The D&D Castrati

Over at B/X Blackrazor, JB has his finger in the dike trying to deconstruct what the OSR claims are tenets of early D&D and what early D&D really is, supported by this subsequent post.  Frankly, I'd weigh in with a post of my own but, sigh, I can't say I give a fuck what D&D was 45 years ago.  There's far too much pretentious bullshit surrounding the question, such as this pile of horse pucky cleaned from a stable by one Adam Dickstein, writer of the blog, Barking Alien, who claims to have been playing RPGs for 44 years, but sounds like he has yet to crack a book.

Amidst the disparaging of various internet voices (we know how these things go), JB explains exactly why wading into this kind of discussion is a waste of our time:

"... I am more than a little fatigued by individuals who started playing D&D in the last 20 years telling me how and what "old school" D&D is ... or even just what ANY kind of D&D is. But you try to correct someone's ignorance and they just tell you to fuck off because, you know, it's just an opinion and you're telling them how their particular brand of fun is bad-wrong-dumb. Please let us NOT be preached to."

Well, yes.  To someone with 20 years experience, that seems like a long time.  To a high school student, 3 years of high school seems like a long time.  I'm sure that to anyone with 62 years of experience in D&D, I sound quite ignorant.  That's how it goes.  You can't explain to a millennial that when actors used to play a sex or a nationality or a race that was not their own, that was acting, not racism.  You can't explain to a Gen-Xer that when, after the sex act, if the sex partner LIKED what happened, then it wasn't rape, by definition, because no one involved thought so.  People with limited comprehension due to their limited time on the planet will be annoyingly ignorant of how ignorant they are, and there's nothing to be done about it.  Eventually, the world will hit them in the face often enough they'll get wise, so they can roll their eyes at people dumber still.

Far more interesting is the question JB asks: "have people forgotten how to play D&D?" ... and in relation to this a list of four "usual elements":  a group of players, peril, a responsible DM and a set of rules.  JB then spends two posts infering that these things are under siege ... while the comments section of both posts he's written (with a third to come) seems to support that yes, game culture is busy shattering our former conception of the game.

Uh huh.

Okay, agreed.  People out there aren't playing D&D the way we used to.  On this front, unquestionably, 5e was a literal gamechanger.  But then, not because it's all that different a game, but because the politics of "friendly gaming" were ruthlessly beaten into the heads of 7-12 year olds, the demographic the company decided to focus on in 2014 ... a demographic that's starting to graduate high school today.  This focus included drastically changing norms regarding social interactions between gamers at game cons and stores, on a draconian level, if you'll forgive the pun.  Anyone who disagreed with the policies of safe cards and game league conduct rules were — and are — ostracized according to the ancient Greek model.  Should we wonder that these children, just now entering young adulthood, should view the game very differently, especially when their authority model dictated that any and all negativity must be expunged from a game traditionally full of negativity?  

The present generation of new players have been warped by a meat grinder that viciously slams individualism unless it follows approved guidelines ... and we're well aware that those guidelines include that EVERYONE must be included and NO ONE should ever be hurt by the activity.  So much for rules, a DM's judgment or peril.  The only thing left is "group play" ... which is mediocritized to the kindergarten level of human communication.

The fish has been caught, gutted, speared and roasted until it looks nothing like a fish.  This was the company's agenda.

And you motherfuckers, with your shock and surprise and confusion, wondering what happened to the dear old game, and oh gosh it isn't like it used to be, argued tooth and nail with me for 12 years when I told you, repeatedly and at length, that it was happening.

"Oh no," you said.  "5e is just like the old game.  5e is rich and wonderful and filled with new things."

Yep.  Wonderful and new.  Arranged for singing high-C.

Well, it doesn't matter.  Because none of these "experience-not-play" participants will have the least influence over what the game is ten, twenty or fifty years from now.  They have no creditable knowledge to adapt, no intellectual principles upon which to expand, no sense of self-advancement that's been gained, no wisdom to share, no purpose to reveal and nothing of interest to say.  They are political creatures.  Expect them to gather together and form a clique of some kind that demands "Equal Respect among Other D&D Players" or some other such bullshit, like their other political peers raised in the same infantile political atmosphere.

They certainly have nothing to do with me or what I'm doing.

