Life and Stuff

My mom reads my blog, but she only likes the entries where I talk about how things are going in my life. Usually, I don't use this blog to write about things unless I think they're of interest to most of you, but you know, moms are important.

We just got a window air conditioner unit for our upstairs because our central air conditioner just can't handle the top floor. We have a tall house with three floors, so our top floor is like an attic in terms of temperature. In other words, hot in the summertime. Of course, other than a short stretch a few weeks ago, this is a bizarrely cold summer. We all had to wear long pants and jackets on July 4th for the fireworks, which is really strange. 

July 4th, however, was a lot of fun. After a cookout with friends, we went to park along Lake Michigan to get a good spot for fireworks. A few of us played Who Would Win? while we waited for it to get dark. The fireworks were amazing, and we had very close, very good "seats" on our blankets on the grass. Who Would Win? is from Gorilla Games and is amazingly fun. Highly recommended.

Milwaukee is a great place to be in the summer. It's as though they try to cram a year's worth of fun into about three months. There's not just a  cool music or ethnic festival every weekend, there's multiple such fests. I was walking around the city today and in one direction I saw them setting up for Bastille Days (a French festival) and in the other I saw them setting up tents for the Circus Parade Festival (apparently, it's like a traditional circus but x10). And it's not just on the weekends. Free concerts, shows, street faires, and big events go on every evening. You couldn't do half of it all if you tried.

Although sometimes, you just have to stay home and relax. I had intended on spending this evening immersed in computer files and whatnot. See, yesterday I got a great deal on a new desktop PC and snapped it up. It's funny how buying a new computer has become an event of such joy and such hassle all mixed together. It's exciting to have a new, better computer, but it's also a pain to set it all up.

For the last three years I've used a laptop (with a docking station and a proper keyboard, mouse, and monitor when at my desk), but this was, as I said, a great deal and I was in need of an upgrade, although the laptop will still serve me well as, well, a laptop. However, I just assumed that it would have a wireless adapter. You know what happens when you assume. You make an ass out of you and Dell. Honestly, wireless connections and networks are so common, I'm surprised they even sell non-wireless computers. Upon further examination, however, it turns out, not only do they, but they still sell a lot of them. So now I wait until the wireless adapter I just ordered with a big black box sitting on my desk. Honestly, there's really no use in even turning the darn thing on until I can get it hooked up to our local network and the Internet.

Tomorrow we're going to the Comedy Sportz championship tournament, which is a gathering of improv comedy troupes from all over the country. I'm expecting hilarity. Friday, I think I'm going to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ghostbusters with a viewing. Saturday, another cookout and then off to see Fountains of Wayne in concert.  Sunday, maybe one of the two festivals I mentioned, or maybe just relaxing at home.

Lastly, I leave you with this. It's a video of a musician wronged by United Airlines getting the only revenge he can. Apparently, when this started making the rounds on Monday, United suddenly decided to help him out. Imagine that. I think the best part about it is that it's actually a catchy little tune. Creativity and talent wins the day.

Game Gab

While at Origins, I chatted with Dan and Sara from Myriad Games. They've presented it as an episode of their podcast, Game Gab. We chat about Dungeonaday.com, game design, the game industry in general, my upcoming book about conspiracies, and more! Maybe you'll give it a listen?

New Stuff for Dungeonaday.com

There's a lot going on with Dungeonaday.com.

First of all, we've got another new sponsor. Todd at DM's Familiar is now working with the site to create Dungeonaday.com content for the DM's Familiar program. DM's Familiar is a great tool to help DM's manage information, and now if you're using Dungeonaday.com content, all of it is loaded up for you.

Speaking of sponsors, it's also worth mentioning that Dungeonaday.com members also get periodic special offers on sponsor products. Last month, for example, there was a discount on Dwarven Forge products and Malhavoc Press stuff. More on the way!

