I haven't forgotten you

Heck, there are still five more actual plays to bring us up to date, this time featuring the group Uncanny Justice, which has fewer members so is easier to play. And I'm side tracked on converting some characters from V&V (namely Crisis at Crusader Citadel) while work demands more and more of my time, plus various vehicles and appliances breaking down. (Because intense cold is fun, folks!)

So I will be back. Maybe no one will be interested, but I'll still be throwing these things out into the void.

Another thing I should do is post new links to my form-fillable Mutants & Masterminds character sheet. I posted the old link on a defunct forum, where I can't post the new security-approved link, and I get a request or two every week for access, so I have to dig up the correct link and send it. That's short, so I'll post that link tomorrow.

Hope you're all taking care of yourselves

I'm not ignoring you, but I have to admit that right now I'm having a hard time forcing myself back to the computer when work hours are over. (Not that I don't spend too long obsessing over news from tweets and Facebook, but I'm trying to cut that down too.)

Game publishers are feeling the crunch, too. If you can, buy something from them; I just purchased one of the new adventures from Green Ronin for Mutants & Masterminds and one of the two missing Icons adventures from Ad Infinitum.

Be good to yourselves.

Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day! 2019 flavour

Garden mulched, recycling and compost out and gone, bins back in, some weeds pulled, newly-transplanted things watered, and not yet 11:00 a.m. so I can sit down for a cold non-adult beverage and then think about taking the dogs for a walk in the heat.

Hope things are going well for you.

Personal stuff: the C word

Personal stuff

I got some interesting news from the oncologist on my last visit. Until recently, the time-span for follow=ups on my particular cancer were two years: if it didn't show up again in two years, you were declared cured and off you go. (Survival rate for five years was still about twenty-five per cent, which mans that there was probably a tremendous death toll in the first two years).

However, it is now five years. On the one hand, this is bad, because I still have to keep going to the oncologist and having MRIs every six months.

On the other hand, this is good, because it probably means that the lethality rate has gone down enough that I am worth a doctor's time for five years.

I choose to focus on the good interpretation. (I should probably get serious about exercising, though.)

Helpful neighbours and racism

So it's the season for home repair. And some folks across the way (I'm near the end of a court) are having their roof redone. (Good idea; we have to do it.) And the city is predominantly white. Not all white, but our particular neighbourhood doesn't have much besides your pale northern European descendants. There's a few, but most of them live in the controlled-cost housing at the end of the lane.

Anyway, I came home at lunch (because I can, now) and one of the roofers called me over. In a concerned tone, he told me that a tall black guy had gone into my garage.

"That's my son," I told him. I can understand his surprise: I'm short, white, red-headed, and dumpy; my son is tall, black, dark-haired, and thin. My daughter takes after me, so we kind of have salt-and-pepper kids. (It was my son; he had forgotten his key, so he was getting the one hidden in the garage.)

I choose not to be offended by this casual assumption that my son is going to cause problems. I mean, if he did it again and again, yes, there's be a cause for concern. And my son looks different: if you've seen me come out of the house, you're not prepared to see him. I hope by telling the roofers who he is, that's helping educate them. And if we were in a place that was, say, fifty-per-cent non-caucasian, then I'd see it as a more systemic stereotyping.

That stereotyping does take place. I just think that gently educating people is better than beating them over the head with it.

Dammit.

So I figured I was recovering pretty well from the hernia surgery so I tried going in to work yesterday.

Mistake.

I not only had to leave early but I think I’m back where I was last Saturday.

Farzing grebbernaf bandersnatches!

Update

For them following along at home, we have had the funeral, and I've started going back to work. It turns out that my sister and I are co-executors on this, but nothing much more happens until the lawyer gets back from his vacation, about the middle of August. Then we have to do bank accounts and investments and stuff, but they don't move until we have the original will (and possibly probate). I haven't actually looked up whether probate happens for all wills but is a rubber-stamp if there are no objections, or if it's special.

I'm absent

My father died early this morning so please forgive my absence. We have things to do.

Hmmmm.

Apparently I am so anaemic that it was necessary to start me on three times the normal iron supplement Right Now.

Well, I wonder what good effects will come of fixing this problem?

Personal stuff

So the chemotherapy is done. Yay. Has been for some weeks. Got some colour back, should start back at work. Except.

Had my first CT scan to establish a baseline post-surgery. No sign of cancer where I had the Whipple, so that's good, but four black spots of unknown origin in the lungs. Sigh. My oncologist was careful to point out that they could be artifacts from a lung infection, or or something else, and not necessarily cancer (too small to tell).

So we'll give them three months to grow or disappear or whatever, and do another CT scan. (Going to CT scans every six months then isn't now doesn't the radiation risk). If they're cancer, they'll get bigger (growing is what cancer does), and we'll know. If they're not cancer, they'll stay the same or disappear.

I just wish this shit was easy, you know?

Things I forget in ICONS

Hey, folks. Sorry I've been away; chemotherapy is really busting my butt these last couple of weeks. What I thought was that it was like antibiotics...I'd start, and I'd feel better and better, and eventually we'd be done. Unfortunately, chemotherapy is more like they're trying to kill you and they hope the cancer dies first. So until you're done, you keep getting worse. Still, past the midway point.

SYSTEM: ICONS
Anyway, there are a couple of rules in ICONS that I rarely act on, mostly because I skimmed them on my first read and didn't catch them until recently.

