Comments | princeofcairo: Four Days: Absinthe, Stilton, Dogs, and Toro

princeofcairo

Four Days: Absinthe, Stilton, Dogs, and Toro

Feb 22, 2006 15:42

Fuller details on the DunDraCon experience in the next "Out of the Box," but I can reveal that Darren Watts remains one of the finest men on two legs, despite (or perhaps because of) his taking me for four or five bucks in dime-quarter poker Friday night.

Thursday was Fields, already discussed in this space, and dinner at Absinthe, an intriguing " ( Read more... )

sf, book review, film talk, games, food

Comments 14

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princeofcairo February 23 2006, 20:26:49 UTC

Always.

freeport_pirate February 23 2006, 07:36:34 UTC

That's a lot of RQ love.

bthomasac February 23 2006, 08:24:31 UTC

On a subject tangentially related to your comment about Frisco UA, I was wondering if you know of any books, fiction or otherwise, which would be good resources for the paranormal weirdness of British Columbia. Besides "Michelle Remembers" and stuff on Native American myths or cryptozoology. I know there's a deluge of stuff on Sasquatch, Ogopogo, and the rest of our cryptids, but am not sure how much fringe academia has looked at, say, the tunnels that Satanists supposedly carved underneath Victoria.

princeofcairo February 23 2006, 20:29:41 UTC

I don't know of anything specifically on BC, but my first recourse would be to Eberhart's Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies, discussed earlier, and to John Colombo's Mysterious Canada, which I bought some time ago at the behest of robin_d_laws.

bthomasac February 24 2006, 22:49:10 UTC

Yeah, I just picked up John Colombo's "More True Canadian Ghost Stories," which is certainly a great read, but as I already have two ghost story books that focus entirelly on the west coast, it didn't present too much new BC goodness. That said, one where he tackles other Canadian weird stuff sounds fascinating.

i need some help bthomasac May 9 2006, 20:38:05 UTC

Hi there my name is brennan Airey email lairey@nexicom.net and i need to talk about "more true canadian ghost stories" by John robert Columbo ummm... in this bbok it talks about a farmhouse in newcastle,ontario and its a murder house!well suprisingly enough i used to live there....umm i was wondering if some how i could get a copy of that article(story) or the book because i cant find it in peterborough.
if you could reply asap
that would be great
thanx brennan

jholloway February 23 2006, 08:54:17 UTC

Know Knew Books on California Avenue, eh? Small but well-formed.

princeofcairo February 23 2006, 20:31:31 UTC

That's the one.

mrteapot February 23 2006, 21:31:42 UTC

Rereading your review of Dogs, I'd say the review is only inaccurate in that it is too narrow in suggesting alternate Dogs scenarios. Any situation where you have someone deciding imposing a black and white morality onto a grey world works for DitV. This includes a lot of religious viewpoints, but also a lot of modern secular political viewpoints, or a host of other alternatives. The Speakers for the Dead in Orson Scott Card's eponymous novel, for example, or feminists, or Nazis (I only mention playing Nazis because there was a Forge thread about how to play Nazi Dogs, not to endorse this plan) or all kinds of things.

princeofcairo February 23 2006, 21:43:42 UTC

Any situation where you have someone deciding imposing a black and white morality onto a grey world works for DitV.

There's a lot of assumptions packed into that sentence. With considerably less violence to the text, it is possible to read DitV as concerning situations where you have someone establishing, or determining, the underlying black and white morality for a confused and murky world, not "imposing" it on a world where it has no real meaning. This is why I wouldn't be able to play a game of "Nazi Dogs," and wouldn't want to play with anyone who would. It would pervert a game about serious moral judgement and responsibility into a contemptible power fantasy.

mrteapot February 24 2006, 00:32:40 UTC

Perhaps "impose" wasn't the right term. I meant that, any situation where you have people making moral judgements on complicated, unclear situations works as a Dogs scenario.

I also wouldn't be able to play in a Nazi Dogs setup, because I'd need to be able to sympathize with my character, and wouldn't be able to, nor would I want to play with those who would. But I'm not clear why you think it would turn the game into a "contemptible power fantasy".

One of the key issues for framing a Nazi Dogs game would be that the difficult moral choices don't concern the Jews: they concern how a good SS Officer is supposed to deal with a proper Aryan blooded Geran family that are Jewish sympathizers. If you accepted the basic Nazi morality, this is a difficult moral decision to make, and any group that did accept it would have strong support from the system in raising these questions.

This thread on the Forge is, I think, the thread I was thinking of. Sydney begins suggesting that Dogs wouldn't work when combined with racism, but then sees ( ... )

princeofcairo February 24 2006, 19:40:30 UTC

I also wouldn't be able to play in a Nazi Dogs setup, because I'd need to be able to sympathize with my character, and wouldn't be able to, nor would I want to play with those who would. But I'm not clear why you think it would turn the game into a "contemptible power fantasy".

Because it's important, for DitV as designed to retain moral seriousness, that the players share at least the basic framework of the Dogs' morality. I'm a Presbyterian, not a quasi-Mormon, but the two share that framework. Even a Kantian agnostic can get behind much of the Dogs' morality as written. I don't share it with a Nazi, and if I don't believe in the morality I'm adjudicating, the temptation becomes overwhelming to simply abuse my power and execute malefactors at my whim.

Which, to be fair, is how things turned out even with people who did share the basic Nazi morality, but again, I have less than no interest in gaming that out.