Forty Years of Dungeons & Dragons and My Work In Progress

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After we graduated boot camp my friend, way back in 1979, introduced me to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and I have been playing and game mastering tabletop role playing games ever since.

As a game master I often had a fairly good but still vague idea of what course adventures would take as the players explored and completed them. The path could not be nailed down with precision as players are a tricky and chaotic lot with a tendency to divert the best laid plans into something wholly unexpected. Because of this one of the skills required to keep a game running is the ability to make crap up on the fly and keep it consistent with what has already transpired.

This skill is now in full force with my latest work-in-progress.

The vague concept of using old nitrate film that had been cursed, or such, has rattled around in my brain for some time, but earlier this year it became a little more solid. Executing it required some research into San Diego during the summer of 1984. That occupied time and with the passing weeks the motivation for the story began to ebb. In order to keep it from dying without being written I simply dove straight into the project.

As of yesterday, I am about 15 thousand words into the text and while I have that vague idea I am chasing and a little more solid conception of the act structure, much like so many games I have run over the decades, I am inventing it as I go along. Characters don’t really exist until I put them in a scene and then I have to make fast notes on the side so the details that came alive in the moment are there to be referenced when they return.

It’s all so haphazard and yet I can feel it working. I have little doubt that the novel will be completed and right now it’s also very exciting.

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Democracy’s Unresolvable Fault

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Throughout its long history humanity has tried many systems of government. Evolution molded us for hunterpgatherer bands that function on interpersonal relationship and knowledge. Agriculture and creative intelligence exploded our populations well beyond that scope and ever since we’ve grappled with creating systems that work efficiently but also with a freedom that at very least sates individuality to the point that people are satisfied enough to not burn it all to the ground.

History is replete with Kings, Emperors, God-Kings, Oligarchs, and religious domination. For the last several centuries the newest and boldest experiment has been democracy.

Amid the various forms and systems, the essence of democratic governance is the concept that in some method the populace, rarely the entire populace, is polled and their preference in party or person is elevated to government. The assumption being that a widely distributed method of selection will tend to marginalize extremism in favor of moderation in rule. There have been spectacular failures, NAZI Germany for example, where the populace selected quite poorly and that points to the flaw of democracy that looks to be uncorrectable.

Self-selection.

The men and women who put themselves forward to be chosen have self-selected. Only those who want to be in power are options for the populace to elect from. While the nobility of service is real and there have always been and always will be people for whom service is their goal they never have and never will be the only ones in that pool.

Power attracts those who want to abuse it for their own selfish needs or twisted ideologies. The pool from which the populace can select will always be tainted by the greedy, the corrupt, and the evil. As such the possibility that the greedy, corrupt, and the evil secure power for themselves is unavoidable.

I am not advocating abandoning democracy, it’s a flawed system that has far fewer flaws than the rest but it is not perfect and your franchise is a terrible power you must always use wisely.

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Not Much Fun in Stalingrad

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One of the least fun things in life is waking up with a headache already in progress. Which is, of course, how I started this particular Tuesday in May. Adding to the woe is that this headache is not a severe migraine that would keep me home. No, this is just enough of a pain to make life unfun but not enough to get me out of work. So, I will spend the day in the office, under those terrible fluorescent lights, because I am the only member of my team that remained in the office, staring at my twin monitors for the next 9 hours.

Oh, I have some NSAIDs here at home that I can take and usually work on lesser non-migraine headaches but this week that course is closed off to me. Last week my doctor’s office called because my liver protein test was elevated but only slightly. Perhaps it was a single test result, perhaps it was from pain killers and supplements, or perhaps it’s from the medications I take for my psoriatic arthritis. So, this week it’s cut out the NSAIDs and supplements so I can retest on Saturday, leaving this particular headache free rein to bang on the backside of my eyeballs.

At least my newest novel has now passed 13,000 words and perhaps soon I’ll know where the plot is actually heading.

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Movie Review: Thunderbolts*

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After never quite finding the time or frankly the motivation to get out to the theaters to see Captain America: Brave New World I returned to my MCU in-theater franchise experience yesterday with Thunderbolts* I can say that skipping the last entry in the series made no discernable difference in the Thunderbolts* experience.

