Lord Admiral of Her Majesty's Airship Fleet

"Novel" is done!

2011-12-05T20:57:00.001-08:00

My National Novel Writing Month "novel" reached 70,000 words on November 30. I barely wrote anything on the last day because I had reached the end of my plot a few days before, went back and added a scene, but couldn't think of anything else to add. Attempts to find a place to shoehorn more description or dialog only revealed tons of places where things should be deleted, so I ended up rounding out my novel to 70,000 words and leaving that as good enough.

The novel started out as "Welcome to Berk" and went through a mid-month re-christening to "A Librarian of Berk." Now that the month is over, I still like the characters and the setting, which I take as a good sign. I also feel like I managed to reverse the trend my November "novels" were going in, where they seemed to be getting progressively worse.

One thing that I realized as I was working on the "novel" was that National Novel Writing Month can be a very selfish activity. There I was, day after day, spending my evenings in front of my computer, cranking out words when I could have been spending time with my wife, family, and/or friends. The "novel" may have been ostensibly written for the eventual enjoyment of others, but really I think a much larger part was proving that I could complete the task I had been given. For a month, a lot of my tweets and Facebook status updates were about my word count and my novel, and they amounted to me saying, "Look at me! Look at how well I am doing!"

It was very much like blogging. I am aware of the irony.

This is the fourth time I've attempted National Novel Writing Month, and the fourth time I've succeeded. I realized as I was writing the novel that the reason I was writing the novel was so that I could boast that I had a four-for-four record on NaNo, and that my latest novel even exceeded the 50,000 word goal. My initial goal was to reach 60,000 words, which I amended to 75,000 when I saw how well I was doing. In the end, I ran out of plot before I ran out of time, so I ended up with 70,000.

Despite having written a 70,000 word story, the story's elements - the plot, the characters, the setting - are all secondary to the simple physical labor of having churned out this work. I feel like the guy who baked the world's largest cake: he's showing off how big the cake is, but nobody cares what flavor it is. And certainly, if my novel had a flavor, it wouldn't be chocolate. As any NaNo participant knows, when your single goal is word count, you can keep on typing long past the point where any rational writer would have cut himself off, deleted the past paragraph, and sat thinking for a good long time about the best way to continue the story.

So what is my point, exactly? Maybe it's that, now that I've managed to birth this hulking monstrosity, I like to make the effort worthwhile by editing it into something readable. I know that, as it stands, I would feel bad about inflicting it on anyone else (even on the people who have generously offered to do so). The lovely editor I live with has offered to look it over and suggest ways to improve it, an offer I am extremely grateful for.

After the first editorial pass has been completed, the novel will probably have not only improved, but also shrunk down to a more manageable size. After spending a month trying to get my novel as large as possible, I now face the daunting challenge of going back and chopping out most of it.

I won't lie and pretend that I'm excited by the prospect. Really, the thing I would like most would be for someone to say, "It's a miracle! Even when he was writing over 2,000 words a day, the novel is still solid gold!" But I know in the rational part of brain that it is going to take a lot of work to get this novel into a readable state.

Ah well. That's NaNoWriMo.

Otherversary #3

2011-11-18T17:57:00.001-08:00

It's been three years since my wife and I started going out. The best three years of my life...

NaNoWriMo Fan Art

2011-11-17T08:54:00.001-08:00

One of my novel's main characters is Aleksander Kolyarov, a Russian Werewolf who looks more like a husky than a wolf. Yesterday, my wife sent me this picture:

So I decided to use my awesome Photoshop skills to make a picture of a baby Kolyarov:

I figure, if I don't make fanart of my own work, how can I ever expect anyone else to? If you're not lucky enough to have a character who is easy to photoshop (like Kolyarov) and you don't have much in the way of artistic talent (I know I sure don't), then the next best thing is to find a picture of someone else's character who kind of looks like your character and pretend that it's fanart of your character.

But in all seriousness, I actually have received fan art for things I've written, and it is the greatest feeling in the world!

Halfway there!

2011-11-15T17:47:00.001-08:00

It's November 15, so I'm halfway through National Novel Writing Month. I currently have 37161 words, though I haven't written today's entry yet. That means that, at this rate, I will be able to reach over 70,000 words by the end of the month! Yikes!

Well, I don't expect to actually make it to 70,000. I expect I'll be getting pretty burned out before then. The first signs of burnout have already started, and I'm sure it'll get worse from here.

That said, I'm still having fun with my writing (usually). My characters have just reached Cyberdome, so now I'm extra excited about describing what happens next! I picture Cyberdome as Thunderdome reinvented as a cyberpunk Dickens Fair. And who wouldn't want to write about that?

Fair Warning: November is Coming...

2011-10-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

Image from austinevan's Flickr

November is coming, and once again I plan on embarking on National Novel Writing Month. The purpose of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is to try to write 50,000 words of prose fiction. You have to start the novel on November 1st, and try to have 50,000 words by the end of the month.

I've tried three times before, and even though I made it to 50,000 words each time, I felt like my first "novel" was the best and they got steadily worse from there. I hope to turn this trend around this year, but I guess we'll see how that turns out.

I plan on setting my novel in Berk. If you see me during November, please remind me that the story needs to be more zany! Wacky hijinks are also encouraged. If I'm not having fun writing it, nobody will ever have fun reading it.

This post is called "Fair warning" because I'm going to be trying to do a little bit of writing each day, so my evenings are going to be booked for the whole month. I may also have to use weekends to catch up on writing, but hopefully I won't be a total recluse all month.

But I suppose we'll see...

Write Fifteen Minutes a Day (WFMAD) Challenge So Far

2011-09-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

So far this month, I have been participating in the Write Fifteen Minutes a Day Challenge. This is supposed to be done in August, but a friend of mine organized a September version online and invited me to join in.

I have been planning on running a Gamma World RPG campaign, or maybe a Dark Sun campaign, or some kind of campaign, for ages now, but I had never really bothered to think it through. I took this opportunity to start fleshing out some details for my setting, starting with the name.

I have also been asking people for feedback (thanks for the feedback I've gotten so far!), but when I ask people about what else I should write about, but people don't know enough about the setting and what's percolating in my brain to ask for it. So here are the posts I've written so far, and some others I'm thinking about writing. Let me know which of these you'd like to see!

Already Written:
Welcome to Berk - A basic overview of the setting and its history.

Berk Faction Profile: Librarians - The scholar-defenders of Berk.

Berk Species Profile: Tofu People - People made of tofu, including information on the Vegan Cannibals species faction.

Berk Faction Profile: Gibsons - Cyberpunk raiders obsessed with first-person shooters.

Berk Species Profile: Russian Werewolves - Amiable self-styled occupation force, including information on the First Vladivostok Werewolf Airborne species faction

Berk Species Profile: Robots - Clanky, dented metal people from the Between-Time.

Guide to Berk: Monsters - Mutant squirrels, mutant raccoons, mutant pigeons, and more...

Guide to Berk: Weapons - Solid projectile weapons, energy weapons, melee weapons, and some of the more exotic weapons still built today in Berk.

Berk Locations: Redwood - A Wild West-type city of ents.

Berk Species Profile: Cuttlefolk - Friendly, stubby cuttlefish people from the Sunken City.

Berk Locations: The Sunken City - Home of the Cuttlefolk

Guide to Berk: Vehicles - From cars to horses to an elephant named Victoria.

Berk Faction Brofile: Brofessors - Keep university culture alive by combining frat boys and college professors

Berk Species Profile: Ents - Living plants descended either from a very powerful strain of weed or people who smoked a lot of weed (or both)

Sample Characters:
Sericea Nix, Librarian Researcher
Aleksander Kolyarov, Russian Werewolf
Horatio Wilberplorp, Sepia Society Cuttlefolk

Berk Locations: Cyberdome - The second home to all Gibsons.

Sample Character:
Annie "Oakleaf" Dell, Redwood Deputy

Who's Who in Berk - Faction Leaders
Librarians and Russian Werewolves - Millicent Renfield and Ivan Ivanovich
Brofessors and Redwood Deputies - Chaz "Horatio" Horowitz, Sheriff Woodrow Stihl

Sample Characters:
Felix "Noobsniper666" Mansetti, Former Gibson
Professor Clanky, Robot

Notorious Villains of Berk:
Xander Bonaparte, Berkeley, Kittenbot 3000
The Steve, Queen Raider MacRaider

Sample Adventure: The Beloved Company
Introduction, Encounters One and Two

Yet to be Written:
Berk Faction Profile: Yoga Zombies - People who meditate to the point that their brains shut down and all they do is shamble around moaning "om" and twisting people into yoga poses.

Berk Faction Profile: Hermits - People who live their whole lives encased in a suit of armor, which they constantly add to and expand.

Berk Faction Profile - Berk Burkes - Men and women in shabby top hats, black coats, and fingerless gloves who do the nasty odd jobs around town.

Berk Locations: Libraries of Berk - Strongholds of the Librarians.

Berk Locations: Subway Stations of Berk - Strongholds of the Russian Werewolves.

By the way, I should take this opportunity to say that I plan on going back and revising some of my past posts, so I apologize to those of you who have already read those posts and will be missing the new information. For instance, I've been meaning to add that energy weapons in Berk are called "Kenners," but I never got around to doing so. I plan on revising the past posts to start calling energy weapons "Kenners," so don't be confused!

Also, should I add the Who's Who and Sample PCs section separately, or as revisions to the original, relevant posts? For instance, should I include the character of Tsar Boris, the Russian Werewolf commander of the constantly-besieged Macarthurvich Station, to the Russian Werewolf post, or should I have a separate Who's Who post that lists all such characters? Or should each character have his or her own post?

Let me know what you think! And here's to writing 15 minutes a day!

Is there no one who values courage over life?

2011-08-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

When some friends came over for a party on the weekend before my birthday, they brought along some awesome gifts. One of the things I got was this:

Tickets for me and my lady to go see one of my favorite bands of all time, The Protomen. I have written about the Protomen on this blog before, so you can guess how excited I was to see them live. I spent the next couple of workdays listening to the Protomen albums back to back nonstop. When it was time to go to the concert, one of our friends gave us a ride. As we crossed the bridge into San Francisco, the sun was setting behind the city, making the buildings look like black silhouettes with shining windows. It felt very much like we were entering the Protomen world.

Kimo's has a bar both downstairs and upstairs. The show was upstairs, so we went up the stairs, checked in, got our hands stamped and started to make our way over to the stage. Three things were apparent that would soon cause problems, though I did not realize it at the time. First, there was no backstage area. Second, the stage was nearly at the same level as the audience floor. Finally, the only thing moving air in the room were a pair of fans up on the wall on either side of the stage.

The opening band was Sigourney Reverb. They hauled their instruments onto the stage by carrying them through the gathering audience, since there was no backstage area. Then they started doing a sound check... and kept doing their sound check... and more sound check. Finally, they started playing, and I wondered why they had wasted so much time doing sound checks. All they did was flail on their instruments while screaming into their microphones. Nearly all of their songs ended when the band members stopped playing their instruments and the lead singer would say "Song!" into the microphone to let the audience know to clap.

They played for far too long for an opening band. In my opinion, if you're the opening act, you should play about four songs, then get off the stage to make room for the band people are there to see. Your job is to get the audience warmed up for the main act, but if you take too long the audience gets bored and starts hoping you'll just get offstage already (which happened about halfway through the Sigourney Reverb set). Also, they were too loud. I don't mind listening to loud music at a rock show - that's the whole point, after all - but I shouldn't be so deafened by the opening acts that I can't heart the headliners. If I'm going to lose my hearing, I want to lose it to the band I'm there to see.

Sigourney Reverb felt like a midlife crisis. The band members were way too old to be on their first tour. The lead singer was losing his hair and putting on the pounds. The guitarist looked like she was halfway to being a minivan mom, and I was convinced that the drummer was actually an old roadie until he saw down and started playing.

I was eagerly anticipating the Protomen, and I think that a lot of the audience felt like I did: we did not want to boo the opening act out of respect for the main act. But then something happened that I had not anticipated: another band started. They had two opening acts. Once again, they had to haul their equipment through the crowd to set up, and this time the audience was packed in so going was slow. The bassist for Sigourney Reverb slammed his case into my knee as he took his instrument off the stage. Classy.

I think the second act was the Greenmen, but I may have misheard that. They were better than Sigourney Reverb - at least their music had a tune - but they also took way too long to set up, do a sound check, and they played too many songs.

At this point it was obvious that Kimo's was the wrong venue for this kind of act. There was no airflow in the room, the audience was packed in and dancing around, and the air was getting hot and humid with sweat. It was stifling and gross. By the time the Greenmen were done, I was covered in sweat (my own and other people's), and I felt exhausted and slightly ill from the overpowering air. I went to the back of the room and bought both of the Protomen's CDs. I already had their songs digitally, but I can play CDs on the CD player in the kitchen while I do dishes. I also bought a "Light Up the Night" t-shirt.

By the time the Protomen hauled their instruments up to the stage and the Greenmen removed their stuff, the audience was getting restless. Several people heckled the Protomen during their sound check, which I thought was ridiculous because people had put up with the other bands without much complaint, only to start getting frustrated when the band they had come to see was finally about to play.

I mentioned earlier that the stage was almost at the same level as the audience floor, so I could barely see the tops of the band's heads. It didn't help that the entire front row seemed to consist of tall, wide dudes. I remember one guy front and center had long, wavy hair that made his big head take up even more space. Way to go, guy.

But then the Protomen started playing, and a huge smile stretched my face. Here I was, watching the Protomen play live. It was awesome. Here is their sound check, which someone got on video that night:

Protomen @ Kimo's in San Francisco - Sound Check to Kenny Loggins (Highway to the Danger Zone) from Darren Pillen on Vimeo.

It's weird to see the sound check in the video, since I did not really get to see it, as such, on the 23rd.

The Protomen did an awesome show. If you've ever seen them live, or seen recordings of it, you know that they are all great. Raul Panther channels the ridiculous over-the-top enthusiasm of 80's power metal, and the rest of the band follows suit. If you want to see more of them live, I highly recommend Emma Story's Vimeo channel. She is a Protomen fan with a lot of their shows recorded.

The Protomen know which of their songs work well live, and they played some of the biggest, most triumphant songs from their albums. These included "Breaking Out," "Keep Quiet," "Light Up the Night," and a song from their first album, "The Will of One." (I may be misremembering some of their songs.)

It's a shame that Kimo's has no backstage, because the Protomen like having prop changes throughout their show, and the venue meant that Kilroy had to walk through the crowd each time, wearing a mask with no peripheral vision, to bring up Protoman's gun and helmet, Megaman's helmet, and other such props.

It's also unfortunate that, about halfway through the show, a bunch of enormous, drunken frat boys charged through the crowd to get to the front, shoving people out of the way. I tried to hold my ground, partly because I wanted to be able to see something, partly out of principle because I was there first, and partly because the Protomen is all about standing up to injustice. Unfortunately, the dude who was shoving into me weighed at least half again as much as I did, and the lack of blood in his alcohol system meant that my elbows to his ribs went unnoticed. So I went to the back of the crowd to join my lady.

Between the main part of their performance and the encore, the band went to the back of the crowd, and when they went back the stage Raul Panther said "I just noticed that you guys in the back can't see a thing, can you? We have got to be the shortest rock band in the world." True, we couldn't see anything, but the band could all have been in platform shoes and it wouldn't have helped much.

The first encore was "The Hounds," which was the only show of the night sung by the guy who sings Dr. Wily's part. I really wanted to see this, so I went back into the crowd and watched the performance. I recommend checking out some other live examples of "The Hounds" on Emma Story's channel, since this guy always puts on an entertaining performance.

The second encore was "Total Eclipse of the Heart," which was epic. The audience sang along, but I don't know the song so I dropped back out and watched with some amusement.

I remember toward the end when I went to the downstairs bar to get a break from the heat upstairs. When I went back up, my glasses fogged up from the sweat-humidity. That about sums up the venue in my memory.

The venue was terrible, but it was more than worth it in order to see The Protomen live. They have a powerful sound, great stage presence, and they put on an awesome show, even though I could hardly see any of it. I expected to be burned out on The Protomen after listening to them so much before the show and then going to the rock concert, but I found myself listening to them for the rest of the week at work, too. If anything, the show made me resolve that, if I ever see an evil robot, I will show it what vengeance means.

Happy Birthday!

2011-08-23T17:12:00.000-07:00

Every year it feels like my birthday is an overwhelming experience, but this year felt like it was overwhelmingly overwhelming! Thanks to all my incredibly kind, generous, cool, and rockin' friends and family for your gifts, your kindness, and your friendship. Also, happy birthday to my brothers, who share a birthday with me! There's plenty of birthday to go around!

And if I haven't told you already, some of my friends got my lady and I tickets to go see The Protomen tonight. I'm so stoked, you guys. So stoked.

Hope rides A-LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!

Size Medium T-Shirts

2011-06-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

When I was a little kid, I would wear enormous shirts that reached my knees. For some reason, I thought this was cool. It probably had to do with my perception of the hip-hop culture of the day. My favorite shirt for a while was an eye-gouging, neon shade of lime green. Go figure.

By the time I got to college, I was used to wearing size Large t-shirts that fit me a little better. I figured that, even though I was skinny, I was tall enough to justify wearing a Large shirt. Maybe part of the reason I wore large shirts was to cover up my physique. Nevermind that many of them draped over my figure like sheets, especially as they started to wear out.

Lately I have started wearing Medium sized shirts, and I am amazed by how much better they seem to fit. When I think about it, it feels like it's part of growing up. I've started trying to pay more attention to my appearance, and that includes trying to make an effort to at least wear shirts that fit.

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Crossovers

2011-05-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

Image by AbyssWolf

I'm a sucker for crossover stories. I'm fascinated by the thought of creating a new story by combining characters from multiple other stories. Sometimes the settings are mashed together with very little explanation, just some hand-waving about dimensional rifts or a magical summons. Other times, there is an elaborate backstory that combines threads of multiple stories to create an amalgam universe. The author can either lift the characters from their original settings as they originally appeared, or re-interpret the characters to match the new setting.

One of my favorite examples of this is the Super Smash Bros. franchise, which combines characters from many Nintendo games. I never owned a Nintendo system more advanced than a N64, but I was always excited to see the official art and fan art that surrounded each new title, as people drew these characters interacting. Watching them fight can be cool, but my favorite art is where they're just hanging out and being bros.

A more serious example of the genre is the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series by Alan Moore. Moore combines many Victorian and pulp-era stories to create a dynamic world. The series has its flaws, as Moore shows his usual tendency to give in to self-indulgent prose, and later books get too caught up in mimicking the styles of the source material to the point that they seem to completely lose interest in telling an interesting story. Nevertheless, I love the idea of combining characters from existing literary works and creating new adventures for them.

Both DC Comics and Marvel have teams composed of stars of their own comics: the Justice League and the Avengers, respectively. While not combining universes, these stories bring together characters with their own back stories, villains, and settings and combine them in interesting ways. From what I understand, the DC and Marvel stories were pretty self-contained before the comics for these teams introduced the idea that all of the stories were taking place in the same universe.

Another well-known crossover is the Alien vs. Predator franchise, which started out as a single comic but was so successful that it eventually spawned several more comic series, some bad movies, and some pretty good video games. The pairing of the two races as hunter and hunted has become so accepted that some fans don't realize that the whole thing started with a fortuitous crossover and took off from there.

Crossovers are a great way to justify writing fan fiction. If you set your fan fiction in a single world, then you're writing something that the creators of the show could have done if they had wanted to, but didn't. This is fine sometimes, but if the reason that you're writing fan fiction is that you wish that certain characters had ended up together, or that certain characters acted in different ways, or because you really think that the show could benefit from one more character who is an idealized version of you, then you're selling the original creators short. If, however, you take from several intellectual properties, then you are creating something that could otherwise never have been. In my mind, creating crossover fan fiction is also more creative and makes a better writing exercise.

Of course, I'm biased when I say that, as I have toyed with the idea of amalgam fictional universes as well. Several months ago, my friends and I joked about a "Battlennium Enternity" universe that combines every major science fiction series we could think of, and is exemplified in the phrase "They can't stop the long life and prosperous good hunting from being with you."

Do you have a favorite crossover? Do you have some favorite series that you think should be combined? Is your secret He-Man/Hardy Boys crossover entering its fifth volume? Let me know in the comments!

A Warning About Maxell Stereo Neckband Head Buds

2011-05-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

I was on the lookout for some cheap headphones so that I could listen to music while at work. I ended up buying a pair of these for next to nothing:
http://www.maxell-usa.com/index.aspx?id=63;66;522;0&a=info&pid=193

See those bits at the bottom? If you think that part is where the music comes out, you are half right. That is the part where music comes out as it drills through your ears into your brain.

Seriously, I have never worn a more uncomfortable set of headphones. When I saw the picture on the cover, I thought the guy was enjoying some awesome tunes. It turns out he's screaming in blinding agony as his ears are brutalized by these torture-machines.

I've already ordered a different kind of headphones from Amazon, but I thought I would let you know to avoid these, just in case.

I think I saw a tumbleweed go by...

2011-05-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've received a comment on this blog.

My other blog, Supervillainous, has the dubious honor of having a grand total of zero comments on it. (There was a comment or two on a placeholder post I originally put up, but that post has since been deleted.)

I'm not writing this post to be bitter (well, maybe a little) or to remind you that I always try to leave comments when I read a blog post (hint hint), but to introduce a change I have implemented: I have turned on "Reactions."

I know that some people read this blog. I also know that it's only around five people, but hey, an audience is an audience. So I figure that the reason that people don't leave comments is that there isn't much to say. People I know tend to be pretty sharp, and not the kind to leave comments like "Yep, I read it," or "Me, too," or "lol." So, to make it easier to give a reaction to my posts, I have added the ability to note whether you thought that a particular entry was "interesting," "weird," and/or "amusing."

Let's see if it works!

PS: Feel free to leave comments, too, if you want.
PPS: If your comment is "First!" I will cry a little, on the inside.

These words have steel

2011-05-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

I stand alone.

I am with you.

We stand together.

Let them come.

Hold the line.

I will not yield.

Li Hing Mui

2011-05-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

I should start by saying that li hing mui is awesome. I'm starting there because it's important to know, and because otherwise this post may sound at first like I don't like it.

I was introduced to li hing mui by my wife, who got a package from her parents in Hawaii. Li hing mui is a Chinese snack that's also very popular in Hawaii. It's a dried plum with special li hing powder on it, and it's impossible to describe the taste. Wikipedia describes it as "a combination of sweet, sour, and salty taste," if that helps.

I'm not sure of its correct pronunciation, but saying "leehee moy" has served me pretty well so far.

I can honestly say that my first li hing mui was memorable. I had never even tasted one before, so my wife warned me that the flavor was strong and I may not like it. Naturally this meant that I had to immediately put a whole piece in my mouth. I must have made some pretty hilarious faces.