• Automatic hitbacks So when anyone tries to hit your character with Prowess or Coordination and the result is a massive failure, you automatically succeed in hitting back, if that's plausible. (ICONS Assembled, pages 43, 138, 139) In the case of a Dodge (using Coordination), it's a bit more limited...throw back thrown projectiles...but it's there. Your high Prowess or Coordination hero can attack multiple heroes in this way without stunting Burst.
• Villains spending Determination When a villain would spend a Determination point (from a power or usually from stunting; Steve Kenson is quite clear on the fact that only heroes have Determination, but some power descriptions include Determination), the affected player gets the Determination. That I remembered. But if the villain uses a maneuver or a tactic to get the Advantage, then the player doesn't get the Determination, because the villain has already paid the "cost" of the Advantage. Good to know.
• Buying vehicles When I looked at Vehicles and the Vehicles power in the various Justice Wheels supplements from Fainting Goat, I realized that the Assembled version of a vehicle would be a reskinned Servant power. While Servant grants you a pool of points to buy Prowess, Strength, Coordination, and any powers, a Vehicles version would give you a pool of points to buy Handling, Speed, and Structure, a movement power (Flight, Aquatic, Burrowing, or Super-Speed), and any other powers. Stealing from the Justice Wheels power, the default number of passengers is 2, and you can spend a point for each extra five passengers. (No, you don't get points for saying 1 passenger only.)
• Old Elemental Control vs. New Element Control As originally written, Element Control had five possible descriptors; you got two and the rest could be bought as Extras(we would call them now): Attacking, Defending, Moving, Creating, and Shaping. Creating is now assumed (that is, it's a Limit if you can't create your element or energy). Attacking, Defending, and Moving are usually obvious Effects (probably Blast, Force Field or Resistance, and Telekinesis, but certain behaviours might call for something different). But that darn Shaping has always been an issue for me. However... There are two options:
  • Just call out Shaping as an Extra. You're the GM, of course you can do it.
  • The book Great Power contains the extra "Force Constructs" for Force Control, and I see no reason why you couldn't apply the Extra "<Material> Constructs" to your power to signify creating earth walls or water walls or force walls or darkness walls or whatever. (The Extra is also how you might do the old Champions power "Force Wall".)

A Brief Personal Note

Just quickly, and to practice saying it:

So about four weeks ago, they removed chunks of my stomach, small intestine, pancreas, and gall bladder in an operation called the Whipple procedure. Examination of the removed tissue showed cancer in the common bile duct. Today I went to see another oncologist--not the surgeon--to see what was next.

Well, what's next might or might not be chemo. Yes, the surgeon thinks he got it all, and the single clinical study shows that for people with my indicators chemo might not affect the five year survival rate. Except it wasn't described to me that clearly, so I need to see how they did the math, and what the sample size was (because I'm annoyingly fact-based). I was told simply that the lifespan of chemo patients was longer, but applying chemo to my particular situation had no statistical significance. So I want to compare the average lifespans of chemo patients with my indicators to the average lifespans of non-chemo patients with my indicators. That seems straightforward enough and will guide my decision.

So that's why I've been absent or flakey this last little while.

John

Another family death

Sorry for being so quiet. It's a combination of work and another family death. 

I guess my family has just reached that age. 

(So long as we don't repeat that time 20 years ago when I did six funerals in six months.)

Super Solstice, everyone

Posting will be sporadic starting last week.

However, I want to take the opportunity to wish everyone a happy year to come. Good gaming for all of you. If you've been having troubles, I hope they ease soon, and bring only good complications. I would rather we all have to choose between six excellent game systems than be forced to work with one that is sub-optimal.

Be kind to one another, and thank you for the kind words you have shown me and the tough criticisms. Both have forced me to work harder at this hobby.

So merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, keen Kwanzaa, super solstice and Saturnalia, or just happy holidays... I hope you have a good wrap-up to the year and an excellent start to the next.

Gaming and GMing

I think I have to admit that, with this schedule, I can't game on Wednesday nights until this job is done...which could be a while. I have to be in bed by nine, and asleep by ten, preferably asleep by nine. That leaves me a whole half-hour to game. Doesn't really work.

So I think that I'll do two things (as I struggle to try and manage my time correctly):

• I'm going to look for something I can do on the weekend. (If you have a superhero game on Saturday or Sunday, and you're in driving distance of Kitchener, Ontario--say, Guelph or even a monthly jaunt to London or Hamilton, and you'd be willing to have me, let's try each other out.) The something might be online gaming.
• I'm going to fashion some kind of survey for my regular gang to try and figure out what I need to improve for them, when I'm GMing next. 

Just to expand on that last point. Even when I've tried newer-style games, I notice I fall back on the same habits (I'm deathly afraid of the whole "you lose until I say you win" structure which I think I can fall into). I want to fix those problems...but I also want to fix problems that individual players have.

For instance, Viktor posted here saying that he prefers a more puzzle-oriented style, and that's not what I do by default--again, I have a tendency to get railroady if I do it: either my solution is the only solution, or I can be convinced as a wishy-washy guy that the offered solution will work.

I also don't want him or anyone to feel unsatisfied. We're all at the table to have fun. My fun doesn't take priority over his fun, just as his fun doesn't take priority over mine.

So if I can figure out some kind of useful survey, that might give me some answers and I can use the enforced free time to try and make my style more appropriate for that group. Yes, apparently I have drunk the Continuous Improvement Kool-Aid. At a guess, two of them are more puzzle oriented, two are more character oriented, and one is, I think, more story oriented. But I'm only guessing; I would never have pegged Viktor as a puzzle guy, though in hindsight it makes perfect sense.

Those things will go on the back burner pile of Things To Do, I'm afraid, as there are other things that take priority. But still...I want to do them.

Still silent

Third day at FanExpo. Still busy with that. I believe I'll see Robin Laws today, so I'll probably have things to say about that. 

Sorry

Life got crazy. Will post soon.