I like drabbles. I like being able to evoke emotion in 100 words. I even like the ability to fiddle with the language to make the drabble exactly 100 words. This is a chart for various drabbles that I've written for faire-fic, games, BPAL and what-have-you that have graced the pages of *this* journal, as opposed to all of the other drabble charts I have rolling around. ( Chart! )

I'm starting a new game after a lengthy hiatus away from GMing. As such, I've been spending my time not writing by looking at blogs on game theory, game design, and helpful advice. One of the best ones I've found is Black Hat Matt's Blog. If you are running a game, used to run a game, or might run a game in the future, this is an interesting read.

No, seriously. Go forth.

I'm looking at you, cuddlycthulhu, cyranocyrano, and all of my cammie friends.

The approval application questions are getting out of hand.

Some background, for those who are either new to the Camarilla or aren't members and have no idea what I'm talking about: The Camarilla runs a number of games, each of which have books that come out on a regular basis, and in each book are new toys for its players to play with. Not all of these toys are appropriate for all of the characters, so the Camarilla instituted a complex system of approvals. In order to get the cool toy, you have to convince a certain number of officials that you are not a douchebag and are only getting the cool tchochke to kill everyone else. This is done through an Approval Application.

Back when I started playing in the Camarilla, the application process consisted of the Thirteen Questions. These were pretty (in)famous questions that made sense. They were designed to make you think about your character, convince the officials that you had thought about your concept beyond, "Ogg Smash!", and to agree that you were not going to be a douchebag; and, if you were, you had made a contract that you wouldn't be and someone could make you pay for it in some official capacity (or tear up your character sheet while you stomped off to have a tantrum. Don't laugh; I've seen it happen). They had an added benefit of being a little bit time consuming, so the average thug wasn't going to want to jump through the hoops. Any and all thugs who got through it at least had to have basic reading and writing skills.

Over the course of time and as we ended one chronicle and started a new one, the questions for the application process changed. Over the last few years, the questions have changed a lot - so much so, that every time I put up a new application, I'm forced to review the questions because something, inevitably, has changed.

Now, there are eighteen bullet points, each with at least two questions, and those are just the national questions. Your region might have additional questions (and the SW does: eight more, for those who are playing the home game, and plus three for custom mechanics). The questions have become ridiculously repetitive (how many ways can you say, "I solemnly swear I'm not going to be a douchebag"?), going so far as to ask the same question two different ways within the same bullet point.

A friend of mine is writing his first application. Last night, he messaged me with one of the questions and asked me, "What the hell is this question actually asking?" We've gone from a system that requires some thought about what motivates a character to one in which extraordinarily smart people are unable to divine the nature of these unnecessarily oblique questions.

I actually support the approval process. I think that not enough people really give thought to their characters, and frankly, the application gives gamers a chance to talk about their characters to people who otherwise won't give a shit. I think that having the hoops are important, and once you've passed through them, you feel like you've accomplished something. However, if you can't make someone agree in thirteen questions that they're not going to be dicks, you can't do it in twenty-six. Maybe, you'll manage to scare them off, but mostly, you're alienating your player base.

And now, we go back to slogging through the application. I'll post a word count, and add it to my total words written for Madeleine-Antoinette. This may put me over the 100,000 mark.

The success of a LARP is usually measured in its attendance. If 60 people show up to your game on a regular basis, you are successful beyond your wildest dreams. If 30 people show, you're doing really well. If 15 people are your regular attendees, you're not doing half bad. If 6 people come, you might as well pack up and start a table top game.

That being said, that is the measure of "success" in LARP. But what makes a good game, in your opinion? Is it the attendees? Plot? The quality of roleplay?

As my local Cam friends are already doubtlessly aware, this is partially in response to this. The quality of Sonoma Requiem has been called into question, and I'm curious to know people's opinions.

By all means, even if you are not a LARPer or a member of the Cam, speak up. I'm looking for all comers here.

My dad died. My mom sent me an email last night that I didn't receive until this morning. He's been living in Massachusetts with his sister and had a massive coronary. According to my mom, he died in seconds and didn't suffer. I guess that's good to know.

A few years ago, I said goodbye to my dad. It was right before he moved, and when we hugged for that last time, it had an air of finality to it. He didn't call me afterwards and I didn't call him. Somehow, I knew that was the last time. I remember standing in his kitchen and we talked and reminisced like we always used to. He told me the stories that I'd heard a million times and still loved.

Anyone who has seen my dad and me together knows that I'm my father's daughter. I look like his side of the family more than anyone else. I have his sense of humor, which is dry in the extreme, and his way of dealing with people and I roll my eyes the same way he did. I was always his little girl, even when we didn't talk. It was the knowledge that we loved each other.