Now I can't get enough of it. I eat it all the time. I only eat a little bit at a time, because I have learned that one of the side effects of li hing mui is that it makes your burps taste terrible.

My in-laws said that they will send us li hing mango next, and I am eagerly anticipating it.

So if you ever get the chance, give it a try. Only, take a little nibble first, to get used to the flavor. You'll be glad you did.

The Blood Bowl video game has a hotseat mode

2011-04-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

Picture this: a chill breeze blows over a scraggly field as a group of orcs faces off against a group of undead. Steam puffs from the orcs' noses and mouths as they snort the cold air. The undead do not breathe at all. Then a ghoul charges forward, its bony claws tearing furrows in the grass and flinging clumps of grass into the air. It swings its leg, and kicks a spiked football into the air. Both teams leap into action as the crowd goes wild...

Blood Bowl is a tabletop miniatures game created by Games Workshop. It's seen a number of video game adaptations, most recently as Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition, which was recently on sale for ten bucks on Steam. It takes place in the Warhammer Fantasy world, which is a very grim Renaissance-era fantasy setting that features all sorts of terrible demons and monsters. In Blood Bowl, those terrible demons and monsters are playing football.

It's wacky, hilarious, and brutal. I've only played a little bit of the game, but so far I'm loving the sight of orcs, dwarves, elves, and more wearing primitive football pads and fighting over a spike-studded ball. Some of the teams play the game straight, while others cheat for all they're worth or simply focus on grinding the other team into the dirt.

The video game can be played either turn-based or as an RTS. I'm lost enough when playing the turn-based game, so I haven't tried the RTS mode yet. As a turn-based game, it even has a hot-seat mode. This means that two players can share a computer. When one person's turn ends, you just pass the mouse to the other player.

So if any of you have the game, or if you're in the area and want to stop by my place, why don't we toss around the old pigskin? Wait, that leather doesn't look like it was made out of a pig...

Thinking Way Too Hard About: PC Weapon rewards for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game

2011-04-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here's a weirdly specific blog post about something that's been on my mind lately. The only RPG campaign I've ever been in that played consistently and reached a conclusion was a Star Wars game that my brother ran. The Star Wars campaign has been on my mind lately because my current campaign is on sort of an unintentional hiatus and I've heard that some of my coworkers are in a Star Wars game.

Looking back, the Star Wars campaign was a lot of fun. I can still remember fighting droids on a hovering platform over lakes of acid, and the forest race whose tribal meetings were held entirely in poetry. That said, I feel like the two areas that could have used the most improvement would have been an overarching villain and some loot to reward the heroes.

This led me to thinking about how best to give weapons to characters in a Star Wars campaign. I've played a lot of Knights of the Old Republic, which in many ways sticks a little too closely to its roots as Dungeons and Dragons in Space. As the characters progress, perhaps their starting "Blaster Pistol" might be traded out for something like a "Republic Blaster Pistol" (a little better) which would later be traded out for a "Mandalorian Blaster Pistol" (even better). The game then had some extra special items that you pick up along the way. Take down a bounty hunter, for instance, and you can pick up his specially customized pistol and use it as your own. This works, but I think GMs can be more creative.

I think that giving weapons backgrounds is a great way to draw the players into the game setting. If anything unites all players in all RPGs ever, it's the desire for better gear for their characters. Players are going to be expecting to get better gear, so if the GM can use the gear to tell a story, everyone wins.

So, mostly to amuse myself, I cooked up a couple of special Star Wars weapons that could be used to reward medium-or high-level PCs in a Star Wars campaign.

==============================================
Karik Aton's Hunting Rifle
You receive an invitation from the famous and eccentric explorer/hunter, Karik Aton. You visits the man at his hunting lodge. The lodge's main room has a tall fireplace, and rising high up the walls toward the ceiling are countless heads of various wild beasts: rancors, rontos, even a krayt dragon. Aton, an older gentleman sitting on a high-backed chair, calls you over. Aton was clearly a vigorous man in his younger days, but age has made him a shadow of his former self.

You sit and talk with him for a while about the various places you have been and the things you have seen. Eventually the old man gets up and leads you to another room. This room is full of items that Aton has collected on his travels: weapons and art from various cultures. He takes you to the center of the room, where a magnificent rifle rests in a display case. Clearly, this is the old hunter's pride and joy. It's large and imposing, with a finely tuned scope on top. The sides and stock are inlaid with a deep red wood. Aton opens the case and takes the rifle from its stand, and hands it to you.

Aton explains that he does not have long to live. He has been diagnosed with Valn's Disease. His family has already started vying for his various trophies and possessions, but Aton knows that they do not appreciate these things and plan to sell them for a big stack of credits. He does not begrudge them the right, but he cannot stand to see the rifle sold an eccentric collector who will show it off to impress snooty rich folks or use it for tame chartered hunts. He has heard of your exploits and was impressed by your spirit, and now that he has met you, he is sure that the right thing to do is to give the weapon to you.

You are hesitant at first. You have killed many powerful beasts in your time, but it was in the course of your service to the Rebellion. Then he leans forward and looks you dead in the eye, saying, "And kill some stormtroopers for me."

The GM can occasionally have an NPC recognize the rifle and share memories of Karik Aton, as well as describing the way the rugged rifle withstands any terrain.
=============================================
X-110 Experimental Rifle, Codename "Moonrise"
After completing a mission where you destroyed an Imperial research facility, you receive a message saying that the cleanup team found something that you should see. Back at headquarters, you meet with Rebel scientists in the labs. They show you two identical rifles. Both are extremely simple and boxy, made of matte black plasteel, with holographic warnings pasted on warning users to be careful with the weapons in case of radiation, burns, electrocution, and explosion.

The head research scientist explains that the weapons are all that's left of an Imperial project to develop a more power blaster rifle. The Rebellion is now working to figure out the rifles in the newly-christened Project Moonrise. One rifle will be kept in the lab to be taken apart and reverse engineered. but the scientists need field test data. The scientist says that, given your record of accomplishing dangerous missions and your proven loyalty to the Rebellion, you are the natural choice to take the rifle into the field and try it out on some Imps.

The scientists rig a number of devices on the rifle, including a scope that captures video data and sensors to measure radiation levels, heat, and structural integrity. They warn you to be very careful when using the rifle, and if any of the sensors ever start registering as critical, you should throw the rifle as far away as possible and seek shelter immediately. He also advises you to carry a backup weapon, in case something in the rifle fails while you're on a mission.

As you uses the new rifle, it should sometimes fire an extra strong beam that drains more of its power (when you roll a critical hit, perhaps). Sometimes it will fail to fire at all (when the player rolls a 0), and in that case, you needs to switch to a new rifle until you can get the rifle back to R&D so that they can fix what broke.

After a few missions, the scientists show you their progress on the other rifle, and explain what their research has uncovered about some of the mysterious components. They teach you enough about stripping down and maintaining the rifle so that now you can do field repairs between encounters if the rifle should ever break.

The GM should also start to send Imperial agents after the hero in an attempt to recover their lost weapon. When the players defeat the agents, one of them should be carrying a note saying that there is a simultaneous attack being planned on the R&D facility, which the players discover is no longer answering their comms...
==============================================
Merr-Sonn Munitions DL-51 "Panthulu" Prototype Blaster Pistol
You are well known throughout the galaxy as a dashing rogue and adventurous scoundrel, so you are not surprised when you receive a comm from a representative of Merr-Sonn Munitions, Inc, about a possible sponsorship. You meet the representative, and she explains that her company is preparing to introduce a new pistol, the DL-51 "Panthulu," and they want you to be the face of the advertising campaign.

Before you can protest that you're not corporate shill, she quickly says that you won't need to worry about photoshoots or sponsor appearances. All they need is the right to use your likeness and mention that you use the weapon. Then, quick as a flash, she flourishes a case and opens it, revealing the weapon.

Lying in a cut-out section of padding in the case, the prototype weapon gleams like an exotic black beetle. Its lines are sleek and predatory, with polished chrome tubes leading from the powerpack slung under the barrel to the actuator above the handle. As you hesitate, the representative mentions that this is a special edition version of the weapon, hand-made by the pistol's inventor. There is even a specially-engraved plate in the handle proclaiming that this is model number 000001, along with the creator's name, Merr-Sonn Munitions, and your name.

The GM should occasionally let the PCs overhear a holo ad for Merr-Sonn, saying something along the lines of:
"When [PC Name Here] is fighting the scum of the universe, s/he trusts her/his life to Merr-Sonn armaments, because [PC Name] knows that Merr-Sonn armaments are individually factory-tested to ensure that no manufacturing default ever leaves the assembly line!"
or:
"Beware, criminals of the galaxy! [PC Name Here] is coming after you, and s/he is bringing Merr-Sonn's latest in blaster technology, the DL-51 'Panthulu.' You really should consider turning yourself over to the local authorities before the dual-state plasma of the DL-51 'Panthulu' finds you..."
In Rebellion-friendly bars (and only in Rebellion-friendly bars), they might even hear an ad saying:
"[PC Name] fights for freedom, and Merr-Sonn fights with her/him! So take a close look at the Merr-Sonn DL-51 'Panthulu' and know that its sleek designer lines and precision-engineered micro-fusion inducer are the last thing many stormtroopers see."
==============================================

Note that I did not create special lightsabers. I think that, while all other PCs should receive better loot along the way, a true Jedi needs only his or her standard issue Jedi armor and lightsaber to bring order and justice to the universe. Any further weapons or some sort of special lightsaber would make the Jedi too overtly bellicose and prone to the Dark Side.

That said, if a Jedi were to carry a talisman of some sort, perhaps one that was created by a long-ago Jedi warrior, that would be a good opportunity for the GM to give the character a stat boost without turning them into walking collections of high-tech gear.

May the Force be with you, and some phat lewtz too!

I have no words for how happy this makes me

2011-03-28T17:26:00.000-07:00

For a while now I have been jealous of one of my friends, who looks eerily like Christopher Marlowe:

I mean, who wouldn't want to look like one of history's greatest writers? Heck, looking a lot like any historical personality would be downright awesome. I browsed Wikipedia in the vain hope of finding someone I resembled, but my search bore no fruit.

Then today, my brother sent me this picture:

That's a young Leo Tolstoy. While he doesn't look exactly like me, the resemblance is pretty striking, and weirdly seems to grow more noticeable the more I look at it. I think it's especially around the eyes (the mustache and sideburns helps).

It's not just the facial hair, though. My brother sent me another picture, without the sideburns, and it still looks quite a bit like me:

I sat at my desk grinning like a loon for about half an hour after seeing this picture.

The good news: I bear a strong resemblance to one of history's great figures.

The bad news: I guess this means I have to read War and Peace.

A Spot of Reading

2011-03-21T18:12:00.000-07:00

I'm quite a slow reader at the best of times, and for a while I was so busy letting myself get distracted with video games that I wasn't doing much reading at all. Lately I've been trying to do a bit more reading, with mixed results, so here are some thoughts on the books I've been reading, and some of the books still on my reading schedule...

Re-Reading The Lord of the Rings and Dune

If you would have asked my high school self to name his two favorite SF novels, he would probably have named these two. The only problem was, I hadn't read them since high school, and that's now starting to get to be a while ago, so I felt it was high time to revisit them.

I enjoyed these two re-reads, for the most part, though at times I had to remind myself that I enjoyed these books. I thought of The Lord of the Rings as "a long walk through some gloomy countryside."

In both cases, it was nice to revisit these settings again, and to remind myself of what the original books contained. Especially in the case of The Lord of the Rings, I had started to picture the film version as definitive, and I knew that I had to take action before I forgot Tom Bombadil.

As for Dune, I remember being even more impressed with Dune when I first read it than I had been with The Lord of the Rings. It's held up well, though I was surprised to find on re-reading the novel that most of the story takes place before Paul and Jessica meet the Fremen, because nearly all of the novel that I remembered took place in the Fremen sietch and in the final battle against the Harkonnens and Sardaukar. I was also rather perplexed by the character of Count Fenring, who I couldn't remember at all from the first time I had read the books.

That said, Thufir Hawat was still my favorite character, and I still loved reading about interstellar politics and all the weird secret societies that Frank Herbert came up with with. Some things never change.

The next two books I read were Leviathan and Behemoth. You can read my thoughts on those on Supervillainous.

After that, I read Feet of Clay, because I can only go so long without reading a Discworld novel.

One of the proudest things I can say is that my wife got me into Discworld. I love the writing, the setting, the characters, the plot, the humor... just about everything. Some of the novels I've read were only so-so (Eric comes to mind as one that could have been skipped), but for the most part, the novels have ranged from good to amazing.

If there's interest from you readers, I'll start working on a longer Discworld post (or series of posts). But in the meantime, I'll constrain myself to commenting on Feet of Clay. It's the third Discworld novel featuring the Watch, which is my favorite set of Discworld stories. I was a big fan of Guards! Guards! and I liked Men at Arms even better, so my expectations were high for Feet of Clay. The book didn't disappoint.

Terry Pratchett has a gift for creating quirky characters, hilarious situations, and genuinely engaging plots. Feet of Clay also includes some deep consideration of what it means to be a person, seen through the lens of a fantasy world where a "person" might be undead, a monster, or even baked from clay.

Finally, I read Momo over the past weekend. This book was a gift from my brother. Both of us were big fans of The Neverending Story when we were younger, and recently my brother tried this other book by the same author, Michael Ende. He must have liked it, because he sent me a copy, too.

The plot is rather simple. It concerns a homeless orphan, Momo, who has a gift of listening to people. She lives alone in an abandoned amphitheater, but she is visited by her friends. The children play especially well when she's around, even without her saying anything to help them make up games. She has two good friends, Guido Guide and Beppo Roadsweeper. Guido is a young man who loves making up stories to tell gullible tourists in exchange for tips, while Beppo is an older gentleman who sweeps roads slowly and thoughtfully. He takes a long time to answer questions because he is convinced the dishonesty, even accidental dishonesty, is the cause of all of the world's problems.

Things get bad when some men in gray come to town. The men are gray all over, with gray suits, gray bowler hats, gray briefcases, and even gray skin and gray voices. They constantly smoke their gray cigars, and everyone around them gets slowly colder and colder. What do the gray people want? Time, as it turns out. They tell people about all the time they're losing to things like sleep, eating, and taking their time at their work. Any time spent with friends and family is time wasted. In fact, according to the men in gray, just about all time spent is time wasted. The gray men have a plan: if people start saving time, the gray men will bank it for them, and the people can have it back at a later point in their lives. People who believe the gray men start rushing about everywhere, doing everything to save time, hoping to get it back as the gray men had promised.

The novel functions best as an allegory for people who rush around trying to cram as much as they can into their days. It's interesting that the novel was published in 1973, because it sounds like a spot-on criticism of modern society. Though a lot of the novel is a bit lackluster, the description of characters who have found themselves caught in the grip of the men in gray is genuinely chilling.

Momo finds herself the only person in her town who hasn't been caught in the schemes of the men in gray, but luckily she has some strange allies to help her. One of these is Cassiopeia, who is a tortoise who can see exactly half an hour into the future and who communicates via messages that spell themselves out on her shell. She goes on a fantastical journey, including such Ende staples as food that gets better with every bite and a magical place where time passes differently than in the real world.

While I hope that everyone reads The Neverending Story at some point in their lives, I have a harder time recommending Momo. Mostly I hope that people pay attention to its message, which is to enjoy the things you do. And though I hesitate to quote Bertrand Russell, he really said it best when he said, "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

Beautiful, melancholy, steampunk-esque music video

2011-03-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

Follow the link to see "Eye of the Storm," a music video for a song by Lovett.

It's a gorgeous video, but I'm not entirely sure what happens. Not that it matters; I think the mood of the piece is more important than the plot. You should go watch it.

Isn't It About Time I Wrote About Hawaii?

2011-02-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

So as you all know, my lady and I visited Hawaii recently, but I haven't written anything about it yet, other than the time I opted out of the Backscatter machine. I've been meaning to write more about Hawaii, though, so here goes.

We arrived in Honolulu first, on the island of Oahu. We spent a day there, seeing the sights. Waikiki Beach was beautiful. Just like on TV, it was full of good-looking people in swimsuits, tanning, swimming, and even lifting weights. It was my first time swimming in the Pacific Ocean. I'm sure that it helped that we were on Hawaii, but it was very different than the Atlantic. Much warmer for one thing, and with a nicer beach. We drove past Diamond Head, a famous crater. We also had shave ice, which is considered an essential part of the Hawaiian vacation.

I know that the public perception of Hawaii is of a beautiful, green place, where the sun is shining, palm trees abound, the ocean waves lap at the beach while majestic green mountains rise above. Well, as it turns out, actually being on Hawaii is pretty much just like that.

Then we flew to Kauai, which is the island where my in-laws live. Kauai is known as the Garden Island, and is considered the least developed and most beautiful of the major islands. It is so small that we were able to take a driving tour of the whole island in a day. The main stop on the trip was at a canyon island called Koke`e. It's amazing to think how such a small island can fit such a large canyon.

The tour was amazing. The highlight was when we were at an overpass looking down at a valley on the edge of the ocean, and the scene below us was covered in a cloud. As we watched, the cloud started to clear out. At first, we could see the vague outline of the valley below us, and then there it was. It was an awe-inspiring moment.

The other great thing about staying on Hawaii was the quiet time, when I could sit in the breezeway of my in-laws' house and read The Return of the King. Of course, it was also nice to spend time with my lady's parents, to meet her extended family and family friends, and to go down to the beach and walk on the sand.

I remember walking on the beach and looking out at the water. The waves were crashing a long way out from the shore, and as I watched the foam on them, I thought of King Haggard in The Last Unicorn, watching the ocean from his tower and seeing the unicorns in the foam. Standing there, I could almost believe that the foam looked like unicorns.

We were lucky that the weather was nice and stayed nice during our stay. There were storms the week before we arrived, and the water was still somewhat murky when we arrived. Still, the weather ranged from somewhat too warm to perfect. It was especially nicest when the sun was behind clouds.

I can't close this account without mentioning that, at night, any sign with a light shining on it would have several geckos climbing on it, catching the bugs that were attracted by the light.

Watch These Videos

2011-02-18T12:02:00.000-08:00

I realize that I may be the last person on the internet to see these, but I just had to share them anyway.

First, the trailer to the video game Dead Island may be on of the best zombie movies I've ever seen, and it's only three minutes long.

Second, watch the short film The Backwater Gospel, a Weird West-ish tale with great visuals. Warning: it's pretty disturbing, and also really quite gory.

I promise I will have actual content on this blog again... someday...

Check Out This Cool Art Show

2011-02-17T10:41:00.000-08:00

Some of our friends put together an art show last month in LA. Unfortunately, LA is far away and we weren't able to attend, but now you can read about it here, and see some of the great art:

Taffy-Colored Clouds Revisited

While you're at it, also check out their zine:
Eyeball Burp

You can think of this as my way of apologizing for not having more content by linking you to other people's content.

RIP Brian Jacques

2011-02-08T17:54:00.000-08:00

Brian Jacques, best known as the author of the Redwall series of novels, passed away on February 5, 2011.

When I was in grade school and middle school, I really got into Redwall. I remember our teacher reading the class Redwall and Martin the Warrior when we were in fifth grade. Both novels made our prickly old teacher get so emotional that she had to pretend to cough and sneeze to cover up the strain in her voice.

The Redwall world was my first experience with online fandom. I joined a Geocities site for roleplaying Redwall characters, and I made up a hare named Borian Tenears. I have probably written more fan fiction for Redwall than for any other setting, though I haven't written any in more than a decade.

That said, the best tribute I can come up with for Brian Jacques is to dust off the old hare one last time, and put him to rest for good.

I don't normally post fiction on this blog, but my original stories were on the internet for all to see, so I see no reason to be shy about this story. You don't have to read it if you don't want to.

Borian Tenears: The End
"The battle-scarred old hare stood tall at the top of the hill, surrounded by a sea of vermin. They surged up the slope toward him, their beady eyes gleaming with hatred as they clutched their sharp weapons. Borian Tenears calmly drew back arrow after arrow, loosing them into the approaching horde. His single, ragged ear stood like a crest, and his aim never wavered. Each speeding shaft struck down a new villain, but the horde got ever closer.

"A weasel with a chipped cutlass was the first to crest the hill, his fangs frothing from the climb. He raised his cruel blade to strike, but the hare spun and landed a kick on the weasel's chest, sending him toppling into the slavering throng of his companions. A rat aimed a slice from a scimitar at the gallant old campaigner, but the hare blocked the blade with his ancient bow and turned it, using the rat's momentum to send him crashing to the ground.

"'Have at me, you rotters!' came the hare's bold call. He kicked a stoat in the face, sending teeth flying. 'I expect you bleeders are finding it harder than you expected to kill a North Patrol Hare, eh wot!"

"The leader of the vermin swarm, a pine marten who wore the skull of a fox like a helmet, emerged from the horde, and the others backed away in anticipation. The pine marten pointed his halberd at the hare in challenge, but Borian only laughed. 'You vermin will follow any old blighter,' chuckled the hare. 'A fellow puts a bone on his bonce and suddenly he's the boss!'

"The pine marten charged, swinging his weapon. Borian dodged under the blow, then blocked the backswing with his bow. The strength of the attack cracked the bow, and the mighty Bow of the Tenears fell from Borian's hands. 'Top-hole shot, old chap,' said Borian grimly. He jumped clean over the next swing as the rest of the vermin, eager to get the killing blow, surged in all around him. 'If you'll permit me to say so, this is really one of the best bands of villains I've ever had the honor of facing.

"And thus fell the brave hero," concluded the storyteller, leaning back in his chair. The fire had gone down to coals since the story began, but the Dibbuns of Redwall who were seated around his chair had not yet noticed how tired they were. An audible exhalation went up from the group at the conclusion of the tale, and amazed smiles spread over sleepy faces. Bluebell, one of the lady mice of Redwall, came by to remind them, shooing them up the stairs to their quarters amid a chorus of mumbled protests.

When Bluebell returned, she found the storyteller gazing into the dimming coals. She touched the old hare's shoulder gently, and he turned to look up at her. She smiled down at him, noting how the firelight made the wrinkles mix with the scars on his face. He was wearing a warm robe, and the hood pulled over his head covered the stump of his missing ear.

Bluebell spoke softly. "That was a nice story. I think I liked last year's version better, though."

The old hare's eyes twinkled as he smiled at her. "Oh? And how did old Borian buy it last year?"

"As if you don't remember," teased the mouse. "He was fighting a rat captain in the rigging of a pirate ship, and they both fell to the churning water below."

"Ah yes, old Greeneye. What a rapscallion he was," chuckled the hare.

Concern creased Bluebell's forehead. "It's nearly Spring. Are you going to leave us again this year? I do wish you would agree to stay in Redwall."

