Journal

ConFusion and Planet Mercenary

Confession time: the Planet Mercenary session at ConFusion was the first time I have run a Planet Mercenary game. I’m familiar with the system, and (obviously) the universe, and I’ve played the game several times as a player, but I’d never before been the Game Chief.

To the game’s credit, it worked just fine in spite of me. We identified a lot of small problems with things like layout and wording, but the mechanics of the game did exactly what they were supposed to do, and encouraged some brilliant role-play.

Granted, 90% of that came from the brilliant players: Saladin Ahmed (Ob’enn quartermaster), Delilah Dawson (Ursumari medic), Mur Lafferty (Esspererin engineer), Brian McClellan (Unioc legal counsel), Cherie Priest (Human pilot), and Brent Weeks (Fobott’r captain).
Brent managed to role-play “four-armed and in charge” with some hilarious pantomime, and Delilah got so into character as “Doctor Murderbear” that on a couple of occasions I thought she was mad at me. Brian put that big eye to use and spotted a spy, who he then bent to the party’s aid.

Cherie got down with the tactics; her roguish pilot did some mad stealth work, cutting off the enemy’s escape route. Mur’s engineer then performed some spectactular disassembly on the enemy getaway vehicle, reducing it not just to pieces, but to pieces of jewelry.

And Saladin’s  bookish, persecuted, expat Ob’enn bet large, and managed to turn a nasty piece of enemy gear into a nasty piece of bookish, persecuted, expat Ob’enn gear.

I can’t thank these folks enough. They sawed a huge chunk of time out of their convention schedule to play this game we made, and they provided lots of suggestions about how to fine tune it.

 

Reviews

The Expanse. It is Just. That. Good.

I’m amazed by how good SyFy’s The Expanse is.

TheExpanseIt is head-and-shoulders above anything else in TV science-fiction, with the possible exception of The Martian, which was a movie. Yes, I include Star Trek, Babylon V, and Firefly.

Here’s my stake in the ground: In 2020 we’ll look at the state of science fiction programming, and ask ourselves how we got into this golden age. Then we’ll look back and say “ah. The Expanse. It set a new bar, and for the last five years everybody has been racing to clear it.”

The Expanse has flaws, sure. It’s a television program, after all. The series of books from which it is drawn are solid, but they’re not epic-level standouts of literary science fiction. That’s okay. They’re worlds better than what usually gets turned into TV programming, and the folks working on them are doing everything they can to convince us that the characters we’re following live in space, on asteroids, in accelerating vessels, and (most importantly) in our future.

This is science fiction that manages sense-of-wonder without sugar coating the dangers of space exploration. It is science fiction that depicts many of the grim realities of human nature, while still instilling hope for the amazing things humans can, and will, create. It is science fiction that does not feel like high-magic fantasy wrapped in robots and ray-guns.

Minor spoiler: There’s one scene in particular during which a vessel loses power, and stops accelerating. Everything starts floating. Then a hole gets punched through the cabin. The characters still able to move spend no more than three seconds looking shocked, and then they do what people who live in space do. They patch the holes so they don’t run out of air.

The Expanse is very non-episodic, much like Netflix’s Daredevil. Each episode is one act in a multi-act story, and while these acts have beginnings, middles, and ends, the overarching story is never lost as we drive forward. I bought the Season Pass on Amazon because I expect to binge watch this at least a couple of times before (huzzah it got renewed!) Season Two comes out.

We’re only six seven episodes in, and the season is short, but if you love science fiction, and you have sufficient discretionary income to let you comfortably put some money where your mouth is, this one’s worth buying now.

Content alert: There’s some PG-13 nudity in episode 1, presumably to rope puerile male viewers into thinking this is Game of Thrones (episodes 2 through 6 have none of that in them). Also, there is PG-13 violence, and can I just say that arterial spray in null-gee is terrifying? 

Announcements

Life, The Universe, and ConFusion this weekend

This weekend I’ll be attending the 42nd annual ConFusion science fiction and fantasy convention, aptly dubbed “Life, The Universe, and ConFusion.”

I’m not on any panels, because I didn’t want to be on any panels. I’m not selling anything, because I didn’t want to be stuck in the dealers’ room. I’ll have a badge, but I’m not really *at* the convention as anything other than as an attendee who is taking a vacation this weekend.

PlanetMercenaryLogo-250pxExcept, of course, for the bit where I’m running a Planet Mercenary RPG session on Saturday morning with several of the convention’s notable guests as players. That’s a little bit like work, and it’s something that fans can come and watch. When it’s done, I will hide in my room and edit a bunch of the Planet Mercenary stuff, focusing on the bits my party of fine storytellers and wordsmiths ran roughshod over.

If you want me to sign something, or sketch in a book, I will do that for you, provided you don’t try to get me to do it during the RPG session, or while I’m eating.

If you want to talk to me, hey, that’s cool, assuming you choose to do this in a setting where approaching people for conversation is appropriate. If I’m not feeling approachable, I’ll probably hide in my room and write.

Announcements

On Boundaries…

The current storyline has some people wondering if I’m “taking a page from Mass Effect,” or perhaps [insert popular SF here.]

schlock20160111

For the record, I’ve played about 60 minutes of Mass Effect, and didn’t love it. I moved on to other games.

I am, however, familiar with Fermi’s Paradox, and have extensively explored the solution sets, none of which are particularly optimistic. Those sets look quite a bit different if they are constrained by the canon of the Schlockiverse, but not so different as to be internally inconsistent.

What this means is that yes, among a hundred thousand readers, somebody will definitely be able to correctly guess key plot points. Science has been grinding on this stuff for decades.

But I’m not borrowing from anybody else’s fiction for this. I’m going whole cloth from the science. What THIS means is that despite the likelihood that 100,000 Schlock Mercenary readers can generate a speculation set that contains actual plot, I’m still going to surprise you.

But only if I shut up now.

So, you know, speculate among one another, but not here (comments are closed,) and for the love of hull integrity, please show some respect for a different boundary, and do NOT ask ME about this stuff.

Writer, Illustrator, Consumer