The Blog of Roon

Well, well, has the Scotland Yard mole been found? Read all about it in the latest Times.

I can’t help thinking there’s more to this than Lieutenant Griegson, though I note that I was right about a fairly high-ranking officer being involved. On the other hand, though, his connection with Carter looks fishy, especially since Carter’s remains haven’t been found anywhere, which suggests that Carter may still be alive. Possibly this is a feint on the part of Scotland Yard. We shall see.

Vroomfondel knows how to build a fast yacht, I must say. From the Indian Ocean to the North Sea in three weeks? Impressive.

Shirley’s description of the burnt supply depots is accurate to the best of his recollection. His hypotheses are purely his, and he will revise them if and when additional evidence becomes available.

Right now, as noted in the Times, he and Margaret are riding a river ferry, and he is taking it very easy to regain his strength after the grueling Siberian trek. (Talking with ducks does take it out of a man.)

The field has narrowed indeed (though if the Times wants to avoid a lawsuit, it had better talk about Vroomfondel’s alleged criminal activities, as he hasn’t been convicted of anything). If you’re betting, I wouldn’t write Shirley and Margaret out quite yet, though. Won’t say why, nope nope… but I think they might be capable of making up a couple weeks’ lead.

Mr. Periwinkle is all David’s fault. Elliptid, indeed!

I know, I know, I said I’m no good at picking theme songs for my characters, and I said it because it’s bloody well true.

Still. I heard Shirley’s theme song last night. It’s from On the Town (musical, not movie), “Lucky To Be Me.”

Yes, Shirley is a bit of a sentimental sap, I admit. But the song is perfect for him.

House Amyriand is still talking over the varied events of the day around the dinner table. I do not know where the conversation will lead, but my guess at the moment (even though everyone at table is against it) is that Tamasi will have to bow before the inevitable.

This is something Tamasi is good at. She’s bowed before a few inevitabilities before. Maybe someday she will learn to rebel, but that time is not yet—and it may be never.

You know, I’m still kinda wog-boggled that nobody has figured out Shirley’s MacGuffin. If you read through my Gaming category long enough, you ought to get a good enough picture of me as a gamer and Shirley as a character to figure it out.

But what the hey, I’ll drop another hint. Take a good, hard look at Shirley’s name. Then email me when you get it.

Update: For the record, Ginger got it. Good for her.

Several Game WISHes ago there was a question about keeping secrets in-game. Lately I’ve had several chances to appreciate a marvelous reason not to keep secrets: intentional meta-game irony.

While Nacreon and Tamasi are closeted with Rilagan, Isleen and a not-dead-yet Nikolao are flirting chatting in the garden. “I can’t imagine what news Rilagan could possibly bring that would hold your uncle’s attention for so long,” Isleen just observed innocently—when Isleen’s player knows perfectly well what is up because she’s read it too.

Nice moment. If the threads had been kept separate, limited only to the participating players, it wouldn’t have been possible—or at the very least wouldn’t have had the same resonance.

There’s some metaphor cross-pollination happening, I think, that I’m also liking. I called Rilagan a puffer-fish in a Tamasi thought-bubble; Nikolao’s player appears to have liked the image. (The sea is turning out to be remarkably rich in not-yet-clichéd similes and metaphors. Kinda fun.)

Alisa and I did the meta-irony thing during the Siberia trek with regard to Vroomfondel. Shirley and Margaret repeatedly reminded each other (and themselves) that he was in custody in Irkutsk. The Times, of course (just updated with some great interviews from the Folks Back Home; go see), knew otherwise, far sooner than the Addams did.

I think there’s another scarlet sardine lurking in the latest Times. I happen to know that Princess Vandana Pathak was in Vladivostok at the same time as Ananda Das (and I do not believe that 4/9 arrival time for an instant; Das bloody well walked across Japan!). I very much don’t think it’s possible to get from Vladivostok to London in time for the Queen’s birthday party.

So who is this Vandana Pathak impersonator, and what is the purpose of the impersonation?

Again, I can put these pieces together—but Shirley hasn’t a hope of it.

I thought this might be the case, but now I know for sure. Tamasi never lifts so much as a finger in her own (metaphorical) defense—but anyone who threatens those she thinks of as hers is asking for serious trouble. “Her people” is a set of concentric circles—her house and house-servants, her land and its tenants, her people of the deep sea.

(When I was a kid we had a dog who hated all cats except one. There were “other cats” against whom his anger was dire indeed, and then there was “his cat,” whom he understood he had to live with in order to stay in our house. Woe betide anyone or anything threatening his cat! Tamasi is more than a little like that dog.)

I wasn’t sure whether Nacreon and Nikolao were hers. I’m not sure she was sure. Now we both know. They are. They are the inmost circle.

And I’m also fairly sure that the Abyssian Empire isn’t in the circle at all. It will be interesting to see whether she finally adopts it, as she has Nacreon’s House Amyriand, or helps kick it to pieces herself.

I also learned this week that Tamasi is potentially a very scary person. She’s starting to make me nervous.

Tamasi dropped a bomb, but it didn’t go off. She has been informed that she has no choice but to go along with the stunner just dropped in her lap. Informed… frankly rather rudely.

She just told off the court minister passing along this information in no uncertain terms. This is not something Tamasi would normally do, but she does not countenance disrespect (well, except when directed against her alone by her family; that she tolerates).

And if the stunner does actually come to pass, she would be quite capable of making the court minister regret his rudeness, she would. Better he should realize that now.

If she’s really lucky, telling him off will send him and his stunners away… she isn’t thinking about that, but I am!

