7 recent sessions

I haven't been keeping up on the old gaming blog much. Since my last post, I have run 2 sessions of 7th Sea, played in 1 session of Ravnica-flavored D&D, and run 4 consecutive marathon sessions of D&D. Here's a bit about each:

7th Sea 2nd Ed: Thus far, the PCs have fought Ghouls, saved a woman from a lynch mob, investigated a supernatural murder scene, and navigated the social strata of a nobleman's court function. We left off last session with the PCs transporting a body on a boat in occupied territory during a storm, and just noticing that the Ghouls were sneaking aboard for a rematch. Next session should be exciting. (That session is scheduled for tomorrow,  but it's probably going to be cancelled on account of an ill player. It's a small game with just 3 PCs, so being even 1 PC down on a session has a pretty big impact.)

Ravnica: Using the new-ish D&D book that is based on the coolest world in Magic: The Gathering. I usually GM (and none of my frequent players would really be into Ravnica) but then a work-friend invited me to this, and I just couldn't turn it down. I was so certain I was going to play a Goblin Izzet Guild Mage, because, after all, this is likely the only time I will ever get to RP in Ravnica. Goblins as RPG characters can be hella fun. Then I get to the character creation session, and two other players also want to be Goblin Izzet Guild Mages. Three goblins of the same guild struggling to carve out sub-niches while stepping on each other's feats (pun intended) seemed less than ideal for everyone. Plan B then, is as follows Class: Druid / Background: Simic Combine Scientist / Race: Simic Hybrid. Essentially a fusion of elf and Blue Bottle Jellyfish (aka Portugese Man'o'war). A mutant who strives to mutate others. The first session was short because it came on the heels of character gen, but it was highly entertaining. The two goblins were hamming it up, so I get to enjoy over-the-top Izzet antics while embodying an entirely different style of mad scientist myself. I think it's going to be good.

D&D Marathon: Every time I make it down to Portland to see my old high-school buddies, we pack the evenings with copious amounts of alcohol and D&D. We introduced a new player this time as another old friend who's usually absent was able to join us for the festivities, and he played a Minotaur Bard. (We needed more cowbell.)  I had great success with a complex no-easy-answers storyline the last time we'd been in Portland, so I went for similar damned-if-you-do-or-don't material this time, too. The first encounter was a group of traveling merchants who just so happened to be orcs. The PCs of course went the full murder-hobo route, for which I made them feel guilty even though it was totally what I expected them to do. I'm kind of a bastard GM sometimes. The rest of the story had to do with a city where everyone was addicted to the newest menu at the largest inn. The players did some investigating, and then broke into the dungeon beneath the inn, accidentally alerting the unit of the city watch that keeps that dungeon sealed up tight. The ruins below has an evil altar that supplies a never-ending supply of undead if you know the correct dark ritual. Yep, the whole town is addicted to delicious ghoul flesh. (I cast "Purify Food and Drink". It should be safe to eat now.) At the end of the session, the PCs were sort-of-trapped. They're behind a secret door that the guard unit doesn't know about, but the guards do know they broke in, and could potentially reveal the gruesome secret to the town. So they need to either find another exit, or else fight their way through a couple dozen policemen on their way out. I don't get down to Portland often, so they've got some time to think up a good plan.

Night's Black Agents: Ideally, this game would meet once a month, but it's a tricky group to schedule sometimes. We're all frequently busy elsewhere. Hopefully in February I'll have another session to tell you about.

Spasmodic Dysphonia

I'd never heard of it before today, but I think I may have a relatively mild (and undiagnosed) case of Spasmodic Dysphonia.

I first noticed it while working at Active Imagination. Whenever I was calling a customer, my voice would crack, and I would get short of breath. The first calls I did there were practically cold calls - I was calling Magic players to remind them about upcoming tournaments. Despite supposedly doing them a service, I always felt bad about it, so the fact that I'd be hoarse before the end of the first call didn't strike me as terribly odd. But it did make me very self-conscious, and I tried to hide it from those jerks I worked for. I'm fairly certain they interpreted my reluctance to make the marketing calls in their presence to mean that I wasn't making the calls at all, or was badmouthing them to their customers, or something. Over time, they insisted more and more on being present in the offices when I was making the calls, and they'd "listen in" frequently.

Later, I ended up working more retail shifts for them. These went fine, I rarely had trouble interacting with people face to face. But on days when shipments would come in, I'd have to call everyone who'd placed special orders and preorders. I knew that I was calling them with good news. I was calling to say "your game is here, and waiting for you!" It wasn't a cold call, it was at their request. Yet, my voice would shatter like I was terrified. I could never explain it. I'd have to take the phone calls slowly, and take deep breaths between each call. At first, I was calm but a little puzzled. Eventually, it made me fear making those calls, especially if co-workers or customers were in earshot, and it got worse after that. The fear made it more pronounced.

