Highmoon's Ponderings

In Vampire: The Masquerade, vampires can enter a state called “torpor,” an extremely deep slumber basically comparable with stasis. This word entered my household’s regular use years ago and is one we sometimes whip out in front of “normals” without noticing except for when we see the confused faces wondering, what language are these two speaking? That’s two very long sentences merely to get to my point that I feel like I’ve fallen into torpor regarding development of the vampire game.

It’s not that my interest has waned in any way, but that the forced breaks during classes have cooled my writing engine and now I’m finding it very hard to get it restarted. Obviously I’m trying – this post, which really doesn’t say much – is me turning the key in the ignition, letting the car sputter, hoping the car will finally turn on.

Ok, enough of the car analogy.

My point is, to have stepped away from this project for months (and the occasional short post I threw in there was merely a way for me to keep the topic current in both my mind and yours, but not really a full-fledged effort at actual on-the-fly game design) makes it really hard now that I have time to go back to it with the same level of enthusiasm as in the beginning. Not impossible, just hard.

I’m not saying anything that doesn’t apply to any writer, I know. I’m just working through my own awakening from torpor.

I continue to hold Gen Con as a deadline for a playable-with-me first draft (this being a draft that is playable only if I’m running it, that is, one full of mnemonics, short phrases completed in my head, references that I’ll understand), which leaves me about a month’s time to work through the parts I know are still missing and put the entire thing together into some semblance of order.

I’m also fighting an innate tendency in my own personality: the close-enough-you-can-see-the-finish-line drop in interest on a project. By nature, I’m far more efficient on the early stages of any project; I have energy, ideas, desire to get the thing going, motivation. I’m a starter, one who gets fires burning. But I have a problem in the long term, as I lose steam or get distracted by other new projects. It’s simply a reality, and unfortunately I have not had the fortune of partnering up with others who can complement my early-in-the-game fire with the endurance needed for the long haul. Given how writing this game has been such a solitary endeavor, it means it is up to me primarily to work through the lethargy and find the inner reserves needed to see this project to its end. Which I desperately want to do.

So, one month left, and perhaps about 25% more of the game to get designed enough for a first playtest draft. I can do it. I just have to shake off this torpor and get designing again. By Dracula’s teeth, I will finish my first full-fledged game.

Well, the Summer A “semester” (I have a hard time calling a 6-week term a semester) at FIU is now done and in the books. How did I fare? Pretty good actually.

• Intercultural Communications: A
• Human Growth & Development: B

I’m happy with my A; this was my first online course and I was a bit worried at first. I mean, I’m more than familiar with online tools, but it’s different when it’s for fun and for a grade. It wasn’t, actually. Moodle was an easy program to use, and in general functioned like an all-in-one package of a lot of tools I am used to from my wanderings around the net (polls, forums, tests, email, file archives – all together). It did demand that I put a lot more on my end, as with no set class times, I could do the readings whenever I wanted. Test and quizzes did have deadlines, so that acted as my time-keeping device. I think the professor did a good job of actually making the tests challenging, knowing full well that we had our books to reference during examination. All in all, I think I would take more online courses in the future (though someone will have to explain to me why online courses cost $200 more than a regular in-class course).

I’m ok with the B in Human Growth & Dev. I was shooting for an A, of course, but let’s face it, memorizing a 15-chapter textbook in 6 weeks is bound to take its toll. There was just a lot of material, which was only being covered only superficially in class. At times I felt as if I might as well have taken this as an online course as well; the only difference in the workload of these two classes was that I had to show up on campus twice a week. It was a good class, but like all introductory-level courses, we had around 60 people, so there was very little opportunity for good discussion. We also completely skipped the age group to which I belong, the 25-39 Emergent Adult group, so that left me deflated (I was really looking forward to exploring what the heck is going on with my age cohort). Given that the professor actively sought to make each test harder than the one prior (she said the class average was too high – ?!), I’m good with the B I got.

I have to say, it feels good ticking off these classes from my pre-requisites list. It puts me so much closer to my actual Nursing classes. I’m actually looking forward to Fall classes!

So now I’m on vacation until the Fall semester starts in late August, which is fantastic as I need it. My brain was starting to fizzle there towards the last weeks of class.

In a couple of weeks I’m off to North Carolina, then in early August it’s Gen Con.

