Tuesday, June 28, 2022

RE: What's Wrong With Nerd Culture, Part 2: "With a Bang and a Whimper"

 


Before I joined the Army I was working at a McDonalds. I hated the job with every cell in my body, despite being extremely good at it, so I was grouchier than I normally was. Most people kept a polite distance, except for one particular nerd, Ezra (name changed to protect the innocent). He was.... not nearly as good at the job as I was, but he had this trait of being friendly to the point of irritation.

That's a very low bar for me, for what it's worth.

He was too damn chipper!

Well, eventually he wore out my grump reflex and we started a friendship, of sorts. Ezra talked a whole hell of a lot about pretty much anything on his mind, at a volume and speed that I could barely keep up with, at a pitch that I definitely didn't want to put up with.... but he was kind. He had a good, gentle heart, under the layers of sheer annoyance. And I find true kindness to be in short supply. So I gritted my teeth and decided a bit of kindness was worth the increase in blood pressure. 

Oh, and dear God he talked about his girlfriend too much. Who he swore was real! Promise! She's just far away. I could never remember where.

Starved for roleplaying game time I offered to GM a Burning Wheel for Ezra. I didn't expect much from him, to be honest. I kinda figured he'd futz around with the rule system and probably just make something that would help me pass the time. And, really, at that point, I wanted time to pass. It was still a few months before I would be able to leave, and I knew that what would probably be bad Burning Wheel was still better than no Burning Wheel at all. So I pitched the game to him. I explained that Burning Wheel was not Dungeons and Dragons, that he'd actually have to put work into it to get something out of it, and that I'd help him with the rules but I wasn't going to take it easy on him when the dice hit the table. It was up to Ezra to succeed. He nodded, told me he looked forward to it, and we ended the workshift with me having a twinge of guilt. At the time GMing was a way for me to vent just how frustrated I was, so I looked forward to low-key torturing Ezra's character. 

No, I don't mean that ironically.

Yes, that's messed up.

I've never claimed to be a good person. Ever.

Ezra made a character who had a cruel older brother, which mirrored some of his real life situation. That should have been a tip off for me. I admit it now. But I was so pent up, so angry, so arrogant, that I didn't really think much about what would drive Ezra to make such a situation. I just decided to make his brother as cruel as possible and then to give Ezra the chance to abandon him. Which is exactly what I did; I had a dark elf kidnap the brother and gave Ezra the chance to rescue.... under suicidal conditions. Eventually Ezra failed the tests, and the dark elf told his character that it was a nice try, but he could either give up or die with his brother.  Ezra walked out of the building. I thought I'd won. And it felt good.

And then Ezra set fire to the entire area, using his Firebuilding skill to set up a conflagration so powerful only he could put it out. When the dark elf came out, furious, Ezra offered to put the fire out.... but only once he had his brother. The dark elf laughed grimly, offered his admiration for a job well done, and brought out Ezra's brother.

The thing that impressed me about this whole scene wasn't Ezra's plan, not principally. It was the look on his face when he had initially failed. There was a determination, a total lack of concern, that took me aback. Ezra's character was going to help his brother and damnit if anyone was going to tell him no. To be able to show kindness and help someone who hated him mattered to this irritating young man. It was unthinkable to Ezra to give up. And, while he normally couldn't do anything so heroic, he had a chance to do it here, in this game. He did it with a grace and ease that I honestly didn't think him capable of. The dark elf's reaction really came out of a genuine place of shocked admiration on my part. Without raising his blood pressure Ezra had shown me what a tool I had been. Kindness and forgiveness are real, no matter how they happen.

The thing is that, otherwise, Ezra was a pretty pathetic person. He had that "feel" of a nerd, of someone who had put all his pudgy existence into playing video games and anime and nothing else. His room was lined with differing paraphernalia he'd definitely spent some good money to acquire. With the exception of his girlfriend (who I never saw of a picture of) there really wasn't much talked about other than video games and anime. If there was a drive that Ezra had beyond these things, he didn't show it to me except that one time, in Burning Wheel. 

My last memory of him was being shown Halo 4. Which I hated. It felt like CoD. But Ezra was so excited that there was a new Halo I didn't really have the heart to tell him how much I despised the thing he had specifically brought me over to show off. He also showed me that you could now watch anime while you played video games on the XBox, something that I hated even more. But again, he was so excited that a part of me knew it would be wrong of me to shut him down. After a few matches he asked if I wanted to watch Pacific Rim. Considering that's one of my favorite movies...

Eventually it was late and I had to go, having work the next day. Ezra walked me to the door, talking excitedly about the resolution on the TV. And it was nice, to be fair! I'd not seen Pacific Rim look that good since seeing it in IMAX. So I was more than happy to reciprocate. But I realized something really sad in that conversation: Ezra didn't know how to look for anything else. Not anymore. The world was a meaningless wasteland for him, and these few hours he could get with his videogames and his TV was as good as he could see it getting. Ezra wished me luck at MEPS and talked about joining the military himself, probably the Coast Guard. I told him that I'd heard the Coast Guard were all genuine badasses and I'd be impressed at anyone making it through their training. And he'd actually be useful, unlike me, who was going into the Army. Ezra laughed and said something kind and dorky. I forget what it was, only that I honestly felt reassured by him in that moment. I didn't feel too reassured by anybody at that point in my life; the feeling was like water to a man stuck in a desert.

I never saw him again.

I hope Ezra made it out. I hope he figured out how to not be addicted to the machines that sidelined him into a life of insignificance. I hope he went and joined the Coast Guard. I really hope things worked out with that girlfriend, or if not with her that some lady would figure out that Ezra was a genuinely kind soul. But the bitter and mean part of me wonders (with a sneer!) if he's not sitting in that same room, even eight years later, still raving about the latest garbage video game and anime. There's only one direction to the universe, after all, and it's down. 