"I would dearly love to see Salamandastron again, and check in on those young fellas at the North Patrols," sighed the hare. As Bluebell was about to speak, he continued, "But I think that, this time, I'll let you finally talk me into staying."

The mouse clapped her hands with relief. The hare adjusted the robe around his shoulders. "Now I think I'd like to sit and think for a while," he said.

The mouse nodded. After a few moments, she asked, "Can I get you anything?"

But the hare was already asleep. She watched his chest rise and fall slowly in the dim light of the embers, and then she quietly slipped away to let him sleep.

Advice for Husbands

2011-02-03T20:36:00.001-08:00

Hi guys,

Pro tip: If your justification for a habit starts with "But it conserves...," you've already lost.

This is Why My Wife is Awesome

2011-02-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

As all of you know, I have been on a Mass Effect kick lately. The gift my wife got me for our anniversary arrived today, and she left the package at work at the end of the day to bring it home. She also gave me explicit instructions not to open it without her.

I don't know exactly why, but I began to wish that I could have gotten an N7 hoodie. For those of you not in the know, the main character in Mass Effect, Commander Shepard, wears N7 armor, and Bioware made a very clever tie-in of a hoodie with the same color scheme as Shepard's armor. The thing is, I knew there was no way my wife would know that I had somehow developed an intense longing for this one thing, and I prepared myself on the way home to hide my inevitable disappointment.

But first, I checked the box to see if it was from Bioware. No such luck; I didn't recognize the company at all.

I got home and my lady could barely contain her excitement as I brought my bike in. She insisted that I open the package immediately, and she was clearly very pleased with what she had gotten me.

As well she should be.

Scroll down a bit to see what she got me.

It was not only an N7 hoodie, but also a lithograph (and a very classy one at that) of one of my favorite characters, Tali.

You know how, when you're a child, you don't really know what you expect your Christmas presents to be, but you always build them up to an impossible level where, no matter what's in the box, you're going to be disappointed? Well, this felt like the redemption of all of those moments.

Thank you, dear. I love you.

PS: Not only is this a very awesome gift, but it absolutely comes in handy, too, because I've been wearing the same gross sweater every day all winter, and I most definitely needed more cold weather garb.

A Year and a Day

2011-01-31T16:10:00.000-08:00

Shepard and Garrus, by Silberfeder

Yesterday was our anniversary. Happy anniversary, my love.

If any of you would like to know how amazing my wife is, you need know only this: I finished Mass Effect 2 over the weekend, so to celebrate, she baked me a Shepard's Pie. Yes, really.

Artist's rendition. Not the actual pie.

What Happens During a TSA Patdown?

2011-01-29T23:27:00.000-08:00

About two weeks ago, we flew to Hawaii to visit my in-laws and see the beautiful island of Kauai. But first, we had to go through the Oakland International Airport, and that meant going through a TSA security checkpoint. Oakland uses the infamous backscatter device, which the internets have been raging about since the holiday season.

I don't mind a machine that sees through my clothes to detect possible hidden weapons. If it means keeping people safe, I'm all for it. However, I've heard that these machines emit dangerous amounts of radiation, and that made me nervous. There's quite a debate about whether the machines are dangerous or not, but I didn't want to take my chances. So, when it came to my turn in line, I told the security person herding people through that I would like to opt out.

"We've got a male opt-out," she shouted. I couldn't tell who she was shouting to. She asked me, rather nervously, whether I realized that opting out meant that I would receive a pat-down. She paused before saying "pat-down," and I thought that maybe she was trying to decide on a more pleasant thing to call it, but she chose to go with what people called it. I told her that I understood.

"Please stand aside, sir," she said, and moved me next to the X-ray machine that was scanning my carry-on bag and the plastic bin that held my shoes, belt, jacket, and the things from my pockets.

When my bags came through, I asked if I should go get them. I was told, no, please wait there. So I waited.

Shortly, a TSA man came over and the security person pointed me out to him. He asked me if I could see my bags from where I was, and I pointed them out. I assume this was so that I could be sure that nobody was walking off with my stuff while I was being patted down. Then he asked me if I was traveling alone, and I replied that I was traveling with my wife. He asked me to point her out, which I did.

Next, he walked me over to a small mat with the shape of two footprints on it that was located behind the X-ray machine. He asked if I wanted to be patted down in private, but, in the interest of time, I said here was fine. So he explained that he would have to run his hands over me, but he would warn me before touching any "sensitive parts of my body," and he would only use the backs of his hands for those parts. "Sensitive parts of your body" must be TSA code for "private parts," because he used this phrase several time during the pat-down.

He next asked if I had any part of my body that was especially sensitive. I assume this was in case the person being patted down has suffered an injury or has a condition that makes a part of their painful to the touch. I don't have anything like that, so I replied, no, I don't.

He patted down me down from the back first, including feeling inside my waistband. This was honestly the most intrusive part of the pat-down for me, but I can see how it makes perfect sense from a security perspective to check in someone's waistband. It seems like a natural place to hide a weapon. Also, as I wasn't wearing my belt at this point, it wasn't difficult for him to check my waistband (I'm glad I wore loose trousers).

Next he ran his hands over the backs of my legs, and he warned me when he was getting close to the "sensitive parts of my body" and reminded me that he would be touching that are with the backs of his hands. When that was done, he moved in front of me and patted me down from the front, including under my arms. Once again he warned me that he was about to reach the "sensitive part of my body" and that he would be using the backs of his hands, and he finished patting me down and told me I could go.

I was impressed and relieved at the professionalism I experienced. It was the opposite of the horror stories I had read online about people feeling assaulted during the pat-downs. Honestly, I don't think he ever actually touched the "sensitive part of my body," and he warned me so many times that I almost told him to just get on with it. I felt like he did a thorough job that would have found any hidden weapons, had I been a terrorist, while still treating me like a human being.

What this tells me is that the TSA is very conscious of the bad press they've been getting, and they have taken steps to ensure that the people performing these pat-downs do so correctly, at least at Oakland International.

Incidentally, on the way back from Hawaii, there were two lines going through security at the Lihue airport: one with a backscatter machine, and one with a traditional metal detector. My wife and I both chose the line with the metal detector.

High Expectations Salarian Uncle

2011-01-28T17:40:00.001-08:00

This trailer for the movie 'Priest' is awesome...

2011-01-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

...and I strongly suspect that someone I know secretly wrote the script. Seriously, this is so relevant to my interests. I would say more but there is nothing to say. Just watch the trailer at io9.

Looking back at the past year of Lord Admiral

2010-12-22T15:52:00.000-08:00

First, warm wishes and happy holidays to everyone who reads my blog, whether you celebrate Lanimas like I do, or another one of the many wonderful holidays this time of year, or no holiday at all!

Secondly, some navel-gazing. I was looking back over the past year to see which of my posts were the most popular, and since I found the results pretty interesting, I thought I'd share!

My posts about Binwin Bronzebottom are my top sources of visitors, especially Binwin Bronzebottom T-Shirts and Binwin Bronzebottom and the Quest for More Money.

Perhaps because Binwin-related visits were spread out over a number of pages, my top landing page (after the home page, of course), was The Alternative Press Expo, or, Can My Camera Flash You? (which I have now adjusted so that I don't spent the whole post saying "nurds are cute hurr hurr"). Most people who have been finding that page lately are no doubt looking forward to the next Alternative Press Expo, as they are apparently arriving based on Google searches for Dylan Meconis (the talented comician behind Family Man) and Der-shing Helmer (the wizard behind my current favorite webcomic, The Meek). These searchers must be trying to discover how these skilled comicians look to prepare themselves for their own photo safari. I do apologize for my pictures being so unprofessional, unflattering, and, in Der-shing's case, incredibly fuzzy.

Also bringing in the visitors are my posts about my 2009 visit to Wondercon, my excitement about attending a Dungeons and Dragons Encounters game set in the Dark Sun universe, and my personal favorite, my nerdy thoughts on Wolverine.

Rounding out my top pages for the year are Fetch Me My Blade and Let the Music Begin, which is about my heavy metal album cover CD project (remember that?), The Coolest Video Game Box Art of All Time about Mechwarrior 2's box art, and my review of Last Exile, which was part of my short tenure at Brass Goggles.

Thank you all for reading, and hopefully next year I can continue to entertain the five loyal readers I have, both here and on Supervillainous (which now has content. Go check it out!)

Mameshiba!

2010-12-06T09:59:00.000-08:00

My otherwise spooky wife loves things that are weird and cute, and thus, she recently introduced me to Mameshiba. Watch the videos: someone tries to eat a lunch involving some variety of the beans, but one of the beans turns into a bean-dog creature and tells them a trivia fact. And it's adorable.

Your New Crush

2010-12-03T11:24:00.000-08:00

One of my friends recently told me about a group of history teachers in Hawaii who have a Youtube channel where they do covers of pop songs that change the words to history lessons.

This is the first song I saw, which is really good:

Now, setting a song about the French Revolution to the tune of "Bad Romance" is pretty good, but this is the video that sealed it for me:

Go on, tell me you don't have a crush on her now.

Added bonus: have some more awesome "Bad Romance" covers!

This one should be title Bäd Ro\m/ance:

And for my wife, for posting about crushes on other ladies (I wasn't being serious, honest). She's seen it before, but it's worth watching again:

(also, I apologize for Blogger cutting off the right side of all Youtube videos. Click through to Youtube to see them full-sized).

November is over!

2010-12-01T17:45:00.000-08:00

Yay!

I actually finished Red Devil on the 26th, and spent the next few days rewarding myself by playing video games and reading comics. Looking back, it's a bit strange because I feel like the point where I ended my novel would be a great starting point for an even BETTER novel, but hey, there's always next November.

Congratulations to all other winners, whether you're a novelist or someone who did a spin-off project.

And if you didn't win this year, I hope you try again next year!

2 Years ((WARNING Adorable post WARNING))

2010-11-18T09:31:00.000-08:00

Today is the second anniversary of my wife and I seeing each other. What a two years it's been!

By the way, if you're thinking "Two years already holy crap where has the time gone," it's not our two year anniversary of being married, but two years since we started going out. Our one-year anniversary is coming up in January.

Happy other anniversary, my dear!

Red Devil has a tank full of ghosts and it's ready to punch some monsters!

2010-11-04T14:36:00.000-07:00

My NaNoWriMo story, Red Devil, is moving along nicely. So far I've been able to meet my daily goal every day, and I feel like the characters are starting to fall into place. The story is about a suit of robot armor that runs on ghosts and punches monsters. No monsters have been punched yet, but we're getting there.

Meanwhile, while my evenings are spent writing Red Devil, other things aren't getting done. For my own amusement, here is a list of things I've temporarily put aside while working on the novel:

Writing a review of "Batman: Arkham Asylum" for Supervillainous
Finishing Psychonauts and writing a review of it
Getting Supervillainous off the ground
Finishing my re-read of The Lord of the Rings
An RPG project I've been mulling over
Other stories I've been meaning to write

But never mind all that. Toss in another ghost, there's monsters to punch! See you at the finish line!

It's that time of the year again

2010-11-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.nanowrimo.org/ is loading at a snail's pace, which can only mean one thing: that November is upon us again, and once more, millions of starry-eyed would-be novelists are setting forth on a crusade to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

I have tried NaNo twice, in '07 and '08. In '09, I decided not to try, because my November was swamped with too many other activities.

This year, it's time I dusted off my keyboard, put on my writing pants, and did it again.

My NaNo profile is here.

See you at the finish line.

Supervillainous

2010-10-28T12:47:00.000-07:00

A while back, I bought a domain, because I thought it would be cool to have a domain, and also because I thought the domain name was clever: http://www.supervillaino.us/

I didn't have any plans for it, but I figured, why not? It was only ten bucks a year.

Then I recently noticed that Blogger will allow you to set up a blog on a domain of your choice for free! I figured, hey, I use Blogger, and I have a domain, so why not? I set up a new blog with Blogger and put it on my domain.

Those of you who are familiar with Blogger may be wondering why I didn't just change this existing blog to use the new URL. I have two answers to that:

1. This way, I can keep using both blogs. So far, Lord Admiral has been a weird mix of personal notes that are only of interest to my friends and family, and reviews that are meant for a larger audience (though probably still only read by my friends and family). Going forward, I will use Lord Admiral for the personal stuff, and post the more general (and more interesting) stuff on Supervillainous.

2. I didn't notice that I could have kept this blog until it was too late.

I also took this opportunity to change my Google screen name from Lord Admiral to Baron von Chop. I was never happy with Lord Admiral, because for one thing it sounds far too high-fallutin', and for another, it's not really a name, just a rank. Baron von Chop may include a rank, but somehow I don't think that anyone will get the impression that I'm full of myself from a name like that.

Mike Mignola Writes and Draws Hellboy Again

2010-10-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

About time I posted the link to the new Mignola-written, Mignola-illustrated Hellboy story, The Whittier Legacy.

I'll leave this entry short so that you don't waste time reading it, but go read Hellboy instead!

The DIY Dragon

2010-10-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

Over the past weekend, my dear lady and I flew down to LA to attend the wedding of two very cool people. The bride looked lovely, the groom was dapper, the ceremony was heartfelt and the banquet afterward was staggering, including an estimated 11 courses of awesome Chinese food and a truly epic cake.

It was my first time in LA, so I also got to see some of the landmarks and tourist spots, such as the Hollywood sign, the Walk of Fame and Mann's Chinese Theater.

To celebrate the happy couple, I thought I'd write them a silly little story. Here goes.

The DIY Dragon
For the Eyeball Burpers

In a far-off kingdom there lived a kindly king and queen. They had a single daughter, the apple of their eye. As she grew older, all of the young men of the realm began to compete for her attention, and foremost among them was the king's youngest and bravest knight.

To prove his love, the knight sorted out a misunderstanding surrounding a black knight and a bridge, and he helped some farmers with an incursion of manticores. He was pretty badass.

The princess, meanwhile, sewed a tapestry. The subject of the tapestry was ogre wrestling, so the princess went out and wrestled the biggest ogres in the kingdom as research for her tapestry. When she ran out of ogres, she chopped up some gorgons, for the design on the tapestry's border. She was pretty badass, too.

The king looked with favor on the knight, knowing that the young man was a match for his formidable daughter. The king was something of a traditionalist, however, and he waited for a dragon to swing by and kidnap his daughter, so that he could offer her hand in marriage to whoever saved her. The king was sure the knight was more than up to the task, and he wasn't the slightest bit worried about his daughter, who could handle any dragon.

The knight and princess waited patiently. The princess even resolved to avoid suplexing the dragon before the knight arrived so that he could rescue her the old-fashioned way (though she reserved the right to soften the dragon up a bit). There was only one problem: no dragon appeared.

The king and his councilors were puzzled. The latest survey of the dragon population indicated that there were plenty of dragons about. What they had not realized was that the dragons had gotten wise to the situation and learned to steer clear of the knight, and no dragon in the kingdom was foolish enough to try to kidnap such a princess.

The lamentable lack of draconic abduction may have caused another couple to despair, but these two were undaunted. They found the royal engineer with the wispiest beard and the most cluttered workplace, and they commissioned a mighty work to their specifications. The knight visited a scheming alchemist with chemical-stained fingers, while the princess sought out an experienced ranger with eyes like a hawk. When these two creative souls set their minds to a task, nothing could stop them, and there was nothing they loved more than working on a project together.

On Saturday, October 16, the royal court was in an uproar. Courtiers ran hither and thither while ladies gossiped and men shouted. A great crowd gathered in the courtyard, and all faces looked up to the princess's tower, where a great wood-and-paper dragon beat its enormous wings slowly as it perched on the balcony. The dragon's eyes glowed red with the heat of its furnace as smoke poured from its smokestack nostrils.

The knight sad astride the clattering, puffing beast. He worked a complex control panel full of levers and knobs and beamed at his princess as she emerged from her room. She somersaulted into the empty chair next to the knight's and cranked a steering wheel, sending the dragon flapping mightily from the tower.

The beast roared and spat flame into the air as it flew over the courtyard, so low that the onlookers tumbled to the ground in surprise and delight. The dragon sped off, carrying the princess and the knight to their next adventure.

The king watched them go with a smile on his face. "Works for me," he said, and dabbed at his eye with a handkerchief.

Computer Game Review Supplement: Mass Effect Combat Supplement

2010-10-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

Since my Mass Effect review was such a success (cricket cricket), I decided to post some more thoughts on the game. I'd like to talk some more about the combat system, because even though it's not the best thing about the game (the characters, story, and setting are what really make this game shine), it's still really fun, but it has some down sides you may want to know about before deciding about whether or not you'd like to play.

Combat will feel very familiar to gamers. You can hold the spacebar to pause the game and open up the squad command/special attack screen, above, which allows you to change weapons, change the squad AI's behavior, or use special attacks.

You will always have two squad members on your team. No more, no less. You can pick them at the start of each mission, or whenever you leave the Normandy.

Healing is very simple: press F to use a health pack. It will heal you and your squad. How much each health pack heals and how often you can use one depends on your squad's total First Aid skill.

You also have grenades, which you throw with R and detonate with another press of R. These can be very useful in certain situations and all but useless in others.

Combat is cover-based, meaning your character will hide behind cover if you walk up against it. You can pop up from behind cover by clicking the aim button (right clicking), which is very easy to get used to. Unfortunately, cover does not protect you from explosive attacks.

Mass Effect features very cool-looking bad guys rendered very well, but for all that, most of the time you're going to be shooting at the aiming reticles on your screen. These are drawn over all of your enemies, so you'll be watching for the red triangles rather than the cool-looking bad guy models. Also, when your enemies die, they disappear, so you can't even go inspect the fallen enemies to see how cool they look (or to finish the kill).

The squad AI is okay, but you'll have to get used to your squad mates spending a lot of time shooting at intervening terrain while trying to hit an enemy on the other side.

One great thing about the combat system is the way looting happens, or rather, they way it doesn't happen. Rather than having to end each fight by running around gathering up items from the fallen bad guys, you receive a notification every time you killed a bad guy and got an item, and the next time you open your inventory, it tells you all the items you found since the last time you opened your inventory.

As I mentioned in my main review, it's also nice that you don't have to worry about ammo, or about repairing the condition of your items. Your items heat up while firing, but you only have to let the heat dissipate before you keep firing again.

Biotic powers look really cool, and tech powers are interesting, too (though not as showy as biotic powers). Guns look like, well, guns, though one time I saw an NPC with a cold upgrade in his weapon shooting an enemy, and frost crystals formed on the enemy with each bullet hitting him. That was rad.

The combat system isn't the best thing about Mass Effect, but it's more than serviceable. The most important part of any combat system is that it makes sense and is easy to use, and in my book, Mass Effect succeeds.

Team Fortress 2 Got Better

2010-10-04T17:32:00.000-07:00

I don't spend a lot of time talking about Team Fortress 2 on this blog, though it remains far and away one of my biggest hobbies. I love the game, the videos of the characters, the fan-made video of the characters dancing, some/most of the fan art... and I may or may not be working on a cosplay costume. If I were, and I'm not confirming anything, it might be of the RED Sniper.

Well, recently Valve took their already nearly pitch-perfect game and made it even better through a long-awaited update that finally allowed players to trade items between each other. I celebrated by giving my lovely wife some Jarate.

The update also allows players to buy items with real-life money, which I'm usually against, but in this case there aren't any items that can only be bought with money, which makes me feel better. After all, TF2 is such a great game, why shouldn't Valve make some more money off it? And why shouldn't the community members who contribute items to the game see some return on their investment of time and energy? If this encourages more people to create items, I'm for it.

The one thing that I'm not so hot on is the crates. Apparently people can now randomly find crates while playing, but can only access them by buying keys for money. I realize that there's nothing forcing the player to buy the key, but creating an item that can only be accessed if you pay for it seems dubious to me. It's like when someone says, "You know, I had this really weird conversation with one of your friends today, but I probably shouldn't tell you about it."

I won't go into what makes TF2 such a great game. If you love team-based shooters with a cartoony style and near-perfect class and map balance, you already play it. If you can't stand playing games with spazzy adolescents and consistently stacked teams, I probably can't convince you to change your mind.

But if you already like the game, then this update will probably make you love it more. And if you haven't played in a while, maybe this will help change your mind. Let me know if you have any items you'd like. I'll check in the back. We might have just what you need.

Computer Game Review: Mass Effect

2010-09-28T21:28:00.000-07:00

Mass Effect was the best computer game RPG I have ever played. It had its flaws, but I happily overlooked them and enjoyed the story, the world, and the characters from the beginning to the epic finale.

First off, Mass Effect was made by Bioware, the superstars of computer RPGs. Their past titles, like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Knights of the Old Republic set the bar very high and were known for giving players a several ways to overcome every challenge, epic plotlines, great writing and memorable NPCs. In my opinion, Mass Effect surpasses all of those previous Bioware titles.

Mass Effect is set in its own universe, and the writers did a marvelous job filling out this world and making it every bit as immersive as the Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons properties that Bioware has worked with in the past. The game includes an in-game Codex that fills up as you play with interesting facts about the planets, races, monsters, factions, and technology you come across.

If I had to pick a favorite thing about Mass Effect, it would be the NPCs. As much as I loved seeing the cool settings and playing through the interesting and thought-provoking missions, hanging out with some of the coolest characters I've ever seen in a video game definitely made every part of the game even better.

I totally dug Garrus Vakarian, the turian renegade cop who quits the force to go after the game's bad guy, another turian named Saren.

I have to confess I developed quite a crush onTali'Zora nar Rayya, the quarian mechanic on a pilgrimage to find things to bring back to her people's fleet of aging starships.

But of course my favorite NPC was the krogan Battlemaster, Urdnot Wrex. The ancient, battle-scarred warrior is every bit as badass as he looks. His gruff exterior hides that he's genuinely worried about the krogan race, which is infected with a virus that has cut their fertility rate so badly that they're all dying out. It doesn't help that he often finds himself going up against other krogans, further lowering the numbers of his already endangered race.

I'll try not to say too much about the NPCs, because getting to know them is one of the coolest things about the game.

The main plot is suitably epic, and really hits the ground running. You don't waste any time killing rats and beetles in Mass Effect. The first enemies you fight are the minions of the main bad guy, Saren.

Saren is a Spectre, an agent of the Citadel Council who has special permissions to operate outside the bounds of ordinary justice. His motivations are mysterious, but his main goal is no big shocker: he wants to wipe out all life in the universe. And guess who gets to stop him?

As the player, you take the role of Commander Shepard. You can choose a first name for Shepard when you create the character, but everyone just refers to you as Commander and/or Shepard. You can choose to play as a male or female Shepard, and you also choose his or her appearance. I played as a male Shepard, so I'll refer to Shepard as "he." You also choose a role for Shepard, who can focus on firepower, technological attacks, or biotic powers (think of biotics as Mass Effect's version of the Force). You may choose to focus on two of these areas instead of just one, so I took a firepower/technological blend.

