19th Level

Like a lot of gamers, I support a lot of Kickstarter projects. Most of the projects I've supported have come through though I've had a few busts. I was going to make this a Google+ post but it kept getting longer and longer until I realized I'd pretty much written a blog post. This is a bit of stream of consciousness, so don't consider it a detailed analysis. I'll get the bad news out first... Accepting I've lost my money on two Kickstarters. As far as percentages go it's not horrible - like I said, most projects I've funded have either delivered or at the very least stayed in communication - special credit to Autarch to pulling off Dwimmermount in the face of the author vanishing on them. The lost causes are Todor Minev's "Cthulhu and Zombie Mugs" (yeah, kinda goofy) and Jess Nevins' "The Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes". The Encyclopedia is especially disappointing as I was in it for just digital delivery of i...

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm. Opening line of Kindred I recently wrote about some of the controversy around an award being named after HP Lovecraft, given his creepy-even-for-its-time racist attitudes. There had been some suggestion of renaming the award for Octavia Butler. As I said there, I'm not certain of the wisdom of naming an award after anyone - everyone has some baggage. For example, Pulitzer was both a reformer and a sensationalist who pursued scandals; today he has a prestigious award named after him. That said, I realized I'd never read an Octavia Butler story. That seemed something most definitely worth remedying. The story I chose to read was Kindred , a novel I read both as an audiobook and via Kindle, bouncing back and forth between the two formats. The narration provided by Kim Staunton is very well done and made for a very engaging listen. The story is about a young African-American woman, Dana, living in 1976 California (which, a...

Roads go ever ever on, Over rock and under tree, By caves where never sun has shone, By streams that never find the sea - The Hobbit 2014 was a very light year for this blog. The mood to write for public consumption wasn't particularly high. In fall of 2013 the charter school where my wife taught went out business, leaving the teachers unemployed and spreading the kids out into a variety of public and private schools. This made for some very stressful times at home, with my wife taking a variety of jobs to stretch out unemployment, at one point working two jobs. Life on the home front was stressful to say the least. I'm hoping 2015 is better. In August my wife accepted an offer for a full-time teaching position. It's a pretty rough commute for her, having us both up at 5 in the morning, leading to the interesting situation where on occasion we are asleep before the kiddies… However, the return of stability has been a good thing for our family, allowing for planning ...

Stephen Puleo's book  Dark Tide  covers a remarkably forgotten tragedy. On January 15, 1919, a 2.3 million gallon tank of molasses collapsed, spilling its contents in Boston's North End in a wave traveling some 35 miles per hour. Twenty-one people lost their lives and some 150 were injured. It almost sounds comical until you consider the horror such an event would no doubt present. Consider how horrible it would be to literally drown in molasses. Yes this is an event that is not in the popular history of the nation or even Boston.  Dark Tide  is divided into three sections. The first, "A Monster in Our Midst" deals with the construction of the tank. Rather than being an exercise in engineering discussion it instead explains why it was built and what the nation and city were like at the time. Puleo explains how the United States Industrial Alcohol Corporation (USIA) distilled molasses in various plants, with one such plant being in Cambridge. A por...

With the Call of Cthulhu RPG most commonly being set in the fictional Miskatonic Valley of Massachusetts (with trips all over the world a possibility), it always surprised me how comparatively little Boston has featured in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. In the United States there are sourcebooks for San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and New Orleans. Cubicle 7 has been doing a fantastic job showcasing the British Isles in their Call of Cthulhu supplements. Miskatonic River Press published a fantastic book of adventures for New York City and Golden Goblin Press followed in their footsteps with a New Orleans adventure book. That's not to say that Boston has been  entirely  absent from the RPG. For example, the adventure  Shadows of Yog-Sothoth  begins in Boston.  The Unspeakable Oath  magazine did have an article giving an overview of Boston. But those resources seem to be few and far between. In one sense it's not too surprising. It's tough to find ...

Boston in the late 1910s was a fascinating time. The North End was plagued by anarchists. A police station was destroyed by anarchists. Influenza struck the city hard in 1918. 1919 saw both a giant molasses tank spill over the North End with a horrible death toll and also bore witness to the underpaid (below the poverty line) police force go on strike. When one thinks of the Roaring Twenties (the period just after this book's) in the United States there are a number of places that come to mind. First and foremost there is the Chicago of Al Capone. There is the New York City that appears in countless novels, television, and movies - for me F. Scott Fitzgerald's  The Great Gatsby  immediately comes to mind. Over the past several years HBO's  Boardwalk Empire  has given us a view of Atlantic City of the 1920s, with trips to Chicago, New York, and many other places. Two places which do not tend to come to mind are Boston, Massachusetts and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Maybe B...

Even though I go through various other games, sometimes for a while, sometimes for a brief spin, I keep on finding myself working my way back to a Call of Cthulhu game. I've recently just finished my first session using the newest incarnation of the game, the 7th edition. I've noted before in this blog that there's tons of shinier games out there. What I've found is Call of Cthulhu has the virtue of just being darn playable. One thing Call of CtThulhu has been known for is how little changes from edition to edition. An edition war in Call of Cthulhu  is pretty much unheard of. I've used adventures from the 2nd edition of the game in a 6th edition campaign with conversion, even on the fly, being wholly unnecessary. So though I've talked about Call of Cthulhu here before, let's do a little recap. The Call of Cthulhu RPG is based on the writings of early 20th century writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Lovecraft's central premise was that humanity is ...