People on the internet are dumb

It makes me sad that the new kind of bullying is accusing the person of being prejudiced.

I'm lucky to have escaped internet drama so far, but it makes me sad nonetheless.

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Crossovers

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.

I think I saw a tumbleweed go by...

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

I stand alone.

I am with you.

We stand together.

Let them come.

Hold the line.

I will not yield.

Advice for Husbands

Hi guys,

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

What if you leveled up?

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.

RIP Ronnie James Dio

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.

RIP Frank Frazetta

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...

Frederick Russell Burnham

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!

Long Coats and Wide-Brimmed Hats

Looking over my past few posts, they have been about adorable animals, romantic flower-wielding BART people, and the path to adulthood. This must be remedied before this blog becomes too serious.

So let's talk about badassery. More specifically, the outfits associated with badassery. These outfits can be simple: a loincloth was enough for one famous badass. Then there are people who prefer outfits that are a bit heavier. I must confess, I have a soft spot for something in between: the long coat with a wide-brimmed hat.

I first started to dig this as the "Witch Hunter" look from Games Workshop's Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 lines. You can't go wrong with something like this:


But the original badass in a long coat and wide-brimmed hat was probably Solomon Kane, the Puritan monster hunter created by Robert E. Howard (you know him as "the guy who invented Conan"). And now there's going to be a movie about him. If this trailer is any indication, it's going to be badass to the brim:

Solomon Kane at IGN.com

And that's awesome.

Thoughts on a Guy with Flowers

A few days ago, there was a guy at the Ashby BART station holding a bouquet of flowers and nervously/anxiously checking his iPhone. Some people would look at him and think that he had done something wrong and was buying flowers for his sweetheart to make up for it. I may be a soppy romantic at heart, but I like to think that he was simply doing it as a sweet gesture for his beloved.

Either way, I hope she liked the flowers.

Viking vs. Samurai

Most of you have already heard my spiel about Viking vs. Samurai as an alternative to the old Pirate vs. Ninja debate. In my argument, vikings are analogous to pirates and samurai are analogous to ninjas, with the advantage that vikings and samurai were both more likely to engage in straight-up battles, whereas the ninjas and pirates preferred assassination and ship-to-ship combat respectively. I think this makes it more of an even match, so rather than debating whether the ninja would slip poison into the pirate's mead before the pirate ship's cannons destroyed the ninja village, we can debate how two warriors going head-to-head would fare. That way, it's actually a discussion of combat techniques rather than a question of which one is cooler.

Imagine my surprise and delight, then, when I recently learned that not only is there a show on Spike TV called Deadliest Warrior, where they match up two historical warriors in a hypothetical, computer-simulated fight, but that one of the matchups they chose was Viking vs. Samurai.

You can see the whole episode for free on Spike's website.

I won't give away the ending, except to say that it was very close. I'm going to take that as an indication of how good a matchup this is! Unlike every other nerd on the internet, I am not a combat expert, and my knowledge of vikings and samurai comes entirely from video games and movies. That said, there were a couple of things that I found interesting...

• The katana shows why everyone loves it so much. Check out 8:00 in the video to see what it can do. But, that said...


• The katana barely scratched the viking's chain mail. Even with a beefy swordmaster swinging it, the world's favorite sword had no real impact on simple iron chain mail. It's at about 9:20.


• The part with the samurai bow (yumi) is insanely cool. Watch that part if you don't watch anything else. It starts at about 27:00.


• Throughout the video, there were a lot of "bro pats" between the vikings. They really didn't try to fight the stereotype of the Viking as history's frat boy.


• They probably shouldn't have bothered with the kanabo. I highly doubt this weapon was used very often in historical battles.


• For all their talk of viking brawn versus samurai skill, the slow motion seemed to back up that generalization. Watch the slow motion longsword at 22:40 to see how the viking longsword was simultaneously less precise and more effective than the katana. (That said, a lot of the difference in technique was probably due to people they found to demonstrate the weapons.)


