084: moisture-wicking
Hullo.
Back from New York. Obviously jetlagged. That's this week's excuse for typos, even though my x-key is still unfixed. The process to fix it has resulted in me discovering there's a Mac specialist shop in Romford called “Stormfront” which I really do hope isn't some kind of Neo-Nazi Mac repair centre. That's taking “We're not PC specialists” far too literally.
Before my inbox is filled by people telling how to fix the problem: don't worry. I know how to do it. I'm just lazy, and am still in warranty.
Contents!
Legs
Crowds
Futures
Lists
Dice
Bye!!!
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This is exciting. Our friends at Bombsheller have made a range of fifteen (Count 'em!) leggings, each using the imagery of one of the gods (And Laura). They're just stunning. Pick your fave, and then fight the horror that you really like Woden's one. It did make me think this must be his recruiting method. “Hmm. On the negative side, he is an awful shithead, on the pro-side, strong aesthetic!”
They're printed in sizes from XS-6X, printed on demand in Seattle, WA and have four-way stretch, moisture-wicking, and SPF 50+. Prompted by Max Tundra's mockery, I have become somewhat obsessed by the phrase “moisture-wicking” and am now going to demand every product I by is moisture-wicked. They're also made from bluesign® certified Italian Fabric Fatale, but by now you may be suspecting I'm cutting and pasting cool phrases from the details that Jazzlyn Bombsheller sent me.
You can order yours from here. If you use the code Divine you'll get 10% off too.
There's free shipping inside the USA. Shipping elsewhere is pretty brutal – I would suggest folks elsewhere team up with friends and order together, as I just checked and postage for two sets is the same as for one set. Hell, maybe try to use the #WicDiv tag to find friends. They're really nice. We're also seeing if there's anything we can do to make it easier for people outside the US. If we can, we will.
Anyway – go nose, if only to see the amazing photography.
Amazing!
*
New York Comic Con was its usual frenzy. I flirted with losing my voice for the whole time, not helped by doing Karaoke twice. No more than five hours sleep a night, something which I’m far too old to be doing regularly. I also seem to have dodged the con plague, at least so far. None of this sounds likely.
It was mainly justified as a marketing trip. DIE is announced. WicDiv is approaching its final arc. That’s enough reason to go to NYCC, do some press, take some meetings and do a handful of signings. In practise, after a year without US cons, we’d go terminal FOMO and missed all our friends.
So we saw lots of people, readers and creators both, and generally having a lovely time. And in the way that a con (like a party) tends to accelerate subjective time, it feels like I was there for several weeks. I keep on remembering having not-insignificant conversations with friends, and I didn’t see half the people who I’m friends there.
I also did Karaoke. Twice. As in, on two different evenings.
This was the first, where Jeremy Lambert and I did Bring Me To Life, with falsetto him as Amy Lee and me as shouty guy doing the shouties. We were nothing if not energetic. That was the bit before I am Brought Into Life. As you can tell by the song choice, my voice was already a mess, and even worse by the following night, where I was only really fit for the rumble of This Corrosion. Which I mainly did for a chance to do the monologue, which (oddly) always works really well in karaoke. I sorely missed my aviators.
<PICTURE>
There was also a lot of lovely fans and lovely cosplay. The above is the most gleefully obscure, being the 1923 Norns. The bloody feet showing where the missing ones are is the best touch. They’re also the editors of Iconic, a WicDiv zine. They gave it to us, and I’d talk about it here, but it’s not out until net week, so I’ll save it until then. Suffice to say, it’s one of the best pieces of fan-created culture I’ve ever seen. I was showing it to some peers over breakfast, and they were astounded.
They also brought the first piece of DIE fanwork I’ve seen…
Which is the shape from the cover of issue 1, assembled into a D20 and gently mushed by me.
In short: yay NYCC, I luv uuuuuu.
Talking about DIE, if you’re a digital buyer, you can now pre-order the issue on Comiology or (for those who have far too much faith in us) pre-order the whole series. Do it now and have it ready and waiting for you in December.
People who love singles should speak to their retailer about pre-ordering it. Or even talk about it generally to them. Reader engagement is absolutely something that effects how shops order books.
High fives for you.
*
Here’s an interview about the end of WicDiv over at The Beat. Kelly’s always great, and this pushes well. As the tagline puts it “The scary thing about WicDiv is that it worked.”
Here’s a couple of short live interviews from NYCC. Here’s Jamie and Me talking about WicDiv. This is Stephanie and me talking about Die. This weekend I’ve very much been feeling out how to talk about DIE. It’s interesting what stuff is coming across to different levels – I’m aware of what I should stress less in the pitch.
