Travel Journal: Spectrum Live 2013

All Photos by Kaitlin

This week's entry is kind of long so I feel bad adding more text up here before I even get to the main article. However, because most of my readership has no idea what Spectrum Live is this seems an important topic to broach. Because he does such a great job and because I don't want to reinvent the wheel I'm going to basically plagiarize a section from Mr. Mike Linnemann's review of Spectrum Live 2.

What is Spectrum?

"Spectrum, in case you don’t know, is an annual book—a volume rather—that showcases the best in the field of fantasy and science fiction art. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the volumes. They’re called individually “Spectrum X: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art.” The X is replaced by the number..." [-Mike Linnemann] This year is Spectrum 20. Spectrum is pretty awesome because you can see a broad diversity of fantasy art just by flipping the page. It also has the names of all the artists with their website, which generally has their contact information. As an artist you can follow people who have a similar style, learn some cool techniques you maybe didn't know, and make friends within the artist community. As an employer/project designer you can find an awesome artist who can breathe life into your ideas/works. As a human being who appreciates art (or a collector) you can marvel at the ease of access to countless masterfully crafted pieces of work. The best part? There's always new artists featured each year and all of the images have to survive a gauntlet-style panel before they're accepted into Spectrum so you're only looking at the best of the best.

What is Spectrum: Live?

"The convention is a gathering of artists, art directors, collectors, and fans in the middle of America. The convention celebrates the annual book and the art field." [-Mike Linnemann] This is basically the best place to meet the artists featured in Spectrum and is a super-gathering of really high talent individuals I'd otherwise find myself driving to Arizona to meet individually.

Last note: This is my personal Spectrum: Live 2 Report. I'll be writing up a more professional event review for MF shortly, in addition to a half-dozen interviews that will likely take a few weeks to put together.

------- End of Notes -------

Batman and The Open Road

Day 1 - Tuesday May 14th, 2013

It was after a full day's work that we started packing for Spectrum Live. I seemed to have let the days slip by and despite counting down the hours until my departure, packing somehow fell by the wayside. We packed everything we expected to need in just under an hour and observed an ancient Russian tradition I picked up from Wikipedia that consisted of stopping at the entrance of the house, waiting though a few moments of silence, and stepping on each other's feet. This is done partly to help remember things you might have forgotten to pack and partly because it's amusing. It worked, and I went back for an Elric of Melnibone' poster and my official MF Press pass. This week I'd be representing the Russian magazine Mir Fantastiki. 

Batman and the Tampa roads

Kaitlin (my partner in crime) and I departed at around 6pm, somehow avoiding the usual traffic, and passed hundreds of acres of blooming purple, red, and white flowers that seemed to line the highway. We passed I-4, my normal routine, then Tampa.

So many flowers!

Now further north than anywhere I typically drive the scenery changed and became oddly western. We saw dozens of horses, hundreds of cows, some boar, and even a few deer. We passed antique malls, Florida's mini bible-belt, and dozens of sun-bleached signs for Cafe Risque while listening to Brom's The Child Thief (read by the remarkably talented Kirby Heyborne). Around sunset, 8:20pm, we stopped at a Subway and caught a bite to eat. Around 11pm, somewhere in the panhandle, we pulled over and puked our guts out. Passers by commented in broken English, Rastafarian, and Spanish, telling us to drink plenty of water. Between bouts of sickness, I took a picture of an interesting sign that showed the distances to various places of interest, including my friends in Orlando.

Not in Kansas City anymore...

By the second 11pm (we passed into the Central Timezone) the roads became straight, dull, and hypnotizing. Kaitlin had long since passed out so I couldn't play my usual loud and jarring music. Slowly the tunes from Diablo 2, Arcanum, Demon's Souls, and the Symphonic Suite to Actraiser began to tug at my consciousness and I found myself right in the middle of a nightmare I frequently have... The one where I'm driving and falling asleep at the wheel. It's a strange nightmare to have for sure but I fought through it and passed the state line to Alabama. We ended the drive at around 1AM CT at the house of family.

The Stuff of Nightmares

Day 2 - Wednesday May 15th, 2013

The Road to Enterprise, AL

Today was a fairly quick day. I woke up fairly late and did some work on my laptop while having breakfast. When we departed around noon found ourselves in a traditional Alabama neighborhood. We passed a few local landmarks, a giant mural of The Boll Weevil Monument, a water tower, a few fighter jets (inactive), a rocket that's been to space, and countless fields of yellow and purple flowers. We also passed something that resembled a wombat standing proudly on top of a rock, various armadillo, vultures, chipmunks, countless cows, and wild onions.

