Dawn

by on September 29, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Tarrant County made us peacekeepers. Charles made us businessmen. And Dawn DeMarco made us the centers of attention of every ball and party over hundreds of lightyears of space. They all made us an example to the people of what they could be. It took flexible minds to play all those roles, and I did not think we were gonna succeed at it. I’ll never forget that one day Dawn pulled me into a corner and gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten. She said that we would fail and make mistakes. That there would be many we could never help, no matter how hard we tried. We simply couldn’t drag the people out of generations of chattel slavery. All we could do was lend them a hand, and those with the drive to succeed would hold on for dear life and drag themselves out of it. And they would pull others up with them. She was so right. We did not save the Hyades Cluster. We gave them the tools to save themselves, and oh my God, did they really go off and do that in the end.

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Dawn

by on September 28, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Most would-be governors or garrisons in the Hyades Cluster had no concept of how rigid the caste system was, and totally failed to understand the game, or the fact that it wasn’t a game at all to the locals. The Alliance planned to use our status as Deputies of the Tarrant County Sheriff, through more legal shenanigans than I even want to think about, as a group of peacekeepers to hold the disparate castes together. Charles got us to wear business suits and trained us to deal with the small but influential caste of business owners. And Dawn DeMarco and her merry little band of misfits put us in the role of pretend masters over former slaves who could pretend we weren’t overturning every aspect of their lives even as we taught them to do precisely that. We wore three hats in the Hyades, and we absolutely made mistakes. Some of them pretty big. But we navigated that crazy mix of roles and helped an entire cluster of people bootstrap themselves into the modern worlds.

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I Love You Mom

by on September 27, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

You never know where life is going to take you, or how many days you have to enjoy it. That is why I always made it a practice to say “I love you mom” whenever I left her house. I wanted to make certain that those were the last words I said if something happened and I never came back. Or if something happened to her, and I never saw her again. “I love you mom” were always the last words I said before I left. Now I’m moving into her house in preparation to rent my house. Tonight I opened her door to go to work, and those words came bubbling into the forefront of my mind. I just froze for a moment, because she wasn’t there to hear me. She would never hear me say those words again. That took a minute or sixty to work my mind through. It is amazing the random thoughts of a lifetime that will rise up and hit you without warning.

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Teaching Gaming

by on September 26, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Many years ago, I demoed games for people to play as a Catalyst Agent. I had a lot of fun doing that, until the day I found a loophole in the Agent rules that could allow unseen minis on the table. I noted the loophole on the official Agent forums in hopes that the head Agents would close the loophole. They fired me instead, saying it was for trying to sneak unseen onto my table. Truth is, I was simply the first to note the loophole on the official forums. That angered people, and I got the axe. I spent a lot of years not doing much with the game. But the truth is, no one should stop you from playing games you love. Last year I rebuilt my old BattleTech Grinder kit and took it out for a spin with friends. It was fun. And then I built an Alpha Strike Demo kit and took it out for a spin as well. That was fun. And now I have an agreement with my local game store to teach and demo once a month. The truth is that I love teaching people how to play games. So I will.

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Dawn

by on September 25, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Dawn DeMarco observed the forms of the master and servant society the Chinese built in the Hyades Cluster because she grew up on a world that lived an idealized version of the concept. It was a voluntary game to her people, but she used the skills she grew up perfecting to inhabit the role the Hyades Cluster citizens needed her to play. And she pulled the rest of us along with her. She introduced us as her compatriots, and the locals quickly put us on the same level as her. Well, maybe a step or two down. Especially when those of us who had no understanding of royal or caste systems failed to act the way we were supposed to. But the locals were surprisingly good at coaching us to correctly play the role when we deviated too far. Being taught how to play the part of a master by a servant caste learning what it was to be free was one of the more surreal dancing acts I’ve played in my entire life.

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