Lev Lafayette's journal

Last weekend was PAX Australia in Melbourne, a convergence of speculative popular culture and gaming of all stripes. With that came a number of interstate visitors and I was quite pleased to host a dinner for Conan of the Sydney-based Exiles gaming group and his fellow-traveller, Jade. The weekend was also time for the RPG Review Cooperative committee meeting and, subsequent to that, a release of the 56th issue of RPG Review; which will be added to our collection in the National Library of Australia once we get past a little technical issue that they're having. RPG Review has been around for sixteen years now, which, I believe, makes it one of the longest-running RPG 'zines in publication, although nobody will ever catch up to Lee Gold's monthly "Alarums and Excursions" which has been running since 1975! The next issue, which will come out by the end of the year, will be a double issue focussed on "Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons"; which incidentially is the unambiguous title of a new book by MIT Press.

It is pretty obvious that my interest in the hobby has waned in the past few years. During this time, over half of my collection has already sold, and the proceeds to various charities (my favourite, due to their maximum life benefits per dollar spent) are Effective Altruism. Nevertheless, as founding president of the association and editor of the 'zine I have certain responsibilities up and until I find someone else to be torchbearer of the Cooperative, it's journal, our extensive gaming library, various publications, repositories, and activities carried out under its name. Fortunately, I am also blessed by one of the best committees that any volunteer-incorporated association could ask for; they are intelligent, dedicated to helping out the cooperative and put in the effort to ensure our activities are a success.

For my own part, I am far from leaving the hobby in its entirety. Every Thursday, I alternate between running a game of classic "Call of Cthulhu", and playing "Wanderhome", a narrativist story-game with an anthropomorphic setting, explicitly stated as "inspired by the works of Brian Jacques, Tove Jansson, and Hayao Miyazaki". Tonight I have just restarted, after an eighteen month break, of my QuestWorlds Glorantha game which started in 2007! Further, just for the sheer joy of it, I have begun converting the famous-notorious "HeartQuest" interactive novels published by TSR into an online version (courtesy of copies gleaned from archive.org). Given their target audience, the stories were pretty simplistic to the point of being condescending, didn't exactly sell well (even if they are collectables today), and the series was cancelled. Nevertheless, it an interesting, even curious, part of RPG history and as such, deserves to be available in a more accessible format.

Last Wednesday afternoon I got my COVID booster. The reaction was quite impressive; for the next thirty-six hours, I was bedridden with strong 'flu-like symptoms, pain in the joints, dehydration, headaches, sweating etc. It was quite a journey and, whilst better than the alternative (actual COVID itself) it put everything one day behind what I had planned, which meant on Friday morning I was quite rushed to attend Conquest, the annual TTRPG convention in Melbourne, which had some five hundred registrations and where the RPG Review Cooperative hosted a heavily visited second-hand games stall. Thanks are due to Michael C., Andrew D., Charmaine D., Karl B., and Liz B., all of whom staffed the stall, ferried games around, engaged with attendees, and so forth - and also to Penny D., who served an apprenticeship at the table and drew amusing pictures. For my own part, I left the convention some two hundred books lighter, which was quite a good result.

After Conquest finished on Sunday I made my way down immediately to attend the Drone Orchestrata event at The Mission to Seafarers, and especially to see Carla's band, BBQ Haques perform, including Carla on the theremin and Liana F., on the harp. Afterwards Carla, Liana, Erica H., and I made our back to my place to celebrate Carla's birthday as the clock struck midnight. Somewhere among all this Bowie cat made their way back home after their little holiday at my place, which I am sure he thought was some sort of cat prison).

The following day was Erica's birthday which was quite the moving feast. It started with a late lunch at Roccella Italian Restaurant which was very good and quite inexpensive, then to the Kino to watch the Korean supernatural film, "Exhuma" which had a satisfying treatment of themes and narrative. After that it was a quick drink at Lilly Blacks in Meyers Place (they're working that deco style) then to Tasma Terrace in Parliament Place Melbourne for the comedy skit "Maren May is German" which certainly had its moments. To complete the birthday succession, today I am heading off with Ruby M., for a couple of evenings in Apollo Bay, extending my time off work to well over a week - I think I'm making good time of it.

