Risus: Thirty Years!

We're almost out of 2023!

This year has been the 30th Anniversary of Risus: The Anything RPG, the 20th Anniversary of The Risus Companion, and the 10th Anniversary of Risus 2nd Edition.

As I write this, we're at the end of December, and I feel like I should raise a glass to Risus before the year is done. I've kept quiet so far because I think it would be unseemly, nowadays, for me to parade the Risus name too much. But, 30, 20 and 10 years are worth taking a moment for, so I'll mark the triple-occasion with a story from the youngest of the three celebrants, the 2nd Ed:

It was a scary Colorado day, for the time had come to draw the Little Cartoon Bastards (the name my stick-figure "art" takes when the sticks pose specifically for Risus).

I always dreaded that part.

Not from dislike! I love the little idiots, and they represent the best of what Risus can be, but I can't draw. That's not some false-modesty thing. I hardcore can't draw. I can't-draw at a world-class level. I could fail to draw at the Olympics and win the can't-draw gold. Almost every Risus "illustration" took several drafts, and came from many false starts, and for every one that made the cut, there were six or seven that didn't, because they were worse.

But, the time had come, so I'd sit around doodling when I was hanging out with my players, hoping some of those doodles would work out.

Around that time, a Risus supporter I was following online got a guitar, and he was super happy about it, and his joy over it felt infectious, so I thought: "I should have a guitar-playing LCB for the new edition, as a shout-out to that gamer's new guitar!"

And I liked that idea almost too much? Like, I wasn't willing to let it go. I had a vibe in my mind and I wanted an LCB who would deliver that vibe: a triumphant vibe, a rock-and-roll-fantasy vibe. A happy LCB, shredding with joy.

But, see above. I cannot draw. So, it's a terrible, heartbreaking idea for me to develop artistic ambitions, no matter how humble.

I did something like 20 gods-forsaken drafts of guitar-playing stickmen. And they all suuuuuuucked.

I did many from pure imagination, and many from photographic reference. I searched the Web for classic images of triumphant guitar poses from the likes of Hendrix, Prince, Van Halen, Clapton, Page, Zappa, Buddy Frickin' Holly ... hoping that their moments of triumph could give me that triumphant vibe.

And if I could draw, that approach would have worked. I would have had the skill, the eye, the insight necessary to translate some of those moments into something sticklike.

But, see above. I cannot draw.

So, I was sad, I was adrift. I wanted a triumphant guitar guy. I couldn't let go of wanting that piece. But the chasm between my approach, and that desire, was blocking my path.

It took me a few weeks of beating my head against that wall before the tweety-birds circling my head got me a light bulb, out of pity.

It came to me when I was waking from a snooze, and I scooted to the computer to search for new references. This time, I was no longer searching for rock stars or guitar legends ... I was searching for people IMAGINING they were rock stars and guitar legends. I searched for pictures of people playing, not guitar, but AIR GUITAR.

Go ahead and try it. You'll see what I saw (well, ten years later, you'll see the equivalent of what I saw): that is the triumph I was craving. Not the reality of shredding guitar, but the fantasy of it, the love of it, the roleplay of it. The absolute frickiting nonsense of it. I wanted the joy of the daydreamer, and the air-guitar people are the people who GET that, and deliver it all the time, so I loaded my eyeballs with air-guitar triumphs and air-guitar dreams, and I stood, and I shredded some air of my own, because I knew this was was the missing piece that would snap the chasm shut, so I could stride across, as if I'd always known how.

I got it on the first (new) try. The little dude danced from my pen without further iteration. A triumphant doodle, by a guy who can't draw, of a triumphant performance, by a guy who can't play.

But we can pretend. Happy anniversary, little game (almost belated!), and here comes 2024.

May we all shred triumphant.

Writing Light

I’m writing this post on my phone.

As I mentioned last entry, we moved to Pennsylvania recently, which means a lot of changes, large and small, including in the way I structure my work time.

Back in our Denver days (2007-2015), and before that in Austin (1998-2007), I was a wandering writer: I’d take my spiral notebooks and/or laptop out into the wilds of town and, by bus and shoe-leather, I’d write everywhere.