• At 24:50 they start throwing viking spears. It's badass. I don't know why they bothered with the two-spears-at-a-time nonsense. One thrown spear was probably much more common and much more effective. Maybe a viking would chuck two spears at a time against a peasant rabble, but if a viking saw a skilled, armored warrior approaching, I'm sure he'd choose to throw one spear at a time.


• That is, if he threw the spear at all. Both vikings and samurai used spears in combat, so why wasn't regular (non-thrown) spear combat considered? I found this to be the main oversight.


• I also suspect that the viking shield (32:00) was entered into the computer simulation as a weapon, not a defense measure. Based on the episode, I don't think the computer simulation software can account for shields properly. (That said, based on some other things I've read about the show, the Spartan vs. Ninja episode apparently showed that the Spartan shield made a very effective weapon.)


• Yes, they pad the show with a lot of talk and they seem to happily embrace every cliche in the way American audience see these two groups. Still, I think they did a fairly good job, and I'm inclined to agree with their results.


• Nobody ever mentions that samurai were warrior elite, while vikings were the rank-and-file. Samurai armies were mostly made up of non-samurai foot soldiers, while viking armies consisted of, well, vikings.

It's a long show, but worth watching if you have some time to spare. Either way, I am curious about what you think: viking or samurai?

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Wolverine

When my brothers and I were kids, we used to draw basically three superheroes: Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man. Those were the only superheroes we knew, and they had such iconic looks to them. Then, when we were a little bit older, we started to branch out a bit. Thanks to the Batman and X-Men cartoons, we became aware of the DC and Marvel universes.

At this point, we started divvying up the characters. This was necessitated by a couple of things: first, when playing the X-Men game at the arcade, we had to pick different characters. Also, if we were going to pretend to be our favorite characters, we had to be different people for it to make sense. And finally, it allowed for the "Who is cooler?" and "Who would win in a fight?" debates that all nerds live for.

It was at this time, way back in grade school, that Wolverine became my favorite superhero. He was badass, he could fight anybody, he was independent, and he had that badass costume. At the time, I thought that the only "real" Wolverine was the guy in the yellow tiger-striped costume with the blue shoulderpads. I didn't like the "old" brown-and-orange costume (not realizing which one he had started with), but I had a special dislike for depictions of him in his "civilian" garb. That wasn't Wolverine, after all: that was Logan, which amounted to Wolverine in disguise. How could you be a superhero without the costume?

Then, starting around high school but really ar0und my college days, I started moving away from Wolverine. My main reason for this was simple: everyone likes Wolverine. He was far and away the most famous of the X-Men. In fact, it could be argued that he's the only member of the X-Men that most people actually like. It certainly seems that way from the covers Marvel puts out: go to any comic shop and count the number of covers that feature Wolverine and the number that don't. You'll be surprised.

At about this time, I started getting into other superheroes. First, Iron Man. I had been reading The Ultimates, and I really liked that depiction of Tony Stark as a reckless, charming rich guy who decides to make the world a better place before his brain cancer kills him. I liked the idea that Tony Stark is a normal human who fights with his intellect, creating a high-tech suit of armor that he can modify and upgrade as the situation demands, allowing him to defeat enemies by outsmarting and out-building them. All that Wolverine ever did was get mad and stab things! Too bad Civil War came along and made the mainstream version of the character the most hated superhero in Marvel. Then, even worse, I found out that the Ultimates version wasn't as "normal" as I had thought: his body is one large living brain, thanks to his monkey blood. I hate his stupid monkey blood!

Then I liked Deadpool, who was a lot like Wolverine: he had Wolverine's regeneration, he fought with guns AND swords instead of just claws, he was hilariously offbeat, and he was a ninja. Everyone likes ninjas! In fact, I liked Iron Man and Deadpool so much that, when we played through Marvel Ultimate Alliance, those were the two heroes I played with. True fact: we let the computer play Wolverine. Eventually, though, I had to admit to myself that Deadpool was just a surrogate Wolverine.

