GM's Revenge!

Song of the week

2012-02-15T07:16:00.000-08:00

Hollywood Undead, Levitate. In case some people are starting to think I don't like modern music. :)

Stormwatch and The Justice League

2012-02-11T17:47:00.000-08:00

So about six months or so DC Comics did a universe wide reboot, causing all their comics to be canceled and starting thing over at issue one. Many comics, like Secret Six, disappeared altogether, other comics were completely new, like Batwing. And some comics that had been canceled before the relaunch returned, among them Stormwatch.

Stormwatch began as an Image Comics title from the nineties, a United Nations super hero team operating from a space station. Operatives were teleported to the Earth's surface and were directed by a supervisor called Weatherman (the series, combined with the "Satellite Era" of the Justice League, were both inspirations for my own Vindicators game when I decided it needed a little re-tooling). The series was not very well written early on and it was not until Warren Ellis came on board that things took a dramatic turn for the better. Ellis wrote the series to it's conclusion and was there for the reboot, then that run ended with half the team dying in some crossover with Alien I did not bother to buy (those characters later on returned in a magical reset button all too often used in comics in the pages of Stormwatch, Post Human Division, which to me was a fantastic title where minimally powered paranormals were deployed to deal with major threats by employing clever tactics and teamwork.) Ellis used the remaining characters, most of whom were his own creations, to form a new series: The Authority. The Authority were a team of paranormals willing to do whatever they felt was right to stop threats to the Earth regardless of how it might offend those in charge. The series saw many ups and downs over the years with varying levels of success.

So Stormwatch is back, with Wildstorm characters being integrated into the DC Universe much like the Charlton Comic characters Blue Beetle, The Question, Captain Atom, Nightshade, and others had after The Crisis back in '86. Back then the introduction of those characters worked wonderfully (Save for Cannon, who pretty much disappeared) and they made a smooth transition into the DC landscape. The Wildstorm characters? Well...

Here is my problem with the current incarnation of Stormwatch: it is The Authority. Stormwatch was a government sanctioned team of heroes who, while they may have skirted the boundaries of the law (or outright broke it, depending on who was Weatherman at the time), at least had heroes as members who possessed a strong moral streak and a respect for authority. The Authority consisted of self righteous bastards who thought they knew what was best for the world and were willing to do whatever they felt was right regardless of who they offended or what laws were broken. They were not so bad during the initial Ellis era when they faced off against three global threats no one else could have possibly handled. But starting with the Millar era the team became impossible for me to read because they became the most unlikable bunch of bastards I ever had the misfortune to spend money reading.

And this is pretty much what we are getting with DC's Stormwatch. DC's Stormwatch consists of paranormals who operate in secret that handles threats too big for the likes of the Justice League to handle. Think about that: DC is now publishing a series about characters who make Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern (Pick your favorite) look like scrubs.

I have no objection to The Justice League being Earth's most powerful super hero team, mightier than the Teen Titans or Suicide Squad or what have you. Each team serves it's own niche in the super heroic landscape, having their own adventures uniquely tailored for those characters and the overall concept the super hero team serves. And sometimes a team not the Justice League winds up saving the Earth without their help. The Teen Titans took on Trigon, for example, a world class threat. And I have no problem with the Justice League sometimes being written as being ill suited to handle a particular threat. For example, in the pages of Justice League Dark the JLA is confronted with a threat they are not equipped to handle because of it's magical nature.

(Picture courtesy of Scans Daily)

And I have no problem with Earth's most powerful heroes sometimes needing help. The first Teen Titans adventure consisted of Justice Leaguers being mind controlled and it was up to the sidekicks to save the day.
What annoys me here is the idea that there is this organization that has apparently been operating for who knows how many years in secret, protecting the world long before the Justice League even existed. On the face of it, it makes no sense in this new DCU landscape because the first story in the new Justice League involves the heroes meeting one another (mostly) for the first time as the planet is invaded by Apokolips and Darkseid. If this is a pre-Justice League of America invasion then I would assume Stormwatch would have intervened somehow to stop it?

But setting aside the so-called logic of Stormwatch's existence, I find it ridiculous that DC would publish a comic that makes their principle heroes look worse than redundant. It makes them look incompetent for not being aware of this other team. It would be like Batman being unaware that there had been a vigilante operating in Gotham city for years, taking out threats even bigger and more menacing than The Joker.

Now you might ask, what does this article have to do with gaming? It goes back to what I have discussed in one of my first posts about the dangers of NPCs and GMPCs making the PCs look inferior and/or unnecessary. This is why you do not introduce legendary figures like Ben Sisko in your Star Trek game to come flying in with The Defiant to make the PCs look useless. Not unless your characters are there to rescue Ben Sisko. Highly unlikely, I know.

You're God-damned right!

Now you might ask yourself what is the harm of having such powerful beings existing in your universe? Star Trek has Q, Dungeons & Dragons has various deities that are sometimes called upon to intercede on behalf of the heroes. In DC Comics during Grant Morrisons run on JLA the Rock of Ages storyline had several ‘Leaguers running into god-like beings, and if we are talking god-like beings then let us look at the likes of Marvel’s Galactus. However, the difference in all these cases are the beings in question are used sparingly and are do not show up the heroes. Rather, their appearance are plot devices that might be employed for a variety of purposes. They might show the heroes that the gods themselves are fallible and petty as the worst of them (i.e. many of Q’s appearances), or it might humble them a bit, putting their lives in perspective if they feel they have grown too arrogant (one of Q’s greatest appearances was in Q Who when he introduced the Enterprise crew to the Borg. Not so cocky now, are we Jena Luc Picard?). And they just might be a convenient plot device to bail the heroes’ butts out of the fire when they get in over their heads.

The difference in what Stormwatch represents in the New DCU is they make the established big guns look redundant and incompetent. What I mean by the first is any threat the Justice League handles Stormwatch can handle in a much easier fashion based upon the resources at their disposal. What I mean by the second touches back on what I said about Batman; how could the likes of Green Lantern and Superman with the senses at their disposal never pick up on this group? Now granted, one member of Stormwatch is The Martian Manhunter, who is also a member of the Justice League. So it may be assumed the Manhunter is using his position in one team to hide the existence of the other. I suppose that is entirely possible, but if this is the case then it calls back the objections many people had about the limited series Identity Crisis, where one Justice Leaguer used her powers to wipe Batman's memories. The Martian Manhunter must not only be eliminating evidence of Stormwatch's existence from Justice League databases, he must also be mentally assaulting his team mates to scrub Stormwatch evidence from their minds! If this is the case then The Manhunter From Mars, one of my favorite DC characters (and the other reason I decided to give this Stormwatch a chance, the first being that I thought I was buying, you know, Stormwatch and not The Authority), is now being written as a complete bastard.

But wait! You may say. What about Marvel’s Annihilators? Those guys are ridiculously powerful and make The Avengers or X-Men look like pathetic bush leaguers. In a poor writer’s hands Marvel’s cosmic powered heroes could easily make The Avengers look pathetic in comparison. But in the recent Earthfall limited series writer Dan Abnett was able to show how The Avengers worked with the cosmically powered team to overcome a universal threat. And the Annihilators normally operate off Earth, outside of the normal "jurisdiction" of Earth's heroes.

When I first started my super hero game I decided that rather than the world be a place where paranormals and metahumans had just begun to appear, there would already be established heroes. And there would be a premier super hero team already in place with it's own rich history. And I decided early on that this premier super team had to go. More than that, this premier super team had to face a threat they could not defeat on their own. Indeed, the threat they faced largely incapacitated them and it was up to the PCs to not only save the day, but to save the premier super team! Afterwards the team, High Justice, retired, it's members taking on the roles of mentors to younger NPC heroes or fading from the public spotlight. Logic was preserved as was the PCs' place in the landscape of my, now our, fictional universe.

So if you are thinking about introducing a group of NPCs that would be operating in the same sphere as the PCs, or might be interacting with the PCs in some fashion, please do not follow the path DC has taken with Stormwatch and make your player's characters look the worse for it. Do not retconn some team of NPCs or a ship or what have you into existence that makes your players look redundant, that might make them feel as if their efforts have been wasted. Do not do what DC has done to their core heroes and show your players the respect they deserve.

The death and return of Superman

2012-02-10T09:15:00.000-08:00

I hope to have a new post up tomorrow, and this one will not be one of those study in evil ones where I take a fictional villain and dissect them. In the mean time my friend Dave Zyn turned me on to this video about the death and return of Superman (Comments to follow after the video). I promise this will not become one of those web sites where it is reduced to me just posting stuff I like from other web sites.

It is an awesome video and in watching it, it made me change my mind regarding what I thought was the real culprit in destroying death in comic books. For me it had always been Jean Grey's return in '86. By the way, her return led to some horrific consequences. It turned Cyclops into a total bastard, a man who would leave his wife to return to Jean Grey (a wife, incidentally, who looked exactly like her), necessitating in writer Chris Claremont writing said wife, Madelyne Pryor, out of the picture by turning her into a super villain. Okay, granted, there were other ways he could have gotten rid of Madelyne and I think making her The Goblyn Queen, evil clone of Jean Grey was a bad idea, but this was the era of Mister Sinister so I am not really surprised Chris Claremont had done some really stupid things in this time period. Other writers and editors had basically come in and wrecked all his plans for his comic but the dude seemed to forget the X-Men was part of a larger universe and man, these things happen. The X-Men had been his private sandbox for so long he forgot that other writers and editors could sometimes play in it.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, Jean Grey's return. Jean Grey was a fluke, an anomaly. Heroes and villains coming back from the dead between '87 and '93? Rare. Very rare. But after Superman's return? Death meant Nothing. Look at this list of dead heroes who returned and look at the dates when they returned. A vast majority of them came back after '93. You would be hard pressed to find many that came back after Jean Grey's return but before Supermans death/rebirth. Heck, hers was not the first death/rebirth: Iris West Allen, The Flash's wife, came back from the dead in '85!

So, excellent video, a lot of fun to watch. Thanks, Dave!

Song of the week

2012-02-08T18:15:00.000-08:00

So I had been working on this one article and almost had it done, when I got sidetracked by this other article. And then I had in mind a third. When all was said and done I now have three articles, all in various stages of completion...and none were ready by Saturday. So hopefully one of them will get done in a few days.

In the mean time, Bob Welch, Ebony Eyes.

I knew next to nothing about this guy so I decided to look him up. Turns out he was a member of Fleetwood Mac. It also turns out Fleetwood Mac has had as impressive a line up change as Pink Floyd's and and Welch was with the band before it's most successful era, when Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had come on board (If I am reading the Wikipedia article right it means Buckingham had been with the band earlier and left, then returned with his then girlfriend). Welch was not inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the band and I think that is a crime, considering he had been with the band for three years, wrote songs for them, appeared on three albums. The man got screwed. Then again, this is the same organization that has yet to induct Rush so I suppose I should not be surprised.

Song of the week

2012-01-31T06:16:00.000-08:00

INXS is a classic case for me of one of those bands that made this one song I absolutely loved, and whose entire body of work otherwise I was completely indifferent to.

Study In Evil, part IV

2012-01-28T03:11:00.000-08:00

A quick note before I begin. I have a ninth follower! Welcome, I hope you enjoy the blog.

Second, please allow a moment of silence for the passing of a dear friend.

I am talking about the car, not the guy standing next to me. That is my brother Donald who co-signed for me back then. That picture was taken in December 8, 1999, the car was a 2000 Saturn SC2 three door coupe. Twelve years, 155,719 miles. I am driving a Chevrolet Sonic right now and it is nice.

But damn it, it just isn't the same.

Okay, on to why you are here. Last time in Study In Evil...Reigns...I lambasted Star Trek, Deep Space Nine writers and producers for ruining the character of Dukat, transforming him from multi-layered villain into a cartoonish joke. This sort of thing can be expected from almost any series if it sticks around past it's expiration date, be it a television series, motion picture series-

And Hayden weeps when he realizes this is the end of his career...

-or most commonly, a comic book series. Since many mainstream comic book characters have been around since the sixties, fifties, forties and even thirties(!) it is inevitable that at one time or another their characters went through some tough times, creatively. And the older a character the greater the odds that its overall quality has had it's highs and lows as creators and editors strove to make it relevant and popular to keep sales going. I am going to look at one such character now but rather than cover it's entire history (which I am really not qualified to do as I do not have access to even a fraction of all of his appearances) I am instead going to focus on a period where the character went through a fantastic metamorphosis from villain to, well, not villain? Anti-hero? Guy not trying to murder the X-Men and Mankind as a whole?

I am speaking, of course, about Magneto.

Really, it took forty years to explain why I wear this bucket?

Magneto is a mutant with the ability to manipulate magnetism and metal who decided that mutants were the superior species and decided he and they should either be in charge of Humanity or Mutantkind should wipe homo sapiens off the planet altogether. When Magneto first appeared he was not a very well defined character. In fact, I would say that for the most part he was a carbon copy of Doctor Doom, a helmet wearing megalomaniac bent on world domination with an opposite number who was head of his own super hero team, one with origins similar to his own (mutations/cosmic rays.).

Okay, to be fair Stan Lee was behind both creations and the guy was churning out a lot of product at this time, and Magneto's association with Xavier was introduced by Claremont (more on that later) so some creative shortcuts were to be expected. Still even back then there were differences. Magneto ultimately created his own team, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Doom always worked alone, and-

Hmmmmmm.

Moving on. When Magneto first appeared he was very much like Doctor Doom in most respects; arrogant, full of self importance, convinced he was right. He was cruel to his minions and manipulative. Heck, the guy even tried to take over his own South American nation at one point so he may have been jealous of Victor von Doom's ability to terrorize peons at a whim. His frequent run-ins with the X-Men always ended in defeat, or his plans being somehow thwarted. Finally one of his master plans backfired and he was transformed into a baby and he ultimately wound up in the care of Xavier's former love interest, Moira McTaggart. Magneto was re-aged by Erik The Red, an agent of the Shi'ar Empire to distract the X-Men but instead of being made an old man, Magneto was now a vibrant and young one (his physical age is never exactly pinned down, but it is suggested maybe late twenties, early thirties? It is hard to tell with that white hair.) with a lifetime of experience in the use of his powers now combined with a youthful strength. He was now awesomely bad ass and needed no Brotherhood to back him up. He defeated the new X-Men and fled1. Some time around this period once Magneto was returned to adulthood the world court ruled he was a "new man" and all the crimes he had committed before were expunged2. This is important later. Magneto confronted the X-Men again by using the villain Mesmero to capture them and make them acts in a carnival. The Beast showed up and helped free them but Magneto showed up and spirited them all away to his underground based located beneath an active volcano. There he imprisoned them in devices that rendered their bodies helpless but their minds active, much the same way he had been when he had been reduced to his infancy. However, Magneto had not counted on Storm's experience as a master thief and lock pick and she used the picks hidden in her tiara to free herself, the rest of her team. The X-Men fought Magneto more effectively this time, but during the melee the base began to come apart and flood with magma, which forced both sides to retreat3. Magneto was not seen again for some time, when he returned it was when Cyclops, on leave from the X-Men, wound up on Magneto's new base, an island he had raised from the ocean floor covered in the ruins of a pre-human civilization-

Just an aside here. Magneto's first base was an asteroid. His second base was located in The Savage Land. Combined with the active volcano and island it is obvious the man knows how to live.

Magneto's plan was to blackmail the world into capitulation by means of a device a device that allowed him to create volcanoes anywhere on Earth, and he employed it to wipe out the Russian town of Varykino as proof of his power. The X-Men fought Magneto to a standstill while their youngest member, thirteen year old Kitty Pryde attempted to destroy the device's computer. Magneto broke off from the fight to stop her and as a result he almost accidentally killed her. Now this is the point where Magneto's character development really begins. Up until now he has largely been a one-note villain bent on world conquest. A very ostentatious one to be sure, but for the most part he had not largely changed from his first appearance. It is when he almost killed a fellow mutant, a thirteen year old girl(!) that he begins to doubt his cause (Although in retrospect I wonder how many mutants he accidentally killed when he wiped that Russian town off the map. Statistically there had to be one or two there. And he once tried to kill the X-Men with a nuke.). Magneto abandoned his base and the new X-Men, for the first time, defeated him4.

A little while later, Chris Claremont told the story of how Magneto and Xavier first met in the pre-X-Men years, back when Xavier wandered the Earth. The pair fought Wolfgang von Strucker and Hydra and beat them, and Magneto wound up with tons of Nazi gold (It was this vast wealth that allowed him to fund his operations. Asteroid and volcanic bases do not come cheap.)5. It was in this story that we first learned that Magneto is Jewish, a critically important retcon. Because it is with this revelation that we are given more depth to Magneto's motivations. It is not just racism that motivates Magneto, but a fundamental belief that humans are bad and if given a chance they would do to mutants what the Nazis did to anyone they felt was inferior or considered a threat. Seen from that perspective Magneto's motives are almost justified, especially when you consider how the United States Federal government has repeatedly funded the creation of the mutant hunting Sentinel robots.

Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.

So then Claremont wrote the exceptional graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills where a psychotic minister named Stryker kidnapped Professor Xavier and planned to use him to kill all mutants by wiring him up to a machine and turning his mental powers up to eleven. Sound familiar? Elements of the story were used in the second X-Men film. And as was seen in the film, Magneto allied himself with the X-Men in order to stop Stryker and rescue Xavier. This was an important change in Magneto's relationship to the X-Men; for the first time they had common ground and regardless of past differences they saw how they had to work together for the greater good. As an aside, I highly recommend you pick up this comic. Claremont is very much on his game here and the art by Brent Anderson is beautiful. Anderson later went on to illustrate Kurt Busiek's Astro City and I love the guy's work.

Magneto, The X-Men, The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk and Spider Man were sucked up into what was known as The Secret Wars. Magneto was placed initially on the heroes' side, but he soon made himself a non-aligned player. I mention this due to the important distinction Jim Shooter was making here to align with the groundwork Claremont had set earlier; Magneto was no longer a straight up villain but someone who fell into a gray area: an anti-hero. Magneto helped The X-Men and various heroes defeat Doctor Doom and returns to Earth, but who refuses to return with the X-Men, stating his paths and theirs "...must diverge. For now...".

Magneto ultimately replaced Charles at Xavier's School while the professor was off in space with his beloved Lilandra, Empress of the Shi'ar Empire. This might seem strange, but Claremont again had laid groundwork for how Xavier thought. He allowed Wolverine to stay on the team despite his violent history. He accepted Rogue onto the team regardless of her past affiliation with The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants because she was desperate to learn how to control her powers6. Xavier believed mutants needed to stick together much like Magneto did, but he also believed that even the worst of them were deserving of their shot at redemption. So when Magneto showed he was changing Charles saw the importance of giving the man a chance to further redeem himself. Magneto became the New Mutants' teacher and a full time ally of the X-Men.

Later, Magneto was taken into custody by the Avengers and brought to trial before the world court, the same judicial body that ruled Magneto's time before his "re-birth" could not be legally held against him. Due to potential mental shenanigans on Magneto's part using technology he had stolen from the fallen Asteroid M, Magneto mind controlled one of the judges to rule in his behalf (The question was, however, whether or not the man would have ruled in his favor anyway. Magneto would never know) and claim his actions had been those of a man at war with Mankind, and hence the world court had no jurisdiction over him. While some countries like Russia could still hold him accountable, Magneto was essentially a free man. This court's ruling only served to further fuel anti-mutant hysteria and Magneto would wonder in the aftermath if his actions had been the right ones to make7.

So Magneto was reborn, free (provided he stay outside of the Soviet Union's sphere of influence), and was a respected associate of the X-Men. His character arc seemed to be largely over.

And then Chris Claremont messed it up. Magneto went bad again, forming a new team of mutants, getting a new Asteroid M, and generally forgetting about years of character development. In later years Magneto became ruler of Genosha (Do not get me started on the idiocy that is Genosha, one of the most utterly stupid comic book retcons of all time.), everyone thought he had died when Genosha was destroyed, he came back, decapitated Jean Gray, everyone thought he was dead but he was not, he teamed up with Xavier again, later was responsible for House of M, Cyclops let him join the X-Men even though Magneto had killed his ex-girlfriend and...

Deep breath.

Dialing back, the point is Magneto had a wonderful story arc going from the sixties up to the early nineties. He started off as a one-note villain and over time was fleshed out to become a more complete, complex character. I attribute this in large part not only to Chris Claremont's writing but also the work of Marvel's editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter as well as writer Roger Stern for his small contribution in writing X-Men vs. Avengers. There was a concerted effort by all parties to try and keep Magneto's character development consistent. It was the slide back into super villainy that ruined him, something I blame not only on Claremont but on editorial decisions at the time. But if you focus on the point where Magneto became the New Mutants' teacher and ended it right there then I think you can see a fantastic story arc of a villain finding redemption and peace. In fact, I would have been happy to have seen them retire Xavier altogether and keep Magneto as the school head. Heck, how awesome would it have been had they run a story where Xavier had become a villain and it was Magneto who had to find a way to bring his old friend back from the brink? Think of the awesomeness in reading that role reversal.

