Campaign Blog - Eyes of the Stone Thief: Preamble

My friend Jack bought a copy of Eyes Of The Stone Thief and, despite knowing

that I was DMing a 13th Age game. Knowing that I’m the sort of DM who takes modules

and adventure books and tears them into pieces to assemble something from the spare

parts, he still lent me his copy.*

Now, as I said, I usually just take adventures and use them for parts, but this book

hooked me with a killer concept – the Stone Thief a sentient, mobile dungeon that steals

architecture to build new dungeons – and wonderful, descriptive encounters. Also, there

are no railroads. Well, rather, there are railroads but they’re complicated and chaotic, like

a Brio train set up by half a dozen overtired toddlers hyped up on Pixie Stix. The

dungeons can be different every single time you enter it, with dozens of differently sets of

rooms to run through.

Not only that, but some of those room-sets feed into different approaches to the

dungeon. Are your players trying to take over the Stone Thief? Well, there are rooms that

lead you to information about the care and feeding of the Stone Thief, as well as hints as

to how you control it. Are they trying to destroy it? There are rooms for that too. Are they

just trying to get their stuff back after the Stone Thief swallowed it? Yep, there’s rooms

for that, too. And the types cross over, so you can have a party enter the Stone Thief

thinking, “I need to get my gear back,” and leave thinking, “I think I can destroy that

monster.” It’s . . . heady. Like someone handed you a stack of campaign notes with tons

of helpful stick notes rather than a linear adventure.

Shortly after reading his copy, I bought one of my own, intending to run a Stone

Thief campaign at the earliest opportunity.

The problem was, I was already running a 13th Age game in a setting I’d spent

some months creating and wasn’t ready to give up. And then my wife realized something

I hadn’t – we’d already spawned a gamer, and he had a friend. That is, my 12 year old

son had expressed interest in playing D&D in the past, and so had his best friend.

And so our gaming group was made – My wife, Christy, my son, Graeme, and his

friend, who we’ll call M. I rounded out the traditional four character party with a GMPC,

a sorcerer. The next blog post will be about character creation in 13th Age and how it

worked for us.

* Insert copious maniacal laughter.

Books for Mark

I've assembled this list for my good friend, Mark, based on his request for "a few good books." This is a dangerous thing to ask me, because you'll end up with me either spilling my guts or writing a long and rambling blog post.

Anyhow, I've picked these out based on what I know of Mark's likes and tastes. These aren't necessarily favourites of mines - well, except in some cases - but they're all good ones. When and where a book is part of a series, I've put the series name in parentheses after the title of the book.

They're in three categories:

Books for Dad and the Kids

These aren't books for a younger audience, really, but rather books that tells stories that are of interest to children. We shouldn't confuse these stories for something "simple" or "easy." They're books on themes that are important to children, and that have characters they can easily relate to.

Books for Dad

These books are challenging - they're genre books, mostly, but most of them either use genre as a starting point for something unexpected, or blend genres in a way that's unique, and sometimes even unsettling. Caution: May contain words. Oh, and some rather controversial stuff.

Books for Dad's Inner Kid

This is the not-meaty stuff. Most of this is solidly in a genre and doesn't step outside it except for effect. That's not to say that they're skeletal stories - there's meat on these bones, it's just been prepared in a manner that a little closer to what you'd expect.

Books for Dad and the Kids

Knee-Deep in Thunder

If Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods has a moral, it's in the lyric, "Witches can be right, and giants can be good." Sondheim's musical is all about telling classic fable and inverting narrative expctations - the handsome prince is a cad, Rapunzel is a self-saving princess, and the narrator - well, I won't spoil it.

With this book, Sheila Moon accomplishes something that I think is rarer and more precious - she tells a fable with a straightforward narrative that teaches the same lesson.

The framing story is your basic, "Child of destiny gets drawn into a fantasy world and set on a quest," kind of a thing. It hits most of the items on that checklist - unusual companions that initially distrust her, a wise old mentor, hideous antagonists, a reminder of the world she came from, an initial failure followed by a final success after finding a source of courage. You know the basics.

The enemy - The Beasts - aren't to be killed, though. Instead, they're to be rehabilitated. Her allies quarrel about how to go about their quest, but rather than the usual falling apart and coming back together, they talk about their reasons for disagreement and come to a consensus on what to do that compromises all of their starting premises a little bit while moving toward an end they all agree on.

For some reads this can be a bit of a disappointment as we like our villains dark and shadow and our heroes glowing with strength and purity of focus but, let's be honest, that's not how it works.

The Neverending Story

Forget the movie. I mean, don't actually forget it. The movie is just about the Platonic ideal of the 80s kid-friendly fantasy movie. For all it's flaws and needless diversions from the book, it's a pretty good story with some frankly astounding practical effects.

But in this case the book really is better. If you're not at all familiar with it, the basic premise that a lonely boy finds a fantastic book and hides out in his school to read it overnight. As he reads, the story comes to life, quite literally.