To The Moon?

We stopped briefly at around 3pm for a picnic at a rest stop. Some of our provisions had gone bad so we tossed them to some birds who didn't seem to mind that the food was bad for human consumption. We kept driving until around 7:30pm, stopping at a clean hotel in Clarkesville, Tennessee.

Picture Unrelated: The Pirate Festival from the weekend before... Kind of like the Child Thief?

Day 3 - Thursday May 16th, 2013

Our Friend in IL had fun glasses...

Not much to talk about. Drove pretty much all day. The day started with a complementary breakfast at the hotel, we coasted to O'Fallon, IL, and stayed at a friend's home. Did you know that you can advertise on any number of the dozens of empty billboards between Alabama and Illinois? We sure do after this drive. Highlights of the day included seeing the new Star Trek film and a particularly poor game of Scrabble. I don't think we collectively broke 100 but there might have been drinking involved... Then again I could be lying to cover up how bad I am at scrabble.

Pretty much the coolest glasses ever...

Day 4 - Friday May 17th, 2013: The First Day of Spectrum

Sunrise in O'Fallon, IL

We woke up to a pretty sunrise, got in the car, and drove the last leg of the journey to Kansas City, MO. Surprisingly, the last few hours of driving were accented by some rather interesting buildings between stretches of farmland. I've driven through America a few times and it only just struck me how much of the country seems to be covered in farmland. I expected more trees.

Just like a scene from Dishonored

I think we took the wrong exit for Kansas City because we found ourselves in a very bleak neighborhood with overgrown lawns that were taller than most children. Between the two and a half lane road (seriously, what's with having a lane that a compact car can't fit on that's clearly for cars?!), the barred windows on every home, and the neon Budweiser lights clearly active before noon on a Friday, it was clear that we probably shouldn't stop to let the homeless man wash our car.

This place is pretty awesome

A few miles later, now in Kansas City, we found ourselves at a nice Vegan diner called Cafe Gratitude and caught an early lunch. The place was fairly packed but there was room at their bar, which we were told gave out free samples. I'm not Vegan or in any way "wholistic" but the food was good and the service staff was both timely and friendly. I honestly regret not living closer to this place. So it was with full stomachs that we arrived at the hotel, checked in, and walked across the street to Spectrum!... Only we couldn't find it...
In a moment of genius I'd neglected to write down the address provided in the Spectrum: Live emails I'd gotten almost every week the month before because i'd assumed that it would be impossible to miss. Much to my dismay we were having a rather difficult time locating the correct part of the massive convention center where Spectrum was happening and it wasn't until we bumped into a friendly woman who identified herself as an art collector that we were pushed in the right direction. The collector (who was dressed very sharply and had a distinctly East-Coast US big city look, despite having no accent) had apparently come from Virginia for the sole purpose of purchasing as much original art as suited her interests. Her intent was mostly to support a few of her favorite artists but she also intended to see if anyone new caught her eye. They do exist! 

A Seemingly Friendly Photo Opportunity

The collector helped us find our way to Spectrum: Live and after checking in we moved towards the opening ceremonies. On our way to opening ceremonies we saw what I thought was a good photo opportunity and briefly stepped outside to take a picture of the above building... Only we suddenly found ourselves locked outside the convention center. A few minutes of knocking on a door someone let us back inside and we returned to the main room just in time for the opening ceremonies.

Spectrum Live 2 Entrance Hall

At the opening ceremonies Cathy and Arnie Fenner made a few announcements, the largest of which that they'd be stepping down as Spectrum's editors to usher in the next generation. They've seen us through 20 Spectrum volumes [books] over 20 years and were solely responsible for every person's attendance at Spectrum Live so this is really big news. For those without a point of comparison it's something akin to George Lucas saying that he's stepping down from Star Wars... After the release of Episode VI. Or Steve Jobs perhaps.

The Main Room

After opening ceremonies Kaitlin and I made use of our press-badges to walk around a bit and set up times to interview the various people on our list. At one point we probably looked exceedingly lost, holding the event map (perhaps upside down?), pointing at it and speaking in hushed German, when Cathy Fenner walked over to us and asked if she could help us find what we were looking for. For reference to non-convention/festival goers, it's insanely rare that an event is running so well that the person in charge of it has time to talk to its attendees or move at any pace slower than a jog while putting out multiple proverbial fires simultaneously. Spectrum: Live 2 was one such well-run event and this interaction was only the beginning of the overwhelming kindness and exceedingly friendly attitudes we experienced that weekend.

