I've been working and reading quite a bit lately, but writing not so much (particularly to my livejournal).

The fall semester is well underway. I'm taking one class (Teaching Literacy in the Elementary School) and that will be it until I begin student teaching in the spring. This class has a clinical component to it, meaning I'm going to an elementary school one morning a week to help out with their reading program for kindergartners through 3rd grade. It's been very inspirational for me, because it's been something of a worst case scenario so far. The classes are absolute chaos (one teacher has either left or was fired during the four weeks I've been there), and I decided to pick the one that seemed to be the worst (I'm always working on the learning edge, doncha know). So what's my inspiration? Knowing that I should be able to do a better job (or at least no worse) than any of these people! Next week, we start presenting our own lessons, and I'm really thinking about trying to do it in front of the entire class (leading edge, remember?) rather than small groups.

I've made an effort to really ramp up my reading this year. One of the things my literacy class has taught me is how much of the reading I've done the last ten years or so has been about efference, basically reading to acquire information, rather than aesthetics, which is reading for pleasure. Prior to this year, I mostly read game books, some non-fiction, text books and other material in an effort to acquire information.

So in that vein, here's what I've read lately. I finished Point Blank by Anthony Horowitz, the second in the Alex Rider teen spy series. It was pretty decent, even if it borrowed heavily from Ian Fleming's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It even had a cloning plot which didn't require too much suspension of belief for me. For my birthday, my oldest daughter gave me the third and the fourth in the series (she definitely has ulterior motives in that she like to read them too). 

Speaking of Fleming, I finished Moonraker, his third James Bond book. You can tell Fleming is struggling to come up with ideas, as for the second time in three books, he has James subdued via automobile accident. Bond gets first involved in the plot by tricking a card cheat (which will come up again in Goldfinger). He also really goes into the mastermind monologue this time. Obviously the book has absolutely nothing to do with that glorious action/near parody produced in the '70s with space shuttles and laser beams and Jaws.

In keeping with the spy theme, I've also been reading the so-called "Union Trilogy" for James Bond by Raymond Benson. I've never read any of Benson's take on Bond, as I had already given up on John Gardner's take on the superspy after he had a fairly decent restart to the series, but quickly devolved into stupidity. I figured Benson has two major points against him in writing Bond. 1. He's an American. 2. He's a gamer (he even wrote a supplement for the 007 RPG).

As it turns out, my prejudices were on target. I've finished the first in the trilogy, High Time To Kill. The set up of climbing Mt. Everest (actually one of its sister mountains) in a race to retrieve a macguffin sounded promising. Unfortunately, it failed to deliver on many different levels. Benson throws in so many product placements you begin to wonder if he's getting sponsored to do it. Then, not just once, but twice his James Bond decides to take a break to have sex even while the mission hangs in the balance. I mean, you almost thought Gardner's Bond was going to settle down and have some kids, but this was unforgivably in the opposite direction.

As for my own writing, I'm working on creating a believable "evil" conspiracy for Racing Spies. Actually, they aren't all that evil, just motivated in a particularly negative direction. If only I were more motivated to write about them in any direction.

I'd like to take yet another episode of "I Spy" and "Ultraspy" it. This one was called "Father Abraham", and was about a young physicist who decides to sacrifice himself to feed the commies bad information and interfere with their solid rocket fuel program. Our two intrepid heroes, Kelly and Alexander, are directed to break him down, basically interrogate him until he spills the beans in a convincing enough manner.

They then escort him around Rome, with the backstory that he is a brilliant, but embittered and alcoholic American physicist responsible for a breakthrough in solid rocket fuel, hoping the enemy will take the bait. Unfortunately, the young physicist's father, a powerful and influential general, gets word of his son's shenanigans and confronts him about his unAmerican ways (he would rather see him dead than turn traitor, hence the "Father Abraham" title).

Kelly and Alexander think the whole thing has been blown, but the confrontation between father and son is just the sign the commies are looking for that the situation is for real, and they kidnap the guy (it's amazing how many one punch knockouts they have in this series!) for interrogation. To further complicate matters, Daddy comes to the rescue before the physicist can give away his "information". Kelly and Alexander have to knock out the father and return the physicist to his captors, where he can finally spill and beans, and they can finally get back to rescue him (even from his own father, who witnesses the "betrayal"). In the end, father is set straight, and the physicist is set to disappear, supposedly killed in the scuffle (but with a posthumous medal to make Dad proud).

Obviously, between this episode and the one I detailed previously, some of the writers for "I Spy" had some real Daddy issues.