In Fort Collins that wasn’t really possible; we were stuck out in the ‘burbs with nothing but manicured hellscapes within walking distance: not a single café, diner, bar or fast-food joint within an easy hike of home. On the other hand, Sandra was working from her home office by then, so we started going out together by car, which means I started getting heavier laptops (in Denver, I’d been leaning toward the smallest, lightest devices I could find for maximum walkabout portability, because “portability” means something very different on foot than it means when you can chuck a laptop bag in the back seat of a vehicle).

That horrific suburban isolation is nearly half the reason we had to leave Fort Collins, and here in PA, I’m happy to say I’m back in town: I’m within 5-20 minutes' walk of pizzerias, bars, other pizzerias, a seafood market, some places that sell hoagies and also pizza, some restaurants, a bowling alley with pretty good pizza, and a couple of libraries. I cannot promise in good faith that the libraries don’t also have pizza.

Dangers to my cholesterol aside, it’s excellent to once again live near human life (suburbia, emphatically, does not qualify).

But that means my 950-ton laptop bag is suddenly a problem, and removing the 945-ton laptop is not the answer (it’s totally portable … if you’re traveling by car).

In our last years in Denver, little keyboards suitable for my phone were popping up on store shelves for pretty low prices, and I was tempted, but I had a netbook that fit in my camera bag (I did the Cumberland edition of Uresia: Grave of Heaven almost entirely on a tiny eeePC), so it wasn’t a priority.

But here I am now, writing this post on a tiny portable Bluetooth keyboard, using a word processor on my phone. And it’s not too bad!

The device itself was pretty cheap (less than $25 for a backlit model, under $20 if you don’t need it backlit), and it connected easily, and it’s responsive. It’s chiclet, which I hate (most laptops have gone chiclet, too), and it’s miniature, which takes getting used to (but no moreso than my old eeePC). So, no snags on hardware.

There was, I’m sorry to say, a brief snag on software. I was assuming I’d just use Google Docs; I’ve been using it a lot for campaign documents and such and it’s comfortable, convenient and powerful enough. Usually. But … Google Docs doesn’t support text reflow when zooming in Android (or if it does, I couldn’t find out how to switch the setting on), nor do several other word processors and office suites I tried (including a couple I've been using for years, but before today I didn't need that function).

Ironically, the app I had the least hope for, Microsoft Frickin’ Word, supports text reflow, and that’s what I’m writing in right now. WPS Office (formerly Kingsoft) does as well (with a handy easy-to-spot on-screen reflow button) and, while it’s deliberately light on features, the markup-oriented Writer Plus does a version of zoomy reflow, too.

I was shocked that so many “full-featured” office suite apps had no apparent concept of text reflow, but here I am with my old nemesis, Microsoft Office, and it’s doing everything I need it to, and I love it and I resent it and that’s my lifelong relationship with Microsoft in a nutshell.

There’s still a lot to learn, but this far into the blogpost, the notion that I’m writing on my phone has pretty much vanished as I type. Word (Microsoft Frickin’ Word; I can’t believe I’m in you again, and away from Windows, no less) is behaving well; the correction features work seamlessly with touch-screen interaction replacing the mouse, and … yeah, It’s good.

In a few months it's going to look a lot dirtier, so I want to remember it this way.

I’ve always done a lot of visual work on my phone. I do preliminary sketches and layout thumbnails here, plus map-development drafts, Risus LCB drafts (and a few final LCB drawings), and recently, I drew two entire fonts on my phone. So, it’s a great device for doodles, and fortunately for me, my work gets pretty doodly.

This right here, though, is the longest bit of writing I’ve ever done on my phone. I’ve used fingerswipes and dictation to do the occasional sidebar or addition, and I’ve done that with increasing frequency, but it’s always for tiny stuff: 300 words or so and I’m tired of swiping, or of trying to get dictation apps to parse phrases like Sindran attitudes toward Raansa veneration among the Mourfa.

But this … this, I can write a blog post on. And if I can write a blog post this way, I can write my books this way, too. Hello from my phone!