Your other choice with Shepard is to go either Paragon, Renegade, or a mixture of both. Unlike the normal good/bad choices that most RPGs offer, in which you can choose to either lie, steal, and kill your way through the plot or to stop and save every lost child and sick puppy you come across, Mass Effect gives you two ways to achieve the same goals: you can either go in guns blazing as a Renegade, sometimes sacrificing civilians to get the job done, or you can take the more careful approach of the Paragon, going out of your way to make sure only the bad guys get hurt. I appreciated that the game doesn't try to trick you about which choices are Paragon and which are Renegade.

To me, one of the best moments in Mass Effect was when I had the ability to choose, about halfway through a game, to either kill an NPC or allow it to live. I won't say any more, but even though I was playing a Paragon, I had a very hard time convincing myself to make the Paragon choice. It's when a game can make you pause and grapple with a decision that you know you're playing something golden.

That's not to say that the Paragon/Renegade system always works perfectly. A lot of times, the only difference between a Paragon and a Renegade is that the Paragon avoids civilian casualties, while the Renegade does not. This can be as simple as avoiding having civilians wander into the crossfire in a gunfight.

Soon after Shepard starts chasing after Saren, the Citadel Council makes him the first human Spectre. This allows you to choose your team and fly off in your new spaceship, the Normandy. Even though the Normandy's only purpose in the game is to ferry you from one quest to the next, I loved being able to run around inside my ship between missions, talking to NPCs and party members, and exploring my ship (which just happens to be the best ship in the human fleet).

After playing some Fallout 3, it felt great to play a game where I did not have to worry about stocking up on ammo or repairing my gear. In Mass Effect, all weapons have unlimited ammo, but overheat if you fire too quickly. Also, weapons and armor do not degrade and never have to be repaired

One thing I could have done without, though, was the unnecessarily complicated inventory system (which I hear has been improved in the sequel). All weapons have many levels. The only thing this accomplishes is to ensure the you routinely need to switch out your weapon for another weapon of the same model but a better level. You also have to stick in upgrades to your weapons and armor, giving you extra damage or effects. Like the weapons, the individual upgrades also have levels, so you'll be switching them out throughout the game.

Another time-consuming aspect of the game is the amount of time you spend getting from place to place. This was my biggest gripe about the game. Almost every planet you land on is extremely mountainous, and you drive your all-terrain vehicle, known as the Mako, over endless hills and mountains to get from where you landed to where your mission is. This might not be so bad if there was more scenery along the way, but for the most part you don't even get trees or lakes to drive past.

Worse, if you come across some bad guys, you'll probably want to jump out and kill them on foot, because using the Mako's powerful guns to kill bad guys yields significantly fewer experience points than killing them on foot. This leads to the immersion-breaking realization that you can whittle down a big opponent's hit points with the Mako's guns, then jump out and finish it off with your regular weapons for the larger share of experience points.

The only point to driving from your landing point to your mission is that you sometimes come across a deposit of ore or a crashed probe or something. These do one of two things: give you items and experience, or give you money and experience. Helpful, but not worth boring, bumping driving to get to.

Whenever you interface with a rock deposit, crashed probe, beacon, locked box, or encrypted computer, you'll play a mini-game I think of as "circular Frogger." It's pretty intuitive and easy to get good at, and as far as hacking/lockpicking mini-games go, I actually quite liked it.

I'm sure I've left out some other things I should say, but this review is long enough now. I hope that those of you who haven't already played this excellent game will check it out. I, for one, have started a second play-through, this time as a female Shepard who will be going Renegade. I also look forward to importing my first Shepard into Mass Effect 2 as soon as I buy it. And Mass Effect 3 is coming out soon, too!

So, I'll end with this:

...Wrex.
...Shepard.

What if you leveled up?

2010-09-15T17:31:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my friend Kage about this, but I found it so fascinating that I decided to share it with the two other people who also read my blog. What if you were given points to distribute among your attributes, skills, and abilities?

I think this makes a fascinating question to ponder.

Would you improve on your strengths, maximizing your ability to do the things you already do well? This would probably move you toward fame and fortune, since chances are that your current occupation and interests use your strongest abilities.

Or would you take the opportunity to improve on some areas where you are currently lacking? In the long run, this might make you happier, as it gives you the opportunity to shore up the weaknesses that make you suffer.

Or you could put your points into something not practical at all. Maybe it's time you improved your ability to speak with cats. You could start working on your ability to breathe underwater, or open up a new multiclass in Telepath or Pyrokineticist.

In this scenario, you can improve anything, and it's up to you how to distribute your level up. You could dump it all into one stat, raising that one thing a lot while leaving everything else the same, or you could improve a number of things to a lesser degree.

Consider: what are some things about yourself that you would like to improve? This is your chance to get something you've been meaning to work on but haven't gotten to it. Want to work off some of that gut? Improve your DEX. Been meaning to go jogging to work on your cardio? Bump up your CON. Or if your significant other complains that your cooking is terrible, throw out the cookbook and dump all your points in Cooking. You can get all the improvement with none of the hard work!

Alternatively, when you consider that anything can potentially be improved, you could add to things that you could never get better at. Want to be taller? Improve your Height stat. Want to get rid of your glasses? Improve your Spot skill. After all, why would you improve something that you could work on anyway, when you can improve something you otherwise wouldn't be able to?

Personally, I'd probably dump everything* into Perception. I tend to be somewhat oblivious sometimes (sorry, dear), and I would love to be more aware of what's going on around me.

What about you?

* Well, maybe I'd save a point or two for the Chainsaw skill so that I can eventually qualify for Chainsaw Monk.

Book Review: Perdido Street Station

2010-09-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

When China Miéville set out to write Perdido Street Station, he deliberately wanted to do something different from most fantasy stories. Therefore, you won't find any medieval maidens riding beside silent champions on the cover of Perdido Street Station. No orcs, no elves, no dragons. In fact, the setting is not medieval at all, but industrial. If you can't remember the last time I talked about Steampunk on this supposedly Steampunk blog, here you go: Perdido Street Station is definitely Steampunk.

You won't see any gentlemen in top hats and waistcoats. There is no Victoriana in the city of New Crobuzon, which is where the novel takes place. The Steampunk elements are steam-powered trains, constructs with surprisingly advanced analog computer brains, and humans who have been Remade by fusing their bodies with steam-powered machines.

The Remade are one of the most interesting aspects of the novel. Remaking is a form of punishment in New Crobuzon. The oppressive capitalist government (more on that later) sadistically combines people with machine or animal parts for transgressions against the state. Sometimes these punishments fit the crime, but often they are simply malicious ways to punish and cripple people.

Remade aren't the only interesting people you'll find walking the streets of New Crobuzon. There are also Cactacae, big cactus people who live in a domed ghetto called the Greenhouse. There are Khepri, beetle-headed women whose heads are actually whole beetles, complete with legs and everything. The third major non-human race of New Crobuzon are the Vodyanoi, froglike water dwellers who can shape water temporarily. Miéville loves spicing up his city with other creatures, too, so you'll hear about more exotic creatures from time to time. The most important of these are the Garuda, bird people who usually live far away in the Cymek desert, but also have a small immigrant population in the city.

The city of New Crobuzon itself is one of the best things about the novel. Based on what I've read of his work, Miéville loves architecture, and he has a talent for making his settings feel completely believable. One of the ways he does this is by describing the ways in which the various parts of the city relate to each other, for instance the way a blue-collar district turns into a slum, or the way a high-rent area has fallen into disrepair and become a series of tenements and squats. He then fills these areas with people of all sorts, who live fully realized, everyday lives of all kinds. And of course, squatting at the center of New Crobuzon, at the point where the train lines converge, is the massive Perdido Street Station, the hub and heart of the city.

There are a lot more unpleasant ghettos than posh neighborhoods in New Crobuzon, and that bleakness extends to whole novel. Miéville pulls no punches in populating his city with gangsters, thieves, whores, and homeless. The mayor and his cronies are more than happy to keep the populace living mostly in squalor, though there are nicer areas for the wealthy middle class, university students and faculty, and artists. Miéville is well known for his extreme left-wing politics, and he sometimes lays it on a bit thick as the mayor and his fascist militia crush the unions and keep the people living in fear.

The plot of the novel concerns a Garuda, Yagharek, who arrives in New Crobuzon to seek out a scientist, Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin. Yagharek had his wings torn off by his tribe as punishment for a crime, and he has heard that Grimnebulin is his best and only hope to ever fly again. Isaac takes on the case, believing that his research into the near-legendary "crisis power" is the key to restoring Yagharek's flight. Meanwhile, Isaac's girlfriend Lin, a Khepri artist, takes on an enormous commission to create a statue of a man who turns out to be a prominent gangster. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, so I'll just stop right there.

Perdido Street Station is extremely well written. Reading it reminded me of the works of William Gibson and Neil Stephenson in the sense that I constantly felt like the author must be an absolute genius. Miéville's descriptions of analog computers, for instance, are completely believable and fascinating, and he gives each race a unique philosophy and mindset that is convincingly and mind-bogglingly inhuman.

I wouldn't recommend the novel to everyone, though. New Crobuzon can be a terrible place, and some atrocious things happen along the way that can be hard to read. It helps the setting feel more believable, but it also makes the book unsuitable to certain readers.

I have a few other complaints about the novel, mostly minor, that I can't get into for fear of spoilers. But despite all that, Perdido Street Station was an absolutely fascinating book that I highly recommend.

One last note: at one point late in the novel, the protagonists hire some adventurers to help them. These are clearly D&D characters, re-imagined for the setting. We even heard that they will do just about anything for "gold and experience." In interviews, China Miéville admits to having played RPGs as a kid, though he's quick to note that he hasn't played one in fifteen years. (It's nothing to be ashamed of, Mr. Miéville, sir!) Oh, and also, he collaborated with Wizards of the Coast to make a 3.5 ruleset for the world of Bas Lag where the novel is set, which is available in Dragon 352. Currently he's working closely with Adament Entertainment on an entirely new pen-and-paper RPG, called Tales of New Crobuzon.

Some Quick Updates

2010-08-29T19:47:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone! I realize that I've been somewhat quiet lately, so here are a few brief updates.

* My replacement video card has arrived and is working beautifully. I no longer experience blue screens at startup, which is awesome.

* My birthday was a blast! Thanks to my lovely wife and my awesome friends who came by, and for everyone who couldn't make it but sent along birthday wishes. The day before my birthday, some friends came over and we played card games and had cake and ice cream. Then on the day of my birthday, my wife and I watched The Two Towers and I got to play a lot of video games.

* At work on Tuesday, the company will be having a mandatory picnic-type event where everyone will be going to a nearby historical farm. I don't know what to expect. It's a good thing so many of my friends work at the company. In fact, just about all of my friends in California do. Up the beloved company!

How Thoth ended up with Lovecraft's heart

2010-08-11T16:08:00.001-07:00

Thoth's thinking to himself, "Seriously, you guys, who stole my freaking heart?"

Many of you know that I recently got a new computer, which I named Thoth. I bought the pieces separately, and with the help of my friends, I put it together for half the cost that it would have cost to buy a comparable computer from Dell or HP or something. This computer had with a lovely, super powerful video card, a Radeon HD 5850.

This video card ran all the modern games I own (aka the ones Steam had on sale) at high settings. But there was a problem: whenever I booted up my computer, it would get to the Windows logo, which would swirl in, pause, then half of it would disappear and a few moments later I would get a blue screen of death and a reboot. The computer would reboot okay, I would tell it to start normally, and everything would be fine. The only problem was, this would happen every time I turned on my computer.

After trying every possible software fix, I finally had to face the facts: it was a hardware problem, probably related to my memory. The error logs indicated that the crash happened when my computer tried to load the video driver. Unfortunately, trying different video drivers didn't help. The problem was with my video card.

So I sent it back for a replacement, and in the meantime, I'm using the video card I pulled out of my old computer, Lovecraft, a Radeon X600.

This was a fine card, back in its day. Sadly, its day was about five years ago. That means it can run TF2 okay, but more modern games are asking a bit much of it.

An artist's rendition of several Radeon X600 video cards around a Radeon HD 5850

I bought my card from Newegg, but the 30-day return window had passed by the time I'd narrowed down the problem, so I was forced to use the warranty provided by the card's manufacturer. It turns out that Sapphire's RMA policy requires me to send them my card (at my own expense) and wait 1-2 weeks while they process it before they'll send me a replacement.

As an added twist, my amazing wife bought me a copy of Starcraft II that arrived the day before I was going to ship back my card. I did not even install the game yet, because I knew that it would be too heartbreaking to have to give it up a day after installing it. It would be easier to wait the 1-2 weeks without having a clear idea of what I was missing.

The other downside is that, while I'm down to one video card, I can't play video games with my wife. Normally, I can play TF2 on Lovecraft, which runs it okay, while my wife plays it on Thoth. But with Thoth's video card in the mail and Lovecraft's video card in Thoth, now we only have one working PC.

It's a good thing I have China Miéville's brilliant novel Perdido Street Station to keep me distracted in the meantime. I'll definitely be posting a review when I finish!

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Adventurers

2010-08-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, my friends and I are experiencing something of a Dungeons & Dragons Renaissance. All this gaming has got me thinking about the characters we play. I have been going on dungeon crawls since grade school, thanks to board games like Hero Quest, arcade games like Gauntlet II and Shadow Over Mystara, and computer games like Might and Magic II. I take for granted that a Warrior, a Thief, a Magician, and a Priest (and/or Dwarf and Elf) will tromp over to the dungeon outside of town to kill some goblins and skeletons. When I stop to think about it, there is a lot more going on here. Adventuring is not just something you do; an adventurer is something you are, and some common threads unite all such men and women.

There are many reasons to go adventuring: a lust for gold ranks highly among these, but there are also many who are trying to protect their people, to serve their lord or god, or to seek out hidden knowledge. These motivations are not enough to make a person an adventurer, however. A strong man can earn gold as a soldier or a thug, a priest can serve his god safe in a temple, and a scholar can learn much in libraries and laboratories. There are some whose blood calls out for more, men and women who are not content with an average, safe life. They know of the danger waiting for them outside civilization's walls, but they are willing to face the challenge. More risk, more reward.

Adventurers are brave.

Adventurers feel a draw to the uncivilized world where danger and reward wait, but there is a corresponding force pushing them away from the commonplace world of cities and civilization. Adventurers are a restless crowd, unable to sit still and accept a normal life. They have trouble relating to the blacksmith, the street sweeper, the carpenter or the farmer. Some adventurers were born to normal lives but could not accept the daily grind. Others never had the option of living a normal life. A large number of adventurers are exotic travelers from foreign kingdoms, elves and dwarves and more exotic races. Many are half-breeds who have trouble fitting in with either of their parents' races.

Adventurers are misfits.

Whether they started adventuring as the exiled vampire half-drow prince or as a gnome with a tambourine, all adventurers must fight constantly with the forces of evil. It's unavoidable: even if an adventurer is a paragon of good, that adventurer will see terrible things in the course of her adventures. No matter how strong her faith is, she must at some point grapple with that age-old question of why such evil can be allowed to exist.

Adventurers are troubled.

The victories an adventurer experiences are temporary. There is always a larger menace; when the orc raiding party has been dispatched, the main orc force must be dealt with. When one villian lies slain, there are many others hidden, scheming. Adventurers move on to the next fight because the righteous battle is never won, or because the adventurer wants to test himself against a stronger adversary, or because the next dragon has an even larger hoard. Inevitably, the battles that follow will be increasingly harder. The party that emerged battered and victorious from their fight with a giant will move on to face a larger, stronger giant the next day. This means that most adventurers eventually reach their limit, and therefore their doom. The ones who survive have to be able to rise to the challenge. As the monsters get stronger, the adventurers have to become stronger still.

Adventurers thrive on danger.

Above all, adventurers defy description. Every rule I can come up with has exceptions: there are adventurers who are cowards, or rooted in the community, or innocent, or who fear challenges. Perhaps the one thing that all adventurers must share in common is that they have answered the call to adventure, time and again.

Because they cannot hear about the grimoir hidden in the lost tomb without wanting to be the first mortal in a thousand years to learn its secrets.

Because they cannot allow the evil cult to spread without bringing upon them the judgment of the true gods.

Because no matter how much wealth they have acquired, the gem in someone else's stash gleams brighter.

Because somebody must slay the dragon. Where is my sword?

Fetch me my sword.

He Fought the Darkness. The Darkness Won.

2010-08-06T17:18:00.000-07:00

Narrator: No one was left who could remember how it had happened,
how the world had fallen under darkness.
At least no one who would do anything.
No one who would oppose the robots.
No one who would challenge their power,
or so Dr. Wily believed...

Thus begins The Protomen, the self-titled debut of a band whose epic rock opera takes the Megaman story and turns it into a dystopian fable of hubris, compassion, vengeance, love, redemption, and hope. The songs rock hard and are full of Meat Loaf-esque emotion: everything is over the top, dramatic, and wonderful.

Somehow, the band takes a story about scientist who creates a robot boy to fight evil robots and turns it into a sprawling saga of a man trying to redeem himself by creating a robot who can stop the megalomaniac he inadvertently helped into power.

The story is complicated, though, because Megaman is the second robotic "son" Dr. Light creates. The first was Protoman, a tragic hero who fought to protect the people of the city but fell when the people of the city refused to help him in his fight.

Whereas Protoman was created as a warrior who could take down the evil Dr. Wily, Megaman was made to be a son and companion to Dr. Light in his misery and helplessness. Nevertheless, when Megaman learns of his brother's stand and noble death, he resolves to complete his brother's quest and rid the city of Wily's evil robots. Megaman rushes out while Dr. Light frantically pleads with him to reconsider and stay safe, saying, "You need to know! You are not him! His fight's not yours! You cannot win!"

Megaman goes into the city and sees how hopeless the people are. Loudspeakers constantly blare out reassuring and oppressive slogans, while the people shuffle around, dead to the world. Megaman is the one with hope. Despite what he sees, he still idealistically believes that he can fight the evil that grips the city. He stumbles across Protoman's grave and sees that someone has scrawled a message over the tombstone: "HOPE RIDES ALONE." Megaman takes it as his personal slogan, though he doesn't realize that Dr. Light himself wrote those words.

The heroic robot swears,
"And as I live
There is no evil that will stand
I will finish
What was started: the fight of Protoman!"

Megaman launches himself into the enemy robots, crowing,

"Send me the best you've got. Send me your strongest machines.
The fight my brother fought, here, now, will end with me."

As he progresses, littering the ground with the wreckage of robots, he sees the leader of the enemies up ahead. Though Megaman cannot see him clearly, there is something strangely familiar about his opponent's shape.

What happens next is tragic and epic and rocks very, very hard. I won't spoil it, (though you've probably already guessed part of it), but I should add that if you listen to the album, you're only getting half the story: you should read the Protomen lyrics and liner notes as you listen to the album to know who's talking and what they're doing.

I highly recommend giving The Protomen a listen. The music rocks, the story is epic, and you don't even have to be a fan of Megaman or SF to enjoy it (though it certainly doesn't hurt).

There is a second album that tells the story of how the city fell under Dr. Wily's control. All Protomen fans should check it out if they want to know the full arc. It also has some of the best songs on either album, so there's that, too!

The Saga of the Time-Traveling FedEx Slips

2010-07-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

Not pictured: H.G. Wells, Dr. Who, or Kathryn Janeway

About a week ago, I got a notice on my door from FedEx saying that this was my third and final notice, and I now had to go pick up my package from their delivery center way down in Emeryville. The thing is, that was the first I'd heard of it. I called them to complain, and they apologized, saying that their system showed two previous delivery attempts, but the delivery person should have left a slip at each attempt. They offered to send it again, but I said I'd just go pick it up.

So I biked down to Emeryville and picked up the package. It was my new phone, by the way, so send me an email if you'd like the new number. Anyway, I figured it was an inconvenience, but I'd live.

Then a weird thing happened: a few days later, I got a notice on my door saying it was the first delivery attempt. But that's not the weirdest part: the date on the notice was several days before the final notice's date (and about a week before the date the slip mysteriously appeared on my door). And sure enough, the next day I got the "second" notice, dated the day after the "first," both for an item I had already retrieved.

In an attempt to cause a rift in the space-time continuum, I looked up the number for the second slip on the FedEx website. The site found no such package.

There are only two possibilities I can think of:

* The delivery person found out that I was unhappy about not receiving the first two notices, and figured that I must really, really love notices. In this hypothetical delivery person's brain, the notices themselves must have some totemic quality, an intrinsic value separate from the package itself. Thus, the delivery person, out of the goodness of his/her heart, decided to grant me my beloved slips, and posted them on my door.

* The slips were posted on the days they were supposed to, but slipped through a rift in space-time and ended up on my door about a week later than they should have.

I honestly can't think of any other explanations. I've considered a few, but had to reject them:

* The slip was posted on time, but it fell off my door, and a helpful neighbor saw it a few days later and replaced it. But how do you explain the second slip also appearing, a day later?

* The two mysterious slips were actually for a second, unrelated package. So why were the dates off by several days, and why didn't anything come up when I looked them up on the website?

If you can think of any other explanation, please let me know. Just look for the guy in the tin-foil hat.

The Legend of Korra

2010-07-21T12:39:00.001-07:00

What you see above is a picture of Korra, a young woman from the Southern Water Tribe who becomes the Avatar after Aang. She will star in a new show on Nickelodeon, made by the team behind the original animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Only a few details have been released, on this site that has currently been brought down by the server load of countless squee'ing Avatar fans.

We do know these things:

Korra will be taught by Tenzin, who is Aang's son.

It will take place in a steampunk metropolis.

Part of the plot will deal with an anti-bending movement.

It takes place 70 years after the original show.

Some of you might be saying, "Aang's son?!" or "Steampunk in Avatar?!" (as if that's news), and I understand your nervousness. Those were my first reactions, too. Avatar fans have good reason to be nervous, given how bad THAT THING was. (If you don't know what I'm referring to, consider yourself blessed. I was going to link to the Rotten Tomatoes page, but decided not to give THAT THING even that little SEO boost that a link from my blog would give it.)

I've gotten over my initial shock and I'm currently in a state of extreme excitement bordering on squee. I remember what it was like watching the original show and wondering, worrying, if the creators would do something to mess it up along the way, but they always steered us right. Personally, I'd just like to know that the same animation studios will be doing the artwork, and I'll be set.

EDIT: A great interview with Mike and Brian here: 'Legend of Korra': The 'Avatar' Creators on the New Spinoff. This show sounds SO GOOD YOU GUYS!

Fake Book Review: Sir Alec Byrd and the Queen of the Sky Pirates

2010-07-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

(Note: there is no such book as Sir Alec Byrd and the Queen of the Sky Pirates. All of the names in this review are made up.)

