disjoint thoughts

A few thoughts about D&D/Gamma World

2011-12-31T17:30:00.001-05:00

It's wintertime, and thoughts turn towards gaming (or at least mine do). While most of my gaming these days revolves around games suitable for playing with a four-year old, I've also been thinking a bit about my current (if sporadic) D&D and Gamma World games. As my players know, I've been a bit unhappy with my games for a while now, though I haven't exactly been able to put my finger on why I've been unhappy. My most common complaint sums up as "the combats are too long", but thinking it over, I don't think that's quite right. It isn't that the combats are too long in an objective sense -- it's that the combats are too long by the metics I want to apply to role-playing game combats.

What do I mean by this? As I've always run RPGs, combat serves one of two purposes. In an exploration/sandbox type game, combat is essentially a random or quasi-random act of violence that reinforces the danger surrounding the area being explored. Think of the classic "Keep on the Borderlands" - why does combat occur in this setting? It occurs because the characters are wandering through a complex of caves inhabited by hostile creatures. Or two of my other favorites - "The Lost City" and "The Isle of Dread". Both of these involve the characters exploring a dangerous area - a lost tomb and a "lost world" island full of dinosaurs. Combat in these scenarios is essential to the settings - the environments are dangerous places full of all kinds of hostile threats - without the combats you don't really have an adventure.

I said that in my experience combat served one of two purposes. The second purpose is the narrative purpose. In this situation, every combat is part of the plot. There is no "random violence" unless the plot requires there to be "random violence" -- and then the combat isn't random, just staged to emphasize that random violence is occurring around the characters. In just about every non-D&D game I've ever run or played, this is the model of combat I've used. Most of my experience in this area is probably with Torg, where the staged encounter was baked into the rules, but Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Superheroes, Star Frontiers, World of Darkness - basically anything I've ever run outside of D&D falls into this paradigm.

The problem that I've been sensing as "combat runs too long" is, I think, a problem with the framework I'm expecting from my role-playing games. In an exploratory game, where combat is about underscoring how dangerous the world is, quick combats are the rule because the point is to have the short adrenaline rush of danger and then get back to exploration. In a narrative game, where the combat is about advancing the plot, the duration of the combat is going to be driven by the need of the narrative. Short quick combats are used to punctuate narrative points, longer combats when reaching the climax of the narrative. And yeah, I'll admit that I'm probably prejudiced in this by my exposure to Torg as one of my first non-D&D, more narrative focused RPGs. Baked into the Torg system was the idea that there were "standard" encounters and "dramatic" encounters. Standard encounters were quick and punchy and of minimal threat to the characters - they might take some damage, but characters were unlikely to die in a standard encounter unless they were stupid or very unlucky. Dramatic encounters favored the villains, tended to be more drawn out, and were more likely to result in death or severe injury to a character.

But regardless, I think that narrows down why I find the current model of D&D unsatisfying - in either its 3rd or 4th edition. There is no fine grain distinction between combat modes in D&D except via the "level" of the encounter. All combats in 3e and 4e are essentially dramatic combats - fights to the death between equally matched opponents. If you lower the encounter level you can, in theory, get something like a Torg "standard" combat (where the PCs have an advantage) but in practice what you get is a combat where the PCs have an advantage but it STILL takes an hour for them to whittle the hit points of the villains down to the point of death or surrender.

So this points to how I probably need to solve this problem - a change in my expectations for what an adventure "should" be. My players all insist that they like the D&D 4e game system - they are all really enjoying the tactical combat - so shifting to a different game system is not really an option. What's more, our limited schedule of games means that my preferred kind of narrative style game (full of long-running mysteries and conspiracies behind the action) is out anyway - nobody can ever remember what happened last session, let alone what happened several sessions ago, when you only play once every 2 or 3 months. So I need to shift my expectations. For the near term, I'm going to shift to more "delve" style adventures. My players enjoy the tactical combat, so why not just give them some combat encounters linked together by narrative instead of coming up with a branching narrative and using that to dictate what combat encounters might happen? I'm basically thinking of "bad action movie" sort of plotting - the kind of thing I complain about when I see it in a movie (see the "Tomb Raider" movies for a classic example). But I think this might work for the "beer and pretzels" role playing game that my gaming sessions have become.

Whatever it is, I've got to do something different. Because as much as I enjoy hanging out with everyone on game days, I'm not really enjoying the games I've been running and something needs to change.

Gamma World Update

2011-10-10T22:30:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we had our third session of Gamma World and much was accomplished. The band of merry mutants were able to beat back the robots at the back door of the Federated Robotics factory and push into the main factory area. After an encounter with a lonely and bored security door (bypassed because the AI was more friendly than smart and easily distracted by a laptop plugged into a local interface port), they fought their way into the main factory floor and waged a pitched battle with barbaric hoop bandits and their robot servitors. Mid battle an alpha flux occurred - shifting all of their powers and throwing them a bit off balance. In the end the party triumphed and discovered a cache of Omega Tech weaponry that made everyone happy.

So that ends the first adventure for this group - the adventure that came in the Gamma World boxed set. Overall it was a lot of fun, but I have to admit we've tweaked a few things. For starters, we've made the Alpha Mutations a lot more stable - instead of changing after each encounter the characters keep their mutations until an Alpha Flux happens. We tried the "change after every encounter" rule and it just didn't work as well in practice as it seemed like it would reading it.

As of right now we're planning on keeping with Gamma World when our next game day comes up. The characters managed to get to 3rd level through the course of this adventure, and it will be interesting to see how the game operates at higher levels. We'll get back to the D&D game, but for now the Gamma World game has a grip on us. And who knows - with the crazy way Gamma World works these characters may end up over in the D&D game before things are all said and done.

(Lords of Creation is also messing with my head - I have some ideas about laying a Lords of Creation mask over the top of the Gamma World setting as it sits right now. But that's probably another post - maybe after I talk about the "Powers" setup in Lords of Creation...)

Lords of Creation - Skills

2011-10-03T22:15:00.000-04:00

The skill system of Lords of Creation is one of the more unusual elements of the game. The game provides a large list of skills, with each skill broken into 5 levels. Each level of a skill carries a "name" that indicates the capabilities of that skill at that level. For example, the Detective skill is broken down into four levels as:

Police Connections
Basic Criminology
Wiretapping
Advanced Criminology
Futuristic/Magical*

The named level of a skill gives an indication of what the character is capable of doing with the skill. The game advises that if a character has a skill level that indicates he can do something, then the skill should work automatically. For example, a character with Detective - 1 would have Police Connections, which means he automatically gets access to small favors from his friends in the police force like checking addresses or tracking a license plate, and he also gets a number of criminal informants who answer questions "for a price". Essentially this "skill" mostly operates like a perk would in other games (like Champions or GURPS).

When the circumstances aren't typical, or when characters want to do things that aren't covered by level names, then the player can make a percentile roll based on the number of skill levels they have. Each level gives a 20% chance of success in a task - so a character attempting to use his Detective skill to, say, push his Police Connections to do something that might get them in trouble, then the player makes a percentile roll and tries to get a result less than 20% (since his character has a single level of the Detective skill). If the character had Detective - 4 and tried to take the same action, the player would need to roll an 80% or less. There's always a 5% chance of failure minimum, so a character with Detective - 5 would only have a 95% chance of success, not 100%.

All in all this is an interesting system. The system requires a lot of GM adjudication - there's a specific admonition that the GM watch out for (and disallow) skill uses that would lead to "ridiculous results". But this was typical for skill-based games at the time - rare was the game that specifically outlined exactly what every skill could or could not do. This system seems fairly simple, and the mix of perks with skills is a nice touch that keeps things lightweight.

There are some downsides for this system, though. Take a look at the complete skill list:

There's a lot to like there, but also a lot that seems a little strange. For starters, the progression given by the skill levels is somewhat odd. The Building skill, for example, suggests that a character needs Carpentry before he can learn Metal Working, and Metal Working before Electrical work. These things aren't necessarily related, let alone in a nice progression like this. The whole skill list is full of things like this -- places where the game gives an explicit progression for an occupation that, really, doesn't need to be an explicit progression. This is pretty easy to fix - in those cases where there is a progression that isn't really a progression let the player pick the named level he wants.

Another "problem" with the skills is that they're completely independent of abilities - a character's Speed attribute, which controls his manual dexterity, has no bearing on his ability to use the Stage Magician - 3 skill Escape Artist to escape a set of handcuffs. Some folks will see this as a problem, but I'm not so sure. The game is essentially saying that training trumps natural ability in a way that most games these days don't. Where it may break down is for high level Lords of Creation, where their huge attributes should maybe give them some advantage here. But that's actually points to a larger problem with the advancement system of the game, which I suspect doesn't scale the way it should (more on that in a future post, once I've given it some more thought).

Another interesting element of this skill system is the existence of Futuristic/Magical ranks for each occupation. Basically each skill has an extra level that can only be obtained if the character travels through time or to another dimension. This isn't a problem - that's actually a fairly cool idea and it one that fits with what we've seen so far of the implied setting for the game. This means that nobody but a dimension hopping character has a chance to become the best of the best in any occupation. I like that idea quite a bit - if the PCs are supposed to be dimension hopping heroes building their way up toward godhood, the idea that you can only completely master a skill by leaving your own dimension would fit nicely.

The Combat skill operates differently than the other skills. There is actually a separate Combat skill for each weapon in the game, the Combat skills do not have named levels, and there is no upper limit on how many levels of a Combat skill can be purchased. Combat skill levels add to the character's Physical Score to determine what a player needs to roll under to hit an opponent in combat, and add to the damage done by the character when he hits with that weapon. It's a fairly simple system with one nice wrinkle - the character cannot allocate more than half of his skill levels to Combat skills. I imagine that in most games the characters will all be right up at that limit -- allocating exactly half of their skill levels to Combat.

Skills, like everything else in the game, are based on a character's Personal Force score. Each point of Personal Force gives the character one more level of a skill to purchase. Neophytes, then, have between 1 and 10 skill levels, Apprentices between 11 and 20, and so on. Ranks are purchased on a one for one basis with no increasing cost for higher levels - tying total levels to Personal Force puts another hard limit on how much min/maxing a player can do, but from what I've seen so far with this game, anyone min/maxing the system is engaging in a giant exercise in "missing the point". The game system is so loose -- with so much left up to the discretion of the GM -- that min/maxing is really probably not going to be a game worth playing with this system.

Lords of Creation - Creating Characters

2011-10-02T22:33:00.001-04:00

After the one-page intro section, Lords of Creation moves to what I often considered the most important part of an RPG during the days of my youth - character creation. When I first started gaming I would often sit and create character after character just to get the hang of a new system. I don't do that so much anymore, mostly because the character creation process in modern games isn't as much fun. Often character creation in games these days boils down to a process that is only slightly more fun than filing my annual income taxes. I think that this is because most modern RPGs have taken their character creation process directly from Champions, where no randomness is allowed. While this allows players to realize the exact character they have in their heads, the character creation process loses aspects that I have always found fun - that bit of randomness that spontaneously generates a character you would never in a million years have conceived of yourself. This is one of the things I love about the new Gamma World - the random character creation process that has a bit of a "throwback" feel to earlier days.

Like most games of its time, Lords of Creation has a semi-random character creation process. Every character has five basic attributes that feel very familiar to folks who grew up on D&D - Muscle, Speed (which covers "muscular coordination and manual dexterity"), Stamina, Mental ("intuition, logic, and willpower") and Luck. The first four of these map to 5 of the six standard D&D attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution and a mix of Intelligence and Wisdom), and are generated with scores between 2 and 20 for new characters. Which again makes for very familiar territory, though unlike D&D the scores are generated by rolling 2d10 rather than 3d6.

Also like D&D, each attribute in LoC grants a modifier. Unlike D&D, where the modifiers spread from -3 to +3 based on ability scores (with an average score granting no modifier), in LoC the modifiers are always positive. Each ability score is divided by 10 and rounded up to generate its associated modifier - so a score of 1-10 is always a +1 modifier, 11-20 is +2, etc. This means that starting characters will always have modifiers of either +1 or +2. The various modifiers are Close Combat Damage Bonus (based on Muscle), Initiative Bonus (based on Speed), Healing Bonus (based on Stamina), Power Modification (based on Mental) and the Luck Roll (based on Luck, and is computed as 5 + the Luck modifier).

In addition to the modifiers, another derived score called the Physical Score is computed. The Physical Score is the average of the character's 3 physical attributes and gets used in combat. The Lords of Creation combat system seems to be a modified version of the D&D combat system, and one of the modifications is the Physical Score. This attribute is what a character needs to roll under in order to hit an unarmored opponent - LoC has a "roll under" combat system rather than a "roll over" system.

Once abilities and modifiers are computed, the character's Personal Force is tallied. Instead of using a direct leveling mechanism like D&D, LoC uses a derived attribute called Personal Force to determine the power level of characters. Attributes are summed and divided by 10 (rounded up) to determine the character's Personal Force. Every 10 points of Personal Force gives a power rank for characters, along with an associated title - Personal Force of 10 or less gives the character the title of Neophyte, 20 or less is Apprentice, 30 or less is Master of Space and so on. In addition to the change of title, each level of Personal Force grants a number of other facets of a character. The Experience Table, that shows what each level in Lords of Creation grants, is reproduced below:

The "# of Powers" column indicates how many powers a character's Personal Force level grants him - powers don't show up in Character Creation because the maximum Personal Force that a starting character is capable of having is exactly 10 (if all 5 attributes have a maximum score of 20), which means that all starting characters, no matter how well the dice roll, will be Neophytes.