He believed in reincarnation, but that if he had a choice, he wouldn't want to come back for a long time. He believed that he had been around this ball for so long that his soul needed a rest. He wasn't a great man, and in some ways, probably wasn't a very good one. But he loved me and helped me and taught me and protected me. He was my daddy and I'm going to miss him.

I find it ironic that the players of Acolytes within game are abandoning ship in the face of adversity.

This post was originally going to be about why a reset is necessary. My wish that the Camarilla would just suck it up and reset already was only partially granted: we’re getting a soft reset.

Let’s get some terminology out of the way before we continue.

In a roleplaying game (in this case, the chronicle of the Camarilla), people will get tired of the game they’re playing, things will stagnate, power levels will go haywire. When this happens, the powers that run the game will declare a reset.

When the rocks fall, Armageddon comes, Ragnarok is nigh, and everyone dies, this is a Hard Reset. In this case, we’re starting over from scratch and everyone rolls up new characters.

Sometimes, you don’t want to nerf campaign continuity. Everyone still likes their characters, and there are only a few things wrong that can be solved by readdressing power levels. When this happens, you keep your character concept, but rewrite your character sheet. This is called a Soft Reset.

The Camarilla Chronicle has some pretty significant problems with it, especially for players who are just coming into the game. When we first started playing Requiem in Chronicle, we had two books: The World of Darkness core rules and the Requiem rules. A number of in-game organizations that were mentioned in the core rule books were created by the players… only to discover, as the books came out for those in-game organizations, that what the players created isn’t anything like what the successive books dictated – and those are just the differences in canon. The Camarilla also suffers from huge power gaps between members who’ve been in the organization longer and those who just joined… and really, the list goes on.

Because so many of the problems in the Chronicle stem from a rough chronicle start, it would seem reasonable that, after playing for 4.5-5 years, that maybe we should scrap it and start over, utilizing all of the books that are now available to us. I know a number of people (myself included) who have started thinking about what we would do in the event of a hard reset – I never lack for character concepts.

Unfortunately, the Camarilla (and by Camarilla, I mean the Master Storyteller, evidently at the behest of White Wolf) has decided that a soft reset is in order. The Reset Guidelines and the Reset FAQ don’t really go into why a soft reset is being made rather than a hard one, except to imply that someone in White Wolf says so. That, more than anything, tells me that whoever actually made the decision knows that it will be generally unpopular and is trying to avoid having to answer for it. It’s shoddy management at the best of times.

So, what does the new system mean for people who already have characters in play, and are looking at rewriting their character sheets? Let’s take a look at numbers. ( Cutting for the uninterested. )

A lot of people are pretty upset about soft reset; a lot are saying that the new system renders their characters unplayable. We’ll see. There’s supposed to be some deus ex machina plot coming down the pipes to explain the sudden loss of power – of everything that is going on here, this is the part that I’m the most irked by, but I’m still hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Over all, though? I wish that the decision was to reformat the drive and reload the OS, start fresh with the new material that has come out from the company, rather than just reboot the system - but if that wasn't an option, I'm glad we're doing something. The system has been broken for a long time, and if we can't set fire to it and start anew, we can at least test some other options in preparation for the new world order.

For those who don’t know, I spend my weekends engaged in a number of incredibly silly activities that mostly involve my dressing up like other people and pretending to be someone else. I often joke that I have all the best escapist hobbies and to a certain extent it’s true.

Any group of people who dress up like other people for their own personal amusement will wind up having drama that doesn’t strictly involve the people they are pretending to be. In gaming circles, we call it out-of-character (OOC), as opposed to in-character (IC). You still with me? Awesome.

Arguably, one of the larger and probably better organized of these organizations that allow for a whole bunch of people to pretend to be people that they are not all together is the Camarilla, the official fan club of White Wolf (WW). White Wolf is a gaming company that produces modern horror games (such as they are) like Vampire: the Masquerade/Requiem, Werewolf: The Apocalypse/Forsaken, Changeling: the Shining/Lost… and a number of other games that follow similar naming schemes. In the above examples, the name before the slash were White Wolf’s first product lines, the name after the slash denotes their later product lines. The old stuff is called, collectively, the Old World of Darkness (OWoD) and the new stuff is the New World of Darkness (NWoD). White Wolf was bought relatively recently by CCP Games, the developers of EVE Online. You may have heard of it.

Last week, White Wolf announced that they would be ending their relationship with the UK affiliate and a lot of nasty words were immediately said, culminating in the General-OOC list being moderated. The UK set out their side of the story pretty quickly and White Wolf has yet to really respond.