Tom Babbey creates fantasy wildlife portraits and concepts

While walking the aisles we met countless artists. We met a talented digital artist named Steve Argyle, an illustrator who creates magnificent scenes of nature named Cory Godbey, a cross medium artist whose works I immediately recognized with admiration with named John Stanko, an artist whose work I couldn't take my eyes off named Tohru Patrick Awa, and a young man who specializes in cross-hatching and pointillism (you know, the insane art of drawing millions of dots to create an image?) named Jeremy Bastian, who makes single images that tell the original story of the Cursed Pirate Girl (his creation)!

Justin Sweet and Vance Kovacs

We saw paintings so detailed it looked like they were pictures of sculpts, sculpts so real they looked ready to move, and images that looked like photos of beasts that couldn't possibly exist! We saw a Face Off finalist, a few Games Workshop artists, Magic: The Gathering artists, and people working on paintings as we walked by!

Steven Belledin

After awhile of walking we finally reached a booth I recognized all too well that contained the covers to two BADASS books, some familiar Magic (The Gathering) Cards, as well as a picture I knew all too well for my upcoming Careless Juja album. So it was that we finally met Steven Belledin (and his wife) in person. Once the booth was a little less busy I got a chance to interview Belledin in the main hall. Belledin has become something of a friend over the last few months and it was really neat to finally meet him in person. It's funny how many friends in life we only interact with online. The interview (my first official interview on behalf of MF) felt fairly natural, almost more like a casual conversation than a real interview because many of the questions from the interview were things I'd wanted to ask him without the need for a press badge. I'll be posting the interview (along with all the others) once Mir Fantastiki gives me the green light. It's worth noting that midway through the interview we were interrupted by a mysteriousloud singing over the PA system, followed by someone apologizing and saying they had no idea what just happened. Perhaps Columbia had finally returned?

Dan Dos Santos

Immediately after interviewing Belledin, we caught up with fellow Firefly enthusiast and super-talented painter Dan Dos Santos! For those not familiar with him check out his website or the regularly updated Muddy Colors Blog! The interview was just as enjoyable as Belledin's, despite my nervousness and despite having some really tough questions to ask him in a non-offensive way. Dos Santos's answers, especially to the tough questions, made me smile and I think he gave a fantastic defense to the future of physical medium art (which I'm clearly a pretty big fan of). My favorite quote from the interview, admittedly borrowed, was his definition of Fantasy as being "the place where nature ends..."

Arnie and Cathy Fenner

Later we caught up on the evening’s festivities on the 16th floor of the Aladdin Hotel. There was a live model drawing and countless artists were involved. Lacking the proper materials to take part in the drawing festivities we socialized and met with (of all people) some Ringling Graduates from Sarasota, the place we’d just left to come to Spectrum Live. We casually chatted while enjoying the free food. It was a pretty fantastic way to end a long day.

Day 5 - Saturday May 18th, 2013: The Second Day of Spectrum

Brom

The next morning we had a quick breakfast and bumped into Brom, who immediately made time for an interview. Brom was much taller (in height) than expected and was extremely animated and friendly. He spoke to us with a manner of familiarity, as if we were longtime friends, kind of like those who share my condition interact with the world. I felt fairly confident in my journalistic abilities by this interview and after the formal discussions were concluded he politely signed the aforementioned Elric poster and Kaitlin's copy of The Child Thief. Strange oddity: he drew a stylistic skull in the book next to his name. Previously (but taken out before bringing it down from the hotel) the book had a paper bookmark of a skull Kaitlin had drawn some years back when she first picked up the book. If it were anyone else I'd call it coincidence...

Charles Vess

Next we interviewed Charles Vess. There was an instant familiarity with him as well and it was like I’d known him for years though I was certainly meeting him for the first time. We talked about many things in the interview (or just during the course of the weekend) and at one point he started mentioning that he was interested in some of my favorite artists and Russian folk stories like Baba Yaga, artists Ivan Bilibin, and Yoshitaka Amano. I was impressed with his knowledge of fantasy art, but it all soon made sense as shortly after the interview he gave a presentation on the evolution of Fantasy Art. It's easy to see that he breathes this stuff and even if he wasn't an artist I strongly suspect that he’d still have the same passion.