The "XP to increase" column gives a hint as to the advancement system of Lords of Creation. Basically, as each character earns experience points (XP), they can spend it to increase ability scores. Interestingly, ability scores are increased semi-randomly - the player chooses which ability he wants increased, pays the XP cost based on his current Personal Force, and then rolls 1d6 and increases the chosen ability score by the amount on the die. I honestly can't think of another game that has even a semi-random advancement scheme like this one, and I wonder how frustrating it gets for players. Interestingly, two characters who have earned the same XP could end up with fairly radically different advancement paths depending on how lucky their players are (at least in the short term - in the long run things should even out, though we all know some players who always seem to be able to roll sixes when they need them...)

That last column is an interesting one - the "Abilities" column gives what the game calls "Title Abilities". The game explicitly says that these work "only at the discretion of the GM". Most of these seem to be designed for the GM to create world-hopping adventures, like Space Travel (that allows a character to teleport through interstellar distances with 10 minutes of preparation) or Dimensional Language (that allows a character to speak whatever local languages exist wherever they land). This whole section gives off a "Time Lord" vibe to me, down to the fact that one of the powers is Transmigration, which grants the character the ability to resurrect after death into a new form that sounds a lot like a Time Lord regenerating into a new body. In fact, if you move the various Projection and Travel powers into a device, you'd have the basis for a Time Lord campaign (whether you call the device a TARDIS or not).

The last power in the list is an interesting one - Construction grants the character the ability to create new universes and the suggestion is that a player whose character reaches those levels of Personal Force should become a GM, design worlds and run games in the worlds generated by their Lords of Creation. Which is an interesting suggestion, but I don't know how well it would work in practice. And that's before we get to the fact that characters with a Personal Force of over 100 would have ability scores in the 200+ range, all raised 1d6 points at a time from their starting level in the 2-20 range.

Anyway - back to the mundane Neophyte creation process. The next step is to generate the character's starting funds by rolling d100 and multiply by $10, which should immediately be used to purchase equipment. If they buy Armor, they should use note the bonus the Armor grants for combat. Life Points are determined as the character's Stamina plus 1d10 per level, which means that as a character levels up he's going to get Life Points from two places - the Stamina attribute that needs to be raised to get that increase in Personal Force and the additional d10 from leveling up. It seems like the Stamina attribute is going to quickly start to dominate the Life Point total within a few levels and the d10 points are just added bonus.

The game then notes "Characters should begin the game as individuals in the 20th century society and should choose their skills and equipment accordingly." Interestingly enough, the game hasn't said anything about selecting skills at this point, but it turns out that the number of Skill Levels a character has is determined by his Personal Force on a one-to-one basis (i.e. a Personal Force of 7 gets a character 7 points to spend on skill levels). This gets covered with more depth in the skills section (part 3), but a nod here would have been nice.

The section ends with a walkthrough showing how to create a character and gives a sample character sheet, along with a step-by-step summary for how to create a character. Interestingly, the numbered steps don't exactly correspond with the order that tasks were laid out in this section, and I actually prefer the clarity of the numbered steps to the structure laid out in the section. The character creation walkthrough is actually a really good example of character creation, and were I organizing the book I might have led with the step-by-step example of character creation and put the details about attributes, character advancement, and the rest after it.

The section ends with a sample character sheet generated by the character generation walkthrough - Virgil "Doc" Fortunato, a stage magician and cat burglar turned adventurer:

Apparently the game did not come with blank character sheets - from what I've read online the game came with dice and two books (the main rulebook and the Book of Foes). The way the rulebook is written, it's clear that originally the game was supposed to ship at the very least with a sample adventure ("The Horn of Roland", turned into a separate product) and probably with a pad of blank character sheets. It looks like Avalon Hill changed the format and eliminated these from the package. This seems like a pretty cheap move by Avalon Hill to me - the books are already on low quality paper and the game apparently only came with 3 polyhedral dice (the rules say the box should have a d6, a d10, and a d20 - it even explicitly says to roll the d10 twice for percentile rolls). On the upside, though, you don't need much for a character sheet - the sample character sheet can be easily reproduced with a sheet of notebook paper (or these days a few minutes in OpenOffice or Word).

Lords of Creation - Intro

2011-09-27T19:30:00.001-04:00

While many modern games will open up with a piece of game fiction, back in 1984 intros like that were rare. It was more typical to open up with a "What Is Roleplaying" introduction, which is what Lords of Creation gives us here. This would have been a perfect place for a blurb telling us what the game is about, but we don't really get that. The closest we get to that is:

LORDS OF CREATION is a role-playing game of science fantasy, fantasy, science fiction and high adventure that explores the farthest reaches of the imagination. Game adventures take place throughout time, space and other dimensions. The game is designed for both experience role-playing gamers and beginners. All that's needed to play are these rules, the dice included in the game, and your imagination!

And that's as close as the intro gets to describing the concepts behind the game. It then goes into a fairly typical "What Is Roleplaying" spiel, though the game definitely has a point-of-view about what a role-playing game is:

A role-playing game is very special: it doesn't need a board or playing pieces. Instead, the people play the game in their imaginations. The game rules provide a structure around which imagination weaves an adventure in the same way a group of people might write a novel or make a movie together. As a role-playing game is played, the people involved in the game make up details of the plot and experience adventure through their characters and the foes they meet.

While that may seem like a typical RPG intro, I think it's notable because the focus here is clearly on collaborative story creation. This wasn't a completely new way to think about RPGs at the time, but it is something that people tend to associate with games from the late 80s (like Vampire). The push towards story-focused games - rather than "challenge focused" games - was already going on even back in 1984. The game doesn't really provide a lot of mechanical support for these kinds of story-focused games, but the intent is there, and the rest of the introduction expands on this somewhat. The intro suggests that the GM is there to create "an outline for the adventure", including the setting and foes and "other personalities" while the players "work together to fulfill the goals of each adventure". You can see how this is an outgrowth from "exploring ruins, killing monsters and taking their stuff", and an attempt to take that idea and make it more abstract.

Lords of Creation - Opening Moves

2011-09-26T19:30:00.002-04:00

To start my examination of Lords of Creation, it's probably best to begin at the beginning. In this case, with the Cover :

There we go - right from the cover we know that this is going to be a genre-mashup game. We have a couple of adventurers wandering through an obvious portal between worlds. On the one side a fairly standard fairy-tale kingdom complete with menacing dragon. On the other some kind of pock-marked alien landscape with a robot standing sentinel. Our adventurers are clad in strange garb - one is a man who is maybe supposed to look like his clothes were designed during the Italian Renaissance carrying a blaster pistol, and the other is a woman who looks to me like a starship pilot casting a lightning bolt.

The art in the book is credited to Dave Billman - I don't know that I've encountered his art outside of this game and it's pretty inconsistent. To me the cover piece, while somewhat evocative, isn't exactly the best piece of art in the book. Ah well - moving on to the Table of Contents:

One noteworthy thing about this Table of Contents right off the bat - it's typeset in Souvenir Demi (aka Soutane), the same font as the Moldvay edited D&D Basic Set. I wonder if this was Avalon Hill purposely attempting to mimic the D&D Basic Set that Moldvay compiled or if, since Moldvay was in charge of design and development this was just Moldvay's choice for the book.

The next thing to note is that the ToC is very detailed. That's noteworthy in this day and age, but I recall that back in the day detailed ToCs were typical (along with decent indexes - which this book also has). What's nice about the level of detail here is that we can see up front some of the elements of the game. Part 3 is skills, and the skill list embedded into the Table of Contents shows some very high-level skills ("Commando", "Espionage", "Scientist") and some strange ones ("Futuristic?"). Part 6 is powers, and here in the ToC we get an entire list of powers.

Another fact that comes out here is that most of the book is directed at players. How to create a character, skills, equipment, combat, powers - this is all "player info" and it covers 2/3rds of the book. Since the boxed set also includes the "Book of Foes" as a kind of "monster manual" for the GM, this probably isn't all that odd. But what is kind of interesting to me is that the game has two books and yet it doesn't split the info between a "player's guide" and a "GM's guide". It would have been an easy way to split the organization, and one with precedent by 1984, but for whatever reason it wasn't. I suspect that part of the rationale might be tied to the fact that both of the books are 64 pages on cheap quality paper - if Avalon Hill dictated the format up front, Moldvay and his editor might have had no choice to fill the pages. The last 14 pages are all setting information, and I get the feeling that Moldvay could have filled as many pages as necessary with settings.

And look at those settings. Just from reading the names in the ToC I wanted to know more - "The Elder Lands", "Imperial Terra", "The Land of Ulro", "The Swashbuckling Era", "Priddo", "The Elemental Planes", "The Nine Worlds". Overall a promising start.

Lords of Creation

2011-09-25T16:55:00.000-04:00

So late last week the following showed up in my mailbox:

Lords of Creation! The copy is pretty beat up, but both books are complete and mostly intact.

This is a game that I know very little about. I remember ads for it showing up in Dragon magazine way back when, but historically speaking that's about it. My interest in it was piqued a few years ago when I found out/was reminded that Tom Moldvay was the designer of the game. Moldvay was the author of pretty much all of my favorite D&D modules back in the day -- most notably B4 - The Lost City and X2 - Castle Amber. I have probably run both of those adventures a dozen times each over the decades. But all I did then was read up a bit about it from the one review I could find on RPGNet and make a mental note to keep watching for it at Half-Price Books. Reviews on Jeff's Gameblog and Grognardia made me more interested in finding the game, but still didn't motivate me to get to eBay and buy a copy -- mostly because a boxed set in good condition goes for a bit too much for an unknown quantity to my tastes.

Well last week I found the "Book of Foes" at Half-Price Books for a couple of bucks. They didn't have the main rulebook, but the Book of Foes was in really good shape. And flipping through the book it was just so weird that I had to have the game. Fortunately, the stars were aligned just right and I was able to find a beat-up copy cheap on eBay. And after an initial read-through I am not disappointed with the purchase. In fact, I'm going to be saving my pennies to get copies of the three adventures that Avalon Hill published for the game.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a sucker for "genre-mashup" games - my Gamma World posts have been about adding more sword-and-sorcery fantasy to the science-fantasy Gamma World setting, and I tend to do that with all of my games. Play in a D&D game with me long enough and a crashed spaceship is bound to appear, and if I'm running a space opera game you're probably going to end up at odds with a wizard or (if I'm in a Star Trek mood) facing off against the Greek gods. And my favorite RPG of all time - the one I ran during my personal gaming Golden Age of High School and early college - is Torg. A system/setting that exists purely as an excuse to rationalize genre mashup campaigns for players who hate genre mashup.

And Lords of Creation is pure genre mashup. Like Torg, it seems to exist <i>because</i> the designer wanted to create a game to excuse genre mashup. Unlike Torg, the system for the game is insanely lightweight - the rulebook is 64 pages, roughly a quarter of which is setting notes. The rules, in fact, have a lot of similarity to Moldvay's Basic Dungeons and Dragons rules. Not an exact clone of the rules, but anyone who played Basic D&D could probably have grasped the rules to Lords of Creation pretty quickly.

Over the next few posts I'm going to post some more thoughts on the Lords of Creation game - the rules, the setting, everything. The reviews I linked to above are decent high-level glosses of what the system is, but Moldvay had some really interesting ideas back in 1984 when he came up with this game. The game system seems to be almost a "transitional fossil" - a snapshot of something between "old school" and more modern game systems. Plus, it's impressive that Moldvay could come up with a rules system that he at least thought could cover any genrea across any era - time-travel is one of the suggested adventure types described in the game - and yet fit into basically 48 pages of rules. To me this is a pretty darn impressive feat and I'd like to take a look and see what he actually accomplished with it.

More Gamma World

2011-09-19T22:19:00.001-04:00

So yesterday we had our second Gamma World session. Three of our four intrepid mutants returned to the table to continue their search for the source of the strange malfunctioning robots that are bothering the village of Owl on the outskirts of the Great Forest. Last time they tracked the robots to a warren of mutant badger-men (badders) and after a pitched battle they tracked the source of the robots to somewhere deep into the lower levels of the badder warrens.

We picked up there this week, and our mutants tracked their robot through the badder lair and into a connected series of natural caverns. After fighting some pests in these caverns (and almost falling prey to some blood birds) they found that the robot tracks in the mud led to a distinctly unnatural cavern - some kind of cave built with Ancient technology which led in two directions. Following one direction they found a metal door with the strange Ancient sign reading "Federated Robot Technologies - Lower Level Employee Entrance" above it and an odd-looking panel beside the door. Treating this as a dead-end, the mutants explored the caves in the other direction -- and found the small cave opening up into a much larger Ancient cave with ramps leading up toward the surface and the cryptic letter "L" painted on the walls.

Traveling up the ramp, the mutants discovered that on the surface was another door - this one made of some kind of unbreakable glass - with the cryptic words "Federated Robot Technologies - A Division of OmniTech International - Paving The Way To A Work-Free Future" painted above it. Through the glass door seemed to be some kind of indoor jungle, and after some debate (and attempts to break open the door), the mutants decided to return to the underground entrance that they had tracked the robot to.

After some discussion one of the mutants (the electrokinetic-felinoid named Tom) proposed using his Alpha Mutation to teleport through the door - and overcharging it to take everyone with him. Unfortunately his overcharge failed and he randomly started teleporting - teleporting himself through the door without the rest of the mutants. He found what seemed to be a storage area full of dormant robots. Searching through the room he found an Ancient badge and used it to open the doors - which activated the robots in the room. A pitched battle followed and the mutants were forced to retreat back through the doors and slam them shut to lick their wounds.