But who knows? 19 years ago I said I didn't want anyone to remember me. I wanted to be dead and forgotten. With a wife and three children that's changing, one step at a time.  I'm able to change. Maybe he did too! Hopefully we'll both make it. Kindness should.

Although that doesn’t change the fact that Halo 4 sucked ass.

Friday, June 24, 2022

The Gamble Paid Off: A Rant


Let's get this out of the way: I did not vote for Trump, neither in 2016 or 2020. I did not find him an acceptable personality in any way, shape, or form, and shared the doubts of my leftist friends that he would actually do anything about abortion. I'd generally given up on the idea  that public action would do anything against Roe v Wade at all, in no large part because of these leftist friends. "It'll never happen," they told me with all the rage and bitterness of the brainwashed. "We need to find other ways to make this work". But the people who voted for Trump said, with a consistency I thought was just stupidity, "If he can stack the court this will be over". I scoffed. So did my leftists "pro-life" friends.

Oops.

Turns out they were right. Over the years, the court was gradually stacked with people who would actually read the Constitution and apply it. And Trump promised to continue the trend.

Before anyone more leftists start going "yeah but why would he tell the truth"-

It's 

GENOCIDE

You

IDIOTS

If you can end a genocide or even have a fraction of a hope of doing so you hold your nose and try. No, that's not a question, that's not something that should be argued about. If you think abortion kills a human then it's legalized genocide that renders our country easily the most evil thing to ever exist, outranking Nazis, Bolsheviks, and pretty much anything else you can imagine without a second's thought.

And the folks who don't try and stop it are at best cowards.

Yes, I just ranked myself in there. I don't care, because unlike most people I've met I don't care if the truth cuts me. If I should be cut I should be cut and that's it.

And the truth cuts pretty deep today.

Good.

Over the course of watching people awoken I became more and more aware that something wasn't right. Initially I got off Facebook because I realized that Facebook wasn't using its power responsibly, and I already have too much blood indirectly on my hands, so I didn't want more. But, the longer I stayed off, the more I've become aware that I had been uneasy on Facebook for years. But this? This goes way beyond anything I anticipated.

I make it a point to make my posts as raw and as honest as possible. I purposefully get out of the way of my fingers and just let them type. And this pain and whatever else just flows out of my body like a tsunami. That's how I've always tried to operate on this blog. If you are reading this this is the closest I can get to a direct "this is my soul" through something this impersonal.

Lives are saved today. 

Thank God. 

And, looking at that, my conscience screams "You were made a sucker. AGAIN." I was made a sucker at six, and have paid for it ever since. I was made a sucker many a time after that, and each and every time after that I swore it wouldn't happen again. And I've gotten better at it. I've learned how to spot the manipulations and lies that people in power use. I've gone and looked around and found out that, in all cases, my suspicions weren't nearly deep enough. Not even close. It's always worse. Always. And someone has not only confirmed it, but they figured it out decades ago and we ignored them. So I've tried, over and over, to get my head clear. And I really hoped I'd accomplished... well... enough.

But this? I didn't know this was there. I didn't think that this response was programmed. And now, looking back at it, of course it was. And I'm just so done. I'm tired of my choices being pushed on me. I'm tired of having to ask "Are these all the choices available? Am I sure that I can't choose something else?" I know I can't get it right, not all the time, but did genocide really have to be involved?

Spider-Man Season Five: Part Three

 


I should not like these last episodes. I really shouldn't. None of this is what I normally what I want to see with Spider-Man, at all. I own the entirety of Tom Taylor's excellent Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man run. Despite my dislike for his... antics... Taylor really wrote the only modern Spidey run I like: Spider-Man on the ground, talking to the locals, being kind, and just... well... being the uncle Ben of the Marvel Universe. That, to me, was always Peter's arc. And on paper all the craziness of Secret Wars and Spider Wars should have completely crashed and burned. It's clearly yet another toy pitch, another sign of corporate nonsense meddling. I. Should. HATE. This.

I really love the ending of this show.

Peter Parker is finally Uncle Ben. They go through some weird hoops to get him there, but at its core these are true Spider-Man stories. I don't say that lightly. I usually hate it when Spidey goes cosmic and I really don't like multiverse stuff at all. And I really love this last third of the season. Secret Wars and Spider Wars are the ending that this show needed. And no, I didn't want them to go on. I liked the cliff hanger ending as a kid and that definitely hasn't changed now.

The first thing that jumps out at me about these episodes is not just how out of his element Spidey is, but how open he is about it. The folks behind the show could have just had Spidey pretend to know what he was doing and had it be genuinely horrible. Fortunately, we had these folks. So Spider-Man was uncomfortable... but he stepped up. And everyone else he had to work with saw that he was choosing to step up and they chose to let him do it. Peter was working with good people, who could see he was changing and let him do it. If this was done today you wouldn't have anything half this noble going on. Even if you got this far with Peter in a modern context (and you probably wouldn't) the others wouldn't let Peter take point. He'd have to prove to a bunch of assholes he was worthy to lead them. For anyone who's going "Marvel characters were always assholes"... no... no they weren't. See. This. Show.

The pacing of these last few episodes is off the freaking charts. This show has always had freaking quick pacing, with season four going absolutely apeshit bonkers with the speed of dialogue. And while I'm not a fan of the incredible speed of the dialogue in season five it's not even in the same ballpark as season four. It's amazing to me how much the show writers get done in such a short amount of time. I could see even one of these episodes taking at least twice the time today... and that's not a compliment. Because this show manages to keep what's going on clear. All the time. I'm not sure how. But they do it.

