THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Show 22 is the last show of this season and it has a MAJOR rewrite.  This is both good and bad.  It’s bad because it leaves me with a lot of work to do. It’s good because I’ve been given as much time as I need to do it.  Since I might go on hiatus once I’m done, I’m not really too much in a rush.  I’m also the only revisionist on the show because my partner went on hiatus.  So it’s up to me to rework the show myself.

Fortunately, some of the work has already been done by the Director and the Assistant Director, for Acts 1 and 2.  I just need to complete what they didn’t get to.

I’m still doing my job and trying to be as efficient as possible, I just don’t have the crazy deadline I usually have.  I hope, once I’m done, I might get to help out doing layout on a show. Otherwise, it will be hiatus time for me.

ROLE PLAYING GAMES/FAMILY

I hope you had a happy Easter. I did and my kids most definitely did. One of the reasons they had so much fun was because they got to play with their cousins at the family Easter party.

Among the many things they did and played was a game that, I think they invented there at the party.  It was a story game.  It went something like this:  the eldest was the “Director” or “Storyteller”,  and she told the story. In this case, it was many stories, mostly classic fairytales, like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk, etc, or Fables like, The Three Little Pigs. So the “Director/Storyteller” would tell the story and the little kids, would “perform” the story and everyone would have a role to play. Or in the case of Jack and the Beanstalk, all the little kids where Jack.

Well, I was only half paying attention to what they were doing because I was having a conversation at the time, but I thought it was very creative of them all.  The problem is that they went through so many stories, they soon ran out of them and the game stopped.

It wasn’t until the next day, when I started thinking about what they had done, that I suddenly realized my kids where practically Live Action Role-Playing (commonly known as LARP).  Then I thought, why can’t I do exactly the same thing they were doing at the party, BUT instead of them playing out a fairytale, they played out a role playing game adventure. That way, they had choices to make and we could roll dice to see what happened during certain parts of the story.

So then I started thinking about what system to use.  At first I thought I’d use SAVAGE WORLDS because I really enjoy the system and it’s fairly simple.  I even thought I’d make a Character sheet with icons instead of just the name of all the stats, so the sheets would be more kid friendly.  I went so far as to start roughing out these icons until I realized that there was a much easier and more kid friendly system I could use:  RISUS: The Anything Rpg.  It’s free, simple and kid friendly. I wrote about it on this blog a few years back.

Having decided that I was going to run a game for the kids, I had to come up with what type of game to run.  Fantasy seemed like the obvious choice, since I could make their adventure very much like a fairytale.

Then it was just a matter of making characters for them.  RISUS is a very simple system and it didn’t really take me too long. What took the longest was that I wanted to make their character sheets visual. For each of their stats, I wanted to have a little picture representing it.  Also, it would help the kids visualize what they were suppose to be pretending to be.  So this is what I came up with:

The first stat was just for the basic character cliche they were suppose to be playing as. The other stats I came up with, where meant to represent some attribute that my kids actually possess that might come in handy in the game.  For example, the “Fast” Stat for my son Dante is there because I didn’t want to put “Afraid”. I thought “Fast” would be better, since I think he’ll be doing a lot of running away.  I don’t think my youngest son, Ambrose (he’ll be 2 years old this Sunday) is actually going to understand what’s going on or is even going to play. BUT if he does, he’ll just copy what his big sister and brother are doing, so I’ll involve him, if he joins in with his “Copier” stat.  He’s also a cute kid so his cuteness might save the day. Who knows…

I’m not exactly sure if they’ll want to do it, or if they’ll like it, but I’ll give this a try and see how it goes.

I’m thinking, perhaps, their first adventure might involve a wicked witch, and candy.

BOARDGAMES

And now here’s something just as nerdy, if not nerdier:

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