While we're just finishing up our first foray out of the dungeon, involving a side adventure surrounding the strange goings on at Terregaunt's Tower, we're gearing up to explore Level 4. Level 4 is a dungeon level built within a tesseract. This strange 4-D adventure is something I've wanted to do since I got into game design, and cartographer Ed Bourelle has made it possible. Not only did Ed produce an amazing map for the level, but he went above and beyond by creating a fold-up model of the level that users can print out and make for themselves. You can see it there in the photo on the right. Now that's a cool dungeon level. It's still only a 3D model of a 4D place, but that's better than a 2D model of a 4D place. (It's a whole D better!) I thought it was so cool that I made it a prop for the adventure itself, so the PCs will find just such a cube, and the DM can hand it to them. (That's why there are no room numbers or whatnot on the map--but there are hidden clues...) Nifty!

While Levels 1-3 have been great, I think I can say that Level 4 is really something special. If you ever wanted to check out Dungeonday.com, now's the time. And speaking of which, in the last few weeks I've been to PaizoCon and Origins handing out Dungeonaday.com business cards with special codes on them. These codes get you a free trial week of full access to the site AND the opportunity to sign up at the lowest rate I offer, which comes out to only $7 per month. If you got such a card, you should really take advantage of the deal--the offers last for 30 days following the con at which you got the card. And yes, I'll be doing this at GenCon as well. If you see me, make sure you get a card. And here's a cool rundown of the Dungeon Design seminar that I did at Origins. I've been assured that video of the one that I gave at PaizoCon will be available soon. I'll post a link when it is.

Lastly, due to user requests, this week I'll be posting a collected PDF of all the encounters on Level 1. This nifty feature is for easy storage to make sure that users get to keep what they have already paid for no matter what. However, I will say that navigating around the actual site is still the best way to access the info. This PDF is available only to Dungeonaday.com members.

Oh, and one more thing--I'm working out another deal for yet another cool sponsor for the site. Stay tuned!

She Knows Where the Treats Are

I've got to start hiding treats everywhere, all over the house. I started this process years ago, but she's figured it out. I've got to find new, and more numerous hiding spots. Underestimating Marley's intelligence--particularly when it comes to food--is always a losing strategy.

See, here's the thing. She knows where the treats are. So rather than having learned "sometimes when Monte gives me a command, I get a treat," she's learned, "when Monte is in certain places in the house and gives me a command, I get a treat." So my commands carry a lot of weight in some places, and virtually none in others.

So from now on, I've got to have a treat within reach from just about everywhere. She's got to learn that there could be a treat at any moment, in any place, as a reward for good behavior. (The key to training isn't the reward, it's the possibility of a reward.)

Did I mention that Corgis--even by dog standards--are wildly food oriented? Oh man. If suddenly Corgis weren't food oriented, and they focused their intelligence on other things, we humans might be in trouble.

 

Origins in Retrospect

I'm home now, of course. Origins was fun. I met some cool new friends and reconnected with old friends. Ron Hawkins from Reaper Miniatures is one of those guys that I never get to see enough at shows because we're always so busy, but he's really one of the nicest guys in the game industry. Chatting briefly with my old boss Pete Fenlon from my Iron Crown days was a nice way to end my Sunday, just before hopping on a plane back for home. (On the ride to the airport, I met Andrea Sfiligoi, a game designer from Italy. Hopefully I'll get to see him again when I go to the Lucca show in October.)

The Origins Awards ceremony on Saturday night was pretty cool although the people I was going to sit with never actually showed until after the ceremony. At least one of the awards is another (rather minor) data point showing that we live in interesting times here in rpg land, but I'll write about that another time.

Perhaps my favorite moment for the whole show came during the Guest of Honor lunch on Sunday where, among other strange things, I got to watch Lou Zocchi perform magic tricks for Peter Mayhew. As I watched this, the enormity of the surreal nature of my life kind of washed over me and I had to keep from laughing out of just the sheer joy of it.

Origins in the Thick of Things

As I write this, I'm at Origins in Columbus, Ohio. It's a nice show to be guest of honor because they treat their guests very well here. I have no idea what the attendance at Origins is these days, but the dealer room, while perhaps smaller than past years, seems busy with lots of traffic.

Mostly, I've been giving panels on GMing, game design, and so forth. These have been only moderately attended, but since there was a snafu and my events were left out of the program book, I guess I should be happy that there's anyone coming at all. (The efficient con staff put up signs announcing my events, so that's cool.)