But my favorite scene, the thing that makes this show, is:



That is how you use a multiverse, people! You don't just use it for cutesy "alternate versions" or "what could have beens". I didn't like it as a kid, I don't like it now. No, you use these alternate scenarios to specifically play off the emotional lives of the characters. You poke and prod at what happened and ask: "How do you respond to the different world?" And the fact that the obnoxious asshole Spidey in this arc is the one who stopped the criminal, thus saving Uncle Ben, is a  truly fascinating idea. "Our" Peter's failure and the loss of his Uncle Ben turned him into the person who would realize that Spider-Carnage would be unable to keep what goodness he had left coming to the fore. By playing through the emotional development of "our" Peter this arc really cements what finally makes him a true hero. The question of the series was answered.

Yes, I think it's done.

And that should answer what I think of the ending of this show, which is eschatological. An eschatological ending is one where you don't see the "true" ending, but given what you know of the characters and the story you know the situation will be resolved, even if you don't quite know how it will be done. You just have faith that it will. I know that this show was ended prematurely, but the ending as it stands is a fantastic eschatological ending! We now know what sort of man Peter has become, we know that with Madame Web's help he will find Mary Jane. And, really, that's really all I wanted. I can picture them being happy quite easily. This show has also given me that. Peter can grow and change. Marvel may not understand this about their property, but the rest of us?

I think we all think Spider-Man deserves some happiness, don't we? I mean, besides Marvel.

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

The Sub-Creationists

 



I generally do not really care about what posts get seen and do not get seen on this blog. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I post whatever the hell I want, whenever the hell I want, however the hell I want. So I was not intending to do anything other than start sharing my response to Dave's Nerd Culture series. They've greatly changed my view on geek and nerd culture, and for the better, and are at the heart of my game design. I merely wrote them because of their deep personal significance to me.

So when people who I sent the link to began to agree, not just wholeheartedly, but sometimes emphatically, I realized that there's a hole in our little corners of the internet: people who like some of the elements of geek/nerd culture, but who like it because they find the Faith (and thus themselves) in it, who are Marxists and secularists, who want things that have a deeper significance. They look and find, becuase God is everywhere, in everything. Geeking out over these things is not a sign of shallowness, but a desire to baptize the nations. To tell the things that people made Yes you too.

It is not a common voice within the geek/nerd circles, and it never was.

But it is there.

So I've decided to hell with it, let's make a little corner of the internet for these folks, The Sub-Creationists! The rules are six, although if I can somehow get it to eight for the symbolism that'd be great. They are:

1. We are centered upon the Great Commission as stated in Luke and John: the forgiveness of sins is what we are about.

This rule is meant to get ride of the Marxists and culture warriors, full stop. We are here because of our shared belief in the healing power of God. A desire to twist that into the culture war is not just unproductive but actively against the spirit of this group.

2. Reality is incarnate; God's spiritual principles and the love and forgiveness those principles give shines through creation and all human sub-creations.

Not only do we believe in this Great Commission, we believe the world is an inherent expression of this reality we have found. Reality is not opaque, it is transparently showing forth the glory of God.

3. As geeks and nerds we find these principles in popular culture and fandoms, and thus find these expressions healthy.

There are folks who are part of the geek/nerd culture who find God's love and His reasonings particularly strong in the stories presented in these fandoms. For whatever reason we find this to be useful in our own development as people.

4. We are a theologically orthodox but inclusive group, faithful to the shared heritage of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Provided anyone not of these traditions holds to point one all is well.

This is not a place to question the doctrines of our traditions. This is not a place to talk about the fallenness of the Church. Or whether or not the Church is inclusive. All such questions are outside the scope of this group. Anyone who is a part of this group accepts their tradition as it was handed to them, and if you have issues with that tradition, this is not the group to voice them. Go talk to your pastors, loved ones, and consult historians and theologians, we are not doing that here.

5. We promote the creation of holistic and wholesome geek/nerd material, which we view to be in line with the principles of point one.

The commodification and commercialization of geek/nerd culture is something we stand against, without exception. We encourage our members to make their own creations, grounded in communicating meaning to people. So there is a creative component to the community. So long as it's grounded in these principles such content is welcomed with open arms.

6. We do not seek to oppose, prevaricate, or argue. We build what we love.

The culture war is over, people. Get over it. To fight and rage at whatever perceived unfairness of the world is not Christian. Forgive, move on, make something beautiful. God will take care of the rest.

This is the beginning. I am not much of a leader. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. But this must be done. And so here we are.

Want to join us? Here's the subreddit. And the Discord. Let's do this thing.

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

RE: What's Wrong with Nerd Culture, Part 1: "The Rise of the Nerd"

 


I am very late to this party. I saw this series of videos during 2019, and have been sitting on them ever since, trying to figure out my opinion. Like or dislike his thoughts, Dave the Distributist's thoughtfulness cannot be denied. And this series of videos on nerd culture has continued to rock me to my core, years and and years later. After attempting to write about gaming and other nerd/geek stuff for about five years, I realized that this series of videos is at the very bottom of my worldview. And I had to get it out of the way if I wanted to write about gaming or really anything else.

Thanks, Dave. Thanks a lot.

In highschool I was Eddie from Stranger Things, without the drugs (or the repeated failures at school):



No, really, that was me. Granted, my hair wasn't that long (it's longer now!), but the attitude? Yup. That's it. I mentioned it to a friend of mine who knew me early in college and he about died laughing, because it's really not an exaggeration. I found friends in large part because of DnD, Magic, video games, and Firefly, as opposed to my heavily chaotic and extreme personality. And going into college I found myself really only feeling comfortable in those elements. 

