Monthly Archive for August, 2006

Morning From San Antonio

You know, I’ve never been that much of a morning person (my pesky eye condition prevents it), but lately I’ve had to be. At this moment, I’m sitting in a little coffee shop called It’s a Grind at the corner of Huebner and IH-10 in San Antonio sipping orange juice (I’m not a coffee person, folks, nor am I a latte person). If you’re ever in the area though, check this place out. It’s definitely cool. They just popped U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name on the radio, so likely it will be a decent day. I have a tendency to judge my day outlook based on the music I hear in the morning. It works out fairly balanced actually, as I’m too forgetful and generaly in too much of a hurry to pick what I put on the stereo in the morning.

I woke up a lot last night. The a/c in my room has a tendency to growl like a respectable sized creature from the Deep every now and again, but it does keep the room cold. All in all the hotel was pretty decent. Last night atv Dragon’s Lair was pretty cool. It’s a hell of a nice store, folks, big and full of gear. They carry some books I’ve never really seen before in a gaming store (only available online or whatnot). The people there were definitely cool, but I didn’t really have enough time or really enough people to run a demo. I probably could have but they invited me into their Magic tournament and I hadn’t played magic in probably 5 years or so, more if you consider a tournament setting, and I haven’t played regularly since the late 90s. It was fun though, I was mercilessly slaughtered, but I had a good time. Met some fine folks, sold a book and a couple of Tshirts, definitely no loss there. Today is the promo grind – I drive to every game store in town that I can get to and promote the book. Hopefully that will go well. Anyways, hope everyone out there is doing well.

- Ashe

Houston TX, Tri-Games 8/24

Well I’m actually out on the road now, I’m typing this through the wireless internet connection provided to me by Days Inn in San Antonio, Texas. Houston was, I think, a success. I didn’t get out to as many places as I had originally planned, but I was still caught up finishing the demo packets for the game. It rained like mad out there, which may not be too big of a deal to some of my readers out there, but I can tell you from living in Denton under a perpetual state of drought, I haven’t seen that much rain in a good long while.

Tri-Games was excellent. It’s a very nice layout for a gaming store with an excellent selection of games and gaming accessories and a lot of space to play. The owners there were extremely good to me and the gamers were definitely of a high-caliber. I had to run for a group of eight, which is quite a bit of players when you tend to lean on the narrative/story side of gaming as I do. I ended up running a variation on one of my angles to include a bit more visceral combat to fit the number of players and put the rules into greatest light, but there was still enough time in there to get a bit of character angle off. The gamers there really worked together well, with a couple of tough archetypes and every branch of power represented, these guys mowed through the Dark with reckless abandon. There was enough teamwork in the party to keep everyone alive, but also enough disagreement and chaos to keep it interesting. While running for a large group on a short time budget didn’t seem to allow for a whole lot of character interaction and development, the crew did impress me with what they have; the Tri-Games guys can definitely play character.

So thank you to Tri-Games and to all who were there for joining me in the first demo and hopefully I’ll see you all again next time I’m in Houston.

- Ashe

Ashe’s someday Rant: The Miracle of Life…and Bugs

OK, so you can call me a weirdo if you like or a sap or whatever, but I got giddy over my insects this morning.

