For my friends have finally converted me to the ways of game-mastering and running roleplaying games, so I’ve started with GURPS and Discworld. It’s Discworld, and GURPS which seems to be the only thing I play in now (d20, I do miss you).  What can go wrong, right?  Ye gods.  The subtlety of Discworld magic is going to kill me, if the whole “rename the spells things like ‘Stacklady’s Morphic Resonator’” doesn’t get to me first.  And considering this is the first time I’ve ever GM’ed, it’s kind of like being thrown into a swimming pool when you’re first learning how to swim.

One of the best parts is that the person who’s always GM’ed me so far is *in* it.

Great.  Just.  Okay.  Sure.

General tips for GMs that I’ve learned in the past week:

1) Show, don’t tell.

2) Find your standard.  You can have the players be observant or rely on the dice.

3) Don’t make it impossible, don’t frustrate your players.

4) Get the big picture and work your way into the details.

Things I’ve learned about Discworld that every Pratchett fan should know:

1) Brigadoons, named after the legend of Brigadoon, are areas in which the structure of reality is weak and the location slips in and out of local existence. (Wandering Shops from Soul Music or the Lost City of Ee)

2) There are three types of magic: Intrinsic, Residual, and Induced.

3) Eight is a hell of a lot more important that you think; if you’re a spell-caster, don’t say it out loud unless you’re looking for a fight with a Thing or two.

4) Spell names are *funny*.

5) The Disc runs on three rules and principles: life force (anything may develop life), the power of metaphor and belief (leads to recurrent literal-mindedness), and narrative casualty (the power of stories).

Happy New Year, everyone!

1) If you’re a music lover, don’t play music while you’re writing your paper, unless it honestly helps you concentrate or you can block it out.  If it makes your mind wander, like mine, just don’t tempt fate.

2) Try not to hang out in high-traffic places where a lot of your friends are.  It’s too tempting to start a conversation and get suitably distracted. For example, HUM paper Friday, I was hanging out in Jo’s room and we were poking each other on Facebook.

I was sitting on her CARPET.

Then Frisbee and Kath came in, and we found fun stuff on the internet.  And then I was hungry.  So Kath made us ramen.  And then I discovered someone making extremely late-night hash browns in the kitchen.  So we wasted about two hours making hash browns for everyone. And I built a blanket tent/cave with Jo.

It was loads of fun and extremely unproductive.

3) Write an outline.  It doesn’t have to be a detailed one, just a basic one so that you don’t lose the flow of your argument or so you have your paragraphs and ideas in the right order.  It comes in handy. Quite a lot.

4) If you’ve been stuck in the same spot for more than fifteen minutes, move on to something else or take a short break.  However, if you’re of the kind that a short break turns into a five-hour holiday, restrict yourself.  Be strong.

5) Make fun of the mistakes you manage to write, or something you figure out in relation to your essay, or something of the sort.  It’ll make the going easier and a lot more fun.  Just trust me.  Also, if you make fun of your first draft, editing is also easier.  That’s from experience.

I’ve decided that I’ve not spent nearly enough time with family since I’ve been here, but I doubt I’ll be able to spend more.  College students at Reed seem to get their time eaten up by work and hanging out in whatever free time they have.  I’ve only met one student, a close friend, who has to go home every Sunday because his mother is possibly the most clingy creature I’ve ever heard of.

Parents should definitely let their children go a little more than that once they’re in college.  Definitely more than that woman, at any rate.  And I’m not saying this just because “it’s college, they’re growing up”, though that is part of it.  Parents need to let go at some point; we should be able to expand and figure out things for ourselves.  They can’t lead us around everywhere and they honestly can’t cling so tightly; it’s inhibiting.

This is coming from the college student who calls her parents at least once every day, if her phone is charged and she hasn’t lost the charger.  Of course, I’m also the type that likes talking with her parents…

But now the turkey smells really great and it won’t be ready for another… four hours. Or something.  I am going to sit in my corner and starve in the mean time.

Sadly enough, my friends don’t believe me.  Obviously, I’m just hanging out with the right people.

I have been offered drugs several times already and every time I’ve said “no thanks”, they’ve gone “all right, cool.  How’s Humanities?” or something to that effect.  (And yes, one of them asked me how my HUM 110 conference is going.  I remember complaining vociferously about how boring Thucydides is to a very high young woman.)

If most people mention drugs, they aren’t thinking about a scene like that.  In fact, if I had been asked a couple of years ago, I would have imagined a seller conniving a younger person into trying it, or a group of people convincing someone by peer pressure.  I’ve never had a positive view of drugs and I doubt I ever will, but it does make me glad to see people who do these drugs are actually smart and responsible.  (Well. So far as I’ve seen, and I’ve seen plenty already, thanks.)

Perhaps change is upon us. Whether it is good or bad, we don’t know yet.  It is common for politicians to lie and cheat — that’s what the popular definition of “politician” is — and I’m sure that Obama in his four years will have his moments.

(If I were an optimist, I’d hold out for that idea to be entirely wrong in four years so I could rub it in my past-self’s face.)

However, last night’s elections were a defining moment in American history: we have elected our first black president.  And not only that, but one that has come across as decent during his election. (Namely, he didn’t pick an idiot like Palin as his vice-president.)  

Obama has his past. To get on the ticket for the Illinois legislature, he managed to legally get everyone else scratched off so he had no opposition.  Legally, he was in the safe zone, but ethically is another story.  Also, the McCain campaign was not the only one with barbs; there was ethically-debatable actions on either side.