It's a fairly common trope in fantasy literature, but it's rarely handled so deftly, and I'm intentionally leaving out some details on how it's used because finding them out while reading is much of the fun. The author does a great job of creating a story that reflects the needs and desires of the protagonist without the narrative yelling, "Look! A metaphor for Bastian's loneliness!", and also creates a rich and engaging fantasy story.

My favourite element of the book is that it really is neverending. At several points, secondary characters walk out of the books narrative with their plotline unresolved, but the author let's us know that their story does continue, "But that is another story and will be told another time." This metatextual acknowledgement that a books world is more complex and involved than just the characters we get to interact with means that how you construct the narrative outside of the main story can change how you're reading the main story, making for a different experience each time you read.

Ocean at the End of the Lane

This might be my favourite book of the last decade. It's a quick read and a quirky one, but most excellent.

It's the story of a man who comes back home - no, wait, that's wrong. He comes back to the vicinity of the building that housed him as a child. Home isn't there anymore, not really, and as the book goes on we come to see that maybe it never really was at all.

There's much weirdness and magical realism in the book - a nanny with supernatural powers, a lake that mores than a lake, vultures made of nothing. There's magic and mystery and peril and all of it leads up to a good, satisfying conclusion.

The Thirteen Clocks

James Thurber is the founding father of modern American comedy. Have you laughed at a Neil Simon play? Thank James Thurber. Enjoyed a classic sitcom? Thanks James Thurber (although that loud wail you heard from lower Manhattan was the sound of his revenant spirit rebelling at the notion).

The Thirteen Clocks is an underprinted, unappreciated work of comedy. It failed mostly because it was seen as a kid's story because it's a book with a bunch of songs in it. Thing is, these aren't silly children's songs, or Tolkein's wordy hymns, these are Broadway-style numbers. In fact, if you can hear the lead character's songs in your head without hearing Danny Kay's voice, you're one of the few.

It's a simple enough plot - an evil duke kidnaps a princess and a handsome, plucky hero goes to ludicrous extremes to free her. Oh, the lunacy, though. The delicious, delightful, dizzying lunacy.

To be read aloud. In many different voices. To as many children as you can muster. And sing the songs. It doesn't have to be good, just committed.

Wee Free Men (Tiffany Aching books)

Though technically part of the larger Discworld series, the Tiffany Aching books really stand mostly as their own series. I should not that it really is a series - if you read I Shall Wear Midnight first, there'll be bits that don't make much sense and totally ruin bits in the earlier book.

Tiffany Aching is a student of Granny Weatherwax and has the potential to become a witch almost as powerful as her mentor. Yes, she's a witch. The Discworld is a place full of magic (that threatens to destroy the universe occasionally) and where you really, really hope the gods are distant because they're jerks. Witches use magic sparingly and wisely, when they're doing it right, and are really more the wise old women of their village, even when they're young, the people who intercede against the strange things that happen in the night and that keep the weird of the world at bay. It sounds dark, I know, but it's not

It helps that despite being advertised as "young adult," and thus redolent of upstart young heroes and heroines drawn with all the depth of a sheet of paper, she's complex - more complex than a lot of "grown-up novel" protagonists. She is by turns selfish, kind, arrogant, emotional, terrified, selfless, stony, impetuous and . . . well, human. And, of course, the whole series is anchored by Pratchetts fantastic wit and riotous use of language, mythology and culture.

A Wind in the Door

You're an English teacher, so I assume you've at least read A Wrinkle In Time. If not, get on that. Now. Stop reading this list, and go and read that book and come back. I'll wait.

A Wind In The Door is a direct sequel with the same core characters, other than Charles Wallace, and has two new cast members - a cherubum, and a farandola. The first is a giant ball of eyes and wings, and the latter is part of the substructure of a mitochondrian. I'd say, "It makes sense if you read it," but that's not really true, but in the most amazing ways. The problem with sequels is that authors seem to think that each new book must have more action, more plot and more drama. In this book, the stakes are roughly as high as they were the last time, and the book does well as a result.

If the book has a theme, it is the discovery that the opposite of love isn't hate, and vice versa. Beyond that, I won't say.

Books for Dad

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Imagine a fictitious account of the birth of the comic book industry intercut with the politics of the 40s and 50s, including punching Nazis, and laced through with insight into the secular Jewish community in 30s Manhattan.

Okay, now make that not boring. That's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It's by turns biographical (the comic book stuff is really, really close to being an accurate history of DC comics), narrative and heart-wrenching. There's a great deal of adventure in the book, but it never becomes unbelievable - well, except for one part related to World War Two - and always serves the narrative.

My favourite part of the book is one of the supporting characters: New York. That's both NYC and the state itself. The author put in an incredible amount of work to make it into a completely believable place. At times you really feel like you can step through the page and into the book in a way that's rare and powerful

American Gods

So, I can't really define the genre of "magical realism" as a genre without saying, "this book."

This premise is deceptively simple - all the gods who have ever lived have moved to North America where they've, well, Americanized. And as humanity's faith in gods has faded, so have their powers and area of influence.

There's a lot more to the story - a large portion of it is a rambling travelogue of America, with stops to meet with various gods from the familiar to the strange - but it would ruin it to describe it much further. Read it and let the story unfold like a flower.