The Elephant

If the goal is distraction, then burning down the inn makes sense.  Killing the messenger bringing the quest makes sense.  Doing anything that gives a momentary sense of control, as an escape from the weekly routine, makes sense.  The game, then, isn't serious.  It's fun.  It's nonsense.  It's a relief.  In which case, the game is like an app ... it's not something that's being played, but something that's being used.  But if that's the reason for the game, then that's fair enough.

If the goal is performance, then the alignment rules make sense.  It makes sense to tell jokes and make snarky comments, it makes sense to pretend to be something we're not.  It makes sense to outdo and outshine the other players, and talk in exhorbitant purplish dialogue.  The actions carried out are a venue for demonstrating one's perspicacity and emotional range.  For game sessions of this kind, simplification is ideal, because the performance covers over the drudgery of gameplay.  The play itself is abstracted and the game time it takes up is only as much as is needed.

If the goal is exploration and discovery, then modules make sense.  It makes sense to have a linear set of highly structured set pieces for the players to come upon, one by one, in order.  It makes sense to run short, small fights that don't hold up the process of what comes next for too long a period.  The players can hear descriptions of the next thing, each with its own glaze of novelty.  There's no need for any continuity or "big picture," so again simplicity is a feature, since what matters is that we keep moving forward, not that any of it makes sense.  And if the DM is put on the spot to provide these fresh, original rooms en masse, with the concommitant souvenirs they require that remind the players of their accomplishments, then modules are a necessity, since no one can be expected to churn out such localities, at the pace they need to be turned out, on their own.

If the goal is problem solving, then puzzles and mysteries make sense.  It makes sense to play up the "weirdness" and semi-magical astonishment of the puzzles, since otherwise they'd be no better than word jumbles and ciphers.  In deciphering the clues, the players are plunged into matters that appear to have no definite answer ... but the answer's not really the point.  The point is that the players feel immersed in the dynamics of the game, the discussion with the other players, using the brain sweat of forcing an innovation to come forward.  And if the players find the solution, they feel smart, and if they don't and it has to be given to them, they can marvel at the cleverness of the puzzle.  In such games, dice really aren't a thing, because dice are dead and lifeless, and therefore useless to solving things.

The perception that D&D possesses any of these as its goal has merit.  It's plain as day that distraction, performance, exploration and discovery, and problem solving, all have their part to play — and depending on which is given the greatest influence on play determines the sort of arguments the DM and players will make about what sort of game it should be, and what matters.  Therefore, any dialogue had between players will be marred by preconceptions set up by these four identifications ... and other less common identities besides, because I don't believe I've listed all the possible pertubations of how the game might be viewed.

If I take up a discussion of dice with a participant focused on performance or problem solving, my arguments will fall and deaf ears.  The same discussion might make some sense with those seeking destraction, but what they get out of dice will differ far and away from what I think dice are for.  As with the perspective of a player seeking discovery.  While these elements are not inconsistent from one another — a single campaign can easily include all four — the emphasis on each tends towards exclusion as its special importance crosses an eventual threshold of exclusion.

I'm reminded of the parable of the blind men and the elephant, which some readers will have leapt to on account of the post's title, while others have no idea what I'm talking about.  So, with apologies, I must repeat the parable to ensure we're together.

A group of blind men have never heard of an elephant.  With their first encounter, each reaches out to touch the creature, to learn its shape.  The first touches the trunk and says, "Aha, an elephant is like a snake."  The second touches the leg and says, "No, the elephant is like a pillar."  The third reaches up and touches the elephant's ear and says, "No, it is like a fan."  The fourth, standing by the elephant's side, says, "You're all wrong, an elephant is like a wall."  A fifth, touching the tale, pronouces that the elephant is "like a rope."  And the last, holding onto to the tusk, explains that the elephant is like a spear.

The tale is Indian in origin, and stealing from Wikipedia and the Rigveda, "Reality is one, though wise men speak of it variously."  We continuously take an extremely complicated game, D&D, unquestionably the most complicated in human history, and present cases for what the dice do, or how characters should be run, or the value of problem solving, and a hundred other features, and boil them down to positive-negativist arguments that make no sense.  Then we make dogma from these, such as "role-play not roll play," and pretend we've said something pithy and factual, when in fact we've demonstrated spectacularly what a bunch of ignorant blind folk we are.