In Sir Alec Byrd and the Queen of the Sky Pirates, B. B. Strauss (writing under the pseudonym Reginald Chestertham) begins what can be considered the golden age of Byrd stories, leaving behind the hackneyed plots of earlier tales while not yet devolving into the jingoism of the later stories.

The Queen of the Sky Pirates is perhaps best known for its thrilling climax, which depicts Sir Alec's dogfight with the sky pirates among the peaks of the Himalayas, and culminates in a one-on-one dogfight between Byrd and the Queen of the Sky Pirates deep within the ancient ruins hidden in the mountains.

Though she never gets a name, the character of the Queen makes the story interesting to scholars of Strauss's work, as she clearly shows how the author was maturing as a writer. Several commentators have focused on the fact that the Queen, a black woman, is one of the few characters in all of the Byrd stories to shoot down Byrd in a fair, one-on-one dogfight (the others being Baron Hell in The Pharaoh's Heart, Otto von Dietrich in Gorombaa, Island of Monsters and Lord Percy Fitzhugh in The Curse of the Maharajah's Gold). The dogfight itself, which takes place over a series of unnamed Mediterranean islands, is considered one of the most thrilling and realistic depictions of one-on-one air combat in the series.

Though it has received less attention from scholars, an equally important aspect of the Queen's character is that she is presented as an attractive woman. When Byrd first sees her in a secret aviators' bar in Greece, he asks Sophia, "Who is that beautiful woman who just came in?" In the ensuing scene, where Byrd and the Queen flirt from across the bar, Strauss shows that he has come a long way from earlier stories such as Sir Alec Byrd and the Cannibal Head-hunters of the Congo.

When Sophia is jealous of Byrd's flirtation with the Queen, we see that the co-owner of the Aurora is becoming a more well-rounded character, herself. In previous stories, Strauss uses Sophia as a plot device. Her secret island shop serves as a place for an injured Byrd to take the damaged Aurora to get them both patched up. Sophia passes on news and fusses over the damage to her plane, often with pages of description in which Strauss overindulges in his passion for amateur engine-building. In The Queen of the Sky Pirates, Strauss delves more deeply into the relationship between Sir Alec and Sophia, describing the plane they built together as their "child" and exploring issues of responsibility in the life of his brawling, devil-may-care hero.

While Sir Alec gets into a brawl in virtually every Byrd story, The Queen of the Sky Pirates is notably the first time he gets into trouble for it. During the opening scene, at a gala in a New York museum, the famous ace is insulted by an airplane racer. When Sir Alec begins to fight the dandy, the two are forcibly removed from the room, meaning that Sir Alec is not present when the Sky Pirates arrive and steal the a stone idol from the museum, setting off the chain of events that constitute the rest of the tale.

Much has been made of Strauss's fascination with weird fiction and his attempts to incorporate it into his stories, but the stone idols and the lost city in the Himalayas are one of the most effective examples found in the series. Strauss leaves both the idols and the city they guard shrouded in mystery, allowing the reader to guess "what hand might carve such grotesque features, and what mind might conceive such a horrid shape." When the city is revealed in the final scene, Strauss describes the "Cyclopean structures flashing by," lifting the most recognizable descriptions from his contemporary writers while focusing on the dogfight itself.

Some modern editors have chosen to begin Sir Alec Byrd collections with The Queen of the Sky Pirates, and there is evidence that Strauss himself considered the tale the first "true" Byrd story, as later stories stop referencing events of novels that preceded The Queen of the Sky Pirates.

I don't like sand

2010-07-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

What's up with all these D&D posts lately? Well, I've been playing a lot of D&D, and I know that my audience (all four of you) is probably interested in hearing about D&D. So here you go, another D&D post.

I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
--Anakin Skywalker

I agree, Anakin. But you left out one important detail about sand: it explodes, and it kills you! Shikirr and his clutch found this out the hard way on Wednesday, when we found ourselves fighting monsters that were living dust devils.

Before the monsters showed up, we met a dwarf who spoke with Jarvix and Castri while Yuka and Shikirr kept careful watch. The dwarf warned us that we were fighting someone called the Wastewalker, who apparently has a vendetta against the Veiled Alliance. Thanks for nothing, Jarvix and Barcan! I was happy being a bug-slave and now here I am, running from my life from people who aren't even out to get me. Well, they're my clutch-mates now, so I'll defend them with my life. The jerks.

The fact that we were fighting the Wastewalker didn't come as a surprise to the players, since the module is called Fury of the Wastewalker. It didn't mean much to the characters, either, as we had already gathered that the storm wasn't natural. We also learned that the Wastewalker's lieutenant, a siltrunner lizard, had a personal grudge against the dwarf, and was coming for him.

After the dwarf showed off his gnarly obsidian wounds, we got attacked by dust devils. One of them promptly exploded, dealing massive damage, including a critical hit on yours truly. I went from 33 HP to 11, then used my Speed of Thought ability to climb onto a rock to avoid the creatures, incurring an opportunity attack that dropped me to 6. Then the sand creature attacked, dealing 11 more damage and knocking me out before I even had a turn. GG, uninstall.

Two of our players were out for the day, so our DM let the first two people to go down play as their characters. I say the first two because, as you may have guessed, our party was soon literally biting the dust. The sand creatures made a mockery of our piecemeal armor and meager defenses. As Jarvix's player, who took over Phye, pointed out at one attack, the attack roll was over twice Phye's defense value. The DM was consistently rolling in the mid to high twenties on his attack rolls, which makes me wonder why he didn't just go straight to rolling damage. Oh that's right; in case he landed critical hits, which he got at least two of on Wednesday.

Shikirr was down, so I got to play Barcan, the human star-sorceror who has the survivability of a damp marshmallow. Because Barcan was late to the battle, he was the last one standing as the lizard-person lieutenant showed up. I couldn't do much about it as one of the dust devils picked up the dwarf, who was already having a seizure from the lieutenant's magical attacks. The lieutenant then cold-bloodedly stabbed him in the heart. Dag.

The dust devils turned to Barcan, and I knew they'd make short work of me. So I figured, heck, this isn't my regular character, we're all about to go down, and I'm not going to get a TPK with a daily power still remaining. So I flung out Barcan's daily power: Cosmos Call.

I focused the power of the unknowable void in my fragile human mind, just long enough to direct it into the skull of my enemy. The lizard man squealed as the power of the universe overwhelmed his brain and flat out killed him.

I like to think that Barcan had a little smirk on his face as the dust devils swung over and beat the tar out of him.

Then our DM dropped the bombshell: with the lizard person lieutenant dead, the dust devils would dissipate after a round. So basically, once they were done with me, they gently fell back into the desert, leaving a suddenly peaceful scene of a bunch of bodies and unconscious people.

I like to think that, when we wake up, we'll be spitting out sand and complaining sand getting into places we didn't even know we had, like Iago in Disney's Aladdin.

Anyone? Anyone?

*cricket, cricket*

Oh, well. See you in Athas!

If I were to sum up my impression of Eberron in one word, that word would be "juicy"

2010-06-29T12:47:00.001-07:00

In this post, I will talk about our "regular" D&D game, the one that we play at a friend's house with people we know rather than the pick-up Encounters games we play at the game store.

We started the campaign in Fallcrest, which is set in the default D&D setting (which may or may not still be called Greyhawk, I'm not totally clear on this). We fought some kobolds, slew a dragon, and got a magical sword as loot. It was all very straightforward D&D stuff. The next adventure we ran was set in Eberron, where things turned out to be somewhat more... juicy.

First, I should take a moment to talk about our campaign, and how we went from Greyhawk to Fallcrest. Our Dungeon Master (who plays Jarvix in my other campaign) has set up his world as a mix of every Dungeons and Dragons setting. People in various parts of the world believe in various pantheons, and depending on how people see the world, the world itself manifests in different ways. At least, that's the way I interpret it.

This feels a lot more real to me than the normal D&D approach, where a campaign setting has a strictly delineated pantheon of gods, who each have their distinct areas of influence. This feels too neat and tidy for my tastes. I like the idea that the gods are sort of trying to scratch out an area of influence while competing with similar gods from neighboring countries.

In any case, we got to Eberron and things seemed pretty normal. We had a bit of a laugh at the place names, as we were in the Darkswamp at the edge of the Blacktree Forest or something like that. The town we were investigating was populated mostly by humans, orcs, and half-orcs. That was a bit weird, but not totally unknown in a setting like Forgotten Realms.

But things got really weird when we entered the inevitable nearby monster-filled cave. We started things off by fighting cultists with eyes growing all over their bodies, who were led by an eyeless, psychic, tentacular horror. Meanwhile, an eye growing out of the wall tried to take over our minds.

Things got even weirder as we descended into Khyber, which is apparently Eberron's version of the underworld. Here we met monsters without heads but with two mouths, formed by evil wizards who had magically fused two goblins. At one point, the DM mentioned that the monsters' eyes were looking for us, and someone asked a question that you should probably avoid asking in Eberron: "But without a head, where are its eyes?" In this case, the DM deadpanned, "Oh, all over." (For those wondering about the mouths, they're on the shoulders.)

The deeper we get into the Khyber, the softer the walls get, and in our current room the walls are distinctly fleshy. I joked that, if we poked them, they'd probably bleed, but I'm in no hurry to test that. Let's just say that the floor has mouths.

I'm not one to get all squeamish, and part of me thinks that this stuff is pretty cool. I'm just glad that, when I run my Dark Sun, things are going to be decidedly drier.

We Killed It and Took Its Stuff

2010-06-28T17:45:00.000-07:00

I have not one, but TWO D&D sessions to recount, as these seem to be fairly popular (meaning one person has commented asking for more). I'll discuss our D&D Encounter from last Wednesday in this post, then post later about the game I played on Sunday.

Our intrepid party found their way into a canyon, where we found a rare fruit tree, covered in ripe, juicy fruit. The non-kreen in the group assured me that the fruit was delicious and succulent. I naturally had little interest in something so repulsive, though I pointed out that, as my companions ate the fruit, their own nutritional value was increasing. I was just trying to make conversation, but apparently my comment made them nervous. I will never understand non-kreen.

Suddenly, we found ourselves under attack from some nearby boulders. Goblin-types bristled at the top of some twenty-foot rocks, peeking out from among the brambles. It soon became obvious that the creatures could happily dodge among the brambles, but when we climbed the rocks, we found ourselves getting slashed and entangled.

One of our party members, Phye, found a rope dangling from the cliff, attached to some provisions. She climbed the rope, only to find a drake tied to the other end. She was soon fighting for her life against the goblins, though the drake itself was too busy trying to break free of its bonds to fight Phye. Yuka climbed up the rock face to help her, but they both suffered a huge blow when, upon defeating one of the goblins, a curse-bleeder (or whatever they were called) made its dying body explode so that it badly damaged both Phye and Yuka.

The most dangerous creatures were spellcasters who threw their own blood at us to curse us, which hurt us and made us more vulnerable to attack. Meanwhile, two snipers with magical rocket boots flew from rock to rock, peppering us with arrows along the way. I half-jumped, half-climbed up after them, then used my natural Thri-Kreen jumping to try to keep up with them. Phye had succeeded in loosing the drake, but its wingbeats did not dislodge the goblins as she had hoped. She needed my help, so I jumped over to her rock as she was dropped by some goblins.

Jarvix, meanwhile, was so engrossed in his fruit that he was nearly taken down before he could put up a fight. Soon he, too, was down for the count, leaving me, the stalwart Yuka and a cowardly Barcan the only ones still fighting, as Castri was MIA. While Yuka held them off, I fed Phye the magical healing fruit I had picked up from the caravan in the first encounter, and she helped us fight off the goblins while the drake lazily flapped away.

Yuka flung several goblins from the rock, where Barcan cleaned them up with chicken-hearted efficiency. We then got Jarvix back on his feet as we took out the last goblin, expecting it to explode again. We were all rather disappointed when it just fell.

This was the second fight so far where closing to melee range meant taking ongoing damage. In the first fight, it was the sandstorm that dealt 5 points of damage to any player outside the tents. In the third fight, it was the brambles. This feels like lazy scenario design to me. The designers figured that the Defenders fight in close range and can soak up a lot of damage, so they design the fights so that close range fighters always have to take ongoing damage.

Another gripe I have is that the enemies keep coming from all sides, making it impossible to set up a unified battle line. I have several abilities that depend on getting several party members "stuck in" to fight the enemy in close combat, and so far I haven't been able to make good use of them.

I'm not trying to say that every fight has to be tailored to allow the player characters to shine, and I'm definitely still having a great time.

One thing I should make note of is that last Wednesday's session was the first D&D Encounter in which we got genuine loot. We had picked up some healing fruit in the first encounter, but in the third we got a magic weapon (which went to Yuka, who had recklessly broken his beloved rope-axe weapon in an earlier fight) and a shrunken head made of wood (made, we were told, from a slightly larger wooden head!)

It felt a bit weird so far to go through two encounters without seeing a single gold coin for our trouble, so it's nice to get some loot, finally... even if I didn't get any of it myself, and thri-kreen don't understand the way money works.

See you in Athas!

O, to be a psychic, four-armed bug-man!

2010-06-22T16:17:00.000-07:00

Our D&D Encounters group had our second game last week, and tomorrow's the next game. The second game was even more fun than the first, which is really saying something. The players seemed more relaxed, and the DM was really getting into it. He would take simple rolls and actions and describe them in epic terms.

In one particularly memorable moment, one of the characters, a Mul (half-dwarf) ex-gladiator was wrestling with a giant beetle that held him in its pincers. The beetle opened a secondary mouth and jabbed a needle-sharp proboscis into the Mul's chest, poisoning him. Not one to be taken down lightly, the Mul broke free of the beetle's grasp and used an ability that let him end the "poisoned" condition. The DM enthusiastically described how the character out-wrestled the beetle, then used his diaphragm to pump out the venom from his chest. If you can, try to picture someone holding an imaginary beetle's pincers in his hands while pantomiming pumping poison from your chest with your diaphragm. He had us in stitches, and the moment will probably live forever in my memories of D&D.

My character so far has been reliable and I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of tanking (though I probably could be using my offensive abilities better). Still, I feel like I'm getting the hang on this character, and hopefully I'll be more on top of things in tomorrow's session. We'll see if maybe I can even get such a legendary moment of greatness!

If any of you are still wondering why I'm so stoked about playing a thri-kreen, check out this picture. Some thri-kreen art looks pretty terrible, as they can look like lumpy beetle-people, but this is the way I picture my guy:

Though my current character has a stone, three-bladed halberd, orangish markings, and a mangled arm.

See you in Athas!

Watch some awesome trailers for The Old Republic

2010-06-16T16:17:00.000-07:00

I can guarantee that The Old Republic won't be as awesome as these cinematics. Plus it's an MMO, so in reality the Sith would be named Darth Bauls. So let's just watch the videos several times each and bask in awesome Star Wars action.

Watch this brutal Mortal Kombat reboot video

2010-06-14T12:48:00.001-07:00

(WARNING: NSFW, contains violence and disturbing imagery)

I find the trend toward making comic book and video game stories more realistic to be fascinating, and one of the best examples I've seen is the Mortal Kombat: Rebirth trailer. According to Wikipedia, the video was used to pitch the concept of a Mortal Kombat reboot to see if the director could get a studio interested. Here's hoping somebody bites, because this project is way too awesome not to happen.

Let's Geek Out on Athas

2010-06-12T20:29:00.000-07:00

Every week, Wizards of the Coast sponsors a night of Dungeons and Dragons at your local gaming store. They provide the the campaign and the characters, the store supplies the DM, and you bring your dice, some snacks, and all the enthusiasm you can cram into your exoskeleton. What's not to love?

I didn't play in the previous D&D Encounters "season," because the setting didn't feel sun-bleached and barbaric enough for me. Well, no worries there, because this current season is set in Dark Sun, D&D's barbaric sand world, with the look designed by none other than BROM:

I'd always been intrigued by the Dark Sun setting, but somehow the fact that my favorite fantasy artist was the principal designer of the look of the setting had escaped my notice until I started looking into it in preparation for D&D Encounters.

So my friend Kage and I headed over to Eudemonia, one of our local gaming stores, and sat down. I was almost late since I had to get dinner after work, so I ended up devouring my ramen at an alarming speed and leaving my wife at the ramen place to dash over to the game store.

I made it just in time, as in a few more minutes they would have given my spot to someone else. As it was, they had to turn away almost as many players as got to play. I heard that they were hoping to find a second DM for the next week so that more people could play.

I got to play my character of choice, Shikirr, a Thri-Kreen. Now I'm not going to say that I've wanted to play a Thri-Kreen since I saw a Thri-Kreen card in our collection of AD&D 2nd Edition trading cards, but if I did say that, it wouldn't be inaccurate.

I don't know how you spent your past Wednesday, but I spent it as a psionic, four-armed mantis-person. Kyle played as a Tiefling psionicist, while I was technically a Battlemind. This worked out very well, as I tanked the heavy hitters while Kyle brought the damage. Speaking of damage, our DM shone when it came time to describe the grisly deaths our enemies suffered. You'd think that psionic death would be pretty boring, as essentially you kill the other person's mind, but our DM described with relish how blood flowed from our surprised enemies' noses, mouths, and ears. Disgusting. I love it.

My dice rolling left something to be desired, as only one attack hit, but Kage seemingly could do no wrong. When the encounter started, none of our enemies had had their heads popped by psionics before. Kage made sure that, by the time the encounter ended, this was no longer the case. Though I only landed one attack, it was an amplified attack that both did a lot of damage and blinded my opponent. The DM described how I swung my weapon in front of my enemy's eyes, and the enemy just started laughing when the wind of my attack popped his eyeballs. Yuss.

I thought that Wizards did a great job of coming up with a scenario that threw together players who had never gamed before and got them to join up. Just like the players, some of the characters did not know each other and some did. The whole party got thrown together when we were the only survivors of a mysterious shower of obsidian boulders. The players all had name cards with their character's portrait and name, which made it easy to remember who was playing who and broke the ice. We had no choice but to rely on each other, and we found ourselves grabbing supplies as we came under attack from opportunistic lizard people.

The lizard people had the drop on us and were about to be reinforced, so we had to grab supplies as the fight soon went from "kill the lizard people" to "escape with our lives." To complicate things, we were in the middle of a vicious sandstorm that did not bother the lizard people but slowly chipped away at our health whenever we were out in the open, giving us another reason to escape as soon as possible.

The players were almost all completely chill and easy to play with, and the DM brought us all together with enthusiasm. He plowed right into things, minimizing the amount of social interaction we nerds had to do before we got down to doing what we do best: throwing dice and geeking out.

My only complaint was that Wizards of the Coast really dropped the ball on the character sheets. They were plagued with typos, the character art did not match the character descriptions, and from what I've read, the stats were also calculated wrong. But to be honest, these were small gripes and did not take away from my enjoyment of the evening.

In case you're not already insanely jealous, I got some cool loot.

It's a foam drink koozie, and reads as follows:

Athasian Sleeve of Refreshment Level 1
This obsidian-black sheath fits snugly around your favorite drink, shielding it from the warming effects common to the Sea of Silt, the Ivory Triangle, and your gaming table.

Wondrous ItemD&D Encounters
Property: When fitted around a standard can or bottle, this insulating koozie protects your hand from suffering any ill effects that may be caused by holding a frosty beverage, while keeping your drink refreshingly cold.
Special: You can probably get away with not using a coaster.
TM & © 2010 Wizards of the Coast, LLC.

Totally awesome. See you in Athas!

RPG Item: Toss-Dog

2010-06-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

The assassin paused beneath the low window, crouching in the shadows and listening to the guards talking within.

"He's only one man. Stay sharp. He won't get past us."

The black-garbed man knew that there was truth in the guards' words. The visiting duke was asleep in his room, but to get there, the assassin had to cross the guards' room. Not without a diversion.

He unslung the bundle he wore over his back. It was a complicated series of bars and gears on a wooden framework. He pulled a cord free and the thing began ticking. Taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, he hurled the bundle through the window into the room. A series of loud snaps and clangs came from the room, accompanied by the surprised shouts of the guards.

The assassin leaped over the windowsill as a shape unfolded in the room and began to bound around, snapping at the guards and causing enough confusion for the assassin to dart through the room and into the duke's chamber.

Image by nancynismo

A toss-dog is a device built to be easily transported in its deactivated state that turns into a vicious attack hound when activated. The device itself is built of metal and wood by the most skilled artificers. The toss-dog is about the size of a backpack when folded up, and the size of a medium-sized dog when active.

In its folded up state, the toss-dog is very resilient and can be hurled long distances onto hard surfaces. There have been occasions where toss-dogs were fired into enemy fortifications using catapults. When unfolded, the toss-dog is somewhat more fragile, as its delicate internal components are more exposed. Nevertheless, its high speed and agility ensure that a toss-dog often causes maximum mayhem before being disabled or running down.

A toss-dog can fight for about five minutes (one encounter) before its internal mechanisms wind down. At this point, the toss-dog must be folded up and re-wound, a process that takes about five minutes for a technically savvy user, or fifteen minutes for the average person. Someone who has no experience with machines is incapable of winding and folding a toss-dog at all.

The parts of a toss-dog are readily available, but they must be very carefully constructed. Some magic is required as well, and a jewel costing at least 3,000 gp must be imprinted with a living dog's mind in order to give the toss-dog life. This imprinting can be performed by any reasonably skilled ritualist, and it causes no harm to the living dog. Rich nobles often commission one or more toss-dogs to be imprinted with the mind of their favorite hunting hound, and a powerful monarch can have an entire hunting pack of toss-dogs modeled on their prize pooch. A necromancer can imprint a dead canine's mind onto a toss-dog.

Though they started out as pets to nobles, toss-dogs came into their own when they were picked up by underworld figures. They were first developed by Iovar Varagundsun, who envisioned them as caravan escorts that could be packed along with the goods and activated if the caravans came under attack. The toss-dogs never really caught on as caravan escorts, but they went through a period when they were extremely fashionable among the wealthy. On Iovar's death, the ownership of the toss-dog workshop was contested between Iovar's protege and his main financier. Both men hired shady characters to help them take over the company, but the cut-throats and thieves preferred to keep the toss-dogs for themselves, finding them incredibly useful for assassinations, burglaries, and jailbreaks.

Most modern toss-dogs are either patched-up originals created by Iovar Varagundsun or cheaper knockoffs commissioned by underworld bosses. A well-repaired Varagundsun original is worth a small fortune, while the cheaper ones are much more reasonable. You'll get what you pay for, though. Many cut-rate toss-dogs will fall apart or run down after activating, or fail to activate at all. Also be sure that the person selling you the toss-dog doesn't have any reason to harm you, or you may find your new "best friend" going for your throat instead of your enemy's.