Recently, partially thanks to the upcoming Wolverine movie, but more thanks to my awesome girlfriend, I have realized something: Wolverine genuinely is exactly as awesome as I used to think when I was a kid. Okay, so the costumes are geeky, and too often he's "declawed" by writers, but the underlying awesome of Wolverine is something not even Magneto can take away (and replace with bone claws).

If you will indulge me a moment, please allow me to geek out about the thing that makes Wolverine the best at what he does: he's a fighter.

That's really what it comes down to. No matter where he is, no matter what he's up against, Wolverine is going to fight it. His adamantium skeleton, razor-sharp claws, and healing factor all mean that he has the ability to put the hurt on the enemy, and he has the staying power to make sure he has the opportunity to do so. It's not only about the ability to take damage and keep fighting, but even moreso it's about his willingness to do so no matter what.

Wolverine is, after all, named after an animal known for fighting anything, despite its small size. The Marvel character, too, has the bloody-minded determination it takes to keep getting up, no matter how many time you're knocked down, and keep getting stuck in. Wolverine exists in a universe full of cosmically powerful beings who can sling around some amazing pyrotechnics. All he has to go up against that is one thing. Make that three things. On each hand. So, six things total. As Ho Chi Minh observed, "If the Tiger does not stop fighting the Elephant, the Elephant will die of exhaustion."

Except in this case the Elephant is a supervillain who can blow up the side of a mountain, and the Tiger is actually a Wolverine.

It's true that Wolverine, like Lobo, has much more potential than actually delivered by most of his comics. The need to shoehorn this loner into a team comic often means that he soon learns the value of teamwork and trusting others, often becoming a father figure for one or more young teammates in the process. And, yes, he wears silly costumes. But no matter how many costumes you put him in, and no matter how many times he tells angsty teens to believe in themselves, he will always be Wolverine.

Living in Berkeley

BART Musicians vs Homeless Guy Who Ain't Afraid of No Po-lice

While waiting for her BART train to arrive, we saw a pair of musicians setting up their musical act at the entrance to the station. This isn't unusual: there are often musicians trying to earn a buck at the BART station. (We also passed a homeless guy who yelled "Hey, white boy! Hey, white boy!" either at me or at the musicians. This wasn't unusual, either.) What was unusual, however, was the instruments they were using. Rather than being some unwashed hipster-hippies with guitars, these guys had a shamisen and an accordion. They started playing. These guys were pretty good.

And then the homeless guy started pestering them. It got pretty ugly, and the accordion player had to stop and leave so that he could call the police. The shamisen player paused as well, and we went over to talk to him. He was selling some CDs from other projects he and the accordion guy had done in the past. We both gave him a little money to show our appreciation.

To me, this whole experience sums up what it's like to live in Berkeley: genuinely cool, creative, and unusual people, juxtaposed with unruly pseudo-criminals. Well, so it goes.

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Guns vs Swords

For the sake of clarity, this post will not deal with swords that are also guns, other than to say that they are awesome.

In the real world, there are swords and there are guns, and there's really no point in comparing the two. While there are apparently still some people out there who kill other people with swords, these people are usually insane enough for it not to count. Plus, modern-day sword-using killers tend to kill people who are unarmed and not particularly interested in fighting back. If someone with a sword tries to fight someone with a gun, the results are unlikely to surprise anybody.

When you take the realm of fiction, however, the situation is often reversed. This is partially because fictional worlds operate not so much on stodgy systems of "logic" than on systems of "awesome," and partially because the protagonists of these stories need a challenge that usually isn't offered by gunning down sword-wielding enemies from across the room.

Giving your protagonist a sword when his enemies all have guns is a good way of establishing his badassitude. Whether he has to rely on his sneakiness, his forethought, or simply his bullet-dodging acrobatics, he's going to be the underdog, which makes his victory that much more impressive. As an added bonus, the anachronism of using such an elegant weapon hearkens back to a more civilized age, so our hero gets the associated ideals of honor, duty, etc.