So, what have we learned when looking at this portion of Magneto's run?

Your villain's base can never be too cool. Magneto's digs are awesome. From orbital asteroids to subterranean caves beneath active volcanoes, to formerly sunken islands covered by the ruins of a city created by a long dead race pre-dating Humanity to a hidden jungle in the Antarctic, the man knew how to live. When fashioning bases for your villain sometimes it is best to think beyond the abandoned warehouse or mundane medieval castle and go big.

Make your power upgrades make sense! There is nothing wrong with having your bad guy be more powerful in the next go 'round, but (s)he cannot be a pathetic loser in one encounter and a devastating bad ass in the next without some rational explanation. In Magneto's case there is a good reason behind him suddenly being able to handle the X-Men all on his own (In part it was also due to the new X-Men being an uncoordinated team. It also did not help that half of their powers could be used against them by the Master of Magnetism: Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Wolverine's powers were all countered by Magneto's abilities to some extent.). Even stating the bad guy has "learned from his last encounter" and has prepared special spells/potions/gadgets to compensate would be good.

Retcons are not bad, unless they are bad retcons. This means if you do add an element of the character's past make certain that it 1) does not contradict what the PCs already know and 2) it adds to the character rather than detracts. For example, what upsets me so much about Ed Brubaker bringing Bucky back and making him The Winter Soldier is how it wrecks an important facet of Captain America's character, that of a man who has lived with survivor's guilt, and who's last act of heroism was a failure. Captain America was shown to be fallible, flawed, without making him any less of a hero. Sometimes even the greatest of us fail...Unless your sidekick is later found floating in the ocean by Russians, given a bionic arm, brainwashed and turned into an assassin and kept in cryogenic freeze until such time as he is needed. Oh and have him have sex with The Black Widow sometime before or after (or maybe during) her marriage just to give him more credibility. With all those literary gymnastics you would think it would have just been easier to, you know, create a new character rather than pissing all over Captain America's story. Or how about the time Ed Brubaker created an entirely new team of X-Men no one had ever heard of that Xavier never mentioned to anyone, who were believed to have been killed in action and Xavier did not tell anyone about. Oh, and one of them was Cyclops' other brother8?

Do I think Ed Brubaker might be a little over rated as a comic book writer? Maybe a bit.

Provide the catalyst. Why do the villains change? What is their epiphany? All reformed villains require one. In Magneto's case it was facing the harsh fact that his conflicts with the X-Men almost had dire consequences for a fellow mutant, the very people he was supposed to be fighting for. Of course he did try and kill the X-Men with a nuke once, but killing from a distance and with one's bare hands-especially when the latter victim is little more than a child-are considerably different.

Give it a little time. Magneto's road to redemption can be said to have begun when he was reborn and ran through a little while past X-Men vs. Avengers. So that was more than ten years of effective storytelling. Each step was logical, with Magneto a couple times almost sliding back to super villainy before finally becoming a full fledged reformed man. These days Doctor Doom can send Reed Richard's son to hell and just a few years later become his sidekick without any mention of his horrific deeds. Do I think Jonathan Hickman is over rated as well? Hell yes.

I am not saying it needs to take years to redeem a villain, just provide a little groundwork. Establish their villainy, add a bit of complexity (i.e. they are morally conflicted, or they hold a murderous grudge against a hero), provide the catalyst for their change. Or use an opportunity your players may provide as that catalyst! I mentioned before how Photon accidentally blew Doctor Hades up and this resulted in him becoming an artificial intelligence with radically different priorities. Your players are important resources of creative energy, use it to your advantage!

Next week, hopefully, I will have another article up focusing on another antagonist. Hopefully February will be a little less dramatic. :)

1 Uncanny X-Men #104

2 Defenders, volume one, #16
3 Uncanny X-Men #111-113
4 Uncanny X-Men #148-150
5 Uncanny X-Men #161
6 Uncanny X-Men #171
7 X-Men vs. Avengers limited series, circa 1987
8 X-Men, Deadly Genesis, a comic which makes no sense and turns Xavier into a total bastard.

This and that

2012-01-21T08:31:00.000-08:00

So last week was pretty rough, with a few things going on that I will not go into here. Suffice to say I was not in the right frame of mind to post anything, not even a song of the week.

So there are several items in this post, the first and most important being my brother Donald now has a blog. Donald is a voracious reader and his interests are more wide ranging than my own. His blog, An Evergreen Tree of Diabolical Knowledge, focuses on the books he has read. So far the subject matter has concerned historical texts but who knows what he might tackle next? I recommend you check the blog out, you might be inspired to pick up something new to read based on his assessment.

Second, the other reason I have not been posting is I have been trying to better put my life in order, and a large part of that is cleaning my environment. My condo is a mess. You have heard of the cliche of the bachelor's pad? Well, I am living it, only worse. Seriously, I am embarrassed to have anyone over to see just how horrible it looks. So this past week I have been kicking myself in gear and getting the place put right. Step one was cleaning off my kitchenette table:

For the first time in two years I can actually eat off of it. In retrospect I wish I had taken a picture of it for you to see just how bad it looked. No, not old ant-filled take out containers or the like. Just paperwork: pay stubs, receipts, junk mail I never got around to opening, misc. junk I collected in my pockets that I dropped on the table, etc. It took me two hours to wade through it all to make certain I did not throw out anything important (Good thing, too; I found my Winter property tax bill. See what I mean about needing to get my life in order? I was not late in paying it, by the way.).

I hope to get a gaming related post off in the following week or so, it is going to be another one regarding villains, character development and the like. This time I will be focusing on several villains who are part of an organization and how different they are as well as how they are associated with one another.

Now on to something political. I decided when I began this blog I would avoid political subjects, mostly because I am ignorant of a great many things political and I did not want to get into political arguments here. However, I do want to touch upon something that affects everyone who might read this blog and who uses the internet on a regular basis: SOPA and PIPA. I will say up front that the links provided are to Wikipedia and after the blackout earlier this week it is obvious that the source material is biased. However, it is a good starting point to educate yourself regarding what these proposed laws are and how they may impact the internet as a whole. I do know there are still a great many people ignorant of their existence, or whom is responsible for the laws, and how it affects them personally. I was speaking to someone earlier this week who thought Obama was behind the bills. While PIPA was proposed by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, SOPA was proposed by Republican Congressman Lamar S. Smith. This is a bipartisan issue and I think everyone needs to educate themselves about how these acts might affect their personal lives and the web sites they take for granted.

Finally, here is your song of the week. I remember when I heard this Hot Hot Heat tune on the radio I thought the dude was singing "Bag of chips".

Song of the week

2012-01-10T05:50:00.000-08:00

I am not a big fan of Rage Against The Machine, but man do I love The Renegades of Funk:

Character Flaw

2012-01-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

I recently booted a long standing player from both of my games after we had a falling out in regards to his actions. I am not going to go in to all the details here, but I will address his arguments and justification regarding his actions in my game: he was playing in character.

Playing in character is important. If you create a PC then there should be some consistency to how they are run. Vegetarians do not suddenly start ordering steak cooked rare and restaurants. Characters with strict codes of killing do not enter beserker rages in the middle of combat. Starship captains should not be touting the Prime Directive in one episode and violating it the next.

Get it right, fanboy

Oh. Right. Starship captains should not flagrantly violate the Prime Directive in the pilot and then irrationally adhere to it later.

That's better

If characters do act out of character there should be very, very good reasons for it (i.e. mind control). GMs should encourage players to run their characters in a consistent manner.

However, there is a dark side to playing in character and that is when doing so is detrimental to the campaign. A player can be too in love with their concept and run it with a manic zeal, much to the dismay of GM and fellow players alike. Or they just like being douche bags.

Here is an example. One of my players was running a character who decided to be a bit anti-social. Anti-social is fine. This player was running his character as being someone who did not mesh well with the others and this is fine...to an extent. What really rubbed people the wrong way was when this one player's PC was discussed: Sand. Sand had nobly sacrificed himself to save the team from what appeared to be certain destruction and this player decided to play his character as thinking Sand had been an idiot. In character arguments ensued and it got to the point where there was no way in hell the PCs would work with a character who was essentially a monumental asshole. The player had taken playing In Character to an unreasonable extreme, to the point where his character was unplayable. Having a diverging viewpoint is all well and good, but when it almost feels like one player might be criticizing another player through his character, well it is time to stand back and re-assess.

I was in a Dungeons & Dragons game many, many years ago run by a guy named Ned. I had issues with Ned's game because I rolled up a swashbuckler and we found ourselves in an African campaign. So my character was an African native swashbuckler. It seems Ned did not want to reveal his campaign setting and apparently felt if he objected to my swashbuckler concept it would give away his plans. So I was playing a character with inappropriate skill sets. I don't think anyone was very happy with Ned but we gave it a couple sessions*. Anyway, the opening adventure involved getting the PCs together and Ned did have a very clever way to do so. The town in which we all resided in was attacked by a powerful force who managed to magically subdue and enthrall everyone. Our PCs were put in a chain gang and when opposing forces launched a counter attack the magical spell was broken and our PCs' minds were freed. And there we were, literally stuck together, having to work together to escape. It was a fantastic method of getting the campaign started because we had nothing in common save for a common enemy and goal, namely to flee and to stick together for mutual protection . It sure as hell beat the "you meet in a tavern" trope so many of us GMs have relied upon for years.

However, one of the players, (I think it was Herb), decided at the first opportunity to break off from the party and board a ship. Rather than submitting to the party's majority decision to take one course of action, he decided to go by sea. He was essentially waving a big middle finger to GM and players because he was not getting his way. Part of his excuse? He was playing In Character. Never mind that in doing so it gave the GM headaches, or that it meant if the GM did go along with this the rest of the players would have to spend considerable time loitering about while the GM ran his character through a solo adventure. It was selfish and juvenile and Ned promptly killed Herb's character off, having his ship attacked, I think, by zombie pirates. Bear in mind this was a decade before Pirates of the Caribbean came out so Ned truly was ahead of his time.

So back to the player I recently booted. This player is in another game and he makes a series of poor decisions. And one of his justifications is he is playing his character In Character. An honest argument to be sure. But this game was just starting out and the main thrust of the story is getting the PCs together as a team. It was a matter of several players coming to rescue another, with another pair of players stumbling into the situation. This player decided that he was going to do things his own way and not stick with the players, which complicated things further. Which meant that made things complicated for me.

I understand how it seems sometimes a player's duty to thwart the GM. The GM's job is to present obstacles for his players to overcome, after all. However, there are situations where it is the job of the players to actually help tell the story along with the GM, almost collaborating with him. The most important of these is when the PCs first meet, the PCs are becoming a team or adventuring party. Splitting off from the party because you are playing a grim loner is very uncool because you are essentially saying "I gotta play In Character, it is up to the GM to give me excuses to stick with the group". That is true to some extent. It is also the player's job in this instance to be saying to themselves "Why should my grim loner stick with this party?". And there are plenty of reasons why if you work at it. In this particular scenario I had worked to get the loner PC to the others and the atmosphere was one of a group of people meeting a mutual threat. However this player decided to take a single instance, a thin thread of an excuse to break off from the party that greatly complicated things not just for myself but for the PCs as well. It was selfish of him to do so.

So e-mails were exchanged, consensus could not be reached and I decided to boot him. I was not happy with this decision. We have been gaming together for going on two decades now and he is an excellent and creative player. But at the end of the day I was still his GM and he was not acknowledging his errors nor was he seeing the difficult position he had put myself and his fellow PCs in. He was having too much fun playing In Character.

*There is nothing wrong with a campaign taking place outside the traditional pseudo-European setting. But a GM that does not come clean with players beforehand regarding his intentions regarding campaign settings is just being an unreasonable jerk.

Song of the week

2012-01-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

Ah, Pat Benetar, my gateway drug to the awesomeness that is Kate Bush. Seriously, I have been a huge fan of Pat going back to the early Mtv years when she did those videos wearing those ultra tight shiny black pants and had that expression that said she would so kick your ass if you tried to do anything other than look. Pat Benetar was utterly bad ass back then and was a pioneer of women's rock.

Song of the week

2011-12-26T15:22:00.000-08:00

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention I hope everyone had a Happy Christmas. :)

I was going through my old cassettes (Why I still have cassettes, I don't know. There are a great many things I should just throw out) and man did I buy a lot of stuff back when I had a disposable income. If I heard a single song I liked I would run out and buy the tape. In the case of The Nylons there were two tunes. One was Happy Together (I think all of The Nylons' songs were covers), the other was this awesome cover of Kiss Him Goodbye:

Song of the week

2011-12-19T05:34:00.000-08:00

I am a huge Billy Joel fan and my first Joel album was Glass Houses. Glass Houses was his most rock oriented album and to me arguably his best (The Stranger is in contention for that. It is a matter of taste.). My favorite song on Glass Houses was the one that did not get any airplay, Sometimes a Fantasy:

Study In Evil, Part 3

2011-12-16T04:42:00.000-08:00

I had originally meant to post this next week, but tomorrow SF Debris is going to post DS9’s Waltz, a pivotal episode regarding the character in this post and I just wanted to express my feelings before SF Debris did. I guess I did not want anyone to think my thoughts were in any way, shape or form influenced by his. Perhaps it is not at all important as I am not at all sure if any of my readers watch SF Debris’ reviews (and if you aren’t, do so. The man has some very good insights and is very funny) but I feel better for expressing my feelings now rather than later.

When running a long term campaign it might be common for the GM to use a recurring villain, an NPC that will often poke up in adventures. Sometimes he will be a straight up bad guy, other times a reluctant ally, still other times perhaps even as comic relief or a source of information. The recurring villain when handled properly can be a fascinating, complex character. For example Darth Vader could be considered a recurring villain on a small scale, as he made only three appearances (And before you even think about correcting me I refuse to acknowledge the second trilogy in these posts.) and his nature evolved over time from lackey to major player to Oh my God he’s Luke’s father?!.

Alas, the character we will be looking at today was fascinating and complex…until his creators decided to make him crazy and completely ruined him. I am speaking of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine’s Dukat.

Gul Dukat was the commander of the Terok Nor mining facility (later the station was re-named Deep Space Nine when the Federation took control at the behest of the Bajoran government) and prefect of Bajor during the Cardassian.occupation. Bajor was a non Federation world conquered by the Cardassians and stripped of its resources, it's people harshly oppressed until they eventually won their freedom through diplomatic means. Dukat remained a thorn in the side of Commander Benjamin Sisko and Major Kira Neeris, acting as an enemy and other times due to circumstances a reluctant ally. Over the years Dukat’s character evolved from straight up villain (and not a very effective one at that) to a sympathetic ally during the Federation’s conflict with the Klingons, to a legitimate bad ass when he threw in with The Dominion and became their Cardassian figurehead and one of their military leaders. However, Dukat’s daughter was slain by his chief lieutenant when it was revealed she had treasonously aided the Federation/Klingon forces in preventing Dominion forces from coming through the Bajoran wormhole. Dukat went crazy, started seeing people who weren’t there, then became a tool of The Prophets’ evil counterparts, the Pah Wraiths. Dukat formed a cult, found some people stupid enough to follow him, betrayed them, and ultimately fought Ben Sisko in a ridiculously over the top final battle that was supposed to appear biblical in proportion but in reality just brought the overall quality of the DS9 series finale down. All of that is a terribly condensed explanation of the events taking place over seven seasons of DS9.

So, what went wrong with Dukat? Let me first address some realities regarding how television works. Deep Space Nine was never guaranteed seven seasons; at the end of the day the producers have to worry about ratings just like any other television program. And so when it appears ratings might be suffering a television series will undergo retooling. A good modern example of this is the television series Hawaii 5-0, which this season introduced a new character, Joe White, played by Terry O'Quinn who used to play Locke on Lost. It was obvious his inclusion in the series was an attempt to secure the Lost crowd as well as fans of JAG, where he used to have a recurring role. I would also think he is there to rope in an older demographic. Likewise with DS9 the series underwent changes during season 4 when Michael Dorn reprised his role as Worf and joined the cast full time and the show underwent a more militant tone with the Klingon conflict (and later on the Dominion War). So Dukat’s changes in personality could have (and to some extent likely were) been due to writers and producers deciding they needed to do something different with him. I have also heard the producers began to realize people actually began to like Dukat and realized they had done a terrible job portraying him, making him too relatable, likable. Well, after some of their creative decisions I cannot see how people could not have taken the character any other way than to assume they were supposed to like and respect him!

But damn, nothing really excuses the ham fisted turn towards super villainy we saw in the season six episode Waltz!

Still, Dukat was a damaged character from the start and let us go back to DS9’s beginning so I can explain. Dukat was supposed to be a terrible person for his actions as prefect of Bajor (In DS9's first episode, Emissary, Dukat is called "one of the most hated people in Bajoran history") but his reputation was softened by the facts that he had ceased child labor, reduced labor camp output by fifty percent, improved medical care. He is a bad person, but compared to his predecessor he is an angel. So right off the bat we see writers and producers are faced with a problem; Dukat has to be a bad person, but if they seek to re-use him he has to have a streak of morality, a decent man working within a corrupt system doing what he can to mitigate the horror. We saw Dukat used in different episodes where he was taken as a hostage by the Maquis and later on aiding Sisko in recovering a stolen Defiant. Dukat came across as a victim in one instance, a willing ally in the other. On top of all this every time Dukat appeared on Deep Space Nine he did so either minimally or entirely unguarded. How could one of the most hated people on Bajor do this? Imagine Hitler taking a stroll through Jerusalem without getting a bullet in the back of the head or being stoned. There was an episode called Duet where a man posing as a hated labor camp commandant was knifed in the back on the station. If that guy could not walk DS9 in safety how could Dukat, his superior responsible for so many more horrors, repeatedly do so? It was sloppy writing. Dukat should have never, ever have appeared on DS9 (the station) if the character was so loathed. Yet his ability to walk around in relative safety strongly implied he was not nearly as despised as was implied in Emissary.

So Dukat was portrayed as being bad, but hey, perhaps he was just a figurehead or patsy, or perhaps everything he did was under direct orders from above and he could not do more for Bajor than he already had. It is easy to assume in Dukat's favor when you see episodes like Defiant where Dukat works with Sisko to recover the stolen ship and you discover there may be Cardassians far worse and insidious than Dukat. Dukat's move to the light side is even further revealed when he throws away his reputation, family standing and career when instead of killing his illegitimate daughter Tora Ziyal he publicly acknowledges her even though he knew exactly what was going to happen (And this is one of those cases of a lack of pre-planning. The character Ziyal was portrayed by three different actors. The first, the youngest, was replaced when producers decided they wanted her to have a relationship with spy-in-exile Garak. They felt the first actor's age was too low. Had they intended the relationship to take place from the start then the role would have been given to an older actor from day one.). Does this seem the action of an evil man, or a selfless one? One you can openly admire for placing principle before self interest.

Now comes the part where maybe the producers realized their error. Dukat's selfless act occurred during season four when he was fighting the Klingons (and here Dukat is portrayed as the plucky underdog fighting against long odds.). By season five the Klingons are no longer the bad guys and the principle villains are now once again the Dominion. Dukat throws out common sense in exchange for a power grab as he agrees to be a Dominion stooge provided he gets to lead the Cardassian Union in the Dominion's name. Okay, sure, he could still be bitter about losing his status over Ziyal, but the man knew how the system worked. Replacing the unfair Cardassian system with the utterly oppressive Dominion system (You know, run by the Founders, who aren't afraid to genetically engineer "solids" to better fit in with their plans. And who aren't above sending ships on suicide runs, or obliterating entire species. These are the guys Dukat is throwing in with) flies utterly in the face of a guy who through his attempts to mitigate the horror of the Bajoran occupation and public acceptance of his half Bajoran daughter shows a strong streak of moral character, a man who tries to balance duty with decency. Is he still a bad man for his horrific actions? Of course. Can you still admire him for trying to do the right thing? Sure.

Only now Dukat is full on Evil. Screw four seasons of character development, we need him to be a very, very bad man because the producers say he is a complete moron for now placing naked ambition before everything else. Where was this naked ambition in the first four seasons? Where is his common sense? The Dominion are ten times worse than the Klingons and Romulans and they can only get to the Alpha Quadrant through a tiny bottleneck known as Deep Space Nine. The smart play would be to forge an alliance between all Alpha Quandrant species and defend that bottleneck. But nope, Dukat is now officially a moron for collaborating with an alien race willing to detonate suns.

So Dukat is now a Dominion figurehead, a lackey. He has sold out his very people for power. The only bright spot is his love of Ziyal but she is killed by his lieutenant when it is discovered she aided the rebels in disabling the station (As a side note here, Dukat said to Ziyal that traitors should be executed, which sort of sealed her fate. Yet he betrayed his entire species. So add hypocrisy to the "new, improved" Dukat.). Dukat now goes crazy...and this makes no sense whatsoever. Dukat was portrayed as brave, selfless, loyal...and now we see he a tyrannical self serving bastard who is also mentally unbalanced.