I was happy to see plenty of industry friends here, and enjoyed tooling around looking at miniatures and accessories (both Reaper and Dwarven Forge are here, for example). My favorite thing at the show so far is a fun little game called Who Would Win? which takes all of about 8 seconds to learn and start to play. There's also a nice looking rpg called Hellas which is very literally Greek myth (or maybe 300) in space.

Last night I saw two gamer-related movies, THAC0: the movie, and Uber Goober.

THAC0 is a comedy piece involving the silly pre-game conversations of four gamers getting ready to play an rpg. It's well-written and true-to-life, with a lot of the kinds of in-jokes that only gamers would get. Plus, part of it is filled at one of my favorite game stores, The Source in the Twin Cities. And Neil Gaiman has a cameo. I enjoyed it.

Uber Goober takes a very different approach. It's a documentary exploring the different facets of gaming (minis/wargames, rpgs, and LARPing). It's informative and entertaining with lots of interviews with gamers and game professionals. The film doesn't avoid the controversies surrounding gaming, from the (now kind of old and tired) Satanic/suicide scare silliness to the much more prominent "it's only for nerds and losers" sigma which is still prominent. It's interesting to me that some of the gamers chose to have their faces obscured (the stigma of gaming is a prominent theme in the documentary). The director could have easily found plenty of interview subjects that weren't embarrassed to show their faces, but the very fact that there are gamers out there who feel it necessary is itself an interesting point. I wonder, however, if the point isn't a bit over-stated by the end of the movie. This is the kind of movie that every gamer would find interesting and insightful to watch, and share with both gaming and non-gaming friends.

Tonight in the Origins Awards ceremony, and tomorrow I fly home!

The Gamer Lifestyle Blog

The Gamer Lifestyle is a great blog about the gaming industry and hobby. I did a fun interview with them and they've posted it.

It's mostly about Dungeonaday.com as an innovative way of presenting game material, but there's a lot of general game industry/publisher/freelancer stuff there too.

I often forget to spread the word when I do interviews and new stuff, but I'm trying to do better.

Discriminating Tastes

I started my Twitter account a few weeks ago, and have been using it to recommend things I like. Mostly music, as it turns out. I have eclectic tastes, but I'd also say I'm fairly discriminating.

When I was kid, this was not so. Growing up, I always was listening to music. Even as I created elaborate scenarios with little green army men and/or Micronauts, I had the radio on. And I didn't really have any concept of "liking" or "disliking" what was played. It was just what was on the radio, and so I listened and of course it got ingrained in my head. Barry Manilow, the Neils (Diamond and Sedaka), Afternoon Delight (sky rockets in flight...), Seasons in the Sun, she ran calling... Wiiiiiiiildfire! and other early to mid-70s AM radio fare all became a part of me. It was all terrible, but I had no idea. I was 8 years old, and it was all great.

As I grew older and gained exposure to more music, I developed preferences, like most of us do. I became a New Wave fan in the early 80s, for starters. Soon thereafter, a friend's brother introduced me to the 70s music I'd missed, because of course it got little or no radioplay: Yes, Rush, Led Zeppelin, and so on. After that, I got really into Classical music for a while. And jazz. And then, well... whatever. What I liked and didn't like isn't my point. My point is that as time passed my tastes became more and more discriminating. I loved music, and so I sought better and better stuff. I turned my back on things I'd liked before so that I could turn toward some new discovery. Like I said, my tastes became eclectic but discriminating.

But sometimes I wonder, are people with discriminating tastes happier? Doesn't having discriminating tastes (about anything) really mean "there are less things that make me happy?" Someone who likes everything is a lot less likely to be disappointed, disgusted, or let down.

The counter argument is probably that people with discriminating tastes are made happier by what they like than people with less discriminating tastes. It's a deeper, more sophisticated appreciation. But is that really true? How can we really know?

It's likely that, like so many things, the ideal lies in moderation. Don't be the person who loves every little bit of garbage that pop culture spits out, but don't be that guy who only likes three specific Italian operas, either. I know that in the last ten years or so, I've intentionally gone back to listening to the radio just to keep up with what's going on out there. (Seattle has some great radio stations. I can only take Milwaukee radio in small doses.) Because the real danger of discriminating tastes, I think, is that you can miss out on something good by being too dismissive.

But whatever. Maybe those three Italian operas really are good enough to be the only thing you listen to for the rest of your life.