Jon Foster

The rest of the day was kicked into overdrive and before I knew it the day was done. I interviewed David Petersen, Jon Foster, and W.A.R.. Petersen is a fellow gaming/comic guy who followed his dreams and created one of my favorite worlds: Mouseguard! Foster is a friendly and soft spoken artist who has created fantastic pieces for some titanic projects (like Buffy & Star Wars)! Wayne Reynolds is quick-tongued and a fellow pen and paper gamer who more or less created the standard for the visual art of Pathfinder & the D&D 4th Edition! It was really cool to shake the hands that made the artwork for most of the books I own...

David Petersen

Kaitlin and I made our rounds through the rest of Spectrum Live, meeting John Picacio, a man who's worked on two Elric books and A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones). We passed an art panel where someone was creating an image of Mr. Spock and also met a fantastic painter named Eirich Olson who was returning to his calling after taking a few years off to become a parent.

Art Panel by Greg Manchess you can see here

After stopping by the last of the booths we changed into more formal clothes and headed to the award ceremony, which was located at the absolutely stunning Midland Theater. All questions as to why the award ceremony wasn't just held in the convention hall immediately vanished as we entered the ornate main hall. Bronze cherubs, glass murals, carved wood, and fantastic fabrics gave the immediate sense that we were truly at the exclusive award ceremony to honor the best fantasy artists in the world.

Photos were effectively impossible to take with my camera

The ceremony opened with a dance troupe that incorporated video, lights, costumes, and music to create an amazing display. My favorite part of the dance involved a single dancer moving in tandem with her "spirit", a larger than life version of herself projected via video display that was both in front of her and behind her. It's difficult to describe and if a video ever pops up online I'll link it here. After the dance was the actual award giving part of the ceremony where we watched as many of the people we interviewed or spoke with walked up, one by one, getting either a gold or silver award. The best speech without a doubt was Vess walking up, saying “Thank you” and walking off without blinking to near-deafening applause. The evening was in full attendance, half of which were in professional attire, and it was nice to see Arnie and Cathy (now the "former" Editors of Spectrum) give out awards one last time as Brom won the Grand Master award. Then, just like that, the evening was over and the final day of Spectrum had begun.

Day 6 - Sunday May 19th, 2013: The Final Day of Spectrum

Krampus by Thomas Kuebler

The last day went by far too quickly. We did our last rounds, talked to a few more artists we’d missed on the prior days, and got a last minute photo with a Krampus sculpture (made by Thomas Kuebler) before it was already time to depart and take the long road back to Sarasota. The road home went by a lot faster with the book on tape and we stopped somewhere near Alabama.

Day 7 - Monday May 20th, 2013

The Bradenton River

The ride back was quick and we somehow dodged all the bad weather in our path until we hit Florida. We finished The Child Thief and crossed the familiar landmarks back home. Spectrum: Live 2 was a fantastic experience and I sincerely hope to be back for their next event.

The Batman

Pen & Paper: My Ever-Dying Character List

My role-playing career (as anything except a GM or DM) has been filled with short lived and extremely unlucky characters. Needless to say, here is a synopsis of my life's experiences compiled for your amusement...

My introduction to role playing was a 1 on 1 game with my childhood friend Julian who was running a pen and paper game... only without the pen or paper because we were only 7 or 8 at the time, I was illiterate, and neither of us owned dice. One afternoon he posed a question asking if I had an imagination and wanted to play a game of words and hypothetical situations. Not quite sure what he was talking about, I agreed and was instantly thrust into the life of an orc named Bleu He (a play on the word "Hebrew") with no real depth or description beyond "a green skinned orc warrior." The game ended almost immediately when the Julian informed me that I had entered a human village because my reaction (having just played Warcraft 2 just moments before) was to kill everything in sight and burn the village. Before the town guard caught up to me and ended my career, three maidens, two peasants, and twenty four elementary school students had been defeated by my hand in glorious combat. Bleu He didn't learn anything from the experience, but I learned a bit about how the game worked and how I needed to be thinking about self-preservation, lest my character die.