For those of you who don’t know, I have a decent sized colony of red Paper Wasps living on the balcony at my apartment. Now, this isn’t generally something to get excited about. In fact, for most of my life, I’ve been pretty freaked out by wasps and other flying, stinging instincts, this owing itself to being stung many times as a child in the same sitting. I mean, I generally would freak out if a wasp was anywhere near me.
For a while I had a colony near the balcony (these were classic Texas red wasps, big red-bodied, red-winged ones) and they got too aggressive so I sprayed them out. After the spray went down, a lot of the colony members were coming back, getting the poison and dying slowly…Now I know I’m a big bad zealot of Khintana and all, but perhaps in her wisdom (and with a little help of my girlfriend Cass) she decided it was time I learned a lesson about harmony with the bugs and whatnot. I must admit that it actually gave me a choke to see those wasps coming back only to be poisoned and watching them die, and it’s the gods’ truth that I felt damn bad about it after, to the point of trying to shoo them away from going back.
About a week later another colony (red with black wings) moved in and started building a nest actually on the balcony, this time in the upper corner near one of the support beams. Now this wasn’t going to fly folks (no pun intended) and my instant urge was to knock that nest down and the two wasps there and be done with it. I suppose it was the fact that I had so viciously annihilated the other colony and watched them die slow that got me here, so I decided to let this colony be for a bit and see how they behaved. It wasn’t long after that they started multiplying…just flying in from everywhere to join up and whatnot, and I noticed that none of them ever really came near me. Also, the bugs seemed extremely laid-back for flying insects: most of the time they barely seemed to work, just hanging about the nest or sitting still on the pole nearby. For a while there my fear still had the best of me and I would simply not go out on my balcony, but I wouldn’t kill them either.
By two weeks later the colony had jumped to 26 wasps who were there most of the day. Several would hang about building the nest while the others would sit simply on the pole as if in conversation. At night all of them started lining up together like sardines on the pole to sleep. By the time all 26 were represented I didn’t bother to avoid the balcony at all, they simply didn’t bother me…often, they would move a bit when I came outside. I got quite attached to these wasps, more than I would have ever thought possible and I would often watch them build early in the morning and count them at night to see if they were all there…if one went missing, I must admit I worried about it.
This is odd for me folks to a great degree. I mean you’re reading about a guy here who is a very serious hater when it comes to wasps. Now here I am watching these guys, saying hi to them when I come out and worrying if they’re alright when they go away. I also no longer turn on the light on the porch at night except to count them, because it wakes them up. That’s pretty weird folks, but there’s a lesson in all this and maybe even a point.
Just a few minutes ago I went outside to see the wasps and check The Plant (a member of the Broken Doll crew and my only pet – the wasps are not pets they are roommates), and low and behold the colonies eggs had hatched. Flying about the pole gathering point and the group on the nest were a bunch of little wasps full of energy, whizzing here and there and bumping into the big ones who seem to be moving about a bit more today (perhaps they are excited). It made me smile; made me smile real big at the fact that there really is magic in this world that a lot of people don’t notice. I know, I know, people say that sort of thing when discussing human children, but I found it with bugs. I’m no entomologist and I’m not a huge fan of bugs to begin with, but I had to stop and think that I helped to some degree provide a safe place for this colony and perhaps that makes up for what I did to the other one.

Now, I know likely there is a chance they may get angry or protective now that the young ones are around and come after me, but I’m giving them their space for the time being, and even if they do sting me (or attempt to) I’ll be damned to the Twelve Towers if I’m going to kill them. I suppose I learned that creatures are what they are and that we are generally the ones now who are disrupting their world. It took a balance to really emphasize that for me.

So be good to your bugs, folks, they all serve some purpose and we all share life. If you think this one’s cheesy, that’s fine, it really is a bit cheesy, but then again, you can’t get too much more geek than me kids – I write role-playing games for a living.

From Denton, TX 15 August, 2006

- Ashe

Workin’ Like Mad

You know, it’s always interesting to me when I’m out up at the local coffee house working and someone says “Hey man, chill out a bit…you work for yourself after all.” Therein lies the funny bit about owning your own business: yes, you get to make your own hours…the problem is all of those hours are work hours.I’ve been working from when I get up pretty much to when I crash out at some odd hour for more than a month now – often more than 18 hours a day. That’s some long hours folks, but I’m not on here to whine about it. I love what I do. Sure, I hate programming and I had to code pretty much all of the website you’re looking at now, but in the end I love gaming. I’m a gamer before I’m a game designer or manufacturer and I wanted a site that gives off more of a community feel than the typical gaming company. I wanted the forum to integrate with the site and I wanted all of you to be able to comment here on the rants without having to make a new account and whatnot. These are pretty small things, but they’re important to me because I care what you guys think about the game. I’ve always been of the opinion that once (as a designer) you release a game it’s no longer yours – it belongs to everyone who plays it. I hope once the book gets out that I’ll see more folks on here working with me on the Wiki site (I’ll be putting more into it soon) and whatnot. I hope that most of the site integrations work as well (drop a line if you find a problem) and I hope to see a lot of you on the tour in the next few months. Keep checking here for the tour dates and diary.

- Ashe