A Post-Modern Catechism: Christianity and the Scapegoat

 

Notice how the strip shows Karl Popper shrugging? It's cause he knows he's an idiot. At best. At worst he's being actively deceptive. I really hope he's just an idiot.

Why?

Because Nazism was founded upon tolerance. And that tolerance created the Holocaust.

Yup.

National Socialist. It's right there in the name. Hitler's genius was in convincing the most extreme wings of the Nationalist and Socialist parties that their methods were complimentary in the formation of a stronger Germany. Through sheer force of personality Hitler forced tolerance between the factions and created an ideal that others could get behind: the creation of an ideal society that rose above its dark past and allowed it to progress into the future.

If you don't see the similarity you're just as stupid as Popper.

What, you thought them copying out of our eugenicist playbook (all the Planned Parenthoods in the black neighborhoods, y'all!) was going to stop with just that?

See the note about Popper's intelligence.

But the Jews would not live like the other Germans. It's the simple reason why anti-Semitism is such a historical thing: they are not like you, will not pretend to be you, and their existence will continue despite (or because of!) your interference. The very existence of the Jews was an existential threat to Germany, because it questioned the very foundations of it. Hell, one could argue that rules like kosher and whatnot rendered Jewish life superior to the German way of life, cause pork's bad for you and all that. Horrible oversimplification, yes, but it does point out the societal problem of parallel societies and why they’re so frequently chased after.

The problem is that Popper's argument isn't wrong, it's just that it's way too limited. The strip indicates that somehow this way of thinking is unique to us, that progressives are the first to have this idea, and that they think their ideas are so unique that literally no other historical case applies to what they're doing.

They're absolutely wrong on all counts.

To think that every civilization before us didn't think of itself as inclusive is stupid. Arrogant. Everyone has come to the same conclusion that Popper did: if our society allows large-scale dissent from the popular ideology then chaos will come back. And chaos is so bad, so awful, that anything is preferable to it. Right?

So y'know what that's called? Scapegoating. As in, the process of finding someone to blame for all your societal problems and then transferring your mass negative feelings to them. Don't think we do that these days?

If, by this point, you're wondering where the "catechism" (as in something religious) is, we're getting there. My point (Gerard makes it better than I, but I intuited it before I knew of him) is that civilization, hell all religion, is based off of taking the rage and other negative emotions that would rip the society apart and putting it on a class of scapegoats. Marxism isn’t wrong about oppressors and oppressed but it messes up literally everything else about the process. And I don't think Marxism even gets things right, nevermind anything else. Trump is a scapegoat for the left’s rage. Prostitutes are scapegoats for a society’s lust. 

Taking any overwhelming feeling and pushing it on a group of people is scapegoating. And we blame the victim. If we don’t the catharsis isn’t complete. All religions do this. All humans do this. It is in our nature to blame the victim of our scapegoating. They were asking for it, being so unacceptable! This is normal human behavior, whether you like it or not. Paganism is built entirely off of it, with the more hardcore versions owning up to the process and doing human sacrifice and temple prostitutes; there were temple prostitutes for Reason in the glory days of The French Revolution, just for the record. The idea of a purely rational humanity is an idea for the underclass, even at the height of the Enlightenment's glory days. Humans do scapegoats, like it or not. And it blames the scapegoat because man that feels good and keeps us all from murdering each other. This is a historical fact.

Except, oddly enough, Christianity.

For you see, in Christianity the scapegoat is God, come down to earth to become scapegoat and make us a member of His family, The Trinity. The script is flipped. The scapegoaters are shown for what they are: hypocritical, scared, oblivious to the true value of those they kill. God took the side of the scapegoats and showed us a new way, that of dying to oneself and arising. We give up scapegoating and thus become gods. Anastasios, the Greek word the Catholics and Orthodox use for resurrection, has an additional meaning: revolution. The siding of God with the scapegoat started a revolution that led to the resurrection of the dead. By taking the external forcing of negative feelings and holding each individual accountable for themselves and how they feel, Christianity created a level of progress and peace hitherto unknown. 

If you claim otherwise you really need to crack open a history book.

Desperately.

Now, does this mean that humans who claim to be Christian don’t scapegoat? No, why would they stop? Humans are idiots, of course they’re not going to do it naturally. Scapegoating is natural. There is not a soul alive who doesn’t do it.

But the story of one man who claimed to be God dying and rising has a funny effect: we know it’s possible to fight this urge, to say “I am a sinner” in all confidence, in hope! 

For if you are a sinner why should you scapegoat others?

You’re just like them, after all.

Variety in Design

 

I have, once again, returned to Breath of the Wild. Every time I try to play other video games I just wind back up here. It’s an ongoing thing. I’m done with fighting it. I may just play Breath of the Wild until I die at this rate. 

So don’t take this post as “How did I get here??” sorta a rant. I’m taking stock. Trying to understand the terrain. I’ll be here awhile. May as well understand what I enjoy.