A few minutes later I created a new character known as "Jarvis The Chosen One," a blond haired knight who had fulfilled a prophecy of some sort by killing orcs that were attacking his village (I didn't see the humor in this at the time). Jarvis's extremely lengthy career (lasting a full day) consisted of him being hunted by evil knights with glowing eyes and glowing swords who seemed to burn every village he traveled to, fighting undead, exploring a ghost pirate ship, being chased by a Zaratan, killing the Zaratan, stopping evil priests from doing something vague but certainly evil, traveling through time to cure world hunger, and finally facing off against a multicolored dragon that seemed to be controlling the evil knights in the present time (for Jarvis). Having little knowledge of dragons at the time I thought it'd be a great idea to charge the beast directly, not fully understanding that dragons breathed fire. Lesson learned... Thus ended the career of Jarvis The Chosen One... Burned to death by multi-colored flames.

The next month I wanted to play again, this time as yet another nondescript character. Keep in mind that this was strictly a verbal game of storytelling without dice, probabilities, or any visual reference beyond our minds and i'm admittedly a non-visual thinker. I was a "bodyguard" (a word I didn't even understand at that age) in modern times with a gun who worked at a science lab. After some stuff went bad at the lab (hissing sounds, explosions, and flashing lights which it turned out were not a surprise birthday/rave party) I found myself trapped inside one of the rooms with an ill described monster-thing (which, in retrospect, it's release was a direct result of Jarvis's time traveling antics). As the thing slowly walked towards me breathing heavily and being generally creepy, I tried to escape the room through a giant glass window that led to the greater lab areas. I tried poking the glass, kicking the glass, and body-slamming the glass which landed me straight on my tailbone. As I laid on the ground, paralyzed with pain the monster killed me. It was about 12 seconds after being consumed that I realized that I had a gun... Lesson 3: Always write down what's in your inventory...

Julian started to get bored of my deaths and I became the regular GM in our group of friends. A few months later, Julian moved away, but before he left I was able to play one last game with him. I was a member of a super-advanced alien race (that doesn't age and that has unlimited patience) which wanted to observe other species. It was my job to monitor and test inferior races to see if we might want to contact them and invite them to our grand interstellar alliance. As the lucky alien assigned to "Earth" I somehow wound up capturing a few subjects and changed my form to match theirs (as I was bi-pedal and about the same size it wasn't that tough). Apparently I found out the hard way that my alien symbol for peace resembled the middle finger to the human race and was forced to mind-wipe my subjects and return them to their homes in Texas. I wasn't sure why I'd chosen to invade Texas (of all places), but he let that bit of information slip mid-game. Weird. After that, I somehow managed to capture the president (of Texas?) by beaming up a section of the (Texan?) White House, but during my escape into the atmosphere my ship was crippled by Texan gunfire just as I jumped to hyper-space. (I'll admit at this point that I might not have been the right alien for the job and wasn't the brightest tool in the shed...)

Because my warp-drive was sentient it helped me avoid an instant death and instead I crash landed on an alien world where giant zerg creatures that built colonies out of mucus attacked my ship. We (the president, secret service, and myself) survived the attacks by working together and preventing the creatures from getting on board while I worked to repair the ship. We eventually had to leave the ship to get a few parts and traveled through the old sewer system left behind by the older races. It was long overrun by the bug-creatures but we ultimately escaped. I remember noting that no real "boss" aliens were seen, just a few larger bug-things. I think the real strength of the enemy was in their numbers and many of the secret service guys died during the journey. So, after saving the president the human race overlooked the whole "you tried to kidnap and perform all sorts of horrible experiments on us" thing and our races became friends. I guess he was the president of Earth (perhaps Texas took over the world?) or something. Anyways, we took a sample of the bug-monsters for study (which I realized later is the monster that killed my previous character), advanced the human race centuries into the future with our technology, cured world hunger (a common theme in Julian's games), and lived happily ever after. I was starting to get the hang of Role Playing games it seemed...

It would be at least two years later (middle school) until I played my next game as a Player Character, this time with a new group of friends. My character (a nondescript human) was devoutly evil, betraying his king, his race, and home by helping the arch-fiend (generic bad guy overlord #1)'s minions enter the walled city through a hidden passage I somehow knew about. Once the forces of evil (grey-skinned humanoids) destroyed the city I was given rank within the bad guy forces and became the bad guy that the other PCs were working against. It was a game of paranoia where (having read many of the D&D Monster Manuals) I would regularly stab at my shadow, or strike people while yelling 'Doppeganger!' The game ended abruptly when I killed all of the other players involved (who were not playing concurrently, but rather in a series of 1-1 or 1-2 sessions) and I was told "congratulations, you beat the game!" Lesson learned: Killing everyone else involved generally ends the game.

