Welcome to Left Coast: a trailer for my new game

Left Coast, my game about science fiction authors in California, is available for purchase for $6.99 at payhip: https://payhip.com/b/9vJI

Here's a trailer for the game, which I think captures its vibe pretty well. (The soundtrack comes from the band I was in at university.)

Please feel free to reshare this with anyone you think would be interested in science fiction, authors, the lives of writers like L. Ron Hubbard, Philip K. Dick and Alice B. Sheldon, California in the 1960s and 70s, and general weirdness in the vein of The Truman Show, Stranger than Fiction, and A Scanner Darkly.

 

The Jinx: Interesting articles about the timeline (all filled with spoilers)

Just finished watching The Jinx, so finally I can read all of the articles I've had piled up in my feed.

Spoilers all the way down ...

First, I didn't know that Andrew Jarecki and his team had been working on this project for ten years (starting in 2006 with their research for All Good Things, which was initially supposed to be a documentary).

Here's Slate's overall timeline of the events in Bob's three murder cases.

Jarecki discusses the origin of the interviews with Daniel Fienberg at Hitfix. He talks about the intentions behind doing the show, and the way they decided to structure it (in terms of number of episodes, their pacing, and the reasons behind his decision to incorporate himself into the film):

We began cutting sort of episode one and episode one was really fascinating and Bob doesn’t even sit down until the end of episode one. 

So we said, "Well that’s the pace of the thing. The pace of the thing is obviously we need to know enough about this person before we meet him and then we need to absorb these chapters of his life. 

And this is a guy who’s been accused of three murders over 30 years. There’s no zipping through these things because we investigate. So for us, we needed to go and understand what had happened in every one of these situations. The audience needs to understand them in a way that’s not the kind of glossy way that you get in a a traditional television environment.

This Gawker timeline of the interviews shows us that the way Team Jarecki presented the events of the documentary (particularly Bob's first visit to his brother's house) don't match the order they happened in.

David Poland has some reasonable follow-up questions about what would be useful to know about the production process.

The film-makers say they didn't go to the police before their final (probably their second) interview with Bob because they didn't want to be seen as 'working for the police' when they spoke to him.

The film-makers' lawyer, Victor Kovner, talked to the Village Voice about the implications surround the production company's research and decisions.

Kovner says the facts are clear. "The final interview was conducted in April of 2012," he says. "The washroom confession — or the talking to himself after the video, as the audio kept going — was not discovered until June 2014 and was made available to law enforcement shortly after."

Kovner also dismisses the notion that there was any deal struck between law enforcement and filmmakers to schedule the arrest for maximum publicity. Rather, he says, the authorities operated independently, though they may well have factored in the possibility that the airing of the final episode would force Durst's hand.

"It came as a shock to the producers and to me that he was arrested on the morning before the airing of the final program," Kovner says. "The probability of flight risk was evident and law enforcement obviously knew that."

Kovner says the relationship between the filmmakers and new law enforcement efforts is "complicated."

A professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University gives his opinion on the legal standing of Bob's closing statements at Bloomberg News. He raises points about:

* the chain of custody on the recording
* whether it's been tampered with
* whether Bob's state of mind was distressed (post-interview) when he made his comments
* whether he should have had an expectation of privacy
* whether, as evidence, the recording would be probative or prejudicial. (Probative:  the jury is likely to glean useful information from the statement that would help prove guilt or innocence; Prejudicial: the jury is more likely to form an irrational prejudice the basis of the evidence)
* whether the structure of Bob's statement (as a soliloquy) means the material is hypothetical or trying out various possibilities. In particular, the identity of the participants in the soliloquy matter in determining Bob's intended meaning

And for the hell of it, Daniel Kanemoto's fan credits for the Walking Dead using The Eels' Fresh Blood:

The Limit: What collaborating with myself on a script polish felt like

I've had the oddest script-writing experience over the last week: I've co-edited a script with my past self.

