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Overwhelming October!!

11/1/2012

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"Boys and girls of every age,
would you like to see something strange?
Come with us and you will see
this, our town of Halloween!"

-- Danny Elfman, "This is Halloween
"

October was excellent. So much to do! Only one month to do it all in!

I should have written something sooner, of course. But STUFF!!!!

So, here's my thoughts on some of the highlights:

PEERS Steampunktoberfest Ball:

This was delightful. Everyone was dressed excellently (including, if the ladies are to be believed, yours truly). Bangers&Mash provided amazingly good music (as they usually do). The drinks and snacks were fabulous (seriously, the people who were constantly bringing out more and more tasty vittles deserve to be lauded!).

And the waltzing was exquisite! I even got to try out a few "scripted" dances with some friends. All-in-all, a truly wonderful evening!

Being in San Mateo, it was a little further away from home than is ideal for me, though Oakland and SF folks shouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with that.
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STEAMSTOCK:

Steamstock was, to put it bluntly, fucking amazing.

<== And, seriously, look how awesome I looked!!!

The vendors were really neat and the music was pretty damn epic across the board.

They really packed the musical acts in, but Brian Gardner and the SwingGoth folks had the ingenious idea of having two stages, so that the crowd could run to one stage to watch a performance while the next band was setting up and sound-checking on the other stage.

Abney Park and Thomas Dolby were quite excellent (as was to be expected), and I enjoyed being able to see Vernian Process live. But for me, the highlight was in getting to hear some really excellent acts I hadn't before.

Lee Presson & the Nails were the biggest newly-discovered treat for me. Seriously, a goth swing band? FUCK YES! And Lee was just... excellent. Super high energy, amazing voice, and he looked really god-damned dapper in that all-black zoot suit with his slicked-back hair and pencil-moustache. Now I really wish I knew how to swing dance!

Other delightful discoveries included Hydrogen Skyline and Victoria & the Vaudevillains (Victoria Victrola is fucking adorable, by the by); though, to be fair, all the acts were fun to hear and watch.

Good news is: they're already planning the Steamstock for next year! Personally, I hope they can use the same venue. The Craneway Pavilion was a really cool place; lots of room with an excellent view of San Francisco from the water.

My only complaint (I've always got at least one) -- I wish more of the vendors had more stuff. A lot of the stalls seemed really sparse on what they were offering. Even though what most of them were offering was pretty cool, there just didn't seem to be much of it. The exception was the Holzer & Combe Haberdashery stall -- they were positively bursting with crazy-awesome stuff to buy. You should seriously visit their website.

And a little more seating and maybe an extra food truck would have been nice.

Club Elysium:

I managed to make it out to the opening of the Club Elysium goth night at the new Purgatory Club in Sacramento (on the arm of a very, very lovely lady, I might add).

While the opening night suffered a few hiccups (like the top floor not being open yet and there not being enough bar staff on hand for the crowd), Club Elysium was quite a hit.

The venue is actually kind of swanky. Purgatory is clearly still in some kind of state of renovation, unfortunately, but the underground "Hell" floor was in excellent repair and was packed to the gills with gothling folks. Lots of nice booth seating with tables all around the perimeter. Clean bathrooms. A huge dance cage AND a stripper pole. All on just the bottom floor... I'm actually a little excited as to what the top floor will be bringing to the table when it opens up.

And the music was pretty damn awesome. It's the first time I've had the pleasure of listening to DJs Blixx and Keyz spin, and, I must say, I was impressed.

I do wish that there had been a little more "swirly goth" though, since the single floor issue crimped the whole "two floors - one for stompy/one for swirly" plan. More for others than for me, of course, since I'm a stomp-monkey. But a few breathers wouldn't have gone awry.

Good news is that it seems that Elysium blew the venue owners away as much as it did the Sac-Goth crowd. With only the one floor, the place quickly reached capacity by about 11 p.m. and the venue owners did manage to call in some back-up on the bar.

For those that don't know the background, Club Elysium is a goth night constructed by members of the Sacramento goth scene specifically to fill the wants and desires of their local scene as a whole. And while it's certain that they won't please everyone, they're definitely approaching the whole thing with arms (if not always eyes) wide open and really trying to meet as much of the community half-way as they can. There's an energy, a drive and passion, that really fuels this thing. Hell, they even had folks walking around with clipboards, taking notes on what people liked and didn't and jotting down suggestions their fellow darklings had.

My final summation is that Elysium is off to a really grand start. The only thing I see holding them back now is the venue itself getting fully up-and-running (in other words: more bar staff, opening the top floor, cleaning up some of the place's "rough edges", and making sure the bouncers stop letting people jump past the line ahead of people that have been waiting twenty minutes to get in). I can't see the future, but Elysium certainly felt like a solid heir to the Sunday-night scene in Sacramento.

Other stuff:

There were other things I made it out to, but I don't really have the energy to go into all of it now.

And a lot that I wished I could have made it out to but didn't: like Ariellah's ShadowDance and DNA's Halloween Bash... Lack of cash and an overabundance of depression leads to all sorts of stupid missing-stuff-I-like.

