GAMA Trade Show is bearing down on us and I’ve got a million things to do. Not sure I’m going to get to a review of the Subhuman’s show before I leave. Suffice to say it was very excellent and had real surprises, like the performance of the entirety of From the Cradle to the Grave, by far their longest song. Sadly, they did not play Ex-Teenage Rebel, or some of the other excellent songs from the Worlds Apart LP like Pigman and Businessman. Just too many good songs to play them all, unfortunately! Hard to complain about the likes of Subvert City, Religious Wars, and Human Error though.

While doing a lot of niggling administrative work, I’ve been mulling over what to do about a particular reviewer that has been pissing me off for months. Now usually we don’t argue with reviewers, or even reply to them at all unless they state things that are factually incorrect. This guy writes a lot of reviews and they are generally favorable for our stuff, but he has a few patented tricks that drive me nuts. Top of the list is his penchant for inventing some criteria out of thin air and then grading us down because we don’t live up to it. For example, say we put out a book about Mutant Plants. The reviewer would say, “I really wish this book had info on Fluffy Bunnies. Fluffy Bunnies and Mutant Plants would work really well together. They should have cut some of this info on Tentacled Beanstalks and included a section on Fluffy Bunnies.” It doesn’t matter that the book isn’t about Fluffy Bunnies. It doesn’t matter that we never promised Fluffy Bunnies. He has decided that the book should have had Fluffy Bunnies, so we must be graded down. Basically, he seems incapable of reviewing the book that’s actually in front of him. He’s got some idea in his mind and if we don’t live up to his imaginary standards, it’s a problem. Of course, he also has different standards for different publishers. We routinely see him give books with far bigger problems than ours (missing material, poor editing, poor design, broken mechanics, etc) the same numeric grade as books of ours that he has nitpicked to death. It’s…frustrating.

So on the one hand, I want to say something about it. On the other hand, I don’t want to look like a whiny publisher who is upset his books don’t all get perfect scores. The day I conduct myself in public like Jim Ward is the day you can shoot me. I just think that we, like everyone else, deserve a fair shake. I’d like the reviews to evaluate the book on its own terms. What did this book set out to do and how successful was it? How does in compare in terms of quality and value to other books on the market? That’s all I’m looking for.

In the end, I expect I won’t say anything. It likely wouldn’t be worth it. There are days when I have seriously considered writing an open letter to this guy though. Like, oh, today.

I just got back from the Subhumans’ (the UK one, not BC one) show at Graceland. I will write a fuller report tomorrow when I’m not sweaty, tired, and listening to the ringing in my ears. Suffice to say that seeing one of my favorite bands of all time deliver a mind-numbingly awesome set on the last date of their US tour has filled me with punk rock goodness. I don’t get to shows that often but it was worth going alone, worth taking the bus, and worth risking a relapse of my flu. I only wish I had gone to last night’s show as well, as singer Dick Lucas noted that tonight they played a different set. Aarrrgggh, what did I miss? How come I didn’t get the memo saying they were doing different sets on the two nights?

Anyway, more tomrrow. If I’m feeling industrious, I may also relate the Saga of Drunk Girl.

There’s a new article under Game Writing called “I Was a Teenage Gamemaster.” It’s a primer on running good games at conventions, based on my experiences in the early 90s. From the intro:

This is an article I wrote many years ago, when I was living in Boston and trying to make a go of the original Ronin Publishing. I was doing mind-bogglingly boring tempt work to pay the bills (which should tell you how well the company was going). One of my gigs was at Tufts University. There was so little for me to do there that I wrote this article on the clock. None of the staff seemed to notice or care what I was doing. An abridged version appeared in Arcane Magazine, #20, which turned out to be its last issue. The full version later appeared in Pyramid Online.

Enjoy.

I finally found some time to work out a bit of background for the Star Wars game I’m running. I had kicked off the game with a short adventure that, true to form with my group, has take us over a month to finish. That was meant to be the exciting James Bond style intro to the campaign, though in reality all the stops and starts reduced the oomph considerably. When we started, I told the players that they worked for a secret Jedi organization they jokingly dubbed the Jedi Intelligence Agency. This was my way to dealing with the fact that practically everyone chose to play a Jedi (not that I can blame them for going with Jedi over some of those snoozer classes like Fringer). Anyway, I worked up a brief background document to give the game some context. I’m sure it will send Star Wars purists running away screaming, as it’s basically SW mixed with Mission Impossible. Nothing much else to report today, so I figured I’d post it here:

Ghost Knights of the Old Republic

It is 3,961 years before the Battle of Yavin (the climactic conflict at the end of the original Star Wars movie). The Mandalorian Wars have been raging for two years. They began when three Mandalorian fleets punched into Republic space and began driving towards the Core Worlds. The Jedi Order decided to stay out of the war, leaving it to the Republic military. This proved a costly mistake, and as a result the Mandalorians have won a string of victories that have humiliated Republican forces and caused huge losses of life and territory.

