Steve Kuntz is staying over at Gabe’s house this week, so he’s been working in the office here with us during the day. He wanted to know if he could rock a cameo in our D&D campaign this week, and I was surprised to learn that Gabe wanted in. They had cooked up some relationship where Scott (Glint Eckhart) was a city guard, grievously disappointed in his wizard son Zek The Magnificent. It was Performance Art.
What’s interesting to me about Gabriel’s approach is that there’s really no metagaming. That is the dork term for playing the game as though you’re “playing a game” as opposed to “playing a role.” This is tolerated to varying degrees by every gaming group, and the ground rules of a particular cadre are present psychically even when they are not made explicit. Gabe genuinely plays roles with more savvy than most people I’ve had at the table. Much like the party being modeled on the board, the player group needs a few established “classes” in play to genuinely flourish: you need the Actor, the Comic, the Interpreter, and the Human Abacus to meet the challenges games like this present. Relatively few of those challenges actually occur in game.
While at PAX we had a chance to hurl polyhedrons with R. W. Wheaton the third, who had apparently heard our podcasts on the subject and wanted in. As the CEO of Acquisitions Inc., I agreed to take him on under the terms of an internship, which means that
1. he gets no gold, and
2. he opens all doors.
People really seemed to like those podcasts, and we had fun doing them. If we do another set, and I think there’s some movement in that direction, I think Wil is a must. Fans of Jim Darkmagic (specifically, Jim Darkmagic of the New Hampshire Darkmagics) may enjoy the post that immediately follows this one.
(CW)TB out.
do you believe in magic
I’ve always wanted to try painting but I just never seemed to have the time or the space to really give it a go. When we moved into our new house both of those problems were solved. Not only did we have a spare bedroom but we had no TV or internet. It seems our cable line has been cut by some overzealous landscapers and it will be weeks before Comcast is able to run a new one. So I decided to pull out a Christmas present my parents had gotten me years ago. It was one of those “start painting today” type of deals with an easel, canvas, brushes and paints all in one big box. it had been collecting dust in my closet but I figured now I had no excuse not to give it a try.
For my first painting I decided to use a sketch that I had originally done as a possible cover for the PAX 2008 program. It was a Twisp and Catsby piece and I figured since I had just done them on last year’s guide I should probably switch it up for 2008. I liked the drawing though and I figured painting it would be a great way to use it.
I learned a lot making this first painting, not the least of which was that I really like painting. When Kurtz came to stay with me after PAX for a week I told him we were going to paint and it would be awesome. He’d had never tried it either and so I think he was a little hesitant. You can read
his blog post about it over on his site and check out
his Flickr for some shots of us working.
His first painting was of Scratch and it turned out great. I decided to try and do a Jim Darkmagic portrait and I challenged myself to do more rendering this time. This one was significantly more difficult for me but just like the first one I learned so fucking much about painting.
I’ve really got the bug now and I have another blank canvas waiting for me back at home. My wife has asked for a painting of our WOW characters but I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that yet. Maybe I need to beg
Jim Murray for some lessons.
-Gabe out