Some background:

• I finished my thriller, 'The Limit', back in 2011
• I sent it off to about seven producers, none of whom were interested
• Last week, a producer asked for a writing sample so I decided to polish The Limit
• Re-reading it, I discovered I'd been sending out the wrong copy, a previous draft, to producers.

The draft I should have been sending out was filled with amazing writing choices and punchier scenes. It had reduced the page count from 106 to 100 pages. It felt leaner, more intense. And it gut-punches you right in the feels exactly when it should.

But there were still sequences that felt clunky.

And so 2015 Steve decided to collaborate with 2011 Steve. We used pretty much every rewritten scene from the 2011 draft. With another four years of experience and distance, I was able to look at the scenes that didn't work and say:

• This is too verbal; we're writing a movie
• This is too complicated; this movie needs to be simple
• This is too overwrought; let's make our point and move on

In most instances, all three of those things were true.

I was a compassionate but brutal editor of my own work. I loved and respected what 2011 Steve had done, while feeling authoritative about saying that the script now needed to work 'this' way in order to achieve its potential.

The script is now down to 93 pages. It'll probably lose another couple after this next editing pass.

Had a great playtesting session with @gamesteratlarge & @simoncarryer last week.

+Simon Carryer has been developing a game which he pitches as "What if D&D has been designed by David Cronenberg?" Over the last couple of years we've worked through what the biologically-invasive monsters would look like and tried out a few versions of brutal combat. But there's always been this tension:

• the communities in this game are traditional and suspicious of outsiders and monsters
• the adventurers are outcasts from society being gradually transformed by their exposure to the dungeons they enter
• the communities need the adventurers but are primed to reject them.

We discussed how the adventurers could fit into the setting, and that prompted Simon to share some very cool ideas that had been implicit in his rules for a long time.

---

+Michael Sands has been designing a Napoleonic naval combat RPG for a while. Recently he switched it over to a science-fiction setting in order to explore crew creation without having to bring players up to speed with lots of historical information.

It worked great: crew design is a bit free-form, and we argued for a while about whether our stolen and experimental racing ship needed a User Experience Consultant in addition to our Pilot and Engineer. Plus we have a teenage stowaway and an uplifted (and kleptomanic) octopus who just wanted to fit in, on board.

Really looking forward to giving this more of a test next month.

---

We finished off with a playtest of my game, Soth. I think this is close: it's a game about cultists trying to summon a dark god. After the last round of playtesting, I've simplified the rules for how a community grows suspicious about what the cultists are up to, and introduced some Mountain Witch-esque not-so-secret agendas to complicate the cultists' attempts to maintain the appearance of normality while performing four ugly rituals to summon Soth.

One more playtest and then I think I'm ready to whip this up from a beta draft that I can use into something publishable.

What are your picks for the best sit-coms of the last 10 years?

Someone just asked over on Facebook and said pick only 1.

I cheated when answering:

---   ---   ---

I've found that most sit-coms in the last 10 years have had one or two seasons of greatness (or greatness sprinkled all the way through.

So, picking only one? Nope. But …

Arrested Development (2003-2006) is the master of the gradually building running gag.

Community is inventive and has the bonus of pulling back the curtains on how a sit-com works. Not only about the plot mechanics, but about watching a team of amazing writers correct the faults it discovers in the show as it's running. It needs to be heavily curated though. I'm happy to point you in the direction of what I consider to be the 'right' episodes to watch. The creator, Dan Harmon, has also done great in-depth interviews with the AV Club and Alan Sepinwall that make great companion pieces.

The Thick of It (Season 3) combines humanity, astute observations about how political power is wielded and lost, and is pretty damn filthy.

How I Met Your Mother (Seasons 2 and 3) are a show coming into its height: most episodes play around with narrative structure or running gags. It also has a lovely rom-com heart.

Louis (Season 2) is something I haven't seen, but reliable reviewers have described it as incredible.

Silicon Valley (only one season so far) has the setting with the most comic potential of any sit-com I've ever watched.

