Tales from the front desk

I know I promised an angry tirade or two, but my crushing overtime schedule hasn't been quite so bad. I've also been working on some maps for Erul-Iton.

Instead of fury, I offer comedy. But first, I feel I must elaborate a bit.

I sacrifice hours of my life in exchange for currency at an upscale apartment building. My official position is front desk attendant, a job which is part security, part customer service, part records management, part administrative assistant, but mostly involves making these idiots feel special. The simplest way to describe it is to say that my job is to enforce the rules in an environment where everyone thinks the rules don't apply to them.

I'm tempted to just say "the rich" when I complain about the residents, but putting aside my usual complaints about money, class, and power, this is not totally accurate. Many are a special kind of rich. We who work here have a term for it, but I ought not reveal this in such a public forum.

You see, I was raised to value labor. A work ethic and a trade and self-reliance and all that. While my early-to-bed-early-to-rise needs a little work, and my skill with power tools brings shame upon my ancestors, I've learned just what you get when you grow up with absolutely none of that.

Some of these people have so much money, they're completely useless.

Whether it's the result an inborn trait -- too much caviar during pregnancy -- or a learned sense of entitlement, I work with people who never learned how to perform simple tasks. From the operation of the simple lever and chain mechanism inside a toilet tank to the complicated operation of a television remote to working a door that you push to open, they're often rendered helpless by the challenge of remarkably banal activities.

In the future, I'll be using this space to document the foibles and failures of the wealthy whilst performing tasks you and I take for granted. Just look for the "tales from the front desk" tag, and no snitching if you know where I work.

Stuff that history nerds like

I've been working on fleshing out the history of my D&D setting. I find this to be a very rewarding task. As I mentioned a while back in my review of the newest edition, the last time I was involved in a D&D game, we spent hours working on the setting. The world had a distinct spirituality that actually influenced game mechanics, and a great sense of history. More time was put into creating that setting than playing it -- several times over, in fact.

Our current game takes place in one very large city -- at least for now it does -- and I think it's important for that place to have a history, to be a character. Therefore, I put together a timeline detailing the major events in the city's history.

Not only does this sort of thing get my inner fantasy dork going, but I recommend it for anyone running a tabletop game. While I was filling it out, I found myself simultaneously constructing a "people's history" in my head.

So now, not only do I have the official version down on paper for my players to read and hopefully accept as a sort of apology for the huge delays between sessions, but I have this other set of events from which I can draw story ideas and use to improve those I already have. The conflict between the two histories is likely going to be a big part of the game overall, which is more skulking and scheming and politicking than kicking and fighting and looting.

Still getting used to it

I know Caution Thinking has been gathering dust. This is partly because I've been working on the new Western Pennsylvania Culinary Warfare League contest. As previously noted, I have a better work ethic when it comes to the more focused projects.

In addition, I feel the need to devote time to some housing issues -- cleaning, packing, and the like -- while staring down the barrel of a nasty overtime schedule later this month. All that time at work will likely increase blog output in general, but I can make no promise that there will be more than a series of classist screeds.

My final excuse is the work I'm doing for my Dungeons & Dragons group over at Crippled Vulture Games. My players have been more patient than could be expected during this lengthy hiatus and I want to play again as soon as possible.

And now a little something for the locals. I just read this article in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Honestly, I'm not sure how to react to the news that perhaps we may have over-estimated the impact the new Children's Hospital would have on the area. I did not grow up in Lawrenceville, but I've been here for two years now and I consider myself a member of the community.

Lawrenceville and the surrounding neighborhoods -- which are all very nice in their own way and I can't see why one would feel the need to claim one's establishment is in Lawrenceville when it's just across the street in Bloomfield -- are experiencing an economic revitalization lately. As opposed to the Whole Foods falling out of the sky-style rebirth of East Liberty, more often than not this is the result of the success of various small local shops and whatnot.

So while it is unfortunate that these joints aren't getting the kind of business injection they had hoped for, I think it may work out better in the long run. Until the Children's Hospital came around, the area's growth was a more organic, ground-up sort of thing. UPMC, however, is a massive organization that likely maintains a few dim, smoke-filled board rooms. It would be sad indeed if sometime in the future their executives decided that our charming Liberty Avenue, Penn Avenue, and Butler Street commercial districts would better serve the overlord as glorified food courts made of national chain restaurants. I'm not saying UPMC doesn't lack the power to do this anyway, but we might as well just hand them the keys if so many local places are counting on traffic from the hospital.

Call me paranoid, but it just seems that relying on the big corporation to support a neighborhood when that neighborhood's success thus far has been the result of local commitment is counter-intuitive.