RIP Ronnie James Dio

2010-05-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

Ronnie James Dio died on Sunday. He was a legend in the rock world, fronting some of the best and most metal bands of all time. Starting out in Rainbow and Elf, he replaced Ozzy at the Black Sabbath frontman before moving on to his own band, Dio. Along the way, he popularized the 'horns' and made metal the dragon's lair that it is today.

Unlike many other rock stars (and other Black Sabbath frontmen), Dio was an articulate, intelligent man who seemed to know how silly a lot of rock is, and then embrace it anyway. He lived the rock and roll lifestyle - notoriously, he once drove a car into a hotel lobby - but he never overindulged to the point where he melted his brain. He gave some of the clearest interviews I have ever heard on the subject of rock music.

Where Ronnie is now, you can bet the locals are surprised at his choice of furnishings. They're probably used to fluffy clouds and maybe green meadows. Requests for spike-covered thrones, chains, and sharp weapons on the walls must be causing something of a stir.

Rock in peace, Dio.

RPG Ability: Beard Armor

2010-05-11T14:19:00.000-07:00

Have a seat, boy, and listen. Now, you're not in trouble, but you gave your ma and I quite a scare when we found that razor in your toolbelt. We're not mad, we're just worried that you might make a terrible mistake.

Don't shave your beard, son. No dwarf should ever shave his beard. I know you think you're stickin' it to your old man and all that, but maybe I can change your mind. I'd like to tell you the story of your great-great-great-great granddad, old Othar Beardhaverson.

Othar was stationed to an outpost on the frontier of our clan's territory, right at the edge of goblin territory. It was little more than a small guardhouse cut from the rock, with a storeroom and a watch tower, but it was crucial in watching for goblin incursions. Othar and three other dwarves kept watch day and night. It was boring work, sure, but crucial, lad, crucial.

You see, one day they spotted a mass goblins approaching across the valley. They tried to go for help, but the goblins had sent advanced scouts that engaged the dwarves and penned them up. The main force would arrive in a matter of hours, and the dwarves knew they had to get a message out to ready the defenses.

They made several attempts to push past the goblins, but the greenskin scouts had the dwarves outnumbered ten to one and kept pushing them back into the gatehouse. The dwarves were tough though, and they kept fighting despite their wounds.

After several hours of constant fighting, all of the dwarves were too wounded to run except your great-great-great-great granddad. After so much abuse, his proud armor was in sad shape, battered and broken, and he didn't have the time or tools necessary to mend it properly. Without his armor's protection, he wouldn't last ten seconds against the cunning gobbos.

Othar was a clever one, though, and he came up with a plan. He took his big, glorious beard, and he braided it over his body, using it to shore up the weak points in his armor and keep the plates in position. With his armor prepared like this, he downed the last of the ale and charged from the guardhouse. The goblins attacked as always, but their weapons couldn't get through Othar's beard armor. He fought his way through and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, bringing warning to his king and mobilizing the army.

The next day, the army came and relieved the guard house. They met the goblin army head-on and turned it back, with Othar Beardhaverson, still clad in his beard armor, personally leading the final charge that routed the goblins.

There, there. Don't cry, son. We forgive you. Just promise me you'll throw away that horrible razor, and not another word about shaving your beard. For your ma's sake.

Beard Armor is an ability that allows a bearded character to bolster his armor with his mighty beard. It was developed by the dwarves, and dwarves get bonuses as the race with the best beards, but it is available to any race capable of growing beards. Sorry, elves.

A character cannot simply tie his beard about his body and expect to receive the Beard Armor bonus. One must learn the secret of the Beardsmith's Art, which includes special techniques for knotting and braiding beards to give the best durability and protection.

Beard Armor gives its bonus in addition to any other armor that the character is wearing. It can be worn by any class, and does not impart any armor-related penalties to skills or spellcasting.

Only the character who grew the beard can wear the beard armor. You cannot cut off another character's beard armor and wear it as your own. Beard armor must consist entirely of your own beard, though you may include your mustache if you like. No weaves, wigs, or beard extensions can grant beard armor.

Legends say that some Beardsmiths grow their beard armor to the level of beardery where they become Beardmasters. Beardmasters weave weapons and tools into their beards so that they can both attack and defend with their formidable facial hair. If there is any interest in the Beardmaster paragon path, please let me know in the comments. If I get enough commenters clamoring for Beardmaster rules, I'll give it a shot to develop full rules for the paragon path.

EDIT: Kudos to my lovely (and beardless) wife for the idea.

RIP Frank Frazetta

2010-05-10T16:31:00.000-07:00

Frank Frazetta died today. Perhaps more than any other artist, Frank Frazetta understood low fantasy, swords-and-sorcery stories. His paintings don't try to be photo-realistic. They're brooding, gritty, sensual, and dangerous. I understand that he's not everyone's cup of tea, but then again, neither is low fantasy.

I know that a lot of people have said it before, and I don't have much new to contribute to the conversation, but what I like about Frazetta's art is that it is straightforward. The hero is muscular, the monster is grotesque, the damsel is voluptuous.

I have been reading some Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, and this is how Conan's creator wanted to see the world. In his mind, the best world was one where a man could take a sword in his hand and carve out a place for himself. Tyrants and monsters would fall before him, and women would long to feel his mighty arms around their slender waists. Not that it would be easy. A hero would have to be prepared for pain. He should steel himself for a long journey, usually alone, against treacherous enemies. There would be women who would try to lure him to danger, and monsters of every size, from the subtle to the gargantuan. There would be dark magic and terrifying elder gods. But a man who was strong of heart and limb, who put his trust in steel and nothing else, could triumph against those odds and emerge the victor, black-haired and sullen-eyed.

This was the world Frank Frazetta painted. It was simple, raw, and unapologetic. May he rest in peace.

EDIT:

I created my first challenge on Ficly today in memory of Frank Frazetta. If you feel like participating, check it out here: RIP Frank Frazetta Challenge on Ficly.

This may be a good opportunity for those of you who have been meaning to write something on Ficly but haven't gotten around to it yet...

Tannhäuser: So Relevant to My Interests

2010-04-14T09:07:00.000-07:00

As most of you already know, I'm really into the idea of a Weird War: World War Two with added elements of sci-fi technology and occult power. It should come as no surprise that I am intrigued and fascinated by the idea of Tannhäuser: a board game originally by Take On You and now owned by Fantasy Flight Games, set in 1949 and featuring the sci-fi technology of an Allied squad against the occult menace of a group of evil Nazis. What's not to like?

One of the intriguing things about Tannhäuser is that it's not set during World War Two. It's actually set during World War One, but that war never ended. The opposing sides have thus become desperate to end the war, turning to either technology obtained from Roswell and re-worked by Edison or occult power from the underworld.

A danger of the Weird War setting is that the evil Nazi zombie occultists are often much more interesting than the plucky Allies who are fighting them. While there's no doubt that the coolest-looking character in the game is the German leader, Herman Von Heïzinger, who looks wicked awesome and more evil than the Devil's upper-deckers. Fortunately, the heroes in the game also look quite interesting, thanks in part to their dieselpunk gear and weaponry. Plus, who can resist the plucky American oo-rah attitude of a bunch of marines?

If you think this sounds cool, you'll want to check out Fantasy Flight Games' Tannhäuser site, and be sure to watch the intro video, which has surprisingly high production value for something that's kind of hard to find on the site.

One complaint I have about the game is that, while the characters on both sides look awesome, the teams are a mix of grunts and named characters. In games like this, everyone gets excited about playing characters with names and personalities, while nobody wants to be the faceless grunt. Maybe this is based around a game mechanic where the troops respawn while the named characters don't, but it's still a pain to buy a game with ten pieces and only get six real characters for that price.

Unfortunately, while this game sounds and looks awesome, the hefty $70 pricetag on the main set, and the $50 expansion that adds a Tesla-armed Russia to the mix, makes this a game I'll probably never get a chance to check out. If this were a roleplaying game or a video game, I would jump for it. However, as a board game, it's limited by the scenarios, figures, and boards available for it.

Maybe I'll just get Weird War Two: Blood on the Rhine, which is a d20 roleplaying game set in the Weird War, and make my own scenario. And I'll definitely continue writing my own "194X" series of Weird War stories!

EDIT: Oh man, you can download the rules online, you guys! In games like this, the art and the backstory is the best part, and you can get it for free from the Fantasy Flight site!

RPG Creature: Bat-Dragon

2010-04-07T12:40:00.001-07:00

The gnome bard danced about, playing a jingly, staccato rhythm on the tambourine he held in one hand while dealing quick blows with the rapier he held in the other. The hobgoblins milled about in confusion, trying to catch the nimble gnome as they were further infuriated by his mocking song.

The Fighter swung his battle axe as he strode into the melee, sending great gouts of red fluid into the air. He turned to the Wizard, whose robes and beard flowed out behind him as he commanded the powers of the cosmos to burn his foes. The Fighter asked, "How can we live with ourselves, fighting beside a gnome with a tambourine?"

"Man, I don't care," said the Wizard. "I have a bat-dragon!" At this, his pet bat-dragon flew from the sky like a black-winged comet, biting the heads off a dozen hobgoblins before landing on the Wizard's shoulder to the sound of a thousand demons wailing on guitars.

Bat-dragons are large flying creatures native to craggy environments. They covered in smooth, soft scales, with bristly hair growing over their head, arms, chest, and back. They have bat-like faces, wings like bats or dragons, and long, flexible tails. Baby bat-dragons are about the size of a hamster, with little nubs of wings, but a fully grown bat-dragon's wingspan could be greater than four feet, with males growing slightly larger than females. Their diet consists of small rodents and lizards. They live in small groups that tend to share a cave or crevasse.

Bat-dragons usually make small chirping noises. Though they do not have a breath attack like dragons do, they can emit a surprising roar once a day that is as loud as the roar of a small dragon. This roar stuns, deafens, and disorients would-be attackers. They can also beat their wings to create gusts of wind that buffet and knock down creatures, even ones that are larger than the bat-dragon.

By disposition, they are usually described as rat-like. In the wild, they are shy, furtive creatures. They are highly intelligent and can be both curious and cautious. They can be tamed, and do best when raised from hatchlings. As pets, they are loyal, sweet, and docile. As they grow, they become protective of their owners and fight beside them in combat.

A bat-dragon is a voracious eater, and owners should take care to keep their pets well fed. In environments where game is plentiful, it is usually best to allow bat-dragons to hunt for themselves. When traveling through areas where the bat-dragons cannot hunt for themselves, bat-dragon owners should bring provisions, especially salted fish or cured meat.

Natives of crags and crevasses, bat-dragons can be agoraphobic when in wide-open spaces like deserts and plains. In such cases, they will often huddle on their owners until they become more comfortable.

Bat-dragons are right at home in dungeons. Though they have a bat-like appearance, they do not have true echolocation. They do, however, have excellent low-light vision, and they can maneuver quite well in confined spaces.

Their eggs are rare and hard to purchase. The best way to acquire a pet bat-dragon is to receive an egg as a gift from a bat-dragon breeder. Bat-dragons usually live about a dozen years in the wild, but a tame bat-dragon with an exciting, active lifestyle can live to twice that.

EDIT: Kudos to my lovely wife for the idea. If we ever find a baby bat-dragon, she gets to keep it.

A Long-Overdue Apology to Duncan Fegredo

2010-04-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

On June 9, 2008, I found out that Mike Mignola hadn't been the artist behind the recently-released Hellboy trade paperback, Darkness Calls. I wrote an angry post about it.

Then I read Darkness Calls, and it was very good. It focused on Russian folktales, featuring Koschei the Deathless, Vasilisa, and the Baba Yaga. I still would have preferred it if Mignola had done the art, and there were some panels that I couldn't help but think that Mignola would have done better, but I really liked Fegredo's style. It stuck close enough to Mignola's to feel like a Hellboy story without trying to copy what Mike Mignola had done before.

I should have retracted my knee-jerk statement then, but I didn't. I've been meaning to ever since.

Then, recently, we got The Wild Hunt, and it blew me away.

Fegredo returned to do the art, and he was even better than before. Mike Mignola's story continues to be excellent, of course, and the two go together perfectly. The Wild Hunt uses the folktales of the British Isles in the same way Darkness Calls had used Russian folktales. I do not consider the Fegredo-drawn comics in any way inferior to the ones Mignola did, and I seriously hope that Fegredo continues to be the artist for the "main" Hellboy storyline, once the "side" stories in Hellboy: the Crooked Man are over (as much as I like Fegredo, I cannot get into Richard Corben, who illustrated the Makoma sequence in Strange Places and a bunch of stories in the upcoming Crooked Man TPB.)

So, not to keep going on and on about it, I'd like to apologize to Duncan Fegredo and take back the things I said almost two years ago. Mr. Fegredo, you can draw my Hellboy anytime.

RPG Ability: Faceblock

2010-04-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

The Ogre Half-Zombie gave a phlegmy chuckle and strode forward, swinging his coffin-shaped club easily over one shoulder. "Who will face me?" he asked, his voice like the slam of a crypt door echoing through empty corridors.

While the rest of the party cowered, the Halfling Cleric strode forward, hands on hips. "You will not triumph here, villain!"

The Ogre stooped down to look the halfling in the eye. "You think you can stand up to my strength, little man?" he asked.

"Bring it," the Halfling responded in a brave voice.

Shaking his head in amused surprised, the Ogre stood and swung his weapon. To his amazement, the Halfling took the blow straight in the face.

The Ogre's jaw dropped as he stared at the halfling-shaped smear on the flagstones. "No-one has ever blocked my attack before!" he said in shock. "Truly you are mighty warriors! Allow me to serve you instead of my dark master, and we will soon rule the world!"

Image by Kai Lim, showing a Gungan Faceblock master demonstrating the ability

Faceblock gives the player character the ability to receive blows to the face. It allows the character to voluntarily transform an attack that would have missed the character into a blow that connects and deals damage as normal.

The ability starts out by allowing the player character to voluntarily lower his/her AC, making it easy for opponents to hit him/her. Each time the player takes damage from an attack that would have missed him/her if he/she hadn't chosen the lower AC value, the character's Faceblock ability advances.

At higher levels, the character can transform regular hits into called shots to the head. A master of Faceblock has the devastating ability to cause an attack that would have otherwise missed to become a critical hit instead.

Note that DMs should be careful about allowing players to choose this ability for their characters, as a tricky player could easily use it to stack a number of effects on his or her character. A player who can pick and choose which blows to take will soon be able to be stunned, dazed, and even knocked unconscious at will.

If players start abusing this power too much, it can be countered by having monsters voluntarily miss. If this proves insufficient - Faceblock masters can throw themselves in the way of a surprising amount of attacks - the DM shouldn't be afraid to have the monsters' spells backfire and damage the monsters instead of the party.

RPG Ability/Item: Swap-Doll

2010-03-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

The Thief crept silently along the dusty corridor. The sounds of pursuit had died away; the mummies must have lost his trail. He got to an otherwise unremarkable part of the corridor that, thanks to his direction sense, he knew was just next to the huge chamber he had glimpsed earlier. He got down on his hands and knees and went carefully along the wall until he found what he was looking for: a crack in the wall just large enough for him to fit his arm through.

He rummaged about in his pack and produced a small, ragged doll. It was poorly patched together to the point that it seemed to consist entirely of patches and string. Its form was barely humanoid. The Thief shoved the thing deep into the wall until he felt it go through the other side.

A moment later he was on the other side of the wall, and the doll was where he had been. The Thief rubbed his hands together gleefully, looking over the treasures in the room. This was going to be a good day.

Image by Ron Spencer

Swap-doll is a doll that allows the owner to swap places with it at any time. I know that it is really an item, not an ability, but I think it's cool so I'm going to share it with you all anyway.

This ability allows you to instantly swap places with a small doll. The doll appears where you were, and you appear where the doll was. There is no limit to the amount of space between you when you swap, though there may be some other consequences.

The doll itself can be as nice or as ragged as necessary. So long as it is still mostly in one piece and vaguely human-shaped, it can be mangled, chewed, burned, and smashed and still be ready for swapping when you need it. The doll itself has low AC and not many hit points, but any character with the manual dexterity and intelligence required to operate a needle and thread should be able to get it back in working order, provided he or she finds most of the pieces and enough stuffing and patches.

To become the owner of a swap-doll, the owner must place a small piece of his or her body into the doll. This doesn't have to be anything ghastly, and can be hair, fingernail clippings, etc. It is possible to make someone an unwilling (and unknowing) owner of a swap-doll by swiping some of that person's hair and stuffing it into the swap-doll, but somehow getting that person to trigger the swap-doll's ability would be more difficult. Trying to include more than one person's hair/nails/etc in a swap-doll causes its ability to fail when those people try to swap with it*.

The owner of a swap doll can swap places at any time with the swap doll simply by thinking about it. The change is instantaneous, though it can be disorienting and the character who just swapped should take appropriate penalties. If the character could see exactly where the doll was before swapping, the penalty should be minor, but swapping to find oneself in a very unexpected location may impose a penalty of missing your next few turns as you try to figure out where you are (and maybe which way is up!). The owner can only swap places with the swap-doll every five minutes, or roughly once per encounter.

If the owner loses track of the doll, the doll does not give much indication about where it is. The owner should therefore be careful about attempting to swap places with the doll when he or she does not know its location. If the doll is currently in a space where there is not enough room for the owner, the results of trying to swap places with it may be... squishy. Worse yet, the doll may have been found by a hulking ogre, who is currently snuggled up with it in bed, sleeping pleasant ogre dreams that it would not like to be woken from!

It the swap-doll is ever destroyed, or if the owner's hair, fingernail clippings, etc are removed from the doll, the owner might not know about it until trying to swap places with it. Nothing will happen in this case, which may not seem like much of a problem, unless the unfortunate owner was counting on the swap-doll to escape from a difficult situation.

Swap-dolls can be purchased from your run-of-the-mill mysterious magic shop that was never there before and will not be there the next time you try to find it. They may also be found in the possession of tricky rogues or paranoid wizards, in which case the player characters can either swap out the previous owner's hair/nails/etc for one of theirs, or they may sneak off with the doll without the owner realizing it and then plan an ambush for the next time the owner tries to swap places with it.

*Tricky DMs may want to tweak this ability to allow for more than one owner. Perhaps one of the PCs thinks he or she is the only owner, but the swap-doll is actually being used by an NPC simultaneously. At first, neither one knows of the other, and they only know that sometimes the swap-doll wasn't where it should have been when they swap for it. This probably works best when both of the owners and the swap-doll itself are in completely different locations, and the player character never knows which of the two other possible locations he or she will appear...

RPG Ability: Musical Attunement

2010-03-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

The wind howled through the skeletal trees as the party picked their way through the moonlit forest. The Thief, Fighter, Wizard, and Cleric clutched their weapons and peered into the gloom. The tavern rumors they had heard had been vague, but it was clear that the forest was a bad place to be after dark.

The Fighter stopped in his tracks and the others took a few more steps before noticing. They turned and saw him standing with his head tilted, as if he were listening for something. The Thief stretched out his highly attuned senses, but he could not make anything out. He was about to ask the Fighter what he was listening to when the latter spun, his great blade flashing silver in the moonlight as he struck something behind him.

The rest of the party hurried over to him, gasping to see the decapitated body of a twisted, dog-like creature. The Thief looked at the Fighter with undisguised admiration and a touch of jealousy. "How did you...?"

The Fighter shrugged. "Just had a feeling," he said.

He did not mention that he had known that the creature was coming because the string section he had been listening to for the past few minutes had risen to a shrieking crescendo before suddenly going silent a few tense seconds before the monster had struck...

Image by hiddenmoves. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Musical Attunement is a sixth sense that manifests itself as music heard only by the player with the ability. The music the character hears corresponds to the situation he is in, and can let that character know when he is in danger, when he is talking to someone who is not to be trusted, or when the final confrontation with the main enemy is beginning...

If the campaign were a movie, the character with musical attunement would be able to hear the soundtrack. This can be helpful, but also somewhat distracting, and can lead to the character receiving some strange looks from people who wonder what he is grooving to. It can even be frustrating, as nobody wants to hear a goofy "wa wa waaaaa" when he flubs an important Diplomacy roll.

In game terms, the character is never caught flat-footed and he gets a bonus to skills relating to sensing motives and making arguments. The character may receive a bonus to the rousing speech he is giving when he hears the heroic music give a great crescendo. When searching for a hidden door, the music may give a playful trill when he comes to the false wall, increasing his Search check. Other benefits are not related to rolls but come in the form of additional context to certain situations. Most of the travelers entering the tavern may not change the lively, rustic music, until an otherwise ordinary-looking traveler comes through the doors and the music suddenly switches to something tense and mysterious.

Ideally, the DM would have a CD or playlist of songs on tap that he or she could use as the situation demanded. The CD player, mp3 player, or computer may even be hooked up to the player's headphones so that only the character with musical attunement benefits from it. More realistically, the DM should describe what the character is hearing at important moments, and allow the player to ask about the music at any time.

RPG Ability: Scuttle-Eye

2010-03-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

The party crept along the cold stone passage and paused outside the warped oak door. They listened for a few moments and could hear the sound of something moving about behind the door.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," whispered the Paladin, and the group automatically got in a huddle around him. "Everyone else, back up a bit, but be ready to move." He nodded at the Thief. "Take a look inside and see what's in there."

The Thief crept padded silently up to the door and crouched down. Eight black nubs poked themselves out around the perimeter of her right eye. The nubs poked further outward until they became thin, hairy legs, which braced themselves against her face. Then her eye lifted itself off her face and scuttled down her neck, leaving a blank flesh-colored spot where it had been. It disappeared in her collar and reappeared at her jacket's cuff. She moved her hand down to the floor by the crack under the door and the eye scampered off her hand and crawled under the door.

"There's a group of hobgoblins lounging about," the Thief said, closing her left eye. "They've got their weapons piled up against the right-hand wall." She smiled. "They don't know we're coming!"

Scuttle-eye allows one of the character's eyes to literally walk off her face on eight spindly spider legs. When it does so, it leaves either a smooth spot on the character's face or a gaping eye socket, according to DM preference. The character controls where the eye walks and can see through the eye as though it were still attached to her face. The eye moves like a spider, able to crawl up walls and even move across ceilings.

It's small (naturally), so it takes a difficult Perception check to spot it. It makes a very soft skittering sound as it moves, so creatures with extra-sharp hearing may be able to detect it.

The eye functions normally out to about a hundred feet from its owner. When it starts to move beyond that, though, the image starts to fade, and the eye starts to take on more and more of a life of its own. Left to its own devices, the eye is cowardly but inquisitive, preferring to hide in shadows and under furniture and peep up at things. When the eye is 1,000 feet from its owner, the owner loses control entirely and can only watch what the eye is showing, though the image is hazy and dreamlike. At a mile (5,280 feet), the user loses contact with the eye entirely.