Breath of the Wild balances four finite resources: health, stamina, items, and time. Any action in the game demands at least one of these resources. Success in the game is measured by how few of these resources you consume on a given action. Each of these resources have different rules. Managing these resources is key to the game.

Health is the most draconian of the resources: you only get so much, and it doesn’t regen naturally, requiring you to rest, eat, and drink potions.

Or, y’know, just don’t get hit!

Yeah, about that.

Health is there to punish you for sucking at the game. You figure I’d want more of it, but it actually makes the game boring for me. So I don’t increase it beyond Divine Beast hearts. That keeps combat tense and makes me avoid pitched battles unless I have a good plan or overwhelming advantage. Which I usually don’t.

Stamina is limited, but regens. It also takes up resources if you want it back faster. It’s there to force you to plan and scheme. It also sets a hard limit so you can figure what’s reasonable to attempt and what you may actually be able to barely pull off. If something costs that automatically makes it more interesting, as constriction of choices naturally leads to creativity. I usually increase stamina every chance I get, because the fun part of the game (exploring) keeps getting more fun, especially once you see that each stamina increase gets you that much farther.

Items are there to help you cheat the other three resources. You use food to get back health, potions to do a variety of actions, and almost always to cut down on time. But items aren’t given to you straight usually, and almost all of them have limited usage before you have to go and find more. So you look for more.

Which means you have to engage with hearts, stamina, and time.

Oops.

Time is the one resource that isn’t strictly delineated by the game, nor does it have to be. Everything has a time  cost, from walking a few steps to going around a hill when it’s raining. While items help somewhat with time there’s two different mechanics for time management: saves and game overs. Both of these help you contextualize the time you spent on the game.

I think a thing that hooks me is none of these resources are separate. They all interconnect. They all inform my experience in a way that I have some (but not total!) ability to control. Breath of the Wild doesn’t dictate to me how to interact with these resources, but it does respond to my decisions via those things.

It’s a part of why I keep coming back.

The Dying(?) Genius of Star Wars

 

Alright folks, let's get the hot take out of the way: Andor sucks. Those three episodes were some of the most boring, most overwrought, piece of shit writing I've experienced since Rings of Power. And, maybe it's just me, but I'm starting to feel this sense of dread about it all. I felt absolutely no need for a show about Andor. He's the second worst character in Rogue One (right behind Jyn Erso!), with so many foundational flaws that I was scratching my head as to why on earth anyone would make a show about him. But that's only half the real problem: a prequel show for Andor isn't necessary. Star Wars was not defined by its abundance, but by its restraint. 

You don't need to know what Luke was up to before the sequel trilogy.

You seriously don't.

Y'know why you don't need an Andor show or a Luke Skywalker post-OT show, just by default? Because the most important part of a story is what it doesn't say. If you're going to add something you have to act like you're touching a hot stove: lightly and with the expectation of harm. Part of what made the OT so good was how much was not stated. You didn't need to know what happened to Vader. You didn't need to know just how in the wrong Obi-Wan was. You had plot points and a story of great pathos, and the rest could be left to your imagination.

No, I'm not commenting against the prequels. Or the sequels.

Now, what happens betwixt those ears of yours is really important. Pretending that it's not is to discount all art, ever. Art is about an object reactivating your interior world. If the piece does not do that it is not art, but just an object, content. And the way art does this is by suggesting just enough to get your heart beating, your brain working, together in concert. The gaps left by the OT are masterful and they suggest something that you can think on for actual decades. That space is sacred and if you add to the work, you invalidate whatever happened in that space. Denying otherwise denies the existence of art.

The principal backlash against the prequels and sequels is the violation of this space. And that's a legit backlash. Anytime someone screams "BUT LUKE WOULDN'T DO THAT" or "WHY IS EVERYONE SO PATHETIC" or anything else, the root emotional cause is that the work they were able to do on themselves because of the OT's permission was interrupted. And because we have absolutely no understanding of art in our day and age it comes out garbled, childish, and sometimes oddly sociopathic.

Yes, Gene Wolfe went and added more than double.

No, I'm really not thrashing the prequels. Or the sequels. Adding to previously established stories isn't a bad idea, but you have to be really careful about it. Gene Wolfe's Solar Cycle was seemingly complete with Book of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun. So was the Earthsea trilogy: yes, I know there's six parts to it now, but it was originally a trilogy.  The Solar Cycle particularly does this right, by jumping to a completely different part of the universe and exploring the same themes from Book and Urth of the New Sun in a completely different way, through different characters. Severian is barely referenced in the ensuing 2400 or so pages, and even then most of the references are oblique at best. And the one time he is directly referenced is so controversial there are people who steadfastly maintain that it's not Severian at all! Despite the clear implications of what's said, people cannot seem to accept the really hard truth Wolfe drops on us about Severian during those sequel 2400-ish pages. Y'know what you get with adding Long Sun and Short Sun? Y'know, the green, orange, and multi-colored volumes in the picture above? Not just an epic story that is an incredible commentary on grieving and forgiveness, but something that mostly indirectly changes the Book of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun respectfully, even if not without some controversy. By changing things up there are now more gaps to be explored and thought about.