We were afraid that the giant mind-breaker named Brainpuncher had been killed by the robots. Androo had failed three death saves and was preparing to roll up a new character, when we noticed that his Alpha Mutation should have prevented most of the damage he'd taken (he'd been endowed with a rubbery skeleton and had forgotten). So in the end, I decided he was knocked unconscious and everyone thought he was dead. When we left our intrepid mutants they had barricaded the door and were licking their wounds, preparing to figure out what to do next.

Sci-Fi Channel Universe

2011-08-02T23:00:00.001-04:00

So last night I watched the Sci-Fi Channel Monday night line-up: Eureka, Warehouse 13 and a new show caled Alphas. For those not in-the-know, Eureka is about the small town full of geniuses in Washingon State, where the sheriff has to deal with all kinds of screwball weirdness -- like antigravity machines accidentally getting turned on and causing the town bank to float away -- which was almost but not quite the plot last night. And Warehouse 13 is about the giant warehouse full of bizarre mad science technology and magic items being collected and maintained by a government conspiracy. These two shows have been crossing over for a couple of seasons now and have established themselves as being in the same universe.

Alphas is a new show about a group of "people born with incredible abilities based on their genetics" who have been organized into a group to track down and stop other "alphas" who are using their powers for selfish/evil reasons. Think X-men without costumes or code names and with a Sci-Fi Channel TV show budget. The show so far has been fairly serious - the alphas are generally tracking down individuals who are part of a terrorist network of other Alphas. Think Brotherhood of Evil Mutants without costumes or code names and with a Sci-Fi Channel TV show budget.

Last night they ran an ad for next week's Alphas. A recurring character from Warehouse 13 is going to be showing up on Alphas: Dr. Vanessa Calder -- an agent of the Warehouse who also works for the CDC (and is played by Lindsay Wagner because that's awesome). Meaning that all three of these shows are sharing the same universe. This is weirding me out mostly because the tone of Alphas is so different from the other two shows. And yet it's pretty cool - it's like Giffen and DeMattias's Justice League International and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing being in the same universe back in the day. And the three shows are all pretty good too - though Alphas seems to be the weakest and it takes itself a bit too seriously in my opinion. So far it's a much better take on the "people with powers" genre than Heroes was, so it has that going for it. Unfortunately most of the characters are kind of bland and some of the ones who aren't bland are kind of unlikeable. We'll see if that changes over the season.

Anyway the shared universe idea is kind of cool regardless. You've got super-science from Eureka mixing with the "artifact" magic/science/weirdness of Warehouse 13 and that's some neat stuff. I personally don't have a problem with the ~~X-men~~ Alphas getting into the game too, though it will probably annoy people who value pseudo-realism in their "people with superpowers" stories.

And in my head I've decided that this is the same universe that the Stargate SG-1 stuff takes place in because, hey, why not? In fact, if they decide to reboot the SG-1 franchise it would be kind of cool to have it take place on the same planet as Warehouse 13. Not everything needs to be explained by Ancient Astronauts after all.

Oh yeah - THAT will work

2011-08-02T21:30:00.000-04:00

So Warner is planning on making another Green Lantern movie despite the fact that the first one didn't do as well as they hoped. Well good - it's a decent franchise idea. I mean, I'm not a big Hal "second most boring superhero on the planet" Jordan fan, but there's an appeal there. Not character setpiece type of drama, but big space adventures, or possibly aliens coming to Earth to menace the locals. It's "space cop with a magic wishing ring" - how can you screw that up?

To go forward we need to make it a little edgier and darker...

Gah? Green Lantern - again "space cop with a magic wishing ring" - and you want to make it "edgier and darker"? WHY? FOR THE LOVE OF GROD WHY?

It's like they've got some program that they're using to try to target post-adolescent males, and when things don't work the only thing they can do is ADD MORE EDGY DARKNESS. The thing doesn't have any other settings - and heaven forbid they think about maybe, you know, making a movie that appeals to a wider audience.

Most prolific DC Comics writers

2011-08-02T20:30:00.001-04:00

Now this is interesting. It's a list of the "most prolific" DC comics writers as determined by the number of pages of published stories as recorded in the Grand Comics Database. Very cool - I didn't know that the GCD had the kind of interface where you could get direct access to their data like that.

Interesting, but not too surprising I guess, that Robert Kanigher would be the most prolific -- he wrote a LOT of stuff back in the day. And it's across every metric too - pages, stories, issues it just doesn't matter. Gardener Fox comes in second, which is also not a surprise.

The surprising one for me is that Chuck Dixon comes in third. I knew that Dixon wrote a LOT of stuff for DC -- I remember buying a lot of it -- but damn, he's got more pages under his belt than Bob Haney or Carey Bates? That's surprising. Also surprising - Geoff Johns coming in right behind him. And he'll probably surpass him in a couple of years since he's only about a thousand pages and twenty stories behind him. And right now Johns has Justice Society as his #1 title -- I imagine that will shift to Green Lantern if he keeps on the book for much longer.

Gamma World Origins - Magic-Users

2011-08-01T23:58:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a bit more about adding "Thundarr the Barbarian" elements to the D&D Gamma World game. The previous three posts (and a few others that I'm still fleshing out) are some of my thoughts on characters whose primary abilities come through training rather than through mutations. I have some more ideas on these types of characters, but there are other ways to approach this problem. The Gamma World game has some suggestions on other origins that can be imagined as coming via training rather than training -- such as the Felinoid, Yeti or Speedster origins might be used for a martial artist, or the Hypercognitive as someone with highly trained intuition and reflexes.

This is approach I've been thinking about when it comes to magic-users in the Gamma World game. The Dark and Psi based origins almost all scream wizardry - pick two, put them together and you have a wizard. An elementalist, for example, could be built using some combination of Pyrokinetic (fire), Seismic (earth), Telekinetic (air), Cryokinetic (ice) and, with a bit of re-themeing Gelatinous (earth or water) origins -- different combinations of these origins give you different elementalists.

Other combinations can yield other types of magicians. The combination of Photonic and Empath creates a set of spells similar to the ones that Ariel from Thundarr the Barbarian uses. Entropic and Reanimator is a classic necromancer, while Demon and Pyrokinetic together give a slightly different take on a fire mage. Nightmare, Shapeshifter and a re-themed Doppelganger could be used to build an illusionist. For some serious sci-fi/fantasy crossover, combinations of Electrokinetic, Gravity Controller, Radioactive, Entropic, Magnetic, Temporal, Antimatter Blaster, and Photonic give a more modern science (or perhaps Mage the Ascension) take on the "elementalist" archetype.

While I think this approach can go far, I don't think it quite covers all the bases as far as classic wizard types go. For example, while the Doppleganger origin might be re-themed to work for a Summoner, a second origin for Summoners would be nice. Also few of the "elementalist" types include an effective "wall" power - walls of fire, ice and stone are kind of classic elementalist spells and it would be nice to have some of those. And some of the non-wizard magicians aren't really covered very well by these combinations -- while mixing a Plant origin with one of the elementalist choices above might make for a decent Druid, it still feels weak. And the only cleric option I've been able to think of so far seems to be a Mythic/Empath combination. So a few additional new origins might be called for, but in general I think this is a workable approach.

Another thing that would up the magic level of the game is to import Rituals to some degree from the D&D 4e rules. I know a lot of folks are less enamored with the rituals rules than I am, and I know my players haven't really made much use of them in my 4e game, but I still think that somehow those rules would be a good way to bring a bit more Thundarr into the game. I'll have more thoughts on those ideas in a later post.

Gamma World Origins - Fighter

2011-07-31T18:30:00.001-04:00

Fighter
There's nothing subtle about your fighting style.
You have a very classic approach to fighting -- you move up next to an enemy and you hit it. Simple and direct. Maybe your friends call you reckless, or maybe they appreciate your blunt technique.

Appearance: Your other origin is going to dictate your appearance -- with a little work almost anyone can learn to be a fighter.

FIGHTER TRAITS
Mutant Type: Strength; Bio; +2 to bio overcharge
Skill Bonus (Level 1): Gain a +4 bonus to Athletics checks
Incredible Stamina (Level 1): Gain a +2 bonus to Fortitude
Weapon Expertise (Level 1): You gain a +2 bonus to attacks made with melee weapons
Fighter Critical (Level 2 or 6): When you score a critical hit, the attack deals 1d10 extra damage and the target is knocked prone

FIGHTER POWERS

Hit 'Em Hard (Fighter Novice)

You back your attack up with your full might.
At-will * Physical, Weapon
Standard Action * Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength + your level + weapon accuracy vs. AC
Hit: 2[W] + twice Strength mod + twice your level physical damage

Shake It Off (Fighter Utility)

Your foes are in awe of your ability to take their hits without flinching.
Encounter * Physical
Immediate Interrupt * Personal
Trigger: You are hit by an attack and take damage
Effect: Reduce the amount of damage by 5 + your Strength modifier. If the attack does no damage the attacker is surprised until the end of your next turn.

Manic Assault (Fighter Expert)
You unleash your full fury against your enemy with a flurry of blows
Encounter * Physical
Standard Action * Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength + your level + weapon accuracy vs.AC. Make the attack three times
Hit (one attack): 2[W] + Strength modifier + twice your level physical damage
Hit (two attacks): 3[W] + Strength modifier + twice your level physical damage and the target grands combat advantage until the end of your next turn
Hit (three attacks): 3[W] + Strength modifier + twice your level physical damage and the target grants combat advantage until the end of the encounter
Miss: The target is pushed 3 squares and falls prone

Notes: The Fighter is a take on the D&D Fighter class. The inspiration for this origin is less the more modern 3rd or 4th edition Fighter classes, who are probably better represented by the Brawler or the Knight. Instead this class is more inspired by the Basic/Expert Fighter class and my memories of Fighters played by others back in the day. The inspiration is almost purely in flavor rather than rules, with the intent to have a fighter who is the guy who just hits things.

Gamma World Origins - Knight

2011-07-30T16:30:00.002-04:00

Knight
You're a defender of the innocent and protector of the downtrodden. Or maybe you just like dressing up in armor and carrying a big sword.
You wander the land righting wrongs, slaying dragons and rescuing princesses. Or maybe you've sworn fealty to a king and act as the defender of his lands. Or maybe you're just a weirdo who likes to dress up in heavy armor and hit things with a sword.

Appearance: Your other origin is going to dictate your appearance -- Knights come from all walks of life. However no matter what your other origin is you're probably going to be wearing some heavy armor, toting a hefty melee weapon, and carrying a large shield. Otherwise why call yourself a Knight?

KNIGHT TRAITS
Mutant Type: Strength; Bio; +2 to bio overcharge
Skill Bonus (Level 1): Gain a +4 bonus to Athletics checks
Knightly Constitution (Level 1): Gain a +2 bonus to Fortitude
Armor Expertise (Level 1): You gain resist 5 physical while wearing heavy armor
Knight Critical (Level 2 or 6): When you score a critical hit, the attack deals 1d10 extra damage and the target grants combat advantage until the end of your next turn

KNIGHT POWERS

Guardian Strike (Knight Novice)

You position your foe to make it more difficult for him to attack your allies.
At-will * Physical, Weapon
Standard Action * Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength + your level + weapon accuracy vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Strength mod + your level physical damage and the target takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls against your allies until the start of your next turn

Hey You! Over Here! (Knight Utility)

You dive to the defense of an ally who is about to be hit by an attack
Encounter * Physical
Immediate Interrupt * Personal
Trigger: An ally is hit by a melee attack from an enemy adjacent to you
Effect: The attack targets you instead of your ally

Armored Assault (Knight Expert)
When the time comes, you can administer a beat down few can walk away from
Encounter * Physical
Standard Action * Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength + your level + weapon accuracy vs. AC
Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier + twice your level physical damage and the target is stunned until the start of your next turn
Miss: The target grants combat advantage until the start of your next turn

Notes: The Knight is another implementation of a specific kind of Fighter -- specifically the "tank" who can take a lot of punishment as well as dish it back out. Here Knight is short-hand for "heavy armor wearing warrior", though this origin should be suitable for characters fitting into the stereotypical knight protector mode as well.

Gamma World Origins - Brawler

2011-07-29T23:57:00.005-04:00

Brawler
You're an expert in fighting more than one opponent at a time
Your training focused on taking on multiple foes at once and making use of makeshift weapons that happen to be at hand. Perhaps you were trained by a Revered Master in an ancient form of a long lost martial art, or maybe you've just been in a lot of barroom brawls.

Appearance: Your other origin is going to dictate your appearance -- being a Brawler is more about training than birth (Brawlers are made, not born). However your career as a fighter has probably left its mark somehow. Maybe your face is scarred or you're missing an eye or an ear.

