Posted inPlays

“Jane Annie” by J M Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle

Giv­en the peo­ple behind it, it should have been a success.

It wasn’t.

“Jane Annie, or The Good Con­duct Award” was an opera writ­ten by J M Bar­rie (of “Peter Pan” fame) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sher­lock Holmes fame) with music by Ernest Ford, for the Savoy The­atre by Richard D’Oy­ly Carte. Four of the biggest names (Doyle, Bar­rie, D’Oy­ly Carte and the Savoy The­ater) in the Lon­don lit­er­ary and the­atri­cal cir­cles could­n’t save what would turn out to be the the­ater’s first true flop.

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Posted inGames

GenCon Findings — 2011

This past week­end I attend­ed Gen­Con, the major gam­ing con­ven­tion in the US. As usu­al, I am look­ing for inter­est­ing and unusu­al role­play­ing games, espe­cial­ly ones that have ele­ments of hyp­no­sis or mind con­trol as part of the char­ac­ter designs or in the oppo­si­tion. This year, I found three such games.

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Posted inFiction Games Mythology

“Dungeons & Dragons” — The Hypnotic Side

When Dave Arne­son showed Gary Gygax the new game he and his friends were play­ing, it prob­a­bly did­n’t occurr to either that they were on the brink of cre­at­ing not only a new game but an entire­ly new type of game, result­ing in a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new gam­ing industry.

Dave Arne­son took the tra­di­tion­al minia­ture game, where minia­tures rep­re­sent­ed groups of indi­vid­u­als and start­ed using them to rep­re­sent indi­vid­u­als. He also added the ele­ments of char­ac­ter class­es and expe­ri­ence lev­els, allow­ing for char­ac­ter spe­cial­iza­tion and growith. This was a rev­o­lu­tion, in that play­ers could project them­selves into the char­ac­ter, devel­op­ing them over time and play. Since both he and Gary Gygax were avid mina­ture ship game play­ers, he shjowed Gary his game and togeth­er they cre­at­ed Dun­geons & Drag­ons.

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