Why Cities?

In fairy tales and children's fantasy, we hear mainly about kingdoms. "She was the most beautiful girl in all the kingdom." "You must save the kingdom!" But in more modern adult fantasy--and in particular fantasy associated with rpgs--we hear more about cities. Lankhmar, Greyhawk, Bas-Lag, Waterdeep, Tanelorn, Sigil, Ambergris, and yes, Ptolus. And that's just a few off the top of my head. Even in Lord of the Rings, while Gondor is cool, Minas Tirith is cooler.

I think authors (and DMs) often focus on cities rather than kingdoms because it's easier to distill a city down to a single theme or idea. Lankhmar is a city of rogues and thieves. Sigil is the crossroads of the multiverse. Authors and designers can develop a city like a character. They can be given a personality. As the embodiment of a single concept, they become a familiar touchstone we can revisit again and again with well-managed expectations.

Plus, cities are just geographically compact. It's convenient to set a story in a city because everything the story (or game session) needs is all right there. Everyone knows each other. City characters are knowledgeable and even sometimes world-weary misanthropes, not wanderers or eager explorers. The city isn't filled with the wonders of the unknown, it teems of the jaded cynicism of the all-too-well-known. Their mysteries are more complex because they deal with humans, not with geography.

And, most modern writers live in cities, not out in a strange wilderness. They understand how cities work, and enjoy the complex dynamics of having so many different people all pushed together. It makes sense, then, that this is mostly a more modern phenomenon.

Which leads me to the last point, which is that I think the abundance of fantasy cities is itself a reaction to the whole fantasy kingdom idea. Cities seem more mature. You don't have the deep, dark woods, you have the shady part of town. You don't have the shining castle where the king lives, you have the (probably corrupt and Byzantine) city court/administration/whatever building. Cities are dirty, edgy, crime- and vice-filled places. It almost makes me wonder if the pendulum will swing back the other way at some point. It will be interesting to watch.

After Dinner

The clatter of dishes being cleared from the table and deposited into the sink paled in comparison to the too-loud music blaring in the kitchen. I turned it down so I could hear what Sue was saying.
"I think she's really depressed," she explained. "You should see what she's posted on Facebook lately. Everything she's written has been so depressing."
I considered this a moment, and thought about all the time I wasted reading Facebook updates, Twitter posts, and blog entries. Too much time. But perhaps in all that I'd learned something.
"Maybe," I told her. "But consider this. When people are happy and having fun, when they're eating ice cream and watching movies and dancing with the love of their life, they're not sitting in front of the computer. They don't have a lot of extra time on their hands to update their status or tell us about their day. They're not hanging around with nothing to do, staring at a computer screen. But when they're sad, lonely, sick, or bored, that's exactly what they're doing. So you're more likely to hear about those things than the happy ones. The Internet, for that reason and probably a hundred others, always leans more toward the negative rather than the positive. When you read people posting online about themselves, you have to adjust your expectations."
She nodded and started running water in the sink to wash the frying pan.
As I brought the rest of the plates into the kitchen, I thought about posting these thoughts on my blog. But how would I end the entry?
I had no idea.

Dungeonaday.com Doings

It's been a while since I've talked about Dungeonaday.com here at any great length. Things are going along great. We're almost done with Level 3, which was mostly water-filled caverns. These looked extra-spiffy thanks to photos of the awesome Dwarven Forge cavern pieces.

Before starting Level 4, however, the site will veer off into something a bit different for almost two weeks. During this time, the daily encounters will detail a very creepy, haunted tower with some really interesting aspects, but I won't spoil anything here. After that, it's back to the dungeon. Level 4 itself is something very special, and it has to do with why I was trying to figure out how best to map a four-dimensional cube a few weeks ago.

Around the time we start Level 4, I'm going to be posting a pdf of the complete first level. This will be available only to members of Dungeonaday.com. I'm doing this less for usability and more for lasting storage. In other words, it's a way for members to easily keep what they've purchased, no matter what. This won't change anything else about the site.

I've also been making a lot of special offers available to members of Dungeonaday.com this month, with discounts on Malhavoc Press pdfs and Dwarven Forge products. More of these kind of special offers will be coming.