I love when little things like this fly by my Twitter feed. This is a parody song about Twilight sung by what looks to be Count Dracula. It’s awesome. And beyond the comedy, it does hold certain truths I happen to agree with about the interpretations of the vampire myth in the last couple of years. You could say my vampire game-in-progress is all about growing a pair…

My wife has been learning the Japanese language on her own for a while, which means an appreciation of Japanese culture has seeped into our household beyond pop-culture mainstays like anime, manga, sushi and ninjas! Part of understanding a language is understanding the culture that uses it, that shaped it, and we’ve both been enriched by what we’ve learned. For some time now we’ve known we have a couple of locations with a Japanese connection we could visit in our general vicinity, and last Sunday we were finally able to make it to the largest of them, the Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach.

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I knew of Imogen Heap; her name is uncommon enough that once you hear it, it tends to stick in your memory. I knew of her from the song “Let Go,” featured years ago in the soundtrack to Garden State (though it took some time before I learned that strange voice belonged to a woman!). Beyond that I had heard a couple songs here are there, especially on Pandora, where her music would sometimes come up as part of some of my playlists. So I knew of Imogen Heap, but I didn’t really know Imogen Heap. Until last night.

It was my wife’s idea to go see her in concert at The Fillmore in Miami Beach; tickets were cheap, general admission and given her non-top-40-radio status, the attendance would probably be manageable. Sure! And then it snuck up on me. Yesterday I played her latest album, which you can stream from her website, but that was it. I was going in cold, ready to soak up the new music.

There were three short opening acts: Euphoria, a trio of high-school kids from Boca Raton who won a contest held by Imogen; Geese, a violin/strings duo who are also part of Imogen’s band; and Ben Christophers, a guy and his guitar, also part of Imogen’s band. They each played 3 songs (Ben did 4) and were each good. The kids from Boca were very good for this being their first show (and what a show!); Geese was weird (in a good way), using computers, loops and effects to create soundscapes; and Ben was fine with his guitar, especially on a very trip-hoppy number that actually got the audience listening. About half an hour after these three acts were done, Imogen took the stage.

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Thanks to summer classes and a Jewish holiday I’ve had to take a small break from the game, though it’s come in handy, as I needed time to ponder all the feedback I received on my post about the dice mechanics for the game. It also allowed me time to think about what I had set down already and what I still needed to address. Let’s make a list, shall we?

1. The Hunger – Perhaps the singlemost obvious vampire trope I have not dealt with yet is the hunger for blood. I am very torn on this issue as I do not want the game to be about having a life meter like in videogames, yet if there is no mechanical weight behind the need for blood then I have failed in my design.
2. Immortality – Or rather long-lived-ness. One of the biggest boons of vampirism is the ability to be nigh-immortal, yet at least in my experience, most vampire characters tend to be fairly young, if not downright newborns-to-darkness. Yeah, there’s a story to be told from that angle, but I want the angst that comes from centuries walking the night. I’ve an idea on how to incorporate this already.
3. The Name – And by this I mean finding a name for the game. Seriously, I need to call this game something and I have not had any ideas! Not true, a name keeps floating around in my head, but I don’t know if it is right. I may crowdsource this, who knows.
4. Weaknesses – This item was brought up to me in the comments by JJ Lanza. What about the traditional vampire weaknesses, like sunlight, crucifixes, garlic, etc? Quite simply, I’m not touching that with a 10-foot pole. There’s a reason: for this game, I am not locking down the particular expression of the vampire beyond “a creature that feeds on blood, has some powers derived from it, is immortal and has a Beast that wants to consume it.” I want this game to be able to handle different expressions of the vampire, from the classic Nosferatu, to Dracula and its derivates (including the Anne Rice vampires and those of Vampire: The Masquerade/Requiem) as well as the new breed of sunlight-immune vamps like in Twilight or True Blood. I know how I’ll handle this, but I’ll write more about it later.

A tentative items #5 would be figuring out a role a bit more active for Humanity to parallel the way that there are minimum Beast dice that need to be used for some actions, as well as finding out what is the down side to Humanity (even if remaining Human is the goal of the game, being Human is not all days of wine and roses.

Likewise, an item #6 would be the revised dice mechanics. The feedback I received was fantastic and invaluable, and though I won’t be using all of it, it did make me think hard about what I wanted the dice to say about the game, about the conflict, about the choices to be made. I’m sure revisions will still come afterward, but it will be nice to have a basic system down to start playtesting.

But these are more an elaboration of existing concepts rather than something that still needs to be tackled, which is why I did not list them outright, though include them here.

My goal is to have a playable draft by Gen Con (Aug 5-8) and maybe even playtest it while in Indy, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.