Poor Mojo's Newswire

The city's effort to increase regulation was initially supported by pawnshop owners, but those business owners now say a proposed rule requiring a 30-day waiting period to pay jewelry sellers would threaten the very existence of what they do: quick cash for the desperate. The result is that rules that the Oakland City Council and city staff have been working on probably will be delayed for at least six months. Meanwhile, the council on Tuesday night extended a moratorium, by a vote of 8-0, on new pawnshops for another six months to allow more time to work on the rules. The moratorium was first put in place in November. The extension is only delaying the inevitable, said Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, who represents the Fruitvale district, where pawnshops are clustered and many crime victims have had gold chains ripped off their necks. "We are facing a situation where (the industry) is unregulated in many ways," he said. "They're not stupid and blind. If someone comes running in with a gold chain, there's no way that a business doesn't know."

At first, I have trouble letting go, letting myself be someone else. The idea of narrating all of the actions my alter ego is undertaking is strange to me, and when people keep asking me to describe what it looks like when I do something, it strikes me as incredibly odd. I’m a writer, of course, and I’ve written my share of fiction. But this is so… naked, so improvisatory, so out-there. There’s no way to go back and edit, and when other players keep trying to draw my character into conversation, there’s that remove, that sense that I always have that I’m me, but also someone standing behind me and watching what I’m doing. I keep trying to deflect the game itself with easy jokes—in Apocalypse World, about a goat I’ve invented for myself as a pet. It’s a way of coping with the fact that I’m still slightly out of my depth, I imagine, but it feels almost as if I can’t give myself over to the spirit of the thing. But in Dungeon World, it all clicks. The GM asks me about Lenore’s history, and I invent the bullshit about her abbey being destroyed by the horde and the god I worship. And then Mike—who’s playing this one with me—writes it down on an index card and pins it on a board. This is because the game I’m in is part of a series of games, constructed to build a shared universe that will develop all through the weekend. It begins to snap into place for me. What I’ve just said is real, or as real as any fiction ever is. The other players over the next few days will see that card on the board, and Lenore’s abbey will still be destroyed for them. I’ve invented a building full of people and killed them all, and as it goes up on the board, it’s thrilling. I finally start to lose myself. When my compatriots raise the necessary gold to restore me from the gem in which I am imprisoned, I cheer.