‘Victorian House’ by roarofthefour on Flickr

Last night, I dreamt of my house.

When I dream, I frequently find myself living in this particular house. It’s a two-story Victorian with pale yellow siding.

I live on the first floor, with its living room and kitchen and bedrooms in the back, and I barely ever think of the second floor. In the dream, I need something or want something on the second floor, or I have to escape from something horrible downstairs, so I go up.

The upstairs is lovely: large rooms, nicely furnished with couches and chairs. It’s messy, but that’s okay. I search through a sitting room, a side bedroom I’ve converted into storage, and I think a few other rooms.

I never find what I’m looking for.

My co-worker Tim and I stepped into the American restaurant on the corner. The bleary-eyed maitre’d pointed us towards a table near the front, part of a trio enclosed by glass on three sides.

One of the other tables was empty. The third hosted four women, all in their late 20′s, who wore name brands and talked louder than absolutely necessary. Tim and I sat, our server took our drink order, and the woman at the far end said, “Hey!”

‘some of the girls’ by arrogant on Flickr

We turned.

“Don’t order the steak,” she said. Her friends tittered.

I looked at our new friend closely. She was having trouble keeping both eyes open and focused. Tim gave the best possible answer.

“Oh?”

She put up two fingers about a quarter-inch apart. “It was like this.” The others murmured their agreement.

We duly thanked them for their advice, then returned to our conversation. The four women started to talk about when they were next going to meet. This took fifteen minutes.

Then I heard a hiss. Tim and I turned. Our new friend had poised a paper airplane in one hand and eyed us mischievously, like she was about to perform a grand prank. She pulled back her hand and let fly, and the poor papercraft didn’t get more than two feet before crashing to the table. It was then passed to the nearest woman to our table–whose shoulder practically touched mine–who attempted again. It was just as successful.

I picked it up, thanked them, and glanced down at the airplane. Half a line of writing peeked out from behind the folds. I unfolded the paper to find this:

DON’T EAT THE STEAK

SLITCHES 4 EVER

I arched an eyebrow. Tim had the daring–and English self-effacement–to ask the women what on Earth a ”slitch” is. For the record, I had no idea, either. They tittered, hemmed, and hawed. Finally, they relented: It means “slut bitch.”

What do you say to that?

I turned back around, making a show of laughing as if this was all a merry batch of teasing among sophisticated adults. Tim and I returned to our dinner (neither of them steaks), at which point my ears turned into spies and eavesdropped. The women were now talking about all the cheating wives and girlfriends they knew, and how they found out about their husbands having affairs. Then our new friend–the one with poor eyelid control–whined, “I have to go back home and get my girls in bed,” stood up…and walked over to us.

The resulting conversation was, to my surprise, completely civil: what brought us to this town? What have we had a chance to see? Had we been to Atkins Park? There was no apparent secret agenda or coded invitations, and I later checked on her suggestions: solid, nice places to go. And then, she was gone.

At least now I know the meaning of ”slitches.”

The Best of Margaret St. Clair cover

I have no idea when or why I bought The Best of Margaret St. Clair (public library). It sat on the bottom of my to-read pile as it grew to skyscraper heights. By the time I got around to reading it, it was an orphan.

As it happens, Margaret St. Clair was a science fiction writer of the mid-twentieth century, a feminist and rough equivalent to Marion Zimmer Bradley.

This book collects a handful of her short stories, all of which provoked total concentration and shortness of breath. After finishing a story, I’d feel compelled to put the book down and think about the story.

She was a woman in a man’s field, writing about men. She wrote about women, too, but it’s her deftness with men that fascinated me most. Her men feel real, motivated by men’s forces: duty, honor, respectability. Her women, ironically, felt simpler.

The stories range from adventure to horror to cerebral science fiction.

As hard as I find it to recommend anything, I have most trouble with short story collections. They cover such a wide range of tones and themes. Perhaps that is the joy of a collection: you won’t like every story, but you’ll probably like one.

I liked them all.

A few weeks ago, I happened to have a free day in Atlanta. I drove up to Peachtree Street–the main one, not the hundred other ones scattered around Atlanta–and fired up my iPhone. I looked for interesting locations nearby.

My eye fell on a dot labelled “Center for Puppetry Arts.” One long walk later, I pushed open the double doors, walked over to a ticket booth, and bought a ticket to a unique museum.