Personally, I've also found Big Bang Theory has executed its premise splendidly. It's trad multi-camera comedy, and one day I will write my defence of it—but I have found (a) that by turning geeks into the lead characters, the first few seasons found an entirely fresh field of jokes to plough, and (b) despite massive stumbling blocks in Seasons 3 and 4, it fulfills the promise it makes to the audience and is not afraid to let its characters grow. The latest season I've watched (7) is disappointingly filled with misogyny and jokes about obesity: some episodes were basically unwatchable as a result.

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone (2013) is a must-see for fans

Last week, I had the pleasure of watching Made of Stone, the new documentary by Shane Meadows about the Stone Roses reuniting for a tour.

If you've ever enjoyed listening to the Stone Roses, this is a must-see. 

It's touched with insights into the legal events that surrounded their break-up, examines the creative dynamics between the band, and has some great drama in the vein of the best music docos.

But best of all: the music. Meadows has edited the film and the performances of the songs to bring out the subtext in the lyrics and the interplay between the band members. The way each song (and where it's performed) adds to the story of a band trying to reunite is just incredible. There were at least two points where I cried, and I was absolutely riveted by the last 15 minutes of the film.

Anyway, here's the trailer (which I think accurately captures the vibe of the film). If you like the trailer, you'll like the film.

My new game: 'Soth'. It's Call of Cthulhu, after you've gone mad

If you ever wanted to know what the world looked like from the villains' point of view, Soth is the game for you.

Soth (26 page .pdf)

It's a roleplaying game where you play cultists in small town America trying to summon the dark god Soth. 

I call it ‘the horrible game’: it starts with your cult having just completed your first ritual sacrifice, and continues with you having to juggle four things:

• covering up your crimes
• continuing with your cult’s rituals
• fulfilling your mundane responsibilities so your family, friends and workmates don’t get suspicious
• warding off the growing number of investigators looking to bring you down.

The tone of the game is noir. In my playtests, it's felt very much like a ‘cat-and-mouse’ thriller. Sometimes the cultists are on top and their evil plans seem unstoppable; sometimes they're very much on the back-foot, scrambling to save themselves. It's got a very competitive ‘players vs. GM’ dynamic.

This was my entry in this year's Game Chef entry this year: a scorched-earth rewrite of an earlier version that's now a mostly diceless hack of Apocalypse World.

If it sounds like your sort of thing, feel free to download, share, play and comment here.

How to run a forum: Have a clear purpose and expected behaviour. Publicly call out offenders

Notes from a 2007 interview. On his Theory from the Closet podcast, Clyde L Roher interviewed Ron Edwards and Vincent Baker on their moderation policies at the Forge. They had three conclusions:

1. The site's purpose needs to be explicit.
   
2. The behaviour you expect from members of the community needs to be clearly stated.
   
3. When a person is behaving problematically, the moderator needs to call them out publicly.

(A fourth principle: you never need to apologise to the moderator.)

It's a good listen, with some other conversation about running Spione and Dogs in the Vineyard. The interview is here: http://www.geekyandgenki.com/show025-interview-with-ron-edwards-and-vincent-baker/

My Left Coast game is a perk for a Philip K Dick movie kickstarter.

There's 8 days left to get a special edition of Left Coast: my game about science fiction writers living in California.

The game was inspired by:

• a competition called ‘The Ronnies’ where you have to write the game within 24 hours, and 
• a collection of interviews with Philip K. Dick (PKD) that showed me how human he was: fallible, creative, moving somewhere between a working poor and middle-class lifestyle, filled with convictions and insight, and having experienced something mystical and inexplicable that completely changed his relationship with reality.

The simple pitch for Left Coast is that you create a short story about a science fiction author and her eccentric friends and family. The problems really start when weirdness from the author’s novels begins invading real life. The whole game takes about two hours to play, and you should be able to sit down and be creating a story with your friends within 15 minutes.


How do you get a copy?