The Golem and the Jinni

This book is, in a word, incredible. It's the story of a traditional Jewish golem and a traditional Arabic jinni arriving in New York in the 19th century, at roughly around the same time, and how they first meet and the things that they learn from each other.

In lesser hands, these characters would either feel monstrous and alien or basically like superpowered humans, but in the author's hands, they're sincere and individual. You understand their mythic nature - the golem is driven to serve others and has trouble controlling herself, and the jinni is a wanderer with a fiery temper - but you relate to them so very well.

The rest of the characters are fabulous as well, from the owners of a traditional Jewish bakery to a longsuffering tinsmith to an atheist driven to carry out his old religion's mandate to help his fellow man.

And, again, New York City just springs to life in these pages. The geography of the city becomes key to much of the story, and it, along with these fantastic characters, charges into an unexpected and terrifying finale that I just can't describe without ruining it.

House of Leaves

I'm not fond of postmodern literature, as a movement. The deconstructions almost always feel stale and artificial, but House of Leaves is an exception.

Usually billed as a horror story, it has four separate narrative layers. The first is the framing of the story by the author, the second is by a struggling tattoo artist who introduces the third narrative - a book written by a blind man who introduces the fourth narrative. It's a series of videos taken by the owner of a house who finds a spare room - a space between walls that should be there and that takes the form of a series of rooms so dark that they seem to absorb the light.

The book is, needless to say, densely narrated and plays a lot with the idea of the unreliable narrator.

The book has an extensive appendix that isn't required to understand the story, but does add to it. The text itself actually becomes part of the story as the words squish together, straighten into lines or form into spirals. Of all the books on this list, this is doubtless the most challenging.

Perdido Street Station

Based in the fictional city of Bas-Lag, it's the story of an eccentric scientist fascinated with "crisis energy," his girlfriend and a handful of allies who're trying to destroy a strange, slightly transdimensional moth creature that's tearing apart the city. So far, so normal for a fantasy book, right?

Well, Bas-Lag is a sort of Victorian pastiche that combines some of the sensibilities of steampunk with fantasy elements. It's a grubby sort of police state where criminals are punished by being turned into ReMade. For example, a woman has her torso replaced with a potbelly stove.

Oh, and did I mention that the scientist's girlfriend's head is that of a giant fly, and that she makes art by inhaling dye, mixing it with her saliva and spitting it onto canvas or molding it into statuary? That one of the methods used to stop the monster is the mayor of Bas-Lag trying to manipulate a giant spider that speaks in free verse to attack it by bribing it with scissors.

If you can get your mind around Bas-Lag and its weirdness, though, you'll be greatly rewarded. It's one of those books where, after a long session of reading I've had to blink my eyes a couple of times to make sure my brain remembers that I'm not actually in the book, and the images from its pages have stayed with me for a long, long time.

Books for Dad's Inner Kid

Cordelia's Honour (Vorkosigan Saga)

This is the first book, chronologically, in the saga of Miles Vorkosigan, who's kind of a big deal in genre sci fi. This is, though, the story of how his parents met. And it's wonderful.

The author, Bujold, comes from a family of Navy engineers, and it shows in her writing. She constructs a plot, introduces a failure state and narrates the results. And the heroes win, at a cost, and the bad guys lose, usually, and it's all tremendous fun. The science fiction are fairly light, despite her background - faster-than-light travel just, well, works, and the weapons and armour are described in light detail.

I should mention - this isn't where most people who have you begin this series. In the chronology of the stories, it's the first, but it was written well after we were first introduced to the series' main character, Miles, a dwarven mastermind who's one half Errol Flynn, one half Tony Stark and one half pirate. Yes, three halves. He might be small, but he packs a lot into a very small space.

The Demons at Rainbow Bridge (The Quintara Marathon)

Jack Chalker is a figure of some controversy in science fiction. He likes to play around with the notions of self-identity and personhood in ways that make people on both sides of aisle uncomfortable. People of a more conservative bent are disturbed by the way he redefines the personalities of his characters so readily, and readers of a more liberal mindset don't like how he tends to treat certain things, like gender, as immutable.

This series manages to avoid most of those problems while still playing silly buggers with the notion of self in a way that's entertaining.

The long and short of it is that three great galactic races who like using humans as frontline workers (we reproduce quickly, adapt easily to new environments and are generally useful) who're racing to determine the significance of the discovery of an ancient alien artifact. The plot moves quickly, the characters are compelling and the aliens are just plain weird. I really like this series and have read it several times.

Sandman

Yes, there really are three Neil Gaiman works listed here. And if I could, I'd also recommend Fortunately The Milk, The Graveyard Book, Coraline, Smoke and Mirrors, Mirrormask, The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, Neverwhere and, heck, even the book about Duran Duran he wrote back when he was a struggling journalist. He's taken to actually turning down nominations for book awards because he wins so many of them, and he usually deserves it.

Anyway, Sandman. It's utterly fantastic, more of less revolutionized the comic book and served as a gateway for the development of graphic novels for grown-ups.