As a kid, I loved the Muppets as much as anyone, and felt my mind blown by The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. But at some point during my early teen years, I grew more interested in how puppets work. I remember watching with hunger a behind-the-scenes clip on the complex Viking “In the Navy” sequence from The Muppet Show, seeing how they rigged the ship and positioned the puppets to achieve specific visuals.

Then I started using a puppet on my YouTube reviews, to my viewer’s surprise and delight. Folks loved it. People respond to puppets.

But enough about me. The Center is a large facility, also including a full-scale theater, while the museum itself is relatively small. The museum consists of three main areas: one big section devoted to puppets on TV (mostly the Muppets), another smaller room devoted entirely to The Muppets and Jim Henson, and a small warren of rooms displaying puppets from around the world.

The Muppet areas had the most immediate appeal. We all grew up with these characters. Besides describing several major puppet TV shows, the museum had examples of the puppets themselves: Big Bird from Sesame Street, Red and Mokey from Fraggle Rock, Sir Didymus from Labyrinth, and even Kermit the Frog. Sadly, the lettering accompanying these treasures, while expansive and helpful, was often faded or missing many letters.

As interesting as this was–Jim Henson built a vast body of work–the puppets from the rest of the world most intrigued me.

I entered that section of the museum through a heavy door, into an empty room. From there, I entered a closet crammed full of puppets. Several of these puppets were controlled by motion-sensitive sensors, so that moving through the room triggered them to turn towards me and chatter. It was one of the creepiest experiences of my life.

Beyond this was a more traditional museum space, wandering through displays of puppets from the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia. It seems that every country has developed a distinct puppetry tradition.

Did you know Vietnam has a tradition of intricate puppet shows…performed entirely in pools of water?

Mind-blowing.

A frustrating day at work. I discovered that a hotel over-charged me for an upcoming trip, because I wasn’t paying attention. I felt despair upon realizing that. Silly, but true. I knew I’d have to call and explain and try to work it out. I felt like a child.

Travel arrangements frequently bring out a feeling of helplessness in me. I feel overwhelmed, even though I have few things to do. I worry that I’ll completely foul it up. I worry that I’ll end up stranded in a foreign city, with no options.

Tomorrow, I have to call the hotel and work this out, dreading every minute of it. Blah.

So I came home and watched some light anime, starting with two episodes of Kids on the Slope. This is the latest series by the director and composer behind the legendary Cowboy Bebop. When I heard it was about teenagers playing jazz together, I was curious. When I watched and discovered it’s a story about growing-up set in 1966 Japan, I was intrigued. Then a piece of Yoko Kanno jazz music hit, and I felt it in my gut. I had so missed that.

Then, three episodes of the original Dirty Pair OVA: girls in metal bikinis, wielding laser guns and causing massive property damage as they pursue criminals. Absolute fun fluff, drawn with care in the inimitable 1980′s anime style. A perfect diversion.

Meanwhile, I continue attempting to keep up with game registrations for Indie+, an online tabletop gaming convention that starts Monday. We’ve established too many beachheads for information, and keeping them all in sync has been a headache. The good news: We have quite a few games scheduled.

Finally, I took a few minutes to cull through the photos I took in the past month. I present them here as a slideshow:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Months ago, I watched a bizarre short film called Zeppelins vs. Pterodactyls which threw together clips from various cartoons and space opera serials of the 1930′s. The film didn’t do much for me, but the name stuck.

I mentioned that name to Michael R, and we fantasized a competitive board game in which zeppelins fly over a lost world, descending for treasure as their crews fight off pterodactyls.

Today, after much play-testing, that game is officially born:

Zeppelins vs. Pterodactyls action shot

I spent several months play-testing the concept, discovering confusing rules and improving gameplay. It’s always had the same basic concept: the players lay out terrain cards to form a lost world, then each player controls a zeppelin. On your turn, you move your zeppelin to an adjacent card or attempt to steal the loot on the terrain card below you. If you move onto an unexplored card, flip it over to reveal its loot: extra cannon balls, extra armor, or a treasure. You can also fire a cannon ball at one of the pterodactyls flying around. Separately, all the players move pterodactyls and cause them to attack nearby zeppelins.