The Ultraspy Version
Take out the rocket fuel angle, and make it an Ironman-like battle suit! The young guy, who is a certifiable genius, has invented a great suit of battle armor. Unfortunately, only one has ever been created, and the government has spent millions of dollars trying to create others to no avail (some kind of psychic link between the guy and the suit). The guy, feeling guilty for all of the money he's wasted and useless because he can't create any others, comes up with this plan to derail the commies in their own battle armor program.

Everything else can proceed pretty much along the same storyline, except the commies should be equipped with some high tech gear of their own, and Dad should definitely show up for his rescue in the battle suit, which could be subsequently claimed and used by the commies. 

In addition to reading a lot during this brief break, I've also been watching some stuff I've had for a while on DVD. Mostly, I've been checking out "I Spy" seasons 2 and 3. It occurred to me that I could "Ultraspyify" most of these episodes to come up with some nifty adventure seeds for my "Sex, Lies and Ultraspies" roleplaying game.

One of my favorite episodes that I've seen so far is called "Little Boy Lost". It stars Opie (a young Ron Howard) as a kid neglected by his rocket scientist father (played by Napoleon Solo, aka Robert Vaugn). Opie decides to get Dad's attention by stealing a miniature guidance system and running away from home. Our two intrepid agents, Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, are assigned to find the kid and the guidance system before the Russians (or at least some vaguely Eastern European types) do. Added into the mix is a sweet hearted secretary who is a little too sweet hearted for her fellow man (she bleeds pink, if you know what I mean, and is an obvious dupe for those swarthy Eastern European types). In the end, the hip cat agents find and befriend the boy at an amusement park, beat off the communists, and retrieve the guidance system. I do like how the episode avoids syruppy sap at the end (that would have been the '80s style) as father and son still seem to have some issues.

The Ultraspy version should have the kid possess "special" powers, and I'm thinking teleportation (a la I Dream Of Jeannie) might be fun. Keep the kid hanging out at an amusement park, but add in some Paladin-types from the movie Jumpers looking to eliminate one of their own who has gone bad. Also, I'd give the commies some "special" powers of their own (I'm thinking at least a wolverine-type sniffer/tracker combat monster type). Change the setting from Malibu to the Brighton Resort area in southwest England and most of the rest of the story would be good. The only thing that doesn't ring very British is the "Poor me, my father ignores me" vibe. I suspect most upper class British children would actually expect that sort of treatment. It could easily be altered with a "I'm special, but Daddy doesn't want me to show it. I'll show him by taking away what make him special" vibe, particularly given the kid's powers.

Voila, an ultrapyified adventure awaits! 

Since I'm finished with my summer classes and have yet to begin my Fall class, I've had some time to read, and I've actually made the most of it. Here's what I've gotten through so far:

The Gunseller by Hugh Laurie: Early on in reading this book, I was really hating Laurie for not only being a talented actor, but a talented writer as well. Fortunately, the story, which was about a secret agent-type named Thomas Lang who becomes involved in a terrorist plot designed to increase weapon sales, falters a little in the middle (so Laurie does have some faults to my mind) but concludes very nicely indeed. The protagonist, a capable and dangerous smartass, is my absolute favorite archetype.

On Writing by Stephen King: After running across this as a strong recommendation for the second time in as many months (the first was by Kelly Gallagher, a teacher/writer whom I greatly respect, the second was from cybersluagh), I decided to pick this up and check it out. I'm not really sure about the advice on writing (it strikes me mostly as a "this is what works for me" manual) but the autobiographical incidents from King's own life are priceless. It did make me realize that I don't want to be a novelist at this point in my life, even though I (like King) have vivid memories of the first novel I read where I thought "I can do better than this." It was Sahara by Clive Cussler. I probably read a few other stinkers before then, but no one makes as much money off from his or her crap as Cussler.

Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz: Speaking of crap (just kidding, sort of), I picked up a couple of the early Alex Rider series about a teenage spy. I read Ark Angel, a later novel in this series, for my literature methods class, and found it light and fun reading. Stormbreaker is the first in the series, and it was quite a bit rougher (which is actually nice to see Mr. Horowitz has improved in his craft).

Destroyer #55, Master's Challenge by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir: During my adolescence, I read more Destroyer novels than I should admit to, and I couldn't resist picking one up when I found myself at a used bookstore during vacation. It was actually as much fun as I remember them--kind of like Alex Rider but with more sex, drugs and rock and roll (to think I was reading them at the exact same age all of these "teen" novels are geared toward. Bah, in my day, we didn't have no stinking "teen" section in the book store!).

Damnation Decade by Robert Toth: This is one of the few roleplaying products (minus all of the quality Hex Games stuff, of course) I picked up during GenCon (for D20 Modern, no less). It does a pretty good job of interweaving many of the classic '70s movies into quite the hodgepodge setting. I really like the overall "In Search Of.." motif (I have to see if that series is on DVD, I am such a child of the '70s!), but I dislike the author changing the name of literally everything (people, countries, oceans, etc.) in this setting.