The genius of The Skywalker Saga is how the gaps in the narrative are leveraged. There's decades between each trilogy, sometimes a decade between each episode, and there is no apology made for it. And Lucasfilm has been mostly good about respecting this fact, with the best examples being the animation shows Clone Wars, Bad Batch, and Rebels. And we can zero in further, focusing on Saw Gerrera. Y'know, the dude who's pictured at the top of the post.

See? I was getting there.

When we first meet Saw in The Clone Wars he’s a green terrorist in the making. He’s got the edge to him, but can’t quite follow up on his aspirations. There’s a softness to him, like a tiger cub who’ll maul you, and do it while being soft and cuddly and probably mewing the whole time. You know what he’ll end up being, but he doesn’t know, and can’t. And that's sad. We then drop in on Saw about 15 or so years later. Saw’s now a fully formed person, ruthless, good at it, and not ashamed of it. But you knew what he was before; you know there’s still a spark of that dumb sweet kid in there, somewhere.  And it helps ground you. This is a person with history. You know that. And you hope he’ll turn around.

And, in a way, he does! Saw is last seen as an old man. His years of ruthless behavior have caught up with him, rendering him crippled and alone. I don't need to know what happened to Saw and what's in my head is a lot better than anything any writer can come up with, by default. The one person Saw hoped would care for him, Erso, is estranged from him. That clearly cuts deep in his soul. And you see that kid in the face of the old man. He clearly has regrets. But he is what he is and  can’t change it now.

These snapshots of Saw’s life are done over multiple creators and years. Each time their stay isn’t overdone; you get out before you’re tired of it all. If anything the weakest entry in this little series of vignettes is the shortest, but Rogue One’s a pretty disappointing film in general and that doesn’t surprise me at all. I find Rogue One to just be… mostly okay. At best.

This is another obligatory reminder that Andor sucks. Sorry not sorry.

That aside,  y’know what I thought of when I first met young Saw again?

This poor old asshole.

And that got a genuine reaction out of me. I didn’t want this young and dumb tiger to end up alone and broken. I heard Saw wheezing on that ventilator. I saw the limp. I felt the regret. Saw had sold his soul and lost. And yeah, in that brief moment that arc suggested itself to me. I felt that within me, deep down in my soul. I tried to take a moment to comfort the part of me that ached. I reassured it that Saw realized that he was in the wrong, and that even at the end, with no time, he tried. I have time. I have hope. And I can do a hell of a lot more than Saw in his wretched last moments.

That. Is. Art. 

And what's why you need it.

Now, can you see what my problem is with Disney owning Star Wars? Disney isn't Gene Wolfe or George Lucas or Ursula K. LeGuin. It's a corporation. It's a shark. It needs to make money, it has to keep moving. If it's not gaining it's losing. That's not an indictment against Disney or any other corporation. It's just a fact about the nature of what it is. With each release Disney makes I keep asking myself "Is this just the corporate cash grab? Or is this actually art?" So far Disney has had more wins than losses: Rogue One is about as artful as a painted prostitute, Andor ain't lookin' good at all, and season one of the Mandalorian is a sham, just straight up. And don't get me started on Book of Boba Fett, we could be here all day listening to that rant about the failure to actually write a coherent show that has any form of respect for Boba or his story and instead places corporate interests above-

Despite my opinions on Disney buying Lucasfilm gradually souring I have to admit that they’re doing a form of storytelling not even being attempted elsewhere. So long as we get more of Saw Gerrara’s type of corporate "fan service" and not… I can’t believe I’m saying this…

THIS.

Y'know, totally unrelated to the story…

I think I may be on board. I loved Kenobi. I know that’s probably controversial. But I don’t care. It actually added something substantial, something that I couldn't have come up with on my own. Long as Disney keeps that up I guess I’m happy. But we're asking a corporation to show restraint. That's not something corporations are known for. So, I hope that they do. I really do. But I'm never going to forget that this is what Disney has always been. and what they will always be:

I don't think anyone should.

The Dark Souls RPG

 

Before we get into my thoughts on this game we need to go over my opinion of “trad” games, such as modern DnD, Pathfinder, and derivatives such as the Power Rangers RPG and the like. We’ll also need to talk about the other RPGs that are openly based on Soulslike games. It’s not exactly a spicy and original take but without knowing my opinion on both Trad and games inspired by Dark Souls my comments on the Dark Souls RPG are going sound odd.

Spoiler: I like the game. Kinda.

No, I wasn’t sent a review copy.

No, the game is not perfect, it has its very obvious flaws. Yes, shame on Steamforged for not taking more time!