Often, I was calling someone that I gamed with casually and personally, but calling to say the book they asked me to order for them was in would make me breathless. Seriously, I could call James or Jeremy and gab all friendly from home, but if I called the same friends from work because the new expansion was in, it hurt to talk. Every word was like fighting for oxygen.

I'd been raised largely without a phone, so I assumed it was psychological, and phone-related. *

But then, I started judging Magic tournaments. All went well for the first few months, until one day, in the midst of giving my opening announcements at a Pro Tour Qualifier, my voice cracked and went up nearly an octave. Everybody laughed at me, Cameron made a snide joke and I felt like I was back in junior high. It happened again during opening announcements at my next couple tournaments, and then sporadically at tourneys thereafter.

I have no stage fright. I'm happy to be in the spotlight. I ran a 40-player LARP for several years without anything like this happening. But for whatever reason, the opening ceremonies of Magic tournaments made my throat constrict and wheeze. Sometimes I could control it, but generally, once started it would last the rest of the event. My boss somehow hadn't noticed until one time when I was in the process of giving out a unsporting conduct penalty to a guy who well deserved it. She dressed me down in front of the whole tournament, and said I was too emotionally invested to give out that penalty. She could tell, so she said, because of the way I sounded. I was calm (but yes, sounding hoarse as I often did at tourneys) until she said that.

That's the point where I started hating her. (There were lots of reasons to do so, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Her behavior that day will never be forgotten, and probably never forgiven.)

I resolved at that point to overcome my problem, since I assumed it was all in my head, and somehow anxiety-related. I taught myself to breathe through my nose before talking, and take long pauses, to control the tone of my voice. This worked for a while, till one day Level 4 Judge John Shannon mentioned that the pauses made me come off as uncertain or stupid, instead of thoughtful. That kinda hurt. Unfortunately, by this point, the pauses were part of how I talk. I only manage to totally avoid them when in-character RPGing. When in-character, nothing like this affects me at all. By the end of my time at Active Imagination, I was a basket case. I still pause, and my voice now cracks nearly any time I call anyone for any reason. Just typing about it has made my nose clog up and my neck constrict for the last 20 minutes.

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*: An aside about my "it's psychological, and us not having a phone from 1987 to 1995" notion. I've always had a distaste for telephone conversations, because they were not part of my life at all for those years, and minimal before that. I once made a really cool video poem called "I Hate Telephones". So it seemed 'obvious' to me that all my trouble (prior to Magic tournaments) was somehow related to fear and unfamiliarity.

At the same time I was blaming it on that, I had doubts about it, too. I'd done all the movie times on the recording at the theatre for a few years because I had such a good phone voice. I also did the recorded message at Page One, Too for a while for the same reason.

Come to think of it, the only hint before Active Imagination that I might have actual problems with phones was the nightly call from my office at the movie theatre to the 3rd party theatre-polling company that we reported box office grosses to. I always got "choked up" calling in things like "Brave Heart: $7,235; A Very Brady Sequel: $3,128;" to the answering machine of some corporate suit I'd never interact with. My voice would crack, and my breath shallow. I couldn't explain that, but I was always very glad to be making those calls alone in the office late at night.

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I've done a lot of soul-searching and healing in the year+ out here in Seattle. Despite that healing, I've been terrified to get back into the job market, because what guarantees did I have that these problems wouldn't just remanifest as soon as I was in a workplace? I was also worried my voice would crack while interviewing. Or that I'd pause a little too much, and they'd write me off as dumb. Even scarier was the notion that I'd get through the interview process, get a job I loved, and then have my problem manifest again.

This wasn't entirely unjustified. During this year i got back in touch with some old friends, and when that finally resulted in a phone conversation with Daved, my voice sounded like I was calling customers about special orders again. Getting away from work reduced the frequency of my triggers, but did not cure it the underlying problem.

I left Magic / quit judging tournaments, despite moving to the city that Magic: The Gathering is designed in, largely because of the things judging did to my voice, and the insecurities that the Godards instilled in me over that voice issue.

That's context. That's what went before. I thought it was psychological, and that I was probably unique in my troubles.

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Today I read an article about Economists and the Election on CNN. The article was by Scott Adams, and that reminded me that I really like The Dilbert Blog back before Jeremy and I had that weird little argument that resulted in months of silence between us. (Why that would result in even more months of me not reading Dilbert is hard to explain. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.) So I clicked on Dilbert's blog today, and started reading back posts.

Turns out, Scott Adams has Spasmodic Dysphonia. It's symptoms sound very close to my problem. People with SD have acute hoarseness while speaking, but the situations that trigger it vary widely. Frequently, it involves talking on the phone. One example that's given is people who's voice cracks or falls apart on the phone, but have no problem talking to their cats. Adams claims his has progressed to the point where the only time his voice sounds normal is when he's talking about Spasmodic Dysphonia. Any other topic of conversation makes his voice go falsetto or scratchy.