Upcoming Stuff:

Don't forget, my darklings --

Friday:
  • Strangelove's Dia de los Muertos in San Francisco

Saturday:
  • Le Bal des Vampires in Alameda
  • Subkulture's DeathWake in San Francisco

Sunday:
  • Club Elysium in Sacramento
  • Komor Kommando at the DNA in San Francisco

Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Goth,

-- Mr. M.



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RPG Review: Abney Park's "Airship Pirates"

9/27/2011

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"The ropes creaking, ship's leaking, sails are on fire,
and this whole bloody ship could go up like a pyre.
We've got smiles on our faces, but we've seen this before
No telling just now what we have in store."
-- Abney Park, "Aether Shanties"

So, I've never reviewed an RPG before. Which is amusing considering how many I've played - and even more amusing considering how many I've read (I'll drop you a hint: way too many).

So, I'm starting with the recent release by Cubicle 7, written by Peter Cakebread and Ken Walton, and based upon the works by that infamous time-traveling, steam-punk mad-man, Captain Robert Brown: Abney Park's Airship Pirates.

Appearance: The first thing you can't help but notice is that the book is beautiful. Well-bound, with a nice parchment-look for the pages, crisp layout, and loads of inspiring artwork, Airship Pirates is among one of the nicest looking non-collector RPG books in my collection. If you've seen the beautiful Warhammer 40K RPG tomes (Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy, and Deathwatch), Airship Pirates comes fairly close to those extremely high-production-value examples.

Setting: Those that are familiar with Abney Park's music and the tales of Captain Robert may already know what to expect. But for the rest of you benighted souls, it is basically (at the risk of under-selling it) post-apocalyptic steampunk.

An evil empire rules the large Change Cage Cities full of Neo-Victorians, Automatons, and Mutants, while the remainder of the world is overgrown and inhabited by prehistoric megafauna. Living in the wilds are the nomadic Neobedouin, wandering caravans that travel from place to place on mammoths and indricotheres (imagine if the inhabitants of your local Maker's Faire were also gypsies, rangers, and gatherers - that's the Neobedouin). And in floating cities, tied to mountain-tops or wandering the tradewinds, dwell the Skyfolk. Gadgeteers and adventurers, the Skyfolk cities are bound in a loose alliance that ties them together against the Neo-Victorian empire - but otherwise has little influence on their habits of piratical raiding.

Ultimately, your PCs are drawn from all of these cultures (aye, even Neo-Victorian outcasts), to form the core officers of a crew of cunning pirates out for adventure, booty, and maybe even a bit of revolution. But the crew are mutinous cretins hungry for plunder... so you best watch your back.

Sections: Airship Pirates is broken down into three "books": 1) Rules and Systems; 2) Encyclopaedia; and 3) Game Master.

1) Rules and Systems - explains character creation, skills, combat, dramatic systems, vehicles (including Airships) and beasts, and equipment. This is where you create your Neobedouin Beast-Dancer or Automaton Love-doll or Skyfolk Air Captain. It's also where you decide your crew's "schtick" - their professional cover to hide their piratical activities in other venues (whether they're a band - like Abney Park themselves - or an acting troupe, a circus, or a number of other options).

2) Encyclopaedia - contains almost all the straight "setting fluff", laying out the setting's history, the geography of North America, and a section on each of the cultures of the North American portion of the setting (supposedly, further cultures will be covered in future supplements). Some of the setting seems a little goofy if you think about it too hard; but, recognizing that it's intended to be fueled mostly by "awesome" in order to hang further "awesome" from it, I think it works well enough.

3) Game Master - this final section contains chapters on running the game, playing around with time travel (which, if you're familiar with Abney Park, you'll understand how central this aspect is to the game), a bestiary, and a sample adventure.

While later supplements may come forth with interesting additions in the way of character options, toys, monsters, and, most importantly, more ships, the core book does an excellent job of being self-contained - covering all the core conceits of the setting with rules and stats.

Systems: The core system of Airship Pirates is something known as the Heresy Engine, which also powers games like Victoriana, 2nd Edition, and Dark Harvest.

The basics are as follows -

A) When you need to roll to resolve some action, you add a relevant attribute to the relevant skill and roll that many 6-sided dice. Each 1 and 6 that come up are successes, and 6's can be rolled again to try for further extra successes.

B) If the Game Master thinks that the task is difficult, he inflicts "Black Dice" (they can be any color, really, so long as you can tell the difference) on you. Every 1 or 6 rolled on a Black Die subtracts one from the total successes from your other dice. Unlike regular dice, Black Dice don't get a re-roll on a 6. If you end up with more successes on your Black Dice than on your regular dice? Then you end up with a critical failure/botch.

C) If you end up with even a single net success, you succeed... though maybe only barely. More net successes mean better, more complete, faster, or just plain more stylish-looking success on the action.

There's a stunt mechanic called Awesome Dice that add more dice to your roll and wounds will subtract dice from your dice pool (instead of adding Black Dice).

Other than that, that's pretty much it. Every other aspect of the game pretty much runs off of this base system - whether you're trying to out-drink your friends, command an airship-to-airship battle, or cross swords and fists with a rival captain.

