In the works!

I'm working on a supplement to Steal Away Jordan which will be set in Brazil, where the PC's will attempt to escape to Quilombo de Palmares. It will be the uplifting sequel. But I'm brainstorming another game. This one's a little more fun, horrific, and unnerving, but in the fictional could-never-happen-or-could-it way. Today I started jotting down ideas for Doll: Tales of Love and Horror. I've mentioned it a few times here, I love dolls. And I've had some scary ones in my life. So this game will be a love and horror story to ti-bonanj (or petit bon ange, New Orleans style), the smirking Barbie, the bubbly Kewpie, that lives in our room or toybox, whom we love and fear, and to whom we reveal our deepest darkest secrets. And these dolls love us, keep our confidences, and hold nasty grudges because we are children and treat them like toys and don't give them the respect they deserve.

So each player will create a two characters: a child and a doll. The child has a secret, something she's done or has been done to her. It can be truly horrible, even to adults, or truly horrible as perceived by a child. Stats I'm playing with are secret, age, imagination, and fear (Child's stats). But each player also creates a a doll character, with the stats, love, malice, life, loyalty, and movement. So the players look at the doll characters and each one chooses one as her very own. The person who created the doll, plays that doll to the player's child who chose it. The child confesses the secret to the doll, and so play begins.

I'm trying to go for scary, intimate, and deliciously terrible. At first I wanted it to be pure scary story telling with no allegory of relationships, but I realize that's inevitable. Que sera sera. I want the game to be like children sitting around a camp fire or at a slumber party, telling each other horror stories, trying to out-scare each other, trying to decipher what was real and what was not real in the story.

I have in mind a complimentary project for this game, though. I'm scouring ebay for old dolls in disrepair (like the one you see above. I'm bidding on it, for sure!) to fashion into nightmareish looking dolls for artwork for the finished project.

Anyone want to join me in the Scary Doll Project? Gather your old dolls, and make them evil looking, send me a photo. Here are some examples and inspiration:

Cute Little Threat
Demon Kidz (kinda like Living Dead Dolls) I'm really going for a more subtle, organic look, but I can certainly appreciate a scary doll, as can Bea, my little punk rock/goth chick in training. (She's certainly one of my muses for this game!)
Yikes!
Creepy Dolls!

Long May You Run

I'm going to be 37 in a little over a week. Ten years ago, on my birthday, Chris asked me to marry him. We had a little picnic and hike at Crag Mountain in Northfield with our late dog Kaya (she was three at the time). He put an engagement ring in my apple pie. I saw the box in his shorts pocket, but I wanted to be surprised. My hair was really short back then, no more than 3 inches all around. Chris' was even shorter. A year later Chris and I went to the very last Bread and Puppet festival. A few months later I was married and pregnant with our first child. I thought about this all day today. I even thought about cutting my hair on my birthday. That thought was fast and fleeting, but I might take a couple inches off to even it out.

I sold my first copy of my game from my website today. So Ingrid and I took a little bike ride to the post office to mail it. Here we are about to leave (I had to document my first internet sale!)


On our way home we stopped at the food co-op to get some lunch. We met the group of kids you see at the top, Eric, Lexie, and Nate. I was taken by Eric's facial tattoos. I didn't notice until I uploaded the photo that Eric has a black eye.

When I walked up to the group, they were definitely a bit apprehensive, but as soon as I said, "I think your facial tattoos are beautiful" everyone softened. Then I explained that when I turn 40 I'd like to get my face tattooed. That won them over. I asked If I could take a picture of them, all of them, and they happily posed. I gave them $5, the last of my cash. They were trying to get to Brattleboro, at least that's what their sign said. I won't argue. When we parted ways, I said, "safe journeys, guys." I wish I'd driven them to Brattleboro myself, but Ingrid was in no mood for a road trip. It was hard enough to get her keep her in the bike trailer.

I used to love road trips. I had the benefit of a reliable car, a little money, and no expensive vices, so I never sat on the street and panhandled in order to get to the next destination. I just hopped in my car and drove, or gathered friends and sought mayhem. Oxford, MS; Little Rock; Nashville, New Orleans, Atlanta. When I was in college, twice I drove from Northampton to Memphis without stopping for the night. By the time I got to Nashville I was falling asleep at the wheel, despite my chain smoking, loud music, and open windows. So I pulled over at a rest area, hung a blanket around my windows and napped for three hours. I clutched a hunting knife, and I was terrified, but too tired to do anything else. Even my friends who out-wandered me--the Deadheads and Rainbow family folks--chastised me for that stupid move. Another time, I smuggled Kaya into a shady motel room with me in Virginia. I still couldn't sleep, even with a rottwieler in the bed and that same knife in my hand, because I got a bad vibe from the hotel manager. He was a nasty, creepy looking man, and looked at me funny.

