(via Ken Hite)

Kraken is his upcoming book (out in the UK in May) and there’s an extract at the publisher’s website. It’s just a short one but it’s a great set up. It’s a return to the real real world – actual London (like in King Rat) rather than made up eastern Europe (like in The City & The City) so that will be interesting. Most people, including myself if I’m honest, would prefer a return to Bas-Lag, the world of Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council, but a man’s gotta write what he’s gotta write – the worst possible thing would be a new Bas-Lag novel just for the hope of selling more copies!

I waited to buy The City & The City until I saw it on sale and I suspect I’ll wait for this in paperback too, unless it gets really seriously good reviews. Luckily Mieville is one of those guys who everyone has an opinion on so at least there will eb lots of reviews.

I travelled with a friend down the highway to Geelong to watch Serenity in a pre-release screening. I had a good time, liked the film, saw it once again in the cinema on general release with another friend and bought it when it came out on DVD in order to help boost sales and convince them to make more. We now know that that’s never going to happen but what the hell. At least I have it on DVD right?

But here’s the problem:  I’ve never watched the DVD. Beyond that, I’ve never revisited the original Firefly series (which I also own on DVD). I’m currently watching (extremely slowly) Buffy with my highly horror adverse wife and I’m enjoying it – we’re only two episodes in and it’s still astonishingly amateurish but it’s fun. When I think of Firefly now I think of it being (a) slightly forced and (b) unfinished. Now I know that (b) is not Whedon’s fault but (a) certainty is. Firefly, I suspect, is not going to go down in history as one of the great shows. If Fox hadn’t canned it in  mid-stream, the reasons it is so missed would have been removed. Hopefully it would have provided new reasons to be missed, but I don’t think we’d seen them yet.

Today I found (via Very Short List)  this cool flickr set of 1920’s passport photos. They’re of famous people but they’re largely not recognisable (and not all of them are still famous). Perfect for a Pulp game or some 20’s Call of Cthulhu.

My Gamemaster is looking to expand our group up to 4 players (we’re currently at two). It’s a fun game (that I should post about more) so hopefully we’ll find someone soon.

Reaching my Limits, Part 1 started the day after the bug fight. It’s a Friday and things are seeming a little tense in the high school. Darius is being given a very wide berth, with most people not too sure what he’s going to do, but very eager to gossip about it once he’s walked past. It seems that another huge hole was dug up last night, but this time it was filled with green goo. Obviously the work of a vengeful Darius after the jocks filled his locker with jelly.

The day passes pretty surreally and uneventful. The boys meet up at lunch, Darius again able to find an empty table, which impresses Calvin greatly.

Calvin: “Have you seen Megan?”

Darius: “Noo…”

Calvin: “Oh.”

Darius: “Why?”

Calvin: Oh, no reason. She just said something weird to me last night and… well…”

Darius: “About what?”

Calvin: “Oh.. I think she got the wrong idea about something… ahh.. never mind.”

They get to talking about Darius’ new bad ass status when Alex arrives with a thump of text books. She seems a bit wired, and only stays long enough to suggest that they all meet at The Limit tonight to unwind. Calvin and Darius agree and Alex rushes out to keep working on her many overdue essays and assignments.

Alex heads home after school to show her face to her parents, and dutifully asks permission to be going out that night. Her parents reluctantly agree and so she passes the next few hours doing more homework, having “Family Time” and counting down till she can escape.

Over dinner she notices some tension between her parents and Jared, but waits till she leaves the house to grill him on it. A flurry of text messages pass between them, but it seems her little brother isn’t interested in sharing.

Alex arrives at The Limit to find it packed. She can’t see any of the others, so heads straight to the bar to order a Coke. While looking over the other patrons and finding her eyes wandering to the cuter members of the crowd she notices Darius doing a Moses impression, as all the people move away from him. Alex pushes through to reach him and suggests they take to the dance floor. Once they get there Darius decides to show of everything he learned on the gymnastics team and starts pulling out twists, tumbles and rolls.

This catches the attention of Calvin and Gina who arrived earlier to have dinner and secure a booth.

Gina: “Is Darius ok?”

Calvin: “What do you mean?”

Gina: “His dancing. Could he be possessed?”

Calvin: “…”

The dancing continues for sometime with Darius eventually calming down and going over to meet up with the others. Alex catches the eye of a cute guy named Devon (who might possibly be in college) and stays on the dance floor for a few more songs. She eventually takes a break as well.

Alex is chatting away, a little on the hyperactive side, when Gina looks a little concerned.

Gina: “Are you ok? You seem a bit tired.”

Alex: “Yeah, I’m good. Just not getting a lot of sleep at the moment.”

Gina: “Oh?”

Alex: “Yeah… well I’m only really sleeping 2 or 3 hours a night. I’ve realised since I’ve become a slayer that I can get by on a lot less sleep.”

Gina, Darius and Calvin: “…”

Alex: “This way I can keep up with school, placate my parents and still have plenty of time to patrol. It’s working great. Hey, who wants to dance?”

She hurries back to the dance floor and is quickly joined by Devon, who is egged on by his friends, while Calvin looks on worriedly.

Not long after she realises that she isn’t going to make curfew with needing to catch the bus. Devon quickly offers to drive her home and she takes him up on it. Stopping by the booth to grab her jacket and to say goodbye, Devon gently helps her through the crowd and out the door.

Calvin: “I bet he’s a vampire.”

Darius: “Well if he is, more fool him. Alex can take care of herself.”

Calvin: “I think he’s creepy. I’m going to bail”

Darius: “….”

Calvin makes for the door, followed by a somewhat confused Darius and Gina. They have an awkward conversation outside when they see Alex is long gone, before Calvin heads off, leaving Gina to get a ride with Darius.

