The Dresden, it takes over my life...

I played in another great session of the Dresden Files RPG this Saturday and spent a few hours Sunday compulsively writing about it. Sunday night the Muse even slapped me across the back of the head with a little piece of something that occurred a few months before the start of the campaign and I was compelled to write it out longhand in my Piccadilly after I got out of the shower. I should finish that one.

True to what I've thus far experienced, the best way for me to get writing is to write. It seems a little like the old question of the chicken and the egg, but with the RPG to get me going, all I have to do is make sure I'm behind the computer when the need strikes.

It feels good to have the story flow out of my fingers and onto the screen. Even in this particular case, where I'm not so much writing the plot as capturing it, James' perspective colours everything, since the story's written in first person. It's fun to watch his snarky thoughts spill out, dark and sarcastic, with a tinge of gallows humour. Like this (warning for James' mental potty mouth):

I felt more than heard Trench Coat moving up behind me. I was twenty yards from him, at least, and he closed the distance in an instant. The situation had just gone from 'oh shit' to 'get me the fuck out of Dodge'. I threw myself to one side, twisting on my heel just enough so I could see Trench Coat's sword slice down through the space where my head had just been. I felt the breeze as it moved, distinctly heard the near-silent 'snick' as the top millimetre or two of the hair on the back of my head was shorn clear. I didn't have a level between 'get me the fuck out of Dodge' and 'you're a dead man'. I hoped there was one.

I continued to pound on toward the door, which I swear was closer before the maniac with the sword started chasing me. There was a brief rending sound which I imagined was Mike the cat, hopefully taking a chunk out of Trench Coat. But I could still feel the guy behind me. You're on your own, Sterling, the remembered voice of my Commandant from the Foreign Legion ground out in my head. You're a Legionnaire. You're the best of the best. Major Pressman from the Special Air Service chimed in, Who Dares Wins, Sterling. Yeah, yeah, I know. Sirs, if you could kindly get out of my head for just a goddamned minute, I'm trying to not die here. Thank you and merci.

I'm still not caught up on all my notes, but I'm making progress. The lead-up to the narrative for this week's session found James flashing back to the events of the previous evening, which actually took place at the prior gaming session. I know, I'm confused too. That's why I take notes!

The full versions of James' adventures with the Dresdenite crew can be found here. I can't be sure that's the Philly skyline on that page, but it looks near enough to me, and besides, I like the colour scheme. Thank you Blogger InDraft and the Template Designer.

The Dresden Files: An Experiment

As I mentioned previously, I'm trying something new with my writing. My gaming group has started playing the Dresden Files RPG and I'm writing my character's role in first-person narrative format. I typically write in some kind of third-person style, and while I enjoy reading first-person stories, I'm not generally comfortable writing them. I'm hoping to polish this stuff up a bit over time. It has more narrative summary, for example, than I usually write, but at this point I'm just trying to get everything down on paper (screen) before I forget the little in-between bits, interactions between characters, mostly, that I didn't put into my notes.

Here's an excerpt, as promised, from our first gaming session. My character arrived at an address he'd been given and promptly found a Philly cop under attack by some knights in shining armour...

"This guy can't keep himself outta trouble," I muttered, snapping off a few quick shots. I swore as my bullets ricocheted off the armour and off into the night. Those aren't costumes, I thought, they're real metal suits of armour! Some people will go to any lengths to impress their weird friends at Halloween.

By this time there was a small crowd approaching the cop and the knights. Most people had backed off -- run screaming, most of 'em -- but three or four people were cautiously making their way over. One woman, carrying a sword, oddly enough, was holding it out crosswise in front of her like a barrier. There was a knight standing in front of her, as if in conversation with her. I ignored them and kept firing.

The cop suddenly started to lose his balance -- he staggered and toppled as if there were an earthquake nearby. The knight nearest to him took full advantage of his disorientation and ran him through.

"Well, shit," I thought, nevertheless firing off another few rounds. "He's had it."

To my amazement, the huge cop stayed on his feet. He'd clearly been eviscerated; the sword had gone clean through his abdomen and his internals were not so internal any more. This blow had got his attention at last, though he didn't release the pistol, made to look like a child's toy in his meaty paw.

I did stare for a moment. I've seen a lot of things in my time – battlefield experience covers a lot of turf – but this was new. To see a man – a mountain of a man but still a man – run through with a sword and not crumple into a heap was not only novel but damn near impossible, to my way of thinking. Instinct guided my hand, and though my mind was reeling with sick fascination over the cop's grisly wound, my trigger finger remembered to pull and my arms made the slightest adjustment, allowing the slug to find its way between the knight's helmet and shoulder armour and bury itself in his neck. A moment later the cop punched him and he collapsed to the pavement.

That Old Beast, Time Management

Lately my life's been getting a little hectic - I have a lot of projects and life keeps handing me new ones. Prioritising isn't a problem, but scheduling is. I have to find a way to squeeze all my tasks into the day and still have time to eat and sleep. And play. Maybe a bit too much emphasis on that sometimes, heh.

This morning I'd planned to set up the old laptop I'm refitting for a friend and get it started on repartitioning, then let that run and sit down to work on e-mail and writing for a bit. Unfortunately the laptop refuses to properly boot the CD with the partitioner on it, and several attempts to remedy this have left me frustrated, and the laptop still in need of partitioning. The important e-mail has been sent, and I'm here writing, so I'm doing a half-decent job of keeping myself on track despite the antics of the laptop and the CD. I have another plan to solve the computer problem. Fingers crossed.

My emotions tend to steer my actions a lot of the time, and that's not usually a good thing. This unexpected setback first thing in the morning, for example, could derail my whole morning if I let it. Today I have too much to do that's important to let that happen.

Ah, success! My solution worked, so now I can let the partitioner run merrily all day if it wants to. There's one checkmark I can put in the box. I like putting checkmarks in boxes. At the end of the day I take a mental tally of how many boxes got checked, and hope I can feel accomplished for what I've done.

Another of my self-appointed tasks is the writeup of my Dresden Files character's notes. I've created a Blogger blog for the full text to live on, but I'm hoping to toss excerpts up on here. I'm also contemplating working through them right here on the blog, to show the process. As I've mentioned before, I'm writing the Dresden stuff in first person, which is a form I don't usually use. It feels odd for the narrator to be describing the setting details, for example. So I invite you to offer critiques on the bits, and cruise on over to the full version when it becomes available, which will, I sincerely hope, be this week.

And now, off to other things. I have a heap of work to do for my business client and it's gotta be done by month's end. Oh, click on the image of the frazzled woman for a neat but unrelated article on Salon.com.

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Footnote: Eheh, I seem to have b0rked the primary partition on the laptop, prompting a reinstall of Windows. Well, now I'll find out if there's proprietary drivers that will go missing... *headdesk* I think I'll detail that particular ... event ... on my Linux blog.