I'm hunting Weviews

Hi,

So I breezed through The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen and translated by Lola M. Rogers. As you might guess, Mr. Jääskeläinen is Finnish and so the reviews are filtereed through the lens of the translator as much as anything. Luckily, Ms. Rogers does a very nice job. The book had a good flow and nothing seemed terribly clunky or out-of-place.

Anyway, Rabbit Back (which I kept reading as Rabbit Black or Black Rabbit or Back Rabbit for some reason) is a small Finnish town. Its main claim to fame is that it's the home of famed children's author Laura White. Shortly after she became famous she began picking a select number of local school children to join her Rabbit Back Literature Society. She chose nine students in all and groomed them to become writers -- all of whom have gone on to a fair amount of success.

Ella is an academic researcher working as a teacher in her hometown of Rabbit Back. One of her short story pieces appears in the local paper and Ms. White takes notice. After many years, Ella is to be the newest, and tenth member of the Society. There's a gala party to celebrate, but in the midst of it, Ms. White disappears in a sudden blizzard.

So Ella is left on her own to meet up with the reclusive members of the Society and in trying to work out what happened to Ms. White, she stumbles upon other mysteries. Odd, unusual things start cropping up, Ella learns about a mysterious Game played by the other Society members, and things take a turn for the weird.

I suppose the book most easily falls under magical realism. There are a lot of loose, dangling plot threads that never really get resolved and the book has no interest in explaining them. It answers enough of the more mundane mysteries that you can let the more mystical ones alone. Overall it was a fairly quiet, low-key kind of book, but certainly enjoyable reading.

later
Tom

Freedom's Ring -- Session 7

Hey,

So we had our wrap-up session of Apocalypse World a couple weeks ago so I should tell folks how it turned out.

( A Pirate's Life For Me )

That pretty much was it. The pirates were defeated, Doc was gone (for good it seems) and Skel has some new playmates. It was quite a bit of fun. There are a number of tweaks I'd make when running an Apocalypse-powered game in the future, but for a first-time with the system, I think I did ok.

later
Tom

5th Ed. D&D -- Let me tell you about my character

Hey,

So this past weekend we started up a new game. This time we're doing 5th Ed. D&D and apparently the plot is based off an old CRPG game the DM enjoyed. This session we made up characters and kinda got the ball rolling.

( so let me tell you about my guy )

( In which our heroes get sent up the river... )

So this is my first outing with the new edition of D&D. We didn't really do much combat so we didn't put the system through its paces. I'm actually most interested in the way that spell casting is set up in 5th ed. Rather than memorize a specific spell for each spell slot you have available, you've got a sort of "mini-library" of memorized spells. Pay the appropriate spell slot and you can cast it as many times as you have that spell slot. This provides and interesting level of flexibility. I'd be curious to see how wizards run in this system, but our particular setting has an anti-arcane magic deal going on so it wasn't really in the cards.

Besides, I don't often play fighter types and haven't done a paladin before so this should be fun.

Quotes!:

GM: "You find the best part of town to get a great meal."
Garret: "Yes, you looked it up on Jauntadvisor"
Pinja: "And cross checked the reviews for it on Shout"

Garret: "What's your character's name?"
Eric: "Eric"
Garret: "...Eric the Cleric?"
GM: "Ask her how she spells that?"
Garret: "Uh, how do you spell that?"
Eric: "With an 'E'"

NPC: "So how old are your parents?"
Asa: "Oh, you know, six-seven hundred years old?"
GM: "You just stop counting after the first three hundred"
Pinja: "You kinda have to cut them open and count the rings"
Eric: "You should see the birthday cakes. Now we know why they need all those forests"

Elves are very Continental. Insert conversation about Legolas on a Moped. Ciao!

Asa: "So how long has this wine been aged?"
Joffrey: "20 years!"
Asa: "Ah. For children then"

Pinja: "She probably gets more blood on her sword shaving"
GM: "Shaving her...legs?"
Eric: "You know how badly leg hair catches on chainmail?"
Pinja: "You know how can tell a master two-handed swordsman?"
Group: "...?"
Pinja: "Smooth ball sack"

later
Tom