At one point Julian returned to town for a few days and when we were extremely bored I played a Zaratan. I did all sorts of cool things that a giant turtle with ESP would do... I took long naps, ate wayward sailors, submerged myself every few thousand years as people would try to build civilizations on my back, and hit on female turtles. It was pretty baller... All of this ended when I tried to eat a guy on a boat, followed him all the way home to his village and was murdered in an oddly familiar way. I was admittedly feeling a foolish after I'd realized what had happened, and we went back to playing Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 or a board game he'd designed out of legos and balsa wood. I don't think I learned any real lessons from playing this game except perhaps a few fun facts about turtles and their courtship rituals.

Unspeakable Evil!

I played a few goofy one-off session characters like a vampire who could hypnotize people upon eye contact (so i'd frequently challenge them to staring matches or say something like "Why don't you say that to my face?"), a pipe-organ bard (who admittedly didn't get out or do much of anything), and various PC-hunting foils that I would be asked to play from time to time. By this point there was not very much simultaneous play, just a series of 1-1 sessions affecting the same world where the plot is generally to kill the other players (at least from my perspective). I'd bribe bar-keeps to poison them, I'd pay beggars to give hand-drawn treasure maps to other players that would lead them to their doom, I actively financed dungeons, mercenary bands, and death-traps. I'd trap treasure chests (generally to release explosive or poisonous gas), I'd swap out signposts at forks in the road, and I'd build diverse splinter-cell factions of evil in every town I came across. I think the other resident GM (besides me) just ran out of ideas and wanted someone else to make challenges in his world because after a while it felt like I was the real villain in the game... Eventually the players put together my Professor Moriarty-like schemes, sought me out, and I found myself entering into a duel with one of the other characters (against my will I assure you). It was at that time that we concluded that we'd need some sort of system by which to manage player vs player combat beyond the GM arbitrarily saying "you hit" or "you don't." We tried a few systems like "I'm thinking of a range of numbers between 1 and 100," but this fell short of fairness. We concluded that since we called our game DnD we might as well learn how the real D&D (in it's shiny new 3rd edition) was played since we were now over the age of 12 (the minimal age requirement for playing). Because of an idiotic episode of 60 minutes and the 1982 film Mazes and Monsters a few of my friends had to stop playing when their parents found out we were converting to the real game.

Dual Wielding Ranger

Our first D&D game was run by our older friend, Tom, who had a well established world that was in the D&D 3.0 system which supposedly had almost become some kind of expansion book made by Wizards of the Coast/TSR. My character (well described, per my interest in completely filling out the detailed character sheet) was a gothic black-haired ranger with a hatred of plants, animals, and the proletariat I dubbed "the Red Terror." Armed with a hammer (medium weapon), a sickle (small weapon, important for dual wielding bonuses), awesome stat rolls, and a hatred of the outdoors it didn't seem like anything could go wrong... But because I had really bad luck at the whole "roll the dice" thing it didn't seem to matter how intelligently I played my character because I walked into more traps than cross-dressing bingo night. I'd volunteered to keep the night-watch only to critically fail the first roll and immediately fall asleep, I failed all of my intuitive direction rolls (making me a useless ranger), and critically failed a "knowledge divine" check that ultimately caused me to put my hand into the mouth of a statute when I thought I saw something shiny inside... The bite that followed killed The Red Terror immediately. In short, I was almost entirely useless largely because of my bad rolls, partly because I didn't have enough points in useful skills (but I could speak 7 languages). So I learned that you need to put some extra thought into making your character statistically useful or you won't last long no matter how well you role-play.

Wild Antics

The above experience was pretty demoralizing, so it would be a few years before I'd pick up the dice and try again... I played as a short gnome (even for gnomes) rogue named Swa Malescar Ekal Vizie-Vare the Twenty-Third, whose bad luck and misfortune was legendary among my social circles. Swa, a noble who left the high life after her mad uncle tried to murder her, was a well intentioned chaotic good character with a case of kleptomania (per the GM's specification). Posing as a traveling dwarf knight with a bucket helmet, and a beard of goat-fur, every roll I seemed to make resulted in taking me one step closer to death. For instance, critically failing a basic depth perception check while trying to use a parachute (don't ask), the GM being polite and saying I landed on a hay bale in enemy territory, critically failing a much needed stealth check to avoid detection from the guards who heard my impact, succeeding in my jump check to avoid getting caught and jumping out of what I thought was a first story window only to land in a moat. After critically failing while trying to swim in the moat, being "rescued" and tied up by the evil uncle (who happened to be there for some reason), failing to roll over "5" on a 20 sided dice with my 3 "escape artist" attempts, and failing a few other really key rolls shortly after, I was sacrificed on an alter to some evil deity he worshiped.

