Second Look - The Moldy Unicorn

It's been about 18 days since the fire. Today, I want to start taking a look forward. The inventory of the house is complete. Let me show you a shelfie: 

Yeah. I can't dwell on that. 

Much to my amazement, this survived: 

Thanks to the Plexiglas frame it's only a little toasted. This is one of those products that reminds me so much of my youth and when I really took a liking to gaming. It still brings back the smell of the mall and Waldens Books. The Moldy Unicorn is great. I love this little book so much. It has a great cover, an interesting adventure and of course, an inn called The Moldy Unicorn. 

I had an interesting childhood. My dad was a big wargamer and would take me to conventions. I was a teenager before I realized that not everyone's dad played games or went to conventions. Or had a suit of chainmail or build castles to teach history. 

I don't think I had a moment where I thought playing games was odd or unusual. Or that this game was better than that game. My dad played WRG while I preferred D&D. Our middle ground was Chainmail, especially that little mini-game for jousting. He loved that as much as I did. Plus, he had the figures for it, which was totally extraneous but hella fun. 

So looking forward instead of backwards, I am going to take the time to really explore new things. This will be a new beginning. 

Minor Miracles

Well. I'm not ready to talk about the fire, I am ready to start counting my blessings. My whole family made it out of the house with no major injuries. My in-laws have stepped up and taken us in for the short term. My oldest is in school with the Air Force. Of course, they take care of their own, too. So many people have stepped forward to help. 

To be honest, this level of support is completely overwhelming.  We are humbled by the response and more thankful than we can or could ever convey. Really, it's a lot to take in and process. 

Our home is nearly a total loss. The walls stand, but that is close to it. Amazingly, I found our Fracture and rescued it. This is a digital painting I did for my wife on our 19th anniversary. It's printed on glass. Somehow, it survived the 1000° C heat. Our windows blew out under the strain and the heat but this thing made it. 

If a piece of glass can survive, we can too. This is not a testament to Fracture or an ad, this one of those random things that happen. A thing that is meaningful because it beautiful or amazing or both. 

My wife got my daughter out in the nick of time. Luckily my boys and I were not home. I just thank God that the kids were old enough to act on their own. Thank God we were not asleep. If the children had been infants or if any us were asleep, not one of us would have made it out. 

Enough of that. Let me end with a whole hearted thank you, to God and his good people who didn't just come to offer help, but the people who are always there to help those in need. All of you didn't just decide that we were important, this is the way you are everyday. Thank you. Bless you. 

Just speaking to you, sitting with you, hearing from you is tremendously helpful. Thank you all. 

Pitching Ideas - Return to the Inside Out

I just got a call from my friend Doug. He wanted some help with a project for his classroom and I did what I could do help. Then went for the important business, getting players for a new campaign. 

I did my elevator pitch, "A Druid, a Unicorn, and a Space Marine are going to save the world from technology so high, it's indistinguishable from magic, Rule set, AD&D." 

He's in. 

If that sounds a bit familiar, it was a one shot I did last year for the wife and kids. It went over like a lead fart because the setting was post-apocalyptic in the middle of a pandemic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least I didn't pour tons of money in the TV show based on The Stand by Stephen King. 

Every DM has ideas kicking around their brains to build a world. Most DM's I've played with will tinker with a variety of setting. I am not built like that. Every D&D campaign I run is in a post-apocalyptic. The one thing I am good at is dropping in anachronistic ideas in ways that don't disturb the players. 

My campaign settings diverge from reality in the mid-eighties with the development of fusion power. There was the Outreach, where every country in the world dumped resources into a multi-nation space program. This idea was based on "The Great Awakening(s)" that happened between the 18th and 20th centuries. Except instead of being based on spiritualism, it was based on exploration. 

There was a period of upheavals as fusion tech was deployed. This was followed by the Outreach, a world wide space program using Space Fountains to deploy probes, then ships and colonists around the solar system. This went on for a couple hundred years. It pretty much distorted all nations so they no longer existed as we know them. The goal as DM in this step was to completely divorce the setting reality by making the question "What happened in/to country x" invalid or at least unimportant.  

The next goal in the Outreach was to get to other stars. Back in the 80's, we didn't know and didn't assume most stars would have planets, so the effort to find them in this setting to centuries by sending out probes. This created a situation where the Space Fountains used to reach the solar system needed a massive upgrade. And this is where everything went wrong. 

Obviously, such a system needed to massive infrastructure built. And this was done. However, the second step was a computer based solution. They wrote a massively complex program to handle the upgrade from the first generation of Space Fountains to the truly titanic interstellar Space Fountains. It was a very rough AI. 

That AI had a glitch. It did things too efficiently. It reprogramed the Space Fountains to launch a few tentative research ships. Then instead of creating many, many waves of ships to the stars, it sacrificed everything for just one giant wave. The effort destroyed or impacted every high tech item on Earth, leaving the planet's technological systems to collapse. 

Centuries of high technological items didn't disappear in an instant, they slowly brokedown. As people tried to hold on, they used the technology to change themselves and the world around them. They were morphed into different species, elves, dwarves, goblins and so on. Some people unlocked technology so high it replicated magic. Others messed with probabilities, opening up gates to different universes where our rules didn't apply. 

The Inside Out is a defense against the AI which has collapsed to a single underground location. The locals have banded together to construct a veritable castle around the entrance. 

The creatures coming out of the facility are interpreted as undead, demons and devils who's vast technology appears as magic.  

Book Review - This Time of Darkness by H. M. Hoover

Title: This Time of Darkness
Author: H. M. Hoover
Year: 1980
Pages: 161 page booklets
Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Born in 1935 between Canton and Alliance, Helen Mary Hoover was the daughter of teachers and naturalists. Her ventures took her from sea to shining sea, from LA to NYC before she settle down in Northern Virginia to write. 

This Time of Darkness is yet another book which sits in the middle YA fiction. It was published in 1980. Of all of Ms. Hoover's books, this one withstands time perhaps because it follows a simple formula of place and becoming. 

Meet Amy and Axel, two 10 year old citizens the City. Or maybe they're 11. Doesn't matter, no one in the City cares for these children. In one moment, they make a choice to escape the City, to go outside. In the rain. The City is like Corrasant turned literally on its head. Amy and Axel must use all of their resources to escape. As they climb the ramps and prowl the halls and corridors looking for the tunnels that lead outdoors, they discover the many secrets about the City and themselves. 

They are pursued by the Authority, Crazies and secretive Watchers on their quest to escape this dysphoria life and explore the great Outdoors. 

This Time of Darkness is a dark, but quick read. As you can tell from the description, this tale could be a sourcebook for 1984 or the Paranoia RPG.  

Books by H. M. Hoover on AbeBooks.