Any single argument I've made on this blog is a waste if the other arguments that are also made are dismissed in the reader's mind.  I am not describing an elephant's leg.  I'm reminding the reader to stop speaking of D&D, or any role-playing game, variously — that is to say, characterised by its features.  If another metaphor is needed, then understand that the different parts of D&D are not labeled beetles stabbed with pins.  Every element and feature of D&D reflects upon every other feature ... and the process of elevating any one part only ensures that the game as potential is not being played.  You haven't the elephant if all you feel is its trunk.

Because it so happens the menu is the example at the moment, some might presuppose that I've created a quaint little doo-dad that's all pretty and stuff, but surely has nothing more to offer than a bit of novelty.  Au contraire, I argue.  If this is your thought, you have nothing more than the elephant's tail in your hand.

Let's take this example I posted months ago:

A restaurant is not merely food on a plate.  It is the culmination of human effort and knowledge, stretching back through a thousand generations of invention and risk.  What is it that makes these items rise to the fore and remain there for centuries as familiar, tasty fare?  Do you suppose these things are arbitrary?  Could you not sit down this moment to a fattened trout or a forequarter of lamb?  Such meals are familiar because the human pallet appreciates them, expands consciously upon them, grants them memory and substance in the imagination because we've had them.

And if you did sit down to such a meal, surely you'd recognize the trout and lamb came from somewhere; and that this somewhere is a part of the world that you can visit, touch and feel.  That, like with mustard farms, there are matters of import associated with their recovery, well-being and transport.  The very fact of these meals in the game world lends greater credence to the game world itself, manifesting itself as something that matters ... so that there is more here in the human soul than a mere list of foods.

Like anything else I've done, or written, or set as a standard for running a game, this menu has it's small place in that world's construction.  And like this blog, the goal of creating it is not just to provide substance for my world, but to provide a larger scheme of thoughts for others.  No one here doubts, do they, that I'm a teacher?  Well, I'd like more students.  I'd like to shake the game world up, by demonstrating what's possible, beyond more modules and puzzles.  Beyond the arguments that D&D ought to be simplified.  Beyond dice.  Beyond the discovery of rooms.  Beyond two-dimensions perceptions of game parts as fetishes.

The uninitiated, those who have never heard of me, picking up and holding this menu in their hands, will have their perception of the game world blown ... because the menu does not merely describe the game world, it IS the game world.  A part of it, that can be held physically in one's hands.

What other unsuspected physical objects, apart from the obvious weapons and armour, lay out there waiting to be invented?  What undisturbed imaginations might be stirred by the presence of this unique item in their hands?  I don't know.

I want to know.  I want to make it available to a great many more people than have perused my blog or understand my gaming philosophy.  For that, I need help.  A little help.  I've already had some.  I still need a little more.  So take a moment, shake $20 or more from your wallets, and let's do something that gives sight to the blind.  Let's wake some people up.  Let's expand this game.  Great things being with one little nail in a single horseshoe.  I've made the nail.

Help me get it into the hands of others.

Sure Loser

From today's Electoral Vote.com:

"The new Texas law that is going to force all the in-state abortion clinics to close is very unpopular nationally. A clear majority of people want to keep abortion safe and legal. By talking endlessly about women who were raped and then forced to bear their rapist's child, the Democrats have a talking point that could potentially overshadow Afghanistan and everything else and allow them to hold the House and Senate in 2022.

"However, a small group of activists don't like talking about abortions as something only women have. They want to include people who were assigned female at birth and who now identify as male but can still be raped, get pregnant, and want an abortion. So in their view, men can also get pregnant and need abortions. To their way of thinking, talking about the need for women to get abortions marginalizes the need for some men to get abortions as well."

Tap.

I'm out. 

A Search

This is a story about memory, and how we are utterly failed by it.

A week ago, I took a trip with friends from Calgary into British Columbia.  We travelled through Banff, Radium Hot Springs, Wasa, Cranbrook, Yakh and Creston.  From there, we took a minor road north to Crawford Bay, then on a ferry to Balfour and Nelson.  From there we went north to New Denver, Nakusp and Galena Bay, where we caught another ferry to Shelter Bay.  We drove north to Revelstoke, then back to Calgary through Golden.  Distance numbers on the map are in red, indicating kilometers.