After college I tempered my wanderlust and limited it to planned road trips to Bread and Puppet and Reggae fests. Then I got married. Then I had children. Last year I backed out of going to a Rainbow Gathering in Vermont last minute. I had too much to do and no money. Backing out made me feel old.

Ten years ago, I would have seen a little of myself in those kids. Fifteen years ago, they might have crashed on my floor while passing through--as Marcus and Skitch (below) did back in 1992. They were train hoppers that my housemates met somewhere out west on their travels.


Today, I worried about those kids. It's quite possible that they were still in diapers when I haunted the roads or kept a light on for people coming off tour or off the train tracks. I actually thought to myself, things are different nowadays. You have to be more careful. The drugs are worse and more dangerous. People are not as charitable to young people who look different. Maybe I recognize the danger in my more settled state. Still, I'm a little jealous of their freedom. Godspeed, guys.

And in other "news", we (Meg, Vincent, Emily, Joshua, and I) played In a Wicked Age tonight. Later, Joshua and I sat on my porch while I pitched a game idea to him: Scary Dolls, the role playing game. Here's what I have so far: You are a child, you have a doll. Like all dolls, your doll has a soul. You tell your doll your deepest darkest secrets. You treat your doll like a close confidant and, well, a toy. Your doll hates you. I don't want this to be any kind of metaphor for abusive relationships. I want this to be strictly about the fuzzy line between a child's imagination and true, pure scary doll badness. Any allegory to anything deeper is purely conincidental.

I'd Hit That

So here are the top 25 keywords that bring people to Parthenia's Blog, according to Google Analytics. I've bolded my favorites, the ones I find more flattering or amusing.

1 and 2. steal away jordan and "steal away jordan"
3. naked sauna
4. tatooed women
5. blodpudding
6. japanese octopus tattoo
7. kombucha troubleshooting
8. people find it difficult to resist your persuasive manner [My favorite. It was a very appropriate fortune cookie message.]
9. how to make ginger kombucha
10. jacci gresham
11. kombucha hair
12. kombucha stomach ache
13. naked women in sauna
14. sauna naked
15. stone babies
16. "stone baby games"
17. ask me psychic
18. bead stuck in nose [Apparently we're not the only ones with a child who sticks beads in her nose.]
19. bead up nose
20. continuous brewing kombucha
21. i like it rough [WTF? I've never said any such thing. I like what rough? Sandpaper?]
22. kombucha addictive
23. kombucha continuous brewing
24. restringing autoharp
25. sauna blog

Some others further down the list include:
"hippie librarian look" (yeah, that's me), "kill your rapist", "see my bare breasts", phrases with "japanese tattoos" and the words "hannya mask" and "octopus", naked women big boobs, other phrases with "kombucha" in them.

Does this say anything about me? I'd like all these keyword hits to incidate somehow that I'm really a nice person with no hang-ups. But people don't do keyword searches for aspiring homebirth midwife, loving mother, wonderful wife, hippie chick with a young-looking face, or the best looking eyebrows in Western Massachusetts thanks to Brooks and Butterfield Day Spa. Kombucha is harmless enough, and I have no shame about my tattoos, except when it comes to telling my parents about them.

But what's up with all the "naked sauna", "naked woman", "naked woman with big boobs in the sauna" hits? I haven't been in a sauna in a few months, and when I go, it's in the women's gold locker room at the local YMCA. The YMCA for crying out loud! I spend much less time in the sauna than all those sauna-related hits would imply.

If you're looking for a cheap thrill you might find one here, but barring discussions of my affection for Bettie Page, my mild obsession with the Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, and my quest to cover my arms in tattoos there's nothing terribly titillating going on here.

That said, I'm going to start discussing most Steal Away Jordan items at Stone Baby Games. Stick around if you want to hear me talk about anything else. I haven't talked about autoharps in a while. I'm still crafting my GenCon 2007 story. There's plenty more to talk about.

I'm planning a sauna visit at the YMCA this week as I return to my workout regimen, which I neglected all summer. There will be nakedness, I guarantee.

Joy!

So I had a mostly adequate time at GenCon. That's an understatement. I don't even know where to begin. As I type this, I'm watching Blood Diamond, which is one of the most upbeat and happy movies I've ever seen. That's a just a lie. But Blood Diamond is a fitting place to begin the tale of how I went to GenCon 2007 and had an indescribable time, and sold a bunch of copies of a game about slavery. By the way, the only diamonds I own are in my engagement ring, which is over 100 years old. It was my mother in law's grandmother's ring from Sweden. No more diamonds for us.