From what I've read, there's no cure. There's a form of speech therapy that might help, but it's also possible that to overcome it I might need quarterly botox injections to my throat or surgery every couple of years. Neither of those last two options are appealing unless my condition gets a lot worse. It's also quite possible that I might not have Spasmodic Dysphonia, but Dilbert's descriptions sound very much like what I experience. I'll need to see a doctor to know for certain.

Knowing that it might be this actual physical disorder is actually very comforting. When I thought it was just me being a phone-fearing wuss, I scared me. But I pwn diseases and disorders. I beat DermatoFibroSarcoma Protuberans (aka cancer), I can sure as hell beat a little thing like Dysphonia. I'm even seriously considering getting back on the judging horse.

The Magic Decision

In my inbox:

Each year every DCI Judge needs to renew and actively judge events (based on level). Failure to do either can result in your judge membership expiring soon

It's been about 9 or 10 months since I last judged or played in a tournament. It's been 6 to 8 months since I last bought a Magic card. I haven't actually played Magic since I moved to Seattle (which is silly, considering that the HQ of judging and the game itself is like 20 minute drive away). I need to make a decision.

Here's the options I see before me:

1. Dive back into it. Recommit to judging before my Level 2 expires. Find a place I want to play and/or judge, and go do some casual games from time to time. Start buying cards again so I can get up to speed on what the formats are like and how the rules have changed.
   
2. Get out. Set up an ebay account and start selling all my cards. Score some money, and free up shelf space.
   
3. Follow plan #2, then regret it later, and feel like an idiot.

It's the existence of course #3 that makes this tough.

my game store

My game store will always be Active Imagination in Albuquerque. Partly that's just 'cause I used to manage the place, but mostly it's 'cause it has a wider selection than any other game store I've been too. I GM RPGs, but I also really dig boardgames (especially cooperative ones), I collect miniatures, and used to judge Magic tournaments. I like a little bit of everything, so variety and depth are big deals for me. AI scored huge in that department.

I'm about to hop on a bus to pick up my copy of Scion: God at Golden Age Collectibles down by the market. It's a good store, but it's really a comic shop. I have Scion: God on reserve, and it turns out it's the only copy they ordered. Their gaming section is pretty small. The game section is 90% RPGs, with about 5 or 6 boardgames and a few CCGs to round it out. The rest of the store is Comics, Action Figures, Lovecraft Memorabilia, Movie Scripts, Posters, etc. Fun stuff, to be sure, but it's focus and mine aren't quite in sync. Yet it's my favorite "game" store in Seattle.

Speaking of Seattle, the game stores here are all overly-specialized. My other choices locally include Uncle's Games and Blue Highway Games, both of which focus on board games. Blue Highway doesn't even carry RPGs, and Uncle's pretty much just carries Wizards of the Coast RPGs. Games Workshop Store #174 is here as well, but it, as you'd expect, only carries GW stuff. The search for links to those shops turned up Gary's Games as well, which I haven't visited, but will have to sometime (next paycheck?). They are all in different directions from me, so I can't even get the "total package" fix by hitting multiple stores - doing so would take all day.

*Sigh* You never know how good you've got it till it's done and gone.

Zero Tolerance, Tempered by Trust

Between a weird experience I had while boardgaming this weekend, and some observations in a political essay a friend pointed me at, I've come to the conclusion that my Zero-Tolerance policy vs cheaters, and my willingness to assume total strangers are not cheating, are both something of a rarity.

The experience I mention was just a minor argument over semantics of lying vs bluffing. It was no big deal. But I was puzzled by certain reactions to it.

Specifically, someone I was playing with seemed adverse to the ideas that:
a) I'd only play certain games (in this case Shadows Over Camelot) with people whom I trusted completely.
b) I'd extend such total trust (in regards to gaming) to him just because he was a friend-of-a-friend.
c) That when playing such a game, I'd need no accountability. That is to say, I'm completely fine with bluffing rules that had no means of verification - I was willing to just take it on honor that no one would abuse such rules.

To me, the temporary rush of winning a game is worth significantly less than the long term value of my integrity and self-image. Not everyone feels that way. I'm a pretty good judge of character, and I can usually spot potential cheaters within the course of a game. So, I'd rather extend a person the benefit of a, b, and c than not do so. Assuming there's no money riding on the game, the most they can cheat me out of is a couple of hours of my time.

That said, when I have a hunch that someone is cheating, I'll call them out, and pretty much blacklist them. I've kicked people out of campaigns and casual gaming groups for being cheaters, even when I couldn't prove it. While it's hard to prove if someone did cheat in a specific instance, it's generally pretty easy to tell whether or not they have the sort of personality that's prone to cheating on a regular basis.

That said, money complicates this. People who would never cheat for ego will often do horrible things when $500 is on the line. You wouldn't last long judging Magic PTQs if you didn't know that.