It has a lot of mature themes and it doesn't shy away from them. Death, dark magic, horror, dreams and demons all play a role in the first chapter of the story, but they're in there to create teh story, not to titillate and shock, and the end result is a complex story told in a rich fictional world that leads you through some of the most powerful characterizations in fiction.

Small Gods (The Discworld Series)

When I recommend a series of books I usually recommend the first book in the series' chronology even if it isn't th ebest book in the series. That's because a series usually develops plot and character over time and so reading a later book can ruin earlier ones.

This isn't a problem with Small Gods. At this point in this very, very long-lived series, it's technically an early book, but you don't really notice.

It's the self-contained story of Brutha, the last remaining worshipper of Om, a storm god who's now nearly powerless from a critical lack of worshippers. I can't say more about the plot without ruining it, but suffice it to say that it's a fascinating conversation about faith, philosophy, democracy, truth and sausage inna bun. It's also quite hilarious.

Storm Front (The Dresden Files)

Harry Dresden is the only self-advertised wizard in the Chicago phone book. If I don't have your attention with just that sentence, then why on earth are you still reading this list?

The Dresden Files is told in first-person narrative by Harry Dresden, a wizard who works the weirdest, most supernatural cases in Chicago. It starts out very much in the mold of a traditional detective series. Femme fatales, gunfights (well, wandfights), crime bosses, hidden motives, lots of people getting coshed on the head, all that sort of thing.

Storm Front is very much in this original framework and makes it work quite well, especially for a freshman novel. The later books expand the background of the Dresdenverse quite a lot until in the most recent book . . . I can't tell you anything, because mentioning anything, I mean the smallest detail I can think of in the most recent book, would spoil your reading of the series.

In fact, of all the series mentioned here, this is the one that most warrants reading in order, and most rewards people who paid attention to background characters and events in previous books. It can still be enjoyed as pure, visceral pulp fiction with fireballs in place of handguns, and ogres in place of mob enforcers - although there are plenty of actual mob enforcers, come to think of it.

Sundiver (The Uplift Series)

You ever notice how in most science fiction books, humanity's the Federation, or the Empire? Humans are usually either the top dog or vying for the title.

In David Brin's Uplift series, not so much. The premise is probably the most interesting part: sentience cannot evolve, it can only be created through thousand and thousands of years of careful breeding and genetic manipulation by a race that's already been raised - "uplifted" - to sentience.

This has been going on for eons before humanity was even aware of it - once species raises others up until they just lose the desire for material existence and their children establish new empires. Humans? Humans are "wolflings," a species that another race attempted to uplift without much success. Unlike most wolflings, humans have actually figured out FTL travel and started some uplifting of their own - chimps and dolphins, mostly. Humans are hated and, in some sectors, actively hunted.

As I said, the premise and its execution is the best part of the books. The first trilogy has a good plot and some interesting characters, but, in my opinion, the second trilogy fails to deliver on the events set in motion during the first. It's still very much worth reading the first trilogy, though.

This is some pretty hard scifi. There are four-page discussions on the merits of various kinds of technology and even longer passages on genetics and animal husbandry. I find those digressions fascinating, though.

Puddles Singing Hallelujah

Jim's Friend: Hey, weren't you, like, studying to be a clown?

Jim: I was for a while, but it was just too depressing.

[cue laughtrack]

Without the laughtrack, I had that exchange a couple of times in my senior year at college. Clowning was, believe it or not, something I'd considered as a career. Not party clowns or circus clowns, but theatrical clowning.

See, I love theatre. The excitement of a new script, the nervous energy of a first rehearsal, the growing collaboration between across and crew, all building up to performance night? Nothing like it. Unfortunately, the people you work with? Yeah, theatre attracts some enormous egos.

I enjoyed clowning a lot when I'd tried it and early reading on theatrical clowning was fascinating. Comedia dell'arte was known to me, but there were so many other options, even sacred clowning some Orthodox churches. Sacred clowning. Wow.

And then I read a line from a professional clown that went something like, "Being a clown means never being happy." It seemed so very, very dark to say, but the more I thought about it, clowns run around on stage, always striving, always falling, always, well, failing. Never getting what they want, always ending up with their hopes dashed and their pants around their ankles.

I salute good clowns, I really do, the ones who go out every night and make people laugh at how pathetic they are and walk away happy. That's hard, that's really, really hard. And in the spirit of good clownings, I give you Puddles, the Pity Party Clown, howling "Hallelujah."

[cue laughtrack]

This Is How It Was

Introduction: Many moons ago, a message board I was on had a "survival game." Basically, a whole bunch of spaceships were given a bunch of points and posters could, once a day, remove points from one ship and add points to another. After much back-and-forth, we were left with Serenity with a relative handful of points and the TARDIS with a sizable lead. And then the Browncoats showed up, as we're want to do, and we won. I wrote this blog post on Xanga as a "victory speech." Not having the heart to actually blow up the TARDIS, I found a compromise.

And you're welcome, Amy Clark.

 (The bridge of the Firefly. An exhausted-looking Wash is at the main controls, with Mal just now rising from the secondary. Jayne stands nearby, Vera on his hip and still wearing his space-suit.)

Malcolm: Well, that was just plain disturbin'.