Yesterday, White Wolf released a copy of the Affiliation Agreement that was sent to the UK. Canadians have stated that this is the same agreement that they signed a few months ago. Cam folks - take a look at it; it's fairly instructive. And once you're done with that, once you've decided that WW is the devil or not, or that CCP should rot in hell or not, and have read all the evidence of saber rattling that's on the alterna-lists that have sprung up so we can all talk about how much we hate everyone in charge, let's consider a devil's advocate argument.

White Wolf and CCP are corporate entities which own the Camarilla. By being a member of the Camarilla, you are agreeing to abide by their rules. The US already operates with WW as being the highest authority. In the opinion of White Wolf, the contract that has been issued for Affiliates more or less brings the affiliates in line with what is already the case with the US.

As a corporation whose primary purpose is to make money, CCP/WW see the Camarilla primarily as being monetary asset. On the high end of the membership numbers we hear, there are 6,000 members who pay WW $20/year to be members of their Official Fan Club. $120,000/year in direct revenue, plus whatever indirect revenue is generated by 6,000 people who buy their products is not an inconsiderable chunk of change... but when looking at the type of money that is generated by EVE Online (with its 250,000 subscribers and more on the way), how much are those 6,000 members even worth? The answer is not as much as members would like to think they are. A World of Darkness MMO (which would have monthly subscribers) will be a steadier source of income, generally more reliable, and certainly less of a pain in the ass than a number of Cammies who seem to think that they have worth as human beings and not just numbers.

A lot of people are blaming Kelley Barnes in her position as Club Director and not sticking it to White Wolf, or speaking out against her employer if the views that she is expressing as Club Director are not her own - and there's a lot more discussion about whether White Wolf can be held liable for anything she says.

Can anything Kelley says be held against WW when she is speaking in an official capacity? You betcha. As the face and voice piece of an organization, hers is the voice that everyone listens to. It's a sticky wicket at the best of times and right now, with a number of people making nuisances of themselves, it's not getting any better for the Club Director. Jon Herrman has already spoken on behalf of Kelley's character; if he is at all accurate in his assessment, she takes her job seriously. Part of being a good employee is not badmouthing your employers publicly, even if you disagree with some of their actions. Think of it this way: the White House Press Secretary doesn't always agree with the President. It is still the job of the Press Secretary to talk to the media and not badmouth the White House in the process.

White Wolf has yet to release more than a terse statement that they are choosing to end their relationship with Cam-UK. A number of people are looking for an official statement, as some rather nasty accusations are being levied, but none of these accusations have been made official to the best of my knowledge - although the inability to post on the General-OOC list regarding this stuff probably isn't helping.

The moral here, kids, is to think long and hard about what you're doing in the Camarilla. In a cost/benefit analysis, is what you're putting in worth what you're getting out? Don't think just about the $20. Is the Camarilla worth your time in terms of drama and emotional investment? Do you enjoy playing in a global chronicle enough to want to continue? Once you have the answer to that, you probably have a better handle on how to respond - but perhaps we should wait until all the information is in before making any final decisions.

Dorotea kneels beside me in church, coming perhaps a touch closer than is strictly appropriate or necessary, but it is very cold on the stones and I press against her.

“Have you seen him?” she whispers into her folded hands, rosary dangling from between gloved fingers.

“Seen who?”

“My new cousin.”

I shake my head mutely as the padre’s eyes wander over us, lips pursed in admonition.

Once Padre turns his head, she murmurs, “He’s an Orsini. Wrong side of the sheets, but definitely an Orsini.”

I widen my eyes and suppress a chuckle. This will be an interesting season.

He’s never liked children, never quite known what to do with them. They are small and fragile, loud when they should be quiet and rambunctious when they should be still. And worst of all, they stink when they should smell good, and inevitably come with a screeching mother, who is worse than all the rest combined.

When the nurse puts the small, squalling bundle in his arms for the first time, he knows… that he still doesn’t like them. His stomach rumbles, and he wonders if his wife will allow him to eat the baby, citing it’s a troll’s way?

I dream about it sometimes – cool water poured into tall glasses filled with ice. Diving into deep pools and swimming until I hit the bottom, pushing with both feet, hurtling towards the surface and taking deep breaths of fresh air. Warm water poured over my hair, rinsing white suds down drains.

Now, we search for it, go to the old ways – men with Y-shaped sticks wandering over dry fields. The places where water once came are as dry as lake beds, and we die slow deaths, each one more agonizing to watch than the last while we hoard plastic bottles.