On a Boat

This was a part of a series of one on one games to try and get a better understanding of the mechanics of D&D with my friend Justin, when we went on a summer-long boat trip up the east coast of the US. Next I tried a Stone Giant character who was crushed to death by a herd of buffalo I accidentally startled, then a bug-controlling wizard who was beaten to death by peasants with newspapers and pitchforks after casting what I didn't realize was a harmful 'area of effect' spell in the middle of town after I got into a bar fight. Next a Lawfully good Paladin who considered "consorting with evil" a capital offense (I didn't fully understand alignment at the time) who the king had executed for treason despite my sound logic, and finally a Golumn-crafting sorcerer who didn't do a whole lot after I finally earned the ability to craft Golumns. The "Golumn Goddess" was sort of an interesting character because it took ALL summer to earn enough xp/gp to start crafting Golumns. The GM had me start off as a servant (who incidentally had magical powers) doing super-mundane household cleaning quests for noble families. Over the course of three weeks (in real time) I worked my way out of cleaning homes and worked as an apprentice blacksmith in the most mundane campaign ever conceived. I made HORSE SHOES for the next week, worked my way up to armor, eventually got better than the blacksmith I worked for, and reached level 12, having never entered into combat or any vaguely life-threatening situation. I was forced to "retire" the character as a master armorer, who ran a shop surrounded by hidden Golumns in a peaceful merchant town after my friend told me he had no ideas for a serious story line for that character now that I had Golumns. Justin later went on to work for city services (in real life) as a maintenance guy doing all of the chores he'd described for my character... He still doesn't have the ability to craft Golumns.

Characters Slightly More Useless Than My SWG: Teras Kasi Master!

Then, after finally getting used to the mechanics of D&D I was reintroduced back into the world of multiplayer (3+ people) role-playing games through Vampire The Masquerade... which uses a completely different ruleset. A good friend at the time was running a game and lent me the books for a week before the game. I spent a day and a half learning the system and making my first character, only to die about twenty minutes into the first session after one of the other player characters thought my character concept was stupid and shot me with a flamethrower. 

In his defense my character was a deranged and mentally unstable vampire (which is sort of the point with Malkavians, one of the main character options) but I was forced to create a new character while everyone else progressed with the story... I was specifically by the GM asked to make a character with a deep backstory that would work well with the other characters. I was also asked to avoid creating a combat-heavy guy "just because." Cool! Character depth was not really a new concept to me but I'd never tried intentionally making a combat-useless character before so I came up with Gav, a rich artist with lots of contacts whose only weapon was a lighter and a canister of silly string... Incidentally vampires are extremely flammable so this worked out alright. I sprayed, lit, and fled at the first mention of combat with maximum efficiency! However, I seemed to botch all of my diplomacy rolls (though the words I said were not poorly chosen), and generally found myself speeding home in my econo-Prius in frustration after the team would tell me to take the night off. Once home I'd horribly botch my craft-art rolls and feel bad about myself. Perhaps this guy was a bit too realestic... Once we realized that main story was going to turn south on us (the 'prince', who hired us to investigate a series of seemingly unrelated crimes was the bad guy, setting us up as the fall guys) I bough a bunch of C4 from my 'contacts', liberally "operated" on one of the vampire PC's (to where he had C4 inside himself and was able to heal up the wounds using "blood points") and drove away in my econo-Prius as he gave the prince a hug and detonated the C4. The whole experience sort of left a sour taste in my mouth (a lazy GM and a group of players that thought I was a bad RP'er because I rolled poorly) and I didn't play as anything except a GM using D20 systems for the next few years.

