Gaming Plans for 2013

We're pretty well along in January but I thought I'd dedicate a brief amount of space to gaming plans for 2013 and looking back at 2012.

2012 was a rather rough time for my gaming group - indeed the concept of a gaming group was a fragile thing. People moving away, losing touch with people, etc. Mid-year I had tried to get a Dungeon Crawl Classics game going. Those of us who played really enjoyed it but we couldn't get a large enough quorum to be able to survive a player or two being unavailable. When I was in college I'd really looked forward to the amount of free time I'd have after graduating. Prior to having kids that was largely true, though that was also the time in my life I was working some crazy hours at some small startup companies in pursuit of millions. I learned a lot and gained confidence in my own abilities as an engineer, but sadly I did not become a gazillionaire - or even a millionaire. Now with two kids, free time is quite the luxury.

Towards the end of 2012 I did manage to recruit some new players for a Call of Cthulhu game. We'd taken December off with crazy schedules and were going to relaunch this week, but yet again the real world interfered with the passing away of an old friend's mother. Coincident with my eldest daughter getting a corneal abrasion - apparently scratches on the surface of one's eyes are intensely painful.

In the immediate future I definitely want to resume our Cthulhu game. We're running a campaign in London of 1890 - if this doesn't work out or in the event of a total party kill (far more likely in Cthulhu than many other games) I've got my eye on an espionage-flavored Cthulhu game, set during World War II and the start of the Cold War. This is what I get for reading John Le Carré novels, Tim Powers' Declare, and books about the OSS (the WWII predecessor to the CIA).

That said, our game is currently set in the 1890s and as someone who loves historical fiction (and history books) I've had great fun diving into the fiction of the era. Those Sherlock Holmes stories are rather enjoyable and period science fiction and horror stories are full of interesting ideas. Plus, Chaosium's Horror on the Orient Express is due to come out this August in time for GenCon. Assuming they can meet that schedule (*cough* *cough* Pulp Cthulhu) they've indicated this new version will include support for Gaslight-era campaigns.

What I really am hoping to be able to do is get gaming regularly again after some bump times over the last year. Right now the plan is for Call of Cthulhu to be the game of choice. As I've commented on my blog before, it is just one of those systems that works for me. I can look at lots of other game systems that I know are more elegant, more realistic, etc. But then we sit down to play and everything just runs super-smoothly. Though truth be told I've run Cthulhu sessions with barely a die rolled.

Another advantage to Call of Cthulhu is it allows for a very broad genre. I've mentioned the possibility of a WWII/early Cold War espionage game. This is something which others have done rather successfully, both using the Call of Cthulhu RPG (such as Pagan Publishing's Delta Green) and as an inspiration (like Contested Ground Studios' Cold City). And there are possibilities further afield - the fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, campaigns set in ancient Rome, etc. I think the reason for this broadness is because the Cthulhu Mythos are not so much a tight saga with no room for ideas, but more an idea - an idea of humanity in an uncaring cosmos. To quote Mr. Lovecraft:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

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Fiction Review: "Hearts in Atlantis" by Stephen King (Part 3-5)

"People grow up, they grow up and leave the kids they were behind."

"Sometimes a little of the magic sticks around," Bobby said. "That's what I think. We came because we still hear some of the right voices. Do you hear them? The voices?" 

 

After opening with two novellas Hearts in Atlantis closes with three short stories.

1983: Blind Willie

The first of the short stories takes us to the 80s and follows Willie Shearman, one of the boys who beat up Carol in the first story. It is an odd tale, as he seeks to do penance for what he did in an odd way. Essentially he adapts a series of identities, including that of a blind Vietnam veteran, "Blind Willie", who begs outside of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

From other reviews I've seen this seems to be the least popular story in the book. I can see why - it is a bit of a reach, all the identities Willie takes on, how he gets away with it, and most importantly, why he's doing all this.

My own opinion is he's pretty well messed up by his life experiences. There's jokes about Catholic guilt and as a, at least nominal member of that group (until they get around to kicking me out for my whacky views), I can confirm its existence. To paraphrase George Carlin, you've got this all-loving God who is perfectly willing to send you off to a place of eternal suffering if you do the wrong things. And Billie knows he did wrong by Carol. And in this story we learn more of some of the characters she wound up geting involved with, including one likely familiar to King readers, a dude bearing the initials RF. And he feels he has some of the guilt for that. And he became a lieutenant in Vietnam, running into none other than Bobby and Carol's childhood friend, Sully-John. He actually winds up saving the life of Sully-John - and you'd think that would give him some sense of redemption.

While perhaps weaker than some of the other works, I think it does do a good job of portraying a man trying to make some sense of his life. Perhaps it is a bit unsatisfying as it doesn't quite give closure but rather just gives us a peek at his life.

1999: Why We're in Vietnam

In this tale we get a bit back towards some more familiar territory. It follows Sully going to the funeral of a fellow veteran. And in so doing, we learn more of his life. While Carol became rabidly anti-war, Sully went off to Vietnam. There he met some of the other characters from pervious tales such as Ronnie Malenfant and Willie Shearman. We learn how Sully's platoon was nearly involved in a massive civilian massacre and how it was stopped, though it was not a pleasant experience. We see how Willie saves Sully from death, though Sully is badly wounded and is haunted by visions of a civilan woman killed by his platoon.