It's nice to see that my reading habits have picked up quite a bit during this break. I'm ashamed to say they've really slacked off quite a bit for the last ten or so years.

I'm going to try and be a little more serious about posting. I've actually had an incredibly busy summer with a lot of stuff to write about, just not much time to write it.

Today, we went to the local Renaissance Faire. As I wandered alongside the costumed "performers", trinket shops, and people chomping on turkey legs, I pondered the intricacies of the various levels of geekdom. I wondered why I was completely comfortable telling my coworkers that I was going to the Renaissance Faire (and they were completely comfortable accepting this fact) while I dare not ever mention going to the GenCon Roleplaying Game Convention (for fear of the uncomfortable attempts at explanation and the silences that follow).

When did it become more socially acceptable to actually dress up strangely and waltz around some constructed fantasy of a medieval village than to simply pretend that you're doing almost the same thing by rolling some dice?

Maybe the RenFaire types have better PR people than gamers.

I've had a week to ponder the events of GenCon, so here goes.

I ran six events this year. I had a total of 29 players for an average of 4.83 players per event. Not bad, especially considering my Sindbad event didn't go off at all (0 players) and my Spy Racers game only had 2. They were both on Saturday, generally the busiest day of the convention, which was especially discouraging. Spy Racers also proved that an event which fills up in preregistration can be particularly problematic, as it's likely that a large group signed up together and may have found something better to do.

My general impression is that the 3 hour format I tried out this year didn't work all that well for me. I had two events go right up to the three hour mark (which in turn caused problems for the next GM at the table) and the rest all went less (some almost criminally so). It was very difficult for me to gauge pacing, as I'm much more comfortable with 4 hours. Most importantly, the 3 hour event did nothing to attract more gamers to my event. I had thought the busy gamers of GenCon might give a 3 hour event more of a try, but GenCon forces you to charge the same amount as a 4 hour event, so that really didn't happen.

So next year, I'm going to only run 4 hour events. I'm going to stay away from Saturday, which means I'll be running four events. Gone will be Qerth (which actually had a fairly decent conclusion), Sindbad (which unfortunately did not, but the only reason I wanted to run it this year was because of how awesome it was last year), and Rocket Jocks (which is a game I've discovered is very hard to keep from turning into purely ridiculous camp).

Set in stone will be three Sex, Lies and Ultraspies games: Ministry Q (which went off almost perfectly this year, except for that one "problematic" player who dwells a bit too much on a tiresome theme, Submariners (ditto, except different tiresome theme), and Racing Spies (my new name for Spy Racers).

I need at least one more female character for Submariners (we ran short during this session). The second lieutenant role wasn't taken (and he tends to be awfully similar to the grizzled veteran role) so I thought about changing the genders up. I just needed to find an actress from the '60s in scuba gear. I tried Zale Perry from Sea Hunt (Lloyd Bridges was currently filling the role), but I couldn't find any decent photos of her in scuba gear (or at all actually). So, it's going to be Claudine Auger from Thunderball.

For my final event, I'd really like to try something reasonably "serious". I'm thinking about a "Heart of Darkness" type adventure with "Ultramercs", i.e. mercenaries in the '60s with limited paranormal abilities. I'll have to think about it a little more, but I do have at least a year to ponder it.

A muse struck me down while I was exercising this morning. I must run QAGS Funkadelic Frankenstein on the Mean Streets of Monstertown with the following title (with apologies to Three Dog Night):

Mummy Told Me Not To Come

I also came up with "Magic Carpet Fright" and "Mummy's Alright, Daddy's Alright." I have way too many '70s songs on my mp3 player.

For my Gencon event, I have now created (for the first time possibly ever!!!!!) Qerth counters. Bwahahahahah!

I'm making all new character sheets for Qerth this year. The old ones (which were admittedly fairly quickly put together in the first place) have now been through two seasons with some of them having received various pencil scratchings etc. Plus I decided I wanted to add spell and magic item descriptions to their backs (in order to see if this facilitates some actual magic being used during the adventure).

In setting up 18 different character sheets, I find myself somewhat melancholy (and not just from writer's cramp). As much as I'd love to see my Diviner, Pythia Ouija, or troubadour, Madonna Baldwin, selected by a ready, willing and able roleplayer this year, sadly it's probably not going to happen.

I predict that the Rabbi and Godi characters will definitely be played. If there is a female roleplayer at the event (there always has been), she will pick the Elf. In the end, the Rabbi player will be selected as the best roleplayer.

Maybe I should be the Diviner!

I'm currently working on my Qerth adventure for GenCon. In case you don't remember what happened in the last two years, you can check out my update handout for the players:

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