The · New · Republic · of · Chelemby

In a fit of errant open-mindedness, I decided over the course of this last week to listen to a variety of gaming podcasts. I won't bother to give the names, mainly in an effort to protect the guilty. Now all of these podcasts were ones recommended by one or more people on various gaming geekboards that I frequent, such as ENWorld, White Wolf Forums, RPGNet, and the like.

Folks, these things were almost unremittingly horrible.

First up, they seem to be almost entirely from the "Let Me Pull This Out Of My Ass" at the last minute configuration of broadcasting. While several of them had "themes", most of them veered wildly away from the topic at hand. There is no real organization in most cases, and not attempt at in. Indeed, at least one podcast I listened to sneered at the producers of another podcast for "sounding scripted". People lose their train of thought during the middle of these podcasts, hem and haw all over the place, get involved in strange circular tail-chasing arguments and the like. While there may well be nuggets of good information hidden in the dross, it does not appear to be worth the time and effort to search for it.

Second, many cooks, spoiled meal. In most of the podcasts the idea seems to be to have at least two, but often three or even four people competing pretty much simultaneously for mike-time, without any signals as to who should lead a discussion. Interviews were stepped on, people constantly interrupt each other, a topic will start with Person A setting an agenda for the conversation only to have Person B take a tangential view of the topic while Person C only wants to bring up lame quotes from either current media or the last game session. One person would be good; two at most. Beyond that, you simply have a mess.

Fourth, inside jokes. And crude language. Wow. I don't mind a bit of a blue tongue (ask my friends), but does it really help to tell crude inside jokes over the airwaves to people who don't know about you and your characters? Does it really advance the notion of gaming to put down people who are not that, often in relationship to topics not brought up to the listeners? And remember all those tales about "Let Me Tell You About My 12th Level Paladin" and how this drives even gamers away? Folks, same thing here.

Finally, "Actual Play" sessions are just horrible. There is usually no attempt to make them ore than simply listening in on a group of people who game together, no explanations for how rules work and the like. Just listening to people involved in a game, which necessarily involves many digressions that have nothing to do with gaming and games, but a lot to do with the outside world, how your week went, and why someone didn't chip in for the pizza.

Are non-gaming podcasts on this same inane level? I fear for future communications if this is the case...

On this day in 1815, over 50,000 men were killed, wounded or lost in Napoleon Bonaparte's last bid for control of Europe.

The Battle of Waterloo was, in the words of the Duke of Wellington, "a near run thing". Troops from Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, France, England, Prussia, and many other nations all struggled together on a wet, muddy, oddly rolling bit of Dutch countryside (oddly near the earlier Battle of Agincourt and the future Battle of the Somme -- ask John Keegan). In the end, the "emperor" Napoleon (a highly debatable title, given his previous defeat at Leipzig in 1813) was defeated, his much vaunted (yet almost never deployed) Old Guard was slaughtered, and a man who in later years thought he was pregnant with an elephant (the Prussian general von Blücher) provided the coup de grace the truly broke the French forces.

I have been reading a lot on the period of the Napoleonic Wars, tracing the wriggling thread that connects the English Civil War ultimately to the writings of Karl Marx. (Yep, very wriggly thread, that.) Nowdays the images that people get about these wars if they have not looked into the period is something about a short, fat man in a funny hat with his hand under his waistcoat and a bunch of armies in clown-bright uniforms, probably matched with the word "Waterloo" in a vague manner. Fair enough -- the events are now 200 years gone and given how little people know about what happened 30 years ago, this is at least something.

These wars began vaguely as an outgrowth of the French Revolution. That event was viewed in much the same was as the Russian Revolution was construed a hundred years later. These revolutionaries were a group of dangerous radicals who were out to overthrow the whole of European society. Napoleon co-opted this revolution, pretty much turned it on its head, and for over a dozen years kept Europe (and many far flung regions -- Brazil, the United States, India, Indonesia, etc.) pretty much steadily at war. And when the wars were ended the world tried to turn back the clock by about 20 years ... and pretty much failed.

Battles can be major turning points in history, but they do not arise simply from the desire to change history or because two national forces bumped into each other accidentally. Battles such as that which took place at Waterloo in 1815 occur because of strange alterations in society, whether they be from mass movements or individuals -- usually it is more because of the latter tapping into the attitudes of the former. The point is that from 1789 until 1815 France was almost constantly at war, inspired to this long conflict in many ways by the involvement of French royal troops in our own revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte was able to tap into mass views of national pride, anger, loathing of the noble class and the church, and used them to build up his personal power and keep the rest of Europe at bay.