So far, so good. If you're writing a book, comic book, or movie about a guy who uses swords to fight guys with guns, it's not going to take a whole lot of explanation for me to say, "Okay, you've got me sold, now let's see some violence, plz kthx." This is an advantage to the "my story, let me show you it" method of storytelling: total control over the plot lets you sacrifice logic for the sake of awesome thanks to the underlying assumption that, if this was anyone else with a sword, they'd be shot to pieces in five seconds, and it's only because our hero is so skilled, trained, lucky, and badass that he gets to carve up his enemies instead.

Of course, there is another method of storytelling that we nerds experience, and that is the "my story, plz tell it to me" method found in video games and roleplaying games. In this method, the system is laid out for you, but it's up to the viewer to generate the actual events. This means that, rather than being able to say "99% of the time gun beats sword, now let me show you the 1%," you have to set up a scenario in which sword always beats gun, or at least stands a good chance against it. And this is where things get weird.

Perhaps the most famous example of this is Final Fantasy VII, in which a guy with a sword (Cloud) does a crapload more damage than a guy with a gun (Vincent). Then you've got systems (see: D&D) where a great big sword is going to be doing more damage than a gun. One wonders, therefore, why anyone would bother using, or even inventing, a firearm, when a sharpened piece of metal is more effective.

There is a reason behind this decision, however, and it deals with the main underlying difference in combat in video games and RPGs versus real life (or media based on real life, such as novels and movies). In real life, it takes a single good hit to take someone out of a fight. This hit could come from a sword, a gun, a rock, or a Scud missile: the result is the same. Death. In video games and RPGs (and RPG video games, and RPGs based on video games), a single good hit is going to hurt your opponent, but they will keep fighting. They lose hit points, but they are not dead, and now it's their turn to hit you.

So while real life combat operates on a more or less binary system of damage (dead/not dead), video games and RPGs have to come up with a sliding scale of damage ('tis but a scratch through MASSIVE DAMAGE). Realism goes out the window, and now we have to decide whether a bullet to the chest should do more or less damage than a sword to the chest. Looking around for something to base this decision on, we come across the previously-mentioned principle of "awesome," and naturally decide that a sword should do more damage.

Because, fundamentally, it's cooler to stab someone than to shoot them.

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Character Classes

Despite the similarities between RPGs and epic stories, there is a fundamental difference between them. Epic stories are, fundamentally, about one person: Conan is about Conan, Star Wars is about Luke Skywalker, Dune is about Paul Atreides. RPGs, on the other hand, are about groups of people, or parties. The limelight and the glory get spread around evenly in RPGs (at least ideally, when the DM knows what (s)he's doing and the players are at about the same level of roleplaying skill).

While Star Wars includes Han, Chewie, Leia, R2, and Threepio, the story is really about Luke. Luke is a good shot, a good pilot, and good with the Force. Similarly, Conan is good at all sorts of things. He's an accomplished thief, sailor, general, and king, and of course he can kick ass with any weapon, including his mighty fists.

If these characters were in an RPG, though, they would have to pick character classes, at which point they would choose which things they could be good at. If Luke wanted to be good at using the Force, he'd have to give up his amazing piloting skills. If Conan wanted to be able to take on ten sword-wielding barbarians at once, he would have to give up his stealthy thieving skills. So on, and so forth.

This is one of the reasons why it's so dangerous to think about an RPG storyline as an epic story. It's really not. Despite what R. A. Salvatore might have led you to believe, it takes more than a single ranger to make a good D&D party. This is purposeful, of course: it encourages the party to act as a team, with various team members contributing in various ways so that everybody is integral to the party's victory. If a cleric's player would otherwise fade into the background while the more showy players of the warrior and thief take the center stage and dominate the game, that cleric will at least have a moment in the sun when the party comes across a buch of skeletons, or an ancient curse, or at least when they take some bashes around the skull and need the cleric for some healing. The formula is well-known: the warrior soaks up damage, the cleric heals it, the wizard causes it, and the thief gets the party around traps and locks. Everyone has a role to play; everyone is guaranteed an area where they, and only they, can contribute.