BRAWLER TRAITS
Mutant Type: Strength; Bio; +2 to bio overcharge
Skill Bonus (Level 1): Gain a +4 bonus to Athletics checks
Tough as Nails (Level 1): Gain a +2 bonus to Fortitude
You and What Army? (Level 1): You do not grant combat advantage when flanked
Brawler Critical (Level 2 or 6): When you score a critical hit, the attack deals 1d10 extra damage and the target is knocked prone

BRAWLER POWERS

Knock Heads (Brawler Novice)

When facing multiple opponents, you always know just how to maneuver to do the most damage.
At-will * Physical, Weapon
Standard Action * Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength + your level + weapon accuracy vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Strength mod + your level physical damage and a different enemy adjacent to you takes Strength modifier + your level physical damage

Duck! (Brawler Utility)

You dodge an incoming attack while directing it at one of your enemies
Encounter * Physical
Immediate Interrupt * Personal
Trigger: You are hit by an attack while adjacent to an enemy
Effect: The attack misses you and an adjacent enemy of your choice takes the damage instead

One Man Army (Brawler Expert)
It doesn't matter how many foes pile on, you can throw them off
Encounter * Physical
Standard Action * Close burst 1
Requirement: You must be wielding a melee weapon
Target: Each enemy in burst
Attack: Strength + your level + weapon accuracy vs. AC
Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier + your level physical damage and the target is pushed 3 squares and falls prone
Miss: The target is pushed 3 squares and falls prone

Notes: The Brawler is an implementation of a specific kind of Fighter. In both 3rd and 4th edition D&D the idea of a "cleaving" fighter who wades into battle and takes on all foes has been a popular one, and this is one interpretation of that idea. Truthfully this origin was inspired more by Thundarr the Barbarian, and a combination Brawler/Engineered Human might be a good fit a character like that. Ookla the Mok could also use this origin -- perhaps Yeti/Brawler with the claws re-themed to represent punches or wrestling grapples.

Gamma World

2011-07-29T22:48:00.001-04:00

This past weekend I finally got a chance to run a session of the new Gamma World game from Wizards of the Coast. All in all, I had an excellent time. Part of that is that my group is fairly awesome, but part of it does come down to the fact that the Gamma World rules are just fun. Character creation was relatively fast and simple -- and after a number of years of playing games where character creation takes hours and is all about making multiple painstaking choices, it was nice to run a game where dice are rolled and characters come together randomly.

I must admit that as much as I have always loved Gamma World, I've never envisioned Gamma World as the dark and serious place that a lot of old-school Gamma World lovers seem to. I suspect that this is because my first exposure to the post-apocalypse genre was not "The Road Warrior" or "Star Man's Son" but rather Thundar the Barbarian. The most recent edition of Gamma World is in many ways a Thundarr the Barbarian RPG -- and I'm just fine with that.

In fact, I'd like it to be even MORE of a Thundarr the Barbarian RPG than it is. What I'd like to do is incorporate some more D&D elements into the game. It's easy enough to pull in monsters -- 4e's monsters seem directly compatible with the game, so throwing a dragon or a beholder at my players shouldn't take a lot of work on my part. But I'd like to incorporate more of the traditional D&D classes and races too. I'm not the only one with this idea - Mark at Dice Monkey has been posting his thoughts on envisioning some D&D races as Gamma World Origins, and he linked to some work that was done at Chaos Grenade to imagine some D&D classes as Gamma World Origins as well.

I really like this idea for -- it makes it easier to do the kind of Thundarr the Barbarian/post-apocalyptic TORG/Rifts-light game that has appealed to me since I was, oh, probably 8 years old. So I'm going to put some effort into this and see what I can come up with.

And let's try this again

2011-07-29T22:02:00.000-04:00

So it's been a while (ha!) since I last tried to do this "blog" thing. It didn't go so well last time, but in the last 6 years my life has changed a bit. I've finished my degree and have had a kid, and I'm finding that I need a creative outlet. So I'm going to try this "blog" thing again

Right now I'm feeling the itch to work on gaming-related stuff, so this place is intended to be a bit of an outlet for that particular creative itch. So we'll see.

Pop Culture Overload! - Star Wars Episode III

2005-05-22T17:20:00.001-04:00

Too much pop culture this week, and I don't know what to talk about. I actually spent most of the weekend working on my homework and research, but sitting here Sunday night it feels like all I've done is fun stuff this weekend.

Friday night my lovely wife and I went to see the final Star Wars movie. My expectations were low for this one despite the good reviews I had read. I didn't think that "Episode I" was as bad as many folks did - I wasn't bothered by the kid or by Jar-Jar and I thought that the story was passable (if a little slow). I also thought both Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson put in performances that were good enough to keep the movie watchable.

No, my expectations were low for this movie purely because of "Episode II" - a movie so bad that it reached back in time and actually made Episode I seem like a worse movie to me. The only redeeming thing about Episode II is Ewan McGregor's performance, and that's not enough to raise the movie to even being watchable.

So, I didn't expect much out of Episode III, but I was pleasantly suprised. The movie actually is pretty good. It definitely has more action in it, and Hayden Christensen puts in a decent performance as Anakin this time (when Natalie Portman isn't on the screen with him, at least). Ewan McGregor's take on Obi-Wan Kenobi still manages to be one of the best things about the movie, but Ian McDermott's performance as Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious comes a close second. The scenes where Anakin finally becomes Vader (both when he takes the name and when he gains his armor) are chillingly done, and though I don't want to get into too many spoilers, the final battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin is fantastic. McGregor's performance is incredibly emotional and you can actually feel the betrayal he feels from his former apprentice.

That's not to say that the movie is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Lucas's decision to cast two actors who have NO CHEMISTRY AT ALL together in a love story bites him here again, as anytime Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen are on screen together feels so wooden and slow that its miserable. Portman's Padme comes across as a frankly pathetic character by the end of the story - a continuation of her descent from feisty Princess to one-dimensional love interest that occurred in Episode II. This makes Anakin's descent to the Dark Side a little less believable, as I never get the feeling that he loves her OR that he's obsessed with her (either of which would work). It's telling that the animated versions of these characters in the Clone Wars cartoons show more emotion with each other than these two are able to manage.

That's probably my largest complaint overall. The movie still suffers from Lucas's poor dialogue, but since the movie moves at such a frantic pace Lucas never really gives you time to notice how bad it is. The most overwrought dialogue gets delivered by Ian McDermott and Ewan McGregor, who manage to sell the lines far better than they probably deserve. Lucas also should have talked to Peter Jackson about how to get actors to deliver lines to characters that will be added to the film later and make it work. Any time Ewan McGregor or Samuel Jackson are talking to Yoda, the pacing of the dialogue just falls apart.

Overall, though, the movie succeeds. I want to see it again (something that I never really wanted to do with either Episode I or II), and its the first of the prequels that has me thinking "I'd like to play that in a game." A Star Wars tabletop RPG game set right after the events of Episode III would be a lot of fun, as this is obviously a time that needs heroes. The two previous Episodes were in a time when heroic politicians might have been able to make a difference, but that doesn't make a good game.

Wow - I actually made an entire post about Episode III. I really hadn't intended to do that. I've still got this week's comics and last night's Justice League Unlimited episode that I wanted to talk about. I didn't actually think I'd have enough to talk about with the movie to fill a post, but I guess I was wrong. Anyone else see the movie this weekend and want to give their opinions?

School & Games: 7th Week Blitz

2005-05-17T21:02:00.001-04:00

So, I missed posting this past weekend because I was attending the 2005 Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium here at OSU. There were a number of excellent talks given, so I'm really glad I attended, but I didn't get a lot of non-school stuff done this weekend. We're also in the 7th week of classes for the Spring quarter, and I have a lot to get done before the quarter ends, so I may end up missing a week or so before the quarter ends.

Since I didn't get any comics last week, I didn't really have a comics post anyway. Only Gail Simone's first Action Comics sounded interesting, so I didn't make a trip in to the local shop this week. I guess I'll have to flip through Outsiders as well to see what's going on, though its a book I usually pass by. This week looks better (though not for my wallet) with Birds of Prey, JLA:Classified, and a new Seven Soldiers issue all out this week. And there's a new Justice League Unlimited episode on Saturday, so there should be plenty to talk about (if I have the time).

Meanwhile, I've also been working on stats for the Justice League for a Mutants and Masterminds game that I am hoping to run this summer. So far, I've got Superman and Wonder Woman statted up, using the animated versions of the characters as the basis for the game (since their power levels are much closer to each other in the animated series). I'm planning on doing the whole "core League" from the animated series, and do each of them as power level 20 characters. That may sound a bit over powered, but Superman and Wonder Woman both seem to work as PL20 characters.

Oddly, the one who has been giving me the most problems has to be Batman. The point allocation for Batman has to be all over the place. He's definitely got to have broad skills, but he's also a combat master which means higher-than-normal attack and defense bonuses and a ton of feats. He also needs to have some points left over for his Batmobile, Batplane and other gadgets that he really needs. Fitting all of that into a PL20 character is proving more difficult than I really think it should.

I'll try to post the characters at my Waste of Space as I get them done up, for those who are interested (or who are willing to look them over and give me some feedback).

Comics & Games: New Links

2005-05-11T08:43:00.000-04:00

Over on the left you'll see a new section - the "Look Kids! Comics!" section. Over here I'm going to be putting links to webcomics that I find amusing or fun. First up are gamer comics, and of course PVPOnline is over there and always good for a laugh about gaming of all types, but I want to especially point out the other link that's there right now - The Order of the Stick.

If you are a gamer, and specificially if you are a table-top player of Dungeons and Dragons, you must read this strip. This strip funny, occasionally hysterical, and full of gamer-type humor. I can't do justice to it, so just go read it.

(Note that if you have not played any tabletop RPG type games, you may not find it as amusing. I suspect that if you are a fan of massively-multiplayer online games that it may be close enough for you to get the jokes.)

Comics: Villains United - SPOILERS

2005-05-08T20:23:00.001-04:00

Well, I promised myself I'd get a post in every week, but due to homework and running around for Mother's Day weekend I don't really have time for a full-on post this week. Instead, I'm going to flesh out a post I made on Usenet earlier in the week about Villains United.

I promised that I wasn't going to rant about Infinite Crisis, Identity Crisis, or any of that here, and I'm sticking to it. However, I will say that Villain's United is the first of the Infinite Crisis tie-ins that I've picked up in the store, flipped through, and didn't immediately just put back up on the shelf. I'm a sucker for villain vs. villain stories anyway, and when I read the first few pages, I got sucked in and decided to pick it up. (In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should point out that I have a complete run of DC's Secret Society of Super-Villains series from the 70's that I've managed to put together over the years).

Overall, though, I thought it was a great read. I like the new Ragdoll - seems like he/she is some kind of a "Living Doll" like Brother Power the Geek or something (maybe its the new "Doll Elemental" or something). I like the new take on Catman, and I enjoyed Simone's take on Cheshire. I also thought that the Parademon got the best lines - "Do you know that on Apokalips there's no word for foliage?" Simone did a pretty good job of introducing the Society and the Secret Six, and she definitely has me hooked into getting the next issue.
But there were still some things that I didn't like. There were a few "hey, wait" moments where when I read the book things made sense but when I was thinking about it later, it kind of fell apart. Like, if Cheshire really thought she was just working for Mockingbird for the money, why would she allow them to put a bracelet on her that would let her get tagged for termination if she screwed up? Maybe she thought that she could outrun Deadshot or something?

I also was annoyed by the death of the Fiddler. I mean, come on - he's an old Golden Age villain. Shouldn't he be in a retirement home or something? Isn't there some other "Scourge-worthy" villain from the 70s that could have been used in that scene instead? It hit me for two reasons - first, it pulled me out of the story because I was thinking "why would these maniacs even WANT someone like the Fiddler on their team?" And second, it just seemed like a pointless death to show that "Mockingbird" meant business. That seems like a lazy shortcut to show how bad-ass the villain is. (This is now a standard trope of superhero comics, and so I probably should just get over it, but it seems so lazy and so pointless that it always jars me out of the story when it happens like this).

Randy Lander's review of the first issue is mostly positive, but he takes issue with the idea that the Outsiders would be a "bunch of chumps" because they apparently allowed Arsenal's daughter to have a bomb planted in her. This didn't really bother me, mainly because I figured Mockingbird was actually lying about putting a bomb into Cheshire's daughter. But, even if she did do it, I figure Arsenal actually is a chump (and has been at least since Marv Wolfman reintroduced him as "Arsenal", continuing the trend of Titans getting lousy new names).

Johanna has a slightly more negative impression of the whole issue over at her blog, but she still says that its "one of the better DC and Marvel comics of the month", and I think she's right. I didn't have such a problem with the unnamed villains, even though I didn't know who most of them were either, because I figured they didn't matter. I would like to know if that was Dr. Psycho recruiting Black Manta early in the book, and if it was why Dr. Psycho was in his underwear, but other than that panel I figure that if we need to know who any of these folks are later that we'll get an introduction. I think Johanna is right, though, that the book could have used some extra pages to add some exposition - if they can do it monthly for Legion of Superheroes, why not for this first issue?

Comics: The Absorbascon and Superhero Legacies

2005-04-30T23:19:00.000-04:00

There is a nice little blog that I found the other day, courtesy of one of the other blogs that found it first (there were so many). It's called the Absorbascon after a device in the older Hawkman comics that contained all of the knowledge on Earth. The Absorbascon blog is a wonderful fan-blog oriented towards the DC comics universe (among other things). He's only been at it for a month or so apparently, but he's got a ton of posts there already.

I wish that I'd found it earlier, though, because there are some great posts on a model for DC's heroes that he calls the "Dynastic Centerpiece" model, involving basically a central character as the centerpiece of a dynasty with other characters filling in roles around the central character (like the Kid Sidekick, the Female Version, the Super Pet, etc.)

It's a great little model, but its hard to make it work in the general case. I think that the author is conflating two different types of breakdowns for superheroes into one model, and I think that's where the difficulty lies. I've thought before that DC has two different types of models for their superheroes. The first is the "Family" model - the hero at the center with all of the various different heroes of the same type surrounding him. Batman and Superman are the classic examples of this, with their various younger versions, female versions, pets and whatnot. The Marvel Family is another good example of this phenomenon.

But, when you look at some of the other heroes, it gets tougher. The Flash barely fits the model at all, and others like Green Lantern or Hawkman really have to be stretched to fit it. These heroes follow more of a "Legacy" model - the hero as the most recent bearer of the standard for a particular costumed identity. This is the model that really comes from the Julie Schwartz-style of superhero revamps that occurred in the 60s, along with the merger of Earths 1 and 2 post-Crisis.

