Still Juggling

Scott Hardie | May 1, 2002
I've lost track of days lately. Matt visited here last week. We ate out so much that I can barely stand to do so now, which is good I guess. I missed some class and I feel pretty bad about it. We played a lot of video games, or mostly I watched Matt play a lot of video games. I was looking forward to using Matt's Gameshark on "Code Veronica" but it didn't work in my system, which may mean that no Gameshark will work in my system, which may mean that I'll never beat that game. Matt gave me his "Silent Hill 2" as a gift; so I guess I have something else to play.

We spent Sunday in Peoria. It was originally a trip to cover old ground, but except for a drive through campus, we ignored Bradley University, where we became friends six years ago. We had lunch at New China Buffet (still good) and dinner at Avanti's (still great). We walked around Toys R Us and I had to limit my board-game purchases to two, since I saw five or six games that I really wanted. We saw "Changing Lanes" and liked it a lot; I find myself showing a strong preference for smart ethics thrillers.

Last week was also the end of my Matrix game. We had a bonus session on Monday night for fun, then the big finalé game on Friday night. If anybody happens to care, I have a long explanation of what went down in the end, and I can email it; let me know. The game itself went well, except for half the players leaving early. Jackie and Lenore went drinking with friends, and Kelly went to bed, leaving just Matt, Jon, and Bill to stay through to the end of the game at 4am. It was worth it. I put a real spin on the world that the movie and my game shared. It was a twist ending, but completely appropriate - how could something that involved such a warping of reality not have a twist ending? Things turned out bittersweet in the end (the world was saved with a price), and I'm so happy that it turned out well.

Now I'm putting together two new games: One game will be played in-person in Florida with the BESM rules. The characters will work for a tabloid newspaper and will be sent on assignment to investigate supernatural things, and the plots will come from actual tabloids that I'll buy in the grocery. Players will get extra experience for writings "articles" after their adventures, and I'll create a web site for the fictional newspaper and display the articles there. The other game will be a fantasy game run online with PHP. It will have some similarities to the world game (that beast of a game that I ran for most of college), but will have no central plot, and will be structured like a game and not like a story. I have a lot of enthusiastic players ready to get started, which is one of the reasons why I'm so ready to do this after the world game died less than a year ago. This game will also be on a web site, obviously, and will be open to anyone to play. What will it mean for WPS4 if I start both of these games? I don't know. Dan now has a job and even less free time than he did before, so I don't know if he's any more able to do WPS4 than I am. I'm talking about it with him and I'll make it known soon whether we'll do WPS4 or not. Since I've got two other games going soon, plus the goo game, I won't be too broken up about it if we give up.

So, now Matt's gone and our gaming year is almost over (just two more sessions of Bill's Gothic Earth game), and my focus is on the end of the semester. I've missed a lot of class lately from illness, senioritis, and Matt's visit, but I still think I'll be able to graduate on time, just with lower grades. I've had pretty bad attendance this semester, but you know what? I think I've had better attendance this semester than any other one in the past, except possibly my very first semester back in 1996. The number of class sessions I've missed this semester is equal to the number of ones I've attended in some in the past. So, I feel very little guilt, only guilt over missing some workshop sessions for classmates. I'm struggling to get their critiques done now, but I probably won't get to them all. One teacher has said that we can still pass without all critiques done; the other is less clear. I'll make it; I always do. New stuff coming online soon: The final version of my essay about Kelly and my mom (the companion to the one about my father and brother two years ago), and a web site for my myths class about a fictional American president.