Short answer: go to this Kickstarter site and pledge $5: Radio Free Albemuth kickstarter


Long and weird answer:

While I was developing the game, Ivan (one of the playtesters) recommended PKD’s novel, Radio Free Albemuth to me. He was totally right: this book was the missing piece in my inspirations for the game. It’s set in a world that’s pretty much like ours; one of the main characters is Philip K. Dick. The other main character is Nick Brady. He’s receiving telepathic messages that are leading him towards trying to overthrow the government. The book’s main mystery is where are those messages coming from? Is Nick crazy? Is he receiving messages from an alternate dimension or time travelers?

At the start of the year, I was contacted by John Alan Simon, an actual Hollywood producer. Once I'd recovered from my surprise, we started talking about a passion project he’s worked on for years: a film adaptation of Radio Free Albemuth that's (a) finished and (b) faithful to the book.

If you’re like me then PKD film adaptations are quite frustrating. There’s a tendency for the ideas in the original story to get strapped onto a chase narrative, so that Act 1 introduces a cool world and a fascinating premise / interesting situation, and then Act 2 jettisons all that to put the main characters on the run.

Radio Free Albemuth is different. It’s got the character focus of an adaptation like A Scanner Darkly. However, the minds of the main characters in Radio Free Albemuth aren’t disintegrating quite as much as the lead character in Scanner. As a result, the story and film focuses more on what it might be like to live in a country ruled by a government obsessed with surveilling and controlling its citizens, and what the cost of rebellion against that government might be.

John Alan Simon found a copy of my original draft of Left Coast online and recognized we were both passionate about these sorts of worlds and stories.

He talked about how the film was complete and had gotten excellent reviews:

Variety
Bleeding Cool
The London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film

... and explained that he was kickstarting to finance a limited release of Radio Free Albemuth in theatres.

I was happy to help. So, I’ve offered Left Coast as a Kickstarter reward.

If you're interested, you can find out more about Left Coast and the Radio Free Albemuth kickstarter here:

Radio Free Albumeth: the Left Coast bonus

This week, I've been learning Adobe Premiere and After Effects

I recut the Jenni's Angels 48 Hour film from 2010: 'Ultimate Monster Fighter: Showdown' (UMF:S). It was a small project to ease back into editing and teach myself the basics of Adobe Premiere.

'The Hunt' is the result:

As I looked over the raw footage of UMF:S, I felt that I really wanted to concentrate on the story of the fight between Jon and Kerina. Figuring out the beats of that story and how to play it tighter and more seriously than UMF:S took a while.

It became clear that it'd be cool to insert a special effect into one of the sequences of the fight. Until this week, I'd never created a special effect but I've watched Norman and Andrew use After Effects to do some great stuff, so I decided to boot it up and teach myself how to use it (google proved helpful).

The weak spot is definitely my sound mixing skills. I haven't figured how to balance all of the elements yet, and that's crucial to any film playing properly.

I'm looking forward to doing more of this.

Here's the original 'Ultimate Monster Fighter: Showdown':




... which is, itself, a sequel to 'Monster Hunter IV: Beyond Repair':

Stephen King's The Dark Tower: Fan Art and Casting

Kevin Costner (Roland), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Eddie), Traci Thoms (Susannah) and Chandler Canterbury (Jake)

This is a bit of an experiment with Photoshop, to try and teach myself some stuff (I still have MUCH to learn). Also, I've made flagrant use of other peoples' art in putting these images together.

The Fades 1.6:

Turns out that having only 6 episodes lets a show be nasty and status-quo-changing.

The Fades 1.5

An episode that riffs off both Buffy's 'School Hard' and John Carpenter films. This one simultaneously feels like a placeholder episode, a nasty self-contained horror movie, and a sophisticated piece of writing that clarifies everyone's motivations and puts all the characters in interesting positions for the finale.

The Fades 1.4: my twitter commentary

A master-class in holding an audience's interest by subverting expectations.

The Fades 1.3: a twitter commentary

This was a fantastic episode, with some of the best plot developments I've seen in a show since Supernatural's Season 1 finale.