Dukat decides to worship the Pah-wraiths, the wormhole aliens' evil counterparts. So Dukat trades in The Dominion, an oppressive, utterly merciless entity, for a group of aliens who do not even understand linear time! All of this is so Dukat can achieve Power. Never mind any of this being for the good of the Cardassian people, it is now all about Dukat! There is nothing selfless, brave or noble about Dukat any more; he is now a two dimensional villain who if he had a handlebar mustache would be twirling it at every available opportunity. Dukat murders Jadzia Dax, because the producers know there might be one or two Dukat fans out there left and they need to really drive home the point that Dukat is superbadevil. He becomes part of a cult of Pah-wraith worshippers and they make him their leader...Because really there is no one more qualified to lead your insane cult than the guy who ruled your planet and was responsible for numerous atrocities and who up until recently was the stooge for a race of beings determined to do pretty much the same thing to your entire sector of space.

Dukat now poses as a Bajoran to get ahold of a mystic tome that will allow him to bring the Pah-wraiths over...or something. He and Ben Sisko wind up in a fight in a place called the Fire Caves and while Ben is saved by the wormhole aliens Dukat is imprisoned for all time with his Pah-wraith masters. Thus the DS9 finale goes from a ten to a seven due to a ham-fisted resolution to the Dukat saga.

So, what we see here in Dukat is a character who is portrayed in the first episode as the principle antagonist. Problem was, the first three seasons of Deep Space Nine were very boring and Dukat as an antagonist was simply not that engaging. He just never seemed to be that effective at being a bad guy. Then beginning with season four Dukat was now portrayed as being someone you could admire. The Klingons were the bad guys, the Cardassians were now the good guys, and Dukat was by his acknowledgment of Ziyal a decent person. Hey, this is great! We have some wonderful character development here. Only...now the producers realized their mass murdering despot was too likable and they had to overcompensate. And boy did they ever, topping themselves season by season until he became a sci-fi antichrist.

So how can you as a GM avoid the mistakes the writers and producers made where Dukat was concerned? I think the problem stems from Ziyal. Introducing the character and making Dukat accept her rather than kill her ruined his character, if the intention was to keep Dukat a bad guy all along. If Dukat had slain Ziyal in Indiscretion then his status as a bad guy would have been secured and his throwing in with The Dominion would have made much more sense. As a GM if you must be consistent with how you portray your NPCs. That does not mean you cannot have character growth and gradually turn an NPC from a bad guy to someone with more shades of gray, but you should not abandon that character development for the sake of expediency as the DS9 writers seemed to do. Dukat experienced legitimate character growth in one direction, and it was completely abandoned at the price of poor writing because the producers needed a Dominion figurehead and they felt they had made him too nice. I think that rather than Dukat being driven by a thirst for power that instead the Dominion took his family on Cardassia hostage and used them as leverage against him, so he was forced into playing the role of villain. Then we could have had the best of both worlds. Then his mental breakdown would have been much more believable when he realized the loss of DS9 meant his family back home would be slaughtered. So you could have had Dukat murder his daughter and throw in with the Dominion in one path, or save his daughter and attempt self redemption only to have the attempt thwarted by circumstances beyond his control.

But the whole Pah-wraith thing? No, I can't see any justification for that, unless he was going to use the Pah-wraiths to get revenge on the Dominion for what they did to his family. That I could have bought. If only the producers had planned Dukat's character arc out a bit better then perhaps we could have seen him come to a better end than the ridiculous one we were subjected to in the finale.

In my Vindicators game I have a character called Annette, an immortal who is the matriarch of a clan of sorcerers. She was responsible for creating the team by manipulating events from behind the scenes, but her reasons were because she felt creating the team would help prevent several dooms her precognitive powers showed her. Before creating the group she had been a super villain and attempted to resolve her problems by manipulating other magic users but when this did not work she abandoned this identity. And later she created a covert team of heroes to fight the extra dimensional invaders and their lackeys, who had slain hundreds of her kin. In every instance Annette has been portrayed not as a hero, but as someone who acts in her own self interest and the interest of her clan.

So if I were to turn her into a full blown super villain, or at the very least have her do something utterly morally reprehensible, I have done nothing that would contradict that because I have striven to remain consistent where Annette's interests, motives and loyalties lay. Annette places family above all, and to hell with everyone else. No law, no person, no thing comes before her family. I have remained true to the core concepts of the character and any character development would not be undone by any horrific actions she may be responsible for, provided those actions were undertaken to protect her family.

There is another character, Doctor Hades. Hades started off as your two dimensional mad scientist who specialized in building robots. Hades died quite by accident when a super hero did not believe his laptop was booby trapped. Hades could have ended there but I instead decided to bring Hades back as an artificial intelligence who now saw himself as an ally to the very hero who had slain his human predecessor's body because they were both inhuman beings and had more in common with one another now. I took advantage of the situation, making a simple character into a complex one, giving him new motivations because Hades the machine's needs and desires were completely different from Hades the man. It was dramatic character development inspired by an in-game event, one the players could easily believe (And in a dark potential future that hero, Photon, was one of Earth's rulers and had turned evil, and Hades was one of his loyal lackeys. Through the game I had Hades attempting to turn Photon towards the dark side, weakening his resolve by pointing out how much more he had in common with Hades than the fleshbags he sought to defend.)

This is the lesson you should take here from Dukat's mishandling and my own attempts to be true to my NPCs. Have some clear cut ideas what you want to do with your prominent NPCs and show some consistency in how they are portrayed, but do not be afraid to change the NPCs provided such changes make sense. If an NPC changes through reasonable and believable character growth then honor that growth; do not undo it out of expediency. Treat your players with more respect than the producers of DS9 did their fans.

Song of the week

2011-12-12T08:51:00.000-08:00

I think Genesis is one of those bands that operated on a curve, quality wise. When they first came out they were a progressive rock band led by Peter Gabriel and I did not much enjoy their stuff. It was not until Gabriel quit the band and Phil Collins took over as lead singer that they produced music that I enjoyed (Oddly enough once Gabriel left I found his solo work much more enjoyable. Weird).

And then somewhere along the way Genesis began to truly suck. The Duke, Abacab, self titled album and Invisible Touch era was my Genesis. We Can't Dance? True suckage.

On the Invisible Touch Album there was an instrumental I loved the hell out of, The Brazilian:

Study in Evil, part two

2011-12-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

Well, perhaps "Evil" is being a bit dramatic, but it makes for a good title.

In part one I discussed T'Pring, one of Star Trek's most interesting and compelling bad guys. T'Pring's motives were understandable, the execution of her plans brilliant, her manipulations masterful. The fact that she won made for great drama. Now I turn my eyes to...

Yes, that's right. Khan. Played by Ricardo Montalban, Khan Noonian Singh was the product of late twentieth century genetic engineering, a principle player in the Eugenic Wars of the late twentieth century. Losing the wars, he and his followers were launched into space on the Botany Bay in cryogenic suspension, accepting exile over the imprisonment/deaths of himself and his people. Captain Kirk and The USS Enterprise discovered the ship and thawed Khan out, not realizing who or what he was, a man with super human strength and advanced intellect, and whose seductive powers rivaled Kirk's own as he suborned lieutenant McGivers and ultimately awoke his people. He took over the Enterprise and it was only McGivers deciding she could not stand by and see her captain die at Khan's hands that saved the day. Khan was exiled on Ceti Alpha V with his people and McGivers.

Now, what makes Khan such a great villain in this episode? Let's break it down.

Khan is an awesome character: Khan was a dictator who honestly believed he was doing good. When confronted by Kirk and Spock at dinner, when they are seeking to confirm that he is indeed Khan Noonian Sighn, his facade cracks and he says "We gave them order!" as he pounds the table. Montalban is able to give us a complex, fascinating, fully fleshed out character in less than an hour, a man who honestly believes he is not evil, that it is his destiny to rule. There is a reason why Khan was chosen to make the leap to the big screen, because Ricardo, writer Carey Wilber (and damn, I wish this guy had written more than just this single episode), producer Gene Coon and director Mark Daniels (who gave us a couple turkeys, but who also provided us with classics like The Doomsday Machine and Mirror/Mirror) did such a wonderful job providing us with a multi-layered personality.

Khan is the complete package. Montalban oozes charisma. He is handsome, looks physically powerful, possesses a strong voice that conveys a barely contained passion. His Khan dominates every scene he is in. Ricardo makes you believe this man once ruled a good chunk of the Earth and while I know we are watching a show made in the sixties and there is a degree of sexism involved in the way lieutenant McGivers is written, it does not take all that much suspension of disbelief for me to buy him seducing the impressionable lieutenant who is quite taken with romantic notions of the eugenics warlord. Khan is highly intelligent, able to absorb twenty third century technical manuals and master their content to gain an understanding of the Enterprise's systems and to use them to take over the ship. Khan is also far stronger than a normal human being and does an awesome job tossing Kirk around like a rag doll before he is taken down through James T.'s equalizer, a length of pipe.

Khan has grand goals/motivations. Khan was one of Earth's rulers, he is an ambitious leader who bows to no one. He seeks to take over Enterprise and convince members of the crew to follow his banner. It might seem silly to think that this man could form an empire from such meager origins, but his story reminds me of Romulus and Remus, the twin survivors of Troy who ultimately found Rome. From the humblest beginnings can an empire grow. Khan taking over the Enterprise is just the first step on his road to Empire.

Now up to now I had discussed Khan's appearance in the television episode Space Seed. This was the first time he was featured. There is, of course, his tremendously memorable appearance in Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan.

I spoke before in the T'Pring article about the importance of a villain being used sparingly, that every time they appear the odds are increased that their impact would be lessened, their legacy tarnished if they are badly handled. Just look at those Voyager episodes starring John DeLancy as Q. Instead of the character going out in style in All Good Things we got The Q and The Gray. When a villain makes another appearance it should be different, should be bigger, grander. It should feel like an event.

And damn it, Wrath of Khan delivers. How is Khan different this time around? Let's look.

He is leaner and meaner. In Space seed Khan is a charismatic, highly intelligent leader with physical presence and a seductive charm. Now fifteen years of exile and hardship, seeing many of his people die (including his beloved wife, McGivers), has made him embittered, angry. Khan's charm now has a biting sarcasm to it, an irony as he confronts Captain Terrell and Commander Chekov, and later Admiral Kirk. Fifteen years of suffering have changed him, made him in many ways a different person.

Khan is Ahab, Kirk the White Whale. So Khan's motivation has undergone a significant change. Before he was interested in building an empire and doing what was best for his people. Now his motivation is vengeance against Kirk regardless of the cost or common sense. His subordinate, Joachim, points out that he has a ship to go where he will. But Khan is not having it. He wants to track down Kirk regardless of the cost. This is where that character development really shows. The Khan from Space Seed would not have been all that interested in revenge, not if it meant risking his personal freedom and the lives of his followers. That Khan was a pragmatic man willing to do anything to survive. He elected to take a risky exile into space rather than make some sort of futile last stand. Now? Now nothing else matters but killing Kirk, or hurting him. Khan has been cost much, there must be reparation, payment in flesh and blood.

This is tremendous character development. People can and usually do change over time, especially when faced with privation. What we see in Khan is a man who has seemingly stripped away all unnecessary emotion to focus upon the sole task of survival of himself and his people. There is no room for weak emotions like love or selfish ones like desire. All that matters is dominance of his environment. And when the possibility of revenge presents itself all that well honed, ruthless pragmatism developed over fifteen years is tossed aside in a second for a chance at revenge.

The stakes are higher. In Space Seed the stakes involve Khan taking over Kirk's ship and killing his crew in an initial bid to create an empire. In the second film the stakes are similar, only they are larger. Khan's chances of creating an empire were slim the first time around, but in the film Khan now has a doomsday weapon that can obliterate an entire planetary population! In the episode the scale is smaller, man versus man. In the second it is ship versus ship. In the episode Kirk loses McGivers to Khan a good crew member. In the film Kirk loses Spock, his best friend as well as numerous crew (among them young cadets). In every way the film takes the stakes and raises them, Khan's second appearance bigger and better.

So what have we learned from how the 'Trek creators used Khan and what lessons can you as a GM take from it? First of all, if you wish to defeat a villain you do not necessarily have to kill him. Perhaps like Khan you exile him, imprison him, or make his death a very ambiguous one so his return can be teased. This is especially true if the villain is one you really like (But please do not fall in love with your villains; you run the risk of putting him before the players) or one the players really enjoyed dealing with. Second, if you do use a major villain (and when I mean "major" I mean the sort of person who is out to take on the world, change it, or destroy it) again it should be bigger and better than the time before. Finally, do not be afraid to change the character's personality and motivations provided they make sense.

Song of the week, personal issues

2011-12-05T07:25:00.000-08:00

Some personal stuff is going on so I am having some trouble focusing on the next Evil Reigns post. In the mean time this song finally hit the 'net. I have been hot to hear it in it's entirety ever since I heard it when I saw The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trailer. I give you Trent Reszer and Karen O.'s cover of Led Zepplen's The Immigrant Song:

Song of the week

2011-11-28T06:10:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone who celebrates it had a nice Thanksgiving. On the way home from dinner my brothers Bob and Donald were discussing with me random stuff, and the conversation came to Mtv. And the conversation turned to what our first music video was. I honestly can't recall the first music video I saw on Mtv (although statistically it was a Rod Stewart video; the first couple years Rod Stewart got ridiculously high airplay because he made a ton of music videos. A man truly ahead of his time). For me my first video was not seen on Mtv but on a horrible variety show called Pink Lady and Jeff. It was Cheap Trick, The Dream Police:

Study in Evil, part one

2011-11-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

In a majority of campaigns the driving force is The Bad Guy. The Bad Guy is the dude who killed the hero's parents, or is ruling the kingdom with an iron fist, or has some other nefarious plot the heroes must thwart. The Bad Guy is often the lynchpin your campaign relies upon. He could be a faceless force like Sauron, acting through intermediaries, or he is up close and personal like Darth Vader. So what makes a ~~good~~ stupendous Bad Guy? To answer this question I thought I would take a look at a series of fictional villains and analyzed them, see where writers got it right and where they got it wrong. And I wanted to start off with one of my favorite Bad Guys of all time.

T'Pring.

Who? You might ask. T'Pring appeared in the Original Star Trek series episode Amok Time, one of my two favorite Star Trek episodes. If you have not seen it, here it is in four parts. Watch it. Watch it now.

I could write an entire article about how utterly awesome this episode is (among the high points: Kirk makes a rare but huge blunder, McCoy is written as awesomely clever, and T'Pau might be one of the greatest 'Trek guest stars of all time. I love how she just knows what McCoy is doing but lets him do it anyway because she gets what is going on and can't stop it, but at the same time isn't going to get in the way of someone else trying to stop it. In fact, she becomes McCoy's willing accomplice!), but I will focus on one part: The Bad Guy, T'Pring, one of the most awesome Star Trek villains of all time. Yes, I easily stack her up against Khan any day and here are the reasons why:

She only appears once. Wait! You may say. If she is so awesome shouldn't we get more T'Pring? Nope. Part of what makes T'Pring so amazing is her one and only appearance (I am not counting her appearance in Diane Duane's book Spock's World, which while it was a good read I feel it did not do T'Pring justice. Really it just felt like Duane needed a Vulcan bad guy and used T'Pring because there were no others available.) because there is no opportunity to screw her up. She shows up, kicks ass all over the place, then rides off into the sunset, leaving devastation in her wake. Look at characters like Marvel's Doctor Doom-

Your repeated use of Doom grows wearisome, fool!

or Deep Space Nine's Gul Dukat. Repeatedly using these characters means writers run the risk of diluting their potential awesomeness. Worse, it provides more and more opportunities to get the characters wrong. Even worse than that, characters like Doctor Doom have to fail; if he won Reed Richards would be dead and he would rule the Earth (although there was a neat graphic novel where Doom did in fact conquer the Earth and discovered becoming the world's biggest bureaucrat kinda sucked, so he let the Avengers defeat him.). So Doom has to lose. Repeatedly. He spends months coming up with an awesome plot to defeat Reed Richards and Mister Fantastic makes him look like a chump in ten minutes. Just once I would love to see a comic book character confront Doom on his win/loss record and point out for such a smart guy he sure am dumb.

Look at another awesome Star Trek villain: Khan Noonian Singh. He only appeared twice and both times were terrific. Had he appeared a third time I am certain someone would have botched it. It was rare instance where lightning struck twice, and that is due in large part to the fact that Khan really in many ways is two different characters (I will touch on the awesomeness that is Khan next time) in his two different appearances. So yeah, while recurring villains sound great, the one shot bad guy, especially one who wins, can be very refreshing.

She is highly intelligent. We all know Vulcans are supposed to be smart, right? Look at Spock; he is the smartest guy in the room regardless of whatever room he is in. Yet that fact does not strike home until Amok Time and you meet other Vulcans and you realize that Jesus Christ, if Vulcans decided to go to war against the Federation, the Federation would be doomed. Because T'Pring is a helluva amateur strategist. Consider:

Spock is suffering from Pon Farr, the Vulcan biological urge to mate which hits every seven years. If he and T'Pring do not have sex, Spock will die. T'Pring wants this arranged marriage to be over so she brings her lover(!) to the ceremony, intent on challenging the marriage, having her lover kill Spock in the duel and to living logically ever after with her man. (Now you may ask, if she wants out of the marriage couldn't she just not have sex with Spock and let him die? Then she would be guilty of murder. It is important to consider she must work within the boundaries of the law because she wishes to still live in Vulcan society.)

Only what happens? Spock brings Kirk and McCoy along, and T'Pring can tell right away that these two human "outworlders" mean a lot to him. Ah ha! T'Pring challenges the validity of the marriage via kali-fi and instead of picking Ston, she chooses Kirk as her champion . Remember she has no idea Spock is bringing Kirk and McCoy to the ritual, she comes up with this change of plans right then and there. And it works perfectly in her favor. Because as she explains it:

1) If Kirk won he would not want T'Pring because he killed Spock (Yes, go ahead, insert Kirk space booty call joke here), so she gets Ston, her man, all legal and proper.

2) If Spock won then he would not want her because he killed Kirk, and she still gets Ston.

3) If Spock won and he did not release her from the marriage she still gets what she wants because Spock would be elsewhere, either with his career or in prison, and she still gets Ston in some way. The status quo is maintained, she risks nothing.

T'Pring cannot lose! How utterly awesome is that? Whereas before there was a risk of her losing her man in the challenge, she sees her chance to completely change the game in her favor and she wins. Even Spock compliments her on her flawless logic. You want the model of an evil super genius? You look at T'Pring. And speaking of which...

T'Pring does not look like your normal villain. T'Pring is lovely, but we have seen lovely bad guys before. The X-Men's White Queen, for example, was a classic case of an ultra-sexy villainess.

And speaking of characters ruined by too many appearances...

But more often than not villains look villainous. Like The Wicked Witch, for example...

I have flying monkeys! Monkeys, that fly!

...who through repeated appearances goes from Bad Guy to being just misunderstood hero of the downtrodden. And hot:

Snide comment aside, I do dig the music to Wicked and would love to see the musical, but it can get annoying when bad guys are sometimes turned into anti heroes (I'm looking at you, Venom and Sabertooth!).

Back to T'Pring. T'Pring does not look evil or vamped up. She looks very attractive but she is almost demure in those Vulcan slippers, being overshadowed by all those big, strong men. No way she is the puppet master, manipulating everyone around her. No sir...

T'Pring does not look evil. She looks sober and cold, but evil? Like a woman willing to force men to kill one another to get what she wants? She doesn't look that way to me. And finally...

T'Pring's motivation is wonderfully understandable. Forget world conquest, or the promotion of some alien ideology, or enslaving the human race, or even a hunt for treasure. T'Pring is sick of being married to Spock and wants out. She wants to be with her man Ston, free and legal. It is motivation based on passion and she uses logic to achieve her aims. This is in so many ways a wonderful interpretation of Vulcans, as alien in thought processes, yes, but still very relatable (interesting how there is a dictionary entry for that word, and yet my spell checker denies it) in some fundamental ways. Viewers can understand what motivates T'Pring, especially men and women trapped in loveless marriages, who may feel powerless, their options limited. In some small way T'Pring may even be a sympathetic character...if you ignore the whole manipulating men into killing one another thing. But even that is excusable to a degree. T'Pring is bound by strict laws and to get what she wants she must work within the confines of those laws. She did not write the part where death matches are a perfectly acceptable means of conflict resolution. If she had a choice I am certain she would hire a good divorce attorney and hash it out in court.

So there you have it, one of the best villains I have ever had the pleasure to watch. Intelligent, does not look like a traditional bad guy, possessing understandable motivations that might even in some small way make her a sympathetic character, and above all else, used very, very sparingly. Theodore Sturgeon wrote the screen play for Amok Time and judging from this and his other Trek contribution Shore Leave, I find it a real pity that he did not have more of an impact on Star Trek as a whole because I think his two efforts are among Trek's best.

Next time I will look at Khan and what makes him work as a villain. Both of him...