Flash fits the "Family" model better than many others because of the Waid expansion of the Flash Family during his tenure on the book in the early 90s. I would guess that Waid is a fan of the "Family"-style of DC heroes and (consciously or not) saw a way to fill out the Flash pantheon a bit by expanding on the idea of a Flash Family.

Marvel has never really played their heroes in this manner - there are no Legacy heroes at Marvel, for example. Captain America is the same Captain America who fought in WWII, not a new one. Namor is the same Sub-mariner from the Golden Age. The Human Torch is different, but its not like there's a Human Torch legacy that gets explored in the Marvel books. Any "families" that exist are more like the Fantastic Four or Power Pack - constructed as a specific superteam and not spun off from a central, popular hero.

Marvel has been branching into the ideas of Legacies and Families, however. In the last few months, Marvel has introduced (another) female Spider-man and a female Wolverine - possibly giving the start of a Spider-man Family or a Wolverine Family. Spider-man has a Legacy on the Marvel version of "Earth-2" also[1], with the ongoing Spider-girl comic book. The Hulk has had a female version of himself running around for a while, though they are rarely played up like a "Family" style book. And now they have a whole group of "Kid Sidekick" versions of Avengers characters in their own book. All-in-all its looking like Marvel is considering the Legacy and Family ideas more and more. I suspect its for the same reason they grew at DC - spin-offs of popular characters can be great money-makers if they are done right.

[1] The MC-2 Earth maps well as Marvel's version of "Earth-2", a world where their prime superheroes aged in near "real time" and have passed on their legacies to their children. Its also the private playground of Tom Defalco, much as Earth-2 was often the private playground of Roy Thomas back in the day. I always consider the "Ultimate Earth" to be Marvel's version of "Earth-3" - the world where the heroes are villains. In Marvel's case, its more like a world where the heroes are jerks, but a strong case can be made that Millar's Ultimates could be considered more villanous than heroic.

Comics: Legion of Super-Heroes #5 - SPOILERS

2005-04-30T22:19:00.000-04:00

Waid and Kitson continue to impress me with their take on the Legion this week in LoSH #5. I think what I continue to be most impressed by is the storytelling style that is being used on this book. Waid and Kitson dragged me in with the "done-in-one" main stories while building my interest in the background plot of the upcoming Galactic War. Five issues in and the next issue box make it look like the Galactic War plot will be ramping up to the fore in the next few issues - that's incredibly fast for plot development in this day and age. I'm fairly confident that Waid will have another set of "B-plots" on the burner while the Galactic War one plays out, but I hope he doesn't try to drag the War story out for too long.

I think that the thing that I love the most about LoSH is the illusion of backstory that pervades the book. It really feels like there are possibly hundreds of issues of stories that have already happened with these characters - they all have a history together and that comes across through their actions and their interactions. I realize that a large chunk of that is because there are hundreds of issues of backstory with characters that are very much like these characters, but this is really an interesting choice for a reboot. Reboots usually end up ditching the backstory and starting from scratch - eventually coming back around to telling the new versions of the same stories that were ditched before because of some desire to see those stories back "in continuity". This is often because the reboot mentality takes a "throw the baby out with the bathwater" approach that eliminates many of the things that make a concept or a character enjoyable to the readers and then a push gets made to get it back.

I like how "new" characters get introduced into this series too. I know who some of these folks were in previous versions of the Legion, but Waid and Kitson have been doing very well at getting us introduced to the "new" versions of these characters. I was also amused by Waid not calling Brin Londo by the name Timber Wolf in this new issue, since it deviates from the naming convention that he has setup for the series.

As for this month's story - its a model of what I like in comics. The bad guys are suitably bad. The good guys are obviously good guys, but they aren't perfect. Saturn Girl's willingness to manipulate the minds of the teenagers that they were protecting just to keep them calm is one example of this that particularly stuck out with me, but there have been others in the series so far. Waid is doing a good job of keeping that delicate balancing act of making the characters human but still heroes - something that many writers can't seem to do very well.

All in all, another impressive issue of this incarnation of the Legion. Waid and Kitson have me anxiously awaiting the next issue once again.

Comics: Klarion #1 - SPOILERS

2005-04-22T22:31:00.000-04:00

Well, the grand blogging experiment isn't working out as well as I had hoped. I'm making a new resolution to try and post something once per week. Today it's thoughts about Klarion - the new Seven Soldiers book from Grant Morrison and Frazer Irving.

Before I get into that, though, I'm making another resolution. I'm planning on concentrating on the things I like about comics for the near future. No rants about Infinite Crisis or who died this week or whatever. If I can't find something good to say about comics, I'll stop buying them again.

But, for now, I have Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers project to keep me happy. So far, only Zatanna has been even slightly disappointing to me, due to what I see as unecessary deaths of 3rd-tier characters. I'll put up a discussion on Zatanna sometime when I have nothing to talk about, but for now - Klarion!

I just finished a second read-through of the first issue of Klarion, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. This felt less hyper-kinetic than the other Seven Soliders books have been so far, and Morrison spent more time world-building with this than he has in all three of the prior 7S books put together. I'm impressed that Morrison has been able to give each book a fairly unique "voice" and that so far I've liked something about each of the books (even if I enjoy some more than others).

I was very impressed with the art on this book. I don't think I've seen anything by Frazer Irving before - does anyone have any recommendations for other things he's worked on in the past?

I especially liked the atmosphere of Limbo Town. The coloring was especially moody and atmospheric. I liked how everything was done in various dark shades, except for the cat Teekl and a few other things (like the candy bar wrapper).

As for the story itself, I thought it was very well done. Morrison definitely drew me into the underground world of Limbo Town and made me want to know more about it. Obviously we're at least meant to believe that its in an area deep underground and that the people there are
descended from folks from the surface. The next issue blurb seems to confirm that, so I'll take it at face value for now.

The religion of the witch-folk seems very interesting too. I'd like to know more about the witch-god Croatoan. At times they talk about him like he's alive and nearby ("How long until you are baptized and they take you to Croatoan?"), and yet the head of the Submissionary Order
needs to perform a divination with his own blood to figure out what their god wants them to do.

I like what I've seen of Klarion's character so far too. Within just the one issue Morrison gives a good introduction to not just Klarion's world, but also Klarion's mindset in that world. The short-hand is that he's a rebel, a young man chafing under the system he was born in. He has a father who has gone missing that he idolizes, and a curiosity about the world beyond the gates to Limbo Town that most of his fellow "witches" do not share.

With all that packed into a single issue, I was actually suprised that Morrison was able to give us some plot as well - tieing into the ongoing Seven Soldiers event. We learn that Limbo Town is tied to the Sheeda in some way, with prophecies indicating an upcoming Sheeda invasion and their own immunity to the Sheeda's assault. This makes me think that Croatoan will be linked to the Sheeda in some way, but who knows.

In all, this was probably my second favorite of the Seven Soldiers "first issues" so far, coming in right after The Guardian's first issue. Morrison and Irving definitely have me hooked for this one.

Tales from the Ninth Week...

2005-03-04T16:08:00.000-05:00

And once again, the quarter heats up and my posting drops to nothing. No worries, though, its the end of the ninth week and so far, so good. I finished up my last lab assignment for one class, will be finishing up my last homework for another sometime in the next few days, and finishing up both a research paper and a final project next week. Good thing I only have two finals this quarter...

You know, I gave up on Newsarama a long time ago - It annoys me that most of their "news" is either hype that is almost as bad as you find in Wizard or press releases (mostly from the Big Two, with others mixed it). And, when they had the recent Joe Quesada/Brian Bendis takeover for a week, I thought that pretty much justified my attitude.

But, then, they go and post a story like this story about the Superman copyright (helpfully pointed out by Mark Evanier at his website) and now I think I need to be reading the site regularly again. This was a good, informative article. I remember reading Newsarama regularly years ago when Matt Brady and Mike Sangiacomo regularly seemed to have actual newsworthy items to post and it was a great site to visit. Of course, the front page still looks more like crud, hype and press releases than anything else, so I don't know.

Am I asking for too much? Is it just that there isn't enough comic book news to put together a site devoted to it without the site degenerating? Maybe - it could be like with 24 hour news channels where there really isn't enough news to fill the network so hype, melodrama, editorial and combativ "debate" has filled in to fill up the space. Or maybe folks just want to read press releases from Marvel and DC and have a place to spout off about them. Maybe I'm just a crotchety old dingbat. I think that last premise is the most likely.

Anyway, back to the grind. A few more weeks until this quarter ends, which of course means only a few more weeks until the new one begins. Woo!

Taking a break from the workload...

2005-02-15T16:12:00.000-05:00

I probably won't get around to making any more long-winded posts for a while, since I'm in the middle of the "7th week sprint" here in school. With only 3 more weeks left in the quarter, time management becomes the key to getting all of the projects, homework, and tests done while still making time to see my beautiful wife and keeping my sanity.

A few random thoughts, though, before I dive back into my work:

LISP really is an elegant language. I've done a bit of dabbling with it in the past, but never really hammered on it before. With my Programming Languages class this quarter, though, we have a project to write a scaled down LISP interpreter. It wasn't until I really got to work with the inner guts of the language that I began to see how beautiful it really is. I can understand what the few LISP-heads I've known see in the language now, and I hope that I get to work with it more in the future.

My manga adventure continues in fits and starts. I've gotten a number of different volumes from the library in the last couple of weeks and I've been reading them when I've needed some kind of break from CS texts and programming. So far, a few gems and a few that have made me want to, as my brother Ed once put it, "invent a time machine to go back and stop myself from wasting my time with them". I'd especially like to get back the time I spent reading the first volume of "Fairie's Landing" - a book that I just didn't like at all. I'm glad it was free - I don't have to rant about how I'd like my money back.

On the other hand, the good ones have been REALLY good. The best of the bunch so far, in my opinion, is "Hikaru no Go", a book that has me wanting to learn how to play Go. It's funny, dramatic, and definitely different from a lot of other stuff I've read. This was probably the best comic book I've read in a long while. I suppose I'm getting cynical in my old age.

Mister Miracle and the New Gods animated on Cartoon Network last week made my night. I'm not a big fan of the Virman Vunderbar character - I would have liked to see a different villain there as a foil against Granny - maybe Dr. Bedlam or Tigra or something - but I loved the episode anyway.

That's it for now. Back to the grind.

Comics: Runaways v.1 and v.2

2005-02-11T07:40:00.000-05:00

So, as I posted before, I picked up copies of Runaways v.1 and v.2 from my local library branch. Now I can see what the hype was all about. I had picked up an issue of Runaways after hearing some good things about it (I think it was issue 8), but it didn't grab me at all. I couldn't figure out what was happening and I didn't feel compelled to go back and get more issues.

But, whoa, after reading the first volume "Pride & Joy" all the way through I can definitely see what people like about this book. The characterization is great, the premise is quite original, and the story is genuinely fun. I grabbed the second volume as well, and while it isn't quite as good as the first one, it continues to be a fun ride.

A spoiler-ish summary for those who haven't read these books:

Summary
"Pride & Joy" is the first volume of the series. We are introduced to the six kids who are the cast of the book, along with their parents. In the first chapter we see snippets of their normal home lives, only to have the rug pulled out from under us when the kids discover that their parents are actually a group of super-villains called the Pride. They see their parents kill a young woman in a secret ceremony and decide that they need to turn their parents into the police. Of course, it turns out that the police are corrupt and in the back pocket of the parents, and the parents use the cops to frame one of their own kids for the murder that the Pride committed, so the rest of the first volume involves the kids getting away from their parents, keeping ahead of the cops, and finding a place to stake themselves out while the figure out what to do next. We also discover that one of the kids is actually sympathetic to his parents and is working as a "mole" for the Pride within the group.

"Teenage Wasteland" is the second volume, and its not as cohesive as the first. Its made up of two story arcs - "Teenage Wasteland" and "Lost and Found". The first arc involves the kids finding another super-powered youth with criminal parents and the repercussions of inviting him into their circle. "Lost and Found" is a guest appearance by Cloak and Dagger, as they are brought into town by one of the Pride's minions to hunt down the kids.

Commentary
I wasn't expecting to like this book nearly as much as I did. Like I said, I'd picked up an issue before to try it, and had been underwhelmed. Nothing much seemed to happen in it, and the characters were not developed enough in the one issue for me to really care to seek it out again.

But, reading it in its collected form, I can really see where the appeal is. The introductory chapters in "Pride & Joy" are must-reads for the kids character development. And while the plot in the issue of "Teenage Wasteland" that I read moved slow in single issue form, the pacing in the collection is perfect.

This is the type of book that really should have a broad appeal outside of superhero fans. While it may be a little cliche to talk about kids wanting to read about kids, conversations with my wife (the children's librarian) have convinced me that this is true. The kids in this book feel like real teenagers with real problems, and not just like what some middle-aged guy thinks a teenager's problems would be. [1]

The only issue that I have with the book, and its a minor one really, is the Cloak and Dagger appearance. Now, I love Cloak and Dagger - I think they're an underrated concept and they've been poorly used over the years - and by bringing them in Vaughn establishes a larger tie to the whole "shared universe". This shouldn't bug me, but it does. With the first volume, even though the kids are obviously in the Marvel Universe, you never feel like that's going to help them. Wolverine isn't going to show up and stop the Pride, Captain America isn't going to swoop in and rescue the kids, these kids are on their own.