Unfortunately, by making certain areas integral to certain classes, RPG designers have made those same areas off-limits to the other classes. Would you like to play a warrior who excels in shadowy assassinations just as much as open combat? Too bad. Would you like your (good-aligned) cleric to be as good at dealing damage as healing it? Suck it up. That's just not your area. I'm not saying that fighters can't put ranks into Stealth, or that clerics don't have spells that do damage. But why bother making a fighter marginally good at sneaking, at the expense of far more useful fighter-y skills, when a thief could excel at sneaking so much more easily?

I can understand the reasoning behind this, but my complaint is simple: it's not fun to suck. It's not fun to be a one-trick pony who fails at everything else. Luke Skywalker may not be Han Solo, but he's not such a bad pilot himself. He's also quite self-sufficient: he can fire a blaster, swing a lightsaber, use the Force, repair his X-Wing, do some fancy acrobatics, etc. For a Player Character, however, it's hard to feel badass knowing that you're only effective as part of a group. Sure, a thief could go out on his own and make Stealth checks to avoid dangers that would normally be overcome by the rest of the party... until he fails a Stealth check. At that point, he's too weak to stand and fight, so he can only run like hell. Similarly, a wizard could fling fireballs at every door, zap trap-filled rooms with lightning, and never let anything get close enough for his lack of armor and scrawniness to come into play... until he runs out of spells, when he has to run like hell.

Running like hell should never be a necessary part of a plan. Maybe Plan C, but definitely not the last step of Plan A.

One possible way around this is with multi-class characters. The rules for multi-class characters have become a lot more simplified in recent editions of Dungeons and Dragons, so they do make a viable alternative. Unfortunately, multi-classing replaces the necessity of being a one-trick pony with being a two-half-trick pony. You can do two things marginally well, but only half as well as someone who specializes. Maybe this makes sense, so I shouldn't whine about it, but it seems like it should be a whole lot easier to be a decent wizard and a decent warrior than it is to be the greatest wizard or the greatest warrior in the land.

Which leads me to my suggestion. First, the way multiclassing currently works in D&D: Say you're a tenth-level wizard, and you decide to take a level of fighter. It takes just as much experience to get that first level of fighter as it would have to take an eleventh level of wizard. If you go on to get a second level of fighter, it costs as much as a twelfth level of wizard would have. Which is a lot.

So what I would suggest would be a system in which picking up a new class is much easier than advancing to extremely high levels of your existing classes. Maybe each new class you pick up should advance along a separate experience track, and each new one should cost twice as much to level up as it would have if it had been your starting class. So characters who take fighter as their second class pay twice as much to level it up, while characters who take it as their third pay four times as much, etc. This sounds expensive, but it would still be a whole lot less expensive than paying high-level experience costs for low-level classes.

Of course, if you're a low-level wizard who wants low-level fighter classes, my remedy above would end up costing you more than it otherwise would have. For this reason, it should be optional which route you take.

Obviously, I have never playtested this rule (or even thought it out very far), so it might make no sense at all. Feel free to point out any obvious glaring problems in the comments! See you next time!

Something New Years-ish

It's the new year, so it's time for the new year's blog post.

Strange paradox: while the past year sucked for our country and the world, it was absolutely fantastic for me. I hit my stride at work, I strengthened friendships with the finest people I have ever known, I did some writing I'm proud of, and, yes, I met a certain young lady.

I suppose that I should be worried about the state of the world. Old tensions are re-igniting in the Middle East as well as between Russia and the USA. The world economy is spiraling down. America is increasingly polarized between the conservative, religious right and the liberal, starry-eyed left. Even Obama is starting to look more and more human now that the initial thrill has worn off.