I'll start with the commerce aspect. I demoed my ass off at the Forge/IPR booth, which paid off. Steal Away Jordan made people uncomfortable, sometimes pleasantly so, sometimes unpleasantly so, sometimes somewhere in between. I had one couple pretend to get a cell phone call that they had to take. I had another guy tell me that he couldn't relate because, "there never was slavery in Canada." What-evah.. You can read an account of that incident at Alexis' LiveJournal., starting with "GenCon also had downside". But lots more people stayed on the ride, and came out the other side. This account from The Forge is my favorite so far. I sold 40 copies of Steal Away Jordan, and tied Dogs in the Vineyard for third top seller at the IPR/Forge booth. Vincent, you are the awesomest person ever. I just buy good candy, and pay attention.

Then there was the socializing and gaming aspect. After hours I had dinner with people I'd either first met at GenCon, or had met in passing on the internet. Too many to list and include everyone. I played Adventures in the Land of 1000 Kings, Best Friends, Poison'd, and Acts of Evil.

With Land of 1000 Kings, I met John Harper, whom I mentioned on the Stone Baby Games blog. (Oh yeah. It's up and chugging along, by the way.) I also got to know Seth Ben Ezra, who adopted some of my kombucha babies a few months ago. Also there was Matt Wilson, who designed the first rpg I ever played (as an adult), Ben Lehman, and Vincent. Now here's the cool thing about Land of 1000 Kings. You go around the table and basically say nice things about each other and what people say about you are marked as your stats: Brave, Strong, Sharp, Kind, and Beautiful. It was not difficult to find something heartfelt to say about each person there. By the end of the game, I could have added more loving kindness to each person's stats. Warm and mushy feelings abounded, and I got to work through some of my issues with raw tomatoes.

I'm going to skip to Saturday night's game, Poison'd, just for contrast. Now I've started two sessions of this already, and used the same character (Abyssinia de Cortez, daughter of a Barbary pirate), more or less. I recycled her for a third time, and am so happy I did, because I finally got to tell her story, and then some. So in this game there was Matt, John, and Vincent from last night, and Rich Harper, whom I'd met earlier in the day, and who has some of the most beautiful tattoos--and a dragony fishy sleeve, no less. While we didn't say very kind or flattering things about each other, we certainly got to know each other by the end of the session. It was one of the most intimate gaming experiences I've ever had and one of the most violent and brutal stories I've ever been in on. It was beautiful and disturbing and mind-blowing. We played themes of sexuality, power, gender, and violence. One of my favorite story lines was about the young pirate who tried to do all the nasty acts that the older ones did, but either we stood in his way, or just plain condemned him when he did it. Sorry, no actual play accounts here. I'm still sorta working through it. We played like a tight chamber ensemble, and we didn't need to look at the music. Ever.

In contrast to the Poison'd game, there was Best Friends, with John Kim, Marc Majcher, John (who gave me the fantastic list of Ghanan names, and whose last name escapes me at the moment), Gregor Hutton, and Emily. I've been wanting to play a full game ever since I had to leave the session at JiffyCon when Ingrid stuck a bead in her nose. This one was just absurdly hilarious. I have not laughed that hard and for that long in a while.

The ride home was fun, too. I dozed off and on, chatted with the van mates, reveled in the joy of sour cherries and homemade fudge, snuggled with Joshua, and missed Bea, Ingrid, and Chris. When I got home, Ingrid and Bea had grown up into young ladies, Chris was handsomer than when I had left, the cats were still fat, the house still messy, and I think my frogs are mating again. Ingrid did not wean as I had hoped, but we're working on it. We're substituting the marathon nursing sessions with stories about Razzle Dazzle the Chicken. A desperate mother's imagination will go to odd places if it's late enough and her breasts are on fire.

I'm leaving out a lot, I know, like how I lost my Dungeons and Dragons virginity. It'll all come back to me eventually. Stay tuned.

Now in "Actual Play" Stage

I'm taking the playtesting version down for Steal Away Jordan. You'll just have to buy a copy at GenCon. When I come back I'll set up a purchasey thing at the Stone Baby Games website (which will be www.stone-baby.com, and you can see the embryonic stages of that website here), and then points beyond.

I went to Nashville last week, and my mom read the proof. She thought it rocked.

See you in Indianapolis!

Update! Stone Baby Games is up and running, with copies of SAJ available for sale, and now they're also available at Indie Press Revolution.