On my podcast feed is The Gauntlet’s podcast about indie RPGs. I got off the plane from NYCC, listen, and I’m presented with Patrick Knowles talking about the hack of Monster hearts 2 he’s running to do something inspired by WicDiv. Which is a lot of fun, and good to chew over. I’ve always said that if someone wanted to play WicDiv, Monster Hearts is the system to use as its base.
This Stereogum article from last month about the whole Andrew WK conspiracy hole is quite the journey.
I also ran a playtest of the DIE rules on Monday after the con. Which is clearly not the ideal time to do anything which involves dazzling improvisational brilliance, but Stephanie had yet to actually play the game, and it was a good opportunity. We pulled together a team of folks who were free, and joining Stephanie and me were comics’ Jody Houser, Critical Role’s Taliesin Jaffe and Comixology’s Tia Vasiliou. So I probably should have been more nervous running the game than I was, but the general physical exhaustion distracted me, and we got through it fine.
Of course, none of you know anything about the game and very little about the comic, so anything I say isn’t going to be of much use. But it held together, folks seemed to like it and I can tell I’m going to move from the problems I was working on (working in the last, most difficult class and making sure I had included the difficult narrative structural engineering) and move back to develop the placeholder mechanics I had included so each of the archetypes had their “verbs” in a basic format. Basically, everything works, and I just need to make it work better. That’s a good place to be.
The game itself was blissfully weird, in a Doom Patrol Way, climaxing in a brawl where a giant Truth Coming Out Of Her Well To Chastise Minkind mashed through a million identical instagram selfies. Last time I played it ended up with everyone sitting down and talking about why one of them was scared of coming out. It’s that kind of game.
The game itself is designed in its current form to be played across two sessions (with full campaign stuff abstractly being later, if folks like it.) As such, playing in one sessions means there’s no time for the prep, meaning I had to improvise a lot. Which is fine – there’s a lot of improvisational tactics built into the game – but always makes it a little more chaotic.
That said, the more I’ve GMed, the less I’ve been drawn to games which demand a lot of prep. Because I’m lazy. Even with more traditional games, I tend to think less of scenarios and more of creating a situation with key actors and then just having the actors either follow their plans or respond in-character way to the players’ actions. For those who are aware of my games criticism back in the day, this may not be a surprise. I was always writing about emergent mechanics.
(Worth noting: the DIE RPG includes a lot of stuff for folks who don’t play like this.)
I said I’d do this anecdote on twitter, I probably better. It’s a really basic, but is absolutely the stuff I love.
This is in 4th edition Warhammer, which is a low-fantasy bleak RPG. I’m playing with a small group, and their leader – or at least most mouthy member – was someone who I’ll call Quinns, because that’s his name.
They’re trying to locate a certain renegade priest. They get the bright idea of trying to get in contact with the Thieves guild, who may know something. By following a few contacts, they end up at the dodgiest inn in town, and go up to the barkeeper. The conversation basically went like this.
“Hullo. We’re looking for a renegade priest. We believe you may be able to help us.”
“I don’t know. I’m just a bartender. If I met anyone who could… well, I believe the Thieves guild need a lot of gold for information like that.”
“We’ve got gold.”
“Okay. I’ll pass a message to the right people. Where can we find you?”
“We’re staying at the Inn.”
“Got it. And you’re sure you can pay?”
At which point Quinns leans across the table, and grins.
“We’ve got all the gold you could ever want.”
At which point they go off, and continue their investigations. As I am kind, the next time they’re heading back to the inn, I let them make a perception roll as they head down the street, and when they succeed I tell they they think there’s someone in their room.
At which point the penny drops.
“We told… the thieves guild… where we lived… and that we had all the gold in the world.”
Cue exciting chase across the roof-tops as they try to chase down the catburglar, obv.
Action. Response. That little loop lies at the heart of almost all the gaming I love.
Quinns is now one of the core members of my favourite board game website, Shut Up And Sit Down. They’re running their convention SHUX in Vancouver this weekend. There’s still a few tickets left. If you have any interest in boardgames, it’ll be an amazing weekend and I wish I was there.
****
Work? I’ve been at a con. It’s been slow. Speak next week, where I’ll hopefully have some fun stuff to talk about. I’m hoping to be near the end of issue 5 of DIE by then, which I’m looking forward to writing enormously. Yes, as it’s me speaking, you probably think “that sounds ominous.” I’m not saying you’re wrong.
Byeeeeee.
Kieron Gillen
London
10.10.2018