A large part of the story, told in flashbacks, is from a conversation between Sully and his old lieutenant, Diefenbaker. They reflect on what they lived through in Vietnam and what happened to them and their generation since. "Deef" is overall disgusted by his generation - he feels they never have left Vietnam, something that Sully and his "ghost" could attest to. The story ends with a hearty dose of the supernatural, although something I can't even come close to describing without going into spoilers.

Overall I liked this tale considerably more than the previous one. Deef and Sully are both wounded by their experiences, whether physically or mentally - or both. You can almost picture King being part of the conversation between the two - they managed to live decent lives after their experience in Vietnam, but there's this sense that their generation had a chance to do something special, something that was lost. I don't know if that's something every generation feels or not. As I grew up college campuses didn't erupt into passions about ending the war or ending racism. Heck, most people at my college seemed to support the Gulf War. So maybe there is something to the criticism King seems to be leveling at his own generation. Though that said he might be a bit too hard on his generation - they did plant some seeds that would bear fruit a generation later.

1999: Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling

And finally we return to young Bobby Garfield. Though not so young any more. He returns to his hometown of Harwich for the first time since 1960 to attend a funeral - and to learn what became of Carol.

This is another tale that is hard to write about without going into spoiler territory. But it does invoke some feeling. One of the qualities King injects into his characters is the connection to childhood - you see that especially in the novel It, but that skill serves him well here. I was visiting my parents in Connecticut several months ago and we drove to pick up some pizza, going to the place we used to always get pizza from. It was a strange experience going back into a restaurant I used to know so well but hadn't entered in something like fifteen years. So I get a glimpse of how Bobby feels as you visit places you'd not seen in a long time - for him nearly four decades. 

It is a touching story where Bobby finally gets some closure the events of his last months in Harwich. And gets to rediscover some of the magic from his childhood.

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Cold War RPG Musings

"O fish, are you constant to the old covenant?"

"Return, and we return. Keep faith, and so will we."

- From Tim Powers' Declare, quoting A Thousand and One Nights

Over the Christmas holidays I spent some time reading the first three of John Le Carré's novels: Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. In the first two the protagonist is George Smiley, a spy about as far from James Bond as one can imagine. He's not a combat master, he's someone who thinks and knows an awful lot.

I've heard this style of writing referred to as "stale beer" espionage novels. It is a world of blackmail, betrayal, and morally questionable actions. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold involves a series of betrayals and deceptions such that it is impossible to find a "hero".

 While such fiction is typically "mundane", it need not be so. For example, Tim Powers' Declare is a WW2/Cold War spy novel with a strong occult element.

D&D and other RPGs were born in the Cold War period. That said, there aren't many RPGs that are dedicated to a Cold War simulation. TSR's Top Secret was one such game - though it is worth noting that it was written when the Cold War was most definitely still going on - just like an espionage game written (and taking place) today would have to deal with the US War on Terror an espionage game back then would of course deal with the Cold War.

As a Generation X-er, I'm probably among the last gamers who grew up during the Cold War. By the time I graduated high school Glasnost was in full swing and in my first semester at college I watched the Berlin Wall open up. I don't think people much younger than me can appreciate what an event that was. My wife's mother was born in Germany and as a child my wife visited Berlin and had the experience of passing through various checkpoints from West Germany to East Germany and into West Berlin. Her descriptions are, to say the least, frightening.

Though it is now history, the Cold War is an interesting period for RPGs and one that is largely untapped. One notable exception is Contested Ground Studios' Cold City, taking place in Berlin of 1950, with teams being made up of representatives of the various occupying nations as they deal with the legacy of the "twisted technologies" of the Third Reich. While this is a dangerous enough threat by itself, you also must deal with the fact that you can't fully trust members of your own team.

As I think about it, trust would be one of the big components of a Cold War game. You really don't know who you can trust. You can usually trust your regular associates. But every once in a while there is a betrayal. Someone is turned by the enemy. Someone has a change of loyalty. Or just breaks down. Or is duped. Sometimes you can't trust your employer or patron. You are a chess piece. And sacrificing chess pieces is par for the course. And sometimes your immediate superiors get turned. Nothing like reporting to a Kim Philby. (A large part of Powers' Declare involved Philby's defection.)

Le Carré and Powers provide a nice axis showing how one can stay in the "gritty" side of spy fiction with varying degrees of the supernatural, from Le Carré 's fully mundane world to dealing with djinn in Declare. Pagan Publishing's Delta Green Call of Cthulhu supplement provides a post-Cold War occult conspiracy but it also provided tons of history for the Delta Green organization, providing some interesting ideas for games set at various stages of the Cold War. Not only do you need to defeat the Mi-Go, but you must also stop the Soviets from gaining access to their technology.


The Cold War also provides a nice level of technology. Computers do exist but they are the machines that fill up rooms, not fit in your pocket. No internet as we know it. A paper copy of a document becomes a valuable thing. No cell phone to call for backup. No answering machines until the end of the Cold War.