But I'm not worried. In fact, I'm looking forward to this next year more than any other. There is nothing I can do about the state of the world, so the best I can do is hope it gets better and hang on for the ride.

I can't wait to see the things we will create, to hear the jokes we will tell, to share the experiences we will find. I realize that everything cannot be perfect, and that events will doubtless come along that will blindside me and throw my year off track. But there is no point in worrying about such things. What will happen will happen. Right now, it looks like the upcoming year will be golden, and I can't wait to share it with all of you.

And New Year's Resolutions? I don't know if I should be making resolutions, because I have found that trying to bind something or give something extra gravity often ends up ruining the thing you were trying to create. So instead I will say something I would like to do: get published. I now join every other wannabe writer in this resolution, but you never know.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Thinking Way Too Hard About Leveling Up

Warning: This post rambles quite a bit.

The necromancer Vektar sat on his throne, overlooking the armies of the dead standing between him and the great doors to his inner sanctum. He allowed himself a phlegmy chuckle. Surely the heroes who even now approached those doors were doomed! Then, a moment later, the great doors were blown from their hinges and smashed down onto the front ranks of the necromancer's servants. Framed in the doorway was a gray-skinned figure, his eyes glowing beneath his cloak, his hands still crackling with energy. The necromancer recognized his former apprentice, Kazrel, whom Vektar had banished for refusing to sacrifice a maiden for a dark ritual. As the undead horde, oblivious to their comrades' recent fate, surged forward, the a massive figure stepped forward form beside the Kazrel. The necromancer stood from his throne at the sight of Wulfbeorn, the black-haired barbarian prince from beyond the steppes. Vektar had heard that Wulfbeorn had left his clan to regain his honor, though the dark servant who had brought that news had known nothing more.

Wulfbeorn, his muscles bulging beneath his simple fur garb, strode forward, his great two-handed blade cutting a great swath through the necromancer’s forces. Kazrel followed behind him, weaving dark energy around him as he walked, sometimes unleashing it when the mindless forces of Vektar threatened to overwhelm the brave warrior who strode before him.

Finally, they reached the throne. Wulfbeorn was covered in a dozen wounds, and blood dripped from his mighty form onto the black stone of the courtyard, yet his eyes were still bright and his strength undiminished. Vektar stepped forward, hissing a black word from behind yellow teeth, and magical energy in the shape of gossamer bones reached for the mighty warrior. Kazrel stepped forward, however, and with a word caused the deadly magics to dissolve. Now the two sorcerors were locked in battle, and soon the air stank and crackled with the power passing between them, as their dark chants caused even the stalwart Wulfbeorn’s heart to tremble in his chest. Nevertheless, the tireless warrior kept the necromancer’s intact minions from interfering, and soon a pile of bodies lay before him.

Then Vektar’s tongue slowed. His joints moved painfully, and his breath came short. He had reached his limit. Kazrel stepped forward, pointed a finger at the man, and spoke a single word. A moment later, the only thing remaining of Vektar was a pile of gristle and shredded robes. Instantly, the dark army, which had a moment ago seemed on the verge of overrunning Wulfbeorn, collapsed into dust.

“It is done,” said Kazrel.

“I feel stronger,” replied Wulfbeorn.

The gray-skinned wizard turned to his companion, glowing eyes questioning. “What?”

The barbarian shrugged. “I can’t explain it. I feel like I’m a better fighter now. Like fighting all those guys taught me new moves.”

“That’s ridiculous. What could you learn in this ten-minute fight that you didn’t learn in your years of training on the steppes?”

“I dunno. Don’t you feel stronger, though?”

The mage was silent for a long while. “You know those spells I have been trying to master? I feel like I should give them another try. Maybe now I would have more success in learning them.”