So, think of war today. Think of consequences of desires. Think of demagogues. Think of implications of chaos. And think of the loss of all those lives. Such is the way of the world.

As I have stated a couple of times before in this blog, much of my life has been the balancing act between two of Gaiman's Endless -- Despair and Dream. Of the two, the Grey Lady has been the stronger of late, which has not been pleasant. A lot of this has had to do with the work situation, but I have also been serving as an emotional security blanket for a severely messed-up individual (Fred) and have been trying to get my hobby-life in order.

So, I have been eating irregularly, sleeping irregularly, finding myself crying at the drop of a hat, feeling generally frustrated, and even spending a couple of whole days in the house looking at the Glowy Box that is my monitor -- NOT healthy!

I am pulling myself around again by getting involved in healthier activities and walking more, but sometimes it helps just to say, "I Am Depressed!" This is not a happy thing to say, nor is it something that most people want to have shared with them, but to cite the holy words of my father, this is a Safety Valve, a way to let off steam before the pressure rises too high.

So, I have been depressed. Pretty damn severely depressed. I am getting better now and I will continue to do so, with the aid of many good friends.

There. It is said. Now I'll work to cope a little better.

So, late last night I finally admitted it to the game group -- I am burnt out.

Irregular meeting times, my horrid employment non-pattern, my own depression, miscommunications within the group, difficulties on all sides in staying focused; anyway, a host of issues. I need time off. I simply cannot run a game and, for me, that is a very difficult matter to confess. I am "the Ref". I have run games, with breaks, since 1976. I have all the voices I use for characters. I am the rules junky. I have the friggin' Magic Box of Dice and Mr. Talky.

Right now, however, I feel adrift.

Over the years I have dealt with a number of varying "identity crises", such as employment, dating status, sibling ranking, education, and the like. I cannot say with any certitude that I have weathered them well; indeed, I seem to misstep as often as not. This point is interesting in that it does not involve the "outside world" as much as personal self-definition. We are talking about a hobby here, something that allows me and the guys to blow off some steam between bouts of reality. In oh so many differing ways, this is literally less real than other matters, and yet over the past couple of years I have relied on my games as a mental crutch, something to keep me going when things are down.

I know I shall get through this point. I know I will roll dice again and all like that, that new 3" binders will be filled with trivial details of imaginary worlds and populace, etc. But for the moment I am feeling a bit hollowed out.

I think I'll be just reading and listening to music today.

So, I have been reading a number of books about Napoleon and "his" era. What a morass.

Let's get the broad points in place. The American colonies, based on ideas brought together from English common law & history along with the broad Enlightenment Era, revolt against the mother country ... and succeed. The French royal government backed the nascent American government basically as a way to slap back at the English for defeating them during the Seven Years War which, amongst other things, stripped France of its India colonies. The French troops who aided the Colonialists brought back these revolutionary concepts ... and thus the 18th century of the Red Scare begins, with nearly every nation fearing democracy and its undercutting of social standards and mores.

Thus the French Revolution, the Terror, the Year of the French (1795 -- the French revolutionary government agrees to back Irish independence), and other uprisings across Europe. The good, the bad, and the very, very ugly ... it's all there.

Enter Napoleon Bonaparte.

(As a side note, I find it intriguing that two of the most storied leaders of French history, Napoleon and Charlemagne, were neither one French.)

Napoleon did not believe in most of the points of the Revolution, especially the excesses of The Terror. He was a brilliant strategist and fine tactician ... but he also had a habit of gambling his forces unnecessarily. His sense of diplomacy was force a deal and see if the other guy backs down. He was convinced that navies in the age of sail behaved the same way ground troops did. He was an egotist and he constantly forgave his family members, even when they overtly betrayed him. He was a poor civic leader ...

...but for most of this, who cares? Napoleon is a byword for military brilliance.

Now if Napoleon had been the top general of a stable regime, he probably would have been brilliant. As a political leader he was a thug, a thief, and a double-dealer. As such, he was constantly undercutting his own message and image.

What is the point to all of this rambling? Time. It is now 200 about years since Napoleon Bonaparte was an important figure. When he is remembered nowadays it is usually for being short, dressing in large hats, and being a good military commander; he often also comes across as rather grumpy, but maybe that is due to that whole "Napoleon Complex" thing. Time does not necessarily soften images, but it does blur and distort them. The big points are overemphasized, the minor points ignored and forgotten. Now Napoleon Bonaparte, once a wild, strange, amazing, exasperating, and utterly singular individual is now seen as a caricature, a stand-in, a prop, a series of short assertations. Somewhere over time, we all lose our focus.