Castle Ravenloft...Vania (Instruction Booklet)

At one point my college family invited me to play a game, so I played a greatsword wielding monster-hunter in an extremely enjoyable Castle Ravenloft campaign. This was a "to the letter of the book" campaign that I found insanely fun and won't go into detail about because other people will undoubtedly try to play the game would appreciate a lack of spoilers. The campaign ended abruptly after some sort of social fo-pah I wasn't a part of that ended with the GM breaking up with the leader of the social circle. Hrm... A few years after that I played as a psychic Pokemon Trainer in a Pokemon Role Playing game which was pretty awesome! Before you judge me, let me explain that I was able to possess people or pokemon, temporarily steal their abilities, and use sed abilities in any body that I possessed (except my own). The party received countless benefits, shout outs, free gifts, won the lottery, twice, and won every battle we took part in because no opposing Pokemon Trainer was able to issue attacks to their pokemon (whom I would possess). No one suspected the little "fainting" paraplegic kid in the wheelchair was behind it all, and we got away with outright murder (technically suicide, but the jumpers were unaware until after they'd jumped) in one or two instances. Sadly my mind-war of terror (that the other players were genuinely oblivious of thanks to an awesome note-passing system the GM allowed) was cut short when a wild Scyther impaled me through the chest, killing the 15 year old boy. He died with no regrets and I learned the importance of 'bug spray.'

Sometimes Games are Broken

My last conventional D&D game (as a player character) was a brush with 4e. I got to play a gnome fighter named Malachite and abuse just about all of the cantrips given to me. I'd magehand arrows from the quiver of archers, magehand a short sword or giant beach towel to distract enemies, prestidigitation the smell of bowl movements upon my enemies when I'd make intimidation rolls, etc. It was all going really well until I missed a game and in that week the entire party died. I told them that if they would have waited for me I could have certainly slain any monster, but in actuality I was only level 3 so it's unlikely that it would have made much of a difference. There's something to be said for the great balancing act of combat, especially in instances where PC's have no other option (e.g. a giant mono directional cave system) but to fight.

Picture From Blizzard HQ

My last Roleplaying experience (as a PC) was a fantastically run Call of Cthulu themed Nemesis-System (D10) game. My character was a mob hitman who got pulled into a giant conspiracy (with all the other player characters). In short (because I don't want to spoil the fantastic plot which is available for other people to play), when we found the 'bad guy' base in 1920's New York, I went in with one of the other guys armed with a Tommy Gun, a switchblade, and a healthy amount of TNT, and we wiped out 4 city blocks. 

As we raced across the world to stop their leader we were chased by the police for our actions in NY, which was kind of inevitable given the previous statement. A silly thing of note in the game was that one of our number (despite whatever dice he used) consistently got critical headshots to such an extreme that the GM actually started giving all of the bad guys magical bullet-proof bubble-shields on their heads. Because I was a combat-character, it was the Nemesis System, and I was still generally botching every important roll in the game I didn't last much longer than the first few sessions but had a great time because it was extremely story driven (as opposed to combat or XP/Loot driven). The GM even let me finish the game with the group as a nondescript sailor the party rescued from the clutches of the evil cultists in Egypt!

So that's been my botch-tastic experience with Roleplaying... Feel free to share your own memorable experiences...

Shadow of the Catlossus

Travel Journal: Day of The Florida Music Festival

By the time this posts, I'll be driving in a car, well on my way to Spectrum  Live. I will have been in the car for at least 5 hours by this point (and an extra 9 nine hours on the first day), listening to Brom's The Child Thief, with no end to the driving in sight.

I know this is completely off topic but it was a pretty interesting Friday a few weeks ago... And a picture is worth a thousand words or something... 

Awake. I started my carrier job, moving goods from one side of town to another.

I passed motels

some artistic buildings

and got closer downtown.

"Downtown, where everything's better."

I made the delivery

and had breakfast.

Then I worked for a few more hours.

On the way to the tour van I passed the airport

and the farms near the van.

I didn't realize at the time that the tour van was out of coolant, that two tires were low, and one tire was pretty much empty. I spent 15 minutes filling the tires and was behind schedule.

The heat indicator started to go crazy about an hour from Orlando, so vented the heat on MAX to keep the gauges low. It was already 85+ (f) degrees outside and I was going to be late if I stopped.

Struggling from heat exhaustion and lack of water, Orlando traffic was an unpleasant sight.

I met up with the band and Moose showed me how to put coolant in the van. I think he hates this picture but I'm posting it anyways.

Showed up to the Florida Music Festival and set up. It's blurry because we were in a rush to set up.

We rocked the FMF.  It was fun. Once again Moose looks unhappy and I look like an accordionist-Shiva. (Photo by Kat Coffin)

I immediately left for the Tampa Intl. Airport to catch a flight to Atlanta for a wedding. I slept in the van until the terminal opened.  What a busy Friday...