Recently, two young Jedi named Revan and Malak defied the Jedi Council and joined the Republic fleet. They also put out a call to other Jedi to join their cause. They are currently rallying Republican forces in the Outer Rim and hope to turn the war around. Revan and Malak are sure they are the only Jedi leaders that see the true threat of the Mandalorian war machine. They are wrong.

The Ghosts of Ossus

There is an organization within the Jedi Order so secret that even Jedi lords like Revan and Malak do not know it exists. It was founded 33 years ago, in the wake of the Sith War. In this conflict a renegade Jedi named Exar Kun fell to the dark side and attempted to topple the Republic. While he ultimately failed, the Jedi Order paid a high price. The great library of Ossus was destroyed when a nearby sun was made to go supernova. Countless irreplaceable artifacts and texts were lost, along with countless lives.

After the war the Jedi Order worked hard to renew its strength. Because Exar Kun had corrupted many young Jedi, a whole generation of knights was nearly wiped out. Amongst the survivors were three Jedi who felt it was time for the Order to evolve. In their minds, Exar Kun had been allowed to run rampant when he should have been taken to heel as soon as he fell to the dark side. The Jedi Masters, they believed, were so concerned with the purity of the Force that they often neglected the greater good. The loss of Ossus was a direct result of their shortsightedness.

The three mysterious Jedi (and to this day, no one knows their names) founded the Ghosts of Ossus, a secret organization dedicated to fighting the enemies of the Jedi Order. The ghosts go into the shadow places where other Jedi feared to tread. They do not shirk from using methods other Jedi would find distasteful. They do it because someone must. They do it for the greater good.

You are a strike team of the Ghosts of Ossus. You have been working behind the scenes to thwart the Mandalorians since the war began. If you are captured, the Jedi will disavow your activities and label you as renegades. Nor can you implicate your superiors in the Ghosts of Ossus because you’ve never met them and don’t know their names. You receive your orders via encrypted holograms and report back the same way. You pick up money and equipment from caches when needed. For the most part, you are on your own.

When the history books are written, you won’t be in them. You are, after all, nothing but ghosts.

Here’s the final question from Sunday’s Democratic debate. It’s asked by a reporter from the NY Times:

BUMILLER: Really fast, on a Sunday morning, President Bush has said that freedom and fear have always been at war, and God is not neutral between them. He’s made quite clear in his speeches that he feels God is on America’s side.

I would call out the courage of the American people, and defend our rights, cancel the Patriot Act, reestablish the fullness of our democracy.

Is God on America’s side? What kind of ridiculous question is that? This is journalism? What did she expect them to say? “Yes, I spoke to God this morning and he assured me that he is on our side.” If there is a god, I’d imagine he’d answer a la Treebeard. “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side…”

Anyway, after “Super Tuesday” looks like it’ll be rich guy who married a richer heiress vs. rich guy who became president because of his daddy. Since Monkey in a Fez isn’t running this year, I guess I’ll vote for Kerry. At least he’s got that war hero thing going for him, even if he did vote for the war and Patriot Act.

I read an interesting article over breakfast about Homo Erectus, one of the ancestors of Homo Sapiens (i.e. humanity). Early in the 20th century two skulls (known as Java Man and Peking Man) were unearthed that were found to be made of very thick bone (much thicker than our skulls today). Various theories for this have been floated over the years (including the one positing that our ancestors were giants!), but this article had a new one: the species had thick skull protection because they beat each other routinely. They came to this conclusion by examining the many instances on the skulls of healed wounds caused by blunt force trauma. One of the skulls had ten such wounds. So basically, our ancestors beat each other in the head with clubs to such a degree that they developed thick skulls.

So, how will our current culture affect our descendents? Will the continued success of reality TV eliminate the “shame gene”? Will the American propensity for overeating lead to a more load-bearing skeleton? Will the use of botox lead to a new species born with paralyzed facial muscles? Ah, for but a glimpse of our heinous future…

Somehow, without me even realizing it, Nik and I have lined up a bunch of social engagements for the weekend. I mean, sure, we’re working this morning and then have a business-related lunch, but after that it’s on to something more relaxing. Last night we were over at Ray and Christine’s for drinking and conversation and got to meet some of Christine’s friends from Chicago. It’s an unusual weekend for us, since we normally just keep on working. I intend to enjoy myself.