It is raining on our June wedding; we picked June so we could stand barefoot on the lawn and say our vows. We do it anyway, as planned, with mud squishing between our toes and the pastor balancing a bible in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

It is raining when we first see the house, covered with fallen leaves. The covered porch is dry and inviting, so we run across the muddy lawn, laughing joyously.

And it is raining when we have sex on our porch for the first time, pounding rain as visceral as we are.

She bustles. It is the word I use to describe her. Even at rest, in her prayers, she seems as if she is always moving, wide skirts forever swirling. She speaks with the lilt of the Italians, giving our words beauty, and when she prays, I understand how Latin is supposed to sound. She keeps her back straight, her chin high, and she looks at the world through bright eyes, knowing, watchful and often laughing even when there is no reason to laugh. And when she chides me for not working, I wonder if she knows how perfect she is?

Author's note: From the perspective of the Polish Kitchen girls.

I gaze down at the trunk, at the pieces of my wife’s past, of mine. There are bits of my brother and patron. There are pieces of her first and really, only love. There are scraps of who I wanted to be, once.

I leave abruptly, without a word and seek solace in a creature who is not my wife, who reminds me not at all of my past. My Maria is sweet and pale, too young to remember, too naïve to understand. She delights my body, leaves my mind free of concern while the specter of history looms darkly.

Author's note: This was actually written in Luciano's voice a year ago in response to one of Dorothea's Endings, with all due apologies.

Papa once told me, “Never grow old. It is full of pain and regret. Don’t grow old.”

He was right, in some ways. My joints ache, my gnarled fingers hurt all the time. It is difficult to lever myself out of bed on cold mornings.

But in some ways, he was wrong. My sons are strong and I teach girls English when they follow the paths that I once took. There is no regret here. Nor when Dorothea comes to me as she always has, and we lay together, girlish giggles slipping from our mouths interspersed with, “Do you remember?”

First part here.

There are three messages on his machine when Mike finally gets home, drunk and smelling like stale cigarettes and spilled beer. One is from his mom, asking what his plans are for his birthday. One is from a computer that desperately wants to sell him a vacation rental and seems vaguely disconsolate that no one is home to take this fabulous deal off its silicon. The last is from his girlfriend, or more properly, his broken up, over, final, caput, finished and in all ways ex-girlfriend. She wants to arrange a time to pick up her stuff and to hand over a box full of his stuff – the final nail in the coffin of their relationship.

-=-=-

Mike met Laura at a funeral. Actually, he met Laura at the wake, when the whiskey had been flowing for a few hours and he and Bobby had been trying to figure out who was related to whom and how much distance there had to be between blood relations to make hitting on the hot chicks okay. The equations they were coming up with involved a whiskey component multiplied by advanced genealogical jargon, raised to powers of more whiskey.

Around the time that “circulating” meant wandering a vague circuit from a couch to the food table, around the back of the house to where a never ending supply of booze was being produced from the basement, and back to the couch, Mike caught sight of a short, pretty woman who was all blonde hair and blue eyes with pale, translucent skin devoid of freckles. For a moment he was transfixed; then, Uncle Pat broke his line of sight with a bear hug. By the time Mike managed to escape the manly back pounding, he had lost her. There was, however, a fresh bottle that was pressed into his hands and he meandered back to the couch where Bobby was waiting. ( Don't worry... it's short. )

Mike and Bobby

It begins with a phone call from his brother.

"C'mon, man. Let's go out and get a beer and shoot some pool."

Mike looks down at the bottom right corner of his computer screen to check the time, consults his watch's digital display, perpetually three minutes faster than his computer. He wonders why there aren't LCD watches, then wonders if there are and he just hasn't seen them.

"Well?" Bobby's voice is tinny and insistent on his piece-of-shit phone. "C'mon. You need to get out of this funk. You like pool. You like beer."

Both are true and Mike sighs. "Fine. I'll be done here in," he checks the time again, "-half an hour."

"Awesome, dude. I'll pick you up then." The line goes dead with no other sound. Phones used to click. Watches used to tick. Mike reflects that he operates in a strangely soundless world before hitting off the mute button on his keyboard and letting his office fill with sound. ( A Story About Pool )

I'm putting together a new mage for Cam. The last drabble was her introduction; here's a little bit more.

