Pokeballs, Airline Peanuts

July 31st, 2016

And what is the deal with pokeballs, anyways?

I’m not just talking about the fact that they compress living creatures into a null space and apparently keep them alive and healthy until they’re recalled out of stasis.  I’m not even talking about the fact that, while in that stasis, they can apparently struggle and break free.  This is a video game and we’ve all seen bags of holding before.  But why is it that anything that goes into a pokeball automatically comes out your friend?

Seriously, let’s put aside that you have to have your pokefriends beat down feral pokevictims before you can cram them into a new ball.  Several species of pokemon aren’t merely predatory but actively hostile.  More than one explicitly preys on humans, including one that targets children.  And yet you bean one of the things upside the skull with a pokeball and they unfailingly obey your commands from that point on.  This works on anything – elementals, spirits, devils, and gods included.

It has to be some kind of mind control tech.

Which is a problem, because humans are not unique in this world.  Several species of pokemon are sapient creatures, including one free-willed independent actor whose entire raison d’etre is to escape from the stifling control of humanity.  They succumb to a master ball just like anything else.  There are psychics whose thoughts are powerful enough to blast others into unconsciousness, tinkerers that use technology to improve themselves and tame their world, and, again, deities reputed to have constructed reality.  One ball and they do anything you command.  Why would humans be any different?

So far as I would guess, those things have been engineered to not work on humans – and probably only not work on humans.  That’s problematic, because reverse engineering one to remove that one limiter would probably not be all that tough, and you’re frequently facing large, well-funded, technologically-apt organizations in those games.  Maybe that’s why everyone whose gaze you cross tries to stop you from reaching the last boss; they’ve been balled and are powerless to do anything else.

It’s either that or I need to get out more.  Fair odds either way, really.

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On the balance of Triforces

July 31st, 2016

Bear with me for a moment, because I’m about to blow your mind: Triangles are important to the world of the various Legends of Zelda. I know, right?

It’s a central conceit of the world that the fundamental powers are arranged in sets of three, which suggests that trinary balance is the basic model. After all, Courage, Power, and Wisdom, operating in tandem as a three-sided godhead, are responsible for their entire creation mythology in the first place, so it makes some sense that so many of the important markers and powers of the world are arranged similarly. Three sacred stones, three mystical pendants, three great kingdoms, etc. The basic philosophical mechanisms of the world are in sets of three, so sets of three are what tend to show up.

This even almost holds out when it comes to our only three repeating principals, each of whom represents an exemplar of one of the fundamental powers. Except, of course, that what we see – or believe we see – is a more straightforward sort of good-vs-evil storyline presented with binary balance: Courage and Wisdom vs. Power.

Now, before I say anything else: I’ll stipulate that Ganondorf is evil. That’s usually where I’m going with these things, but not in this one. My point isn’t that the sorcerous Gerudo king isn’t a Really Bad Guy (even if we never really see him do anything particularly wicked), but that his being a bad guy is less than consequential in the face of a universe where whether you’re powerful or wise is more critical.

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Trailer Round-Up! (Comic-Con Edition)

July 24th, 2016

Here we have a trailer for Luke Cage, whom I have always liked.  In the comics, Luke Cage used to wear a blouse and a ridiculous tiara, demolished Dr. Doom’s fortress once because Doom stiffed him on a job (and the man’s a professional), and sometimes went by Power Man.  In the show, he’s probably going to get straight to the superheroics rather than taking a detour through being a mercenary, but is still packing bulletproof skin and enough strength to wrap a car door around a man.  It’s also a little weird to remember that Marvel’s Netflix shows are explicitly taking place in actual New York; Luke, here, is dealing with Harlem, specifically.

And over here we have a trailer for Iron Fist, who has gone through his own share of alternate versions.  Danny Rand is an incarnation of one of the immortal weapons and the wielder of a mystical ki-powered fist he picked up by beating down a dragon, in addition to an heir whose plane happened to crash into a magical kung-fu empire.  Much like with Dr. Strange, I’m interested in seeing how Marvel deals with the clearly mystical aspects of the character, because there’s very patently not any “your ancestors called it magic even though it’s science” going on with the guy.  He can punch through steel because of that one time he fought a dragon.  Science that, Thor.

Finally, there’s this… teaser, I guess, for the Defenders, which will feature both of those characters, as well as Daredevil and Jessica Jones.  There’s zero information in it other than that, if I’m listening correctly, Stick shows up, but hey, new Marvel Netflix show.  The first two have worked out pretty well, so (provided Iron Fist and Luke Cage don’t eat it) that’s got to mean something, right?

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Thoughts on exactly one game of 5th edition

July 24th, 2016

So, I don’t actually know how far we’re going to get on our foray into testing 5th edition.  Maybe we’ll make it to the end of the mini-campaign.  Maybe we won’t.  But this is what I know so far:

  1. The organization of information in this edition is appalling.
  2. If your rolls are on fire, anything can be a lethal encounter.
  3. I have lost the ability to coherently relay a mission briefing.