By introducing Cloak and Dagger, Vaughn introduces a messy element into the mix. Now, with this kind of "in-your-face" example, we have to wonder - how is this city cut off from the rest of the Marvel Universe? Does anyone know that the Pride exists (villains must - the Pride talks about how no villains operate in their city without permission)? If so, why hasn't anyone stepped forward before to stop them? By keeping the Marvel Universe offstage for the first volume, Vaughn sidestepped most of these issues. But, buy pushing Cloak and Dagger into the second volume, these issues become front and center and intrude on my reading of the book.

But, really, its a minor thing [2]. Overall, these are some great books and I cannot wait to pick up volume 3. I'll probably even end up buying it in my February comics purchases, since I think I'll have some room in the budget and I probably won't want to wait for the library to get a copy. I hope that the second series for this title continues to be as fun as this first series has been.

[1] Ah yes, it is ironic isn't it that I, being a middle-age guy, get to comment on what I think "feels" like what a teenager's real problems are. They seem like real kids - okay? I mean, I could see some of them being freshmen in my College Algebra classes. It's more than just the speech patterns (though that helps) - there's something about them that Vaughn captures that just feels right.

[2] And a geeky, fanboy thing at that. I admit it.

Comics Industry: Pamphlets, Digests, and Magazines - Oh My!

2005-02-09T07:34:00.000-05:00

Allright, so this is a bit of an essay/rant/diatribe that I've been wanting to write for a while. Over at Fanboy Rampage there was recently a post about cheaper comics. The gist of the post was that comics companies (meaning DC and Marvel here) should put their products out on cheap newsprint and price them close to $1, instead of the $3 price-point with superior paper that comics have now. The upshot of the whole thing seeming to be that if the comics cost less, more would be purchased, and the comics industry would be SAVED!

Now, let's leave aside the whole thought about whether the "comics industry" needs saving. Johanna had a good post the other day about why the "comics industry" is actually doing quite fine, if you include manga in that description. I'm going to assume here that "comics industry" means "direct market and the big two publishers", though I agree with Johanna that the actual state of the market as a whole for comics is much better than it has been in years.

So, what about the "big two" then? Would making $1 comics bring them back the fans who had left, drag in new young readers, and generally get the superhero comics back into the limelight that they held in the mythical "golden age" of comics? IMHO, eh - not so much. And it has less to do with whether you could get more people to read comics at that price point (an argument I'm willing to have, but not here), and more to do with how retail works.

The standard retail model works (in a simplistic fashion) like this: Producer of goods sells goods to distributor for a set price. Distributor marks that price up by a percentage, and sells it to a retailer. The retailer then marks that price up again by a percentage to sell to a customer. Everyone along the chain gets a cut of the action.

So, why should Diamond carry and distribute a line of $1 books when they could be distributing a line of $3 books instead? They get more money per book, the retailer gets more money per book, the publisher gets more money per book, everyone in the chain is happier in general. And, since the purpose of this exercise is for each of these companies to make money, you can see which direction things are going to trend.

What about a selection of loss-leader books? Remember, the sales of the books have to support their weight in overhead costs for the publisher, the distributor and the retailer. If a retailer has shelf space for a number of books, and he has to choose between selling 100 copies of a $3 book and 100 copies of a $1 book, you can see what he's going to choose.

And, when we get outside of comic book stores, it gets worse. Look over the magazines at your local newsstand or Barnes and Noble. Check out those cover prices. Do you think with the selection of magazines available, the Barnes and Noble wants to take up precious shelf space with a bunch of $1 comics? That's the whole reason comics got pushed off the newsstand in the first place - magazines were going up in price and the comics companies refused to change their format to allow them to stay in the newsstand market (see "DC Comics Implosion")[1].

So, if I don't think that you can get comics to the masses by making them cheaper, how do I think you can get them out? Simple, make them more expensive. I'm serious. Look again at that newsstand example - the average price of a magazine right now is in the $5-$6 range, with many of them running into the $10-$15 range for some "specialty" areas. How can you get newsstand vendors to put your product on their racks? Make sure that your product is giving them a chance to make at least as much as their average mags are getting them.

Now, the other thing that you have to do is make sure that folks don't look at your magazine and laugh. If you tried to charge $5 for your average 32-page pamphlet, most folks would laugh in your face (or punch you, maybe)[2]. Look at the page counts of those $5-$6 magazines again - they've usually got over a hundred pages, even if they have a lot of ads. People expect VALUE for their dollars, which includes more than page count, but page count is a part of it.

So, what do I suggest doing then? Lets take Marvel as an example. Currently, Marvel puts out some ungodly number of Spider-man comic books and X-Men comic books. Marvel also has two of the most recognizable comic-book movie properties right now with Spider-man and the X-Men. These are the names that COULD be bringing folks into reading Marvel's superhero comics IF they could get them.

I contend that Marvel could easily combine two of their monthly Spider-man books into a single magazine - "Amazing Spider-Man magazine." Charge $5-$6 bucks for it, make it actually magazine sized, and fill out the back half of the magazine with reprints. Fans would still be getting their $6 for two stories, while the format would be more conducive to people picking it up from their local grocery or bookstore newsstand. I would also have some editorial changes to make one of the new stories in the book a "stand-alone" story with the second new story an on-going one, but that's less of a format decision than a "marketing" one.

They could do something similar with their X-Men books - pick two to combine together into one book (say Uncanny and X-Men) and name it "Uncanny X-Men magazine". Charge $5-$6 bucks for it and put reprints in the back.

As time passes and readership builds, Marvel should be able to add more advertising, and maybe offset the costs of replacing the reprints with new material. Spin-off characters like Arana could be tried in the back of an Amazing Spider-Man magazine, instead of giving them a six issue limited series. Stories that really only work well in collected form could be used as backup material with an eye towards getting them into digests, etc.

A similar case could be made for DC. In fact, with DC, Superman and Batman books suggest themselves right away, and with the number of Superman and Batman books on the shelves, consolodating two into a monthly magazine should be even easier than with Spider-man.

The objection that will come to the front is that Marvel tried this just a few years ago - with their Ultimate and Marvel Knights magazine. This plan would be different from that one because this one leverages the existing readership of Amazing Spider-man into the readership of the magazine. You may lose a few, but with format chages you might actually get some back (especially if you combine a serial with a "done-in-one" story). You can then use that readership to grow out to newsstands and subscribers.

Now, I really think that branching out into non-superhero properties is how the big two will survive in the future. But, if they're serious about being in the monthly serial business, the time has come to really re-examine what they are doing and what formats they are using. The direct market is suffering, and without an injection of new readers, bad things are going to happen to it.

[1] Newsstands also have a whole 'returnability' issue that is another reason comics left the newsstand, I know. That's another aspect of the magazine publishing business that the direct market has allowed the comics companies to avoid for a long time.

[2] I could be wrong about this. I never thought we'd see comics get above $2, but here we are. Of course, there's also been a steady drain of readers, so maybe we are approaching some kind of equilibrium point or something.

Comics: Legion of Superheroes #2 Musings

2005-02-06T08:34:00.000-05:00

"Legion Of Superheroes, rather than being a future looking book, reads like a backwards looking one. The characters seem old, safe and dull ... All good sci-fi is never about the future, but about the present. This is sci-fi that's about the past. So traditional. So classic. So Dad's Comics."

These are some of the words that Rich Johnston uses in his review of Waid and Kitson's Legion of Superheroes #2. I'm not going to dispute all of Johnston's review in general, his opinions are valid even if I feel that he's off on his reading of things - I liked how Waid wrote the precognition scenes and I like how he handled to planet of precogs.[1] But, I do want to talk a little bit about this whole "looking backward" thing.

First of all, I agree wholeheartedly that good sci-fi is about the present. Good sci-fi is really a commentary on what our current world is like, but extrapolated into the future. It gives us a feel for "where we are going" if we continue down the paths that we have set. Books like Neuromancer, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and others all give us a glimpse of what the future will be like not just due to advancing technology, but with changing social mores and attitudes.

That is not to say that just because a piece of sci-fi is about the present, it will be good. There are many, many Star Trek scripts that say otherwise (see entire seasons of Star Trek: Voyager for more). However, finding good sci-fi that doesn't reflect on our current culture and attitudes is hard.

So what does this have to do with the Legion? I'd like to know exactly what Rich is looking at and saying its "backwards looking". Is it the futuristic Utopia? This is a reflection of our current attitudes extrapolated out a thousand years. Look at how things seem to be set up in this futuristic "utopia":

People go out of their way to avoid human contact and try to only talk to each other through their computer connections.
Parents are so concerned about what their kids see, hear and do that they have built an entire "Public Service" that seems to do nothing but monitor their own children for them.
A government is so worried about the reactions of their youth population that they censor the knowledge they receive to prevent them from reacting against it.

And these are JUST in that second issue. The first issue contains more, including a government so afraid of losing its grip on power that it turns its army loose on its own children to keep them in line and a United Planets government that is unwilling or unable to step in and stop them from doing it.

If you aren't seeing how these things are related to our present day, then I really don't know what to say. Sure it still has some trappings that "smell" kind of old and musty, especially the codenames, but that's because its not just sci-fi, its also a super-hero book and lately they tend to be musty-smelling all-around.

And its not like Waid is using the Legion as a metaphor for conflicts in our world - he's extending our conflicts a thousand years into the future. The opposition of the idealists versus those in power, the conflict between the need to express yourself versus the need for security and stability, the conflict between society's responsibility to help parents raise their children correctly versus the freedom of the individual to grown and learn on his own. These are all the types of battles that are fought every day now, and the types of things that Waid seems to be looking at with the Legion.

Now, that's not to say that he COULDN'T screw it up and turn the whole thing into a nostalgia-fest. He could, and if it happens I will sigh and stop buying the book (and perhaps grumble about missed opportunities here and there). But for now, its unfair to call this a backwards looking book. Waid is definitely looking into the future, despite the "musty-smelling" superhero trappings, and I can't wait to see where it goes next.

[1] I also agree with Rich that civilization tends to turn out brats and that these kids are a bit on the "nice" side. However, that's partly because we are dealing with superhero fiction here. You shouldn't generally think that your heroes are a bunch of selfish bastards (unless that's the point of the whole thing - see "The Authority"). If your characters are not likeable, its not going to get sales into that mass market of superhero comics (again, unless that's the point - see "The Ultimates).

Also, by making the Legion the sympathetic ones, Waid may be setting things up for the "crush of idealism" in the future. I'd like to see this book run in real-time for 5 years and see what happens to the idealists like Brainiac 5 and Sun Boy as their idealism is crushed out of them. It won't happen, of course, but it would be interesting to watch.

Book Lists: My Library Reserves

2005-02-05T07:46:00.000-05:00

DISCLAIMER: My wife works for the public library system.

I love the public library. Our public library stocks not only books, but also trade paperbacks (including manga), DVD's and even some indivdual issues of comics. The library has been a great way to try some books that I've wanted to read before committing myself to buying them. This is a great way for me to make sure I'm not spending money on something I'm only going to read once anyway.

This year, I've made myself a resolution that I would try to read more manga. I haven't exactly avoided reading manga in the past, and it's not like I refused to read it if someone recommended something to me. I never really sought it out for myself, though. It was always something that seemed like a "specialty taste" before. Now, due to reviews on the web like the ones at Comics Worth Reading, I can see that there is a lot more breadth to the manga being released in this country than there was before. (Or maybe it was just my perceptions that were wrong).

So, of course, I've turned to the local library to do my "try before I buy" thing. While the library's stock of manga isn't as varied as, say, Borders, there is some breadth to the collection and I hope to find some things that I'm going to like. Once I do, I'll probably end up picking them up do add to my personal library (since I know me and that's what I usually do).

Here are the items I have currently checked out and currently on reserve through the local library:

Checked Out
Runaways v.1
Runaways v.2
Redmoon v.1
Redmoon v.2
Sgt. Frog v.1
Oh My Goddess: Wrong Number
Buddha v.1
Channel Zero

On Reserve
God's Politics - Why the right gets it wrong and the left doesn't get it, Wallis
Going Postal, Pratchett
Kindaichi Case Files v.1
Hellsing v.1
Inuyasha v.1
Maison Ikkoku v.1
One-pound gospel v.1
Nausicca of the Valley of the Wind v.1-v.2
Fushigi Yugi v.1
FruitsBasket v.1
Akira v.1
Shaman King v.1
Superman - The Animated Series DVD collection v.1
Batman - The Animated Series DVD collection v.2

Links: Other Legion Impressions

2005-02-01T07:45:00.000-05:00

Other folks are talking about the second issue of the Legion of Super-Heroes that I wrote about below. Johanna talks about both the Legion and the final issue of Morrison's We3 at her blog, Comics Worth Reading. Randy Lander and Don MacPherson give fairly thorough impressions at their site The Fourth Rail. And, for a counterpoint to the good reviews the above give, Rich Johnston at HeroRealm has a much more negative impression of the second issue.

If you can't tell from below, I disagree with Rich Johnston's impression. I agree that good sci-fi is about the present and not really about the future. I disagree that these Legion stories are somehow science fiction about the past, even if you take just the second issue in isolation and ignore the first. I'm hoping to get some time later this week to expand on that. We'll see.

Comics: Legion of Super-Heroes 1 & 2

2005-02-01T07:14:00.000-05:00

I wasn't originally going to even pick up Waid and Kitson's revamp of the Legion. Initially, I kind of thought this was a "wait for the trade" book for me. While I love a lot of what Waid has done in the past (Empire, his Flash run, his issues of Ruse), he has a strong tendency to cross the line between using the past as a springboard for ideas and wallowing in the past for the sake of nostalgia. I wasn't sure where the Legion book would end up in this spectrum, so I initially decided to pass on it in favor of seeing how it went.