“Also, I think I can lose more blood before passing out, and survive falls from greater heights,” said Wulfbeorn as they walked away.

“Now that’s just stupid,” said Kazrel. “But yeah, me, too.”

Leveling up has become such a big part of games these days that we've all started taking it for granted. These days, even first-person shooters have characters that gain skills and abilities, and nearly every RPG has some method for leveling up. In theory, it's meant to represent the process of a character going from a starry-eyed youth full of enthusiasm and ideals but with little to show for practical experience, to a battle-hardened professional who has survived hardships and learned from them. In actuality, it serves as a carrot dangled in front of players to constantly keep them interested. Sure, you're just a Goblin-poker now, but just imagine how much ass you'll kick when you're a Dragon-smiter! Right now, you're pleased as punch to drop a Bubba's Discount Singeing, but play for another few months, and you'll be hurling Merlin's Meteor of Fiery Armageddon Death.

So part of the problem is that leveling serves as a way to promise future ass-kicking, rather than simply handing it to players. I think that this is a lot like the FPS Pistol Syndrome I described in my review of Painkiller: game developers, whether they're making an FPS or an RPG, seem to feel like gamers won't appreciate kicking ass unless they're forced to spend an appreciable amount of time being weak as kittens before they're allowed to start stabbing giants in the face.

This is bull. Conan might not have started out as King Conan, but right from the start he could take on three hard-as-nails barbarian dudes and kick their asses hardcore. Elric of Melnbone starts his books as an expert sorcerer. Aragorn can fight off Ringwraiths before they party even gets the backstory for the campaign in Rivendell. And, as Bluefish once pointed out to me, Luke Skywalker didn't have to kill worrts before he could use the damn Force.

One possible explanation for this is that the characters really did have to go through all that, we just didn't see it. Conan trained with his tribe of Cimmerians, Elric studied in the libraries of Melnibone, and even Luke bulls-eyed womp rats in his T-16 back home. It all just happened off-screen. Well, my response to this is that there is a good reason it happened off-screen: because it's boring!

The only time starting a player at such a level is justified is if that player is unfamiliar with the rules, and you're easing him into it. Most RPGs start the character off with just a basic attack, for instance, and special attacks, spells, and items are gradually introduced to the player as the character learns/gains them. This makes sense, but should be optional. If the player already knows how to play, why not skip the toad-stabbing and get right into it?

My other problem with leveling up is how, for whatever reason, characters tend to get better all at once. Suddenly, not only do I become better at stabbing faces, but I also become harder to hit, better at blacksmithing, and able to take more arrows to the chest and fight on. I realize that this cuts down on bookkeeping, but it immediately takes me out of the game. The whole point of RPGs is to think of your PCs as characters in a story, rather than as stats on a sheet, and the minute the DM says, "Okay, good job. You all gain a level," suddenly the spreadsheets and rulebooks come out and instead of thinking, "How did my character grow as a person when he killed the man who betrayed his clan to their blood-enemies?" I'm forced to think, "Would I rather be able to cleave through armor like butter with my broadsword, or scramble my enemy's intestines with my throwing daggers?"

The other side of this is that, when I level up, I worry that I'm taking the wrong abilities. Will I need to be able to move heavy objects with the Force, or should I instead learn to jump insanely high? Jumping isn't going to help me much when the giant idol crashes down in front of the tunnel we have to get into, but moving heavy objects is going to suck if I have to chase down the bad guy's speeder as he gets away. Even worse is getting to a high level and finding a cool ability or prestige class that fits your character perfectly, only to find that you didn't take that ability or skill two levels ago that you need now, so you're stuck being a Horse Patter for another few levels when you could have been an Ogre Smiter if only you'd treated your character as a statistic instead of a person.

Well, if I'm going to think way too hard about something, I should at least come up with an alternative. Ideally, I think it should be up to the Gamemaster when players gain skills, abilities, and spells. When the GM notes that a character has spent a lot of time fighting duels, for instance, that character may gain an ability that gives a bonus when engaging enemies one-on-one. Or when a wizard has spent enough time in the chaos lands beyond the veil of sleep, the wizard's mind may be opened enough to comprehend the next powerful spell.