But suffering hammers and expands one into something you don't really expect. I found myself wanting more out of my interests and hobbies... and couldn't get it. And had no idea why. And then I found Burning Wheel. There's a few years of posts of that game on this blog. and while I haven't played the game in a while it still holds a near and dear place in my heart. I used the game to explore and process, particularly with The Giggling Dark and The Undertow, both of which I consider the highest points of my GMing Career so far.

All this to say that I never really was into nerd culture for anything other than a vehicle to explore meaning. I've never really experienced the urge to use my interests as an anti-movement, a wish to destroy, to eradicate societal concepts that were persecuting me. If I was against anything it was against being pointless, of having no meaning at all. Whatever burning hatred of humanity I have, it is total, as opposed to directed at one particular social caste. I think humans, in general, suck horribly and I see no reason to exclude one group from that hatred. Not that this is a good thing, mind you, but whatever baggage and damage I have, hating a particular group and resisting them isn't one of those things I have to struggle with.

But I've noticed that I'm not in the majority company of those I share interests with, both generally and with things like RPGs and games and comics and whatnot. The particular areas of "nerddom" I inhabit are more than a bit left-leaning, with an assumed "Us VS Them" mentality that makes running around those circles really hard to manage. I've noticed this alienation for years but could not figure out what to do with it. How do you tell your own "home camp" that you think that everyone sucks pretty damn equally, and that you don't really understand the need to hate conservatives? Or Christians? Or the physically fit jarheads? And that, really, by fixating upon these groups they've just done what was done to them in reverse, and thus made themselves the perpetuators of a cycle that they claim to want to end? It's not that I mind people have different opinions than I, but simply that, if you're going to stand for something, stand for it, as opposed to using it as a weapon to fight someone else.

Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I forgot, the evil conservatives and Christians are out to get all progressives and trans people!

And the evil progressives and trans people are out to get all conservatives and Christians!

I literally just had to switch the subject and object of the sentence. Structure's the same. It's the same ideology: abuser vs abused, attacker vs victim. And there's the same stoking of a war spirit, the same "let's just enjoy our shit until we have to kill each other" nonsense going on. Eat, drink, fuck, for tomorrow we kill each other.

And, before any progressive stupid enough to argue with that opens their mouth, this is from one of the bigger RPG Discord groups I'm a part of:


And, while I don't have any examples from conservatives close at hand at the time of the writing of this post, I'm sure you wouldn't have to look very far to find it. These groups of nerds are stuffed to the brim with rage, and the only reason why anyone reading this post doesn't see it is because they're in it. Because it's that obvious.

If you are saying "BUT VIOLENCE AGAINST TRANS AND LGBTQ FOLX IS REAL" you didn't read my last few words. 

Try again.

If you still can't see it please go find an adult. No, it's clearly not you. I stated exactly what I meant, word for word. If you think that means I'm downtalking your side, whoever you are, you didn't read for comprehension. 

I'm moving on.

Atop all this I kept finding this weird materialistic consumption at the heart of the culture: buy, watch, consume! Now I definitely live in a glass house when it comes to this sorta thing: I'm a sucker for Kickstarters and random shiny games, and I'm keeping up with the Star Wars train and enjoying it. But I don't necessarily view this tendency as a virtue, but as a vicious flaw that I struggle against with all my might, even if it's the weak struggle of a spiritual invalid. But I can hardly go a week without having to roll my eyes at yet another soulless Marvel movie coming out, or some element of "come and be a part of this large corporately sponsored story that's not quite good enough to be nourishing but not quite bad enough to get you to walk away in disgust!", which comes with a wave of toys, collectibles, and licensed properties.

Yes, I know this includes Star Wars.

This was one series of videos I did not want to sit through. I felt distinctly uncomfortable throughout them, but only because I realized I could finally have a language for what I was feeling. There's sometimes you don't want to look a problem in the face, because to see it means you have to change in order to address it. And change can be quite painful and lonely. I've had a lot of both in my life. I'd prefer not to do more.


Fuck.

To live is to be in pain. After more than two decades of trying to ignore this fact of living I've gotten tired of trying to run from it. So. Let's do this.

Fundamentally, generally, I think Dave is right. I've never not seen general geek/nerd culture as much more than a counter-movement against the ideal of an integrated person. And I find that sad! This whole nerd culture thing doesn't have to be anti-integrationalist. I think both soul and body are absolutely necessary. I try not to use my more intellectual interests as a cage to keep the stresses of my body out, but as a way to process them so that I can return to my body, revitalized and ready. Gaming, particularly tabletop gaming, has helped me make sense of my world in a way I couldn't do otherwise. There is something to be said for taking the principles of the world and putting them into a rulebook. There is definitely something to be said for taking the rules of reality and dressing them up a bit differently so you can get a better look at them. Our bodies are exhausting to live in, regardless of why they are. It's nice to get out and about every once in a while, without them. That's a universal, human, need. If I believed in rights I'd not hesitate to call it such. But I don't believe in rights. So I won't be saying such silly things.

I don't know if anyone "On the other side" of this divide would agree with my analysis. But elephants in a room generally don't notice the mice they squish, regardless of how loud they squeak. And I am definitely not that elephant.

SQUEAK.

Part Two Next Week!

Saturday, June 18, 2022

The Truth Found in Death

 


Awhile back I was talking with the inestimable Mike Low, who linked me to one of his articles on violence in gaming. I'd been thinking on some of the stuff that he brought up in the article, and randomly decided to try and change the name of my Conflict mechanic in Crescendo to Struggle. I wanted to see if Mike was right; would removing words usually associated with violence in our day and age lead to people using the mechanic for non-violent purposes?

Actually, it did.

One of my playtesters called it out, specifically, when she noticed the change from Conflict to Struggle: "Wait, this isn't just for fighting?"

Mike, you were right. Not that I should be shocked. But yes, you're right.