If contact is lost, moving back within range of the eye will not re-establish the contact. Instead, the eye must be found and somehow coaxed to once again resume its place on the owner's face. Gentle voices and no sudden movements are critical. Note that the eye is also prone to being lonely, and can feel rejected if the owner breaks the contact (whether it was voluntary or not). Making the eye feel wanted again will make it more likely to resume its role. Offering it a gentlemanly monocle is almost guaranteed to win back the eye's favor.

The eye is about as intelligent as a mouse, but it may never communicate and any attempts to read its thoughts will result in a confusing impression of shifting color and space, like looking into a kaleidoscope while dizzy.

The eye only has 1 hp, and though it has a high AC for its high Dex and small size, if it is hit, it is immediately destroyed. If the player receives a healing spell that would allow the re-growth of damaged body parts, or if the player has a natural regenerative ability, the eye may be re-grown and it once again has the ability to scuttle forth.

Mischievous DMs may want to experiment with the eye starting to gain more of a personality over time. Maybe it gets tired of always being sent into dangerous situations, so its owner has to coax it, threaten it, or fool it into spying on monsters. Another possibility would be that the eye starts to enjoy the adrenaline rush, and the owner has to constantly keep it from rushing off into danger!

Depending on how gruesome the DM wants to be, the eye could either be granted through a spell or potion (Vecna and Gruumsh make good candidates for patrons), or it may require the catching of the rare and elusive eye-spider, then scooping out the recipient's original eye and replacing it with the eye-spider in a ritual. Yeesh!

RPG Ability: Wuxia Hero

2010-03-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

The ogre chief stood over the beaten and bloody Wizard. "Is that all?" he laughed. "I expected more from one so promising." He hefted the idol. "After I stole this from your village and killed your teacher, I was afraid I had gone too far." He turned to his ogre goons. "Bring out the cages! We feast in triumph tonight!"

The Wizard rolled onto his hands and knees, then slowly, painfully lifted himself to his feet. "You killed my teacher," he said, and the ogres' laughter died when they heard the edge in his voice. "I will not let you defeat me! Instead it is I who will defeat you with my righteous fireball of burning power!"

Their eyes met and time seemed to freeze between them. Then the Wizard tore off his shirt and flexed, giving a high-pitched yell of challenge. A nearby goon stared, slack-jawed, and dropped the cage of doves he had been carrying. The cage door burst open as the Wizard held his arms to his side, his muscles standing out like steel cables as a fireball formed between his hands....

Wuxia hero gives a player character the abilities of a protagonist in a kung fu movie or Hong Kong action flick. Perhaps an honorable, martial god has taken the character as a champion. Perhaps the character is the host to the spirit of a master monk. Maybe he's simple learned to channel the power of pure awesome. Whatever the case may be, he finds himself able to turn cinematic courage, grit, and skill into combat bonuses.

Tearing off the character's shirt, flexing, and yelling immediately grants a healing surge.

Every time the character receives a badass wound (becomes bloodied), all opponents with line of sight to him must immediately save versus fear or take a penalty to their next attack.

Enemies are inclined to come at the hero one at a time. Each consecutive opponent to attack the character in a single turn earns a cumulative penalty.

If the character makes a badass declaration before attacking, he receives a bonus to his attack.

The character never takes penalties for improvised weaponry.

A character with Wuxia Hero who has a weapon feat also has that weapon feat with that weapon's "-chuck" version. So a character with Weapon Proficiency: Greatsword also has Weapon Proficiency: Greatsword-chucks, or someone with Weapon Focus: Battle-axe also has Weapon Focus: Battle-axe-chucks.

The character never takes penalties for leaping or falling when shooting, and may actually receive a bonus. Extra bonus points for leaping while shooting more than one weapon at a time.

Finally, every time the character scores a critical hit, something awesome happens. Doves fly by in the background, something explodes, glass shatters, etc. All nearby opponents must make a save or be stunned for a round.

While some people might try to make this into a prestige class (or paragon path etc), I really love the idea of giving these powers to a character that would not otherwise be eligible for this sort of thing. If a DM and the player can discuss the power outside of their gaming session without the other players knowing, imagine the looks on their faces when the halfling rogue suddenly steps forward to confront the lich king in his necro-volcano lair, declaring that the necromancer will pay for his evil, before leaping through the air and firing two hand-crossbows as gouts of green fire rise up around him.

(I'll try to make the next ability a bit more serious. No promises, though.)

RPG Ability: Wuffle

2010-03-15T15:33:00.000-07:00

"I don't trust the duke," the Fighter growled. "He's clearly in league with the vampires."

The Wizard pushed his spectacles up his nose. "I find it hard to believe that a man with as distinguished a lineage as our benefactor the Duke would be in league with common cadavers."

"There's only one way to know for sure," pointed out the Thief. They all looked expectantly at the Cleric. The Cleric sagged. "I'll just go sniff his butt, then, shall I?"

Image from Mark Watson's Flickr page.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalimistuk/ / CC BY 2.0

Wuffle is the ability to get information from scents the same way dogs do. Adventurers with this ability who come across a spot "marked" by a monster can tell the monster's age, gender, and health. Further inspection may reveal how long ago the monster passed or even what mood it was in at the time. The adventurer can't just sniff the spot from a distance, though. They have to get right in there and get a good noseful.

Even better, when confronting a monster or NPC, the character can smell that creature's bottom to learn even more about it. This could reveal special abilities or weaknesses to the player. Depending on how cheeky the GM wants the campaign to be, the character could also become uncomfortably aware of whether NPCs in the area are 'in heat.'

This ability fits in well with wilderness types like druids and rangers, but I like the idea of an impish satyr or puca giving it to the most straight-laced, dramatic character in the party. If a player insists on playing a brooding exiled prince or a misunderstood dark wizard, give that character an ability that only becomes really useful when smelling an NPC's bottom.

The ability should be tied to a Perception-type skill, and can give bonuses to skills like Diplomacy and Persuade. A high enough roll can reveal information about a monster in a similar way to the Lore skill.

RPG Ability: Disposition of Skulls

2010-03-05T17:54:00.001-08:00

As you follow the skeleton through the cemetery, he gambols over the headstones and says conversationally, "I don't see how you living can have conversations without seeing each others' skulls. How can you tell what someone's thinking with all that flesh in the way?" You tell the skeleton that, for the living, facial expressions depend on the flesh of the face. He shakes his head and replies, "No no no, that's all wrong! The flesh can deceive you, but the expression on someone's skull is always true. Here, I'll show you..."

Disposition of Skulls allows characters to see through a person's face and glimpse the expression on that person's skull. When viewed with this ability, skulls are not always grinning, and are in fact better indicators of what a person is truly feeling than the face is.

This ability will always show a single expression to represent the target's overall mood and attitude. In order for a character to use this ability, the character must be able to see through the target's face to its skull. Therefore, it only works on creatures that have skulls, but not on creatures that only have skulls and not faces. Thus, it would not work on a thri-kreen (which has an exoskeleton, not a skull) or a lich whose face is only a skull.

Players have to announce that their character is going to attempt to read the Disposition of an NPC's skull. The DM then reveals the look on the NPC's skull and grants the PC a relevant bonus on the next Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check.

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Interesting RPG Abilities

2010-03-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

Everyone who plays fantasy RPGs, whether on the computer, console, or as pen-and-paper games, knows the standard RPG abilities: fighter stabs, crushes, and takes damage; wizard blows things up; thief sneaks, backstabs, and disarms traps; and cleric heals, buffs, and drives off unholy things.

Playing the PC game Planescape: Torment made me realize that there's more to RPG abilities than that. In Planescape, the player character always rises from the dead, regardless of what killed him, so long as he can be more or less put back together in the same shape (one of the items you get in the game is your own intestines). The player character can pick up other abilities, too. One of them is to resurrect your party members. My favorite is the ability to have conversations with bodies you come across.

The party members all have interesting abilities, too. Morte is a foul-mouthed flying skull who can use profanity to incite enemies to concentrate their attacks on him. Whenever you get an NPC to swear at you in interesting new ways, Morte adds the new profanities to his repertoire and improves his ability. Dak'kon has a sword that is tied to his mental state. When Dak'kon is focused, his sword is razor-sharp, but when he's distracted or emotional, his sword becomes blunt. Fall-from-Grace is a succubus who, in addition to her clerical spells, can kiss enemies to drain health from enemies and give them to Grace.

When I first got into Dungeons and Dragons, I didn't care a bit about game balance. I wanted characters who could shoot fire from their hands and stab dragons with big, pointy swords. In some ways, the original D&D rules supported this approach: there was a character class (Paladin) with requirements so high that the chances of a player rolling well enough to even get to play as one were laughably small, whose abilities were correspondingly overpowered. Even in later editions, fighters were much more powerful than other classes at low levels, and wizards became unstoppable at high levels.

Now, thanks in part to video games and their focus on balanced classes, character classes are painstakingly mapped out in the rulebooks. Players can--and do--plot out exactly how they want their characters to advance, choosing which powers they will have at later levels right from the start. In some ways, the rules require it. If I want to have a character with a certain ability at Level 8, I don't want to get there only to find that I can't take the ability because it requires another ability I was supposed to take at Level 4, or worse, I don't have enough points in a certain stat.

In some ways, I understand where the need for this comes from. RPG designers want every player to feel like he or she is contributing to the party, so the characters each have their roles to fill, with abilities that allow them to do so. These roles are designed to complement each other and be equally useful, so a party cannot get far without at least one person who can take damage, disarm traps, deal damage, and heal damage.

Though I understand what makes game designers balance their games and limit the characters' roles like this, I think it's an unfortunate trend. Having characters with unique, unusual abilities is one of the best things about roleplaying games. The abilities are often best when they're not solely tied to combat bonuses, or when they say something about the character.

One of the things a pen-and-paper game can do that a video game can't is have things that are entirely unique. Game Masters can come up with monsters, locations, items, and characters that appear only in their campaign. They can also come up with unique abilities that are suited to the characters their players have designed.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind. If you give one player's character a unique ability, the other players are going to want one for their characters, too. The abilities should then be as balanced as possible. Finally, the abilities shouldn't give the characters so much power that it breaks the game and makes every challenge a cakewalk. I think these three considerations are enough to deter most Game Masters from trying to come up with their own abilities, and that's a terrible shame.

I've been working on some ideas for abilities like this. If that sounds interesting to you, let me know and I might post a couple on this blog. Also, if you've ever been in a campaign where the GM gave the players unusual abilities, I'd love to hear what they were and how well they ended up working in the story!

Book Review: War for the Oaks

2010-02-16T20:41:00.001-08:00

I've done all these recent reviews for modern fantasy novels, so I'm surprised that I haven't mentioned Emma Bull's War for the Oaks yet. I read it before these others (Bad Magic, The Last Hot Time, and The Arcanum), and I consider it to be the best of the bunch. The novel centers around Eddi McCandry, a rock-and-roller who leaves her no-good boyfriend and his crappy band to start her own. Along the way, she gets mixed up with the Fey, including a phouka who is sometimes a man, sometimes a dog, but always very charming and strange.

The plot is familiar, but not necessarily in a bad way. The Fey need Eddi in their fight between the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Though she is recruited by the Seelie court, the Unseelie court has plans for her as well. Along the way, the story of her band's creation and rise in the local music scene is paralleled with the war between the Fey, and elements from each feed into the other in interesting ways.

Emma Bull's strength lies in her ability to incorporate "fairy" and "real" elements together so that there is no clear delineation between them. There are moments in the novel where Eddi's "normal" life suddenly has something decidedly non-normal intrude upon it, but the thing that works for me about War for the Oaks is the feeling that, even in the seemingly "normal" moments, something magical, exciting, and dangerous is out there, and probably closer than you think.

Not everything about the novel works. There is a twist that everyone sees coming, and the fascination with describing every street and Minneapolis can leave those who have never visited that city feeling left out. The main characters rather predictably form a band, and each of their concerts consists of doing covers of famous rock songs they all know. Unfortunately, I knew a grand total of perhaps one of those songs, so again I felt somewhat un-hip and excluded. Finally, there are times when I wished the narrator described things a little bit more thoroughly, especially the faerie scenes, but I do think that under-describing is better than over-describing, as it leaves things to the reader's imagination rather than going through several pages of exactly what every single type of faerie looks like.

I think this book has rightly earned its reputation as a classic of the modern fantasy genre. It can be a little bit uneven, as is often the case with first novels, but that somehow adds to the charm, as the novel isn't over-polished.

I recommend this novel to fans of Neil Gaiman and fantasy.

Book Review: The Arcanum

2010-02-16T19:53:00.000-08:00

The Arcanum, by Thomas Wheeler, is about Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, H.P. Lovecraft, and Marie Laveau (sort of) as a paranormal task force called the Arcanum, taking on an evil sorcerer to try to protect one of the world's last great hidden secrets. That's about it. If you think that sounds like fun, you may want to give it a shot. Otherwise, please steer clear.

The novel is very cinematic, which makes sense since the author is primarily a screenwriter. I don't feel I have to worry too much about spoilers, since just about everything in this novel is a well-established trope. It even ends with a train chase... well, before the "twist" ending where a character who totally wasn't a villain before turns out to have totally been a villain the whole time!

What irked me was that the characters were so nondescript that they really didn't need to be based on historical figures. Doyle could have been any stout Englishman with an eye for detail, Houdini could have been anyone with good balance, and Marie Laveau could have been any woman with generic nature-based sorcerous powers. H.P. Lovecraft didn't even act like H.P. Lovecraft: he was described as a demonologist several times, and I highly doubt that the cripplingly antisocial Lovecraft would ever have considered himself one. Worse, he seems completely okay with palling around with a black woman wielding voodoo powers, when ancient, "savage" magic is one of the primary vehicles of evil in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Speaking of the Mythos, the book refers to supernatural creatures as "of the Mythos." That really bugged me.

The book suddenly shifts in pace about halfway through. Where it starts off relatively realistically, with attempts to create plausible explanations for every supernatural-type occurrence, suddenly we have demons swishing through the air and Lovecraft starts waving around improbably-described steampunk gadgets. He even wears a steampunk gauntlet at one point, and gauntlets are second only to goggles as overused steampunk accessories.

Like I said in my review of The Last Hot Time: if you want to read an inventive modern fantasy, try Bad Magic instead. Still, if you have the opportunity and the inclination, The Arcanum is worth a skim. Just don't take anything about it too seriously.

I Got Married

2010-02-09T09:51:00.001-08:00

I feel like I should post something about getting married, but the whole thing is far too amazing and complex to sum up in a blog post. So suffice it to say that I married the most amazing woman I have ever met and I am looking forward to spending the rest of my life with her.

Game Review: Gloom

2010-01-19T20:20:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in the drafty main hall of our creaky old mansion, screwing wheels into the leg-stubs of my favorite rat, Detritus, whose legs had recently been gnawed off by our cat Wemsley, who had choked to death on them. My lady was in her darkened chamber, surrounded by cracked mirrors and brushing the spiderwebs from her hair. The door moaned open and two of our ghastly friends entered, bringing with them a game they promised would be more diverting than scraping mold from the stern portraits of dead ancestors.

My lady and I sighed and rolled our eyes. We had tried such games before, and they were always about gaining money or wild hi-jinx which only made our everyday existence that much more unbearable. Our friends assured us that this game was different. It was every bit as morbid, macabre, and morose as we were.

Sure enough, the game was Gloom, and we were soon having more fun than a bevy of bats in a magnificent mausoleum. Each player controls a family of five unlucky, unlikeable people. The purpose is to make sure that the members of your family live as miserable lives as possible, then die. How horrid. How delightful!

The real fun comes from playing with quirky people with twisted senses of humor, and fortunately, our ghoulish group fit the bill. Soon, we were weaving tales around the cards, exploring how a brain in a vat is an especially unfortunate victim for poltergeists (since he can't get away from them) and learning exactly how many vicious animals a single red-headed stepchild can accidentally aggravate on a single picnic. Also, the only thing worse than being eaten by bears is being eaten by bear-snake hybrids.

The game has impishly innovative card design. The cards are printed on translucent plastic, and players stack events on top of the characters to describe the horrendous things occurring to them. Each of these events are worth a certain number of negative points (which are best for players!), except those few things that are actually pleasant for the characters (alas!). As you play more cards on top of the characters, bonuses from the more recent cards start to cover up the bonuses of past cards, so you can play excellent events on the other players' characters to cancel out the dreary day that character has had, while simultaneously ruining the previously peachy (or at least appallingly average) day your own character had.

I would recommend this game to any gloomy, ghastly gamer who is looking for a change of pace. Just beware those manatees, don't anger any midgets, and make sure the tiger is the one in the cage...

Book Review: The Last Hot Time

2010-01-12T15:08:00.000-08:00

The Last Hot Time, by John M. Ford, asks an interesting question: what would happen if the elves returned? According to the novel, the world wouldn't immediately turn into a magical realm of wonder and danger, and it also wouldn't remain completely bland and mundane. Instead, we would have the Elf lands and the human lands, and places in between where magic and technology exist. These in-between places, known as the Shade in the book, are often major cities, and one of those cities is Chicago, which is where the book takes place.

The Shade seems to have taken the heart of Chicago and made the city more like what it really is underneath. The book takes place in the modern day, but the Shade is full of speakeasies and casinos, with both human and Elf gangs fighting over them.

The protagonist, a paramedic named Danny Holman, gets mixed up with a kind-hearted gangster named Mr. Patrice and his bunch of oddball characters. They call him "Doc Hallownight" because nobody in the Shade goes by their real name. As Doc, he learns how to treat elf wounds with magical herbs, and he also learns something about courage, love, and terror. But enough about the cliches.

The story has quite a cast of characters all stuffed into a surprisingly sparse setting. Most of the action takes place either in Mr. Patrice's restaurant, the attached casino, or the rooms where various characters are staying. The supporting cast includes Cloudhunter, the mysterious elf, McCain, Mr. Patrice's loyal bodyguard, and Ginny, a bartender working for Mr. Patrice whom Danny falls for. Added to these are a dizzying array of secondary characters who are very difficult to keep straight.

The idea behind the novel is intriguing, and Ford explores a lot of interesting themes. I found that the tone shifted a lot through the book, going from mundane accounts of Danny's insomnia to nostalgic descriptions of people singing and dancing, to macabre scenes of terror where the bad guys torture innocent people for magic.

Naturally, there are bad guys, though the book doesn't tell us much about them. They're the bad guys because they're using people's suffering to generate magical power, and the protagonists have to stop them because they're also rival gangsters. The novel swerves suddenly into the action-filled parts and swerves back into the restaurant/casino lifestyle afterward just as quickly.

I think the thing that bothered me most about The Last Hot Time was that the author often left things unsaid, and I wasn't sure what he meant. I don't know if I was missing clues, or if the author meant for readers to fill in those parts for themselves. I'm not saying that everything has to be spelled out for the reader, but it's nice when we eventually figure out what's going on.

The novel was good, and I would recommend it, but if you're looking for an offbeat account of modern magic, check out Bad Magic by Stephan Zielinski first. Then, if you're still hungry for more, head over to The Last Hot Time. This review focuses on the negative, which is always easier to do than to talk about the positive, but I'll leave you with this quote from the novel that, to me, sums it up: "'Sides, didn't you always wanted to shoot a Tommy gun?"

Movie Review - Watson

2009-12-31T10:29:00.000-08:00

My lady and I saw Sir Guy of Ritchie's newest movie, "Watson," and we found it wonderfully entertaining. It has little to do with the source material by the esteemed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, but that is not the point. The movie does not try to emulate Sir Arthur's style, but instead uses the source material as a rough skeleton for telling its own tale full of delightful costumes and sets.

The lead character is played by the talented Jude Law. His character has three motivations: to marry his lovely fiance (a commendable notion to be sure), to look dashing in Victorian-era clothing, and to get away from his sidekick, Sherlock Holmes, played by Robert Downey, Jr.

Downey, Jr.'s Holmes is a frumpy man with amusing facial expressions and permanently tousled hair. Holmes's neurotic genius serves as a good counterpoint to Watson's steely cool. I fear that Sir Guy's love of macho fighting may have caused him to devote too much of the movie to the Holmes character, though this fortunately does not take the focus away from his lead.

Rachel McAdams plays Holmes's love interest, Irene Adler, whose only purpose in this movie is to pout and be American. She pouts a lot and is very American. I suspect she gets her spy gear from Wal-Mart. In any case, I am glad they chose to have this character be a romantic interest for the sidekick, as this allows Watson to have the much more interesting Mary Morstan, played by the (fortunately British) Kelly Reilly.

The villain is Lord Blackwood, played by Mark Strong. Unlike in many mysteries, there is never any doubt as to his identity. His villainy is over-the-top, and in some ways encapsulates what this movie is about: it is theatrical, unreserved, and shamelessly entertaining. There is a moment at the start of the movie between him and Watson that made me gasp aloud.

I would not think it is necessary to see this movie in theaters to enjoy it, but if you do, be sure to keep an eye on the sets. Sometimes it is nice to simply look around and see Sir Guy's version of turn-of-the-century London.

In conclusion, "Watson" is an entertaining, if not particularly deep, bit of cinema, and I recommend it to anyone who likes gaslights, top hats, and explosions.

Graphic Novel Review: Old Man Logan

2009-12-22T16:42:00.000-08:00

I have long searched for a Wolverine comic that doesn't bother with the tiresome backstory, the silly costumes, the countless characters that Wolverine has befriended, fought, and/or married, or the traumas his body has gone through.

This isn't that comic.

It's pretty close, though.

The story takes place fifty years in the future, after a cataclysm wiped out all the superheroes and left the world ruled by supervillains. The landscape looks like something out of Mad Max. Wolverine is a pacifist, emotionally scarred by the cataclysm from fifty years ago. He's married, with two kids, and he seems to have found peace scratching out a meager existence farming the land.

Unfortunately, his landlords are Bruce Banner's ornery, inbred grandchildren, and they demand rent money Wolverine--excuse me, Logan--hasn't got. Then, his old friend Hawkeye arrives and offers Logan $500 to drive across the country with him. Hawkeye is now a blind old man, but that doesn't stop him from taking the wheel and making Logan the navigator.

Logan goes along, on one condition: that he won't do any fighting.

Well, good luck with that.

Also, this comic has a T-rex that bonds with the Venom symbiote:

Read it already.

(I would like to add that the scene with Emma Frost was completely unnecessary. She's one of my least favorite Marvel characters, and her appearance adds absolutely nothing to the story. Also, the last fight is somewhat anticlimactic, but still cool... and I still wish the Venom T-rex would have played a larger part in the story.)

Christmas Gifts may be misinterpreted as Wedding Presents

2009-12-22T12:29:00.001-08:00

Hi gang,

It occurs to me that some of you may have sent me Christmas presents through Amazon. If I didn't realize those were Christmas presents, chances are good that I added them to the pile of wedding presents, which we aren't opening until the wedding.