The country is beautiful; we drove through and visited five national parks, six provincial parks and some of the most magnificent and remarkable mountains in the world.  But the reason for this strange circular journey was not only to look at mountains.  I was also looking for my grandfather.

I have spoken about my grandfather on the blog before.  Born in 1886, emigrated to Canada at 18, a Canadian veteran of both World Wars, a writer, a painter, an ornithologist and towards the end of his life, a mountain man who squatted on land he did not own, in the very country I visited last weekend.  Only thing is, I didn't know where.

My grandfather was 51 when my father was born; my grandfather was 85 in 1971, when he had a stroke and was brought by my father to Foothills Hospital in Calgary.  There he remained as a convalescent until his death in 1976.  My parents are both gone now, so all I have left of him are my memories when I was only five or six.

I remember visiting him in British Columbia, perhaps two or three times before his stroke.  I had a memory of what Cranbrook and Creston looked like ... but I hadn't been there since before 1971.  Yet I remembered the highway; I remembered there was a big house with glass windows on the right hand side, and that there was a huge lake on that side.  On the other side, the mountainside came down to the highway.  I remembered that we always drove south to reach my grandfather.  But of course, there are hundreds of places in B.C. that look exactly like this.  My only thought was to get some sense of where his house might have been.

I was certain the place had to be somewhere between Cranbrook and Creston.  It might be somewhere before Cranbrook.  But as we came down highway 93, it was obvious from the great flat valley that my grandfather couldn't have lived around Cranbrook.  And as we followed highway 3 to Cranbrook, nothing looked at all familiar.  There were no large lakes, and the mountains were all wrong.

I'd told my fellow travellers about my search on the first day, so they were on the lookout as well for clues and possibilities.  I must point out that we couldn't be on the wrong highway; every valley in this country has exactly one paved route.  That night in Creston, I must admit feeling downhearted.  There were no highways further south; Creston is only a few miles north of Idaho, and we certainly never crossed the border.

So, last Sunday, a week ago, we started north on highway 3A.  Kootenay lake loomed beautifully on the left hand side, the wrong side by my memory, while we enjoyed the journey.  Then my friend Jan called out that we were passing a "Glass House" on the left-hand side; it was also the wrong side by my memory, but he stopped the car and we veered back.

As I got out of the car, looking at the house, it looked completely wrong.  I saw large panes of glass in my mind, a tall angular roof.  Here's what we saw:

I couldn't know it, but The Glass House is a famous B.C. tourist site; but I don't have any memory in 1970 of it being anything special.  I said out loud to my friends that it definitely wasn't the right place.

Nevertheless, for the sake of stretching our legs and maybe finding a nice piece of B.C. jade, we parked the car and walked to the shop.  We were greeted by a friendly woman in her 60s.  And on some ludicrous whim, I asked her if she'd ever heard of a man by my grandfather's name.  She said she didn't, but she called her husband, asking if he might have.  Her husband's name was Eldon and he had lived there since he was a boy, back into the 1960s.

He remembered my grandfather perfectly.  For an hour, I listened as he told story after story, funny ones and serious ones; things my grandfather had taught him; jokes my grandfather had made.  It was clear that Eldon was as stunned and pleased to find the grandson of this man in his company, as I was to hear stories from someone other than my parents.  My grandfather was a recluse; not a part of the larger family, divorced from his wife and her people, out of choice.  The serendipity of the moment was ... astonishing.  I'm still confounded.  The chances of my choosing to take the journey; to have any expectations at all of finding even a scrap of evidence; the chances of this man Eldon still living in this place where he was a boy, and still remembering an old man, a man 70 years his senior, so well that he could talk and talk and talk about him.  The chances of our meeting.  It's stupefying.

My friends listened just as I did; no one felt any need to rush away.  For the next two days, we found ourselves wondering at it, as though we'd just witnessed a great historical event.

Now I'm staring at my coffee and not writing, so I must be out of things to say.

Did You ... ?

 

The Menu's Logo

We have art.