Now, as a martial artist, fan of MMA, and US vet, I don't think violence is inherently a bad thing, nor is killing. If you have to do these things when you really need to there shouldn't be a stigma around it whatsoever. There's a very good reason why pre-modern societies tended towards militarism and blood: to say you're a state means you're willing to kill to keep what you and yours have. But games shouldn't necessarily be about violence, its costs, and things related to it. Violence should not be the default option. Period.

The Truth Found in Death is about violence. It's about the necessity of violence and courage in the face of certain death. It’s about how yes, violence can be beautiful, because people are beautiful and therefore can commit violence beautifully. But it’s also about the cost of violence. How you have to harden yourself to take it and dish it. Your body and soul will pay costs you never thought you’d have to, but here comes the piper a knocking! And ultimately how that violence may bereave others of their loved ones, changing them permanently. That change doesn’t stay put; it radiates out. 

The Truth Found in Death will use a modified PBTA engine. The game uses a single d20 to resolve all Moves. There are no stats in the game. Instead there are Exploits, feats of derring-do in the form of a sentence.You may use these Exploits to reroll your d20 rolls as often as you like… at the expense of possibly changing the plot in large ways. As you gain and spend XP you will be able to use your Exploits more often without affecting the story as much.

The Black Swans I pioneered in Crescendo return here, as does journaling! Journals will be used to not just record specific actions and use then to make more Black Swans, but also to record the actions of NPCs affected by the players’ actions. Lore will also be recorded in the journal, primarily as campfire stories and snatches of songs the party members sing to each other. Training sessions, where party members test each other, will also have elements of that time recorded.

And then there’s the core of the game: the fighting. The Truth Found in Death does not feature a dedicated combat system. That may sound odd, but without a mechanical start/stop this allows combat to ebb and flow organically, which help keep the immersion of the players. All creatures the players face have two principle elements to them: Locks and Approaches. Locks are a defensive aspect that has to be figured around: a kobold is a Jumpy Little Bastard. These Locks are absolute mechanical defenses: if someone swings at a kobold they’re going to miss, because he’s a Jumpy Little Bastard and moves out of the way! But if his back is to the wall, where can he go? He’s stuck, isn’t he? Or, y’know, maybe you just get him at the top of a cliff… the fall will do the trick, won’t it? Creatures also have Approaches, which tell you how they’re going to try and hit you. If you mess up your attacks or aren’t paying attention then you’ll get hit, flat. HP is low, and while HP recovers quickly the Conditions you get when you lose HP don’t, further hampering you in the fiction.

Thera is a lot to do on The Truth Found in Death yet; the game text is very much so in its beginning stages. I’m truly blessed to have friends who are willing to test my initial ideas, so that I can see where I want to go. 

I find game design to be a form of meditation. It helps me to process my life and figure out where to go next. The Truth Found in Death arises from musings on the incontrovertible fact that the most beautiful moments in my life are in no small way indebted to the ugliest.  Without those dark moments I’d not have the light I have today. Goodness does not come free. 

The payment, invariably, is in blood.

No, you won’t get the same answer to that problem. 

Nor should you.

Friday, June 17, 2022

Spider-Man 94: Season Five, Part Two

 


Everyone has landmarks in their life. There was life before that moment and then life afterwards. The moment changed the way you saw the whole world so strongly that all that can possibly exist is life after that moment. Everyone has these moments, factual or fictional Usually we don't remember these moments consciously.

What I didn't remember was that a bunch of these moments for me are here, in Season Five. 

This is one of the most expertly handled final seasons I've ever seen. The web has been spun, the plot points have been built competently, at worst. It's now time for the chickens to come home, roost and bring forth the apocalypse. There's just moment, after moment, after moment that wouldn't have meant what they do without the four seasons of buildup. It's hard to understate just how good this season can really get, with all the bombs they drop.

And the big one is the death of Mary Jane.

Yes, I know it's a clone.

No, I don't care. This hurt to watch as a kid. There's a ton of complicating factors. For one thing, it just comes out of nowhere. Absolutely. Freaking. Nowhere. Yeah, Mary Jane coming back mysteriously is weird and all that, but a clone??? There's a level of cruelty in the writing that was not lost on me, at all, as a child. Peter wasn't even losing Mary Jane, it was that she had never returned at all and this was actually a stranger, had always been, and was now dying, but she looked like Mary Jane and just... she was able to just accept her death? That  was overload for me as a child. She just looked her death in the face and made sure that she could give to Peter one last ray of hope, something, anything. 

Let's not forget the incredibly badass way "MJ" takes out "Morrie". This show had always been really good about empowering female characters, and this was a wonderful scene where "MJ" got to send Morrie off one last time, directly. And it felt good to watch that. Morrie has always had the "whiner entitled piece of shit" shtick down to a T, and it was nice to see him get kicked down again. Catharsis much?

But "MJ" was dying. And Peter didn't fix it. Couldn't. For all the times that Peter had figured out how to save someone with his mind it was just flat out impossible here. There wasn't time. There was never going to be any time. Peter's failure was not his fault but it was a failure nonetheless. Granted, I had that concept from The Return of the Jedi, but it was a completely different thing here, given everything previously stated. All Peter could do was to watch and listen and try to absorb the horrors.

And then there's the clone stuff with Miles Warren. I didn't realize it as a child but this was a huge plot bomb to drop. Even if Peter managed to get Mary Jane back, he'd have to deal with Smythe finding out his identity, nevermind a clone! The implied problems coming in were enormous. Peter's entire life was about to be screwed up and he had no idea it was coming. The show had a moment to hit the audience and picked every last opportunity to do it.