Nothing much to report otherwise. I caught the Daredevil movie on late night cable this week and it was a total piece of shit. The writing was bad and even the action scenes were bad. Ugh. And Colin Ferrell’s Bullseye was just embarrassing. I mean, he literally points at the bullseye on his head and says, “Heh heh, bullseye, heh heh.” He’s supposed to be all cool and badass and is just laughable. And Jennifer Garner only appears once in her Elektra outfit and then it promptly killed. Just a terrible movie.

I’ve been looking forward to GAMA Trade Show, the game industry’s only real trade show, for months now. With all the stuff we’ve got going on, it should be our most triumphant GTS ever. We’ve got a lot of great books coming, including the Nocturnals book that just went to print and looks like a million damn dollars. We have cool licenses like the Red Star and the Black Company that we’ll be marketing there. The Origins Awards nominees will be announced at GTS and hopefully we’ll see a few of those too. And, of course, it’s always nice to spend some time in Vegas (no, not gambling, but eating in fine restaurants and socializing with friends I don’t see as often as I’d like).

Now though, the GAMA nonsense I alluded to in my last entry is putting a pall over the whole show. I’m going to have to go to meetings that are sure to be bile-filled and contentious. I’m going to have to debate with lying sacks of shit I’d rather not even see, let alone talk to. Nicole is likely to be pissed off the entire time as well, which will certainly cut down on the fun aspect of being in Vegas.

It would be so easy to just give up, to let the fuckers win. I just can’t do it though. My bullshit detector is in the red. The lies are piling up, the innuendo doing its dirty work, and the backroom shenanigans are in full effect. Certain people have crossed the line and I’m not going to sit idly by. I can’t, in good conscience. So GTS will certainly be triumphant for Green Ronin, but it’s also going to be bloody and ugly.

As Iggy Pop said, “No fun.”

But as David Farragut said, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

I can be a cantankerous son of a bitch when I’m pissed. And I am officially pissed.

There’s a 19-page (and counting) thread over on rpg.net about the current GAMA brouhaha (that’s the Game Manufacturer’s Association, the only trade organization for the game biz, for you non-gamers). That whole thing is vitriolic enough that I don’t want to discuss it here, but Mike Mearls opined thusly in the thread:

“I think 10 years form now, Ryan [Dancey] will be judged as the savior of RPGs.”

First I laughed out loud. Then I reflected on how Ryan did a much better job marketing Ryan than marketing D&D.; Finally, I decided to respond to Mike. Since I doubt many folks are still following this argument (and since this makes an easy blog entry), here’s my reply. Discuss.

“I say this as someone who has benefited from d20 and the OGL as much as anyone: I don’t. I think Ryan will actually be known as the guy who first saved D&D;* and then hamstrung it by creating d20 and the OGL.

As I said, I’ve done very well with d20, so I have no complaints on that score. If I ran WotC though, I’d release 4th edition next year and never add the new rules to the SRD. I just don’t think d20 has been good for WotC financially. I don’t think anyone foresaw how many new companies would start up and how much product would be pumped into the channel month after month. I simply can’t believe that this hasn’t caused WotC to lose sales. And note how 3.5 was brought out earlier than originally intended.

*For the record, I don’t think Ryan saved D&D;, but I think that most gamers will by the time 10 years have gone by. I think the dozens of designers, artists, editors, graphic designers, etc. had a little something to do with the game’s success. And Ryan had a marketing budget that was simply astronomical by RPG standards. To give you an idea, the budget for one event alone (the D&D; College Tour, which you likely have never heard of) had a budget five times that of the Chainmail game’s for its entire first year. But I digress.”

I see that Ralph Nader is going to run for president again. While I admire the guy’s gumption, I think he’s going to be disappointed. This comes from someone who voted for him in the last election. At the time I felt I couldn’t in good conscience vote for the Democrats and reward their “cozying to the right” strategy. I wanted my vote to show them that they couldn’t just assume anyone on the left would vote for them, while they tried to woo “liberal republicans.”

Well, this time all my high-minded moralizing is out the window. In 2000 I didn’t think four years of Bush Jr. could be THAT bad. I fully admit that I was dead wrong. So very wrong. Oh my god, I was wrong. The Bush administration has been an unmitigated disaster for America. It will take decades to fix the harm done to this country. So in 2004 I’m going to vote for whomever the Democrats put forward. Kerry apparently. Well, whatever. I’d literally vote for a monkey in a fez to get Bush and his cronies out of power. I have a feeling that many people who voted for Nader last time feel the same way. I would be surprised if his total votes were even half of what they were in the 200 election.

Sorry, Ralph, but sometimes who you’re voting against is more important than who you are voting for.