Good reviews, however, can change a man's mind. So, with the high marks that this book received from some of the reviewers at the left, I decided to pick it up and see for myself if it was worth getting.

Some "true confession" time here. I've never been a huge fan of the Legion. I remember getting some old back issues of "Superboy and the Legion" when I was a kid from somewhere, and I thought they were cool, but I never really read the book. By the time I started into weekly trips to the comic book store, Legion continuity had reached the point of X-Men continuity as far as ludicrousness and exclusivity, so I never really got into it then. I DID start picking it up during the "reboot" era, but after a while it felt like the writers were going through motions and maybe "re-telling" old stories with some kind of twist to keep the fans happy.

Given that, I have to say that Waid has sucked me in with these first two issues. I was astounded by how much he was able to cram into just two quick stories -AND that there were actually TWO stories in TWO issues. That doesn't seem to happen nearly as often as it should.

Some semi-spoilerish summary for those who haven't read the issues:

Summary
Issue 1 is an "introduction to the Legion" issue, but thankfully it isn't a "origin issue." We get enough information from it to find out that the Legion is both some kind of youth movement and a group of government-sanctioned peacekeepers who work outside the usual police channels. The law enforcement arm of the government (the Science Police) hate them, while the governing body of the United Planets is apparently trying to co-opt their popularity for their own ends. We get a nice snapshot of what life in the early 31st century is like as well as some all-out action sequences and a vision of the lengths that the people of the 31st century will go to to preserve their "utopia."

Issue 2 is a character piece, delving into the characters of both Braniac 5 and Dream Girl. The Legion investigates why the children of Naltor are unable to sleep and dream precognitive dreams. Again we get to see what the people of the 31st century will do not just to protect their utopia, but to protect their children from the real world.

Commentary
First of all, these books are really nicely designed. I love the cover design even if it seems like it SHOULD be screaming "retro" at me. The layouts are clear and crisp and make the story easy to follow. The coloring is a little bland for my taste - it seems like it should be brighter for some reason - but its not really substandard.

The stories in these issues really blew me away. I certainly wasn't expecting anything like what I read despite the reviews I'd read for both of these issues. The idea of the Legion being both a peace-keeping force AND a youth movement is interesting to me, despite me being at the age where youth movements would no longer accept me as a member. Its a tactic that certainly seems like it should lead to some interesting stories, even if the youth movement is basically the superhero universe equivalent of the "Society for Creative Anachronism."

From other reviews that I've read I thought that I might be turned off by the series "looking backward." Some reviewers had made it seem like the Legion was a group of kids who were looking back to "better times" when superheroes roamed the Earth keeping the world safe from harm. I thought that this might be another bit of "navel-gazing" into comic-book history that Waid has done on occasion. While I've enjoyed some of them (notably Kingdom Come), its a theme that I think lends itself too much to "times were better then" thinking that I've come to dislike intensely [1].

Thankfully, though, this does not seem to be the case. At least with these first two issues, Waid seems to be taking a different track than "times were better then." The kids are "bored" with the utopia that their ancestors have built and that their parents and grandparents generation maintain, but boredom does not seem to be the motivating factor leading these kids to become the Legion. Instead, it seems to be the struggle against what their parents have done to keep them safe and secure versus their own ability to express themselves, to be individuals, and to live their lives free.

An example of this is the idea of the "Public Service." Waid hasn't fleshed this out much so far, but it appears to be some kind of network that not only keeps track of where each kid is at all times, it also tracks what they see and what they hear. Given what we find out about the "modifications" that Naltor made to their "Public Service" in issue 2, I suspect that the "big brother-ish" nature of the Service extends to not only tracking what the kids see and do but preventing them from seeing or doing anything that is not approved. Its insidious, but not a stretch to believe that in a thousand years such a thing might be possible. And its also not a stretch to believe that parents would push to have such a thing in place to track their children. Is it any wonder then that the primary use for the Legion flight ring is actually to block the connection to the Service so that the kids can live their own lives?

The book does not seem to be just about young/old conflicts, however. There's a strong political vibe running through the first few issues. The Legion is a sanctioned arm of the United Planets government as well as a youth movement, and there are conflicts from that as well. The arguments between what is "right" and what is "pragmatic" comes to the forefront in the first issue as Cosmic Boy and Sun Boy debate that very issue while Sun Boy and his team attempt to save the youth of Lallor from a very Tienamen Square-like massacre. The optimism of youth wins out, of course, but it will be interesting to see if Waid follows this up with repercussions for the Legion's actions on Lallor [2].

Finally, I want to make a comment on the story structure. Each issue tells a self-contained story, which I think is a great move by both Waid and DC to get folks to read this book. I didn't feel like I had to plan to commit $18 to read the first Legion story issue by issue. Instead, I have a $3 commitment to picking up the first issue. If I like it, I can come back for more (which I will be doing, I think). And, since I know that I'll get a full story for my $3, I'm not really tempted to "wait for the trade" instead of picking up the individual issues. This is really what the industry needs to do if they expect me to pick up single-issues - give me some real value for my money. Don't make it "part 1 of 8", especially when the book is starting out and needs to grow a fanbase.

[1] Mainly because it seems to be coming from the "Baby Boomer" generation who thinks, for some reason, things were better in the 60's than they are now. Look, I've read enough about the era to know that drug use was rampant, teen pregnancy was high, and racism and intolerance were outrageous. I refuse to believe that the 60's (or the 50's, 40's, 30's whatever) were in any way superior to where we are now. In many ways previous decades were far, far worse than anything we have right now, despite the wars, intolerance, bad television, and general mass hysteria the country and the world is going through right now. Because of that, I try to watch out for that kind of thinking coming from folks in MY generation and beat them senseless when I see it.

[2] Not that I think that what the Legion did on Lallor is wrong by any stretch. However, its obvious that given the situation that Waid set up, there SHOULD be some repercussions from this and if he lets those pass by he's missing some good opportunities for stories.

Comics: JLA Classified 1-3

2005-01-30T09:45:00.000-05:00

I don't buy many individual issues of comics these days - I don't feel like I get enough story for my $3 to make buying individual issues worth it [1]. I generally stick to trade paperbacks or checking things out at the library before I buy them to make sure that what I'm buying is worth owning.

There are always exceptions though. There are certain creators who have proven to me that their stories will be worth looking at on a monthly basis. I also look over reviews on the Internet to find quality opinions on the books that are out on the newsstands (check out the sidebar for some of these review sites). I don't always AGREE with the reviewers I read, but I have come to appreciate their judgment.

Grant Morrison definitely fits into the first category. He's a writer that generally understands what I want from a single-issue superhero comic book. He has a reputation for filling his books full of weird ideas (which is true, and I love the weird ideas), but he also crams his superhero books so full of action and story that I never feel cheated out of my $3.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I have been picking up Grant Morrison's JLA: Classified story arc. Since the final issue of this arc came out this week, I thought I'd give my thoughts on the arc as a whole, since even though each issue really is worth reading on its own, its really worth commenting on the whole arc.

For those who missed it, a slightly spoiler-ish summary of the story as a whole:

Summary
Issue 1 starts the story out with a bang, and really sets the tone for the entire arc. Morrison drops us right into the story, where the International Ultramarine Corps are attempting to rescue the African city of Kinshasa from a takeover attempt by Super-Gorilla Grodd. It quickly becomes obvious that the Ultramarines are out of their league with Grodd, and the first chapter ends with most of the Ultramarines captured and one of them escaping to get help from the Justice league only to find out that most of the League is currently MIA.

Issue 2 catches us up to what the League is doing as Batman attempts to take on Gorilla Grodd and his group of mind-controlled Ultramarines. Meanwhile, the remaining free Ultramarine attempts to contact the Justice League to get them back from their "off-universe" mission to save the Earth from Grodd and his new cosmic ally - Neb-Uh-Loh. Chapter two ends with Batman facing certain death and the Justice League successfully returning from their off-universe mission.

Issue 3 is the final chapter of the arc. The Justice League faces off against the Ultramarines and Grodd in a large-scale "battle-royale." This being a Justice League comic, it really isn't a spoiler to say that the Justice League kicks the mind-controlled Ultramarines and Grodd's tails into the ground and save the day. The League then gets to deal with the punishment of Grodd, his gorilla henchmen, and the final fate of the International Ultramarine Corps.

Commentary
WARNING: This commentary will contain SPOILERS. You have been warned!

If my write-up above makes the whole thing sound like standard super-hero fare, well it is. This is about a group of superheroes triumphing in the face of adversity. Its about evil supervillains plotting nasty things both for the world and for the heroes. Its a visceral, all-out action, superhero story that keeps you on the edge of your seat and makes you want to come back and find out "what happens next!"

Now, I'm not going to say that the story doesn't have flaws. The fast-pace of the story and the fairly dense layout makes it sometimes a little confusing to tell what is going on from panel to panel. For some reason I didn't realize until the final issue that Grodd was not the only gorilla in the Ultramarine's flying fortress.

The action sequences in the third chapter also have a definite "Morrison" feel to them. Most of Morrison's super-hero work has the property that when the all-out action fight sequence between heroes and villains comes, the heroes are going to win, so get it over with quickly and get to the aftermath. The heroes do some clever things to take out the Ultramarines and get to Grodd in this chapter, but there really isn't any tension. You KNOW they're going to win and there are very few sequences where Morrison has them even fail to take out a single opponent quickly. In fact, only the Martian Manhunter (DC's perpetual JLA whipping boy [2]) loses against his initial opponent and fails to take out anyone, really. All of the other Leaguers quickly take out their opponents and move us quickly to the end of the story.

And, for those who feel that "characterization is king" in stories, well, you may feel like something is missing here. This is not a character piece - it is an all-out action plot-fest. There's nothing wrong with the way any of the characters are presented - despite references to Batman's "sci-fi closet" [3] none of them feel like they're being written "out of character" - but there really isn't much depth to their presentation. Morrison writes these DC "big gun" characters as icons. They don't just have powers that put them beyond normal people, their "moral compass" is also superior to that of normal people. Morrison's take on these characters makes it hard to really "get into their heads" and see them as people.

But, that's not really a flaw if that is what the writer is attempting, and I believe that in this case it is. Morrison's take on the League seems to be that they ARE the "icons" - they are superhuman in both power and morality and that is what separates them from the villains that they fight. Taken in that light, Superman's "lecture" to the Ultramarines before consigning them to their fate makes much more sense. Morrison is speaking through Superman, saying that a world like the DC Universe doesn't need to have heroes like the Ultramarines because its moral compass SHOULDN'T be as complex as that of the "real world". The League's world is one where good triumphs over evil because its the type of fictional universe where "GOOD TRIUMPHS OVER EVIL" is a universal law.

Meanwhile, the infant universe of QWEWQ is a different sort of fictional universe - a world where good and evil are more intertwined and shades of grey exist instead of clearly defined borders. In chapter two, the members of the League are obviously uncomfortable in QWEWQ because of how creepy the world feels to them. People are still people, still capable of both good and evil, but there is no assurance that good will win, making it a dark and creepy place for the League.

Morrison has explored this before with the League. In some ways it is similar to the work he did on "Earth 2", where the League visited a world where the universal law was "EVIL TRIUMPHS OVER GOOD". Much of Morrison's other work has dealt with fictional universes and their impact on each other and on the real world (see Animal Man, Invisibles, Flex Mentallo, and even the first story arc of his Doom Patrol run for other examples), so its not suprising to see this theme come up again here.

And, reading the story at this level, it brings up another interesting thought. Neb-Uh-Loh was revealed in the last issue to be the infant universe of QWEWQ grown up and having traveled backwards in time to assault the DC Universe. He comes to bring the "end of the world" and he talks about "his people" and his "queen of terror". At the micro-level, I think this is Morrison setting up his "Seven Soldiers" run that will be coming in 2005. The hints of the Nebula-Man/Seven Soldiers connection are too much to overlook.

However, at a larger level, it is interesting to see that Morrison is kind of suggesting that the more "realistic" fictional universe of QWEWQ is trying to destroy the more fantastic DC universe. Is this unconscious or conscious commentary on Morrison's part about the take of a more "grim-and-gritty" approach to superheroics trying to destroy the fantastic world of the more traditional superheroes, or am I reading too much into this? I try not to read too much metaphor or meaning into things, but Morrison makes it hard not to.

Regardless, despite a somewhat weaker finish, the story as a whole works. Even without the level of "meta-commentary" this is a fun, action-adventure superhero fest. I highly recommend this entire arc to anyone who enjoys old-style superhero smash-em-ups.

[1] I know, I'm killing the industry. All by myself. I'll deal with it. I'm also a grad student on an extremely limited budget with an incredibly understanding wife. I don't make the kind of money I did when my comic-buying habit was at it most extreme, and I have a lot more that my money needs to be spent on now than I did then. My roughly 10 to 20 dollars per month on comics is my budget for the foreseeable future.

[2] J'Onn is my favorite DC superhero. Why is it that NO ONE lets him have his due? Even Morrison who writes these heroes as "the best of the best" seems to consign J'Onn to be the one who screws up.

[3] I know people complained about this, but I loved it. Morrison writes one of the best versions of Batman, in my opinion, and I'd love to see him take a stab at the All-Star version once Miller and Lee are done with their run and he and Quitely are done with their Superman run.

Updates!

2005-01-30T09:41:00.000-05:00

Well, that figures. Christmas break was a whirlwind of activity instead of the relaxing time I expected. I spent most of the break juggling family time with school work, so the experiment in blogging over the break was a bust and I didn't get any real time to post things. Then, classes have kept me busy for the last four weeks, to the point that I again haven't had any time to add any entries.