The biggest advantage of serialized story telling is accumulation. You don't have to tightly construct a narrative to land a big moment. You just plop down plot point after plot point, on their own, and build them as well as you can. Eventually you'll have a web of points that don't look connected... until you pull the magic trick. And then you have these huge moments, where your context has been shifted and juggled and messed with and your understanding of the previous points are irrevocably changed. You can no longer see what happened in the past the same way because of what just happened. And when it's done well you're totally upended.

That scene at the top of the post is one of the best moments in serialized storytelling. I don't care who you are, it's hard to understate just how masterfully they pulled it off. You don't get much better than the death of Mary Jane. 

That howl of despair from Peter was stamped into my consciousness as a child, and it's carried forward into everything I've ever done. Sometimes there are moments where there is no good, no bad, no greater telos. There's just pain. The present, in all its awful glory. You can try and avoid it, but eventually the present has its reckoning, one way or another. You'll run out of tricks, escape routes, and flat denials, and the present will come crashing in and there's only thing to do.

Grieve.

A wise man once told me that grieving was the sum total of our activity in life.

The older I get the wiser that statement becomes.

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII: Designing For My Table

 


I had a system I thought worked. SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII was originally meant to be Rooted in Trophy, with strong on-the-fly scenario creation. Play was supposed to be character-focused, fast, and unpredictable, with the seat-of-your-pants being attached to a rocket. It was meant for the times when someone couldn't show up to a session of one of my longer-running games. People could still play, have a great time, and move on, all in between an hour to two and a half hours.

I just scrapped most of the mechanics and started over.

Don't get wrong, I loved the mechanics! They produced interesting results. Trophy's got some seriously awesome mechanics behind it and I can't wait to finally play me some Trophy Gold with the hardcover I ordered. Trophy Dark is just boatloads of fun. Once I get some more development of this game and Crescendo done, further down the line, I think I'll do some Trophy Dark scenarios. I love just how evocative the whole line of Trophy is.

But the problem is that I want a one shot that can do a game in an hour and a half to two hours, maybe two and a half hours. I don't get a whole lot of time to game, doing it after the kids are put down for the night. Which is late. I also don't want it to jump into another session, as usually when a player misses they only miss the one session. So that makes it a pain to include him or just... wait until the next time he misses? I guess? I know this isn't necessarily a problem for everyone, or even really anyone but me, but... I kinda have to be able to test the game I designed! I also wonder if other older players don't run into this problem as well. How many games are designed for more time-intensive singular sessions of play, and are thus inaccessible to folks with small kids? Not sure, but I'm in the situation so I can't help but design for it. 

The other problem is that I am a bit of a rolling junkie. I really like Trophy's rolling mechanics, as stated before, and found that I was constantly calling for rolls. My testers went with it because they're good people, but I could tell they just wanted to let the game breathe for a minute. So I decided to make it a mostly-diceless game. where you build up experience chits to eventually get to the decisive roll, the moment of truth, in each act. This strips the mechanical overload to a fraction of what it currently was, with still some back and forth, as players have to negotiate around getting chits for the end of the act versus how that affects the narrative in the meantime.

The biggest problem, of course, was the scenario generation. I'd built a system to make up a scenario with players on the fly, and it's a lot of fun! It made for some hilariously wonderful conversations. The problem? It took too long. The point wasn't to make a cool scenario, but to finish the scenario in a short amount of time. Fortunately the solution was simple: the GM just comes up with the scenario beforehand. Character creation is short enough to where players can just roll at the top of the session, but obviously making characters beforehand is polite.

There's a lot to be said for the older version of SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII. But you have kill your darlings if they don't work. And this didn't work. I want something fast and decisive. And the earlier draft just wasn't doing it. Further playtesting is necessary, but I think I'm on the right track.

Friday, June 10, 2022

Spider-Man 94: Season Five, Part One

 


I really dislike this version of Captain America. He doesn’t seem to have a stable character. Over the course of this season you could hand almost any of his lines to anyone and it would be fine.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

I like the first part of this season in theory. Peter shouldn’t stay single and miserable. Not only should Peter grow up but he really does have leadership material in him' Cable’s estimation of Spidey as the best superhero still doesn’t do Peter justice. Peter Parker is the Uncle Ben of the Marvel universe, and Marvel’s utterly insane need to keep him single and miserable shows just how creatively (not to mention morally) bankrupt the company has become. 

That being said: dear God this arc is a mess. 

While it is cool the Six Forgotten Warriors arc puts Spidey in a situation where he has to step up… not like this. Please. The Spider-Sense is nerfed in the most idiotic of ways, with scenes where it goes off and Peter just sits there, remarking on it… and then he gets hit. I got jarred out of this arc so many times I just couldn’t enjoy it. Electro is one of the few villains in this show that I just can't care about. It's not that he's a Nazi, although that doesn't help. There's nothing to him that I sympathetic at all. He wants power, to the exclusion of his relationship with his dad? That felt wrong to me. If you can take a character as pathetic and awful as Morrie Bench and make him sympathetic... you can probably do it with a Nazi.

Oh, and speaking of plot convenience, MJ gets hurt in this arc, in the most ham-fisted way possible. For a regular show? This is bad. It's plain ole bad writing. But for this show, which had done Mary-Jane so well? It's easily the worst writing in the show. This is something I'd see out of a bad/modern comic book, not this show. Period. I've ghosted shows for less.

But there's nostalgia.

So.

On I went.

But there's a lot of good to this arc, contrary to what the above rant would indicate. This is easily one of the biggest swings at Spidey lore ever done. Peter has to step up. It's not a question. The connection to his family is a fantastic hook and got me invested immediately. And they play up that angle really nicely! Peter's idea of his parents, the only thing he has left of them, is challenged, and he has to resolve the identity crisis, immediately. It's such a good hook that I wasn't really jarred by the bad writing until MJ got hurt.

