Category: Livejournal

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Perspective

The Republicans have fucked themselves. Nominating an old man with dubious political decisions and a rookie governor with no foreign experience, relying on the ultra-conservative base to push them through the electoral college with promises of pro-life judges and creationism in schools. I mean, what the fuck are the Republicans thinking?

An old man and a rookie governor? The American people would never go for that!!!!

Except they did. Twice.

Joke’s on you, America!

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
What does America get for getting fooled three times?

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DarkPages: Dangerous Saints

It’s hard to be a saint in the city.
— Bruce Springsteen

Those who have read Play Dirty are familiar with my old Champions campaign. See, I was “The Guy Running Call of Cthulhu” in the college gaming club  and I already had the reputation as “The Guy Who Killed Characters.” I didn’t like that nom de guerre and I wanted to change it. Thus, when I was told “You just can’t kill a Champions character,” I took up the challenge of running the game.

Now, the thing is, I didn’t kill characters. I massacred them.

The players were costumed heroes in an organization with law enforcement powers. They acted like cops–with certain limitations–trying to bring peace, justice and harmony to a broken city.

(For more info on the game and how I ran it, you can check it out in the first few chapters of Play Dirty.)

For a long time, I’ve been thinking out writing out my old campaign as a sourcebook of some kind. A Champions sourcebook or something like that. But I never got the juice to do it. Champions wasn’t really the system to do the setting in. Yeah, that’s the game that spawned the campaign, but the rules really weren’t right for what I wanted.

(I started fiddling with my own supers system: something driven by motivations rather than powers. In other words, Batman’s Motivation is Revenge (no, it’s not Justice) while Superman’s Motivation is Justice and Wonder Woman’s Motivation is Peace. It don’t matter how big and powerful Supes or Batman are: the number of dice you roll is based on Motivation. If you are acting outside your Motivation, you get less dice. That’s why Batman can beat up Superman from time to time. Not all the time, but only when he’s acting on his Motivation.)

I gave up on that–not enough of a mechanic for a game. So, I put my mind toward other things…

Then, I started reading Jared’s DarkPages.

I now have a game system that really fits my old campaign. And it’s all because of one little word.

Pain.

Keep an eye out for Dangerous Saints: a new imprint for DarkPages.

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Toby Ziegler Endorses Joe Biden

No shit.

DENVER — SOMETIMES life really does imitate art.

As the Democratic National Convention was kicking off, actor Richard Schiff, who played the White House communications director on “West Wing,” was holding court with a pack of reporters on a concrete version of a red carpet outside of a restaurant here.

The Emmy Award-winning actor was completely at ease talking about real-life politics and his favorite politician, Sen. Joe Biden.

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DarkPages

Reading through Jared’s DarkPages makes me want to run my old Champions game.

There’s even a mechanic to break characters and remove them from play.

Thank you, Jared.

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I Went to GenCon

  • Sold 100 copies of a $45 book.
  • Got invited to Burning Man by a friend.
  • Got invited to go to England as a special guest at a convention.
  • Got invited to go to Finland as a special guest at a convention.
  • Got told my first novel was the best novel someone ever read (twice) by someones who have a lot of literary expertise and friends who are literary agents.
  • Talked smack about Gary Gygax during his moment of silence on Saturday while high on prescription back pain medicine after I threw out my back on Friday night.
  • Got to hang out with a bunch of wonderful people I only see once a year 
  • ate good food
  • Picked up a bunch of great games
  • Heard people say WONDERFUL things about my own games (including the new one–holy shit, they were playing it the day they bought it!)
  • Heard the phrase, “If you published this game in the ’90s, I woudln’t be playing Vampire” more than once.
  • Have HUGE plans for next year

    (more later–with pictures and CHW Bear!)

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    Ireland

    After a conversation with

    [info]mnight

     about the political/economic future of the United States, I am seriously considering moving to Ireland in the next couple of years.

    When I visited, I loved it. Stronger economy (and growing), a better political match, the land of my ancestors.

    Any feedback, suggestions, etc.?

    EDIT: Why must I constantly be reminded why I should keep my journal friends only?

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    It’s the Little Things

    I notice little things. Watch this video, then tell me what’s wrong.

    Why is a Protestant preacher using the word “saint” when he’s talking about Paul? I mean, really. Don’t these people understand their own religion?

    (The answer is, “No.” Yeah, I know the answer to my own questions, sometimes.)

    The preacher, by the way, is John Hagee. Not a man known for his love of the Catholic Church.

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    Science Beats Jesus to the Punch

    While Christians all across the world wait for Jesus’ return–and the End of the World–it looks like Science may do it first.

    “Officials at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, outside Geneva, announced Thursday that their new particle accelerator, the world’s largest, would begin operation on Sept. 10. On that date, the physicists and engineers will make the first attempt to circulate a beam of protons around a 17-mile-long super-cooled underground racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider.”

    They are going to recreate conditions that first occurred at the beginning of the universe… and may take out the universe with it. So, go hug your loved ones and say goodbye–just in case.

    Science is gonna blow up the universe. Jesus better get a move on.

    Goddamn, Science is sexy.

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    Questions on a Sunday

    The God of the Old Testament is named “YHVH.” It is unpronounceable and most scholars translate this to “I AM.”
    In the New Testament, Jesus calls the god he reveres “Abba.” “Father.”
    Jesus also teaches the doctrine of salvation–something the Old Testament God certainly does not teach. Jesus also teaches a new prayer to “Abba” and all but says, “Forget the old ways, this is the new way.”

    Therefore, it is logical to assume that Jesus is teaching his followers to revere a different god from the one in the Old Testament. 

    (This is not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination, but most people have never heard of the gnostics or any of the other Christian heresies that the Catholics put down [re: “murdered”], and I was thinking about it today, so I decided to write it down.)

    Likewise, Paul had his own religion going on. He talked a lot about Jesus, but take note of this: nowhere in Paul’s writings does he mention anything about Jesus’ life other than the crucifixion. Nothing. So, in other words, he doesn’t mention 

    the virgin birth, 
    Herod killing the firstborns, 
    John the Baptist, 
    40 days in the wilderness, 
    the temptation of Satan, 
    turning water into wine, 
    walking on water
    no healings,
    no casting out of demons,
    “… cast the first stone,”
    the arrival in Jerusalem,
    the last supper, 
    the betrayal of Judas,
    or any other of the events of Jesus’ life

    With that evidence in mind, is it possible Paul was talking about a different Jesus? After all, lots of folks named Jesus at that time. A common name. And the Romans were crucifying whole metric shit tons of people. So, maybe the “scholars” of the bronze age (if you really want to call them scholars) got things mixed up and mingled the stories of two different men called “Jesus.”

    It’s possible.

    Or maybe the four different gospels in the Bible are written about four different men named Jesus. After all, the stories are similar, but not identical, and there are a lot of descrepencies. So, maybe there were a few men in Jerusalem calling themselves “the messiah” and more than a few of them were named Jesus.

    It’s possible.

    Of course, if you want to be an archeologist and print any of this in a shcolarly journal, you’ll need some proof.
    But, if you make it your religion, you don’t need to prove any of it. You’ve got faith.

    Just some thoughts on a Sunday.