Welcome to this week’s Lost meditation. Not a lot to say for such a tight episode — it answered more questions than it raised and, frankly, was just a well-woven trio of little stories: that of Jack the Believer, Ben the Killer, and Dr. Linus the Good Man. I’m eager to hear what you have to say, though. Did you like this episode as much as I did?

As always, be sure to check out the Lostpedia entry for this week’s episode, too.

Spoilers are what killed her friends, back at the Statue.

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I waffled for a while about this. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to blog much about Razed while it was still in development, because I didn’t want to promise things that might get dropped or altered during development, and because I didn’t want too much of your apocalypse getting into mine. (More about that later.)

What changed my mind? My in-house playtest campaign. In the past few weeks, the game has begun to take on an identity of its own — or at least this particular campaign has — and that makes me think it’s now ready to stand up to some scrutiny. Not too much, not yet. To write, I need batteries, and if I’m not careful I’ll drain those batteries here instead of in the actual manuscript. I don’t want to spoil the game for you, or for your players. Razed is, after all, a game with a built-in mystery, which I call the meta-mystery, and while it’d be difficult for me to spoil it outright, I remain wary. (More about that later.)

Anyway, the means by which I can avoid draining my batteries here is by not showing you things that are still “soft,” developmentally speaking. A lot of Razed fits the traditional GUMSHOE rules pretty tightly, because I so often believe in that famous principle: If It Ain’t Broke. Things like the Civility Meter, on the other hand, are still in active development. The mechanics for settlements and safe havens, too.

Instead, what I’ll be blogging about is the thought process that goes into my design — the inspirations, the fears and the caution, the hopes and the aims. I’ll write a bit about the Razed campaign I’m running, and the difference between individual instances of play and the game as a whole. For example, I think my campaign is going pretty well, with its social tensions and human drama starting to simmer as they are, but systematizing play can be tricky. Even lousy games can be run well, right? I’m after a good game that runs great, at the least.

While I’m still revving up Razed over here, have a look as Bill White blogs about New World, the RPG about colonization and clashing worlds that he’s also developing for Pelgrane Press. He’s cooking something fantastic over there, it looks like. Where he’s wrestling against the entrenched ludological notion of top-down play that comes when we think of the word civilization, I’m struggling with expectations of the apocalyptic sub-genre, which also relate to that word: civilization. Don’t get me wrong, Razed is about battling aliens and scrounging treasures from the ruins of the previous civilization, but it is also a game about the ways that humans work together (or die alone), the ways they organize and control themselves and each other, and the choices and sacrifices necessary to save or rebuild — wait for it — civilization.

But more about that later.

That Chuck Wendig, he of Terrible Minds fame, he is so meta. I put forward a call on Twitter, asking people to submit questions to me via the Tumblr Ask Me Anything feature, in the hopes that it would generate blog fodder, and here’s what Chuck asked:

What do you want people to ask you?

This reminds me of a seminal bit from Stephen King’s On Writing. King asked Amy Tan if there was one question that never got asked at her authorial Q&As — a question she never gets the chance to answer. Tan said, “Nobody ever asks about the language.” In a way, King wrote On Writing to answer those questions about the language.

Of course, On Writing isn’t just a book about writing; it’s a memoir. Questions about the language aren’t just about the language at all. They’re questions about the work and the worker. They’re evidence that the questioner sees the work as work, and not just a mystical bolt of luck that makes finished works fall from a writer’s mouth. They’re curious about the writer as a craftsperson, and as a person.

I love that question of King’s. I steal it for interviews all the time: What question is missing? What don’t people ask about? What is it that you want to get asked, but don’t?

Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that I don’t have an answer to the question myself. I don’t have a standout, singular question that I’m dying to be asked. Instead, what I want is to be provoked into writing something unexpected. Or, I’ll admit, I want to be consulted. I want to be asked a question that implies my experience or my opinion has value to someone. (Who doesn’t want that?) It’s selfish and, typed out in front of me like that, a little pathetic, but so what? That’s the way that goes.

I thought I’d write out a list of questions I wanted to be asked — about my history, work, future, tastes — as the ultimate literal response to Chuck’s question, but this is what happened instead.

The truth is, I tend to put forward that request for questions when I’m feeling trapped in my house, pining for human contact. I want to be asked the sort of questions that start conversations. I want to converse. I want some indication that you can see me, sitting here, even though you can’t. Not really.

But also, I want to be asked about the language.

Saturday is my day to catch up with Caprica (on Hulu), but I haven’t been writing about it here. This isn’t to say I’m not into the show anymore — I am.

The U-87 Cylon rips off its own arm, by Daniel Graystone's command, in "There Is Another Sky."

Rather, I’m not usually sure that I have much to say to you beyond recommending composer Bear McCreary’s weekly reports. His entry on the episode, “Gravedancing,” is especially great, blending source music and score as it does (with a free song, “Was Love,” there for the downloading), but be sure to check out the two newer entries, as well: “There Is Another Sky” and “Know Thy Enemy.” Always fascinating to get a look behind the scenes with Bear — and I hardly know anything about music. What I do know is characterization and world-building, and McCreary’s music is all about both.

Beyond that, I’ve simply been savoring the show, hoping that it’s slow burn turns into more of a boil. I’ve been sipping it across my palate, trying to appreciate it for both its bitterness and its burgeoning sweetness, and hoping or a second bottle.

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When I’m running an RPG, like Razed, I make CDs to play during the game session. They help set the tone for key scenes and, just as importantly, they help me pace the story out during actual play. (If I’ve only played two or three tracks after an hour and a half of play, I know I’m in trouble.) Here, then, are some songs that I’ve been playing during the writing or playtesting of Razed, my new post-apocalyptic survival RPG coming from Pelgrane Press.

This is no complete list — my main Razed playlist, right now, has 186 songs. This is just an hour’s worth of material available for sale individually on iTunes. (Note: I don’t get any money from this — it’s just a nice way to give you samples of what I’m listening to if you don’t own some of these tracks.)

Some of these (like Tom Waits’ “Earth Died Screaming”) are meant to indirectly evoke the vibe and character of the setting — visions of apocalypse and aftermath. Other songs allude to favorite apocalyptic tales of mine (as “The Court of the Crimson King” alludes to Children of Men). Some are quiet mood-setting pieces for safe havens  from the terrors of the razed world, like Andrew Bird’s “Yawning At The Apocalypse” and Bear McCreary’s “Elegy” (played on a busted piano for the post-apocalyptic future-past of Battlestar Galactica). Meanwhile, others are action cues I’ve played during fights and chases. I just dig the mechanical rattle and momentum in “The Harvester Returns,” for example, and the weird machine voice of “The Invid Attacks.” And, of course, if we’re talking about music that I write to, I had to include multiple hits of Bear McCreary and Nine Inch Nails, in one form or another. (I skipped “The Day The World Went Away,” here, in favor of a couple of Year Zero remixes.)

I think this gives a little bit of a clue as to the kind of setting Razed will ship with. At the very least, I think it hints at where my head’s at, in terms of tone, right now.

Thanks for listening.