Marvel Studios

While this is team story, featuring Red Guardian (David Harbour) The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russel), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) the story and the film really belong to Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and her deep nearly debilitating depression.

Our heroes, following a betrayal that was intended to leave them all dead in order to provide a ‘clean record’ for their employer, unite as a fractious collective in order to bring the truth out into the open but along the way encounter an enhanced individual with powers of a magnitude as to make them physically unstoppable. In order to save humanity from an existence of never-ending darkness and depression the team must each face their own deep and persistent psychological traumas.

Directed competently by Jake Schreier from a script by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo with unflashy cinematography by Andrew Droz Palermo, Thunderbolts* is very much a return to form for Marvel feature films. It moves fast, uses a mix of humor and pathos to make each scene compelling and emotionally weighty and does not bite off more than it can chew in a feature film’s runtime. The film continues the Marvel Studio’s tradition of both a mid-credit and post-credit scene, but I would have flipped the order of their presentation. If you actually read the credit crawl just before the post-credit scene plays a clue revealing its nature slides across the screen, one that for me acted as a spoiler.

All in all, I enjoyed Thunderbolts* though there are bits and bobs that did not quite sit right for me, and I do believe that some of the characters were treated with less respect than their cinematic history required.

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Thinking About Vampires

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After seeing Sinners this week, I’ve found myself thinking about vampires here and there. Now, vampires are not my favorite type of monsters or horror tale, for me that goes to the ghost story. In fact, most vampire movies leave me cold. I am in that minority that actively dislikes The Lost Boys and count myself among those who read Interview with the Vampire in hardback and had no interest in any other book in the series.

What I do find fascinating is the way the vampire is used by so many creators with so many different attributes.

Until Stoker came along and published Dracula in 1897, the nature of vampires varied a great deal by regional folklore. Stoker in his research gathered the aspects he liked and wanted, discarded many others, and created the template that so many others would follow or deliberately shatter.

Vampires are the dead reanimated. This makes them cousins to the post-Romero interpretation of the zombie and a more distant relation to the traditional version. In modern culture I have seen the two as opposite sides of the same coin. Vampires, as we often depict them in movies today, are the ultimate expression of individuality, iconoclasts surviving and preying upon a larger society that they no longer are a part of. Zombies are the unnamed, undifferentiated great mass, they are the faceless crowd where absolutely no one is special.

Vampires feed on blood. In folklore this is often shown as an unending hunger with the beasts when located in their graves or tomb bloated from their gorging. This is not sexy and is rarely if ever shown in film. By the time Buffy the Vampire Slayer arrived in the cultural scene blood had been reduced to a mere nutrient with any animal’s blood sufficing to meet a metabolic need that remained inexplicable.

Vampires are destroyed by sunlight. This is not found in Dracula where the count walks about in the daylight but with greatly reduced abilities. Count Orlok’s destruction with the rising sun in Nosferatu  set the standard followed by countless films with his gentle fading eventually giving way to explosive detonations in Near Dark. Sinners settled for simple combustion.

Vampires cast no reflection. This is another classic aspect and one that gets upgraded to the contemporary times with the creatures often not appearing in video or film. The British limited series Vhad a secret agency hunting the vampires using pistols that had small video screens attached to allow for rapid identification of their targets.

Vampires must be invited into a space. This aspect comes and goes. Some creators use public spaces like a club or a store are having open to all invites while retaining the restriction for private areas, some dispense with it entirely. Buffy’s force field at the threshold always struck me as a little over the top, while Sinners played a much more subtle action where it was clear the vampire desires to enter but simply doesn’t actually try until invited.

The most problematic and yet widespread aspect of the vampire is the repulsion by a cross or crucifix. Traditionally this is straightforward Christianity, the symbol of the power of a real god and his manifestation in the world of the living acts is a shield against evil and a promise of eternal life not damnation for his believers. As society secularized over the decades, the ‘reality’ behind the cross’s symbolism faded with most creators supplanting a ‘truth’ of the Christian religion with the power of faith by the wielder.

By the time we get to Buffy, the cross itself is simply another talisman wielded by non-Christian with equal efficacy. Sinners wisely dispenses with this aspect entirely, a vampire wearing a cross has no particular meaning and a vampire can easily repeat the Lord’s Prayer without any ill-effect.