Calvin jumps in the oh so subtle Kermit and casually drives past Alex’s house… only to see her light isn’t on. So he drives off, does a loop of the block and drives back past again. Still no light. He slows, almost stops and then zooms off home.

Meanwhile inside Alex is being lectured by her parents for being 5 minutes later than her curfew. She once again placates them, and gently extricates herself despite her mother’s suggestion of pancakes. Once the house quietens down she sneaks out of the window to do her patrol.

Coming around a corner in a local park she almost literally stumbles upon a very badly savaged body. All she can tell is that it used to be a boy and he may have been to her school. He is also gently steaming, so until very recently he was alive.

She goes immediately on her guard looking for what might have done this. Her next reaction is to text Calvin.

Alex: U awake?

Almost immediately he texts back: Yeah

Alex: Found body in Maryland Park. Not good. Can u come?

Calvin: On my way

While she waits for him to arrive she also texts Darius, who drops off Gina and heads over as well.

Calvin arrives, handing Alex a machete, as she comes to the conclusion that this is the work of Hell Hounds. Or at least Hell Hound, no doubt the one that ran off a couple of weeks ago after savaging Megan and Calvin. Calvin calls the ambulance telling them where the body is before promptly hanging up before they can connect him to the police.

They head further into the park to try and find some trace of the demon, but are utterly unsuccessful. They circle back round in time to see police cars pulling up next to the ambulance and the ever conspicuous Kermit. Darius also arrives about now but wisely decides to keep moving.

They decide to just slink off and walk back to Alex’s house discussing the likely locations of the Hound’s lair. Underground and near blood is mentioned in some of the books Alex read, so she’s convinced that it will be in the sewers.

They get back to Alex’s house and she climbs back into her room, leaving Calvin to go jump in a cab and head home.

What next for our heroes? Will:

• Megan show up? Where has she been?!
• Calvin continue to be overly protective of Alex?
• Darius finally get into a fight? Provoked or otherwise?
• Alex see Devon again?
• The Hell Hound lead them to whoever is summoning these beasties?

Find out next time on, Fall.

I haven’t blogged much about Dollhouse’s cancellation, mostly due to a lot of other people already what I had to say. As a series it was deeply flawed and didn’t always get it right, but the thing it always had underpinning it was that it was just so different. That difference in approach to a theme is classic Whedon, as much as the layered characters and pithy dialogue. It wasn’t Buffy or Angel and it certainly wasn’t Firefly. It was it’s own beast, with it’s own issues.

Did the US network, Fox, step in and mess it up? Maybe. Did the show tiptoe around it’s loaded subject matter? Of course it did. It was about human slavery, prostitution and a person’s hunt for self when they’re stuck in that world. It’s heavy stuff, too heavy no doubt than a lot of everyday TV watchers.

The fans watched though. Us rapid fan boys and girls who lap up anything “The Whedon” does and then sit around for months and years afterwards talking about how good it was. How it was canned too soon. Despite the fact that we fans meant the almost guaranteed success of the internet musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog we are not enough to keep a major US TV network happy.

So what next? There is that episode of Glee that is coming up, but that won’t be a Whedon show. It will be an episode of Glee directed by Joss Whedon, not written. Then of course there is the much rumored follow up to Dr. Horrible. They’d be mad not to really. Will Joss Whedon go back to TV? I’ve heard it said that he’s not interested, at least not in it’s traditional format.

I’ve talked about this with a few people and I reckon there are two formats that would suit a Whedon style story down to the ground:

• Mini-series format – Torchwood did it for their Season 3 and it was amazing. I reckon Joss Whedon could really blast this format. 5 x 1.5 hour episodes, back to back and really concentrating on the story. Though he’s have to work on that slow build up thing of his that seems to happen in every series , bar Firefly.

• Online streaming – This is the other format that has been mentioned a lot. A regular show, with proper production values which is shown only on the internet. Anyone who wants to watch it pays a subscription, and then at the end of the season the DVDs are released as normal. No networks exerting control or pulling the strings. The technology is there and the fan base as well, pretty much all of whom are very internet savvy.

So those are my vague thoughts on the matter. It’ll be interesting to see what comes next, whether it be ‘net based, TV or another movie.

Recently though I’m finding that the games that I play which demand a high level of player buy in and direction are the ones I’m enjoying the most. This doesn’t just mean “dirty hippie indie games” (or small press games, or shared narrative games or what ever you want to call them) but also more “traditional” games in which the players take an active role in trying to develop the plot, rather than just waiting for the GM to tell them what happens so they can react to it. This often means that I get disappointed as both a player (when a GM refuses any input from me into the outcome of an action or scene) and as a GM (when the other people I play with want me to tell them exactly what I want to happen, with no input from them) because I see this roleplaying thing we do as a a shared story telling experience.

I really enjoy shared narration games. I love how they promote more player buy in for their characters, especially in the compressed time frames of Con games. The fantasic play experiences the I’ve had with these games have made me expect more from the people I play with, and made me fight against the idea that as a GM I’m just here to “bring the fun”. Being GM doesn’t stop me from being a player, it just means I have a different role.

So what to do about this? How am I going to continue to play in and run games where I feel that I’m getting out of them what I want? Well for starters I’m going to write games where that kind of buy in is needed. Some times that means mixing more traditional games with shared narration ideas, like I did in a recent Mongoose Traveller scenario I wrote, Still to Come. Other times it will be to ask the players for the things they want to happen, and if they don’t focus on those who do. As a player I’m going to offer ideas to the person running the game and if those ideas are consistently ignored or  sidelined I’ll find myself another game.

All these things are easier said than done. But it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, so expect more posts of my random game related musing.