It does also present some interesting challenges. I remember being scared of the Soviet boogeyman. I remember being shown those scary maps showing the spread of communism. There was a real fear of the Soviet Union and us all getting nuked to kingdom come. That may be hard to relate to. "You were really scared of them?" Similarly, any game set in a past period may get caught up on details like technological and societal details. However, there is a ton of source material out there, both in fiction and non-fiction. It can make for some rather enjoyable research.

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Fiction Review: "Hearts in Atlantis" by Stephen King (Part 2 - 1966: Hearts in Atlantis)

"I learned a lot in college, the very least of it in the classrooms."

The first novella in King's Hearts in Atlantis, Low Men in Yellow Coats, is by far the longest in the volume, taking about 50% of the book. It concerned 11 year old Bobby Garfield and his friends John Sullivan and Carol Gerber meting Ted Brautigan. We learn Ted has some telepathic abilities and can pass them on to others, at least briefly. We also learn that he has some connection to the Dark Tower, the center of Stephen King's "universe".

The second tale, entitled "Hearts in Atlantis", from which the volume gets its title, is also of novella length, though considerably shorter than the previous tale. It is also far less "fantastic", more grounded in reality. But it also shows the affects the previous tale had on Carol Gerber, now 17 and a freshman at the University of Maine. However, she is not the viewpoint character, rather that is Peter Riley, another freshman at the University of Maine.

Our protagonist, Peter Riley, is on financial assistance at the University of Maine. He has a cafeteria job to help pay his way though school. And this requires him to maintain a minimum GPA. The people in his dorm are in the same situation as him.

An A student in high school, Pete starts the semester off fairly well. We meet some of the other residents of his dorm. He becomes close friends with Skip Kirk. His roommate Nate is a pre-dentistry student who prefers not to get directly involved in the history being made around him. You've got the floor proctor, David Dearborn, a by the book ROTC student who wants more order and respect from his floor. Stoke Jones is a anti-war activist who has a huge chip on his soldier and health problems and non-working legs. Ronnie Malefant is a generally nasty character with bad hygiene. And living nearby and also working in the dining hall is Carol Gerber.

Pete develops two passions. The one most understandable is the attraction he feels towards Carol Gerber. Though both have someone back home they quickly form a romantic relationship. The other is a never-ending hearts game, initiated by the foul-mouthed Ronnie Malefant.

The hearts game is something hard to explain but to be honest I have witnessed similar all-consuming passions. The bulk of the residents of the third floor, Nate, Dearborn, and Stoke excepted, spend all their time playing hearts. They begin neglecting their school work and even their classes. Soon people begin dropping out of school and others know they won't be invited back next semester. And at this period of time, people with a Y chromosome not attending school tended to get invited to visit Vietnam.

His relationship with Carol is one of the few things that can pull Pete out of his hearts games. She has become very active in the anti-war movement. Her experiences in the previous tale, where she was rescued from Bobby gives her the need to do this. However, as this tale and later tales in this book reveal, she becomes involved with some very shady characters.


I can't speak to how well this tale captures King's lost continent of Atlantis, a metaphor he uses for the Sixties. I was born in the following decade. I can say that I was reminded of my own time in college. How things change for you. Unexpected opportunities. Missed opportunities too. And strange obsessions. My dorms didn't have any hearts games but strange obsessions did through the dorms I lived in. A bunch of us engineers used to study in a large basement room of one dorm I lived in, someplace we called "the Pit", and there were always a few chessboards around. On the computer front there was an obsession with Tetris that hit our dorm.

I also found the change in technology interesting. Though this tale took place in the sixties, the technology was actually closet to the technology I went to college with in the late 80s/early 90s than the technology of today. We had cable tv and our own telephones. VCRs too. Some of us - especially the engineers - had PCs - though none of us had laptops. And a very few of us had access to the nascent internet, working our way with BITNET and Gopher. But today's college students have smartphones, tablets, etc.

I imagine one thing that hasn't changed from the 1960s to 1990s to 2010s is what a change it makes in you. Or at least it can. One of the characters, Nate, plays it safe. He's at the periphery. He wants to be more involved, but can't. Pete gets pulled into lots of stuff and needs an act of will to take control of his own life. Carol is trying to repay the debt she owes to Bobby from the previous tale by taking stands. But she gets pulled into dark places, as this tale and the later tales in the book allude to.

Also reflected in this tale is what relationships we keep from that period of our lives. Sometimes we form relationships that last a lifetime. Other people come into our lives, make a huge impact, and then back out, never to be seen again. I met my wife at UConn, just a month away from graduation (on a night whose stated goal was for me to forget about women). I also had my first serious relationship there with a woman who I've not seen for nearly twenty years now but who clearly made an impact on me. And there's people in-between with whom I hear from occasionally, communicate with on Facebook, etc.

I'm talking a lot about me in this "review" but I think the nature of the story encourages that. "Low Men in Yellow Coats" took us to the magic of childhood. "Hearts in Atlantis" takes us to another magical time where we begin our journey into adulthood with infinite opportunities and possibilities.

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