Simple. Elegant. And, it seems from my reading (I haven't managed to play it quite yet), that it is very conducive to creating the action and the fast pace necessary to keep the game flowing.

As far as I'm concerned, Abney Park's Airship Pirates scores high on both style and substance. So if steampunk, post-apocalyptic derring-do, airships, pirates, or Abney Park (or any combination of them) inspire you with excitement - this is likely to be a perfect choice.

-- Mr. M.
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Black Beard's Ball and Abney Park

5/15/2011

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So, this is much later than I intended for this post to get written and go up. I know - I shouldn't let silly things like life get in the way of my virtual endeavors.

Priorities, man!!

So... Black Beard's Ball.

Overall Analysis: All-round, I had a fairly good time. Band was good. Drinks were decent. Venue was kind of cool.

Venue: The Oakland Metro Operahouse.

Kind of a cool place. Basically a warehouse just a few blocks off the Broadway strip in Oakland. There are two bars (one in the main room and one in a room all to itself) and drinks weren't terribly expensive (about $4 for mixers and scotch) though the selection left a bit to be desired. The main room is basically a big black-box theater.

The Crowd: Meh. There were some solid goth folk among them. And a lot of steampunks and a smattering of pirates, of course. And a lot of non-scene folk, too. Anyplace else, I'd call them tourists, but I suspect that their presence may have something to do with Abney Park's fairly wide fan-base itself.

It was also a little thick with people. There wasn't a whole lot of room for dancing and most of that was taken up by the fairly frantic swing-gothers.

Ultimately, though, they certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves and were polite enough when they inevitably bumped into you.

Vendor Room: The entry room was mostly for socializing and a couple of (rather over-priced) vendors. I wasn't terribly impressed by the selection and, though I expected vendoring with the steampunk theme, I was sort of disappointed in the lack of actual steampunk stuff they were selling. The whole selection was a couple artists and a clothing seller that seemed to specialize mostly in extremely expensive (though admittedly nice-looking) gothic, punk, and steampunk-ish belts.

The Mid-Show Variety Performance: In between sets by Abney Park, there were a couple of variety-show mini-performances.

The fire-juggler/breather and an extremely skilled hula-hoop dancer were both fairly awesome

But the set that stood out to me was The Standfire Collective - Two extremely lovely belly-dancers (Lisa Hyde and Unsinkable Molly), dancing to mixed goth-pop and techno-swing. Now, I've had the misfortune to see a lot of really bad bellydancing over the years (seriously, between being a pagan and an ex-Renaissance-Faire monkey, we're talking A LOT). These ladies, though, were not among that ill-favored crowd. Their movements were synchronized, elegant, and their hips moved without their upper torsos being shimmied to distract from bad footwork.

In other words, they danced like professionals.

Also... let's be honest: they were both really hot.

The Unsinkable Molly, later joined Abney Park on stage for parts of their second act.

If you get a chance to see the Standfire Collective, or either of the two lovely ladies that make it up,

The Headline Performance: Abney Park

Never having heard the band before, myself, I wasn't sure what to expect. But I was pleasantly surprised at what I heard.

Imagine old 19th Century sea-shanties of loss, public drunkenness, adventure, and life on the ocean (or, in this case, the sky), with a slightly industrial beat, synth instead of pipe-organs (though the latter might be more apropos), and just a faint touch of what I'd call Tom Waits-ishness (a lot of their songs remind me of the slightly surreal themes of pieces like "Singapore" and "Cemetery Polka" from the Rain Dogs album)... And you probably still can't exactly imagine what I'm describing.

Their music, whether properly called steampunk or not (for they are neither steam nor all that punk), is charmingly idiosyncratic and defiant of classification. And this is not a bad thing.

Using a variety of instruments (synthesizer and guitars, of course, but also accordion, mandolin, violin, hand-drums, and, hell, even a banjo), they manage to come off feeling a little like folk music but with a lot of metal and industrial sensibilities. Actually... come to think of it, a lot like Jethro Tull's combination of folk and hard rock in Crest of a Knave.

But their sound isn't the only part of their charm. Oh no! They have the steampunk aesthetic to play with... though, in their case, it feels a lot more like steampunk's version of the cybergoth. Steamer-goth, maybe? Or perhaps more accurately, Babbage-goth?

I'm getting a sense of a lot of cross-genre bending-blending-and-pollination in every aspect of who they are.

All that said - I bought their two latest albumsÆther Shanties and The End of Days after the show and have played the ever-loving shit out of them in the days since.

I think we can count that as an endorsement on my behalf.
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Looks Like I'm rolling Steampunk tomorrow. What about you?

5/6/2011

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For those of you not yet in the know, Abney Park, former goth-band turned steampunk (yeah, that's right, you heard me correctly: steampunk) will be playing tomorrow night (Saturday, May 7th) at Black Beard's Ball which is happening at the Oakland Metro Opera House.

Brought to us by the lovely people at Swing Goth!

I hope to see some of my little darklings there.

I'll be the one with the goggles.

-- Mr. M.
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    MisterMephisto is a pretentious prick. That's why his opinions are so much better than yours.

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