Vanilla Cake, White Frosting

I baked a birthday cake for Scott on Saturday. His birthday was Sunday, and we spent the day with his family. I made the cake to feed to the various friends who stopped by for role playing sessions on Saturday. We didn't get rid of all of it, but I managed to keep myself to one small piece.

Amy gave me a lift to the grocery store Friday to get the mix (I feel a bit wrong using a mix since I was brought up that it's better to cook from scratch, but I don't have the time or patience to make a proper from scratch cake. I also would never use up all of the ingredients I'd have to purchase). Scott likes white cake with white frosting, so that's what I got. I was a little startled by the array of choices in that direction: vanilla, French vanilla, cherry vanilla, butter cream, cream cheese. I went with French vanilla. Scott says now that that's his favorite flavor, but I'm not certain that he wouldn't have said that regardless. His mother's convinced that his favorite frosting is an egg white based concoction that requires quite a bit of work, and he's been trying to figure out how to tell her not to bother for quite some time. Since I'd assured her that I wouldn't be eating the cake she made, she used the egg white frosting.

I used an oil substitute and an egg substitute. The oil substitute consists pretty much entirely of ground prunes and tends to make things moister and to lengthen baking time. The egg substitute is a powder made from potato starch and tapioca that tends to dry things out. The two balance fairly well. I mostly used the oil substitute because we had it on hand, but balancing out the "egg" was a bonus. My allergy to egg whites is bad enough that I use the substitute pretty much all of the time in baking. (My sister-in-law, Suzanne, discovered it a few years ago and bought some to use in baking for family gatherings since her father needs to be very careful about cholesterol.)

At any rate, the cake looked and smelled good. I had to bake it about 10-15 extra minutes. I ended up using almost a full container of frosting on it. It came out just a little dry and not quite as sweet as I'd expected. Two of the guys who came over Saturday evening ate two pieces each, but the third wasn't able to have any because he's allergic enough to barley that enriched flour's fairly toxic.

Amy hasn't gotten the notes from the last couple of Amber sessions done yet. Both have been note-intensive sessions during which there was a lot of conversation that she tried to get verbatim. She's visiting some in-laws this weekend and will need to visit her parents after that, so I'm not certain she'll have them done by next session. I'm working on coming up with a good way to let the player characters escape from their current predicament. I don't want to make it easy, but I need to do something or the situation will get boring. (For those interested in following the game, the website is: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~lcarter/amber/ )

We went over to Matt's for anime on Thursday and ended up arriving before he expected us. Fortunately, he didn't have a problem with that, and we figured out that he'd misread the e-mail we'd sent him, so it wasn't our fault. We watched more Hana Yori Dango, and the episodes were quite a painful as I'd expected in terms of bad things happening to the characters. It's a high school soap opera, so that's no big surprise. We also decided to watch some Blue Seed and to keep the combination for the next few sessions since having something more action oriented will balance things a bit.

Friday night, Amy and I got Justin to watch the last four episodes of Utena. She needed to leave right after it ended, so we didn't really discuss it which is a pity because I wanted to hear her theory as to what Chu-Chu is. She and I did threaten Justin with the movie, but we've given him fair warning that it makes no sense. Maybe we can do that next week.

I've finally finished rewriting the bit of story I was working on for our writers' group. We're scheduled to meet next week. I gave printed copies to Tony last night for him and for Amy (she no longer has ready access to a printer, and his is broken). I still need to e-mail copies to Justin. We're planning to give each other both the rewrites and a bit of not yet reviewed material for critique. I don't know if we'll end up having time to do both, but I'm getting both out in hope that it'll happen.

Birthday Goings On

Scott and I got up just early enough on Sunday to get a few errands taken care of before heading to his parents' place. We returned some stuff to the library and then stopped by the Underworld to pick up our comics. After that, we headed out to the mall so that I could get Scott's birthday present. I wanted to get him a Babylon 5 DVD, the one containing "The Gathering" and "In the Beginning." We managed to find it without too much trouble. We also got a FarScape DVD that included one of the episodes we lost when we tried to tape them all of the SciFi channel. I wanted to get him something I knew he'd enjoy, and this worked well, I think.

The gathering at Scott's parents' place was fairly pleasant. He got a large wheeled box with a handle and several removable trays for storing his tools, a pair of pants and a pair of shorts and a wet/dry shop vac. Both were things he really wanted but wouldn't have bought for himself.

I enjoyed the opportunity to see Brendan and Kayla. Brendan was a bit whiny, but that didn't surprise me much. He's a week short of three and had already had a busy day by the time we saw him (another birthday party at some sort of nature reserve). I hadn't seen Kayla since shortly after she was born, so from my point of view she'd grown a lot. I held her a bit but gave her back to her father when she needed to be changed (he tried to talk me into it, but I demurred. Hearing that she hadn't been changed since before the first party they went to somehow didn't inspire me with enthusiasm for the task). She was wriggly and kicked a lot. I missed most of her smiles since I kept her facing out toward the rest of the family (I thought that the cabinet behind me would make fairly boring viewing for her).

We thought we'd set up the VCR to get both Enterprise and Andromeda, but it appears that we only got Enterprise (which appears to be a rerun). We got home about 20 minutes into Andromeda, so we'll have to tape it next Saturday if we're going to see the rest. I'd like to because I'm a bit curious as to how the situation we saw worked out in the rest of the episode was set up.

Even with the Andromeda problem, Scott still told me that this ranks as one of his best birthdays in years. It wasn't rushed, and nothing important went wrong. He got presents he wanted and would use, and he and I got some time to spend together. I'm pleased too.