Jayne: Don't know what you're talking about. After a coupla years of no space-fightin', we had ourselves a real battle. Plenty o' bad ass spaceships.

Wash: Well, there was that tiandu wu yohn ship that went down first. Not too impressive. And that guy, the vaguely Buddhist one - “The One?” The one what?

Jayne: Well . . .

Wash: Ooo, and then there was that cube! I mean, who wants to pilot a cube?

Mal: Cube was scary, Wash, mighty scary. Took just about all those fancy ships with the people in running suit's to take it out.

Jayne (chuckling): Runnin' suits. Looked ridiculous, every one of 'em. (rubbing the bruise on his chin) Guy with the crab on his forehead, he was strong enough, though.

Mal: But who ever heard of punchin' with an open hand? Likely to break your wrist as hurt a man.

Simon (over intercom, nervous): Uhh, captain, how's everything up there?

Mal: Fine, Simon, you getting' our prisoners patched up pretty?

Simon: The one with the red shirt didn't make it. Which is surprising as he hardly even got shot.

(sound of a saw whirring in the background)

Mal: And the green-skinned guy? The robot?

Simon: River's working on him.

(piercing screams)

Mal: Sounds like that's going . . . well. I'll leave you to it.

(turns intercom off)

Kaylee (bounding onto the bridge): Everyone all right up here?

Jayne (motions to poorly bandaged arm): Well, I got shot in the . . .

Kaylee: 'Kay, good, I'll just see how Simon's doing. (turns to leave)

Mal: And River, Book and Inara, right?

Kaylee (distracted): Right shiny, cap'n. (bounds away)

Mal: Zoe, you still out there?

(Cut to exterior shot of the Firefly where Zoe stands, hauling in a blue telephone box on the end of a long cable. Cut to close-up of Zoe's face beneath her helmet)

Zoe: Yes, captain. Thing's heavier than it looks, even in zero-g. I'll get her reeled in soon enough.

Mal (over intercom): Any idea if anyone's still in there?

Zoe: Looks like feh wu to me, captain, but looks like it might've been before this battle anyway. Not much to look at, that's for sure.

Jayne (muttering): Could say the same about this bucket.

Kaylee (off-screen): I heard that!

(Zoe draws the phone box into Serenity's loading bay where it falls on its end with a loud thud)

Zoe (over intercom): She's inside, sir.

Mal: Book, Inara, you guys down there?

(Book and Inara stand near the phone-box. Book has a six-shooter in hand, but at his side. Inarra is unarmed)

Book: We're here, captain.

(back on the bridge)

Jayne: Still say I should be down there.

Mal: The idea's to make 'em feel welcome. You ain't exactly a welcoming face.

Jayne: They was in that battle same as us!

Mal: Yeah, trying to survive is all they did. Never fired a shot.

Wash: Still, don't know if they're hostile or not, and you let the preacher and the socialite take point?

Mal (to Jayne): Look, I'm the captain and . . . wait. Wash, did you just agree with Jayne?

Wash: I'm as shocked as you, captain. Shocked to my core.

Mal: I'll leave you ladies to your love-fest, then. Got guests to meet.

(the phone box, banging, clattering and shouting from inside)

Book (putting his hand on the gun): Hope they're as peaceful as the captain expects. That doesn't sound like a . . .

(the tenth Doctor and Donna fall out of the TARDIS, pursued by a cloud of smoke and a shower of sparks)

Doctor (recovering, but still staggered, nearly collides with Book before extending a hand and shaking Book's vigorously – his crying of falling turns into his introduction): Aaaaaaaaaaand who might you be, then?

Book: Shepherd Book . . .

Doctor: Lovely! (turning to Inara) And you are?

Inara: Inara, wel . . .

Doctor: Lovely! (looking around) Oh, this is a smuggler's ship, and no mistake. Perfect. Tons of little cubbyholes and hiding places and . . . oh, is that a hover-mule! Look, Donna, a hover-mule!

Donna (arms crossed, catches Inara's flummoxed expression): Yeah, he's always like this for the first bit. He'll run around a while, get all interested. Take a nap eventually and then he'll be a bit more . . .

Inara: Himself?

Donna: No, no, this is himself, really.

Mal (booking down the stairs): What chwen let our new house-guest play get up on the furniture?

(The Doctor on the hover-mule, pretending to steer, wearing a leather helmet and goggles)

Doctor (leaping off and bounding over to Mal): And you must be the (Mal levels his gun at The Doctor from the hip) captain. Huh. Thought you'd be a friendlier lot than that. Two of you with guns.

(loud clanking from the top of the gangplank – it's the sound of Jayne cocking Vera)

Doctor: And I think THAT gun counts for three. So you all were part of that strange little war after all? Even though you never fired a shot?

Mal (to Jayne): I said I was coming down, didn't I tell you to stay . . .

Jayne: No, you didn't. Wouldn't've listened anyway.

Mal: Jayne, I . . . I'll deal with you later.

Doctor (clucking): Ah, issues with your crew. Well, I don't want to get in the way of that, so if you could just point me to a spare berth or (Mal turns his steely gaze back to The Doctor) not. I seem to have arrived at a bad time. Or, more properly, I seem to have been roped into your ship at a bad time.