Song of the week

2011-11-17T07:32:00.000-08:00

Batman and Robin is an abomination, a horrible film that was the creation of Joel Schumacher's "creative genius" and Warner Brothers merchandising greed (And while I have often complained about Joel's hatchet job on the film he cannot take all the blame. Directors are employees of both producers and the studio system, so anything Joel did the studio either approved of or made him do.). Despite Chris Sims' impassioned and amusing review nothing can convince me this movie is anything but an utter waste of two hours of my time. True story: I saw this movie at the dollar theater at my brother Jon's insistence (and I paid him back by making him see Battlefield Earth with me. Vengeance is mine!) and we went with a bunch of our friends. When the film let out Herb Harris had this expression on his face I can imagine survivors of the bombing of Dresden must have shared. He turned to us and said, "I feel so...used."

So the film is as bad as modern film making can be with a terrible script, bad acting, and horrific direction. All that being said, it has an awesome Smashing Pumpkins song on the soundtrack. And now some super genius has married this song with scenes from Nolan's two Batman films:

Brilliant.

Creative Short Cuts

2011-11-13T00:32:00.000-08:00

There is a comic book called Knights of The Dinner Table, it is about five friends who play a Dungeons & Dragons type game called Hackmaster (a game that was later actually created, partly based on the original D&D engine). I used to buy it but I 1) was running out of room to store comics and 2) I could not justify the price because once the Hackmaster game was created KOTDT became a Hackmaster supplement magazine and the price went up. So I could not see why I should be a magazine where half the material was stuff I was not interested in.

Anyway, in one issue one of the players, Dave, decides to take a crack behind the GM screen and the results are...less than stellar. The dungeon, you see, was just the layout of his house. Because Dave was a first time GM and had difficulty coming up with something he fell back on something he knew.

As silly as the plot was, as funny as the strip struck me, the principle used is not.

First time, or even veteran GMs may be hard pressed to come up with original material and can find running a game to be very intimidating. In an earlier post I referenced online sources for pre-generated adventures and this is one avenue. But what if you want to run a longer lasting campaign and are having difficulty creating supporting characters, kingdoms, plots and these online sources are not helping? The fact is there is plenty of material to pick and choose from, be it old television programs, motion pictures, books, history, etc.

I am not talking about ripping off a plot whole, but there is nothing wrong with being inspired. For example, Star Trek's Balance of Terror is obviously inspired by The Enemy Below, but it is still very much a Star Trek story. And sticking with Star Trek, the writers and producers were obviously influenced by modern events at the time, with the Klingons and Romulans playing the part of the Soviets and Communist China. There were episodes where the Klingons and Federation were indirectly involved in conflicts much like the Soviet Union and United States were during the Cold War. Looking at other fictional worlds, even a legendary writer like Robert E. Howard has gone this route; he used ancient Egypt as the blueprint for the Hyborian kingdom of Stygia. Hell, Harry Turtledove does not even hide the fact that he has used the American Civil War and World War II as the basis of two fantasy series.

EDIT: I completely forgot about George Lucas, who has admitted that two of his inspirations for Star Wars were Flash Gordon (he actually wanted to do a Flash Gordon movie but was unable to because someone else had the rights) and The Hidden Fortress.

What do you know about the region where you live? Here in Michigan there are two interesting stories that could make for good one-short adventures or long or short campaigns. During the height of the logging industry there were guys who would steal logs as they floated down the river: log rustlers. It might sound silly but at a time when wood was the number one construction material in places without quarries logs were a very valuable commodity. Perhaps your adventurers have stumbled into a situation where loggers, frustrated with the loss of revenue, have hired the wandering adventurers to put an end to the rustlers? It is a change of pace from the standard dungeon crawl and PCs might have to deal with unusual environments to fight in (imagine a pitched battle on logs snarled in a river. The wet, uncertain footing, the possibility that the wrong move could shift the entire pile and send people falling into the water, PCs crushed between logs or trapped beneath the pile, drowning!). Another incident is the "Toledo War" where a conflict erupted between the state of Ohio and the territory of Michigan over the city of Toledo. In the late eighteenth through early nineteenth century Toledo was a thriving and important town due to it's geographical location on Lake Erie and the creation of the Erie canal (before railroads the canal systems played a major role in the movement of goods, with mule-pulled barges floating up and down them). Imagine two kingdoms warring over a small town due to it's economically important location. The town is split into factions, factions eager to hire adventurers to protect their goods as they ply the river. Perhaps the PCs must come up with some way to find a resolution to this conflict? What if the loggers from the earlier idea run their logs down to this town? So just by using two pieces of Michigan history I have come up with a possible long term campaign. Sure, it might not be to everyone's taste but not every adventure should revolve around abandoned dungeons and bags of gold and jewels that are just laying around. Too much of that sort of thing and players run the risk of growing jaded.

With a little homework I could adapt Detroit politics into the political framework of a fantasy or sci-fi city. Have you heard of Tammany Hall? There is a fantastic blueprint to create a corrupt political machine. Why knock yourself out trying to create all that material? Unless you love it, of course. If that is the case then knock yourself out. I am just saying for those of you hard pressed to create this stuff, there are avenues to pursue, resources to exploit.

This principle does not necessarily have to apply only to an adventure or a setting. Perhaps you are simply having trouble coming up with NPC names? My friend Dave, for one of his campaigns, named the members of one mighty house after characters from an anime. You could use famous people from a historically important event like the battle of Thermopylae, perhaps modify their names a bit. Leonidas becomes Leon, Demophilus becomes Demo, Themistocles is now Themi (the latter possibly even being a good female name). Xerxes? Zerk, maybe. There, I just came up with the names for a cyberpunk biker gang, the Chrome Spartans. Maybe use foreign boy and girl names for the names of regions and cities. Aimery, Arbogastro, Zosime, Chace are all French boy names, ones likely not known to English speaking players, they would be ideal names for cities and countries. Italian girl names? Ghita, Perlita, Zoila. Three of the members of the super villain group the Company of Wolves were named after my brothers, that was done more simplicity's sake because at the time their first names were not that important.

What about villains? When I began my Vindicators campaign I created a lot of poorly defined background because I wanted to give the players the feeling that they were not the first heroes in this world, that paranormals had been making an impact on it for decades. So I worked up a timeline and sprinkled numerous fictional events in it (I was very much inspired by the Watchmen comic, where Alan Moore succeeded in showing how the existence of super heroes would impact the real world). With some I had some ideas that would be addressed in the game eventually, with others I just put them there for color. One of them was a guy named Lord Dread. I had never intended Dread to be anything more than a Doctor Doom knockoff and I had never intended to use him.

Not without giving Doom royalties!

But then I came across an image online and I thought they were so cool that I simply had to expand on Lord Dread, only what could I do to make him unique from Doom? Two things sprang to mind. The first was Dread's numerous defeats have worn him down over the years. When you look at Doctor Doom the guy loses. A lot. Seriously, has any of his successes had any lasting impact on his enemies or the world at large? Not really. You would think a guy who has lost so many times would just give up, right? And that is what Lord Dread did. He gave up. Beaten once too often, he has ceased in his attempts to conquer the world and as a result he has become forgotten, a punch line.

And then...he got old. And now he is dying. And now he has decided to go out with one last gasp.

So while I was inspired by Doom-hi tech villain who wears armor and has his own country-I have taken it someplace else. I added my own twists. And yeah, maybe some comic book writer has done the same thing, but if they have I have not read it. Believe it or not, but it is very difficult to come up with something new. I thought my friend Joe had invented the idea of the super hero reality show when he ran his Avant Guard PBeM, then I discovered DC had done it during the nineties with some of their New Blood characters.

Chances are you are surrounded by inspiration: historical texts, paperbacks, comic books, DVDs, the internet. You have at your fingertips entire worlds to adapt to your campaign. The hard part is to give it enough of a spin that makes it yours, make it fun for you and your players. Just try to have more vision than to simply use your house layout for your dungeon, or your brothers as the bad guys. :)

Song of the week, Delays

2011-11-10T06:57:00.000-08:00

Well, after that cathartic series of posts I had planned on jumping in with another...eventually. But one of my players, Earl, and I spoke and it turns out I am running a second adventure in my Vindicators game (which really makes sense, as suddenly the game's number of players swelled due to past members returning and the thought of all those guys going on one adventure would be...messy). And I am not complaining because I hope Maidenquest will be as fun a ride as Dylanquest should be. So those two combined with the Behind The Veil game has got me a little busy.

And yeah, City of Heroes. It's the cowled monkey on my back.

So I have a couple ideas for some posts that I will try and get to this weekend. In the mean time your song of the week comes from A Perfect Circle, the song is Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm of War Drums.

Whew.

I heard the song when I saw a commercial for the video game Rage and it stuck with me. What I find funny is when you look at some of the comments on the YouTube page how some Perfect Circle fans are upset that people were drawn to the song due to it's commercial use. Me, I would love it if a video game (a good one, of course) used a Kate Bush song in it's commercial. I guess maybe some Perfect Circle fans were upset because the band "sold out" or something.

Song of the week

2011-10-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

Eric Clapton. Need I say more?

In closing

2011-10-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

In case you showed up late, I wrote a series of posts regarding a GM named Drew and his game. You can find the posts below or just go to the links here, here and here. I was angry with the man, angry with what he had said to me. He had called my actions "pure evil", scoffed at my assertion that I was his peer. But now that I have written my articles, have given myself time to think, to ponder on what he said and what I wrote, I have come to the conclusion that he is right, I am not his peer.

I am his superior.

He mocked me for presuming he was a novice, but with the evidence at hand what other conclusion could I come to? An adventure that was simplistic in setting but clunky and over complicated in execution, players quitting every few weeks for one reason or another, a web site devoid of information, a GMPC whose function could have easily been handled by a PC, my only logical conclusion was he was a player who had gotten in over his head. Now granted his game has limped along as he has recruited new players to fill in the holes of the literary dike but he had to scrap his first failed adventure due to departing players (me being among them) and an inability to bring it to a successful conclusion. Of course he railed against me for the trouble I caused, but a good GM looks as much to his own shortcomings as he does his players.

And this is where I consider myself superior. Yes, I have had players quit on me in the past, but if you look at my game I have a loyal group of friends who have stuck with me, some for as many as ten years or more. Even players who have quit for personal reasons have come back. Jeff and Keith left the game a few months ago, they are returning. Robin might be coming back after an eighteen month or so absence. Why do these people return? Because they like who they play with and I entertain them. They dig what I am putting down.

I have the greatest group of players on the 'net. I have the Justice League of players:

They are the Avengers of players (and not the Brian Michael Bendis era of Avengers. I'm talking Steve Englehart level of Avengers here!):

They are The League of Extraordinary Players:

God bless 'em.

I am done with Drew, I am moving on. Writing these posts has made me feel much better and I will now think on what other articles to write. Almost every writer wants a following, but at the end of the day a writer should write for themselves. I should be less concerned about the size of my target audience and more concerned with the joy I may find in writing these articles. And if even just one aspiring GM finds inspiration in my works, if just one guy or girl enjoys reading what I am laying down, then I should be content.

Good bye, Drew. This GM has has his revenge.

Captain's log: Detrimental

2011-10-21T05:08:00.000-07:00

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

All right, let us recap Drew's mistakes:

He took the job in the first place. Drew was not Exeter's original GM, he took over at the request of someone else. This means he did not get to pick the ship, the players or possibly even the plot. Putting himself in that situation was courting disaster and I do not recommend anyone doing the same. If you run a game, make it your own. Only in rare exceptions does it make sense to take over another game. My player Rafe, for example, ran a team of Vindicators for about a year but only after he and I discussed it. We discuss which players/characters he would have on his team, when and how our two games would impact one another, etc. And Rafe had been my player for some ten years so he was quite familiar with the Vindicators universe and with my GMing style, he knew what we expected from one another. Finally, Rafe showed tremendous creativity and did some pretty clever things from the unused bits and pieces in my game.

Drew, on the other hand, was stuck with Space Angel, among other things.

He decided to use Nova: The Nova system sucks. I already noted in my earlier posts why I think so, but another problem is the archive feature. If you look at a forum based game looking at past events is relatively simple. Mailing lists are more difficult, although you can do a word search (with varied results). But apparently where Nova is concerned if a character quits and they did not do a joint post with someone else, all those posts...disappear. There were two away teams sent down to the planet but since all the players involved in that away team are all those posts are just...gone. What if something relevant had happened on that mission? Are those posts available? Are they only accessible by the GM?

Just because a player quits it does not mean everything they wrote suddenly becomes irrelevant. Sometimes players quit on less acrimonious terms and their material deserves to be both preserved and made easily accessible to present and future players. If the Nova system does not allow for this then the Nova system is horribly flawed.

He was lazy: Deneva IV has two rival factions, just like many Star Trek set ups. I am not even sure if a culture has two such opposing cultures that they would even be allowed in the Federation. But setting that aside, they aren't even alien; they look human. It made sense for Star Trek to do that as a television series due to budget constraints, but where PBeMs are concerned a GM can stretch themselves creatively. Drew did not bother.

And look at the site. Where is the ship information? Deck listing? Images of the vessel or the bridge? Any GM who does not bother trying to give players a decent database is seriously half assing it.

He did not keep it simple: So you might think Drew was just trying to keep things simple with the two factions, human looking aliens, right? Only he threw in Section 31 and The Dominion and he had a space station full of space angels floating overhead. So Drew was going for anything but simple. In reality creating the two rival planetary super powers seemed more like a way of marginalizing the aliens suffering from the drought so he could instead focus on the much "cooler" aspects he had introduced.

The problem is, there were too many plot elements, especially for an introductory adventure. An introductory adventure with a new crew should be relatively straightforward, in this manner a GM can tell the strengths and weaknesses of his players, determine their likes and dislikes and most importantly who is going to fit in and who is simply not going to work out. A straightforward, one-off adventure can also be fun and gives the GM a way to test their literary mettle. Make it a simple rescue mission (that may in time turn out to be not-so-simple. Perhaps one of the rescued people is a spy, or becomes a love interest), or a hunt for a pirate who becomes a recurring nemesis (Imagine a half human/half green Orion woman calling herself The Wicked Witch, her ship called The Broomstick. Perhaps she takes a shine to the dashing XO.) Dropping a team of new players right into a wasp's nest of political intrigue is likely going to frustrate new players and it is difficult to tell how all of them are going to react.

I confess that my first Star Trek game involved a convoluted plot involving time travel and a Dominion plot to wipe out humanity in order to cripple the Federation (the only thing humans seem to be able to do better than any other alien species is shag. How else can you explain 90% of all Starfleet personnel being humans, and most half breeds being half human in there somewhere? Sex may be our one super power.). Honestly? I lucked out by having a pretty good group of players. Still, I think the adventure worked out well because of the uniqueness of the setting (Lionheart was being sent back to Earth to be decommissioned, her crew was a mish-mash of people being shipped out for reassignment) and the first adventure right off the bat was an unexpected ambush the gang really enjoyed. Bam! Almost immediately the group got tossed into a cinematic action set piece and from the aftermath the story unfolded.

What did Drew do? Let's beam down to the planet, talk to aliens, get nowhere, learn nothing important (Well, the team I was on learned nothing important.), beam back up, discuss, beam back down, meet Section 31 agent...Which brings me to another point.

His NPCs overshadowed the PCs: There are PCs, NPCs, and GMPCs. You must be very, very careful not to have an NPC overshadow the PCs, make them look redundant. In this post, for example, you have the Section 31 operative playing a key role, a role with a little tweaking a PC could have played. In fact, much of what the Section 31 operative does in the game I imagine could have been handled by the ship's Intelligence officer. Why have the intelligence officer assigned to the ship in the first place? Why not have that player running a character who is on a separate assignment to the planet who hooks up with the ship, then gets assigned to the vessel after the first adventure? Why does every PC have to start off the game assigned to the ship? When Worf was first introduced on DS9 his first adventure was as a consultant rather than a member of Sisko's staff so there is a precedent for it.

When an NPC begins to overshadow the PCs, then they have become GMPCs. Every GM should be concerned that their NPCs make the PCs look redundant or irrelevant. I play important NPCs in my game but they are only there to fill in much needed slots (Much like a Dungeons & Dragons DM might run a cleric NPC for healing because none of the players wanted to). Drew's pet Section 31 agent crossed over into GMPC territory.

On a side note, one thing I found amusing was how Captain Kerr knew of Section 31's existence. Heaven forbid Drew role play a character who was ignorant of something cool like that...

He did not choose his setting wisely: Although again, to be fair, he inherited the game. Another thing to consider is the type of ship the campaign takes place on. Exeter is a carrier. Why? What is served story wise by having a carrier vessel? Now granted, my first Star Trek game took place on a battered Sabre class and later and Akira, I chose them because I thought they looked cool. No other reason, I had seen First Contact, saw those ships, and I thought they were utterly bitchin'. Still, they were generic enough that they fit most adventures (In fact, the first Lionheart hardly factored at all. She was so battered much of the adventure involved players split into teams off ship.). So if you are pirate hunting an Oberth probably makes little sense. Same goes for a rescue or diplomatic mission being seen to by a carrier. True, Drew said Exeter was chosen because she was the only ship available in the quadrant, but that excuse is pretty lame. It was used in at least three Star Trek movies, and one of those was Star Trek V.

Okay, maybe the carrier thing is a nit. One way or another the ship class did not seem to impact Drew's game much at all. Still, it would have been nice if Drew had chosen a ship with some more information behind it.

He did not know his role: As a GM your job is to push the plot forward, not expect others to do it for you. In the game Drew had asked me twice to steer a joint post in a way he wanted rather than role playing it out naturally. He made it the responsibility of the players to control NPCs rather than himself. This makes me wonder if he was doing the same in every joint post. Was he asking players at every turn to write the scenes out just so? If so, then where, exactly, is the fun in that? In the joint post where he directed me I already knew the outcome. The second time he asked me again he was telling me in advance how things were going to play out. A large part of the fun of a game is not knowing what is behind the door, not knowing what the NPC is going to say. If Drew wanted events to unfold he should have trusted in his players writing well, run NPCs and played the scenes out rather than script everything in advance. This style of role playing revealed a GM who was either A) inexperienced, B) did not trust his players and/or C) a megalomaniac bent on controlling every single aspect of his game.

Doom is not amused with your use of his image in this blog, lackey!

He ASSumed: Just because a player has willingly gone along with your suggestion to write a scene the way you want, do not assume he is looking to partner up with you to run your game. From the way Drew spoke to me it sounded like he wanted a collaborator, a co-GM. I was not looking for anything of the sort nor had he ever discussed such a thing with me. I don't know, perhaps it was my god-like charisma or my amazing writing, or perhaps he had seen a picture of my perfectly shaped dome and thought "Yeah, that's the bloke I want to run games with!"

I shave my head to show off just how perfectly shaped it is. Hair loss has nothing to do with it. Really.

Seriously, if you are looking for collaborators, ask. Do not assume. Sometimes you might find a player eager to be a GM. But that was not the case where I was concerned. I was already GMing a game, I was in Exeter just to play. Drew's assumption was...annoying. It was as if he thought I had let him down, not living up to his well-hidden expectations.

As of this writing Drew's game has six players, which really is not bad. Problem is I am not sure if anyone is actually writing. At this point the engineer-my replacement-has yet to post, the last post was from Drew himself on the 16th. It is entirely possible players are writing joint posts as we speak, but what if that is not the case? My replacement apparently has not generated an introductory post, others have not posted in a week or more. If you ask Drew, he might blame me for the "trouble" I caused. If Drew's game is suffering, he need only look at himself in the mirror for all his troubles.

Tomorrow, an afterword...

Angels and Devils

2011-10-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

In every man's heart there is a devil, but we do not know the man as bad until the devil is roused.

JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

So let us discuss Drew’s game, the USS Exeter (This is not the original web site as Drew left his original fleet under a cloud. Apparently someone was making allegations about him on the forums there or something. Seems like I am not the only one who has issues with Drew.). I joined it in July of this year as lieutenant Aurora 0408/A, a human clone from a society of clones that I created. I was inspired by two TNG episodes, Up The Long Ladder and The Masterpiece Society. The idea was each type of clone had a specific function in that society (i.e. Grubermans were sanitation workers, Auroras were involved in space sciences, Dukes were military and law enforcement, etc.). Aurora was an outcast because she decided to be an engineer instead and made a home for herself in The Federation.

Everything seemed to be all right at first. The adventure involved a mission of mercy to a planet which was experiencing a world-wide drought. We had to determine what was causing it and how to fix it. I spoke with Drew and suggested one quick, temporary fix might be ice mining local stellar bodies, i.e. comets or the rings of some planets. He thought it was a great idea and we would factor it into the game somehow.

And somewhere along the way it got lost in the shuffle. More on that later.

The Exeter reaches the planet and the captain (played by Drew, which is quite normal on just about every single Star Trek game I have seen) forbids anyone from analyzing any of the data collected by the inhabitants. He wants fresh eyes or something. I tried to imagine Kirk, Picard, Sisko or even Janeway dismissing hard data out of hand. Archer? Yeah, okay, I can see Archer doing that.