And that ending scene, with MJ telling Peter to still be Spidey, that it's not a question of one or the other, that he has a responsibility to both her and  the world... I have nothing but love for this scene. Regardless of how clumsy the delivery was, getting to this scene was truly worth it. I really miss this aspect of Spider-Man: the idea of expanding responsibility, of love creating more opportunities for goodness, not just hardship. It's the next step of that arc.

And I have nothing but bile for Marvel's decision to steer away from it.

Part Two Next Week!

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Power Rangers RPG Early Game Review

 


This is going to be a really odd review. On the one hand, I've never had so much fun with a combat-focused game. The combat is really rewarding and people can really let loose! What an experience! On the other hand, I've never seen a published book so badly edited and laid out. It's the definition of a mixed bag. If you're okay with learning how to get around the rulebook this game is genuinely a blast to play, working for a wide variety of ages and affections for the franchise.

Also: this a review that covers my impressions of the book and gameplay up to level five. I don’t feel confident talking about high level play yet, and I feel that will be its own review. I fully intend to get there. So stay tuned!

You'll see a lot of licensed products get by just on the hype. And that's not wrong (more on that later), but that is not the case for Power Rangers gameplay. This game definitely has the chops to not just be for fans.  Improvising is rewarded and spamming of actions is discouraged. There's two ways they achieve this: low HP and allowing improv actions to be the equal of regular attacks. Low HP means that you can't just rush into combat. You have to have a plan, and everyone has to be on the same page. One wrong hit and you’re out of the fight! Improving your HP with leveling isn't automatic, meaning you have to put in resources you’d normally use for offense to survive hits. And even then, you won't be getting that much more HP. So at best you'll be using your HP as a resource for your team, as opposed to breaking gameplay and removing risk. The damage in the game is also lowered and flattened, with all damage dice removed. This means that improvised attacks aren't outpaced by "regular" attacks. So if you want to just spam attacks, over and over? It does exactly the same as people who are being creative. Given that being creative is usually more fun than spam.... creative actions actually become more rewarding, because of the mechanically even playing field. That might sound a bit odd, but that’s what I’ve found at my table, and so that’s what I have to report. I also really appreciate the Power Point system. It allows for some really neat tricks without going overly much into straitjacketing how you do those tricks.

Character building (once you've gotten over the book) is a lot of fun. While the customization looks sparse, it's actually extremely robust, and possibly even broken, depending on how far you're willing to push getting perks. Each ranger color is its own class, granting you a series of well-defined roles. Red is the leader, black the buffer, blue is support, pink is tac-nuke, green the lone striker, and yellow the combo master. The colors themselves are really straightforward, with the origins (more like beginning stereotypes!) and influences making your character unique. As stated before, it's the perks that really make characters stand out. One of the perks lets you change your ranger color (multiclassing) and another let’s you choose from an advanced spectrum color (redo, essentially). There's a lot of variety in a very small amount of space. I’ve made more than a few characters and never felt like characters were being pigeonholed, as there was enough structure for everyone to have solid expectations of each other, but enough room for some surprises and individuality. That being said, I’ve home brewed some perks and found the examples in the book to be helpful in reverse engineering for my table. I’ve not had a dissatisfied player yet!

Granted, any ranger can do this with the right perk:


And thats not not elicited an excited giggle from all my players, regardless of age. So that may be a low bar. Dunno. Up to you and all that.

The role playing systems in this book are pretty middle of the road. The Power Rangers RPG is a combat storygame with obvious inspiration from 5e… to its detriment. Characters have Origins and Influences. Both words are not very indicative of what the concepts actually are: stereotypes and life paths. Origins provide base health, some initial spread of skills, and a base personality type. Influences are where the details are: it gives the stereotype you picked some nuance. You can have as many Influences as you like, and are given some guidance on how to modify the ones provided to get a concept you want. Influences also have the elements that most directly impact story point gain:  Perks, Hang-Ups, and Bonds. Perks are special options you gain from that Influence, Hang-Ups are really wordy flaws (which give you disadvantage in certain situations) and Bonds… are even wordier character traits. The origins of Bonds are clearly from 5e, and they really are too large for players and GMs to remember and challenge. I GM’d Burning Wheel two to three times a week for approximately three years, which is far chunkier and much more involved. The problem isn’t that Bonds are complicated, but that they’re unwieldy for the amount of mechanical weight they have on them. Even the Hang-Ups are overly verbose, in need of an actual editing pass. None of this is insurmountable, but the system is getting in its own way here. 

The Story Points mechanic is similarly mixed. On the one hand, the designers clearly made the game to need Story Points, which is good. You want the game to be mean enough to necessitate the actions you take to get the Story Points. Having fudged more than a few rolls for my kids I can tell you the system needs the Story Points. But there’s six ways to spend them! Six! My players in Burning Wheel had trouble remembering one type of expenditure for two (occasionally three) types of metacurrency! I have GM’d a good dozen sessions of this game and still couldn’t tell you what the hell all the uses for Story Points are. There’s also two pools: one for the GM and one for the players, each with their own requirements for increasing their own respective pools. This isn’t insurmountable, but if any page of the book has to be printed and given to each player as a handout, it’s page 91, where all the information on Story Points resides. But again, once you get the hang of it you’ll find a system that’s satisfying to use, one which rewards good RP and problem solving. 

Now for the bad: the actual book. The art's lovely, but the actual layout and editing is a nightmare. I own more than a few RPG books and have learned quite a few systems over the years.... and I had to get help. Flat out. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it! Fortunately the Power Mafia Discord group is composed almost entirely of helpful people who have figured out how to play this game and are willing to share their knowledge. I highly recommend going there after a quick look through the book. They're friendly and knowledgeable. Once I found the information in the book I could figure out the logic, but this is what it looks like when one of the designers is editor! I'm in the middle of writing my own game and the sheer amount of typos that other people find in my own text is more than enough proof that you need someone a bit more separate from the work to look it over. That didn’t happen here, by the credits on the inside cover.