Inara: If we're awake, it's probably a bad time.

Donna: Look, really simple questions. I have three of them. Everyone ready? I'll even let you know who can answer them. (silence) Right. One: were you lot actually part of all that fighting or just caught up in it same as us? Captain?

Mal: Just caught up in it, I suppose. I mean, we have some that'd like to blow us out of the sky and all, but none of 'em fly ships like the ones we just saw. Question of my own: what brought you lot here?

Donna: Well . . .

Doctor: Just passing through, really. We were trying to get to the Tiber Cluster round about seventy million years from now so I could show Donna a real live actual supernova when the primary temporal buffer panel went all wobbly. Before I knew it, we were trapped in time, barely able to move in space, ships zooming all around. We survived as much because of our shields as anything, and even those were failing. Some sort of power drain. Anyway, we pulled through and ended up here. Question two -

(during this exchange, Kaylee leaves medbay and sidles up by the captain)

Donna: I'm asking the questions, Doctor.

Doctor: Right, sorry.

Donna: Question two-

Jayne: Can I shoot 'em yet, captain?

Donna: Question two: If you weren't fighting in that battle, then are you being so aggressive now only because you're a bit on edge? Everyone?

(silence)

Donna: Right. So let's just pretend that neither of us is particularly in the mood to shoot people and see where we go from there.

Mal (putting his gun down at his side, not holstering): Seems a good plan. Your last question, very talkative new person.

Donna: Three: (apologetically) Captain, mind if we stay here for a bit?

(the crew begin talking at once)

Jayne: . . . runnin' a gorram daycare . . .

Kaylee: . . . could use a hand with repairs . . .

Book: . . . as a Shepherd, I should say that . . .

etc.

Mal: Quiet, the lot of you! This ship is a democracy: one man, one vote. I'm the man, it's my vote. (turns to The Doctor and Donna) Much obliged to you both for not trying to kill us but we're full up on crew just now. We get you to a planet, we'll get you settled but that's the best we can do.

Doctor (meandering over to Kaylee): Well, I do think that we could come in handy for you captain. For example, did you know that the intake manifold on the primary extrusion engine is going to give way in a week, maybe less? Leave you drifting, that will.

Kaylee: I TOLD you that manifold weren't right and you wouldn't listen, said we didn't have . . .

Mal: Money, that's right, we don't have the money, so you'll have to make do until . . .

Doctor: Make do? Make do? This is a 03-K64 Firefly Mid-Bulk Transport, a classic spacegoing vehicle, preference of scoundrels and anti-authority vagabonds everywhere. You can have all the money in the universe, but if you don't love this ship, she'll shake you off like the turning of the worlds. Love her and she'll keep you flying, let you know what's wrong before you even notice it. It makes the ship a home.

(silence)

Mal: Might do to remember that, doc, but that don't mean I can just magic up the money to pay for a part.

Doctor (to Kaylee): Do you have a Z-91 compression coil, two solid-state cadmium batteries, about thirty inches of copper cable and a pair of tweezers? Aluminum tweezers?

Kaylee: Don't know about the tweezers, but . . .

Doctor (intensely): Listen. The tweezers are important.

Inara (putting up her hand): I think I have a spare.

Doctor: Fantastic! Problem solved. I can make your manifold for you! When I'm not trying to fix up my ship, of course.

Kaylee: Can we keep him, please!

Jayne: Lio coh jwei ji neong hur ho deh yung dug buhn ja j'wohn . . .

Donna: Oi! Your mum know you talk like that!

Jayne (surprised): She's the one that gorram taught me.

Donna: Cheeky little . . .

(the crew talks up again, this time louder, ending with Mal shouting them down again, overlapping with Wash, who's just shown up)

Wash: I have to go to the baaathroom.

Mal: Everyone settle!

Jayne (to Wash): What?

Wash: I wanted to get in on the whining. Am I too late for the whining? Damn, I always miss the good stuff . . .

Doctor: Hobart Washburn!

Wash: Uh, yeah . . .

Doctor: THE Hobart Washburn!

Wash: W . . .

Doctor: Your run through the ion cloud on the Geserel IV rogue moon just before the fall of the Parliament – it's the stuff of legend.

Wash: Well, I never . . .

Doctor: Well, no, you haven't. Not yet. But you will. And it's fantastic.

Wash (to Mal): I vote we keep him. I like people who like me. It's a weakness.

Doctor: You lot do seem altogether less . . .

(River and Simon come out of medbay. River is holding a mechanical arm, still twitching, with tatters of green skin and black and yellowish cloth)

River: Broken doll, strings cut, no more dancing.

Doctor: scary than I thought . . . you . . . might.

(River sees The Doctor and immediately falls to the ground, hands over her head)

River: The storm, the waves, the crashing sea, salt in my eyes, in my EYES, Simon.