I would suggest to anyone thinking about crafting a tale with vampire think deeply about not only which aspects to include but also to why those aspects apply.

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Movie Review: Sinners

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It took me a little while to find the time and the energy to get out to the cinema to see Sinnersa film that had my interest from the first time I watched a trailer. It is worth it.

Warner Brothers Studios

Sinners is a horror film so amid the racism, and the twins’ troubled romantic history, the opening night of the joint is marred by Irish vampires drawn to the establishment by the power of Sammy’s voice and music.

Cinema over the decades has presented all manner of vampires, aristocratic European nobility, tragic lovers trapped by the enormity of endless time, farcical flat mates in contemporary Wellington, and countless forgettable bloodsuckers that inspires no terror. Sinners, while not wholly reinventing the monster, much of what people accept as traditional vampiric lore remains, does present them as monsters to be feared and destroyed not an enjoyable method for dodging the grim fact that all things die. These vampires are seductive but decidedly not sexy. The script also artfully sidesteps the tangle created by crosses and crucifixes.

In addition to its tremendous power to frighten, Sinners is also a celebration of survival over centuries of trauma and oppression a celebration experienced in music. It is a horror film, and it is also a musical leaning on the ancient human tradition of oral history in song. More than once Coogler’s movie reminded me of one of my favorite films, The Wicker Man. Both movies deal with isolated communities that live in opposition to the larger culture surrounding them and for whom music is both reverential and festive.

Sinners is well worth the trip out to the cinema.

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The First 10,000 Words

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My untitled 80s San Diego-based cinema-themed horror novel just passed 10,000 words.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I needed to get this book started because I could feel the enthusiasm battery starting to drain away and if it got much lower while I did prep and research there would not be enough juice to start the writing engine.

This has led me to writing a novel with even less of a mental outline than the last two books I completed, but I think it’s actually started.

My cast of characters is slowly revealing themselves as they step into the story, David Ludendorff, my gay movie theater owner and so far, the character at the center of this ghost story. The theater’s manager, Tram Nguyen, college student and reserved, Terrance, Dave’s best friend and occasional lover, and I just introduced Cyril Jones, long time projectionist at the theater but he’s going to be the first body to hit the floor in this plot.

I have a very rough idea of my 5-act breakdown. The numerous novels and stories I have constructed with this 5-act method I think plays a large part in how I can make the writing work without the aid of an outline. The structure gives me just enough guidance to keep me pointed in the correct direction, so I do not feel lost.

If things go as planned, I have high hopes of completing at least a first draft before Halloween.

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This Week’s Zoo Photographs

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This Sunday was our customary trip to the San Diego Zoo and I am continuing to gain familiarity with my new camera. (It’s a used DSLR but new to me.) I came away with three photos that I particularly like.

This Polar Bear.

 

 

 

This Bee Eater. (I Like the composition of this one)

 

 

 

And this pudgy little Weaver

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That Scene in Andor

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There are fandom fights fiercer that than those found among the fans of Star Wars and Episode 3, Harvest, of Season 2 Andor provoked a fine one.

Bix (Adria Arjona) and a couple of compatriots, on the lam from Imperial Security, are hiding out on a distant agricultural planet. She comes to the lecherous attention of Imperial Lieutenant Krole (Alex Waldmann). Bix rebuffs his advances and when his attempt to coerce her under the color of authority also fails, Krole attacks Bix with intent to sexually assault her.

The story element ignited furious arguments among fans.

One faction defends the plot point with the clear and undisputed historical truth that this is precisely what takes place in fascist regimes. Petty evil people abuse their positions of power and control for their own selfish satisfactions including sexual assault becoming quite common.

The counter argument raised is that in the universe of noble Jedi Knights, mystical magical forces, and valiant rebellions against tyranny such real-world ugliness has no place. Star Wars is a vehicle for escape from reality’s nasty brutishness and need not reflect it back at the escapees.