Making the dog captain would have made more sense.

That decision made no sense, but hey, let’s roll with it. We were to send down two away teams to the two rival governments and-

Wait, two rival governments? You mean like just about every other adversarial set up seen in Star Trek? No attempt to stretch one’s self, set up multiple factions, even just three? It’s him and me, black and white. I can understand that when you have a sixty minute story to tell, but this is a role playing game, try and think outside the box a bit.

Two away teams beam down and now Drew wants someone else to play the aliens dealing with the team led by the XO. So, Drew doesn’t want to role play the NPCs for half the players. Why not? It’s his game, he is the GM, it is his responsibility to role play the NPCs. So that half of the game turned into a muddled mess due to a lack of direction (Drew's half went very well, apparently).

Later on, we now have a new pair of factors involved in the game, The Dominion and Section 31. Now I don’t mind either organization when they are written well, but Drew was not up to the task, at least where the latter was concerned. Because the whole point of Section 31 is, few know they exist. Members of DS9 know they exist because the shadowy organization wanted to recruit Doctor Bashir and this resulted in him telling others. An admiral or two were aware they existed because of their security clearance. But outside of that Section 31 was beyond black ops.

And in Drew’s game everyone acted as if their existence were common knowledge. I think I was the only person who role played utter ignorance of their existence. I think Drew mistook Section 31 for Starfleet Intelligence. Or something. This is one of those instances where there is player knowledge and character knowledge and it seemed neither Drew or the other players could tell the difference.

So apparently The Dominion might be behind the drought and Section 31 was along because…Drew apparently likes Section 31. Only the Section 31 guy does not seem to be very good at his job because he is confrontational and not very good at manipulating people and events from behind the scenes the way Section 31 is supposed to be. Section 31 operatives pose as legitimate officers, conduct their affairs through intermediaries, shun the light.

But hey, let’s roll with it. The Section 31 agent through some plan manages to help the Captain capture the Dominion scout ship along with its crew. At this point I begin to role play Aurora as being concerned the Dominion vessel might be booby trapped. The Dominion is run by shape changers and their foot soldiers, the Jem Hadar, can turn invisible. Any bunch this sneaky probably has booby traps everywhere (I was role playing Aurora, a character from a highly conformist and all-human culture as being leery of aliens and a little racist. And really, can you blame her? It seems like every alien is stronger, smarter, lives longer or has some sort of super power like telepathy or shape changing or invisibility. You never saw enough racism in Star Trek. Everyone liked everyone else.)! Drew was okay with it and I engaged in a joint post with the player running lieutenant Rakka, the Nausican chief of security, to discuss sweeping the scout craft for booby traps.

Now this is where Drew’s role playing style began to rankle a bit. The system he was using, the mechanism to run the game, was the Nova system. Nova is a means to send e-mails to the players but rather than sending e-mails to a single group address, the player has to choose whom to send it to. The system encourages joint posting rather than a more open system and this often results in very, very large e-mails sent out at intermittent intervals. A player has no idea of the game’s health because all sorts of things could be going on with those posts. I much prefer games using a mailing list or a forum.

Drew contacts me and asks me during my joint post with the player running Rakka to have a jail break, some of the Jem Hadar are supposed to bust loose. Now, why isn’t Drew running those Jem Hadar? Why isn’t he role playing the NPCs rather than have us running the characters? Instead he is here dictating to me what he would like to see happen in the game. And while I had my misgivings I thought what the heck, I owe the guy for posting a message in the wrong area of the message board because of my ignorance of Nova in general.

The jail break goes down, my character is wounded, I am sent to sickbay and I am thinking that this is great, I get to do a scene with the doctor! Only…the doctor all but disappears from the game at this point (This is the second doctor, btw. The first one quit. People quit a lot in Drew's game. The current XO used to be chief of security.). So I am left running a solo post NPCing the medical staff. Some people love doing solo posts. I hate ‘em. I am playing a role playing game to interact with people, not write fan fiction. And this seems to be exactly what is going on because around the time I post I discover other PCs have been wounded and are in sickbay. Well, I am thinking, wouldn’t it have been nice to have been able to factor this in to my post, to have these things going on together somehow? Only the Nova format does not allow this because the joint post system means I have no idea what people are writing while I am writing. If this were a forum based game everything you could see what is going on as players are role playing it out. If it were a mailing list based game that discouraged joint posting the same applies.

I do want to address one important thing regarding Drew's tenure as GM and he was not the original guy. He inherited the game from someone else, which means he also inherited some, well, baggage. Namely he inherited ensign Ghaliel Arreren tor, space angel. No, seriously. Apparently her race is very ancient and has been messing around with primitive cultures for thousands of years, thus giving rise to legends of angelic beings. You know, like that Star Trek episode Who Mourns For Adonis, where an alien claiming to be the Greek god Apollo states that it was he and his people who brought civilization to Earth? Or the rubber tree people from the Voyager episode Tattoo. Or TOS' Preservers, who went around rescuing primitive cultures. Or if you wanted to go outside of Star Trek for influences you could look up Arthur C. Clark's Childhood's End where aliens bear a striking resemblance to winged devils. Or if you want to go outside conventional science fiction take a look at DC Comics' Dawnstar:

Best. Costume. Ever. Has nothing to do with the post, just sayin'.

Oh, did I mention she also wears a special, sexier version of the standard issue uniform? So the whole space angel thing? Yeah, Drew gets a pass on that. And the space angel's black hair? Unusual among her species. So not only did she stand out among humans, she stood out among other angels. Nice.

But wait, Tom, you may say. What about your character? Didn't you rip off Star Trek ideas yourself? Well yes, you could say I did. First of all, I did not come up with some lame reason why my character is running around in a spandex catsuit. Second, my character was not a member of a race of advanced beings who have been running around space manipulating more primitive cultures. If anything my character was from an inferior, backwards, insular culture. Third, I did not have super powers (i.e. flight).

Perhaps the player was "inspired" by other sources like I was, but it is what you do with that inspiration that counts. I tried to come up with something unique in Star Trek, but in Ghaliel's case it was a matter of been there, seen that.

But now there is another aspect of the game: the space angels have a space station orbiting this planet and someone has slaughtered everyone on board! So let us recap all the irons heating up in the plot forge. We have a planet wide drought, two rival governments blaming one another for it. A space station full of space angels orbiting overhead who may or may not be involved and may or may not be helping to fix the problem who get slaughtered wholesale. We have The Dominion, who may or may not be responsible for the drought as well as Section 31, who is doing a terrible job remaining in the shadows.

Well, my character gets out of sickbay and the captain approaches her to dissect the Dominion vessel. She agrees and now I am joint posting with the helmsman who will be helping her. Now I had already role played my character’s concern of booby traps in one post, and because I do not have access to the archived messages I cannot be certain but I believe I role played with Drew my character’s concern about the Dominion craft being unsafe. So my intention in role playing the scene was to have Aurora have the ship flown into orbit within transporter range so in the event of some mischief the Exeter would be safe.

And that was when Drew IMed me, asking me to have the ship brought into the hangar bay so it could explode. Drew was not only having scenes scripted-again-but now he wanted me to role play my character as an idiot.

And that was when I lost it. I was fed up. I had to sit through almost three months of meandering plot and Drew was asking me to role play my character as some sort of mental deficient, like, like-

Star Wars Episode I in 3D? Yay!

Yeah, like those guys.

So that was it for me. I quit. You can wade through some of this stuff on the Exeter site, each character bio has a list of posts. Apparently the whole adventure was wrapped up off camera and the crew is off to a new adventure. This does not surprise me. During this period Drew lost not only me but about three other players, so by this point taking this lame horse out in the back of the barn and shooting it in the head was probably for the best.

Tomorrow I will break down where I think Drew made his mistakes, among other things.

To be concluded...

The "E" Word

2011-10-18T07:13:00.000-07:00

Apathy is the glove in which evil slips its hand.

ANONYMOUS

Just to warn you up front, this post is going to have little if anything to do with the mechanics of running a game, it is almost purely personal drama. So if that sort of thing does not interest you then you might wish to skip this and come back tomorrow. I am writing this to hopefully get it out of my system so that I may move on, but then again it may not help a bit?

I have two brothers who are very different in terms of temperament and interests, but one thing they do share is this inability to let things go where their old jobs and co-workers are concerned. One has not worked for a place for over ten years yet he still goes over the same stories about how terrible it was to work there, of the injustices suffered, of the terrible bosses. And my other brother is not that much different. He worked with a guy he could not stand and he still talks about him. I think both of them should just let it go. What good does it do to talk about events long in the past or people who no longer have an impact on your life? And yet, here I am feeling, as I imagine, the exact same way they do. Only instead of co-workers and bosses and jobs, it is gaming. It is this thing I do that I enjoy doing; running role playing games, participating in them. It is gaming, or more specifically, a gamer.

This guy, Drew, my old GM, said some disparaging things to me and I really began to wonder about what I was doing here. “Here” being this blog. I began this blog for several reasons. The first is I thought perhaps it might be a nice way to network with people, engage in conversations, exchange ideas. That did not exactly work out. I think I have had maybe four responses to all my entries (To be fair, I never really expected responses to things like Song of The Week or Wonder Woman’s new costume). And I thought it would be a nice way to discuss the mistakes I have made in the past, talk about what has worked for me, suggest ideas for people’s games. But I have no idea if any of what I have written has been at all helpful to anyone because I never get any feedback. After a while even some constructive negative feedback might be nice. Finally, I began the blog because I wanted to write. I am a writer, at least an aspiring one, and writing articles like this was a way to exercise. Only after a while the articles felt like work. I am not being paid to write them and it appears I do not have much of an audience to write them for. Sure, I have eight followers but two one guys I know from my college and table top days and to my knowledge neither are running any games, and at least another one are my players and I am almost certain he is not running anything. Are any of my followers fellow GMs? I don’t know; they don’t talk to me. I called Drew one of my peers and he dismissed me, used the "E" word in reference to me. Both stung and they made me take stock of what, exactly I am still doing here. With Drew’s allegation of wickedness on my part compounded with personal drama (which I will detail below), and on top of that my purpose for writing this blog called into question, Apathy descended, so much so that I could not be bothered to look up a suitable synonym to shake things up.

And now…Now, something else has taken hold and like the affliction my two brothers suffer from, it will simply not let go. Indifference has gone and has been replaced with anger. Anger at Drew. Drew called what I did "pure evil", and all I did was express my opinion. Evil. That is a pretty strong word. Had I tried to destroy his reputation or sought to wreck his marriage (if he were, in fact, married. I have no idea.) like a soap opera villain then yes, I might be considered evil. But for what I did, private exchanges made, one under the influence of annoyance and grief? I sought to explain myself and this was the response I earned?

I will elaborate. A few weeks ago I suspected my cats might be ill. They are going on sixteen and honestly their age never really impacted me. For some years now they always seemed to be the same. Sure, the fat one got a little fatter, but outside of that there was this status quo. Until I began noticing at least one of them was urinating more. So I consulted my local pet store owner, who is a cat lover herself (Hers lived to be 23. If there was any layman’s opinion to consult it was hers) and she suggested it was the first stages of renal failure. So for the first time in years (and I will get to that in a moment) I took my cats to the vet. Blood work was done and it turns out the fat one-Babooshka-has first stage renal failure, her kidneys are starting to shut down. On top of that her teeth were in terrible shape and some were going to have to be pulled. So not only was I slapped in the face with my cat’s sudden mortality, her quality of life was to be diminished and the latter was entirely my fault because I did not take my girls in for annual check-ups. I was, am a delinquent parent.

So during this period of grief and self recrimination Drew sends me an instant message. Drew was my GM and by this point I was coming to dread getting these things from him. I had botched something terribly in his game and still felt bad about it and I suppose I was always expecting the next IM to be him telling me I screwed up again. This time Drew was asking me to write a segment in a joint post where my character would do something Very Stupid, and this made me so…angry. And yes, it is just a game, in the grand scheme of things it is utterly irrelevant but gaming is important to me, and when he asked me to write my character as being Very Stupid when I had up until that point written her in what I feel was a realistic, relatable and above all else smart character, I blew my stack. All at once these issues I had with Drew’s game came to a head and I quit. I told him off, told him the problems I had with the system he used to run the game and his GMing style. Later I e-mailed him with a better explanation.

And that was when he used the "E" word.

Here is the exchange between Drew and myself concerning the falling out, I still have the e-mails should he or anyone else try to refute my comments. I am not proud of my behavior but at least I did not call Drew Evil for being a lousy GM. And if I presumed he was inexperienced I just looked at how his game was being run and I assumed he was new to it. If Exeter is the result of more than twenty five years of role playing then I shudder to think the sort of game he was running ten years ago.

And so that is part of the reason I am writing this now, I am going to address why I think Drew is a lousy GM. If Drew wishes to think expressing my opinion in private "pure evil" then I wonder how he would feel if I voiced my opinions publicly? What the hell, let me embrace the "E" word. Let the hate swell within me and let me come over to the dark side...

To be continued...

A little apathy settling in...

2011-10-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

I quit the Star Trek, Exeter game this week in part due to Drew's GMing style and my utter dislike of the Nova system. And on of my cats was diagnosed with first stage liver failure, a heart murmur and possible thyroid issues. She is fifteen years old so none of this should really be a surprise, but it still depresses the heck out of me. So I was thinking of doing posts regarding world building shortcuts and the pros and cons of the three primary methods of PBeMing (Nova, forums, mailing lists) but honestly I am not much in the mood to write anything too in depth. The argument between Drew and myself left me a bit depressed. I was honest with him in how I felt regarding his GMing style, and he called me "evil". I suppose people simply do not want to hear honest opinions.

So I don't know when the next game-related post will be up at this point. I think I have sworn off Star Trek games entirely now. With most of them apparently using Nova and many having Marines serving one board I do not see much there to interest me.

For God's sake...

2011-09-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

My Dad will sometimes lament that "my generation" is bastardizing his heroes, that Hollywood is taking the characters of his childhood and ruining them. I used to take it in stride, think that hey, it's progress. New generations of directors and producers should be able to interpret old school characters the way they see fit for new consum-

...Yeah, now I know how my Dad felt.

Just who the hell is this movie being made for? Video game players suffering from ADD? I think it was Dave who suggested this may have been a script with a different name on it, only someone decided to slap a marketable name on this instead.

The thing is, I agree with Dave. If this movie was not named The Three Musketeers then it might be a fun film. But because they are stomping all over what I feel The Three Musketeers is about then I have no desire to see it. It is obvious all the book's subtleties (and yeah, I read the book) have been tossed out the window in favor of flashy visuals. This movie looks so bad to me it might actually make the Disney version look good...

Song of the week

2011-09-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

In 1980 Judas Priest released their sixth album, British Steel. Three songs were released as singles: Breaking The Law, Living After Midnight and United (I do not think the last song did had any American airplay). While these songs are good, I think Metal Gods was best:

Song of the week

2011-09-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

Heard this on 93.9, the River this past week and damn if it didn't stick with me all day:

One word: Yes!

2011-09-12T06:03:00.000-07:00

According to Kate Bush's official web site, a new album is due out in November of this year. I listened to her earlier album, The Director's Cut, and I am sad to say I was not entirely impressed with her reinterpretations of her earlier material. But this is all new stuff so I am cautiously optimistic.

Song of the week

2011-09-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

I have made no secret of my love of Kate Bush. What might surprise some people is I am not the only one. Not only does she have a rabid fan following, but there are musical performers, both well known and obscure (Well, obscure to me. For all I know they've sold ten million albums in the UK and/or Europe) who like to cover some of her songs. First, Kate's version of her hit single, Running Up That Hill:

Then there is the cover by Placebo, which was used in the trailers for the vampire flick Daybreakers as well as in numerous other television programs and ads, such as The History Channel's Gettysburg special that aired earlier this year:

Then there is Within Temptation, a Dutch symphonic rock band:

Tori Amos went a different route, combining Kate's song with her own live. Early on, when Tori was first starting out, she was compared to Kate (Unjustly, in my opinion), and while I can see how both women might attract the same sorts of fans, Tori is every bit as unique as Kate:

Then there is Australian Idol's Natalie Gauci's live cover:

Finally there is the pop band MPHO's version, which I think is the finest cover:

Star Trek, 45 years young

2011-09-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

So 45 years ago today Star Trek first aired on television with the episode The Man Trap. Happy 45th, Star Trek!

Song of the week

2011-09-05T16:42:00.000-07:00

When people think The Romantics they probably think of the songs Talking In Your Sleep or What I Like About You. Both songs are good, but they are not my favorite Romantics song. And if it had not been for Mtv I would not have known this song existed.

Retcon Job

2011-09-03T22:27:00.000-07:00

This past week has proven to be pretty interesting in regards to continuity. On the one hand, DC Comics has ceased the run on all their comics in order to more or less reboot the DCU with 52 new issues in an attempt to boost sales. Histories have been re-written, the status quo shaken up...again. Now, I say "more or less" because while some characters are getting a fresh start, the better selling titles like Green Lantern and Batman Incorporated are going to be largely untouched despite massive holes in logic...which seems par for the course as the first time DC did a shake this big it was also done in a typically half-assed fashion.

It will be interesting to see if this daring (uncharitable readers might use the word "desperate") move on the part of DC VP Dan Didio will work or not. Me, I will buy some of the comics, give the experiment a chance, and I hope it works because I do want to see DC succeed in the dwindling comic market.

I must admit, the man does rock a bald dome.

The other piece of news-and this one makes me cringe-is George Lucas releasing the original Star Wars trilogy on Blu Ray...and making yet more changes. The most damning, unforgivable one to me is changing Darth Vader's climactic scene. It is evidence of George Lucas being surrounded by yes men who are unable and/or unwilling to tell him when he is doing something creatively bankrupt and when he is alienating the fans that made him filthy rich.

I could post a ten thousand word rant about the subject of George Lucas, but there are other places online for that sort of thing. I only mention it here because of the symmetry we are seeing between the Star Wars and DC franchises, on retooling properties that may or may not need it (I recognize the potential need to tweak the Star Wars movies for the high definition format. I just disagree with the tweaks George has chosen to make.)

Raping my childhood since Greedo shot first.

These changes are known as "retcons", a shortening of "retroactive continuity". Now, you may ask, if I am not going to rant about Dan Didio and George Lucas, why do I bring up retcons at all? Well, you may wish to do one in your game.

This is not something you should consider lightly. A retcon should never be attempted unless it is absolutely necessary. A retcon involves editing or adding to a game's history and that is to me a very, very big deal.

There are different kinds of retcons. The least damaging is one where history is added to without contradicting known information. An excellent example of this where comics are concerned was a Spider Man story written by professional wrestler Raven. He penned a story about the wrestler Peter Parker had defeated that fateful night when his Uncle Ben had been murdered (I have not read the story but have been told it is a great read.). Nothing in the story contradicts what was written before. An excellent example of this where my Vindicators game is concerned was his post my fellow GM Rafe composed concerning vampires, and not the sparkling kind.

The face of regret, ladies and gentlemen.

He had in mind the idea to employ a little used, all but forgotten character called The Ace of Spades. In one great post he turned this character from a punchline into someone menacing, hinting at a deep back story. And he did it without contradicting what we knew of Ace or any of his in-game actions.

Another example of retconning is the alteration of known game facts, but said facts do not impact the game as a whole. In my games there was an organization known as the Six Families, magical clans. One of them was called the Fong-Kabayama. It was a lame name but at the time I did not see it as a high priority. It was an Asian clan and I did not have any immediate plans to use them, it existed for the purposes of fleshing out the game world. Only now I am running a new game, Behind The Veil, and it involves the magical community in a broader way and "Fong-Kabayama" simply does not cut it. So I changed the clan name to Golden Dragon and added more information without altering the information that had already been posted. It was a harmless alteration, it changed no past events.

Now we come to the sorts of retcons that make major alterations to the histories of properties. Excellent examples of this can be seen in Star Trek, The Next Generation, where the Klingons started out as joining the Federation, then later on writers decided to make the Klingons a separate empire again (A note: my friend, Dave Zyn, thought Star Trek producers Berman and Braga missed an excellent opportunity during the Enterprise television series. The show's primary subplot concerned a "temporal cold war", a conflict taking place between rival time travelers. Dave suggested every retcon seen in Star Trek could have been ascribed to the temporal cold war, where one side or the other was messing with the timeline to suit their purposes. Sadly Berman and Braga were pretty much just cashing a check at that point and did not seem interested in generating compelling storytelling or paying attention to inconvenient literary gaps in logic.). Another example is where a character has been killed but another writer brings them back (Sadly, Marvel and DC Comics both have been guilty of this on what is by now probably a hundred occasions.). It is these sorts of retcons that you have to be very careful of.

Sometimes a retcon may seem necessary, especially where real world events may impact your game. For example, author John Ringo has written a series of books about a retired Navy SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden and collected the reward. Only now Osama Bin Laden is dead for real. So if John Ringo wishes to continue writing that series of books he is going to have to address real world events; either he says his character is still Bin Laden's killer (which in my opinion is disrespectful to the men who really did take him down) , or he says the man his character killed was someone else. So what we are seeing is how a real world event impacts a work of fiction.

