Camp

I've been debating on whether to say anything about this here, because it's kind of private, but I don't have a whole lot of readers and most of the ones I do have will go away as soon as they figure out that this isn't a gaming post. I need to get this out SOMEWHERE.

I work at a weekends-only camp for kids with terminal diseases-cancer, mostly, but we have all types here. I love working with the kids, and if it is a little depressing thinking of how many of them aren't going to make it, I try and make up for that with remembering that I'm brightening their lives.

This is my third year working at the camp, and honestly it's the only reason I came back to Tampa this year instead of doing summer school like most of my friends.  The credit hours I get are nice, and as pediatric nursing is my chosen field I love the experience I get.

That's... that's not the problem part. The problem is with one of my campers. A little eight year old I'll call Kaylee. The first weekend I found her crying in her bunk and took her for a walk to cheer her up, and ever since, she's been my best friend among the kids. She has a heart defect, and before she got to camp she'd never really been allowed to run and play outside for fear of overexerting herself. She loves it, and she's always SO EXCITED to arrive Friday afternoon.

Saturday night she was feeling rather down so I took her for another walk before lights out. I remember the two of us leaving and laughing as we strolled into the woods, and then I remember her being on the ground and frantically calling everyone to help as I tried to keep her heart going. I wish I could remember what happened to give her problems.

She's in the hospital now, and she's in bad shape, but she'll last a while longer. It got her bumped up the transplant list, which is good, if scary. I went to see her this morning, and she seemed terrified. Wouldn't talk about what happened, said she didn't want to go back to camp. It's probably nothing-odds are high she hallucinated when she went down due to a lack of oxygen to the brain. If it were something scary, it would explain everything.

But still. I worry. It just doesn't feel quite right, and I don't know why

I'm an Idiot

Sorry to scare any of you watching this. Last week was a little test. I wanted to see if I could pull off writing a slenderblog. The answer is no, I'm thinking, so I'm going to go back to my normal reviews. Starting Wednesday.

Sorry for the insanity. I didn't mean to scare anyone.



Maybe if I tell them it's a lie I'll start to believe it.

Forum Games

For a slight change of pace, and also because I've almost missed my update again and I don't have time to make this a normal critique, I want to talk to you about forum roleplaying. The kind where there's no dice, just a bunch of people writing characters together on forums. I have a great love for this type of roleplaying, I've honestly been doing it for half my life and I love seeing a story come together.

Reading the blogs made me start thinking about it, as the blogs are a very similar type of thing in that you make a character and interact with others IC. It's just a bit bigger, with the blogging and the email and the commenting and sometimes even IMs and such.

But I'm not talking about the blogs here, that's not what I'm here to do at all, no matter how fun they are. I'm here to talk about Forum Roleplaying. Just a few things a tabletop roleplayer needs to know if they want to try it out.

First, fights. As a tabletop gamer, mostly combat is something you expect on a regular basis-though how often that is depends on a lot of things. Many a tabletop gamer has crossed to forum land and been thrown by the lack of combat. Forum RPing, unless otherwise stated, tends to avoid combat because it's messy to deal with via writing and honestly the majority of forum RPs are in settings where fighting would be rare anyway.
If you DO get into a fight, be courteous. Do not assume your strikes hit, and do not dodge everything they throw your way. Just because there's no dice being rolled does not make you an unstoppable god at combat. Unless you have a really good reason for completely trouncing someone, you probably won't, so take that into consideration.

Secondly, sex. Depending on the forum, there's a chance you can sleep with other characters. If this is a mature forum, you might even be able to play out an explicit sex scene. Don't be a dick who just goes around looking for sex. Seriously. Just like in the real world, if you just walk around wanting to bang, no one will want  to have anything to do with you.

Thirdly, interactions. I don't know your tabletop style, but what I do know is that there are a surprisingly large number of tabletop players that get by on glaring about and looking mysterious, occasionally offering threats or suggestions. DO NOT DO THIS ON A FORUM. You need a solid, three dimensional character. One that will interact with other players, and do so in a way that adds something to the story.

Fourth, and this would be first if I didn't have the vain hope that you would all already know this one, grammar. If you cannot write using the basics of good spelling and grammar, get the heck off of the internet and go back to third grade. Seriously, guys. My little cousin writes better than some of these idiots. And she's twelve.  If you need to, run it through a spell checker before you post. It's easy and makes a huge difference.

As a side note, and this is just me ranting, not part of the critique, but I'm getting kind of irritated with how jumpy I've gotten reading this Slenderman stuff. I'm going to start laying off, I think, see if it helps. I don't like losing sleep over this.

Back on Friday, with another, hopefully more normal update.

Slender Man

So I missed doing yesterday's review. I got a little distracted. I confess. Instead of spending my afternoon writing up a proper review of Mutants and Masterminds, I spent it reading. I was doing some research for that Scion game that I'm currently running, looking for interesting monsters to throw at my party, when I found something fascinating.

Slenderman.

Some of you theoretical readers might already know about him. He's apparently something of an internet phenomenon, ever since Something Awful came up with him a couple years back. Tall, faceless, wears a suit, he's a simple, primal image that is all too easy to start seeing in the shadows at night. So of course I decided I wanted to make a Slendy arc for my players. Pants shittingly terrifying is totally fair game for a SRS BZNS Scion game where they're in the process of changing all the rules and challenging divinity itself, right?

It is now. But I wanted to do my research first. So I started reading. Seeking Truth, Dreams in Darkness, A Really Bad Joke, Records of an Impossibility... You should see my favorites folder for this stuff-it's HUGE. Apparently they've made this an ARG? I'm amazed at how much work these guys put into this stuff, it's incredible. Maybe once I've run out of systems to review I'll look at starting a blog of my own. 

For now, I apologize for the delay, I'll try to get back to my normal routine tomorrow. Not sure what I'm reviewing yet, but I'll tear myself away from the blogs long enough to do it