As with the best disagreements, truth, in some form, lies on both sides of the discussion. Fascistic systems attract and generate the bullies, the thugs, and the rapists to them for the opportunity to wield unchecked power and authority free from social or legal accountability. Traditionally, Star Wars is a fantasy beyond its reality of transcendent forces with clear moral codes that translate into ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sides but well into the realm of social political forces. The rebellion against the galactic empire is presented as unblemished by ethical compromises. They do not prey upon a population to steal resources, they do not commit acts of terrorism to drain away imperial support, nor do they engage in revenge driven bloodbaths after their victory. The rebellion in how it operates in the field and after overthrowing the government acts in a matter as fantastic as a Jedi’s telekinetic powers. All this makes the attempted sexual assault far too ‘real’ for how traditional Star Wars presented itself.

There is another factor why that scene rubbed so many traditional Star Wars fans the wrong way.

Star Wars, traditionally, is quite chaste.

While romance imbued throughout the originally trilogy including the charged triangle of Luke, Leia, and Han. What those first films did not have was potent real sexuality. Star Wars, though produced in the late 70s, has more in common with a pre-code feature in terms of sexuality than its cinematic compatriots. Nearly a decade earlier broadcast television was more sexually charged that Star Wars. When Captain Kirk, sitting on a bed is slipping his boots back on and Deela is fixing her hair in a mirror everyone understood that the couple had just completed sexual relations. Not only is there no such scene in the first trilogy of Star Wars movies, but it is also clear that any scene even approaching that is wildly out of tone with the ‘fairy tale’ nature of the productions. The Empire Strikes Back would never introduce a scene where Lando walks into a room where Han and Leia were together under the covers of a beautiful bed. Sex, in traditional Star Wars, is an abstract existing only in a conceptual form.

Andor is not traditional Star Wars.

Tony Gilroy’s conception with this series is something much more informed by our actual reality than our sanitized fairy tales of nobles knight and virginal princesses. His creation of emotionally complex and competent agents of the Empire, his depiction of a rebellion riven with factions and not above assassination shows that this is not the pristine and unmuddied forces of good that Lucas showed us in the 70s and 80s.

From Luthen’s willingness to use and abandon his own people as a means towards a victory he expects he will never see to season 2’s quite explicit echo of the Nazi’s Wannsee conference where the eradication of Europe’s Jewish population was decided Gilroy is reflecting our real world back at us through the distorted mirror of a Star Wars story. In that respect Krole’s assault on Bix is very much in keeping with the tone and the intention of the production as much as it conflicts and is at odds with the films released by Lucas.

Both camps are right in their reactions to the scene. As I have often said in my writers’ group, ‘no honest critique can be wrong.’ That said if the more real world inspired tone of Andor is not to your taste, then Andor is not for you and perhaps the more traditionally aligned products are where you need to find your enjoyment.

Personally? I adore Andor.

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Yet Another Reason to Hate A. I.

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Generative A.I. is not without decent and good uses but there has been a lot of terrible things as well, the scraping of artists’ work to feed it, my own novel has been fed into at least one A.I. to ‘train it, the enormous amounts of energy used to power it for so far little practical benefits, the dangerously destabilizing effect it could have if not carefully introduced in the economy. All that said last night I discovered yet another reason to hate the wide-spread and easy access to artificial ‘intelligence.’

After watching the programs of interest to us my sweetie-wife and I relaxed by scanning trailers on YouTube. Some were interesting, some were not but then at the end of the line produced by the search lay a trailer for The Odyssey.

Christopher Nolan began filming his adaptation of that classic story in February 2025 and it should hit theaters in the summer of 2026 so it is possible that some form of teaser trailer had just been released.

Nope.

Some forking dipshirt had prompted generative A.I. to make a trailer and it was among the most idiotic and terrible bit of video I have ever witnessed. It was evident within a few moments what sort of garbage this was, and we stopped watching, disgusted with the thing.

It is bad enough when fans make fake trailers; I still recall how hard it was to find a legitimate trailer for The Return, ironically enough also adapted from The Odyssey when the internet was overflowing with fan-made trailers using clips from various movies starring Ralph Fiennes. A.I. doesn’t even resort to clips, it just lies and throws crap into the world.

There are some very funny and creative fake trailers out there, such as Must Love Jaws which is created to make Jaws look like a buddy comedy when misfit friends Brody and Hooper have to stop the evil Quint from killing their shark friend. You would never mistake this for the real trailer, it’s a work of creativity and love, things A.I. does not possess.

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