A blog largely about reviewing role playing game material and issues. Grumpily.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Fiction: Performance Review, 2/2
“You said Laura got the inoculation?”
“Yeah.”
“When did you read her file last?”
“This morning. I was curious. Why’d you ask?”
“Well, now it says she didn’t get that shot. I looked at it a couple of minutes ago.”
“I don’t have the access privileges to change her file...”
“Jack does. ‘Course, so does Hank.”
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Video and Images: Music Makes the Characters Come Together
Because sex is funny. Don't look at me like that - you know it is.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Fiction: Performance Review, 1/2
Jack took notes on his legal pad as Laura died during her performance review Friday.
Employees had legitimate reasons to feel apprehensive before their annual performance review. Jack carefully noted every fidget in the margins of his legal pad and kept track of the review itself on the main part of the page.
“…and I was part of the team that worked on the issues the company faced with the Amarillo contract,” Laura said in an uneven voice.
“But that was a team effort,” Hank said in a steady voice as he cracked his knuckles. "What were your individual contributions to it? You, specifically."
Hank served as the head of the company’s human resources department and Jack served as his executive assistant. They handled job interviews and annual employee performance reviews.
“I was the go between for this company with the CDC after the incident,” said Laura. “My work kept them from permanently shutting down the project.”
The company kept three chairs in the interview room. As Laura stood before the seated men, because no one replaced the broken chair, she trembled.
“We were still stopped for two months,” said Hank.
“But they let us go again, they let us start working again,” said Laura as she crossed her arms across her chest. “I was part of that.”
“Yes, you were,” said Hank. “I was there too, remember? So was Jack here. Anyway, the company appreciates that. But that’s not the same thing as saying you’ve earned a salary increase. Why do you think we should give you a raise?”
“Yes sir…” started Laura as the tremors became worse, spreading through her like vibrations traveling up and down a plucked guitar string.
“Laura, are you alright?” asked Hank, concern in his voice.
The woman made a gurgling sound. A seizure rolled back and forth through her, though she did not fall down. Fear and humiliation filled her eyes. The tremors transformed into a kind of disturbing dance. Jack watched Hank get to his feet and move to help. She staggered a few steps across the room, which made her seizure look more like a dance.
Laura stumbled and the back of her calf struck the broken chair. She fell backwards, just out of Hank’s grip as he reached for her. The edge of a table caught the back of her head with a wet thud and blood splashed on the table. The blow knocked over her cup of coffee and the spill mixed with her blood, red and black, across the white tabletop. For a few moments, she lay writhing on the floor as blue-gray fluid came out her nose and mouth and blood pooled around her head.
#
After the memorial service the following Monday, three of the members of the human resources department took a smoke break outside the building. They could see the asymmetrically shaped, 1970s-era, Dallas City hall from their table.
“I thought she’d gotten that shot,” said Margaret, a matronly woman whose many rings irritated Jack.
“I guess not,” said Jack in his quavering voice, watching the other two employees closely.
“It’s on her paperwork,” said Dwight, then still young and bright-eyed.
“What?” asked Jack.
“Her paperwork says she got the inoculation,” answered Dwight.
“That’s a mistake then,” said Jack, stabbing his cigarette out in the ashtray. “If she got the Saint, then she couldn’t have had that shot.”
The company offered free inoculations to all employees. Not all of the employees elected to receive the voluntary shot.
“How many infections is that?” asked Margaret. “I mean, since Amarillo.”
“Here in Dallas or in the company?” asked Jack, lighting a second smoke and looking at the other employees across the match flame.
“According to the newspaper, Laura was the 594th in Texas, but I don’t think they’re actually reporting all of them,” said Dwight.
“They don’t need to,” said Jack.
Margaret and Dwight glanced at Jack. The three of them habitually took smoking breaks at the same time. Dwight began smoking when he started working at the company to keep up on the gossip and had progressed to the point his eyes no longer watered.
Margaret’s wristwatch beeped. She checked the time and then took a pair of nitro pills from a plastic bottle in her purse.
“How long’s this been goin’ on now?” asked Margaret.
“Don’t you read the papers?” asked Dwight.
“Naw,” responded Margaret.
“Good for you,” said Jack.
“Well, it’s been six months since Amarillo,” responded Dwight at the same time Jack spoke.
“I know that,” said Margaret. “But the first outbreak, after the trouble out there, wasn’t for a few weeks, right?”
“It was a full month,” said Dwight. “It was a full month after the outbreak at the Amarillo project before the first appearance of it in Dallas.”
The CDC then confirmed Saint Vitus had jumped the quarantine at Amarillo, Jack remembered. That was part of what allowed the company to resume working on the project – because it had already spread, there was no point in keeping the project off limits.
“How many people have died now?” asked Margaret.
“About a hundred here in the Metroplex and supposedly a lot of those were because of accidents, like what happened to Laura,” said Dwight. “Or the victim had a heart attack or something.”
“Thank God the company gave us those free inoculations,” said Jack, proactive in his defense of the company. “The company didn’t have to pay to give us those shots. You two should be grateful for that.”
“Neither of us said anythin’ about the company, Jack,” said Margaret, watching him through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
“You’ve got to believe the company is doing the right thing,” said Jack, repeating his personal mantra. “If you don’t believe, then find another job.”
“It’s all good,” responded Dwight in an attempt to handle the older employees.
The smoking break ended and they processed the paperwork of multiple job applications that afternoon.
Later, when Margaret leaned against the wall of Dwight’s cubicle, she accidentally knocked off a couple of the action figures he had lined up along the top of the dividing section.
“You knocked off Randall and Dante,” said Dwight.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” said Margaret. “You need to stick them down with tape or somethin’.”
The figures tended to take a tumble when anyone bumped his cubicle. Jack disliked them and the way Dwight decorated his cubicle but lacked the influence to change the rules permitting them. Adding insult to injury Dwight wore a tee shirt bearing a stylized image of a person pouring liquid from one coffee mug into another, supposedly an image from a version of the tarot deck.
“You said Laura got the inoculation?”
“Yeah.”
“When did you read her file last?”
“This morning. I was curious. Why’d you ask?”
“Well, now it says she didn’t get that shot. I looked at it a couple of minutes ago.”
“I don’t have the access privileges to change her file...”
“Jack does. ‘Course, so does Hank.”
To be continued...
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
Game Content: Wonky Vampire Math
Just a short bit of fluffy numbers, to go with my recent spate of world of Darkness material. Several years ago, I drafted a similar article for the old World of Darkness.
This is a vampire census, or a rough estimate of the number of vampires in the world by total population, covenant, clan and similar social groups. By no means a hard-and-fast set of numbers, however, it should provide a ballpark figure by which to put the vampire population situation into context.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Monday, June 06, 2011
Friday, June 03, 2011
A Rebuttal to "Tastes Like Chicken"
This is an usual - for me and where I am going with this blog – posting. I am attempting a rebuttal to Greg Christopher’s post, “It Tastes Like Chicken: A Post-Mortem on World of Darkness” which appeared at his blog on Friday.
Christopher makes several assertions, the central of which is that the new version of White Wolf “World of Darkness” is bland.
I disagree - the full rebuttal is below.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
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