The expectation is that the artwork will be embossed on the front cover of the menu, in silver.  We're having this done by the company when the time comes; I'll be pricing it tomorrow.  As such, the artwork cannot be overly complex.  For something like this, simple is best.

I'll be interested to hear from those who like the picture.  I have no interest in hearing from those who don't.  First rule of the internet: there will always be haters.  Always.  Such comments and opinions are, therefore, useless to a creator.  It's only important to count the number of likes.

Those who cannot like something might as well say nothing at all.

Anything that Isn't "Easy" is Impossible

I wonder if Apple or Samsung regularly receive letters and missives from readers saying, "Hey, I really like your phone and I'd like to make one of my own.  Can you help me do that?"

When I began designing a trade system for my game world, I had one fundamental goal: that it would define different prices for different goods and services based on the origin of those things.  I had no sense of there being a "right" way to do this.  I began by accumulating a list of manufactures and resources according to their origin.  Using the real world as a model, this soon became a prodigious list, with hundreds of unique references and thousands of sources.  For a time, I was confounded on how to turn this list into a format that would produce prices, then adjust those prices according to how far said goods were shipped.  To make it work, I had to adjust my thinking process again and again; I had to throw out preconceptions for the sake of practicality.

Those preconceptions included "supply & demand," the basing of value upon labour, or upon produced food and determining a flat-rate cost of transportation for things being shipped.  I had to accept that any system I created had to function "illogically," because all the details and particulars were never going to be accounted for.  We can't account for them today, with millions of economists, strategists and other experts working on them today.  I'm just one person.  I have limitations.  Therefore, realistically, the trade system would have to be unrealistic.  And because of that, it would end up as counter-intuitive.

This evaluation and eventual manifestation took 16 years.  During that time I tried everything.   I rebuilt the system fifty different ways.  Try to imagine what it was like to organize all the data, make lists, make calculations and then run tests with the players, with pencil and paper, only to find that it produces absurd, aberrant numbers ... and then to face up to the players disparaging your system and expressing things that make you feel humiliated.  Then, doing it all again.  Fifty times.

Long before I had dedicated readers, I had dedicated players.  They tolerated this procedure for literally years, gamely giving each system a try, recognizing the value of the idea if not the idea's success.  Those players never saw a successful version.  That first gaming period of my life ended in 1997 and it took another seven years before I finally sorted out the system.

I write this to explain that whatever prejudices I had about how a working trade system would function were steadily eroded away by failure after failure.  In the end, the final result was the one that worked, not the one I wanted or the one that best reflected the real world's economic trade system (which, it must be noted, is organic and in some degree misunderstood by everyone).  My trade system, however, does do what it was meant to do: it provides different prices for different goods and services based on the origin of those things.

I've been approached by others who claimed to have a "better" system than mine ... and yet I have never seen any of these systems laid out as plainly and directly as I have on multiple blog posts; and upon further investigation, they all admit that no, they don't do what mine does, specifically what mine was designed to do: provide different prices, et al.  Meaning that they're not a trade system at all.  They're a glorified pricing system for one game world location.

I've also been approached with the general message, "Hey, I really like your trade system and I'd like to make one of my own.  Can you use your time to help me do that?"

Recently, I've been giving the answer, "No."  I've come to that because in the past, when I've tried to help, my advice is never taken.  It is assumed that while it's nice that I made the decisions I made, the new maker wants to make their own decisions.  They think the trade system they want should function differently.  It should be based somehow on supply & demand, or labour, or a gold standard, or any one of a hundred economic principles that have been thoroughly debunked in the real world for a century now.  If you want to be laughed out of a room by a group of economists, mention supply & demand.

Additionally, every once in awhile I see someone has discovered the pdf for "Grain Into Gold."  These people are always excited, because at last they've found the economic Mecca they've been searching for all these years!  This "simple and sane supplement" is an exercise in pulling economic numbers out of your ass.  I've never seen anyone write, "I've done it!  I built a trade system based on Grain Into Gold."  Because it doesn't work.  It's hot garbage.  Yet it feeds the standard belief system for most people who want to build anything for their campaign world.

It promises that this is going to be easy.