But hear me out.

Trad games (as defined by this blog post) are classified in part as games where the  GM is active and the players are reactive. The game rules have a giant hole where storygames, the OSR, and classic games have a turn structure. Whether it be PBTA Moves, Burning Wheel’s round robin style of showcasing player Beliefs, BDnD’s turn structure, etc, most RPGs have some pretty detailed rules on how to handle the story as a part of the game. It’s actually pretty common for RPGs, if you take the hobby as a whole.

But not Trad. There’s a big gaping hole in that area, by and large, because one of two things are expected: either your GM has come up with his own little structure/flowchart/map or whatever, or he bought an adventure so he didn’t have to prep for God knows how many hours.

Don’t balk at that. Even a cursory glance at DnD 3.5 and up reveals that is the assumed state of play. Hours are assumed to be spent by the GM in prepping a showcase of goodies that players of the “wrong” (aka people who are allergic being reactive) persuasion will wreck within minutes. Ironically enough if you hand one of these ornery players a game of literally any other type they become fantastic players, by and large. This is Trad’s greatest disadvantage: if a player wants to do more than react to whatever the GM has in mind they’re going to create waves, regardless of how much the GM communicates with them.

So, now you know my opinion on Trad games.

Dark Souls the RPG is the best Trad game I’ve personally ever read.

There are a lot of games based off of Dark Souls. I’ve played some, and enjoyed them. I’ve read more than a few, more than I can remember right now, so I have a… decently(?)… educated opinion on the subject. These games try to take the feeling of Dark Souls and explore it on their own terms. One of these games, Bleak Spirit, is one of my favorite games. So I’m not here to talk against the many adaptations. They’re good games in their own right, by and large.

But Dark Souls the RPG is the most faithful adaptation that I, personally, have ever read. 

It’s not close either.

I’ve now made two astoundingly ridiculous sounding claims. Let’s take them in reverse order.

Dark Souls the RPG is the most faithful adaptation that I, personally, have ever read, for an astoundingly simple reason: with the exception of class features every single mechanical element of the game is an in-game object. You don’t gain spells, can’t just grab whatever weapons you want, you find them! Souls can be scattered throughout the world. Even your backstory is a part of the game, an object you can lose. I’ve not seen another game that’s owned up to it to this degree. And this faithfulness to ludo-narrative cohesion fixes Trad play. The GM can construct an environment with all the mechanical bits and bobs, complete with all the layout tricks he likes. He then drops the players into this environment and sits back. And waits. The greatest strength of a Trad game (letting the GM just go nuts in the background) then overcomes Trad’s greatest flaw (the ease of railroading). 

“But the game’s lacking in combat balance!” This freaking Dark Souls, why’re you looking for a fair fight??? That's not a thing in Dark Souls and we all know it!

“The game has glaring flaws!” Yes it does, but you know what you do with that? What you literally do with all Trad games: houserule it extensively. Just 'cause 5e is more polished than Dark Souls does not mean that 5e is a good game, nevermind that they expect you to fix their design stupidity. There’s no real operative difference, like it or not. I’d much rather house-rule a game with a good chassis (Dark Souls) than a mediocre one (5e, and I’m being generous by calling it mediocre). And the set up of Dark Souls is actually really really good. 

You can find all the obvious flaws and discuss the really bad production cycle of The Dark Souls RPG all you like. It’s deserved. The game was clearly rushed. But if you’re going to do that the other side of it should be discussed as well. The Dark Souls RPG respects the actual gameplay ideas of the video game, and adapts it to TTRPGs more faithfully than any other adaptation than I’m aware of. That makes the flaws of this game all the more tragic.

That being said, I’m going to enjoy drawing up dark and twisted environments with all the crunchy/fictional goodness I can. Not to mention hacking part my players’ backstories with glee when they die.

If you don’t then that’s your choice. But me? I’m gonna go have some fun.

Sometimes I am really glad I write these awhile in advance. My opinion's become a bit more sarcastic since the above, so in my typical fashion I'm not going to rewrite the above (because it's not wrong) but contextualize it. See, I really like this idea of the special abilities being tied to stuff you find in the world, and that you change your character build by swapping out the items you have, with some influence and choice within the class you have. Combine that with a good and crunchy combat system and something passible at skills and you'd have a good game!

That seems.... familiar... somehow... where have I seen this before?

Yes, Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, the Essentials line. The classes have more choice than Dark Souls, nevermind the feat choices are voluminous. 4e's got multiple books worth of items, along with a way of fixing the math so that you don't need the items to keep up. Monsters are built off of 4e's far better engine, with plenty of room to not just do what Dark Souls currently does.... but a lot better. Like, a hell of a lot better.