I am also learning that my fluff-writing has started to resemble Golden Age pulp fantasy in a startling and rather unsettling fashion. Ah, well. I never claimed I was good at this. At least it’s tolerably good Golden Age pulp—not quite Leigh Brackett, but not too bad.

(This is a great thread. I am loving every bit of it. And despite appearances, I don’t think Tamasi is being railroaded—I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen, and I am chewing my fingernails to find out!)

Shirley and Margaret are putting their family back together, after Shirley’s obsessive self-doubt threatened to tear it (and him) apart. Nice to see him get his sense of humo(u)r back. It looks as though there will not be an interview with the Addams posted to the Times from Irkutsk, as Gospodin Karlov has yet to approach them for one; so you will have to be content with the oblivious Col. Davis.

(In my meaner moments, I hope that obliviousness catches up with him.)

Shirley had another conversation with the Duck, which cannot, alas! be posted because the Duck is well-acquainted with Shirley’s MacGuffin, which rather colo(u)red the interview. (Back-rubs are occasionally dangerous. Verbum sapientibus.)

At the request of M. Fontaine, Hannah and her fiancé Richard will be hosting “Gibbs” O’Neil and his moderately faithful sidekick Gabriel Rhys-Williams at dinner in one of the finest restaurants in Paris.

Hannah is desperately nervous about the whole thing, and wishes M. Fontaine had chosen someone else. Even though she thinks she understands his reasoning—she wishes he had chosen someone else.

And I still don’t know what poor Tamasi is going to do, assuming she can successfully play for time. (May not even be possible. Hoo boy. She doesn’t like having to make snap decisions.) She is in a right pickle.

Gotta love a GM who can lay out a total stunner. James just knocked me cold (metaphorically). Tamasi’s going to have to play for time to think this one over. Not the kind of thing one can react quickly to.

Still shaking my head in disbelief…

(Crud. Now I know what Ocietrem was getting at. Tamasi is just too honorable for her own good sometimes. Well, if she has to call it off, at least there’s a convenient excuse.)

Update: Great response from Nacreon’s player. It’s becoming clear that as much as these people don’t like each other—they like each other.

I am thinking that I will return a bomb for a bomb. Ocietrem will just have to live with it. Mua-hahaha.

Update 2: The more I think about this, the more complicated and uncertain it gets! Now that is the sign of a good plot twist. Tamasi is going to have to ask for help working out what to do, which will irk her mightily.

A comment to Ginger’s latest Role Call response said, “The one thing I can’t stand is inter-party fighting or backstabbing, but that can happen in any genre.”

Yes, it can happen anywhere, but I must confess I don’t understand why internal party conflict is at all times and in all circumstances a bad thing. (Which is, just so we all understand each other, probably going a bit beyond what the commenter meant.)

The court minister in Passions of the Tide just dropped a bomb that is likely to separate Nacreon from the rest of his family. (Still some unknowns there, so don’t hold me to that—but it does seem likely.) I’m not afraid of that, and I’m dead sure Nacreon’s player isn’t either. Given the initial character designs, it was frankly inevitable. The resulting fights should provide lots of scope for verbal acrobatics and behind-the-scenes scheming. I’m actually looking forward to it.

Come to think of it, there have been some fairly amusingly dysfunctional moments already. Nacreon tried to have Tamasi write a flagrantly insulting message to the court minister; she flatly disobeyed his orders (and made him out a feeble old mer hunting for death’s door in the letter to boot) to maintain decorum. Tamasi made curt and unkind demands of a rather intoxicated Nikolao, who has since taken delight in testing her patience. And Nacreon neglected to tell Tamasi that she was wanted at the court minister’s audience; if both he and the court minister are quick, they might have noticed her momentary discomfiture, and there is nothing Tamasi hates worse than public embarrassment.

(Well, okay, a few things. But nothing relating to her personally.)

And it’s fine. It’s all fine. Even in a PBeM, where the lack of face-to-face interaction can flare tempers, everybody knows that it’s all character conflict, and isn’t to be taken personally.

Nor is Nacreon’s family going to fall apart at the seams, another fear of some gamers who believe that any party not completely united will eventually divide. Nacreon’s unthinking patriarchy, Tamasi’s sense of duty and decorum, what may (I’m not sure yet) turn out to be a surprising amount of decency and kindness in Nikolao—all of these counterweight the chaos. When the battle-lines are drawn, at least some of these merfolk will start pulling together.

Do I know exactly what Tamasi is going to do? Well, no; I don’t even know the full extent of the situation yet, nor am I wholly certain of the balance between Tamasi’s principles and her iron sense of duty. But I’m certainly not going to circumscribe her reaction just because she and Nacreon couldn’t see eye-to-eye even if placed face-to-face an inch away from each other.

This isn’t to say there aren’t limits. Launch a killing attack on another character, expect nasty in-game and out-of-game repercussions. That’s genuinely off-limits. (Which isn’t to say a non-killing attack might not happen—but even then, I’d give the other player’s character plenty of notice—and veto power, frankly.) Rape a character or NPC in any game I’m in without negotiating with the other player and GM first, and expect me to leave. Quickly. Even if I’m not running any of the characters involved.

The only times I’ve seen internal party conflict get out of hand were when the conflict was a proxy for unresolved conflict among players. It’s really that simple, at least in my experience. The really nasty thing about this is that it can’t be resolved in-game, even though at least one of the parties to the conflict usually thinks it can, if the group would only Do Things His/Her Way.

I’m interested in alternate views on this. (Hm. I think it’s a previous Game WISH. I’ll have to look up the answers it got.) My sense, though, is that forbidding characters to get mad at each other, much less fight, reduces the scope of a game practically to unplayability.