As the website has developed, I've been doing about two blog posts each week and a podcast each month. These contain DM advice, behind the scenes looks at design implications of some of the encounters, and other various thoughts on gaming. In other words, if you liked the 3E DMG or my Dungeoncraft columns from the past, these are for you. It's great having this outlet to discuss all manner of gaming topics from game balance to handing out treasure to taking prisoners (and that's just a few from the last month or so). 

I've also been experimenting with how I want to use art in Dungeonaday.com. I think I've settled on creating a lot of "you see this" illustrations as handouts for DMs to print out and show to the players (or just call up on their laptop and show the players that way--no need to waste paper and ink if you don't want to).

Lastly, speaking of special deals, I'll be handing out cards at all the conventions that I go to this summer with special codes on them. These codes will not only get you a great rate on membership on the site, but you'll have your first week for free so that you can try it out and see what you like. If you're not a member yet, make sure that if you're going to Origins or GenCon this year you seek me out and get one of these cards.

Ptolus Evolved

The Gamer's Haven podcast creates, along with its regular podcast, a series of "actual play" episodes. Right now they're doing a mash-up of Ptolus and Arcana Evolved for 4E. It's pretty cool. Check out Ptolus Evolved.

PaizoCon

Well, Sue and I are back from Seattle. We had a simply wonderful time at PaizoCon.

Our trip there was awful, with an almost six-hour delay caused by the deadly combo of weather, mechanical failures, and general incompetence. These things caused, in respective order, a two hour delay, followed by a three hour delay, and another hour delay. The first and third delays forced us to sit on the plane on the runway. Blah.

But on to better things! Our long-time great friend Sean Reynolds picked us up and brought us to the hotel. We got to hang out with Sean throughout the weekend when he wasn't crashing his car into trees (a long story, and his to tell), and so that was great. At registration the next day, all attendees got this amazing bag of goodies full of cool free games like Yetisburg, Key Largo, and more. Plus, a free Gary Gygax novel, some Gamemastery stuff, and more. And on top of that, the fans of Paizo put out this amazing Pathfinder fanzine that everyone got.

On Friday, I ran a playtest for dungeonaday.com and it went really well despite one player not showing up. Lots of creepy goodness in a haunted tower (yes, there's more to dungeonaday.com than just dungeons--you should check it out). On Saturday, I did a seminar on dungeon creation. After that, Sue and I joined Sean, Wolfgang Baur, and Pierce Watters for a seminar that was basically just telling stories about old TSR. Lots of fun. That night was an amazing banquet put on by the Paizo staff. Great food and cool entertainment, mainly in the form of a trivia contest in which much hilarity ensued. And of course, Jason Bulmahn previewed the new Pathfinder game, during which much oohing and aahing ensued.

Sunday Sue had a series of seminars on editing which were very popular and impressive. Meanwhile, I just hung around and chatted with people for most of the day. This included seeing another long-time great friend Bruce Cordell that evening, which was really fantastic. In fact, Bruce and I have been friends since 8th grade.

I have to admit that by Sunday, I was pretty tired and low-key, but it was still fun. In fact, the highlight of the convention was almost certainly just getting to meet lots of gamers and chat in a very casual atmosphere, which was kind of the point of PaizoCon. Overall, I really enjoyed it. Lots of times at conventions the guests are given rigorous schedules that don't allow that kind of friendly interaction.

Alas, Poor Comics Den

My old comic book store in Renton, WA burned down a few days ago. For a lot of years, I went there every Wednesday and today my friend Bruce just drove me past it on our visit back here in the Seattle area. In 1997, after first moving to the Seattle area, my friend Jeff Quick and I started going there every Wednesday at lunch. "Comics lunch" became a tradition for a lot of years, growing in size to a huge group of us writers and editors and other Wizards of the Coast employees who would go get comics and then have lunch (lunch location changed many times over the years). I can only assume that even though Jeff and I are long gone, comics lunch continued up until, well, last week. It sounds like the owner, Howard, is going to relocate, though. Howard is a good guy. I hope it all works out for him.

PaizoCon and Origins

I've been invited as Guest of Honor at both PaizoCon and Origins this month. PaizoCon is this weekend, the 12th through the 14th, and Origins is the 24th through the 28th. I'll be running dungeonaday.com playtests at both, and I'll also be on various panels and seminars. Hope to see you there!