The problem with this is obvious: players are going to gripe. Some might grow in power better than others. A player might prefer a different ability to the one the Gamemaster gives out. Worse, a lot of players like to plan out exactly how their characters are going to progress when the character is first generated. The character's progression then has nothing to do with what the character does in the campaign, but everything to do with which abilities the player wants to use and thinks are the best.

A good compromise might be to use a leveling system like the one seen in the World of Darkness, where a character spends experience points to get better bit-by-bit. First an attribute may go up, then a skill, then another skill, then maybe the character will gain some resolve. It feels a lot more organic than everyone suddenly getting better at everything all at once. In my perfect, happy world, where all GMs are wise and just and all players are just so excited to be playing that they go along with what the GM says, the GM would be the one deciding how the experience points are spent. In the real world, the player and the GM should have a serious conversation about what the character learned and how it should affect that character's stats.

And, for the love of Gygax, please don't make me start by stabbing roaches. Because that's just no fun at all.

Brilliant (or Mad) Steampunk Idea

Pocket watches are awesome and very steampunk, but these days nobody wears pocket watches any more. So how do we recreate the look without being unnecessarily anachronistic (assuming we don't want to be unnecessarily anachronistic)? I'll tell you: someone has to design headphones for mp3 players that look like pocketwatch chains.

It's a goldmine, I tell you!

With the possible hurdle of pocket watches not usually being stuck into people's ears. Okay, so the idea still needs some work. But there's definite promise here...

Bollocks to the Makers

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: In my original post, I had forgotten who had written the introduction, and tried to keep it vague by using the pronoun "they" for the author. This ended up making it sound like the VanderMeers had written the introduction. Jeff VanderMeer won't stand for such rubbish, and corrected me in a most gracious manner, pointing out that the introduction was penned by Jess Nevins.

ANOTHER NOTE: That means that the publisher of the book I was writing about commented on my blog. How cool is that?

THE ORIGINAL NOTE: I should point out that the following represents my own views, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Ann or Jeff VanderMeer, Jess Nevins, or anyone else involved with the Steampunk anthology.

I recently read the introduction to the VanderMeers' Steampunk anthology, and I must say, it's rather gotten my blood up. At the moment I forget the exact words Jess Nevins used, but they described the current Steampunk movement, which they call the second generation, as a cliche and a fashion trend. This really struck me, as I quite like Steampunk fashion, but they explained that Steampunk was originally a way for people to make a statement about our culture and our time. It was a way to raise an outcry against society, to put the -punk into Steampunk, to show how really we're just modern-day Victorians who all too often believe that money is the measure of a man, progress should benefit the rich and be built on the backs of the poor, and that other cultures and viewpoints are strange, alien, and best when forcibly "civilized."

This sort of Steampunk was created by the writers: William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and others. As storytellers, they were interested in the ideas behind Steampunk. They used Steampunk to spread a message and make a statement. Like the best science fiction, they used a fictional setting to say what could not be said in a realistic one. By transporting our problems to another place, they threw those problems into sharp relief.

The new generation of Steampunk is created by artists. It's about a look, a fashion and a trend. This is the Steampunk that is exemplified by the Makers: Vladislaus Dantes and Datamancer and their kind. It exists not on the written page but in Deviantart and forums and livejournal, with people squeezing themselves into dresses and putting on goggles and boots to show themselves off and prove to everyone how Steampunk they are.

I think it's obvious whose side I'm on. I never realized it, but I miss the message behind Steampunk. I really like the Steampunk aesthetic, don't get me wrong, and I am full of admiration and jealousy when it comes to the works of the great Steampunk artists and crafters. But I do think that we have lost something. The style has overwhelmed the substance, and Steampunk is the poorer for it.