THAT, my friends, is about 80 bucks: the cost of the Dark Souls roleplaying game, shipping included! If you can throw in some extra money for a copy of DM's Guide 2 you'll be set for the rest of your life.  You can take the same ludo-narrative stuff that Dark Souls does and put it in here, with more variety, better builds, and actual guidance for hacking the game.

Sure, the art ain't as nice. And the writing in Dark Souls I find more enjoyable. But those above books? They'll give you the same experience, but more reliably.

So yes, Dark Souls is actually a good RPG

But 4e is better, buck for buck.

But that's true of 4e against a lot of modern games, Essentials or not.

The Book of the Elders: Prologue

“So nobody has been able precisely to describe their (the saints’) virtuous life for us. Those who labored… have bequeathed to us in writing a few examples of achievements… to rouse those who came after to emulation.”

Book of the Elders: Prologue

There's a growing group of horrifically disillusioned former Christians. Raised upon the bastardization that is "conservative" Christianity, which uses words on paper to excuse perversities and cruelties that will never cease to surprise me, these younger folks leave, trying to find some truth, somewhere. The problem is that the usual place these folks seem to wind up is progressivism, which has all the life of a rotting corpse. Given what they think of as a choice between a more active mental life filled with cruelty or a totally vapid mental life that appears kinder, they miss the trick: there aren't two options. There's a lot more than two.

But I think there's really only one actual answer: they're all wrong. Two seconds of checking sources and taking them at actual face value reveals the conservative and progressive lies.

Book of the Elders is one of those sources you can check.

The above quote is right there in the introduction. Doesn't sound like "Let's be assholes and quote older sources we've clearly never read", does it? Nor does it sound like "Straitjacket your life to these stories because you're either doing exactly this or you're going to Hell" either. Because here's the thing: you cannot describe a full life. You cannot imitate someone in totality. You do not have their experiences, predispositions, biased, flaws, strengths, etc. And you shouldn’t: you’re you. And you’re enough.

Yes, in that sense you’re enough. 

Gosh I hate that phrase so much. Anyways.

The point of The Book of The Elders, one of the foremost collections of monastic stories, is not there to force you to be someone else, regardless of what our misguided parents said. Emulation does not mean you stop being you. Anyone who watches a younger sibling emulate an older one can see that the younger sibling never does what he emulates even remotely similar. And eventually the little sibling stops, because he’s found his own way. But for that little amount of time? The little sibling is happy to have a bigger one around to copy.

The Book of the Elders is a book meant for younger siblings to find something to love. To admire. To push in directions you’d not think to go otherwise. It is a book of possibilities, not a book of condemnations. If a story does not inspire then that’s okay! Maybe another will! This is a menu, not a list of odd impossibilities that you should feel bad for not being able to do. Read one, be puzzled, amazed, fearful, whatever, just feel something!

If you sit with this book long enough, taking the stories as these extraordinary things that happened, that the compilers themselves couldn't explain but they happened so down they go into the book, if you allow yourself to be puzzled, a beautiful thing can happen: you realize that life is just so much more than anything anyone ever told you it could be. Someone ran into a centaur? What? Centaurs don't exist... right? Maybe? The compiler's just writing down what he heard, which means he's actually just as shocked as you. You don't have to do anything more than go "Huh" and keep it in the back of your head.

We're going to break this book down, chapter by chapter, for awhile here on this blog. I'll be going over stories and some of the history behind them. I don't do this to castigate or to hate on the people who gave me these sources, but because I know the people who really could benefit from them don't know to look. I'm begging you. Look again. There's beauty here of a kind that I know you can't get anywhere else. Don't settle for less!

The Truth Found in Death: Scene Economy and Masochism

I am GMing a Power Rangers game for my friends. It’s been a great time, filled with a lot of camaraderie, heart, role playing… and barely any fighting??? The first two sessions were essentially the characters trying to figure out where they stood on things. Which isn’t bad (and was role played so well I didn’t care much at the time) but… an action RPG should have action! And adventure! Get to the point!

There is an irony in having Kull in the blog picture. If you know you’re hopefully laughing. If you don’t go listen to a Kull story. And then you’ll probably get it.

Point is: they didn’t have much mechanical support in just getting to the conflict. “But Nathan, you’re the GM, that’s your job! Don’t blame the game for what you’re supposed to be doing!” you’ll say. And that’s not wrong? I see where that criticism is coming from. 

But you know my first rule is GMing, at least at this point? Always let the player tie their own rope; only act when the players aren’t creating enough trouble on their own. The best GM is one who you barely notice because you were just… playing. I’ve got players who make great trouble, just not the type of trouble that requires combat. If the game stalled I would have thrown in a combat. And the game barely stalled.

Yes, my players are just that good. I’m extremely lucky!

But.

I think there’s a problem. The problem is that people get tired. Whenever I get to my RPG nights I'm tuckered out. My job's stressful and can really take it out of me. So when I get to game night? I don't really have a lot of chutzpah left. I want a good story but I don't necessarily want to hunt down my friends in a game to have good drama. Good drama involves suffering. Sorry folks, that's how it works. And you know what I  can't pull out of my tired soul as much anymore? Y'know, thanks to the two and a half intensive years of EMDR therapy, nights spent crying on the floor, and awful panic attacks?

