On Role-Playing Games and Family Vacations

I didn't think I'd be posting in awhile, but this blog has been part of my life for so long that I can't see myself not posting. Yes, most of the time I post about nothing, but nothing really happens in my life. Especially around summer.

I don't know if the Changeling LARP is happening, which is a shame. I sent an email to the people there and have had no reply. Once University starts again I'll ask my contact if things are still going on. If it seems likely to continue I'll join, if not then I'll have to wait for another.

It's raining outside at the moment. Thunder and everything. I just thought I'd mention that, because I like it when there is rain and thunder. It's cool and I like the way thunder sounds. It means I'm stuck here at my local coffee house but that's alright.

Anyways, and I should have started with this, but I have done something recently. I have been to my Aunt and Uncle's Cottage in the Muskokas. I suppose it was fun most of the time, but I was also stressed because of all the stuff I had to deal with. There was to many people for me to deal with on a regular basis, about nine besides myself and hardly much in the way for me to really be on my own without bugs eating at me. I did finish Salinger's "Nine Stories," while I was there. I don't think I actually got it though. My friend who suggested it said it is about human interaction and sudden twists, but I didn't really get it. It was probubly my autism, so for the most part it was just a bunch of neurotypicals doing neurotypical things. I also finished Bolano's "2666," but that was before I even left. I don't think I understood that either, but not in the way I didn't understand Nine Stories.

I remember someone once compared Bolano's work to "Highway 61 Revisted," the Bob Dylan song. That made sense, and in many ways Bolano's writing is like Bob Dylan's writing during that period. It's beautifully written and dense and really dosen't make that much sense while still remaining spellbindingly brilliant. Besides that "2666" and "Highway 61" are both similar in various respects. Both revolve around a series of locations, the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa in "2666," Highway 61 in the Bob Dylan song. The location stays the same in both song and book, but various interconnected stories are told within them. I don't know what it is in the Bob Dylan song that connects all these stories besides Highway 61, but in Bolano's novel it is the murder of various women and the reclusive author Benno von Archimboldi. I don't know the meaning for either song or book, but it is something I am curious about both.

Anyways, the role-playing game I hope to run in the fall is becoming something of an obsession, most specifically desighing the supernatural political situation in Weimar Berlin. It was hard enough since I came up with just having Mages, but now I'm working on setting up a vampiric court. The way it went was that the game was going to become rather political and involve a lot of turmoil and it felt a shame to leave vampires out of it. As such I've got a list of the various roles withing a vampire court and am going to come up with roles for each. This is hard since I don't really have much of the political structure of the Mage Consiliuum set up. I have an idea on the Hierarch, his Provost, the Consilor for the Mysterium and a few other important people but not much else. I'm going to have to come up with everyone else during the time it takes to set up the game.

I'm not going to start the game immediatly when I get to University. First of all, I only have two people, and I want to see who else is interested. After that I'd like to talk with them a bit about their characters. I want to get a handle of what kind of PCs I'll be dealing with. I think this is a better idea then last time, since I can see how to work them into the story, which is more or less about the rise of the Nazis, though at first it's going to be rather political with various bits of the fun hedonistic side of Weimar Berlin. I'd like to work more of this into the game, but I'd like to know who is going to play and what kind of characters they are so I can put together the story. I'd like to put all the issues together, for instance one character is looking for his long lost sister, another is trying to stop the Holocaust. Does lost sister have something to do with the Holocaust? Maybe, we'll have to see. Also, it would help the players to look up things on the time period to add any biographical details. One of the characters is a veteran of the Polish-Soviet War for instance, and to run his Awakening I'm going to start with his participation in the Battle of Warsaw.

I don't really know if my obsession with this is a problem or not. I enjoy coming up with this game. I enjoy the research aspect and I enjoy coming up with ways to mess with the heads of the PCs. For instance, I'm learning about the New York Mafia now. One of the characters is a gangster, I think from New York but I can't remember, and as such I want to read up on Gangsters to make things more historically accurate though I fully admit that I'm using Wikipedia as my main source. If anyone knows the situation of the New York Mafia around 1922 - 1923, I'd really appreciate it. Also, I'm going to have fun role-playing all the Mafia Wiseguys during that character's Awakening and the New York Storyline I'm working on.