I do not like the zord combat rules. I do not use them. I find them to be unusable. I'm sorry, it's just that simple. There's nothing kind to say about them, as they strain character resources to a degree I just don't find fun. I have use the Zord autopilot rules as the base ones to acceptable effect and have found the Zord customization rules acceptable enough. This part of the game needs work.

But it gets worse. The ugliest part of the game is the absolute lack of any advice on building combat encounters and monsters. The outcry over this was so intense that Renegade released these guidelines for free, but the lack of those guidelines being in the book is a severe black mark for me, particularly because there's not a whole lot of monsters in the book to begin with! I'm honestly baffled by this decision, given just how many thousands of monsters Power Rangers has had in its 25+ year reign. Decades of awesome Japanese rubber suits and there’s barely enough to run even a campaign, nevermind multiple! Given just how weird Power Rangers monsters are it would have been really simple to set up a crazy monster generation system. But the lack of support in a book that claims to be a one stop shop is just criminal.

And honestly that may be too much for any reader of this blog post. I find that sad, because this game is a lot of fun and encourages creativity in a way I've not seen a lot of combat focused games manage. It's ultimately up to you if you want to take a swing at the game, but hopefully with an indication of the flaws of the product in mind. I've been playing with my kids (it's simple enough to where you don't have brain overload managing mechanics) and with other folks and have found that this game is worthwhile for me. Despite Renegade's errors with the text their design acumen really can't be denied.

I’d also like to throw a shoutout to the fantastic customer service at Renegade. The binding on the book appears to be sewn (I’m terrible at telling things like that), but pages began to fall out of my initial copy of my book. I’d done nothing to the book to warrant such an outcome. I contacted customer service and they sent me a new book within a few days. They were polite and horrified that my book hadn’t lived up to reasonable expectations. I’ve contacted them a few times for other issues in the past and have always found Renegade’s customer service to go above and beyond what I expected. And I do think that’s a part of the picture that’s worth relating to you.

Power Rangers the RPG has some fantastic ideas, great gameplay, and really unhelpful layout and editing. If that doesn’t scare you off I think it’s worth the time. I’ve had a blast and so have my players. It’s worth the effort, I think. But if that’s not what you want to do? I totally understand. 

Friday, June 3, 2022

Spider-Man 94: Season Four


After a lackluster third season Spider-Man 94 had a lot of scrambling to do. And, while I was afraid they'd completely lose their touch at first, the fourth season manages to bounce back. By sticking with human motivations and keeping to their weird science roots Spider-Man 94 manages to turn in a good season. I'd not say it tops Season Two, but it's certainly in the ballpark. And hey, given how much I love season two that's something!

Let's get what I don't like out of the way first: production quality. Dialogue was always fast on this show, but the earlier portion of Season Four is downright unpleasant to watch. Had I not known from childhood how good this season can be I'd have given up! I find it that bad! Reused animation is fourth wall breaking at this point. There were various times throughout the season I was completely jolted out of watching because the show reused a shot that made absolutely no sense. Basic animation gets trampled on, and the results are repulsive.

Nowhere to go but up, right?

Actually yes!

After a disappointing and technically irritating opening featuring Robbie Robertson, we finally get this show's version of the Black Cat. This is definitely where my nostalgia kicks in. I love every second of these two episodes. The writers kick Felicia all the way into hot shit territory and, once again, surpass the source material.

Sorry comic book Black Cat lovers: she's boring.

@ me, go ahead. You're still wrong.

This version of Felicia (and Black Cat) is a beautiful combination of dangerous, inexperienced, and playful. I could never tell what she was up to, even with the benefit of seeing the show when I was younger. Every second of her on the screen is a good one. Cat breaks down "Spider's" defenses and baggage, helping him to recover from the grief of losing MJ. Spidey finally accepts Cat as a partner, two episodes later. Kraven returns and it's great to see him again. 

And then there's the Smythe/Silvermane episode. I didn't know if I was supposed to be laughing at Silvermane? But I did? Does that make me a terrible person? I don't really care. Cat was great and the reused animation was hilarious. And Silvermane's last line is worth it all. 

And my goodness, is this another two episodes of Morbius and Blade? With some damn fine work on Cat/Felicia as well? I think these are the best episodes of the season! This is another pair of episodes that just couldn't have been done earlier in the show. 

Oh, and they're actually building up the Harry subplot along the way this time! They learned!!! I love it when show runners learn from their mistakes. Harry's flip to the green side is really well done. I like how Norman manages to show up. And we also get the Punisher again, which is a most unexpected (but welcome) treat! If you're not choking up a little bit for Punisher's ray of hope at the end, then... Well, I'll have to call the battle van. Sorry.

The twist of MJ being back is so much crueler as an adult. This was such a sickening move on the writer's part. And I do mean that as a compliment.

Okay, honestly the next episode, featuring Mysterio, just isn't very good. I'm glad this season was shorter than three, but they could have cut this episode really easily and no one would have noticed. 


Yes, even with the unmasking at the end! I think just about anything else could have been done to make Peter realize he needed MJ more than anything and it would have been better.

The rest of the season is about these two deciding to love each other, regardless of cost. The rapport they build is so cool, so heartfelt, I just... Yeah. This is right in the nostalgia. I've no pretense to objective thought here. I just don't. This feels great to revisit. Even with the looming threat of the truth I can't help myself. 

They're happy.

 And they have it coming.

What the heck am I actually going to think of Season Five?