The Fades 1.2: a twitter commentary

Fiasco: Time travel and Coen Brothers shenanigans create a compelling story

On Tuesday night, I had my first unequivocally successful game of Fiasco - a roleplaying game by Jason Morningstar about inspired by cinematic tales of small time capers gone disastrously wrong (such as Blood Simple, Fargo, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan).

 Fiasco is a GM-less game for 3-5 players. My previous attempts have been marred by different combinations of the following:

• too many players 
• disagreements about tone (some players wanting the story to be gonzo; others wanting it more serious and real) 
• lack of genuine enthusiasm from all players about the setting of the story 
• scenes that featured fuzzy motivations and unclear conflicts 
• confusion amongst the players about how events in the story pay off and tie together. 

This session (which lasted about two hours) dealt with many of those problems head on.

We had five players, and all of us were genuinely keen to play a setting called 'All the Damn Time', which centres around a time-traveller called Sam. Each player portrays Sam at a different stage of his life, and each Sam (from youngest to oldest) has access to a time machine and can interfere or aid the other versions of himself.

Once we'd set the story up two situations clearly emerged. Firstly, my character, Sam at 12 years old (henceforth Sam@12) was obsessed with building a time machine and disappointed with Sam@17 who had abandoned this dream. Secondly, due to a malfunction with the time machine the oldest version of Sam (Sam@33) was stuck in the Mesozoic era trying to avoid dinosaurs and find a way out.

I took the opportunity before the game began to ask everyone a few questions about what was motivating each of our Sams - and expressed a preference for clear simple motivations. For instance, Sam@12 wanted to build the time machine in order to go back and save his mum's life.

From there, the game flowed pretty smoothly. Fiasco doesn't really give you much support in the way of 'what happens in a scene' but the game works well if a group (a) are all enthusiastic about the setting and characters they've chosen,  (b) use the locations, objects and motivations that the setting gives them, (c) have a clear understanding of each character's motives, (d) stay aware of how everyone's plans will affect each other, and (e) are familiar with the genre of ambitious people trying to pull off cons that are too smart for their capabilities.

My favourite moments included:

• Sam@12's disgust at how Sam@17 just wanted to play his guitar - leading to Sam@12 attempting to crush his own hand with a hammer and being carted off to a psych ward for extensive therapy ... which led to him being convinced that his experiences with time travel were a delusion and that he should take up the guitar as musical therapy.
  
• Sam@17 being harrassed by every single other version of Sam into building the machine. The breaking point came when Sam@28 dragged Sam@17 back to see Sam's mother playing with Sam@7. To Sam@17, this was a complete violation of that special moment - and it was at that point we realised that the mysterious figure who'd been defeating all our attempts to save our mum was Sam@17 experiencing a Tyler Durden-style psychotic break / split personality that prevented us from realising we were sabotaging our own efforts.
  
• The continual replaying of Sam@22's first meeting with Abby Wright, venture capitalist and lover. By the second meeting it was becoming clear that both Sam and Abby were getting instructions from their future selves about what to say and how to act, and that two different lots of time travellers were trying to get the advantage over each other.

Great game, great players, genuine emotions, twisting multi-layered cons. It may have taken me 10 games, a full-read through of the rules, leafing through tons of internet posts about how to play, extensive thinking, and watching Tabletop's Fiasco episode, but I can now thoroughly recommend this game when played with the right people and the right techniques.



Here's a 30 minute video showing how the first half of an excellent game of Fiasco works.

Agent Anna 1.1

The Fades 1.1

Just gave some feedback on a game about Mars colonisaton

http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/17980/life-on-mars-beta-feedback-playtesters-wanted#Item_1

'Life On Mars' is a fascinating examination of how to present and teach a game. It's about three pages long, and each page introduces new rules into a game about a group of colonists travelling to and exploring Mars.

The game's being written for a competition that's due in two weeks. It's in a rough state at the moment, but I'll be checking out the next / finished version.

http://heartofthedeernicorn.com/downloads/lifeonmars-beta.pdf