Oh, right, suffering.

And I know for a fact that people, when tired, try to avoid suffering. It's rather difficult to go "Yay let's do suffering!" when you're not tired, as opposed to when you are. An adventure game requires suffering. If you want a good time the fictional pieces need to be in trouble. What makes it a game is that it isn't you. It's one thing if a game system does it, but when a game system isn't doing it... I don't think that's a good thing. Perseverating on how you're going to harm your fellow player's characters just doesn't strike me as a humane thing to do. The game producing those moments, giving everyone something to react against? Sure. That's fine, you didn't make it whole cloth, out of your own skull. You're playing a game to deal with a type of situation that you may need to experience, somehow.

But figuring out how to stress out your players over a long period of time?

No, I don't think that's the GM's business.

And here we come to the idea of scene economy: having a script that runs on in the background, telling the group "this is the type of scene you're doing right now". Before anyone balks, every single adventure plot is more or less the same structure, and that's okay. The point isn't the structure, but what happens within it. Obviously exceptions exist, and me referencing Kull earlier means I'm not only aware of them but am making the game specifically to make sure most of Kull's stories don't happen. Because, let's be blunt, a lot of Kull's stories are an almost excessive amount of world-building with very little adventure. The word navel-gazing comes to mind.

I wonder how many people I just lost by writing that.

Oh well.

Now, there's obviously various adventure stories with their own structures and whatnot, but I'm not aiming to do them all, I just want a framework that allows people to focus on their feats of awesomeness in the face of chaos and death, which is really the essence of a good adventure story anyways. We enjoy the guided tour up against the raging chaos and, provided we're given a genuine chance to see things in a visceral light and see actual triumph.

Fortunately this wheel has been crafted before: Misspent Youth. Robert Bohl's fantastic little RPG has a seven act structure that slots in perfectly with the ideas I've got for The Truth Found in Death. I'm not going to take it straight, because I've got some ideas that will work really nicely with these acts (and I've always found Misspent Youth's conflict mechanic too shallow for my tastes), but it's a great place to start. It gets you on the ground, forces everyone to focus on one big bad thing going on right now, and then weaves seven of these conflicts into a tightly focused narrative of pulse-pounding adventure. If we didn't want a story we could play Grand Theft Auto or whatever, but RPGs are inherently about narrative in a way most games are not. But there's nothing that says that any one person at the table really controls that narrative or its structure.

I think RPGs should allow you free play in the story you’re meant to tell, but really nothing else. This isn’t because I want to restrict players but because it’s hard to do an actual adventure correctly, given the breakneck pace and how tired people are before they play. Asking people to come to every session with their A Game is… not kind. A scene structure lets everyone lean on the mechanics and do what they came to do: kick ass, take names, and drink out of skulls.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

 

I pretty much swore off the MCU after Far From Home. That movie was the right cross in the 1-2 combo that broke my love of the overly bloated juggernaut franchise. I just… the corporate checklist became too much. I’ve dealt with it too much. I’m done with it. 

But Raimi, doing a sequel to my second favorite Phase 3 movie?

Civil War beat Dr. Strange.

Yes, it is my second favorite of Phase 3, although Ragnorak is its own good time.

I mean, I couldn’t say no.

I should have. God if only. But I didn’t.

Let’s get the stuff I liked done. Because it is here. I just… what could have been!

I adore the central message of the movie: happiness is fleeting, relationships win no matter what. I really like how they kept asking how relevant happiness is to a good life, if life can be worth it given that you’re not getting what you want. That’s a message I’m surprised got through a corporate machine designed to make you buy toys. Anytime anyone makes that point in a corporate commercial I’m gonna point it out.

I liked most of Wanda’s arc. I adored WandaVision, and  while I was surprised that corporate allowed Wanda to be the antagonist I really appreciated it. Wanda being shown as a grief-stricken addict to power was incredibly well-done… until the end. We’ll get there, but I really want to show I approached this movie on its own terms as I could. And man Elizabeth Olson really really sold it, to a degree I should have come to expect from her, but I always kick myself when I don’t. Elizabeth Olson is a woman of craft. I’m glad she’s getting work and this movie was the one to sell me on being an actual fan of Elizabeth Olson.

Yes, even over WandaVision. 

So.

Cumberbatch really does a great job with what he’s given. He’s given a bit of screen time playing multiple versions of Strange and does a good job in making them similar, but different in ways that feel organic. There’s a lot of untold stories behind those eyes, sometimes in the same scene. Cumberbatch’s talent for camp is called upon and he did a good job with material that sometimes gets genuinely terrible. But more on that later. Suffice to say that Strange’s arc of grieving the loss of Christine was poignant and I liked how they ended the arc of the movie by showing the acceptance of the protagonist of his entire life situation, pleasant and unpleasant.