So, if you got me a Christmas present and sent it through Amazon, let me know when it should have arrived, the size of the package, and/or who you ordered it through so that I can open it on time. :)

Thanks, and Merry Christmas!

New Bitey Movie: Last of the Dashkin

2009-12-22T12:18:00.000-08:00

Most of you already know that I love Bitey of Brackenwood. Well, in the latest installment, Adam Phillips takes his already formidable talent for storytelling and animation and turns it up another notch. It's amazing. Go see it.

the Last of the Dashkin

Book Review: At the Mountains of Madness

2009-12-17T14:26:00.000-08:00

I finally finish H. P. Lovecraft's longest work, At the Mountains of Madness, shortly before I read Bad Magic (which has a review here). It can best be summed up like this (page values approximate):

Page 1: Don't go to Antarctica, guys. We found something really scary there.

Page 1 to ~50: We went to Antarctica and it was really cold. Also, we heard weird piping and saw a mirage of a weird city.

(seriously you guys, we saw something really scary. My buddy totally went nuts from it.)

Page ~50 to ~70: My colleagues in the advance camp found a cave full of ancient bones and some million-year-old dead creatures that looked like sea cucumbers with tentacles. Those things were tough. Also, the dogs hate their scent. We will ignore this! Onward, for science!

(I'm not kidding, something totally freaky is in Antarctica)

Page ~70 to ~80: The other camp got trashed and some of the sea cucumber things disappeared. Woa!

(Have I mentioned the freaky thing we saw?)

Page ~80 to ~100: We flew past some weird mountains and found a city that's millions of years old. We got out and explored and somehow managed to decipher the drawings on the walls to learn the history of the sea cucumber race. They created and enslaved the shoggoths, fought the Spawn of Cthulhu and the Mi-Go, and finally went underground when it got too cold for them. Let's just skip over the part where "psychic control" and "senses beyond those of humans" are somehow depicted in art.

Page ~101: We found a big hole in the ground.

Page ~102: OMG SHOGGOTH RUN RUN RUN RUN!!!

Page ~103-end: Dude seriously, that shoggoth was scary. Also, my companion saw some weird city in the clouds that made him go crazy. Yeah, I don't get it, either.

The one cool part of the story was the description of the Shoggoth, which comes at the very end and, much to my dismay, I had already read on the Wikipedia page on the topic.

Some parts of this story were so typically Lovecraft that they felt like self-parody. Just about everything they come across is indescribably terrifying. To illustrate, I leave you with this:

Had it been some trace of that bizarre musical piping over a wide range which Lake’s dissection report had led us to expect in those others - and which, indeed, our overwrought fancies had been reading into every wind howl we had heard since coming on the camp horror - it would have had a kind of hellish congruity with the aeon-dead region around us. A voice from other epochs belongs in a graveyard of other epochs. As it was, however, the noise shattered all our profoundly seated adjustments - all our tacit acceptance of the inner antarctic as a waste utterly and irrevocably void of every vestige of normal life. What we heard was not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response. Instead, it was a thing so mockingly normal and so unerringly familiarized by our sea days off Victoria Land and our camp days at McMurdo Sound that we shuddered to think of it here, where such things ought not to be. To be brief - it was simply the raucous squawking of a penguin.

A Good Weekend for Movies

2009-12-07T11:09:00.000-08:00

Last weekend my lady and I saw two awesome movies. First was The Fall, which we got from Netflix ages ago and finally got around to seeing. My lady had seen it before, and ever since seeing the movie poster on her wall I have wondered what this movie was about. Well, I finally got to see it, and it was fantastic.

The plot deals with a little girl with a broken arm poking around the hospital where she is recovering after falling from a tree. She finds a man who is paralyzed from the waist down after falling from a bridge. The man starts telling her stories to amuse himself, but the stories start to serve another purpose as he tries to get her to bring him something. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, and besides, the plot doesn't matter.

The real strength of this movie is in the gorgeous visuals. The sets, the costumes, the cinematography all combine to make it absolutely beautiful. The highlight of this movie is the story the man tells the little girl. What we see is entirely what's in her imagination, so things change as the man's description changes, and she even misinterprets some things. For instance, the man describes an Indian brave who loses his squaw, but the girl imagines a guy with a beard and mustache wearing a turban.

In some ways, this is a darker version of "The Princess Bride." The man is telling a sick little girl a story filled with wonder and imagination. Even more than "The Princess Bride," "The Fall" explores how the listener and the storyteller create the story together.

We then saw Red Cliff in theaters, because we knew that, as a foreign film, it probably wouldn't be in theaters very long.

This movie exists to prove one thing: Chinese history is badass.

"Red Cliff" was a four-hour, two-part epic in China, which was cut down to a single two-and-a-half hour movie for American audiences. You still get more epic badassery in the first ten minutes of this movie than you get in the entirety of just about any other movie, so I didn't mind as much that they shortened it.

The plot deals with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which a powerful and ambitious prime minister tries to conquer two smaller kingdoms whom he pretends are trying to revolt against the Emperor. The two kingdoms are forced to band together: one has an experienced leader and a bunch of badass generals but with a severely diminished army, and the other has a young, somewhat naive leader with a single really badass general who leads a large but inexperienced army.

There's all sorts of intrigue and character development, but that tends to focus on only a portion of the characters. Most of the characters all but disappear during the plot-related parts and then show up again for the fight scenes. This is okay by me, since the characters the plot focuses on are fascinating and their interaction is one of the high points of this movie.

The other high point of this movie is, of course, the fight scenes. I'll try not to give away too many of my favorite moments, but I'll say this: there is a scene that follows this sequence of events:

a guy gets shot by an arrow

he pulls out the arrow

he runs over to the archer

he leaps into the air

he jabs the arrow through the back of the archer's throat

If you still don't want to see this movie, perhaps you should read that sentence again.

Surprisingly, the action in this movie is relatively realistic, compared to wuxia films where people go flying through the air and run across treetops. Nevertheless, you shouldn't expect anything less than over-the-top fight scenes, because Red Cliff delivers those in spades.

Book Review: Bad Magic

2009-12-01T12:56:00.000-08:00

You like books about magic. You like books about monsters. You like books about a ragtag group of heroes fighting impossible odds. So why haven't you read Bad Magic yet?

In Stephan Zielinski's Bad Magic, mundane reality and many competing forms of magic are all thrown together. If you're tired of those cut-and-dry books in which the real world and the magical world are clearly delineated, or you get the real world but with a single magical element (the real world and vampires, the real world and voodoo, the real world and cosmic horror, etc), Bad Magic is the cure for what ails you. All the various kinds of supernatural forces are piled in together, squeezed in like too many people trying to crowd into an elevator.

You get the raw power of elemental magic, illicit alchemy that seems more like felonious drug use than science, deep dark voodoo, magic that has you babbling in Sumerian, magic that has you weaving lightbeams and siphoning sounds, creepy ghost-like magic, and even magic that lets you talk to giant clams.

The eight main characters all have different approaches to magic, and they argue at times about how to approach and interpret what has been happening in the story. This is when Stephan Zielinski really shines. We get eight distinct characters, each with their own habits, perspectives, shortcomings, and endearing qualities:

There's Al Rider, arguably the main character, a nebbish coward who is the closest to a traditional magician.

There's Pericles "Perry" Whitlomb, who has no magic of his own but is an expert on the occult and a member of the Van Helsing Society. He also packs his father's supply of incredibly overpowered firearms and serves as a paternal figure for the others.

There's Maggie-Sue, a nearly illiterate young woman whose main means of communication are glares and profanity. Her magic is elemental, meaning it's the oldest, most basic kind of magic.

There's Joe Washington, a black dwarf who knows voodoo and Bruce Lee-style ass-kicking.

There's Chloe Lee, whose totem animal is, I kid you not, the Mollusk of Glory, the Great Geoduck clam.

There's Max Sturgeon, a large man with a serious mustache who, though he barely uses magic, leads the team based on the fact that he's probably the only sane person in the group.

There's Kris Arbeiter, the pretty-boy, East German alchemist/junky.

And finally there's Creedon Thiebaud, who's so over-the-top badass that you don't mind that he's just a tad cliche.

The plot is straightforward when you get down to it: the city is being threatened by a cult and it's up to our heroes to save the day. But the plot isn't the strength of the story: this is definitely a journey that's more important than the destination. The things you see along the way, the people you meet and the things they do, are what make this book a success. The world buzzes with energy and life, and there is no doubt that there is material here for a whole series of novels.

Unfortunately, that also makes it hard to write a review, because while I would love to go on and on about the cool things in this story, I don't want to spoil it for you, and I also don't want end up re-writing the novel.

The storytelling is very cinematic and readable. Some knowledge of the Bay Area (or Google Maps) is recommended, as it takes place in San Francisco and the surrounding area. Sometimes it can be a little bit hard to tell what's going on, but that doesn't distract from how quickly you can tear through this book.

The ending of the book was a bit unexpected and anticlimactic. There were also several elements that felt like the author expected to develop them but never got around to them... maybe he's saving them for the sequel!

Like I said before, though, you're not reading this book for the plot or for everything to be tied neatly together in the end. You're reading it for one of the most enjoyable depictions of magic I have ever seen, and that's saying something.

Thanksgiving

2009-12-01T11:01:00.000-08:00

I had a great Thanksgiving, including great food and great company. Unfortunately, both my lady and I got sick afterward, and I'm just finishing the recovery from that now. The silver lining to that is that I had the chance to plow through a fantastic book called Bad Magic over the weekend... I should have a book review posted for you guys soon.

A Short Post Today

2009-11-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

I've been with the woman I love for a year and this makes me happy.

New Lobo comic, written by... Scott Ian?!

2009-11-06T11:17:00.000-08:00

Despite never having had a good comic in his life, Lobo remains one of my favorite DC Comics characters. He's definitely a "B" list character, almost always played for laughs in over-the-top, violent stories with only marginal connections to the rest of the DC universe. Despite his one-sided character and often teeth-grindingly lame stories, I have a soft spot for Lobo simply because he has no soft spots: while every other DC character moans about the weight of their responsibilities and how hard it is to be idolized, Lobo just wants to get drunk and punch some goons in the face.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only Lobo fan out there, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw his face right there on the DC Comics home page, with a link to the comic.

Lobo's previous story was a Batman crossover in which he and Batman go after some sort of alien entity that possesses women's bodies and causes them to become homicidal. The story tried to be both funny and poignant, but it failed on both counts.

Well, let's hope Scott Ian can do better. Scott Ian has made a career out of being the likable guy on VH1 talking about how great rock music is. He's the former guitarist of Anthrax, which has given him just enough celebrity to be put him on TV and give him fifteen minutes of fame that he's managed to stretch into C-list celebrity status. It would be easy to see Scott as an attention-starved celebrity, but he comes across as being a genuinely cool guy.

Now we get to find out if he can write Lobo. Based on the preview I'd say we can be cautiously optimistic!

Dance of the Dead

2009-11-04T21:55:00.001-08:00

Has anyone heard of this movie? Good? Bad? It looks like it could be hilarious or awful, depending on how it's handled:

High school losers vs. zombies. At least the premise is good!

A Familiar Story, Retold

2009-10-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

A young lad was trapped in a bubble
Which cracked and he woke on the double
He was saddened when shown
That he'd lost all he'd known
But a cute girl was worth all the trouble.

A sarcastic kid from the south pole
Had meat-eating as his main goal
But you should cut him some slack
Boomerang always came back
And his jokes were often quite droll.

A girl with loops in her hair
Kept an eye on this wacky pair
She was talented and smart
And she stole the bald kid's heart
But watch out for her withering glare

The bald kid was sought from afar
By a kid with a topknot and scar
Who said, "When that kid's a goner
I'll get back my honor."
His hair got ever more bizarre.

Following that kid out to sea
Was his uncle, wise and carefree
His love for brewed drink
Is so well-known that I think
You can guess what this last rhyme should be.

They meet a girl dressed in green
Who can be prickly and just a bit mean
She's totally blind
But she'll kick your behind.
She's cute, but lacks any hygiene.

A princess who grew up quite rich
Tried to put them in a ditch
She had a heart full of ire
And could wield lightning and fire
That said, she was a bit of a jerk.

"That last line didn't rhyme."

Any interest in my friend's chapbook?

2009-10-19T22:08:00.001-07:00

One of my friends from Utah State, Shanan Ballam, is trying to publish a chapbook of her writing. To do so, she has to pre-sell 55 books before Nov. 30. I haven't read this particular collection yet, but her poetry tends to be dark and disturbing, and it is definitely not for the squeamish. She definitely knows her stuff and most of all she has a talent for creating a strong reaction in her readers. Here is her description of it:

Title: "The Red Riding Hood Papers"
pages: 16-26 (I won't know for sure until I see format and go through edits)
themes: the Red Riding Hood Story is interwoven with another narrative about a woman and her abusive ex-husband. It's pretty dark.
cost: between $12 and $14

If anyone's interested, let me know and I'll send you her contact information. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and I'll either answer them as best I can or pass them along to Shanan.

Some Additions to Recent Posts

2009-10-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

First, an addition to my post about Binwin Bronzebottom and Scott Kurtz:

It seems like Scott Kurtz realized what a jerk he was to Wil Wheaton, and he contacted Wil afterward and made it up to him. I still think SK was quite rude, but it's actually quite classy of him to call WW afterward and comfort him on the death of his character.

Second, I completely forgot to mention in my APE post that we met Spike, who does Templar, Arizona. She was very cool and friendly, and the only reason I forgot to mention her was that I neglected to take any photos of her. I don't know why, as she safely fit into the "good-looking nerd" category that APE was so full of. Here is another picture of her that I found using Google Image search. Anyway, she was awesome and signed & sketched in three Templar, Arizona books that we bought. In fact, of all the people we talked to, she was probably the most relaxed and talking to her felt the most like chatting with someone you know.

Rock on.

The Alternative Press Expo, or, Can My Camera Flash You?

2009-10-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start by saying that my digital camera is actually quite good in most respects. The pictures it takes are huge resolution, and I have found it very easy to take pictures and download them to my computer. The one thing it can't do is function in anything less than bright lighting without the flash. In even normal lighting, like at the Alternative Press Expo, I have a decision to make: take pictures with flash (which are annoying to the people I'm taking pictures of), or take pictures without the flash and end up with a blurry photo.

I should also mention that this post links out to webcomics. If you're not familiar with webcomics, you should know that a lot of webcomics have the latest page on their homepage, so if you'd like to avoid any spoilers, click the "Archive" or "First" button as quickly as you can.

With that out of the way, let's get started.

First impressions of APE: comics are a legitimate art form. Also, there are tons of good-looking, nerdy people here. Single nerds take note.

We started off wandering separately and getting a feel for the place. It was pretty packed, as the picture above shows, with two wings and a lower main area. One cool thing about APE was that most of the tables were by comic publishers and artists. At many other cons I've been to, a lot of the tables are local comic book stores selling their wares. I noticed one of these at APE, and there were probably more, and there were also a few art schools trying to peddle their classes to would-be artists, but for the most part it was comics being sold by the people who made them, and that is awesome.

The most popular table at APE was shared by Dylan Meconis and Kate Beaton. I didn't know Dylan Meconis's work at the time (which I've been working on remedying since I got home), but I am a fan of Kate's Hark! A Vagrant, and my lady is a big fan of both of them, so we headed over.

My lady had already gotten Dylan's signature on Bite Me!, her off-the-wall graphic novel about vampires in Revolutionary France, so while we were waiting for space to clear up around Kate Beaton I asked her if she would mind a picture with my lady. I'm so sorry for using flash in your face, Dylan Meconis, but otherwise the picture was too blurry to see anything:
Remember what I was saying about all the good-looking nerds at APE? Plus, Dylan Meconis had a pile of stickers that read "Real Vampires Don't Fricking Sparkle," and how cool is that?

When we got through to Kate Beaton, she signed my lady's copy of her book and also drew us a sketch of Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe (based on this comic of hers).

And what did she charge us for this AMAZING sketch? How about FIVE BUCKS? Kate Beaton, you rock! Also, apparently my camera was feeling braver by this point, because I managed to get some pretty good pictures of Kate Beaton without having to use the flash.

The next part of our journey was seeing several examples of "it's the guy who does..." such as Matt Boyd, "one of the guys who do Mac Hall and Three Panel Soul:"
and Chris Hastings, "the guy who does Dr. McNinja:"
I basically did a walk-by photographing of those two, since I didn't have anything to say to them, or, more accurately, any money to give them. Hence, another photo safari, like my time at Wondercon.

We next met with one my lady's friends, Der-shing Helmer. I think possibly this girl is part ghost, or perhaps she is haunted by the wailing spirits of those who have passed over, because every picture I got of her was off-focus. This was the best I came up with:
I'm terribly sorry, Der-shing. I know it sucks to have people who suck take pictures of you with their sucky camera and post sucky pictures of you on the internet. If it's any consolation, I read your comic "The Meek" and totally dug it. For those of you who haven't read it yet, the art is amazing and the storytelling is delightful. I'd even go so far as to say that it's "Miyazaki-esque!" Der-shing also did "Snowball in Hell," about a fluffy cat who ends up in Hell. While I haven't had a chance to read much of it yet, I love that there's a story out there called "Snowball in Hell" about a fluffy cat in hell.

At the same table we met Johane Matte, who did "Water Tribe." Now if I were to tell you that it's a fan comic of Avatar: the Last Airbender, you'd probably think that it's some earnest, enthusiastic, and terrible work of squeeing fandom. While it's definitely earnest and enthusiastic, it's also excellent. I read some of the mini-comics they have for Avatar on the Nickelodeon site, and Water Tribe is magnitudes better than them. That's right: the fan comic is many times better than the official stuff they put out. The art, the storytelling, the feel of it is perfect. If you like Avatar, you should check out Water Tribe. I could spend an entire blog post talking about "Water Tribe," and I haven't even finished the first volume yet.

Here's my lady meeting "the guy who does Rice Boy," which I haven't read yet, but it looks good:

My lady and I also met Brandon Graham, "the guy who does King City."
He drew us a sketch for free. I was going to ask him about the part of King City that didn't make any sense when I read it, so I picked up his copy and started to leaf through it, and I realized that the whole thing didn't make sense! But I really liked it. It's about a guy who has a cat that gets superpowers when he injects it with cat-juice. The art is great, and I absolutely love the way Brandon Graham does sound effects.

Which brings us to the end of APE. So, to wrap up, here are some miscellaneous observations about APE:

Cute is the new scary - so much of the 'dark' stuff being sold was annoyingly cute. There were at least two Satanically-possessed fluffy creatures, as well as cute dead animals, cute scary little girls, etc.

Zombies are the new superhero - there were sexy zombies, ironic zombies, high school zombies, crime-fighting zombies. In fact, just about every kind of zombie except for the flesh-eating, mindless zombie (but who likes THOSE?).

Irony is the new badassery - why write about a grim monster hunter when you can write about a grim monster hunter who's a school janitor?

Until next time, then. I had a fantastic time and I highly recommend APE to anyone who can make it out. It's lots of fun if you bring your own cute nerd to spend the con with, but if you don't already have a cute nerd, you may find one at APE!

Wil Wheaton Agrees about Binwin Bronzebottom

2009-10-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

WARNING: Spoilers for the PVP/Penny Arcade/Wil Wheaton D&D Podcasts

In the latest episode of the PVP/Penny Arcade/Wil Wheaton D&D Podcasts (link) Wil Wheaton voices his beliefs about Binwin Bronzebottom and Scott Kurtz. This follows a particularly poorly-timed comment from Kurtz, who was probably trying to be funny but really picked the worst possible time and way to do so.

I shouldn't go into too much detail, despite my spoiler warning above, because a) I don't want to take away from the profanity-laden moment, and b) Who pays attention to spoiler warnings, anyway?

Next: Memories (and photos) from the Alternative Press Expo.

The Ultimate Chronicle Gets Better and Better

2009-10-16T10:38:00.001-07:00

If you're not reading The Ultimate Chronicle yet, you should know that the latest chapter includes this line:

“Know this, Rasputin,” said Lincoln. “I cannot dedicate. I cannot consecrate. I cannot hallow.” He put on some sunglasses. “Because Space/Time Lincoln only has one setting today: ass-whoopin’.”

So what are you waiting for? Go read it!

The Ultimate Chronicle

2009-10-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

Follow the adventures of Space/Time Lincoln and the preserved head of Nikola Tesla as they fight Rasputin and the forces of Mecha-Hitler. Perhaps even contribute to the story... 1024 characters at a time!

Click here already!

First Squad Russian Trailer

2009-10-08T15:56:00.001-07:00

This is amazing! I couldn't wait to post it. It's in Russian, which sounds awesome, and features guns, swords, crusaders, zombies, Soviets, Nazis, and all sorts of combinations of those elements.

The animation looks to be about the same quality as your average modern anime series, rather than a full-length movie, but the plot is so relevant to my interests that I don't care.

Kyle Talks About Ninja Pirates and Pirate Ninjas

2009-10-08T14:31:00.001-07:00

If you're curious, you can read my friend Kyle's thoughts on ninja pirates and pirate ninjas here.

Frederick Russell Burnham

2009-09-21T21:23:00.001-07:00

Imagine this: you're fighting the Boers in Africa, and you've been sent to blow up their bridge. Along the way, you run into a group of Boers and are forced to ride for your life. As you do, your horse gets shot and killed, and crushes you under it. You're knocked out for a day. When you awake, you're alone and badly injured. What do you do?

If you're Frederick Russell Burnham, you go back and blow up the bridge.

Read the Wikipedia entry. In 1901, Teddy Roosevelt said, "I know Burnham. He is a scout and a hunter of courage and ability, a man totally without fear, a sure shot, and a fighter. He is the ideal scout, and when enlisted in the military service of any country he is bound to be of the greatest benefit."

Then, in 1933, the German spy Fritz Joubert Duquesne said, "To my friendly enemy, Major Frederick Russell Burnham, the greatest scout of the world, whose eyes were that of an Empire. I once craved the honour of killing him, but failing that, I extend my heartiest admiration.."

It's a truly astounding example of historical badassery.

Then, if you haven't had your fill of 19th Century badasses named Frederick, read about Frederick Selous. The man made a living hunting every dangerous animal you can think of, and died when he was in his sixties and got shot by a sniper during World War One. And get this line from his biography: "He ate less than most men, and never drank anything but tea, which he enjoyed at every meal. Sometimes he drank champagne at big dinners, but rich wines and high feeding had no attractions to him." Sounds like my kind of chap!

Something I Never Knew About My Name

2009-09-20T21:45:00.001-07:00

According to 20000-names.com, my name, "Benedek," is the Hungarian form of the Greek "Benediktos." Apparently, Martin Luther noted that "Benediktos" is "666" in Greek gematria.

Yikes.