So it might be necessary to tweak your game a bit if modern real world events impact a game that takes place in the future. However you can usually find that most events can simply be ignored where your game is concerned. Ten years on, 9/11 is just one more tragedy in a long, long line to most people not directly impacted by it, and in another ten years there will be a generation it hardly affected at all. No one ever talks about the Oklahoma City bombings any more, Timothy McVey is almost wholly unknown to anyone not living there or in Michigan. Same goes for the tragedies in Waco or Columbine. So for simplicity's sake, most modern events can be ignored. At worst you can simply say your game is taking place in an alternate timeline where it did not happen. After all, the Eugenics Wars never happened during the late twentieth century and that never stopped me from enjoying Star Trek re-runs. But perhaps you feel it necessary to incorporate real world events into your setting. If so do try to do so with a modicum of tact, if anything to spare the feelings of those who may have touched by the tragedies. Try not to exploit them.

So it might not be necessary to incorporate real world events into your game. What other reasons might a retcon be necessary? Perhaps there was a player meltdown and someone has quit. The break up was so acrimonious you want to wipe any trace of this player's character from your game. And let's say there has been a player involved in the game since the beginning, or at least years. And the two of you have had an epic falling out. Words were exchanged that cannot be taken back. He or she has gone, but he or she has left behind hundreds and hundreds of posts. So, what do you do?

Nothing. Nothing at all. He or she is gone, suck it up. Doesn't matter who was right or who was wrong. For the good of the game you accept the fact their contribution is there to stay, write their characters out in a fair and realistic manner, and then you move on. You do not pretend their character did not exist, you do not murder their character in some humiliating fashion. You do not write some massive vindictive post where a time traveler murders his character in his crib. Find a way to logically write their character out of the game, be mature about it. But for God's sake do not retcon them from existence!

So now let's say you have a great idea for an adventure, but the only problem is this pesky event happened five years ago that is in the way. So you have to ask yourself these questions: Is this really the only way you can accomplish the story you have in mind? How important is the event in question to the players? What are the long term consequences to your game's integrity? If any of these three questions give you pause, do not do the retcon!

If it seems that I am against major retcons you are right. I am against introducing new characters that are written as if they had always been. I am against extensive re-writes of canon history. I am against bringing dead characters back to life regardless of how much I like them. Greg Rucka may have written some great Captain America stories with Bucky not dying in that rocket crash, but at the cost of destroying a key component of Captain America's origin. Rucka creating a third Summers brother in X-Men, an entire team of X-Men no one ever heard of before? Pardon my french, but I call bullshit on that.

Now, that being said, I am not against a perceived retcon. In these cases it appears you have made dramatic changes but in reality it is not the case. For example, in my game Paragon died. What if Paragon resurfaces? Is it truly Paragon or an imposter? Is it Paragon from a parallel universe? What we can have here is a mystery the PCs need to solve.

Or is it Paragon time traveling a day before he dies? What are the implications if the PCs talk him out of going back? What we could see there is a possible retcon based on the actions of the PCs and even a potential Flashpoint (Warning: Spoilers!) situation. Still, I would be very, very careful before

So when it comes to retcons, think twice. If it is a minor thing then there is no harm. But if the consequences are potentially game wrecking, well, play it safe and don't pull a Lucas.

Song of the week

2011-08-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

As per the request of a regular reader (and great guy, by the way), Duffy:

Song of the week

2011-08-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

I thought I would go a little old school this week. During the early eighties my exposure to music was greatly expanded by Mtv. To the youngsters out there, back then Mtv showed music videos all the time. Alternative programming was nonexistent and they had to show whatever they could get their hands on. For this reason the airplay was pretty amazingly eclectic, from early rap to heavy metal to alternative to classic rock. I had no idea a lot of these bands existed, and when I heard a song I had heard before I was able to actually discover the artist from the information Mtv provided in the lower left corner of the screen. Through Mtv I became a huge fan of acts like Van Halen and Queen.

Anyway, The Who's You Better You Bet was one of my favorite songs. Sadly I could not find an original version of the video I liked, but musically I thought this one sounded the best:

An open call

2011-08-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

I am putting out an invitation to those who might be interested in joining my games. The first is The Vindicators, which has been around since 2001. It is a stable, fun game with a fantastic group of players. The second game is Behind The Veil, which takes place in the same universe and has many of the same players. It is a magic based RPG and is just starting.

If you have any questions and/or are interested in joining, e-mail me at tstockel@rocketmail.com.

Song of the week

2011-08-13T18:54:00.000-07:00

The Hives. Nothing more need be said.

Bringing the funny

2011-08-06T05:36:00.000-07:00

I am not a very funny person. I sometimes say something funny, but comedy is not something that comes easily to me, my attempts to bring the funny here at he blog notwithstanding. So I generally tend to avoid being funny in my adventures. But just because I am not very good at it does not mean that I have not tried to inject a little humor into my games.

I spoke in earlier posts regarding tone and it is important to be consistent, but sometimes a change in pace can prove to be refreshing for GM and players alike. Perhaps you have in mind a comedic adventure, or one of the PCs becomes the target of a practical joker. A new villain may appear who can be easily dismissed as a joke (i.e. DC's Riddler, for the most part.) or might be the catalyst for a fun adventure (Star Trek's Cyrano Jones). But if you want to try your hand at funny, you should bear a few things in mind:

A lot of humor is referential.

There was an episode of Bruce Timm's Batman, I think it was during that era when the animators of Superman took over duties so the character designs changed, where The Dark Knight was captured by Harley Quinn (not his finest hour, btw.) and tied upside-down over a tank full of piranhas. The Joker arrived and Harley explained the joke was the piranhas would look like they were grinning to Batman's perspective as they devoured him. The Joker was outraged, not only because he was upstaged by the sidekick (Batman tells Joker Harley had come closer to killing him than anyone else, Joker included) but because, as he explained it to Harley, the joke is not funny if you have to explain it.

If you have to explain to your players the mechanics of the joke before or afterwards, then it is not funny. I ran an adventure for one of my super hero games where the heroes were stranded on a mysterious island. The island held a variety of encounters inspired by the live action Sid and Marty Krofft television shows of the seventies and early eighties. Characters encountered sea monsters, came across smashed spacecraft with killer androids. A diminutive PC met humanoids with insect features much like herself whose enemy was a mad scientist with a shrinking ray, who had shrunken his wife and kept her in an old juke box behind his mansion. There was a feral woman with a beastly humanoid sidekick, a village whose inhabitants were enslaved with special hats by a witch and her wizard lover. There were also lizard men and ultimately they were going to meet a gold dragon with a Texan drawl.

Look, you had to be there. Being four years old helped. Or high. Or four years old and high.

So, what was the problem, you might ask? No one got it. Part of it was generational; many of my players were younger than me and did not see the same programs. Or they were from other countries where the program did not air. Or they just were not Krofft fans. So the jokes went completely over the heads of the players, and the adventure itself was not compelling enough to keep their attention. Now had I used a host of other enduring cartoon shows (i.e. Mighty Mouse) then perhaps the concept would have worked better. Imagine a smashed, rusted out green van dangling from tree vines, a haggard looking man in a red ascot and his two female companions, lonely survivors terrified of a savage beast lurking in the woods who, once it tasted the flesh of it's pal, now stalked them. The joke? You are expecting the dog to be the beast, when in reality it is Shaggy, perhaps mad with rabies.

Another example of failed comedy, you might ask? Years ago I was involved in play testing a game designed by my friend Dave, Zen and The Art of Mayhem, and I created a character named Kate Bushido. The idea was she was raised by monks who took to the teachings of Kate Bush's music, and consequently she could only speak using Kate Bush lyrics (And no, I could not rattle off lyrics off the top of my head. I made a list. An extensive list. Cataloged by situations my character might conceivably face. In retrospect the fact I went through all that trouble sounds so very sad.). Her martial arts style was also based on the titles of Kate Bush songs. Personally I thought it was hilarious. Everyone else? They humored me. On the other hand, Dave (not the guy who created the game, the one who follows this blog), created two characters whose names I will not mention here for potential legal purposes. One was a send-up of barbarian characters, essentially an indestructible idiot with a massive sword who always spoke of himself in third person. His other character was a redneck ninja. Dave was always funny when he played these characters and part of that was due to the fact that we got it. We knew who Conan (the barbarian, not the talk show host. Although someone playing Conan the barbarian looking like Conan O'Brien would be a hoot) the barbarian was, had all played Dungeons & Dragons. We knew what stereotypical rednecks were supposedly like as well as what ninjas were. Dave consistently brought the funny because he understood the target audience-his fellow players-and what made us laugh. When he described the redneck ninja's pickup truck squealing to a stop in a cloud of rust? Priceless.

Bring the funny, not the controversy.

Because players will come from a wide range of backgrounds and have varying tastes it is important to try to cater to as many as possible in order to keep them satisfied, and more importantly not offend or hurt their feelings. To that end where humor is concerned it is vitally important to consider the subject matter. For that reason there are some subjects you will want to avoid. The big ones are race and religion.

There is a film I love called Undercover Brother, it is a spoof of seventies blaxploitation films as well as calling out black stereotypes often seen in modern media, such as the angry black boss, or the smart black scientist wearing glasses (Which can be seen in the GI Joe cartoon series, Doc, who was a medic in the comic but since he was black and wore glasses cartoon writers immediately assumed he was a super smart scientist and wrote him accordingly. These are the same guys who turned master chef and articulate heavy weapons expert Roadblock into a jive talking rhymer.). My brother Jon considers the movie to be racist because all the bad guys are white...which is the point of the film because of what the is spoofing. In Blaxploitation the protagonists guys were always white, the bad guys almost always black (or a black man taking advantage of his people, usually a drug dealer. I think pimping was all right, though. I will have to finish watching Truck Turner one of these days to see how that plot ends). The point is, I think the film is funny because I think I get the jokes and Jon thinks it is racist because he does not. Is Undercover Brother racist? Maybe, a bit. But a lot of humor pushes the envelop and risks offending members of the audience.

So imagine you are running a game and your crew meets a race of aliens that have coal black skin and large white lips. You know, like this:

You might think it is funny because they are a send-up of how black people were portrayed in silent films. Perhaps you are even trying to be clever and there is no verbal language so everyone speaks with overly expressive facial features (i.e. comically hug eyes) and hand gestures. Or let's say you saw that episode of South Park where Kyle's cousin visits, the one who looks like a Jewish stereotype complete with curly hair, thick glasses, and is a hypochondriac. That was hilarious! You might say. I'm going to put a character like that in my game, everyone will love it! Please, please take this into account; Matt Stone and Trey Parker get lots of hate male, they alienate people all the time. And they can afford to alienate people. You as a GM cannot afford to alienate anyone with potentially controversial material, not only because you will lose players (and possibly friends), but you will also get a reputation as an insensitive racist bastard.

To a lesser extent, you might want to avoid political humor as well. Politics is often a divisive subject and Political humorists play to a specific audience, and like I said before regarding referential humor, if you use something regarding politics exclusive to your country some of your players might not get it. So that plot where the crew meets the Obomanians and their infamous health care system? Your heavy handed attempt at satire is not going to go over very well.

Keep it clean.

I will keep this brief: I do not get toilet humor. Chances are at least one of your players does not get toilet humor, too. So keep it out of your game, m'kay? Or if you feel you must insert it into your game, try your best to keep it as tactful as humanly possible and you must be confident that your players will get it. For example, in my Vindicators game one of the NPCs (really a PC, but the player has temporarily left the game), Xavious, a PC with x-ray vision, was in a meeting with two PCs and an NPC. One mentioned an NPC they wished to speak with:

"Has anyone checked on Little Big Gun? If she was out of the loop, she knows something's going on. You don't spend that much time in law enforcement and the military without developing a well-honed bullshit detector, and she probably thinks that the 'Baffler made me do it' story stinks as much as we do. If she isn't part of this, and I was in their shoes, dealing with a breakout at a prison for dangerous paranormals, I might take the opportunity to arrange an 'unfortunate accident'..."

"She is downstairs," Xavious said, staring at the floor, "One floor down, in the ladies-"

He turned away, "Awkward."

No details were needed beyond that. By the way, I would not have dared to use this joke in a new game, with players I did not know well. So if you are running a Star Trek game and have a joke regarding space toilets, you might want to re-think it.

Same goes for sex. I tend to run PG-13 games and avoid sexual situations in my adventures. You never know when someone shows a trace of prudishness.

Gee. No race, religion, politics, toilet humor or sex. What's left?

Little things hitting each other. THAT'S WHAT I LIKE!

Time Bandits. If you have not seen this movie, see it now. Right now. Stop reading my blog and see this film. Netflix it, buy it, borrow it, download it online, I do not care how you do it, do yourself a favor and see how humor is done. The blog will still be here when you get back.
Back? Good. Where was I? Oh, yes. Violence. Violence for the sake of the funny can be a tricky subject to handle. Quite often violence is simply not funny. It is all a matter of context. If a game is based on horror or more realistic films then likely the violence is not going to be too humorous. For example, I did almost nothing about Saving Private Ryan funny, certainly not the horrors of war. However, I found the last Rambo film to be a hoot. Watching guys getting tossed a dozen yards from sniper shots, or Rambo decapitating the guy in the bed of the truck and then turning the machine gun on the guys in the cab, their blood splashing across the windshield? I giggled. Swear to God, I giggled. Still, pretty sure nothing is wrong with me. Pretty sure. But if the game is four color super heroic or a ridiculously over the top then violence for the sake of humor may very well be something all your players can get behind. I have not used much violence for the sake of humor in my games so it is hard for me to advise you how to use language to capture the tone you are looking for, and really some people might be a bit squeamish.

You see, that is the problem with humor that a lot of other genres do not have to worry about. When it comes to horror or romance a wide variety of people have the same triggers, respond to the same things in similar ways. Save for some exceptions romance and horror are apolitical, do not deal with religion or politics. But humor? Some people simply will not get it regardless of whether they were the target audience or not. Humor is something that is frustratingly indefinable.

Know when to leave the stage.

There was a Tex Avery cartoon where a wolf was hunting Droopy and his brothers in a parody of The Three Little Pigs, and he winds up getting bit in the ass by a bull dog (I highly recommend you watch the entire cartoon, but if you lack the time or inclination the point starts at the 5 minute mark and is about a minute long.):

The point is, any joke can get old. It is much more important to end a joke early rather than drag it out. "When is that?" you might ask. Hard to say. Every instance will be different. When in doubt, privately ask a player you trust what he or she might think.

Roasting should only apply to food.

I mentioned above the idea of the PCs being confronted by a practical joker, and perhaps a single player is being targeted. In cases like this you run the risk of making a players PC a laughingstock. No one likes to be laughed at, unless they are being roasted on television, and usually the pain is mitigated by a fat paycheck or the promise of rejuvenating one's sagging career.

I mentioned this incident before when my brother Donald ran a Dungeons & Dragons game. I was playing a half elf swashbuckler, partly because I am a huge fan of the Salkind Musketeer movies (If you ever get a chance to see these films, take it! They are the best adaptation of Dumas' Three Musketeers ever made) and I wanted to try something different. Donald never missed a chance to have NPCs say things like "Aren't all elves fags?" You know, because I was wearing a little lace and my character did not shave. The icing on the cake was when I discovered two other players were also playing half elves, but they looked more human than me. But hey, they laughed right along with Donald every time he said "fag" like they were the living embodiment of Beavis and Butthead. So Donald finally lost a player because he decided to make him-me-the weekly laughingstock.

Now don't think that a player should not sometimes be the focus of humor. The player might actually want to be. He or she may have designed her character to be ridiculous. If so cater to their desires provided it does not overly annoy the rest of the players or detract from the adventure. Just to be on the safe side, though, touch base with your players in private, find out how they feel. They may not be expressing their feelings, they may be volcanoes of repressed magmatic rage ready to explode at any time.

Huh. I had no idea "magmatic" was a word until I used it in a sentence. I was just trying to make a word up to be funny.

I know this article might not feel very helpful, all I have done is tell you what not to do more than tell you how to make your game funny. But I believe when it comes to gaming it pays to be a bit conservative.

No, not that kind of conservative. I mean, you want to play it safe. So if you decide to bring the funny, tread carefully.

Mathematically perfect

2011-08-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

According to a poll of 2,000 in the UK, Kylie Minogue's posterior is superior.

Agreed.

Happy Birthday, Kate!

2011-07-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

Kate Bush is 53 years young today. In tribute to her the video of the week will feature material from each of her albums. First up is her first hit single from 1978's The Kick Inside, Wuthering Heights:

Next is from '79's Lionheart, Wow(!).

Now we head to 1980 and Babooshka:

Kate shot a lot of videos where she used her dance experience to great effect, but it did not stop her from doing more conceptual stuff like Army Dreamers:

And now on to 1982 and The Dreaming, where things get...weird...er...

At this point in her career Kate had become her own albums' sole producer. Collaboration with Peter Gabriel had introduced her to the fairlight synthesizer, which she used extensively on this album. She butted heads with record company execs and her desire to take time and experiment warred with booking studio time. The result was an album that did not do well perhaps because it was too experimental, too much of a departure from her earlier work. Deciding she was fed up with struggling for studio time, Kate spent time and money in creating one of her own. What followed then was Hounds of Love/The Ninth Wave, an album where side A consisted of commercially accessible tracks, while the second side was very much a concept album.

Sadly, the man dancing with Kate in this video died just a few weeks ago:

This is to me Kate's greatest album, the high water mark of her career. It was her most successful album and some of her best music videos were being made at this time. See if you can recognize the father/professor in Cloudbusting:

The following year Kate released a greatest hits album, The Whole Story, it contained two new singles. One was a remake of Wuthering Heights, the second was Experiment IV, guest starring a very young Hugh Laurie:

In '89 Kate produced another album full of new music. By now it was obvious it was taking longer and longer for her to general new material. Where before it only took one year, then two, there was a three year gap between The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. Now we see a four year gap between Hounds and The Sensual World. It gets worse.

The Sensual World was one of her most beautiful videos, but what rivals it with Love And Anger are the cameos. We see two dancers who toured with her, her brother Paddy, and the most awesome Dave Gilmour, who had helped her early in her career.

Another four year gap brought us '93's The Red Shoes:

That is Miranda Richardson playing the heavy, with a cameo from Lindsey Kemp.

And now the drought began, the twelve year famine we Kate Bush fans suffered through. Along the way she got herself pregnant, gave birth to her son Bertie. In an interview years earlier Kate had said if she ever became a mother she would make her career second to that, something she stuck to. But finally after twelve years we got Aeriel:

Most recently Kate has released a new album called The Director's Cut, a re-imagining of her earlier songs. Honestly...I am not thrilled with it. I realize that sometimes revisiting an earlier work is a good thing; her new vocal of Wuthering Heights is superior to the original. But I gave this album a listen and, well...

Well, the album has received critical acclaim so I am very, very happy for Kate, and I am grateful for what has been for me twenty five years of joy.

Crazy Eight!

2011-07-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

Hey, turns out I have an eighth follower. Welcome!

Now I really feeling guilty about not finishing that article. If any of you are wondering why I haven't completed it, there are reasons. The first is I am in mourning over the death of Amy Winehouse.

Hahahahahahahahahaha! Okay, no seriously, I have good reasons for there being a delay other than the death a self destructive drug addict who refused to accept the help of those who loved and cared for her. And yes, when I see the internet making fun of her demise I do not feel the least bit guilty when I laugh.

Now, seriously, I usually post stuff on Saturdays and this coming Saturday is July 30th. For those of you wholly ignorant of my unhealthy obsessions, July 30th is Kate Bush's birthday. And since I am doing the video of the week thing likely the the next new post will be devoted to The Greatest Female Vocalist Of Our Age. Note that Kate is 52, has a child, a legacy any musical performer can be proud of and the respect of her peers. Winehouse, however, will be forever known as a sad, pathetic punchline.

Okay, okay, I'm through talking about Winehouse. I think.

The other reason I have not been finishing the article is I have been concentrating on putting together a new game. I had originally thought about running a Star Trek game, but I gave up on it for several reasons. The first is I was having trouble with the whole Nova format that seems so popular with 'Trek GMs these days. Someone suggested I join a fleet...

No. Fucking. Way. I will play in a fleet if I absolutely must, but run a ship under someone else's thumb? Dealing with the ridiculous politics? Hell with that.

What ultimately killed it for me was what was going on in the 'Trek game I am in now (Exeter's GM seems like a pretty cool guy, btw. If you are looking for a game to join I would seriously consider giving it a try.) and that is the player turnover. It is not that it is a bad game, it is simply typical of many Star Trek games. People are infamous for dropping out of 'Trek games, and it can be very frustrating. I just did not want to deal with the hassle of hunting down enough players to run the game, then watch half of them fade away in a month.