This past weekend was so busy, I suspect I must have been trying to catch up for lost evenings and events from the past month, or in preparation for an upcoming busy week study-wise. Either way, it started on Thursday night with dinner with Anthony and Robin and with the discovery of some rather remarkable (even by my criteria) political machinations occurring among some neighbouring states; the sort of skulduggery that you hear about from investigative journalists, back when that was an actual profession. The following night was dinner with dear Liza and Ev, and whilst that was absent of such revelations the quality of conversation was just as good. Plus, there was a new adorable Russian blue cat to make friends with.

The big event the following night was going to see comedian Daniel Sloss at Plenary Hall. He's certainly rocketed in popularity in recent months; a year ago I reviewed a show at Hamer Hall which fills at 2500; this was almost at capacity of 5500. Aided by a quality support act, Sloss was able to provide a certain edginess, outrage, explanation, and ventured heavily into his absurd and disturbed observations as a new father. I'm rather keen to write another review perhaps in the coming week (you know, with all my spare time).

The following day I joined a special gaming day organised by Tim R at uni; we played "Noir", a rather good simulation of the film noir genre, which works quite well. As a related bonus, today I received a small delivery of old RPGs including a very early (1975) edition of "Empire of the Petal Throne", another copy of "Bunnies & Burrows", and a third edition of "Call of Cthulhu". Wrapping up the weekend, on Sunday evening I went out with Liana to the Astor Theatre to see "Beau is Afraid", which is almost certainly destined to become a bit of an arthouse classic, crossing absurd horror and gore with comedy with troubled psychologies. Somehow, this all seemed quite appropriate in the context of the wider weekend.

Most of my weekend has been developing the outline for a trial HPC mentoring project for the University of Melbourne. With a waiting list of several hundred researchers for my courses, even as I conduct them with two days of workshops every fortnight it is clear that the number of requests is greater than my ability to deliver, hence the need for a mentoring project. Not to mention that there is a new workshop in development, Mathematical and Statistical Programming in HPC, in development and kindly sanity-checked by a senior lecturer in the subject. Whether the project itself is actually accepted by positional management is another matter entirely, but curiously the outline is only indirectly for them; it is also a major assignment for my MHEd paper, Academic Leadership in Higher Education at the University of Otago. Which is something that I must sing their praises for, their papers and assignments have combined theoretical foundations with necessary and actual practice every step of the way. So if the University of Melbourne, or Australia for that matter, doesn't grasp the initiative and obvious advantages, there will be another place with a long white cloud that will.

The issue does bring some current thoughts to the matters of "suppressed science", and I don't mean in conspiracy theory sense, but as an actual, evidence-based conspiratorial practice. It does strike me as a little weird that many people do latch on to highly improbable conspiracy theories that lack probability when there is much greater evidence for the actual suppression of facts and usually of greater importance (Technology Review provides a good article on how to talk to conspiracy theorists, and one which I need to improve on myself). Of course, conspiracies do exist, as nine impressive examples by Business Insider points out. But really, one needs to look at means, motive, opportunity, probability, and knowing the actual science to determine the likelihood (and asking them if you don't know it yourself). Because without these steps, ultimately bad public policy results and that kills people and other life. Australia is currently having a flurry of such issues with environmental scientists saying their work is being suppressed. It is like that some people think that managing perceptions is sufficient to alter reality; or at the very least, maintain their positions of power and wealth; but the dead are many.

On a much lighter note, I have been made into an RPG character! Captain Lev Lafayette is a sample character in a recent publication, The Secret of the Silver Hedgehog, "he once was accused of being a Blanquist and called his accuser to a duel, first knocking him down for daring to suggest for daring to suggest he would replace one elite with another". Included as other pre-generated characters are participants in a Middle Earth campaign that I played in some years ago, which included an ally named "Ed Hogg" (a pixie were-hedgehog), which itself turned out to be the nom-de-net of another person whom I had encountered in RPG circles on usenet some twenty years prior. There is something quite beautiful about this recursive storytelling.