We can argue about the level of character customization (even feats are technically a variant), simplification, and tactical decision-making some other time, but these things are facts.

Seriously, we’ve had five people poring over these books, and we still can’t figure out if size categories do anything but change your face.  Rolling a critical “threat” is an automatic hit, so if you expand your critical threat range you auto-hit on a 19 or less… said the designers when we Googled it, but hell if I know where in any book it says that.  It took us several minutes to finally find the rules for attacking from stealth – under Unseen Attackers, by the way, which isn’t referenced in Stealth or Initiative or anything of the sort.  Hell, want to know the rules for disarming?  They’re not in the Player’s Handbook at all; they’re in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.  Because..?

Second, despite running two “easy” encounters back-to-back, we almost ended up with a party wipe.  It’s not because I was feeling especially murderous, either – I went almost two hours with my lowest roll as a natural 12.  I got a critical hit through disadvantage, and that’s ridiculous.  This is not, strictly speaking, my fault, although it does make a really good case for occasionally fudging dice.  Nobody wants the entire party to get ganked by a merrow.

And then there’s the elephant in the room.  It has been a long time since I’ve run anything, and that time has not been kind to my ability to articulate a series of basic thoughts regarding why there are monsters or what anyone needs to do about them.  I’m… really hoping this is going to get better.  I sucked at DMing the first time I tried it, too, so maybe it’s just less like riding a bike and more like re-learning the ability to intelligibly speak about a tower of evil falling from the sky.  Heck, maybe it’ll go faster this time.  Lord knows it needs to, since our standards are slightly higher than they were when we were all stuttery fourteen-year-olds.

Anyways, I’d like to reserve any remotely final judgements until we finish at least one full adventure cycle, so that’s what I’ve got for the moment.  We’ll see how it plays out in the reasonably near future.

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Did she just punch his soul out?

April 14th, 2016

So here’s the Dr. Strange teaser for a trailer that… I guess will explain even more?  This is decently comprehensive.

Still, we have astral projection, gravity manipulation, multiple intersecting dimensions, telekinesis, and energy creation ex nihilo.  I’m sure Thor would try to “Oh, it’s just advanced technology” this stuff, but I think it’s pretty clear what we’re going to see here is some actual magic.

As noted in the trailer, Dr. Strange is hitting theaters in November.  Maybe I’ll be back in a mode where I can write a review by then.

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Everyone dies badly: A tale of Fringe

April 5th, 2016

Let me sing you a song of Fringe.

In the vacuum of the X-Files, Fringe emerged as a similarly weird-science-based investigative conspiracy adventure show, albeit one where the weird science was the centerpiece rather than the conspiracies.  It trades eight hundred nothing factions for three or four heavy hitters that constantly interfere, swaps the Department of Homeland Security for the FBI, and drops Mulder, the spooky mystic, and Scully, the obtuse skeptic, in favor of Olivia Dunham, the skeptical mystic who has spooky abilities and is sort of obtuse about them.

Now, I have had serious misgivings about this show for a while.  It has some content regularities that bother me on a visceral level, and the metaplot (as was the case with the X-Files) pulls into a nosedive pretty fast.  But, man, the second season finale is just unconscionable.  It is some of the worst writing I’ve seen on television.

I have a mother who watches Hallmark, people.  And I’m saying this is bad writing.

Now, I’m going to go into ludicrous amounts of detail and write too much as is my wont, but here’s my basic synopsis:  If you’re not watching, don’t start, and if you are, stop.  The bad storytelling is coming from inside the show and you are all at risk.  Go watch Daredevil, which is a good show that features good writing and also Frank Castle’s ridiculous coffee addiction.

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Blue Dark Guy vs. Gray Dark Guy: Dawn of Justice

March 30th, 2016

Marvel Entertainment is eating the comics market.  Their shared cinematic universe has obviously paid off, netting them several of the largest opening weekends in history and changing the landscape to the extent that “superhero movie” is now the major genre rather than an industry in-joke.  They made the transition to online comics well ahead of their competitors and seem to be making major inroads.  Shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones are critically acclaimed, sought after, and seemingly universally enjoyed, and are already the forerunners for at least two more of their kind.

DC has a sum total of superior cartoons.  They are running scared.

What I was afraid of going into Dawn of Justice is that it was going to be a rushed, patchjob mess clearly slamming five movies of exposition into something that could be released Before It’s Too Late.  I was afraid it was going to be incoherent and meandering, with huge failures of context and motivation.  I was worried – as I said – that the lack of contrast between Dark Gun nee Batman and The Blue Puncher was going to make their conflict tiresome, or at least uninspired.

These things are all true.  Dawn of Justice is not the worst movie I’ve ever seen.  I don’t even really think it would necessarily have been a bad movie had it been released after, you know, actual franchises happened.  But it is not good, and it’s a terrible way to try to force onto a Marvel-style platform.

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Of Endless Gray

March 26th, 2016

Let’s talk about contrast for a moment.