Movies!

Sue and I have seen a few movies lately. Here, let me tell you of them (without spoilers).

The Brothers Bloom: From Rian Johnson, the man who gave us Brick, which was extremely creative and smart, comes Brothers Bloom, which is fairly creative and smart. The plot is convoluted, but in a fairly standard way for con movies. (Not that either of those clauses is meant as criticism.) The characters are very interesting, though, particularly the female lead played by Rachel Weisz. Really, it's the quirky characters and the dialog that make the film. Johnson also has a great knack for having two interesting things going on on screen at once. Long conversations often have funny (and sometimes important) events going on in the background. Recommended.

Up: Someday, Pixar's going to make a misstep, but it's not today. This is yet another brilliant, original, heartwarming animated tale from the house that gave us The Incredibles, Wall-E, and almost every other animated feature worth watching from the last decade (although Sue and I also really enjoyed Bolt). Up proves that you can take three unrelated but fairly interesting ideas, combine them, and get a wonderfully fresh story. Sue pointed out that this movie is an animated, G-rated version of Gran Torino, which is interesting. There's a lot of storytelling power in the old person + young person formula. It's also interesting, from a storytelling perspective, how important it seems to be to have a minor character steal the show. In this case, it's the dog, Dug.

And speaking of storytelling, watch the animated short in front of Up with all the awe it deserves. It could be easily dismissed as a silly little trifle with a few laughs, but it's elegantly done with dialog-less brevity and purely visual exposition that I couldn't have been more impressed.

Terminator Salvation: I almost hesitate to mention this one, because all the interesting things to say about it are negative, and yet it's not as bad as a lot of reviewers are painting it. Mainly, I think, its major fault lies in mismanaged expectations. We went in thinking we were going to see a movie about John Connor's war against the machines that has been alluded to in three movies and a TV series. What we got was a story set in that dark future, with John Connor as a side character involved in the action. But this isn't his story. It's really the story of a weird sort of half-terminator (the writers seemed to believe that it was important that each Terminator movie show us a new kind of terminator, which I think is a mistake), who is in fact a fairly interesting character. From that point of view, it's not a bad film. It's only when John Connor gets involved that it veers off into its worst plot holes. It's also a poorly edited movie, so much so that the action of the last third of the movie becomes a chore to follow. Ultimately, it fails rather miserably to be a worthy successor to T1 or T2, and is about on par with (perhaps, overall, slightly better than) T3--which was a very different movie with its own very different problems (and occasionally, strengths). If there were a whole series of "stories set in the Terminator universe," this would be a fine entry. But it's no classic.

Caprica

First, let me reveal my bias: I don't like prequels. I never have. I don't like foregone conclusions and I dislike the self-imposed limitations a prequel faces.

Tonight Sue and I watched the DVD version of Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica prequel that is a set-up for an ongoing series. I have very mixed opinions. Mild spoilers ahead.

I really feel that BSG, as the show went on, strayed from one of the main reasons why people initially watched it. It seems almost wrong to put a voice to this. Perhaps a bit uncouth. But here goes. We liked the space battles. It was a show about battles in space and the people that fought them. A very well-written show about them. With real drama and characterization that we were interested in. In between the space battles. But as the show went on, the drama got bigger, more convoluted (and often more overblown). The space battles were fewer and fewer, but what the heck, we liked the characters, and they tantalized us with intriguing mysteries, which is not a bad way to go.

There had been sci fi with gripping drama and the exploration of thought-provoking ideas before. And sci fi with space battles. But very rarely did we get them together. So if they want to go down one of those roads mainly, that was OK, I guess, but I think I speak for a lot of us that they could have had a couple more space battles thrown in there too.

Caprica is BSG without any space battles. Or mysteries. And the thought-provoking ideas are only going to provoke thoughts if you've not read or watched much science fiction. That doesn't make it bad. It just makes it a drama that happens to be set on another planet. It's a decent, if slow-moving drama, but compared to most of the rubbish on the SciFi channel, it's not bad. I'm not against cerebral science fiction by any means. I do wish if they were going to go that route that it would have been actually more cerebral and groundbreaking, but that's where the whole tied-to-BSG problem comes in. We know where it's going. We know what can and can't happen. We know, for example, that if they're going to be true to the continuity there won't be any human-appearing cylons. They're hamstrung right out of the gate by what they can't do. For this show's premise, they would have been better off NOT tying it to BSG and just setting it in Earth's future. Then, they could take some of their ideas to their full and logical conclusions.