(Simon and the Doctor run to her at the same time as River continues to babble)

River: Stream runs to the lake river runs to the ocean ocean comes over me drowing, storm-driven tempest-tossed I don't want your cloven pine anymore get thee behind me Sycorax Miranda Miranda make me a stone the dark behind it all the eyes the eyes with no eyes no heart no head just hate exterminate extirpate extricate the weave and weft the curds and whey have curdled you were gone gone so long ago and so far from now torn apart the war the gathering storm you're the last the last but you aren't supposed to be at all. (sobbing)

Doctor (using his sonic screwdriver): Oh, my goodness, her brain. Neural stripping. Alterations of a kind I've never . . . I'd call this barbaric but it was done with great skill. They raped her mind and left the core of her naked and exposed. I'd heard of experiments like this, never seen one close-up before. Horror beyond imagination. (insensely) I should very much like to find out who's behind this.

Simon: We were just heading somewhere where I hoped we could find out more about her condition, see about healing her.

Doctor: I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. There's no healing this kind of damage, not in this century, not with what you have. Can't heal her mind, but there might be hope left for her spirit. Not for a while yet, but it may come.

Simon: Who are you?

Doctor: The Doctor. And you?

Simon: Simon Tam.

Doctor: Of course! So that makes the rest of you (points in turn) Zoe Washburn, Jayne Cobb, Kaylee Frye and that makes you (grabs Mal's hand so suddenly that Mal drops his gun) Major Malcolm Reynolds.

Mal: Captain. Just a captain.

Doctor: Right! Getting ahead of myself again. Well, anyway, captain, how about it? Your crew seems to want me on board and now you know I have ill intent toward the Alliance. What's not to love?

Mal (looking around): You can stay until your ship's fixed, not a day more.

(Jayne walks away, not bothering to hide his disgust)

Doctor: Captain, I believe this may be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Mal (stalking back up to the bridge): Wong ba duhn, why can't nothin' go smooth?

(The others begin to move away)

Kaylee: Stop by the engine room when you can. I'll get you those parts you were lookin' for.

Doctor: Oh, sure, fabulous.

Donna: Well, that went well.

Doctor: Yeah, rather. We'll be a week or two here, I'm afraid. TARDIS is pretty well knocked out of commission but I think I can fix her. We get along well, the two of us.

Donna: Yeah, I noticed. Sure it's smart to let on to this lot? Bunch of petty criminals the lot of of 'em.

Doctor: Oh, that. You know those parts I asked for? (Donna nods) Not for a manifold, though I can make that easily enough from what we have on our ship. No, that's for a memory eraser. Wipe out the memory of this whole battle from the crew, and anything to do with us. Best that way.

Donna: Really? What about the girl?

Doctor: Oh, we'll get to the bottom of that, don't you worry. But I can't bring this lot into that much danger. (claps hands) Well, to work?

Donna: Of course!

(Exeunt omnes)

13th Age Campaign Design Blog: Icons

So, my next campaign is going to use the 13th Age rules. It's a ruleset that combines the "theater of the mind" with basic tactical combat* and has tools that make it easy for the DM to use the setting as "crunch."** It also simplifies character play and DM prep to a monstrous degree which means, naturally, that I'm biting off way more than I can chew when it comes to campaign prep overall.

One of the major narrative thrusts of 13th Age are the Icons. These are personages of such great importance to the world that they're actually a part of the setting - your character's relationship with these figures is something that will affect the course of the campaign, and occasionally you'll have to roll dice to determine how much on an impact they have.

The book presents a list of Icons and they're actually quite good. Really good, in fact, so much so that for the first time I can recall I've actually used setting material from a books without significant modification. I've still worked on some of them, though, and I've put a link below to the document as it stands now. There are probably contradictions throughout, I know, and I'm still missing The Mighty Hero, The Shadow Prince and the True Paladin, but it's a start.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1HjAfhpHuWoWGQydmhGUVhKQ0E/edit?usp=sharing

* Combat still uses minis, but on a much simpler map and not 3.x+'s combat grid.
** There are standard saves and standard damages for environmental hazards, so you can make travelling a swamp feel more dangerous than navigating a forest, but without rolling on a random event table every time, giving the DM (and the group) narrative control.

10 Most Influential Books

Jon Tripp challenged me to pick the 10 books that influenced me. That's as much as I know about this challenge, so I'm basing this list on the books that most often quote and the ones that have had the greatest effects on my personal outlook. They are in no particular order.

1. The Bible*. This one's kind of obvious, but it's impact on me has been tremendous. I've read it three or four times, and portions of it more often than that (I read the book of James every few days, it seems).

2. A Wrinkle In Time. The first in L'Engle's amazing series of books, I consider it to be her best. It taught me that love is always more powerful than hate, that life is worth living fully and that being smart and being wise are equally important.

3. Knee-Deep In Thunder. Based on Native American mythology, this book taught me . . . well, just about everything about how to deal with conflict. It taught me that there really aren't bad guys and good guys, there's just us, some of us worse than others.

4. Small Gods. One of Terry Pratchett's standalone books in the Discworld series, it's a hilarious book and a meditation on the nature of faith, and manages to do good service to both ideas.