A lot has changed. The terrain cards were initially square (hexes get around the question of diagonal movement and look cool). Early iterations had a lot of empty terrain cards; now there are no empty terrain cards, but some with minimal rewards. Controlling pterodactyls went through many iterations before I hit on the current system that involves flipping over a pterodactyl card on your turn to control that pterodactyl. I also tried several ways for players to track armor and cannon balls, from setting a 20-sided die to the current number, to placing stones on a paper track, to the current system of tokens.

As with my 50 Games in 50 Weeks challenge (and this counted as one of the games!), I learned a lot:

• Rules must be airtight, written without ambiguity.
  • Much play-testing experience is needed to learn which phrases people find ambiguous.
• Players benefit from a summary of the rules that can be used during play. Ideally, this summary fits on a card or one side of a sheet of paper.
• A game will not appeal to everyone.
  • Better to create multiple versions of a game to appeal to different demographics than to attempt one game for everyone.
• We now live in a world where I can upload a bunch of images and text to The Game Crafter, and within a few minutes, anyone in the U.S. can buy my game.

Zeppelins vs. Pterodactyls is a family game for 1–6 players that plays in 30–60 minutes. If you’d like a copy, it’s US$30 on The Game Crafter.

‘Game closet’ by lkbm on Flickr

In July of last year, I took stock of myself as a gamer. I wanted to understand games better, and eventually design games. I realized that I suffered from a deficiency: I could play a few games well, but I knew only a few of them.

I decided to fix this by setting myself an impossible-sounding challenge: 50 Games in 50 Weeks. I would play 50 games that I had never played before, all within the next 50 weeks.

Last night, at the stroke of midnight on the last day in June, I finished my fiftieth game: Houses of the Blooded.

Looking back on the past year, I’m struck by a few things:

• There’s a huge variety of games and mechanics. I feel like I’ve plunged two feet into the ocean.
• I have learned a lot. I’ve discovered many different mechanics and rule approaches. The challenge worked.
• In a ”bad” game, the mechanics don’t fit the kinds of actions the players want to take. Indeed, the mechanics are often the same generic mechanics used in popular games. “Good” game design involves finding appropriate mechanics and fitting them together in ways that fit the game’s concept and offer the players interesting choices.

I do realize that I’ve fallen behind in posting my game summaries; I’ll write and post those in the coming months.

'Journal #41' by paperbackwriter on Flickr

I love having a personal blog.

Yet it sits in an awkward place, like the new boyfriend at the dinner table. It’s not a cathartic private journal that records one’s angers and fears. Neither is a blog about anything other than the self. I’m too much of a Renaissance Man to give my personal blog a single topic like politics or cooking.

As such, this has become a wildly inconsistent record of my interests and thoughts. On one hand, I feel frustrated at a site that updates so infrequently and inconsistently. On the other, well, sometimes I haven’t much to say here, while I’m throwing bits on Google+ or Dr. Worldbuilder.

So. Expect more blogging here. I want to be personal again.

Bottom line up-front: I ordered a bunch of candy from Munchies Sweets and Treats, only received half, and they’ve ignored my requests for the rest of the candy I paid for.

This past Halloween, I wanted to buy a bunch of full-size candy bars for the trick-or-treaters. It’s always fun to see their eyes bug out when I offer them a pail full of big candy bars. And I figured I could buy them in bulk.

After an hour of Googling, I found Munchies Sweets and Treats <munchiessweetsandtreats.com>. They had low prices and a large selection. Perfect! I ordered my bars, plus about a dozen unusual candies I can’t get in my area. The total came to a little over a hundred dollars. I gulped, and clicked “submit” on my order.

A week later, a large box arrived. I hauled it into the kitchen, split it open, and found most of the full-size candy bars, but none of the unusual candies. Inside was a packing slip, with all the candies I’d ordered listed.

I though, Well, maybe they’re shipping in two boxes. I waited a couple of days. No second box arrived.

:sigh: Okay, well, their materials listed a phone number. This was undoubtedly a mistake; I’d just call them and get the rest of my order. I dialed their number, and the call went straight to their voiccemail.

Which was full.

Now that’s an ominous sign.

I returned to their website. They had no live chat, but they did have a contact form. I filled that out, explaining that half my candy was missing from my order.

Need I say more?

There’s a lot of terrible Halloween music out there: fake “horror” sound effects set to Casio keyboard demo music and banal lyrics.

Here’s part of my Halloween playlist to get us started. What’s your favorite Halloween music?