What, you thought his third eye opening after truly accepting his fate was an accident?

C’mon folks.

And the cinematography? God, it’s gorgeous! There was some really imaginative stuff here, particularly the music fight, which was one of the most creative sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie, nevermind a summer blockbuster. I’d not recommend seeing it in the context of the movie itself, just watch if on YouTube… here. Just watch. You deserve to see something this cool.

This movie also stands out as being the goriest and creepiest Marvel movie. Raimi got to play, straight up, and it was great to someone actually masterful with a camera directing a Marvel movie. There’s some seriously creative camera and editing work here. I mean it!

So the stuff I like? I love. 

Unfortunately corporate got involved: garbage world building, dialogue, and selling false promises. The stuff that’s bad in this movie? Holy crap. I mean Feige, I get you have your agenda but damn.

I hate the “not technology” magic. The magical not-artillery, the not-Star Wars energy shields, the incredible not-gadgets… this is the sorta magical shit I hate in my inmost depths. I hated it in Thor: The Dark World and I hate it more here. So many creative things going on in this movie… and they resort to canons and shield generators??? I’m sorry, I know  it sounds petty… but I don’t care. I hate it. 

Wanda’s turn around at the end was pure, nonsensical bullshit. The entire movie she’s clearly addicted to power and she sees reason at any point? That’s outright stupid. I don’t see Raimi in that, although I could be wrong. Humans don’t change on a dime, not like that. Gollum trips, he doesn’t change his mind and throw the Ring in!

Yes, I really do think she’d not make it because of the anguish of the children.

I know, people suck. I’ve watched mothers do worse. Get over it folks.

Speaking of people sucking… the Illuminati was clearly meant to be fan service. It was awful. Reed Richards was dumber than a bag of rocks and got everyone killed. I’ve never disliked a group of Marvel heroes so fast in my life and I read Civil War when it came out. This wasn’t storytelling, it was grade-A Marvel schlock, the type of nonsense I’d expect from the summer crossover comics… not a big budget movie that could actually afford to pay good writers.

Y’know, NOT modern Marvel writers???

Speaking of which, what on God’s green earth was up with the dialogue? I know one writer is credited, but that is a damned lie. There’s some dialogue in here so out of place, so cringe, so stupid that it could not have been the writer. I refuse to believe it. Even the sentence structure changes, and so drastically that the one writer credit really needed to be two, with the second being: “The idiots who thought “We have her back” was a good scene.” It’s truly an embarrassment, coming at points in time where the emotional weight of the movie was genuinely being sold… until the stupid joke interrupted like a turd being passed off as a meatball in gourmet spaghetti. What a waste.

Multiverse had real potential. There’s aspects of the film that are so good, so genuine, so artful, that it makes the Marvel corporate bullshit become a genuine offense to movies. Marvel had a virtuoso on their hands and just couldn’t trust the audience enough.

I’m shocked at how bad a product it made this movie. 

What a shame!!!

Okay What the Hell

 

Look folks I know this isn’t a terribly reasonable post. But it’s my blog and I’ll rant if I want to! Bitch if I want to! Whine if I want to!

You would bitch too if you wrote a blooog too!

Yes I think I’m clever. 

So I recently found the “pocket” editions of Pathfinder 2e. I also discovered I adore the format. All the content of a book literally double the size, at about half the price?? Sign me up! I could kill a man with my Pathfinder 2e core book. It wouldn’t take much. I’ve long considered getting the first Bestiary and the GM’s Guide, but I’ve been spoiled by the indie movement, where it’s all in one tome. And that tome ain’t too big, even monster chunkers like Burning Wheel and Burning Empires. So three huge books for the cost of five or six indie games, at about the same quality of gameplay, and that’s me generous to Pathfinder?

Yeah no. No thanks.

But I’ll admit: I’ve been waxing nostalgic for my days of crunchy combat fantasy RPGs. And Pathfinder 2e fits that bill. So if that’s something I can invest in at a fraction of the cost and shelf space, consider me sold!

And this is where the rant begins: why the hell isn’t this the standard??? RPGs are expensive to get into. Not as much as video games, sure, but the big corporate folks turn these books into coffee table affairs, with full color art and gigantic-ass tomes that could be registered as lethal weapons. It was horrendously expensive for me as a high school and college student and it’s especially expensive now, what with a wife and three kids. 

And I know I know that this rant misses the point. WOTC and Paizo and FFG and my dead grandma want something that feels premium. They want something with sizzle and pop. I get it. And that’s nice and all… but can I just get a game that works, which stands the test of time? I will be passing Burning Wheel onto my kids if they want it. I ain’t passing that game on because it’s a pretty book that will make a great conversation piece. 