So I decided to play it safe and go for a format that I am more comfortable with and has a built in bunch of players. I am putting together a game taking place in the Vindicators universe, it will be magic-centric. The plot is someone dies and a funeral is held for them, followed by a wake. Various members of the magical community are in attendance and at this wake something happens. Not quite sure what that something is, but it is the hook for the adventure. Perhaps his or her will is read and the PCs are given a quest, it will be something along those lines. Right now I am spending a heckuva lot of time on creating background material for the game.

If you are wondering a bit about it, I have put together a tentative FAQ, I will probably be updating it more (for example, where inspirations are concerned, as much as I was underwhelmed by the whole White Wolf game system and worlds (It just felt so depressing; the bad, I cannot deny I thought some of the Mage stuff was neat. And one of the writers quoted a Kate Bush song. Can't be all bad.), and I have a ton of background I need to get finished before the game can be advertised. The Six Families and The Elves need more depth, for example. As it happens, I do have a new leader for the necrotic Graves Clan:

What do you think? ;)

Song of the week

2011-07-24T03:42:00.000-07:00

First of all, a welcome to my two new followers. I will have a post up hopefully in a couple weeks. In the mean time, here is your song of the week:

John Carter

2011-07-17T15:35:00.000-07:00

I am not wholly sold on it, but from what I have seen I am cautiously optimistic. With Disney involved I can understand how our Warlord of Mars and his lady cannot be as (ahem) adult as I would have preferred, but barring that it looks like it might be good.

Song of the week

2011-07-09T08:08:00.000-07:00

There are many, musical performers around that I am not a fan of, but nevertheless have produced a song or two I really like. Case in point, Slipknot. I have listened to their albums, heard their singles and for the most part I don't get it or them.

However, there is one song of theirs that I just love: Psychosocial.

Semper Fie!

2011-07-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

If it seems as if I focus an undue amount of attention to Star Trek I think that it is because in the PBEM world they, X-Men and adult games (Which I will not touch on in this blog...despite the fact it would likely increase my readership considerably.) are the most common. I think it probable that just about everyone who reads this blog is either in a Star Trek game or has played one in the past, or at the very least has read their fair share of 'Trek ads and seen the web sites.

What I would like to address today is the use of Marines in Star Trek games. I don't get it.

No, seriously, I do not understand why or how Marines ever began to be used in Star Trek games. As far as I can tell the only time Marines were ever mentioned was in a deleted scene from Star Trek VI when Colonel West proposed a rescue operation to rescue Kirk and McCoy, and later was revealed as being the Klingon in disguise who tried to assassinate the Federation President. Outside of that there is no canonical reference to Marines in the 'Trek universe. Even Ex Astris Scientia's Bernd Schneider, one of the web's foremost authorities on Star Trek, has stated Marines are false canon.

So why are Marines used at all? First, let us look at modern USN vessels and the role Marines play on them now or had in the past.

Repelling boarders. Marines are a ship's primary defense against incursions by enemy forces, they are the best armed, best trained fighters on board. Their job is to provide security on board a vessel. Just like security forces on board a Starfleet vessel, headed up by a Chief of Security.

Accompanying officers on offshore missions. Whenever officers might enter dangerous areas they may be assigned a Marine contingent to act as a bodyguard...Just like security personnel often do on away missions.

Who could forget ensign...um...moving on...

Boarding operations. Marines are often tasked with boarding a potentially hostile or dangerous vessel either in order to stage an assault or to mount rescue operations...just like we have seen away teams do in Star Trek going back to the days when they were called landing parties, and in all those cases there was not a single Marine in sight.

But what about Marine pilots? You might ask. Marines have fighter wings, don't they? Yes, they do. And it is true Marine pilots must undergo extensive training with the United States Navy at Pensacola Marine fighters do not operate off of Navy warships. You know who does fly aircraft off Navy vessels? Navy pilots. Shocking, I know. All right, I freely admit there are Marines who fly off of USN vessels, but these are specialty ships, such as amphibious assault ships. Anything a Marine can do in regards to piloting fighter craft a Naval pilot can do, and in regards to Star Trek the latter makes far more sense.

So why the obsession with Marines? Is it a hatred of the color mustard?

...in the holodeck with the bat'leth

I have given the matter some thought and I think I have some ideas why Marines have acquired such a love from a sad, misguided faction of Star Trek fans.

There is no doubt that save for Special Forces like Navy SEAL teams, or The Rangers or Green Berets, or Russian Spetnaz or British SAS (or a dozen or more other elite units from around the world), the United States (and let us be fair, British) Marines hold a certain mystique. Marines are largely considered by many to be an elite force in itself. And this bears out when you look at the way Marines are trained and what is expected of them. Every Marine pilot, for example, is also trained as an infantry platoon commander. Marine NCOs are expected to be able to act with greater autonomy than NCOs from other branches.

The thought of being part of such an extraordinary organization of men and women is doubtless attractive. But when you add sci fi to Marines, well then...


Is there anyone more manly than Michael Biehn? I don't think so.

...the awesome is turned up to eleven. They are often portrayed as utter badasses, they look cool, carry cool weapons, kill lots of stuff. This is especially true in Aliens where Space Marines were first introduced on the big screen.

But Aliens is not the only source. Warhammer 40k has their own Space Marines, and while I am not a fan I cannot deny the artistic style of that world is stunning. I mean really, take a look at this:

Do the amps have a twelve setting? They do now.

These are just two examples. This is a list of Space Marines in science fiction, it is a long list. An impressive list. But you know what franchise is not on the list? Star Trek. If someone wants to play a Space Marine they can play Warhammer 40k, Traveler, or Wing Commander rather than polluting 'Trek with a livid green rash.

What is Star Trek about? Sure, it is about Captain Kirk beating someone with double fists and tearing his shirt, or constructing a gun from bamboo. It is about Worf whipping out a Bat'leth and carving some dude up. It is about Benjamin Sisko being utterly badass just cooking up a batch of gumbo. But it is equally about Scotty being a miracle worker, or Spock solving a problem logically. It is about senior officers sitting around a poker table in a delightful moment of character interaction. It is about political intrigue at a remote space station. It is about exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life forms, new civilizations. DS9's Dominion War began something that we really did not need and that was a greater obsession with the military side of 'Trek. And what made it sad was DS9 was just aping what was going on in Babylon 5, a better show overall*. Just a note about B5: there were no Marines there, either.

But back to the subject at hand; Marines, and Star Trek PBEMs. They are not necessary, people. Never have been. Star Trek games survived before the advent of Marines, they worked just fine. Anyone who wanted to play a Marine could have played a security/tactical officer. Anyone who wanted to fly a fighter craft could have played a Starfleet helmsman. Marines are redundant in the 'Trek universe. And here is another thing that bothers me. Take a look at the rank insignia from The Original Series. Now take a look at the rank insignia from The Motion Picture here and here. Now here are the insignia from Star Treks II thru VI. In each case the creators were attempting to create either insignia that were fairly generic easily adoptable by multiple alien cultures (And yes, I know, many Navies use stripes on the sleeves to denote rank, but they are still a generic form of rank designation which is widely recognized by numerous cultures, which is the point of using them) or unique to a sci-fi series.

Now here are the insignia from Next Generation:

In the first two examples the designers went for a look which was unique, the latter when they realized they needed to further expand on non-commissioned ranks they were inspired by modern military insignia. I stress the words "inspired by" as there is still a unique style to these insignia. Now take a look at the rank tabs widely used in Star Trek games for Marines:

Wow. Talk about an utter lack of creativity. These insignia are exactly the same used by the modern United States Marine Corps. An Earth organization that was in existence three hundred years before Star Trek, Deep Space Nine. Why would Starfleet use the insignia of a three hundred year old Earth military organization? Remember when I mentioned the hatred of the color mustard? Take a look at the color of the rank tabs: green. In Star Trek the three colors double up: blue is Science and Medical. Red is Command and Helm. Mustard is Security/Tactical, and Engineering. But hey, if you play a Marine not only are your rank tabs different from everyone else, but you get to wear your own special color as well. How kewl is that? That is just...immature.

In the end, the presence of Marines diminishes Star Trek games. Are GMs who use Marines in their games bad people? Are players who play them? No, of course not. But I would say the former are largely people desperate to fill their ships with players, the latter people who largely just do not get what Star Trek is.

*My opinion, of course.

Song of the week

2011-06-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

I am working on a game related post, hopefully it will be up by this weekend. In the mean time, your song of the week:

Song of the week

2011-06-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

When I think of theme songs for my Vindicators super hero game, this song is almost always at the top of the list.

Communication is Key

2011-06-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

I just dropped out of a Star Trek game, not because I did not like the premise or had a falling out with one of the players. It was not due to a bad plot element or the GM including marines in the game.

No, it was due to the fact the GM disappeared.

This is an issue I have seen over the years with both GMs and player alike. A person gets involved in a game and for one reason or another stops communicating altogether. In this day and age of easy access to the internet I do not see any excuse for this. Twenty years ago, maybe. But internet access is available in most libraries as well as FedEx Office locations. You might have access to the internet at work, or your friends probably have access to the internet, even your parents! That does not include internet access through many phones. When guys stationed in the field in Afghanistan and Iraq can check their e-mails, I find it hard to believe that anyone living in a more civilized region can't at least once in a while.

I am not talking about running a game through alternative internet sources, but if you are having trouble with your primary internet source then it behooves you as a player or a GM to at least let people know what is going on. It is the polite, responsible thing to do.

"But Tom," you say, "My father died, I am not feeling much like chatting online." Bull. If a loved one died or was put in the hospital you would notify work, wouldn't you? You would notify your friends, right? If you had social engagements you would contact those involved so you would cancel or reschedule, correct? There is absolutely no difference here. Just because you have not met any of your players face-to-face it does not makes them any less important. Again, I am not talking about running a game or participating, just let people know what is going on so they don't worry.

And let's say you have grown bored with a game and no longer wish to play or run it. What is the harm in letting players know how you feel? Not letting your players know, leaving them in the dark could conceivably harm your chances of running a game later on down the line if you develop a reputation as a flake. Just flat-out disappearing as a player could hurt your chances of being picked up for a game later on down the line for the same reason. It makes you look like someone who views players as disposable, not important.

So please, if for one reason or another you are unable to participate in a game, do the proper, adult thing and don't leave people in the dark.

X-Men: First Class

2011-06-04T11:50:00.000-07:00

So I saw First Class this Friday, and I liked the film a great deal. I will try and provide a review that does not give away much more than you have already seen in the trailers.

For those of you who have not seen the trailers (so for you this might be slightly spoiler-y) First Class tells the origins of Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto, former best friends who now stand at opposite ends of the fight for mutant kind. The tale takes place in 1962, and I think just about everything about the film was well done. The performances were great, the look and feel of the era was captured well (although I think some of the hair styles may not have been sixties accurate). A reviewer at IO9 compared the film to a James Bond flick, which made me smile when I read that because I did so after I saw the movie and during it my brother Donald said something along those lines when he compared Kevin Bacon to a James Bond villain. And that is a good thing, in my opinion.

If I have any complaint, it is that several of the proto X-Men do not get much opportunity to be fleshed out. And Banshee is nothing like the Sean Cassidy I liked in the comics; instead he is little more than a teenager. In watching the film I understand why that was done, but it was still a bummer not to get the classic Banshee, because likely we aren't going to get a classic Black Tom Cassidy as a bad guy (then again, we aren't going to get a classic Juggernaut, either, after that atrocious third X-Men film). And one bad guy does not get a single line of dialogue. Heck even Goldfinger's Odd Job got to grunt once in a while. :/

Another thing I thought was awesome was the origin of Magneto's helmet. If you have seen the trailers he is wearing the bucket. Where he gets it from is pretty neat, in my opinion.

I give the film a solid 8/10. If the younger X-Men had been given a bit more opportunity to shine I think the film would have been better for it, but I can understand with time constraints why this was not done. I am looking forward to the DVD release to catch the deleted scenes. I would love to go into more detail about the film but I do not want to give away the plot or discuss some of the more awesome aspects of the film. I highly recommend you see this one in the theater. With this film and Thor I think this Summer's movie season is much stronger than last year's.

Finally, do not bother staying to the end of the credits, there is nothing there like there had been in the last X-Men film or other Marvel movies. I just don't want you wasting your time.

Apologies for not posting...

2011-05-31T16:08:00.000-07:00

But there are several factors involved. The first is a lack of subject matter. I have an idea in mind regarding world building but it has not really gelled. Then there was the anti-Star Trek Marine article I was compiling but that just sounded bitter ranting.

And I suppose I feel a bit bummed about the state of PBEMing in general. There seem to be fewer people playing, and many of the games are focused on canon worlds I have no interest in (i.e. Twilight, Harry Potter) and those I might be are 'Trek games that have...Marines...

Sorry, threw up in my mouth a little bit.

On top of that a friend of mine who plays in my game is going through a rough patch and had to bow out, my brother is still unemployed and...

Well, I guess it is just easier to lose time playing City of Heroes than writing.

I am not shutting down the blog, far from it. I just wanted to explain to the awesome guys following my blog and everyone else who gives me a little time to read what I put out why there is no new activity. Hopefully something will be up some time this Summer. In the mean time if something catches my attention or if I have a song of the week I will still put it up.

A great many regards,

Tom

Song of the week

2011-05-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

Randy Savage, RIP

2011-05-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

Randy Savage died of a heart attack in Tampa, Fla. today, due to a heart attack. I was a huge fan of his during his WWF years, although when it came between him and Ricky Steamboat, I was firmly in Ricky's corner. I am sorry to see Randy go.

Anyway, in my opinion this is one of the best things Randy ever did:

Song of the week

2011-05-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Garbage is one of those bands who had a great first album and whose talent seemed to wane more with each successive release. By their third album I almost completely lost interest in their music.

However, there was one single from the third album I liked:

This and that

2011-05-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

I just noticed this morning I have a new follower. Welcome, Bryan, I hope you enjoy my posts.

If anyone has ideas for blog entries please let me know. I am currently working on one or two, one of them a suggestion from my friend Dave Zyn.

Anything else? Um, I saw Thor last week, good movie. Good action, great performances. If anyone sees it, be sure to stay 'til the very end after the closing credits. I am very much looking forward to Captain America later this year as a result. :D

Jews in Space!

2011-05-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

And in case anyone is wondering where that title comes from, you need to acquaint yourself with Mel Brooks.

One of the problems with a lot of conventional science fiction is the mono culture, the alien race where a vast majority of the individuals look and act the same. Almost all Klingons are warriors who wear some form of armor; Romulans are all sneaky and have the same hair cut, etc. Babylon 5 had a similar problem with some of their races. Even Star Wars has this problem in that the inhabitants of Bespin do not seem all that different from the humans living on Tatooine. Sure, they dress differently but for the most part they all seem to be cut from the same cloth (it does not help the 99% of all humans in the SW universe are white. What happened to all the Asians?). In running a sci-fi game it might be a good idea to mix things up and introduce factions/peoples that are against the norm.

To me, Star Trek’s biggest flaw (other than the fact that Enterprise is canon) is the lack of human religion. I am not a religious person nor do I appreciate anyone trying to shove their beliefs down my throat. That does not mean that I do not respect the religious beliefs of others nor does it mean that I mind seeing religion portrayed in my television programming. One of the things I loved about Babylon 5 was the inclusion of a Baptist minister as a supporting character as well as Catholic monks working on their own special project on the station. Hey, guess what: religion does not die out with space travel! It was nice to see that some humans could be as spiritual as Narns or Minbari. Sure, Star Trek has paid lip service to some beliefs but the writers and producers have always refused to be pinned down by specifics. We have seen Aboriginal cultures’ beliefs but the cultures and beliefs themselves are either fictional or so generic that it is impossible to tell who or what they represent. I am, of course, talking about Chakotay, Generic Indian. I just find it annoying that Klingons can be as spiritual or as religious or whatever, and we can’t see one Muslim rolling out a prayer rug, or someone slipping their crucifix necklace on before slipping into uniform. I understand that Rodenberry was an atheist, but so is J. Michael Strazinski and he understood full well that just because he does not believe in a higher power that did not mean the billions of human beings would adopt his attitude and abandon thousands of years of religious belief.

In a Star Trek or future Earth sci-fi campaign perhaps the ship runs across a planet colonized by a religious sect, say they are Jewish or Muslim. Christian works as well, it all depends on what the GM feels is appropriate, how knowledgeable they are about the faith in question, and how the players feel in general about religion. The adventure does not have to embroil the characters in an in depth study of the religion nor do things have to descend into some predictable holy war storyline, but the PCs would have to deal with various religious and cultural taboos. In a way to a people who have largely become nonreligious, a group of Hasidic Jews might seem almost alien in their strict adherence to dietary laws, or the Muslims with their need to pray five times daily towards Mecca. How would they handle a Baptist sing along? It would be nice to see PCs have to role play this sort of thing out (one thing to keep in mind where the Muslim faith is concerned is to carefully separate Muslim religion from Middle Eastern cultural norms. There are many African Americans who practice the Muslim faith but have not adopted Middle Eastern cultural norms). The adventure could be that the heroes must track down a fugitive who has fled to his homeworld for protection and the PCs must deal with the social or political aspects. Or perhaps a valuable ore has been discovered on this world and the colony must deal with the outside universe whether they like it or not. Heck, it could even be a simple “shore leave” storyline and the gang winds up doing something really silly or stupid to antagonize the locals.

Then there are the aliens who are considered outcasts, perhaps are even considered freakish. This was a neat idea shown in an episode of Enterprise…

Sorry, I threw up in my throat a little bit. Giving Enterprise credit for anything can be difficult.

Who needs compelling story telling when you have tits?

Anyway, in Enterprise the crew met a group of emotional Vulcans who were pretty much pariahs. It was an interesting idea. Perhaps it was not executed as well as it could have been but I give the writers and producers credit for trying something different…

Okay, maybe not as different as all that.

What if the group found a colony of Romulans trying their hardest to be Vulcan, trying to adopt the principles of IDIC. Or pacifist Klingons who shun violence and think that the ridiculous obsession with a warrior’s code and honor have crippled their race’s potential? Ninety nine percent of all Ferengi seen on Star Trek are focused on making a profit like it is some genetic imperative; wouldn’t it be great if you saw a group that believed in doing charitable works? Perhaps they use their ruthless business savvy to aid ailing economies? What might at first seem like Ferengi greed is in fact Ferengi altruism? What if the Ferengi mafia were renegade charity workers, bilking the system to help those who needed financial aid? That would be an…immoral inversion, to twist the term coined by Mister Spock in A Piece of The Action. Other races could follow similar themes; celibate Orions, for example. Smart Pakleds. What if there was a faction of the Trill species who were dedicated to destroying the symbiotes because they believed the slugs were actually controlling the minds of their hosts? It is a not a rational belief, but no one said any fanatic’s belief’s had to make sense.

I ran a Star Trek adventure where the catalyst was a group of Klingons who panicked, whose ship fled the field of battle in the face of defeat. Cowardly Klingons is certainly against the norm. We have seen Klingons acting dishonorably but even when they do so there is still that warrior spirit driving them on. What if that spirit fails them?

The Next Generation had a terrible episode called Sub Rosa, which pretty much ripped off Anne Rice (to the point where Anne Rice was given credit. Although if I had been Anne Rice I would have taken a monetary settlement rather than have my name attached to that dog). The part that did not rip off Anne Rice were the aliens living on the planet who were fascinated with Scottish culture. Having an alien race embracing some human belief or cultural mores would be an interesting idea; would some Klingons find Japanese feudalism calling to their souls? We could have Space Nazis…

Okay, hell with Space Nazis. We could have aliens becoming Jewish. This idea is not as weird as you might think. In Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s comic series Nexus there was a character named Judah Maccabee, named after the Hebrew hero. He was most definitely alien. Heck, if you want to go contemporary imagine a group of Klingons acting like those punks from the Jersey Shore.

These ideas do not work so well in a Star Wars or Firefly universe and the idea of creating the opposite of what you expect was already done on Stargate with the Tok'ra, a faction of the Goa'uld that formed a partnership with a host rather than dominate it. However, if you were running a Firefly game it might be interesting to explore the Chinese side of the culture a bit more; from what little was seen in the comic books, television series and movie the series was largely influenced by Westerns, with a little Asian flavor thrown in. Is there an aspect of the Firefly universe which is far more Asian? As far as I know only one or two core worlds were shown. What if there are others that are predominantly Chinese and do not welcome "foreigners"? Jubal Early, The Operative and Preacher Book, all black men, all had mysterious pasts and possessed martial prowess. Jubal said of Book “That man is no preacher”. What if there was some sort of order of warriors, all African? In this I am turning things around; instead of seeing a hodge-podge of cultures mixed up, the unusual thing to see in Firefly would be the mono culture/race.

What I am suggesting is a shake up from the norm, to see something players are not expecting. Can it be weird? Sure, why not? Star Trek is about seeking out new civilizations and boldly going, and to me the biggest word in that statement is “boldly”. Going against the grain is a bold move any GM can undertake and I encourage anyone running a game to try something a little different, a little weird once they feel they are on firm footing with their players. The universe is a big place and if Earth itself is anything to go by it should be a diverse universe. Do not let what you have seen from established canon hinder your imagination.