Some Explanations

Recently, someone left me a note asking me for an explanation as to what exactly I'm talking about when I speak of writing, running and playing LARPs. I know I've explained before (at least I think I have), but I haven't been able to figure out which entry I did it in, so I'm going to do it again. If you're not interested or already know this stuff, feel free to skip this entry; I don't plan to talk about anything else.

I participate in three types of role playing games: play by e-mail (PBEM), table top (aka face to face) and live action (LARPs). When I say I've played or run a game, I'm talking about one of these three. Other people using the term may also be referring to playing a game like Final Fantasy or to using IRC or to visiting a MUD, MUSH, MUCK, MOO or whatever. I don't do any of those, so I won't try to explain them. I think that needs to be left to someone who actually participates and so understands them.

In my opinion, role playing games involve aspects of a collaborative writing project and of method acting. There's generally one person, the gamemaster (GM), also known as the Dungeonmaster (DM), Storyteller, Keeper of Secrets, etc., who designs a framework on which to build the story. The framework includes the initial situation, the setting, the antagonists, other important non-player characters and the probable outcome if the player characters do nothing. The other participants, the players, each have one or more characters that they control absolutely. The game results from the interactions between the player characters and the GM's framework. All participants need to be flexible enough to deal with unexpected responses from other participants; in fact, at least in my opinion, the unexpected is what makes role playing challenging.

Back when I first played (1983 or 1984 some time), table top games were pretty much all there was. A few people would gather for a few hours to sit around a table and talk out a story. We used die rolls to insert some randomness into situations and to reflect the fact that people don't always succeed in what they try to do or always manage a task as well as they might. The group I started with consisted of me and three guys who'd been playing together for years, and we played fairly straightforward fantasy quests without worrying much about character history or depth.

As I got older, my horizons expanded somewhat, and I encountered games in which being able to talk fast, analyze motivations (my character's and other people's) and figure out ethical dilemmas became an advantage. I discovered that I liked that sort of thing much better than I liked rolling dice to see if my character could successfully shoot an arrow into a monster or break down a door. I became focused on the elements that made a game a story as opposed to on the tools used to make the story function.

In any game I play, my character is not me. My character has a history and motivations that may be totally alien to my own. When I sit down to play, I put on another way of thinking for the duration. Maureen was horribly naive and thought the world couldn't or wouldn't hurt her. She did stupid things with the best of intentions and eventually got herself killed. Helen prided herself on common sense but had no real respect those who officially had more power than she. Yvaine was out for anything she could get and would use any means that came to hand to achieve her goals (This hardly came into play since the other player characters were dreadfully nice and gave her what she wanted without asking anything in return).

When I GM a table top game, I have to work in a slightly different mode. I usually have several different characters to juggle and can't allow any of them to take center stage. I also have to think about the mechanics of the situation and the possible outcomes and pay attention to the players to make sure they're involved and having fun. I'm currently GMing three table top games, one that meets weekly on Wednesdays, and another two that meet on alternating Saturdays. Two are set in Roger Zelazny's Amber universe and use rules that don't require die rolls. The third uses a system called GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System, if I recall correctly) that's fairly numbers intensive but quite flexible. That game's set in Boston in 1999 and involves elements of horror, conspiracy and fantasy.

I'm currently participating in one PBEM game and hoping to be involved in another soon. These games involve me and the GM (and sometimes other players) writing e-mails back and forth. I specify my character's words and actions and indicate a couple of contingencies that she's keeping in mind (other players in the scene would do the same) while the GM describes the surroundings, has non-player characters respond to my words and actions and tells me what the consequences are of what my character does. It's generally much like a table top game but slower and without any chance for either of us to pick up on body language cues.

(There's a variant of the PBEM that I don't entirely classify as role playing. It's called a letter game. All participants write letters to the others in character and may discuss the setting and events with each other outside of the letters. Each person controls all events around his/her character completely so that it's more a case of writing fiction and sharing than of role playing. One seldom faces anything immediate and unexpected. I've done this on a few occasions with varying levels of success.)

LARPs are both very different from and much the same as table top games. Players still step into characters and interact with each other as other people. The difference is that people walk around while playing and physically act out some of the things that their characters are doing. There are a lot of varieties of LARPs. Players may design their own characters or the GM(s) may do so. The game may run only one or two sessions or be ongoing. Props may or may not be allowed, and players may or may not be expected to wear costumes. Physical activities may still be largely verbal or may have to be acted out (there's more of a spectrum here).

I run games that have one or two sessions in which I write all of the characters and assign them as best I can to players who I think will do well with them. I use multi-colored index cards to represent props and leave it up to the individual players whether or not they bother with costumes (yes, I'm kind of biased against costumes). I require that all combat simulations and other physical interaction between characters be largely verbal (grabbing someone's a good way to get kicked out of one of my events, but I do recognize that people can get a bit carried away sometimes).

The game I just ran on the 17th was set at a family reunion in the year 2187. It has forty possible characters, ranging from the family gossip to the alien who's trying to take over the world to the people struggling with each other to get elected to run the family. I wrote all of the characters and planned the setting (The setting information's at: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~acm/PlotLuck/FP.html ).

I use a rules system of my own design for running these things. It's evolved quite a bit over the last fifteen years. I've kept it as simple as I've been able to, but special cases keep cropping up. We've had to come up with, for example, the Scream Rule. Players who decide that their characters would scream are supposed to say (or shout if appropriate), "Scream." This lets us distinguish between feigned and genuine sounds of distress. Since we play in public places, there are often people around who are not involved in the game who'll come running or call the cops or otherwise be upset by screams, and I want to know whether or not to drop everything and come running myself.

I'm thinking of writing up a FAQ for the LARPs I run, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I may yet do so but not promises.