This is why people come to me and ask if I'll help them build their trade system, their way.  Because having me do it is easier than doing it themselves.  After all, I've proved I can do it.  I have the evidence.  Anyone can read it.  And in fact, anyone can copy and implement it exactly as I've done it ... only they don't.  Because it is too much work.  It isn't easy.  Which begs the mantra that titles this post.

My trade system wasn't easy.  Took 16 years to invent it.  Took another 10 to get it into a truly serviceable order.  Expanding it has been an effort I've undertaken for almost a year now, one that I'm wallowing through, because the project is immense.  Making any change is an enormous headache, because the system functions like a delicate machine.  It is adjustment-unfriendly.  Yet every instance I use it in a game, every time I need to sort out some detailed element of the game's money or economy, I am enormously grateful for the time I've taken.  No matter how awful it was to make the bloody thing, the bloody thing is bloody marvelous.  It is both unequalled and unadaptable ... and is therefore intimidating as hell for any other user, particularly those who won't break their body and mental prejudices to accept the thing as it is, and to do the necessary work to make it function in their world.

I've decided I no longer care.  I haven't any respect for those who won't work.  Nor do I have any interest in using my time to hand-hold someone who has the benefit of my work but feels that isn't enough.  And I say this while trying to raise money for a completely different project ... which I know perfectly well can't be reinvented by someone else without my help, because it required an expertise in history, culinary art, dungeon mastering and creativity to manage.

Therefore, as long as I don't explain how I did it, I hold an intellectual patent that no government can issue.  So, when I said yesterday I would offer "proof," that certainly did not include providing more examples of the product.  From my point of view, that would be enormously stupid.

Work is not just tiring.  It produces results.  Results carry knowledge in the process and knowledge is power.   Power brings independence and opportunities.

When the reader resists or refuses to work on their game world, there are no results.  Without working to make something result, knowledge isn't gained; and without knowledge, there is impotency.  Impotence offers only dependency and subjugation to others.

"Easy" has a cost.  It is time, and life, and self-respect, wasted.

It's Alive!

The kickstarter is indeed live.  It seems to have started just after midnight last night, my time.  As of writing this, I had 8 backers pledging $639.  I'm overwhelmed by the considerable generosity shown by such a small number of people.

Necessity requires that I ask my readers to please go to the sign, watch the video if you have not and then contribute what you can.

If you feel you cannot for some reason, please tell me what thing I could say that would convince you.  Explain the post I could write or the subject I could address.  Define the proof you need that would allow me to demonstrate my commitment and passion for this project.  Help me to help you understand how important this is.

One thing is true: the plans I have hinge on the menu doing well.  I think it will do well.  I've had the opportunity to show it to complete strangers now, and the result is everything I'd hoped it would be.  The immediate impression is startling; one might say electric.  One fellow exclaimed quite loudly, in a public place, that not only was the menu unexpected, but that "It's like nothing I've ever heard of before!  I've never even imagined that something like this could exist!"  High praise.

Therefore, please contribute.  Contribute and I will do my part.

Journey's End

Back from my trip and naturally, I'm tired from the trip.  But ... while the trip was very good, with lots of great food and strangers, plus beautiful scenery, just now I'm too tired to appreciate it.  The sheer exhaustion of twelve hours in a car yesterday, as we took a circuitous route to get back from our wandering (to see more things), casts a pall over the memories that it will take another sleep to get over.  Good to be back in my own bed, sitting at my desk, my fave coffee cup in hand, drinking my own good-tasting coffee.  Travel coffee always sucks.  Always.

I don't know why the kickstarter hasn't launched yet.  I set the date up for last week, and it is clearly public; I received an email last Wednesday that it was confirmed from the company.  Without a direction to go, I'm just waiting.  Originally, the site said 8 business days to launch; I set it up for 8 business days, but maybe they mean AFTER the date I set.  Don't know.  This is my first time.

I received two complaints that the menu shouldn't be listed under "game hardware" because this usually means electronic and obviously the menu isn't electronic.  Well, too fucking bad.  The menus are "hard", they're "ware" and they're for "games."  There were no choices for "fictional game menu" in the list, it isn't an actual food product, and if anyone gives me money thinking it's an electronic gadget, because they didn't read the DESCRIPTION, then caveat emptor.  Yes, that's right, I'm saying this is a super-clever grift to steal money from enormously stupid people who don't read about the electronic products they want to pump money into.  It only proves how frickin' smart I am.

