tablesaw | Infodump

Things done since ever.

Bought tickets for the NPL Convention in Providence. Will be flying into Boston on the 4th (5 p.m. EDT), looking to bum around before heading to the hotel on Wednesday afternoon, then flying out of Logan early on the 11th (7 a.m.). Who'll be around?
I also said, "Screw it!" and asked for the rest of that week off from work, so it's going to be a real vacation for me all through to the 15th. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. But it will not be working.
I'm coming out of a funk (well, came out of a funk a week or so ago). It's always hard to identify it when I'm in it, till my body rebels and says, "No, Tablesaw, you need to do things again. You're going to do those situps, and then you're going to go out and see people." I'm looking ahead to when the pushback happens, the time when I feel a little sick or a little tired, and I let my momentum slip, and I can't pick it up again. On the horizon, this is most likely to happen because . . .
I'm probably going into the dentist this week to get my other wisdom tooth looked at. I have a feeling it's going to need removal too. The last time that happened it took a lot out of me. If it happens again, I'm going to need to plan ahead so that I can remomentatize myself.
I planned to go geocaching with trinker, and then found out it was to happen on her birthday, so I went all out to be the birthday fairy. It turned out kind of okay.
All the TV shows ended, and everyone is pregnant, I guess.
My phone, my crappy-ass phone—that is only one step removed from a crappy assphone—has started losing its charge, so I'm actually getting a smartphone. Virgin Mobile, which I've been using to keep my cell-phone bill under $10/month, has an unlimited data plan for $25/month. It should arrive this week. So that'll be interesting.
The Portal 2 print is framed and gorgeous-looking. I'm also wrestling with framing these prints on the cheap, which would be easier if the United States and Canada hadn't decided that they wanted their own special paper sizes.
Oh, I got a haircut too. For me, it's super short. But then, my hair was getting kind of long. For a while, it looked way too young for my big, bearded, thirty-three-year-old face, but it's looking better with a beard trim.
I watched a friend run Dungeon World at Strategicon over the weekend, which got me rereading Apocalypse World. After playing through a campaign, the directives made a lot more sense. It's a fascinating game, which is probably why I keep talking about it to everyone I meet. Also, much like with Smallville, I'm seeing it in the shows I watch. Sons of Anarchy and Dexter are totally running on Apocalypse World.
Finished Dragon Age:Origins. Pablum is too exciting a word.
Visited the Museum of Death, knocking another item off of my bucket list (defined as things that are close enough for me to throw a bucket at). It was disappointing. I was hoping for a curatorial perspective beyond, "WOW ISN'T THIS COOOOOOOOL!? SERIAL KILLERS, MAN! FUCK SOCIETY!" There were some nice touches: a set of crime-scene photographs near (what I assume was) the brief mention of the murder-suicide. On the other hand, relics of Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein were counterposed with "ads containing humorous depictions of cannibals." Yeah, that wasn't too pleasant.

Gotta go to bed now . . .

We just started an AW game last week. It was fun, though GMing it is weird because you have to readjust in your head what dice are for and how/when they get used.

I never had trouble understanding the dice (that is, the player moves). My problem was understanding the MC moves and how and when they work. I have a much better understanding of them now, as well as how threats and fronts generate from the first session.

See, it's the other way for me. The Player Moves aren't hard, for me it's what you don't have as player moves.

For example, there was a situation where one person was trying to ambush another. It took a second for me to realize the game doesn't tell you, that you have to make a judgment call- "Is this Under Fire?" before you even get to dice.

Fronts were pretty easy for me. Because the MC advice is to think of everything as a threat, and a target, every time I introduced a character, I just thought about what kind of problem they might be (Most of the time, it didn't require malevolence, just poor impulse control, since characters "just aren't that complicated").

Right now, I've got:

- A cult that believes it's going to "Put the psychic maelstrom to sleep, forever!" but is doing some weird shit that's fucking up some of the folks in the Hardhold.
- A rival Hardhold being threatened by a mutant gang
- The wife of one of the PCs is high maintanence and a little naive about the kinds of shit necessary to acquire what she's asking for ("The recipe says it needs Spam, so we need to get Spam!")
- A paranoid, or perhaps realistic Hardholder NPC who's trying to root out threats to his power and all to quick to shoot.

In what may be the least intuitive aspect of the basic moves, an ambush is covered under go aggro along with all other situations where the PC's targets are unprepared or unable to fight back easily. The detailed description of the basic moves gives an example of a ranged sniper with someone in their sights. On a 10+, the ambushee can either cave and do what the ambusher wants (die, be captured, what have you) or suck it up and take the damage the ambusher has prepared. On a 7-9, the ambushee has the extended options, most notably "get the hell out of their way."

Thinking of everything as a threat is kind of a foreign idea to me, I think. I'm inclined to think of most people as neutral and balanced, so that took some head-wrapping.

Ah, I'm working from the preview version, which doesn't have that example. Good to know!

Everything as a threat is actually easy when I think of highly dysfunctional living situations - there's people with little or no impulse control and respect for other folks' boundaries, and other folks with irrational responses/mechanisms controlling their behavior.

Everyone is neutral - just with very, very narrow vision of what they're doing and a tendency to over do it all.

cheap framing tip from one who used to work in a custom frame shop. If you needs it to be custom, Aaron Bros has coupons all the time. Little known fact that Michael's and Aaron brothers are owned by same company. If you get a frame estimate from Michael's and bring it over to Aaron bros they used to have the policy where they'd beat the price by something like 10%. Another tip is to get a mat cut to fit it to a standard frame size... You can put it in the frame yourself if you're feeling industrious or cheap.

Good luck with art. I like when people put their art up

Michaels was having a killer sale on large frames, so I picked some of those up. At the moment, instead of a mat, I've got one placed on top of a sheet of black background paper. I'll see if I still like that in a bit, otherwise I may go for a custom mat to fit the frame.

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From the elusive Tiffany

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