It is necessary, on occasion, to contract with Sleepers. Joule doesn't much like it these days, but Sleepers at least are generally polite and will pay in actual money (Remember money? That thing that lets you buy groceries?) as opposed to information or favors or tass. The latter three are important, but at the end of the day, raw information doesn't pay the rent and "Thanks, Joule - I owe you one" only goes so far. Tass isn't nearly as filling as one might hope or expect. ( See this? This is why I don't take Sleeper contracts anymore. )

This mage is not yet in play:

Joule feels magic in the air as palpably as the heat of the engine under her hands; for a moment she revels in it before returning her attention to her task. A little grease and a nudge right here, and the cap will come off in her hands, just as easy as one… two…

Pop!

She straightens, tucks a stray wire sprouting from her scalp behind her ear, ignoring the smear of engine grease she tracks across her cheekbone. She examines the cap, carelessly underhands it to her client. "Don't need this. It just gums things up in there, anyway."

I did not expect the void he leaves in life to be so large. When he was here, with us, he would irritate me, come to me with requests that only a man who was born to wealth and nobility would make, could make. I longed for the days when he would travel on his uncle's business, the business of the court, and leave me be with my papers and ledgers. I wished for him to go, just go and not return for a few weeks. That was all I asked.

And now that he is gone, that he will not, cannot return, there is a niggling question in the back of my head... did I do it? Did I drive him away?

I look for solace in all my usual places. Davide eats in my quarters more often than he does not, offers wry commentary on the state of the embassy. I try not to bother D for even as my schedule has cleared, hers is still busy as ever and only getting more so. I content myself to attending Cristiana, to searching for those exactly perfect stones to match my new dress. I bury myself in papa's paperwork, even offering my skills as scribe and clerk to Don Giovanni and wondering all the while if this is all there is to my life.

I wrote this as a fan-fiction piece some time ago. While I was going through some files on my computer the other day, I found it and decided to rewrite it as an original piece. This is a nasty, nasty little story: ( A Matter of Timing )

We are in bed when it happens. It is cold out and we are pressed against each other under the covers, skin damp with sweat and limbs intertwined. Her lips brush against my skin, the sensation I remember when the knock comes, and with it, the letter.

I read it once and grow numb in the chill air. She takes it gently from my grasp and reads it herself. She doesn’t hesitate, only kisses my brow and orders hot mulled wine. I take comfort in this, in her, even as I can’t muster tears, only a grim acceptance of inevitability.

I've been remiss in bpal blogging. The system at work is down right now, so I'm doing a little artsy-wanking: ( Oblivion )

I find it hard to concentrate. Her scent wafts past me, tingling in my nose. Any pretense I had of getting work done today is just that. ( The easily distracted may want to wait until they get home. )

Judy fell first. This is unsurprising, given her age and physical condition. She took Ciara's death hard, wasn't quite able to cope. Courtenay's about my age, and in better physical shape. Of the two of us, though, I'm the one who seems to have a better handle on what is happening.

What is happening?

We made a push to escape. I tossed a flamingo over the chair and cube wall barrier, distracting the shamblers momentarily. It was enough to hop the barrier and sprint for the exit. Judy, the slowest of us, didn't make it. Courtenay wanted to go back for her, but I knew as soon as I heard the screams that it was over. Courtenay started to go back, but I caught her by the arm, shook my head slightly.

We paused at the door, waiting, watching. The parking lot seemed deserted and we made a run for it. We'd argued briefly about whose car we should take, who should drive. Both she and Judy drove convertibles. Mine is the only car that is sufficiently solid, although a better bet would be to try to get a larger, tougher vehicle. As the thought comes to me, I ask Courtenay if she knows how to hotwire a car. She looks at me like I'm crazy. Fair enough.

There are a couple of Shamblers across the parking lot from my car. For the first time, I regret not having electric doorlocks. I get into the drivers side, reach across for the passenger side. I take stock of my car, think about what I have readily available in terms of food and weapons. Not good; I recently cleaned out my car.

As we drive, I ask Courtenay how defensible her mother's house is - that is our current objective.

"Umm..." she says.

Shit. I quiz her on how many doors, windows the place has. Levels? What does the driveway look like? How close is it to her neighbors? Trees and bushes around the house?

She doesn't know, never gave it any thought. I stifle the urge to ask if she never thought about what to do in case of zombie apocalypse. Of course she didn't. She's a nice girl, teaches kids how to swim on the weekends. She's not like me, not like my people. We plan for emergencies, lay in contingencies. We keep axes and shotguns ready to hand... or some of us do. I'm nearly defenseless, I realize, and the thought scares me. It's just me and my car right now, and one scared swim coach.

-=-=-=-

Courtenay's mom's house is a nice, two level bit in the hills of Marin, but aside from being conveniently located on a hill, well away from its neighbors, it is otherwise useless to us. Too many exit and entrance points, too many places we would have to defend. And, as becomes obvious, it is already infested with zombies.