Within the realms of fiction, it’s kind of a given that there is going to be a Bad Guy.  It’s not absolute – there are plenty of Man Against Nature stories and quite a few Man Against Society ones (although usually then it’s a Bad Society) – but it generally stands.  Someone is on the wrong side, and the specific genre generally dictates whether he’s shamed, arrested, or Liam Neesoned.

As I mentioned way, way back in the day, though, our society demands increasingly complex villains.  Even fifty years ago you could get away with tying women to railroad tracks just as a thing to do, but we’re past that.  More effective villains – or even just antagonists – are the ones that are humanized, so that even if we hate them we can understand at least part of what makes them tick.  Being relatable on an intellectual level can make a Bad Guy more poignant, more memorable, or more detestable, because we can understand him not merely as an obstacle for the hero but as a guy who is bad.

Meanwhile, our culture in particular has had an increasingly desperate love affair with antiheroes.  Even while our villains are becoming more reasonable and complicated, our heroes are ignoring boundaries, killing indiscriminately, and displaying as many negative social qualities as they can cram into the story.  It’s gotten to the point that in a movie like Captain America – which, as a plot, was not great – simply having a heroic character who is a good person and does the right thing seems so mind-blowing that it makes the entire experience.  Because he’s suddenly the only character in the room who isn’t torturing prisoners or butchering security guards.

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Dancin’ Superman

March 19th, 2016

A while back, I relayed an opinion (that is, someone else’s) that Call of Cthulhu was the only ‘mature’ roleplaying game because the heroes can’t achieve a perfect victory.  In the world of adults – the real world – there isn’t a single long-haired Japanese man you can beat up to fix everything.  Ousting a dictator won’t make his country a paradise.  Shooting one terrorist won’t end the bombings.  Discovering one vaccine isn’t going to stop millions of people from dying anyways.  If we translate that through a fantasy lens, you run into a situation where blowing up a nine-tongued demon worm saves this town, this time, but doesn’t suddenly correct the devastation or heal the psychological scars or even slow the next eldritch catastrophe.

Bad Call of Cthulhu takes this way too far, doubling down on the idea that no one can win and just maddening and murdering every hero no matter what they do.  Good Call of Cthulhu invests fallible, fragile heroes with greater nobility, because they keep on holding out in the face of literally impossible odds.

Another thing I said a while back, though, is that there’s no one system that covers every functional need.  Nobody really wants to play Call of Cthulhu all the time.  Most people don’t want to play Call of Cthulhu at all.  Nobody wanted to play Ravenloft except me, and it would have been bloody amazing.  I think.

Which brings us to Superman.

A new theory I’m pretty fond of – and which I’m pretty sure I invented – is that what makes Superman super isn’t that he has all the powers, but all the victories.  He doesn’t have to compromise, and he doesn’t leave a wake of destruction.  In Superman, a terrified 12-year-old with the power of several gods gets talked down before anyone gets hurt.  In Superman, when there’s still some good in a bad guy, somebody gets through to him in time.  In Superman, when evil deities show up and wage a war of obliteration against Earth, the destruction is minimal, the buildings are repaired instantly at no real cost, and the only guy who dies is Dan Turpin.  And that’s a really big deal, because nobody dies in Superman.  Hell, even when absolutely everything is against him he doesn’t have to murder the bad guys.  There’s another way, and he finds it.  Because he’s Superman.

By the way, spoiler warning.

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Cue the Magnificent Seven

March 15th, 2016

Darkseid [sic] is not DC’s Apocalypse.  I understand the confusion – they’re both bald, gray-skinned, talkative megalomaniacs in blue armor who act almost exclusively through intermediaries while being capable of smashing tanks and spend all their time pursuing some sort of vaguely-defined scientific perfection.  But, for all his psychoses, Apocalypse is a pissy mutant with a god complex.  Darkseid is a god.

Good Darkseid stories are not about Darkseid punching people, because that’s not what he’s there to do.  There are a lot of villains that can punch people.  Darkseid is smarter, more merciless, more calculating, better equipped, and better prepared.  And he’s virtually invincible, practically immortal, and can atomize stuff by thinking about looking at it.  He’s supposed to be the sort of force of nature that can be checked, but not stopped, and slowing down his attempts to unlock a mathematical formula that accomplishes something a great deal like literal omnipotence – even if it’s kind of stupidly named (see also “Darkseid”) – is supposed to be a Big Victory for the heroes.  It’s like going the distance against Apollo Creed.  Wrecking the guy’s plan is spitting in the eye of the devil.

So let’s have a word about Justice League:  War.

War is based on the New 52 Justice League, and follows a planetary invasion of Earth by Apokolips [sic], the arrival of Darkseid, the formation of the Justice League, the defeat of Darkseid, and the repulsion of Apokolips by Earth in like an hour of movie time.  It’s not… bad, really, but it’s really fast, relies on some unfortunate characterizations, and more or less uses Darkseid as That Guy Who Shoots Lasers.  It’s weird (and maybe a little sad) that the Superman adventure show intended for children handled Darkseid better, but it kind of did.
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