It has been an epic ride. Get ready for some change.

Sincerely,

Shona Márquez.

PS. Let us not forget how Illinois joined as a state in 1818.  If you don’t know: there were 22,000 residents in the area, but they needed 40,000 signatures to become a state. So they signed on the dead; all the dead in the graveyards. Also, Illinois has had five governors put in jail.

President-Elect Obama, please don’t follow their trend.

Everyone’s wandering around campus with excited looks on their faces, jabbering away about one thing and one thing only.  They’ve all got pins and needles; some people are optimistic and have a good feeling, others not so much.

We fucked up once, we can do it again.

But today is election day, and if Obama doesn’t win, I think I might cry.  And so will the rest of campus, except for the lone McCain supporters (I’ve met two).  And probably, so will the rest of America.  The world will hate us forever and ask themselves “what is America doing wrong?”.

Now, in reality, I don’t like any of the candidates. McCain picked that idiot Palin - she definitely doesn’t belong in politics; I mean, Christ, I can’t believe she thought she was actually speaking to Sarkozy for six minutes - and Obama’s speeches are reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s.  ”Change, change, change, change” — change what? and how?  I have yet to hear an answer to both of these question at once (albeit, I haven’t seen all his speeches; so I have some blanks).

Most of the people I’ve talked to are preparing for a landslide. I’ve never seen any sort of excitement like this.  Back in Puerto Rico, we did pay attention to elections, both for president and our governor (more of the latter than the former), but never as intense as this.  It’s definitely different, and people give me odd looks whenever I mention that I’ve never watched the elections this closely for such a long time.  I mostly just paid attention on the actual election day and kept the TV on for a *very* long time.  

Let’s keep our fingers crossed everyone.

6:33 PM

I’m in the rather silent DoJo, streaming MSNBC Live Coverage and making massive amounts of cookies (and generally making a nuisance of myself).  I wonder why Florida is always under the “Too Close to Call” headline.

10:54 PM

After several hours of joy, screams, laughter, victory ice cream, and walking in on my friend having sex (ah), I post the news that all of America knows by now:

Obama has won the election by a landslide.

There’s parties everywhere, people still screaming and laughing.  Some of us can’t believe we’re this lucky, because really, the alternative was Palin.  If that doesn’t scare you, you’re either Republican or stuck under a rock.

It’s already started to be an interesting experience balancing NaNo and college.  I haven’t gotten much done on either of the two!  Hopefully, though, my Calculus homework will be finished soon and then I can do some work on my Humanities paper (woefully due the 15th of November).  I’m not the only one doing this odd balance of course — there are tons and tons of us, and at Reed, I know of a few.  In a few days, we might just go genuinely bonkers, ready-for-the-asylum crazy (hopefully after the 15th…).

However, I’ve noticed that Reedies — an especially Reedies who do NaNo — have a better concept of time management than others, at least some of the time.  I have managed to get everything done with some time to spare, except for my Humanities papers. I obviously need to plan those better.

My friends, with a divided double dorm room, just created a Narnia wardrobe.  I kid you not, my friends, Meg and Liz’s dorm room is now Liz’s room and Narnia.  You have to walk through Liz’s closet to get to Meg’s room. It’s absolutely amazing; it took them and Matt 1, Kath, Frisbee, and Jo an hour to put it all together coherently.  I stood around, loitered, and filmed.

Now all that’s missing is to deck out Meg’s door with an image of a forest and a lamppost (Jo’s idea).

Jeez. Crazy college kids. What will they think of next?

EDIT: In a bid to make this less worthless, I’ll be taking a decent photo or two of the wardrobe tomorrow sans people in the way.  My only excuse is that I didn’t want a photo with people in it uploaded without their knowledge… or I’m just lazy.

But at any rate, our week-long vacation has started.  It’s going to be full of roleplaying campaigns, Halloween costume making, home-cooking, and sleeping (lots).  I would expect most college students go to Hawaii or Cancún, or something silly like that (not that those areas are silly), but I note that about half of campus went home for the week and the other half stayed here.  (This is an approximation by how many people have stayed in the dorms I hang out in).   I think maybe I’m influenced by the old world of high school.

What do Reedies do on vacation?  Probably nothing more than what I’ve already described.  The cafeteria keeps the weirdest hours.  My classes barely gave me any homework.  It is horribly cold out, but my parents sent me yet more warm clothes, which is likely the best thing that’s happened so far.  Seriously,  you can’t go wrong by sending your children more clothing suitable to their view on the weather they’ve moved into.

Well, I mean, I like the dude.  The Histories is actually a pretty sweet book; there’s tales of sex and war and ambiguous righteous oracles.  Sometimes it gets a little dry and boring when Herodotus is trying to restrain himself from any actual storytelling (like in Book Two: bo-ring!), but he can’t really stop himself from digressing into different tales.

Like the one about the king who was called insane by this man and he was insulted.  So he took a bow and arrow and shot this guy’s son through the heart, and asked if an insane man could do that.

Fun times.

My essay is on how Herodotus incorporates the concept of fate into his history, focusing on two or three passages.  It’s fun, but I think I need to change my first passage.  There’s not much to it.  My first passage is when Croesus dreams of an iron spear killing his son.  The basic analysis is: Croesus dreamed, tried to protect his son, let him go out of his sight, and the dream came true.  Whoop-dee-doo.

Of course, there’s an “unfortunate stranger” and a just-married whiny son who never took his wife to bed stuck in there.  Hooray for ominousness!  (And I can’t believe that’s a word!)