Song of the week

2011-05-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

From the musical Cats. This video was a promotional thing they did back in the early eighties when Cats was coming to Broadway for the first time. Back then Mtv played music videos just about exclusively and would air whatever they could get their hands on, but HBO also showed videos to cover the space between movies.

Seeing this video made me realize I had a serious anime cat girl fetish before I knew anime and cat girls existed. :)

Getting Gritty

2011-04-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

I have mostly run four color super hero games, and the occasional Star Trek. The Star Trek games have also been, for the most part, straight up adventures much like the ones seen on television, with the settings being perhaps a little different (i.e. my Tyche game which involved a clone colony, Team Mugatu which was supposed to be a special forces team). In a majority of cases the games involved did not address any gritty real world issues. For a change of pace, though, getting grim and gritty might be the way to go.

Some comic books have done this sort of thing before. Denny O’Neil addressed drug addiction in Green Lantern/Green Arrow when it was discovered Roy Harper, Speedy, was a heroin addict. Marv Wolfman discussed human trafficking in Teen Titans when the Titans had to help a group of runaways. Of course, there can be colossal failures when some writers attempt to do this, as JMS’ recent aborted run on Superman tried to address the drug trade and made Supes out to be pretty much an idiot. Anyway, the point is four color characters have stepped out of their bright, easily defined worlds and seen a darker side where there are no easy answers.

Star Trek has delved into this sort of thing a time or two. In Symbiosis you have two societies, one a drug addicted people who think they are sick and are being given medication to treat the illness, the other their pushers. Picard’s handling of the situation was well done and as viewers we see the conflict addressed by various parties (i.e. Crusher wanting to do more because there is an entire civilization being preyed upon, Picard realizing sometimes people have to wake the hell up on their own when they are in a state of mass denial). If it seems I am using drugs overly much it is because drug addiction is one of the most common problems facing society today and the one which has the most moral quandaries attached to it. And I confess being half way through season four of The Wire might have something to do with it.

Here is an example of how frustrating working within the confines of the law can be, as seen on The Wire. Drug dealers operate on corners in teams of four. A junkie approaches one guy, he hands him the cash and makes an order. Cash guy tells the corner captain often with hand signals, who then signals a third person who is most likely a minor as he will be handling the drugs. The minor heads out of sight to the stash, which is guarded by another minor whose job it is to run off with said stash in the event the police show up. Minor #1 then gets the drugs and meets the junkies around the corner out of sight of the cash man and corner captain. At no time does corner captain interact with the junkies, at no time does cash guy interact with the people handling the drugs. And because of all of this it is very difficult to prosecute anyone. No wonder it must be wonderful to be Batman when he can just beat the crap out of anyone.

And yet that raises problems as well. How many undercover cops and Federal agents has Batman beaten over the years by accident? How many criminal informants-people working for the police in secret-has he hospitalized? And that is a potentially interesting problem for the players. For blood thirsty ones they could critically injure those who either working for or who are the police.

How would heroes deal with drug trafficking? How would they handle dealing with under aged prostitution? What would heroes do if confronted with real world problems without any clear cut answers? Granted, players may grow frustrated if an adventure went unresolved or if it seemed as if they did little good, but that is life. Police officers face that reality every day. I think it may be a good idea not to run an adventure like that with a relatively new group of players but with an experienced bunch they would probably be able to handle a step into the dark side a time or two.

So, what sort of adventures could be run? Going back to drugs-again-DC Comics’ Flash (the Wally West version) had to deal with a group of people taking a drug called Velocity 9 that gave them super speed powers (this was during Mike Baron’s run, where in a short time West faced off against Velocity 9 junkies, Speed McGee and Blue Trinity. I get the feeling Mike Baron had no clue what to do with the character and was assigned the comic.). In the Champions RPG one potential adventure taking place in a mirror universe people were taking drugs to attain super powers. This could be one interesting thread where people are taking drugs to attain or sustain paranormal abilities. Instead of everyone having the same power, what might be amusing is to have a wide variety, in many cases silly powers such as prehensile hair, or something akin to Superman vision. Things could get seriously weird.

Another way to go might be there are drugs on the street “cut” with an additive known as Hot Shot (a hot shot is when drugs are deliberately cut so that they will harm or kill the user, often a purer dose of the drug will do), which builds up in a person’s body. When a person takes enough Hot Shot they spontaneously explode. The motives could be terrorism, or an attempt by one drug dealing faction to cripple another by destroying their customer base and the faith of the remaining junkies in their product. Or perhaps it is a test being conducted by a rogue faction of the Military Industrial Complex using what they feel are expendable human beings as guinea pigs? The heroes could have all sorts of ways to track down the drugs, from dealing with the drug dealers directly to exploring the bodies and trying to determine who has the technology to create such a deadly chemical. To make the game more interesting it would be of more interest to have the heroes forced to go to the street to try and work their way up the drug chain to the source rather than the other way around. It could be amusing, making them have to pose as junkies of one social strata or another in order to score drugs. Perhaps they are arrested by police for possession? Or someone attempts to mug them? Or they are mistaken for cops because they look so straight laced and uptight?

This sort of adventure could take the heroes to another country where they may have to deal with more grittiness. Some countries rely heavily upon the drug trade to survive, or at least their governments do. Afghanistan, for example. There warlords grow fields of opium poppies in order to generate enough funds to feed, arm and pay their troops (and there goes the moral quandary again. Afghanistan is a nominal ally, yet they are responsible for generating a source of heroin. Same goes for Mexico and Colombia, sources of black tar heroin, marijuana and cocaine). Perhaps the source of the drugs is alien in origin, an extraterrestrial plant being grown in some remote part of the world? Perhaps the synthetic drug is being produced by an enemy or ally of the United States, and as a result the team has to either battle conventional forces or a team of paranormal bad asses. Or they are compelled to fight fellow heroes who are following the letter of the law. So a game can go from the gritty streets of Vancouver to the secret Pandronum fields of China.

Another type of gritty crime can be that of human trafficking. There are different versions of this, from children being exploited to immigrants being forced into slavery to pay for their passage to another country. This sort of storyline can be potentially ugly based on the subject matter so the GM really has to be very, very careful in what he or she wishes to address. I would strongly recommend avoiding the darker themes like child prostitution unless the players are okay with it, and even then the material has to be handled in a very delicate way. I would strongly advise against running any game involving this issue as some players have kids. If a human trafficking adventure of any sort is going to be run I would recommend something along the idea of Chinese immigrants being ferried to North America by “snake head” Chinese gangsters and forced into hard labor or prostitution to pay for their passage, or Mexican immigrants being smuggled into the country by coyotes, or Eastern European women shipped in to the East coast. Many unsavory things happen to these people who are only looking for an opportunity, but at least a majority of them are adults.

How can you run something like this in your super heroic campaign? Perhaps a normal hero’s maid is an illegal immigrant and he/she discovers she is in trouble. Or a friend disappeared after visiting a brothel full of Eastern European women and discover something darker is going on (vampirism, naturally, is one idea. Rich folks with no relatives being murdered for their cash is a more conventional way to go). This could lead to the heroes uncovering a major criminal conspiracy where human trafficking is just one aspect. Another idea might be the hero discovers their girlfriend is an illegal immigrant and is facing deportation. Does he/she marry her in order to keep her in the country? Perhaps her “benefactors” are now demanding payment. Is this a legitimate threat to her well being, or is the hero being played for a sucker?

If you want to go in another direction entirely, perhaps humans are being abducted by aliens and shipped off to alien worlds as slave labor? What if the coyotes are aliens leading Mexican immigrant into the desert where the alien vessels are waiting? Or instead of trafficking in humans, someone is trafficking in inhumans? What if orcs and trolls are shipping unwanted conquered elves off into the hands of human criminals on Earth? Or the other way around? An unscrupulous mining company in central Africa is using dwarven slave labor to better find precious gems? These last ideas are much more fantastic in tone but there are still gritty elements as it deals with the misery and exploitation of others. These ideas are easily applicable to a sci-fi or even fantasy campaign as well, with a little tweaking.

This idea of going gritty can work the other way. I used to love reading The Shadow pulp novels online through this web sight, before the William Gibson estate made the guy shut it down (and serious bummer, as I was only about a third the way done reading the some 300 stories, if that. It was a true online treasure.). The Shadow dealt with street level viillainy, criminal masterminds dealing in largely conventional crimes. Sure, often the bad guys used superstition and trickery to mislead the authorities and normal people, but ultimately there was always a real world answer to the mystery. However, sometimes there were instances where The Shadow dealt with super science crime and these could be refreshing changes of pace. I had no issue whatsoever with The Shadow dealing with unusual elements. If you are running a gritty campaign it might be fun to introduce a more unusual plot device or two in order to shake things up a bit. Maybe the players will hate it, but as a GM you might want to try something different, experiment, or even lighten things up if things have grown too dark.

In the end, the experiment to add a little dark reality to your game, rub a little dirt on those four colors.

Song of the week

2011-04-23T04:38:00.000-07:00

I will always have a soft spot for David Gilmour. Not only was Pink Floyd one of the most influential rock bands ever, but Dave helped launch Kate Bush's career. He actually paid for her studio demo that landed her her first record contract.

FYI, the first few seconds of the video have no sound on purpose, so don't think it is some sort of glitch. Be patient. :)

Let's Get Small

2011-04-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

One common plot device used in fantasy and science fiction is where the heroes are shrunk to tiny size. We have seen this in children’s television (Doctor Shrinker), children’s literature (Alice In Wonderland), standard sci-fi television (Land of TheGiants), Star Trek (TAS’ The Terratin Incident and DS9’s One Little Ship),the classic sci-fi movie The Incredible Shrinking Man (the part where he has to fight the spider for the piece of cake still gives me chills) and not-so-classic The Incredible Shrinking Woman. DC Comics produced an Atom mini series where his belt was lost or broken and he had to “go native” among a diminutive group of people living in South America. Even Spider Man had to deal with it such a circumstance when he battled Mysterio...

...Wrong Mysterio...

While accurate, Spider Man fighting Rey Mysterio would be a much cooler battle. Anyway, the confrontation with Mysterio was all an elaborate illusion, of course. The Fantastic Four were thrown into a similar situation when Doctor Doom and The Puppet Master teamed up (Well, Puppet Master would have called it a team up. Doom would have called it him hiring a new lackey). Having the PCs shrunk down can be an interesting adventure, providing them with numerous problems and perils to overcome they might not have to deal with normally.

First of all, there are a couple different ways to go with this. The first is where the gang winds up in a sub atomic universe (i.e. The Hulk’s adventures in Kai, Marvel’s Microverses). In these cases the adventure can be more or less a fish out of water adventure where the gang has to cope with a strange environment. In these cases the characters might not even be the same size as the inhabitants; they could be giants in comparison (as was seen in a Justice League story where The Atom was giant size and the rest of the JLA were normal sized in comparison to the natives). The GM has numerous ways to go with a game like this, from creating a world quite different from the one the heroes are used to (i.e. magic if the heroes are from a hi-tech world, hi-tech if their origins are magical) or they could be seeing a world very much like their own (which gives question to the nature of existence itself; what if their own world is simply a sub atomic reflection of a larger one?). In these cases the adventures can be more or less straight up quest or action stories with the ultimate goal being a way to discover how to return to normal size without obliterating the world they are visiting.

The other type of “getting small” adventure is where the heroes are shrunk down to a fraction of their size and must cope with a variety of threats. Now, you might think if these characters are well armed or have extraordinary powers that being small is not big deal. Well, let them take a gander at some of the creatures they would have to deal with. Take the common house cat, for instance:

... Okay, wrong sort of cat.

You kill it, I'm busy.

Sure, Babooshka and Rantan look like pushovers, but you have not seen them hunting bugs (Save ants. And apparently freak Ran Tan the hell out). They are armed with claws and teeth and possess a house cat’s inborn need to use them. Cats like to play with their food before killing them. Imagine having to deal with cats the size of elephants or even rats the size of horses and you get an idea of how bad things could get.

At six inches imagine how big cockroaches are. Even ants can be more than just a nuisance. And do not forget the spiders.

No matter how creative you are, Nature is scarier.

Try envisioning an eight legged rottweiller with a poisonous bite that can melt your insides. A hornet’s nest is now a well armed squadron of death dealing dive bombers. Mosquitoes? Imagine a female mosquito shoving her proboscis (Okay, I cannot believe I spelled that word right on the first try.) into a hero’s chest to suck the heart from out between his ribs. Even maggots become Lovecraftian horrors. Shrink them down any more and those alien looking predators become true horrors. While nasty at the same size, if the heroes are at two inches the preying mantis is a six inch long flying murder machine with its twin scythe-like arms.

I'm so badass they named a kung fu style after me.

And I have not even addressed environmental concerns like drops of rain the size of basketballs!

Being shrunk also presents the heroes with other problems such as transportation and movement. A trip across a lawn or room could be a journey of hours or even days so as a GM it is important to work out where the adventure might take place and whether or not the goals the heroes must set out to achieve are do-able in the time and space you have allotted them.

Finally, there is a third option between the two extremes and that is being reduced to microscopic size. In these instances I can only think of one scenario and that is traveling through the body of a living being (i.e. Fantastic Voyage, the enjoyable Martin Short/Dennis Quaid/Meg Ryan movie Innerspace, Invader Zim). There could be different plots for this scenario. The first is the classic 'Voyage where the being they have been inserted into is ill and the only way to cure him is to go inside to repair the damage from within. Another might be the person has an implanted explosive and it is impossible to operate on him via conventional means. A third could be microscopic assassins have slipped into the subject and it is up to the heroes to stop the hit before it goes down. For another plot, imagine a criminal mastermind has discovered the perfect hiding place within one of his minions! If you really want to get a little out there, there was a Justice League story where the JLA had to deal with a boy's tumor, which turned out to house an alien civilization. Perhaps a person has been invaded by subatomic aliens and a person's very brain has become the battleground? In these instances the heroes are going to need some hi-tech gear in which to fulfill their mission, or perhaps magical devices that simulate submersible craft and underwater gear. Some pre planning and possible NPC aid will be in order and the GM should not hinder the heroes in their quest but aid them to at least get to the mission proper. This includes supporting possible, workable plans and ideas.

So when planning an adventure you can dream big even as your getting’ small…

More delays, song of the week

2011-04-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

Work was a bear this week, with one person let go last week and us trying to cover, another calling in sick, and a third taking a couple vacation days. So it is a matter of finishing the new article or addressing my game, and I think the game comes first.

Anyway, song of the week is from Train. Not a huge Train fan, but I like a couple of their songs and I think this song from the Spider Man soundtrack is awesome.

Song of the week

2011-04-09T02:03:00.000-07:00

I never finished watching this series as my library only had the first DVD. It is on Hulu now but I lost interest in the series.

However, I still think the opening song is awesome.

Double Trouble

2011-04-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have noticed I am starting to use more images and links in my articles. It (finally) occurred to me that the people - all four of you, apparently, :D - may be ignorant of certain things I am talking about and may like a bit more background. If as a reader you can think of any way to improve on article formats I am willing to hear them.

And no, "stop writing articles" is not an option.

A commonly seen staple of fantasy and science fiction as well as comics is that of the Evil Twin. The Evil Twin could be from a parallel universe, or (s)he may be a clone or the manifestation of the character’s psyche. Whatever the origin, the Evil Twin can be a fun introduction to the campaign either as a short term adventure or as a long term nemesis for the players to deal with.

New Spock, now with 50% more awesome.

The most common Evil Twin that I have seen (and there may be a more common one, such as the Evil Twin seen on soap operas) is that of the inhabitant from another dimension, the most famous of which is the Mirror/Mirror (A bit of a side rant here; DS9 writers completely botched the mirror/mirror concept. For a good interpretation, read Diane Duane's Dark Mirror) universe seen in Star Trek (and to me the source of the Beard of Evil trope). In these cases the worlds are similar but the other side has a more evil/twisted slant to it, and the PCs’ counterparts are just plain bad. The best comic book example of this is DC’s parallel Earth where the Syndicate rules. It was most recently seen in Grant Morrison’s Earth Two and the DC animated movie Crisis on Two Earths. The bad guys were Ultraman, Owlman (James Woods did the voice of Owl Man, William Baldwin was Batman. I am shocked Batman did not get his ass kicked within the first ten seconds of their meeting.), Superwoman, Power Ring, and Johnny Quick. They had similar power sets to the principle DC heroes but their motivations were polar opposites. There could be several ways to use this plot device. Perhaps the PCs wind up on this alternate world and are mistaken for the bad guys? Or their counterparts come to the good guys’ world in search of something. There are many ways to go with adventures like this; do they have to pretend to be their alternate selves? Are they hunted down by the authorities in a case of mistaken identity? If their counterparts wind up on their world is it the right thing to do to send them back or would they be doing the other dimension a favor by incarcerating them on their own world? Perhaps like the Earth 2/Crisis story someone from this other world is asking for the heroes' help. Of course an original slant of some sort is highly recommended to avoid outright copying.

Speaking of original slants, what if the other world was the good one and the one the heroes inhabited seemed to be evil in comparison? For example, in my Vindicators game there is a character named Vortex who has a history of infidelity. What if his counterpart is still married to his first wife and had always been faithful? Doctor Kinkaid devotes as much time to adventuring as she does trying to find a cure for a rare disease she and others are victims of, but perhaps her opposite number is a dedicated doctor? Wolf is a former police officer and private detective who is a werewolf, but his foil refuses to allow the beast out? Finally, The Box is an agent of Chaos, his twin could be an agent of Order. Both fight for good but the former is much more fun, the latter incredibly uptight. These characters could see the PCs not as heroes but as loose cannon vigilantes who lead immoral lives, and hence need to be reeled in, defeated.

Evil Twins from other dimensions do not necessarily have to be opposite or Evil, but their nature may be radically different. Perhaps your heroes are from a sci-fi world and their counterparts are fantasy based? Perhaps they hail from a Wild West world, or Noir world where men are hard boiled and dames can’t be trusted. There is a Steam Trek game out there, perhaps your PCs’ starship winds up breaching a barrier and finds itself in a dimension where the laws of physics allow for such vessels to ply space?

Could be worse: Liefeld could have designed the costume

Setting aside dimensional travel and more fantastic plot elements, another aspect of Evil Twins is that of the clone or opposite number. Spider Man is infamous for the clone concept, with him having at least two running around: Scarlet Spider, Kaine (because mis-spelling words is kewl) and...uh...Spidercide. Wow, I had no idea that character existed before writing this article. I would have been so much happier in my ignorance. The former was a hero, the latter a scarred vigilante, the third...evidence of creative bankruptcy. In both the former cases existed characters who felt out of place because they were copies, “inferior” to the original. I have no idea what Spidercide was feeling. Awkward, maybe, because of his stupid name. In Star Trek Nemesis, you had Shizon, a clone of Captain Picard who viewed his original with hatred because he had been created to replace Picard but was ultimately discarded when his usefulness was at an end. Superman has Superboy, who is a hero (and yes, I know Connor also has Luthor’s DNA in him), but there is also TheEradicator and the Cyborg Superman. In Lois McMaster Bujold's (warning: Spoiler heavy link ahead! I give this notice because this is one of my all time favorite series and do not want to ruin it for anyone interested in reading it. You have been warned!) Miles Vorkosigan series the idea of the cloned replacement is touched upon (Years before Nemesis hit theatres, by the way. And if you have not read the series I highly recommend it.). In The Vindicators Kinkaid has a clone that was ultimately created to replace her in a world-spanning plot to assassinate key heroes (I mentioned in an earlier post how this plotline resembled Bendis’ Secret Invasion plot, but I came up with it some five years earlier. I have yet to see royalties). What many of these examples have in common is, much like counterparts from other dimensions clones do not have to be evil but could be misguided, or even ultimately allies.

Going to the less fantastic route, in the Batman comics there was a character called The Wrath whose origins paralleled Batman’s own. In Bruce Wayne’s case his parents were killed by a criminal, in The Wrath’s it was a police officer who shot his. Chris at the Super Blog pointed out Bane in many ways is an even better counterpoint to Batman than the Wrath is. So perhaps your players have evil opposites, characters who are similar in some ways but so radically opposite in world view and motives they are bound to be the PCs' nemeses. In these cases the counterpart is much more likely to be evil or selfish and hence naturally the antagonist. In the early days of my Vindicators game there was a PC called Paragon, I created a character with a similar origin called Paradigm who was supposed to be his opposite number and see Paragon as a rival, a challenge. Sadly Paragon died and Paradigm has over the years largely collected literary dust.

In the end, Evil Twins can be a lot of fun for players and GMs alike, so if you are stuck for ideas regarding a campaign or one shot adventure, or you wish to create a new antagonist to trip up the heroes, stroke you goatee, grin wickedly and get to plotting...

Sweet Jesus, a fourth follower!

2011-04-04T09:18:00.001-07:00

Aw, now I feel truly obligated to getting a post up. Welcome James, hope you like what you read here, hope it is informative, or at the very least entertaining. :)

So City of Heroes is something like this...

2011-04-04T09:10:00.000-07:00