But, I have some time today, and I feel like broadcasting some thoughts about some comics that I've recently read, so today I'm going to do some comics blogging. Woo-hoo! Hopefully I can be a little more frequent with my updates here in the near future.

Creepiest Ad Ever

2004-12-09T22:57:00.000-05:00

I don't know if they show these ads outside of Ohio, but I just saw another example of what I consider the "Creepiest Ad Ever" on TV. Its an ad for a mortgage company called "King Capital." Its typical of its kind of ad in that it has a smarmy looking guy (who is probably Mr. King) in a tux shilling how great his mortgage company is. That's not the creepy part.

The creepy part is that he has his kid (also in a tux) on his lap. And the kid doesn't just sit there and look cute - oh no - the kid has a speaking role. Specificially, the kid talks with his father's voice and continues the smarmy spiel that the dad gives on low interest rates. The creepy part is the way that they superimpose the dad's mouth over the kid's face. It looks eerie. And on the new one they just showed the kid looks like he needs a shave (the kid is probably 2 years old tops). They should have filmed the ad earlier in the day, I suppose. And at the end of the ad the kid sings with dad's voice "You're the King at King Capital." Just so strange.

Anyway, these ads get my "Creepiest Ad Ever" award because its just so creepy to see someone using his kid as a ventriloquist dummy. I mean, if you want a dummy make one out of wood like people have been doing since vaudville. Don't dress your kid up in a tux and make him spout lines about low interest rates in your creepy voice. That's just wrong - totally, totally wrong. And it in no way makes me want to see how low your interest rates are, just for the record.

Campaign Journal - Setting

2004-12-09T21:14:00.000-05:00

The characters are all natives of the island of Aeru - a large island roughly the size of Great Britain. Until a few decades ago, most of Aeru was ruled by the Archduke, a man appointed by the Emperor of mainland nation of Theria to govern the island nation. A little over twenty years ago the Archduke died without an heir. With the death of the Archduke, various warlords and minor nobles each tried to lay claim to the Archduke's title, and the island fell into chaos for decades.

In recent years, a level of peace has descended over Aeru. The petty warlords and minor nobles have each achieved a level of control over their lands, but none has the strength to push his advantage and take control of the whole isle. In addition, representatives of the Emperor have begun to insist that the island work out its problems and maintain the Emperor's tribute - or else.

Much of Aeru is uncivilized "frontier." Many bordertowns sit at the edges of what can loosely be called "civilization" in Aeru. These towns generally rely on self-sustaining agriculture, although at one time most towns were set up to be either mining or lumber towns, supplying the fruits of their labors as tribute to the Empire. Over the last few decades, more and more of these towns have turned to subsistence farming as the roads to the port cities have become more dangerous and lawless.

The world of Aeru is slightly different from most D&D campaign worlds. Elves, dwarves, gnomes and many other non-human races are legends from ancient history. Some are still born with traces of "fae-blood" in them, throwbacks to an ancient race known in legends as the Fae. These throwbacks are called "faeborn" and are often looked at with fear, contempt, and occasionally envy by their human brothers and sisters.

The goblin races are among those who share the world with humans. On Aeru, tribes of goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears live at the fringes of human civilization. Usually goblins stay separate from human society, at least on Aeru. Occasionally, however, children of goblins and humans are born. These fearsome looking men are known as "goblinspawn" by their human brothers and sisters. Goblinspawn often have no place in either human or goblin society, usually becoming nomads and adventurers out of necessity rather than design.

Religion on Aeru is also different from most D&D campaign worlds. The major religions of Aeru are druidic in origin. Different Orders of druids revere different aspects of nature in their own ways. The people of Aeru also tend to follow druidic teachings, especially in the bordertowns near the frontier. Here, the only religion that people are exposed to are the teachings of the Druidic Orders. In addition, the druids often use their divine powers to assist the communities that they tend to by helping with mundane tasks like pest control and ensuring that crops get enough water.

As an outgrowth of the Druidic Orders, a number of Monastic Orders also dot the landscape of Aeru. These monastaries house men and women who have decided to take the life of quiet contemplation instead of the more active role that the Druidic Orders take. Although the Monastic Orders grew out of the Druidic Orders on Aeru, some Monastic Orders are so different from their founding druidic principles that outsiders often do not notice the connections. Other Monastic Orders maintain strong ties to their druidic roots, with both monks and druids becoming members.

The other major religion of Aeru is the Church of Theria - technically the only legal religion on the island. When Theria conquered Aeru millenia ago, the Empire impose its Church on the people. The original religions of Aeru were persecuted out of existence, with the remnants of the old priesthoods slowly turning into the Druidic Orders of today. The Church of Theria is a "monotheistic" religion that demands that the faithful worship only one god - the Emperor of Theria. The Church insists that the Emperor is the God-Emperor of Theria, and all other gods are merely demons pretending to be gods. Indeed, over the last thousand years most of the ancient gods of Aeru have been completely forgotten.

Our story begins in the bordertown of Gerald's Haven. This community is a typical bordertown on the Aeru frontier. The town is the size of a small village, with maybe fifty residents in town and a handful of farmers in the surrounding area. The town itself is protected by a large wooden stockade and by a militia of the local able-bodied men and women. These protections are primarily there to guard the town from raids by the local goblin tribes.

Recently, the raids by local humanoid tribes have stepped up in frequency and ferocity. In the month before the campaign began, the humanoids raided the village and kidnapped six members of the community. Two weeks before the beginning of the campaign, a group of experienced villagers undertook a raid on the humanoid stronghold near town, the Demontooth Citadel. As the campaign begins, the villagers are realizing that their loved ones and the rescuers may not be coming back. It becomes obvious that it is up to our heroes to do something about it.

End of the Quarter

2004-12-09T21:03:00.000-05:00

Well, that's over with. I took my last two finals today and now I'm totally wiped out. Its been about six years since I last took a final and I'd forgotten how intense the week of testing could be. I'm ready to relax for a few weeks now - good thing Winter Break starts now, I guess.

Of course, I won't be just slacking off and relaxing over break. In addition to the travels to visit the family and the work around the house that I've put off over the last 11 weeks, I've got reading to do for the research I'm doing next quarter. It looks like interesting stuff, but I need to make sure I don't go overboard and that I get some relaxation in along with the reading and running around.

And, I'm hoping to get some serious updates to my sites in place over the next few weeks. We've got plans for at least two (maybe three) D&D sessions over the next couple of weeks and I can't wait! As the kids say "WOOT!"

My Brain Hurts

2004-12-06T17:49:00.000-05:00

Ow. I feel like I've been going non-stop all day, but I only had one final today. I imagine I'll be totally exhausted on Thursday when I have two. Its been so long since I last had a finals week (6 years!) that I'd forgotten how intense they can get.

Back to the books.

Arrested Development

2004-12-05T21:03:00.000-05:00

Just watched the latest episode of Arrested Development, and I have to say that I love this show. I started watching it last season and it quickly became a "must watch" show for me. The characters are so bizarre and the writing on this show is hilarious. It really is one of the shows that I look forward to every week.

Tonight's episode was really funny, as the family finds out that their father was killed in Mexico and plan his wake. Okay, as I type this I realize that it doesn't SOUND funny, but trust me - it was. No matter how dark the situation gets, the way this disfunctional family operates makes the whole thing funny.

Anyway, I like spotting hidden touches in the shows I watch, and this episode was a trip. My favorite "bit" was the way they played the Charlie Brown Christmas theme when a character was sad - the character would walk around all hunch-shouldered with the weight of the world on his back. Absolutely hilarious in action, but the funny "bit" was when I noticed it the first time, George Michael, the son of the main character, was walking by a doghouse that had a dog sleeping on top of it. It was pretty quick and you might not have noticed it if your attention wandered, but it was funny.

Anyway, that's it for now. I spent most of the day studying for my first final on Monday, so not much time for other things today. I'm hoping to do another Campaign Journal entry later this week.

Justice League Unlimited

2004-12-04T23:13:00.000-05:00

We watched the Justice League Unlimited episode Ultimatum tonight. I thought it was another great episode for this season. I love all of the little "nods" in this episode - to the old Superfriends cartoon as well as to the DC Universe continuity. I'm also loving the on-going conspiracy subplot that is going on through this season, but more of that in the SPOILER section:

Highlight below to read the SPOILERS:

First of all, I was highly amused at the way that the Ultimen map to various Superfriends. Apache Chief to Longshadow, Black Vulcan to Juice, Samurai to Wind Dragon, and of course (my favorite nod) the Wonder Twins. I was also highly amused by the fact that the Justice League members for the episode were Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman - making the team as a whole almost the "regular cast" for the Challenge of the Superfriends era of Superfriends (or maybe just after that - I'm getting my seasons mixed up, I think). If either Robin or Casey Kasem had been in the episode, it would have been perfect....

And on top of that, the only supervillains seen in the episode are Giganta and Bizarro - a combo who in the universe of Unlimited don't really make sense together, but they were teammates in the Legion of Doom during the Superfriends days, so that amused me as well. (And they were freeing Grodd - another member of the old LoD...)

As far as the plot goes, I liked the progression of the government conspiracy subplot that we first started seeing in the episode "Fearful Symmetry" earlier this season. Seeing Emil Hamilton crop up again and now finding out that he's working for Amanda Waller was GREAT. I imagine that the Ultimen were the animated universe's initial version of Task Force X - we'll see if they get the bright idea to use captured supervillains later.

And Max Lord as the smarmy PR person for the Ultimen amused me to no end. I love how they work these DC Universe characters into the storylines. J.M. Demattias (co-writer of the Maxwell Lord era Justice League International) had a creative credit at the beginning (along with Dwane McDuffie), so I guess that might explain it a little bit.

All in all a great episode. I hope we get to see more of Longshadow too. I was a fan of Apache Chief as a kid (he can get real big - how cool is that? Okay it sucks, but I was a kid), and Longshadow is a much better character than Apache Chief. That's a lousy rationale, but I liked what I saw in this episode.

That's all for now. Another new episode next week! I think its supposed to be Dark Heart, the other Atom episode for this season - I can't wait!

Josh Reads the Comics So You Don't Have To

2004-12-03T23:42:00.000-05:00

This is a laugh-out-loud funny site. Go read it. Just go.

Josh Reads the Comics So You Don't Have To

Campaign Journal

2004-12-03T20:05:00.000-05:00

So now for something geeky...

One of the things that I've wanted to do is post a "Campaign Journal" for the D&D game that I've been running. I have always felt that this was an incredibly geeky thing to do, so naturally I'm drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

First some background: This game has been going on for over a year now, with a regular (rotating) cast of five players plus me as the DM. We don't play very often - we were playing roughly every 2 weeks before I started back to school in September. Since then we've only played once, but we're going to be playing weekly over the break and we'll see how it goes.

The cast of characters

Nightfall - Faeblood (aka half-elven) druid. Nightfall is, of course, not his given name. Nightfall was the adopted child of a family of farmers in the frontier village of Gerald's Haven. When Nightfall's brother was captured by one of the local goblin tribes, and an initial rescue mission goes wrong, Nightfall decides to try to rescue him.

Cronk - Goblinspawn (aka half-orc) barbarian. Cronk and his half-brother Morgan were originally raised by one of the local goblin tribes, but were cast out to the village of Gerald's Haven when Cronk was quite young. Morgan was one of the members of the rescue mission organized by the villagers to try to recover their family members. When the rescue mission went bad, Cronk decided to rescue his older brother.

Kerrigan - Faeblood rogue/sorcerer. Kerrigan was the apprentice of an old, retired "adventurer" who came to Haven years ago. Kerrigan had a fellow student - a goblinspawn named Morgan. When Morgan disappeared during the rescue attempt, Kerrigan decided to join Cronk in trying to get him back.

Thelonius - Human monk. Thelonius is a member of the monastary of the Sylvan Path, located in the village of Haven. The Sylvan Path requires that their members experience the world after their initial training, and Thelonius knew that the villagers needed help getting their loved ones back from the goblins.

Kateri - Human fighter. Kateri was the final "founding member" of the group. Kateri's mentor, an outcast knight from the Empire to the West, was among the group that did not return from a rescue mission in the goblin ruins. Kateri joined the others to try to get her teacher back.

Manfred - Human cleric of Kraith, Lord of War and Peace. Manfred is not an "original" cast member, but rather joined the group fairly recently. Manfred is from the same nation (Aeru) as the rest of the group, but is not from Gerald's Haven.

That's it for now. Later, the setting.

First Post

2004-12-03T19:28:00.000-05:00

So I've been reading different blogs for a while, and I think "Hey, I'm egotistical enough to think that other people care about what I think about things. Why don't I have a blog."

One little signup with Blogger later and - presto - I'm the owner of a brand-new blog. So, now I get to post a bunch of stuff that few will read and fewer will probably care about. Awesome!

So what am I going to talk about in this blog? Whatever I feel like (ah, the power of the Internet). In general, I suppose its going to be about my interests, so there will probably be posts about role-playing games, comic books, sci-fi and other suitably "geeky" stuff. I'll probably also post about my life as a Computer Science grad student occasionally and all of the excitement and intrigue that that entails...

Since I've got finals next week this is of course the PERFECT time to be starting something like this. After all, I should be studying my rear off to get the grades, but what better thing to do the week of finals but start a site to post things for random strangers on the Internet. What fun!

We'll see how this little experiment works out. Will it be a fun little thing that I maintain as a hobby, a horrible timesink that drags down too much of my time, or something shiny that I play with for a little while before discarding it for something newer and shinier? Stay tuned!