Much of the last four days was spoiled by a consistent theme: Things We're Not Allowed to Do because at some point in the past, stupid people acted stupidly and died.  Going onto the Ferry's top deck to see 360 degrees?  Nope, it's closed, people have fallen off and drowned despite the railing.  Crossing the bridge over the canyon, that's been there since the 1950s and I've crossed twenty times in the past?  Nope, can't do it now; stupid people have purposefully jumped to their death.  We saw one sign in Nelson B.C. that warned us that if we wanted to walk over the rocks to reach the lake, we should be careful to "wear proper shoes."  Careful, the Hot Springs are hot.  Warning, this scree is slippery.  Careful, this mountain lake is deep.  I wanted desperately to find a "cliff" sign literally at the edge of a cliff; unfortunately, all the cliff signs could only be found at the bottom of trails leading up mountain sides.  Didn't really make that good a picture.

In effect, the world is being held hostage by what the stupidest person coming to this place might do at any given moment.  The most obvious example is covid and masking.  Travelling while masking ranges from a mild inconvenience, where one merely needs to remember a mask when meeting people, to a entrenched headache when randomly subjected to a stranger's paranoia or arrogant rudeness.  We did meet the occasional right wing sort that refused to mask; we did find one stranger in the village of Radium who was screaming about how masks are stupid and no one needs them.  But far, far worse than such idiots were the occasional left wing obsessives posting fake "out of order" signs on public toilets or imposing excessive demands for social distancing.  I am a strong believer in taking steps for public health and I steadfastly support mask wearing, social distancing and getting vaccinated.  But I am definitely opposed to self-appointed screaming fanatics without education, credentials or sense shouting their dictates at strangers like WWII block wardens.  Maybe someone should issue these people white hardhats so we can identify them and cross the street.

But ... yes, had a very good time.  Spectacular mountains, deep azure blue or emerald green lakes, water in some places so crystal clear as to be invisible, lots of friendly shopkeepers, one moment of staggering serendipity (I'll write about that on another post) and very good company for four days made a marvelous winding, adventurous time. I hope to do something like it again next year, in a different part of B.C. — and in parts of Alberta I've never seen as well.

I've had some thoughts and I feel restored somewhat creatively.  This is always a good feeling.  As soon as my body catches up, I know I'm going to have a great month.

... And

 

4 Days

Not sure of how the kickstarter actually works, or when it actually starts at this point.  I set it for today, but I see from the website that it "might" take a while longer.  Ah, patience.

For the long weekend, I've arranged a 4-day road trip with friends, starting tomorrow, to small resort towns in southeast British Columbia ... my first overnight stay since 2017, when I last did a game con in Edmonton.  Plans are to see the hot springs at Radium, some of the Purcell Wilderness, the forest where my grandfather lived off the grid as a squatter (hunter, farmer & ornithologist) near Cranbrook, the Kootenay valley and Nelson (though I think I'm too old for serious bouldering) and a good part of the Columbia River valley.  Mountains, rocks and trees, and water ... a true Canadian landscape.

Always good to get back to the basics.

I'm being held to a commitment not to access my email or blog during the trip, so I'll be doing so only surreptiously when I can slip away from witnesses ... because obviously such commitments are silly and of no importance.  Nonetheless, my marriage is important so I'll be sly about it.  No one needs to know (unless she reads this blog, whereupon she'll assume I'm kidding).

I plan to have fun.

I'll be gone on the 6th of September, so I won't be observing my 42 anniversary of playing D&D on Monday (unless I want to do so late at night, which I won't, because I'll be beat).  I don't have anything special to say about it anyway, except that 42 is a very, very long time.  This is 8 more years than Gygax played the game and 7 more than David Arneson.  I think those numbers are relevant.

Please support the kickstarter.  Be well all.

Jousting Piglet Kickstarter Launched

I've been approved and the Kickstarter for the Jousting Piglet menu starts tomorrow, Sep. 2.  Here is the site's url:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/authenticdnd/the-jousting-piglet-menu

Please support me if you can.  Go to the link and sign up to be notified upon launch.

I don't know what more can be said that hasn't already been said, except that you're all wonderful.