5. Ocean At The End Of The Lane. Page for page, there just isn't a better book, in my opinion. It's biographical, it's semi-mystical, it's fantasy, it's reality, it's . . . it's a book about a world that I wished that I lived, a world that scares me and one that terrifies me. It's all of those things at the same time and is a book that inspires me to write better and to write more.

6. Till We Have Faces. It's C.S. Lewis' best work of fiction, but I also think it's his best work of apologetics, although I can't quite explain to you how exactly it does that. That's the reason I love this book - it ignores fiction and non-fiction conventions in favour of just being good.

7. Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook. No, those last two aren't actually D&D, but they're carrying on the tradition of being books that function as a toolkit you can use to create your own fantasy stories with your friends. I've spent so many Friday nights doing this with friends, and many of them I'm still in contact with now.

8. TheNeverending Story. I could tell you about how this story enabled me to have the courage to walk up to a beautiful young blond woman and ask her on a date, but that is another story, and will be told another time.

9. TheGift of Fire. One thing I've always struggled with in man's initial fall from grace. This book was absolutely vital in helping me come to terms with that, and with a lot of the other things that drive my faith in God.

10. Watchmen. Yeah, I put a graphic novel on here. Read it, if you haven't, and you'll understand why. It's really pretty amazing. I mean, I'd always loved graphic novels and comic books, but Watchmen taught me that it's a medium that simply has no limits.

*Gotcha.

Try This At Home

I'm a writer. I have been since I was a little kid. I love telling stories and I'm obsessed with legends and mythology. When I'm bored, or when I'm excited, or when I'm tired or wired awake, I'm thinking of stories. I have three or four in my head right now - a young woman find a ventriloquist's dummy in her grandmother's attic that looks just like her husband, only it's actually him turned into a dummy and her mother's a witch; three hundred years in the future, everyone works dead-end jobs in cubicles, but at least it's Friday and the weekend's coming soon, only it never does because we were all hollowed out and replaced with robots and our mindless tasks are really just the sub-routines of a planet-sized super computer and the weekend's never coming; a minotaur and elf queen have fallen in love.

It's quite possible that none of these things will every end up written down in a meaningful way. I'll write a couple of lines of dialogue, maybe a description or two. In some way, shape or form, though, those stories are going to keep playing in my head. Bits of them will ooze out into other stories, some of which I'll finish and post somewhere online or maybe send them into some small journal somewhere.

When people find out that I'm a writer, but I haven't really published anything, they have one of two reactions. They either tell me that they're glad that I've found a healthy creative outlet (I love it when people say this) or they act like my lack of publication is a horrible thing, and don't I feel bad that I'm not a great crashing success.

I dislike this very much. I write because those three stories you read about up there? They've vanished, for now, and new ones are in their place. At some point, the brain, it just can't fit any more and some of what's up there has to get out onto a page or I start losing sleep, get seriously distracted and, quite frankly, really cranky. It's a outlet in the same way that venting an overheated radiator is an outlet, it's just that creative writing is less likely to scald your hand.

Huh. That metaphor sounded a lot better in my head.

Anyhow, I write because I have to, and I write because I enjoy it and, quite simply, that's enough for me. Maybe some day I'll get published, but I'm not going to live my life in anticipation of it. Frank Turner sums this up for me in I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous.

I am sick and tired of people who are living on the B-list.
They're waiting to be famous and they're wondering why they do this.
And I know I'm not the one who is habitually optimistic,
but I'm the one who's got the microphone here so just remember this:

Life is about love, last minutes and lost evenings,
about fire in our bellies and furtive little feelings,
and the aching amplitudes that set our needles all a-flickering,
and help us with remembering that the only thing that's left to do is live.

So, that's my piece. Enough with that. The rest of this is for the rest of you.

Some of you love to sculpt, but you don't feel like sculptors. Some of you love to draw, but you don't feel like artists. For Pete's sake, stop that. A writer writes, a sculptor sculpts, and an artist, err, arts. Okay, so maybe you'll never actually be good at it. Do you like sculpting and painting and writing? Then that makes it a worthwhile endeavour.

Keep doing it. Don't let the "professionals" tell you that it's complicated stuff best left to them. They're either protecting their paycheck or their ego, and you're ultimately responsible for neither.

Now, to my Christian brothers and sisters. If you were raise in a church like the one I grew up in, you were told from a rather young age that, "Everything you do, you should do as unto the Lord," and that this meant that you shouldn't spend too much time at artistic pursuits that produce things that aren't praise to God.

Well, meet Heman the Ezrahite.

That's his one psalm. Describing it as "bleak" doesn't quite do it justice. It's painfully, almost ornately mournful. I've had days like that, though, and if we're honest, most of us have and it's nice to have this psalm in the Bible - a reminder that sometimes all you have in you is despair, tempered by hope, and that it's expected. It doesn't always provide comfort, but it's good to know you're not alone.

This is Heman's legacy. This is it, those 18 verses ending with his "praise" to God, "You have taken from me friend and neighbour—darkness is my closest friend." If you want to spend an hour or two using your God-given imagination writing a mash-up of My Little Pony, Doctor Who and Big Bang Theory, go for it. God loves you with all your faults and failure. I'm pretty sure he can love you with all your hobbies as well.