Gen Con Gamers Loved by Indy Restaurants

Always nice to find something like this.

"The insomniacs with the pointy ears and science fiction obsessions are the darlings of the Downtown restaurant servers. Indianapolis has a constant stream of convention traffic over the summer months, but the visitors that restaurateurs and their wait staffs love to see coming are Gen Con Indy’s. The reason: They’re fun and they are good tippers..."

http://www.indystar.com/article/20130718/LIFE/307180105/Gen-Con-gamers-win-Indy-restaurants-favorite-convention-visitors

Ming's Throne

I had a dream that I thought of this wonderful post about the back of Ming's throne being a live tiger. I know, I know, but look, it sounded brilliant in the dream. Just go with it. So I ran to get my phone and hit the Twitter app (there's no G+ app for Windows Phone so that would be a pain) and started to type. Then my right eye went blind. As distressing as this was, I decided I wanted to finish typing before saying anything about it.

Then the font started screwing up. Who even knew you could change fonts in Twitter, right? It kept trying to post in this kind of ornate Gothic fantasy-looking thing. Apparently eager to drive home the absurdity of this situation, the dream switched my eye back on.

Shortly after that, I woke up, wondering if I would really delay calling for help with something that scary, just to finish typing a weird message.

Epilogue: I noticed that the pillow was covering my right eye. Obviously, both eyes were closed, so you wouldn't think it would matter, but I wonder if my dream was interpreting the difference in the amount of light as some kind of deficiency.

Learning to Surf

"I can't hold my breath anymore. I stopped swimming and learned to surf."

-- Superchunk

I'm down to that last-minute crunch on Qalidar. I should already be into layouts, but there are a few more changes that I've just got to get in. The funny thing, though, is that I'm still having fun.

Before I even got to this point with Peryton RPG, I wanted it to be over. I had already worked out all the interesting additions -the fun part- and I was left with the task of slogging through all the old familiar rules and adding all the magic missiles and orcs and flaming swords that I wanted to borrow from the Open Gaming Licence. I'm proud of what I did with that game but it is, after all, still just a stripped-down Dungeons & Dragons variant with some sprinkles I cooked up to give it its own color.

Qalidar is something else. It's mine. Sure, it's still based on the d20 core mechanic. It still has classes and levels and hit points. Unlike Peryton RPG, though, it's not trying to hold onto the flavor of something else. It's not a fix or a substitute. Qalidar has been creeping into my game sessions and my writing for the past twenty years. It finally poked its head into the outside world in 2008, but even that was just a start, one that I again pushed aside to work on other projects, other stuff that seemed more important or more practical because... I don't even remember.

But Qalidar was never an act of will; it was always just there. And that, I think, is why it feels so good to be giving it its own rules and an expanded treatment now. Don't get me wrong - it's not like I'm just scribbling down a stream of consciousness, but the creative part does feel more natural than usual, and the mechanical part comes together around it without much of a fuss. From the start, when my players and I stumbled across it in that D&D game back in the 80's, Qalidar always felt more like something I was exploring than something I was building.

Which I guess brings me back to the whole surf metaphor, although I actually don't know anything about surfing. Getting thrown about at random is not acceptable. I can manage swimming against the waves, but it's exhausting. I'd like to try taking a ride.