But without the tie-in, would anyone watch? (Will anyone watch as it is? I don't know.)

Perhaps worst of all is that they don't do anything interesting by showing us what life on the 12 colonies was like before the Fall. It's pretty much what you would have expected. In fact, it's pretty much just Earth about 10 years from now, except everyone says "frak" a lot, there's gratuitous references to "pyramid" and everything is named "Caprica this" and "Caprica that." It reminds me of the old Star Trek Animated series or the Marvel Star Wars comics where various authors just had random science fiction ideas and crammed them into the Star Trek or Star Wars universes whether they were appropriate or not. If Kirk's shooting it with a phaser or Luke's hitting it with a lightsaber, it's appropriate, right? But I digress.

I almost wish that Caprica was worse than it was, because I'd like to dismiss it, but really, it wasn't that bad. It's positioned and branded all wrong. A lot of BSG fans are likely to find it boring and turn it off saying things like, "this is everything I didn't like about the other show." Other potential fans will find the BSG links an unnecessary barrier and will expect it to go in directions that it cannot.

I'm disappointed. I don't know if I'll watch the series when it starts or not. It seems unlikely, but I might regret it a bit.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who helped us celebrate Malhavoc Press' anniversary. It was a very successful sale, and hopefully everyone who got cheap pdfs agrees. (And it looks like lots of you took advantage of the sale to scoop up Ptolus--hope you enjoy it!)

The sale's over now, but we have them every anniversary. Plus, there might be more events like this one as the year goes on (although we always like to make our anniversary sale the biggest special offer of each year).

Two Hastily Thought Out Theories on Comedy

After attending an amateur sketch comedy show with Sue and my friend Kent tonight, I have two new theories about comedy. These are not comprehensive, just two more to add to the list.

1. Comedy is best when it is spontaneous and immediate, or when it is honed and well-thought out. It's at its worst when it's somewhere in between.

Spontaneous = great improv, Christopher Guest movies, snappy one-liners, Eddie Izzard
Well-Thought Out = 30 Rock, Arrested Development, really good stand-up, David Sedaris, the Onion
In Between = 9 out of 10 Saturday Night Live sketches (and really, most sketch comedy), most sitcoms

(Even if you don't agree with my examples, you can still see where the theory is going.)

2. Words and actions are funny. Situations are, at best, amusing. Relying entirely on a humorous premise without anything actually funny happening or funny things being said is a recipe for disaster. Even if the people involved are funny. (Again, I'm looking at you SNL.)

Time for bed, Internet. Goodnight.

A Week of Twitter

No, this isn't one of those blog posts where someone just reprints all their Twitter posts. It's my views on Twitter after being on it for a week (a bit more, actually).

I like it a lot more than I thought I would. It moves fast and is always fresh. It's more dynamic than other similar social networking opportunities like, say, Facebook. That doesn't make it better, just different. It's like listening to music with a much faster beat.

Some people use Twitter as a way to simply text out loud. Virtually all their posts are directed at one specific friend or another, and so they carry on conversations with each other with their tweets, even though everyone can read them. That's probably the least appealing way to use Twitter, in my opinion. Just a step above are the posts that are just people telling the world what they are doing. Interesting if they're doing something cool, less so if they're just eating their breakfast cereal.

Far better are the people who actually have something to say. Posting something of substance that conveys clear meaning in 140 characters or less can be challenging. Some people are terrible at it, and their posts can be taken more than one way or don't make much sense at all. Some people, however, are really good at it.

There's a truism that while people think that short stories would be easier to write than novels, it's often just the opposite. At the very least, most authors will tell you that they're very different skills. The same, it would seem, can be said of Twitter and traditional blogging. That doesn't mean that one is better than the other--just that they're different, and serve different purposes. That's my big challenge: figuring out what to write about here and what to mention briefly on Twitter.