Burning Wheel is getting passed down because some of the most profound experiences of my life were made possible by it. For all its flaws it’s the game that sparked something in me I still struggle to understand and respect.

I don’t want something glitzy. 

I want something that works. And we all should, really. 

The Problem of Evil: A Jewish Myth

 

Once there was a man who had felt no fear. He looked out at the wicked world and wanted to find true justice. So he set out, finding awful people wherever he went who mocked his supposed fearlessness and told him there was no true justice. But the Fearless Man paid them no heed. He searched the wide world, finding the worst sort of men (the ones who don’t think they’re bad  sorts at all! Decent men!) who greeted him with the same mockery. But the Fearless Man paid them no mind, even as the places he had to explore dwindled like a flame on a shrinking wick.

One day he found a deep and frightening wood. No one he met had ever gone in, for the place was most unnatural and awful, a place of true nightmares. But the Fearless Man paid the terrors no heed and strode in, iron set to find true justice.

Eventually the light waned. The Fearless Man wearied, so he looked for a place to stay, although whoever would stay here and offer him hospitality was beyond him! But sometime after dark he saw the soft glow of candlelight from a window; a cottage loomed in the sudden clearing. Exhausted, the Fearless Man only knocked once.

The inside of the cottage seemed to go on forever, startling the Fearless Man so much that he didn’t hear the door shut behind him. Stretching on into infinity were shelves upon shelves, filled with lit oil lamps. It was a hypnotic scene, as the possibly infinite candles produced a bright but wavering light. The Fearless Man walked up and down the rows of shelves, noticing that some lamps had a lot of oil and some barely had any.

“May I help you?”

The Fearless Man jumped. Behind him was a man so old his eyes were almost completely hidden by the wrinkles. “Pardon me sir, I’m sorry. It’s dark in the woods and I’m in need of a place to sleep.”

“Well of course!” The old man began to escort the Fearless Man down the rows of flickering candles.

“What are these?”

“The lives of all living men. When the oil goes out their life ends.”

The Fearless Man said nothing for a moment as he surveyed the limitless space. “May I see my own?”

The old man shrugged and hung a right. The Fearless Man followed. After a few turns the old man stopped, and the Fearless Man found himself staring at one oil lamp.

There was barely anything left.

The flame was guttering out. 

A cold feeling invaded his stomach. And then his limbs. And then his brain.

But next to it… one only just filled. It had  some oil trailing on its side! So much!

If only he could not dump it all out on the shelf-

The grasp on his wrist was that of iron. The old man’s eyes shone with a terrible light.

“Is this the justice you were searching for?”

And then the man was in the woods. But now he heard them. The whispers. The souls of the departed were in these woods. He hadn’t  heard them before, when he first had entered the wood.

Why could he hear them now?

 

There were many things wrong with the awful slog that was the first Rings of Power episode. The pacing sucks. So very very much. The dialogue is just flat out bad, with almost all of it being cringe at best. I was bored. Flat out bored.

These people don’t understand Tolkien at all. No, not even a little. This has as much to do with Tolkien as Satanism has to do with Christianity.

Confused? Thinking that hyperbole?

Here’s three very curious facts The Rings of Power left out:

1. THEY DON’T EVEN MENTION THE VALAR. Who are they, you ask? They’re the major gods of Middle Earth. They’re literally what Valinor, the land of the Far West, is named for! The elves lived with them, in eternal blessedness. 

Until Morgoth, one of the most powerful of the Valar, was able to destroy the light of the trees.

Yes Tolkien fans I oversimplified a bit. Shut up. At  least I mentioned them!!! The Valar invited the elves to live with them.

2. THE NOLDOR AREN’T THE GOOD GUYS. Who are the Noldor? The elves who swore revenge upon Morgoth and left the light of Valinor. The Valar point blank told them not to go. Morgoth was entirely out of their league. The Noldor didn’t listen… and then committed genocide to get to Middle Earth. 

Yup.

The Kinslaying.

The Noldor slew an entire civilization of sea faring elves to get their ships. Now, some of them (Galadriel among them) went acrost the ice way up north. But they didn’t reject their brethren who did the killing.

And then they got their asses kicked.

For thousands of years.

Eventually the Valar stepped in and sunk half of Middle Earth in a war one could rightfully call apocalyptic. The Noldor were totally useless, by and large, just like the Valar predicted.

3. THE NOLDOR CANNOT GO BACK TO VALINOR. Nope. Flat out. When they left Valinor the Noldor were forever banned from the continent, and all attempts to get back put you on a magical island, asleep, until the end of the world. Sleepy time night night!

Removing these three things completely changes the point of Tolkien’s stories. “We resisted” is the dumbest thing they could have said. Fighting Morgoth was not like fighting Sauron at all. The Noldor were not going out for justice, but for revenge. They did heinous things and destroyed much as a consequence.

Oh, and like I said it’s a banal piece of shit. Totally boring, and with fanfic levels of writing.