Healthy Humor

Tis Thanksgiving.  Trying to stay positive all day since that’s unusual for me.  Watching pieces of Bears v Lions was not conducive to staying positive, but, then, I didn’t really care what happened.  Hopefully everyone else is having a good day.  My traditional patty melt was okay, could have used bacon or something crunchy and oddly two different spicy condiments still didn’t make it spicy.

I watched Dune Tuesday night.  I didn’t realize it was just a part one, but, then, I saw it because other people wanted to.  I’d like to see the Bond movie, but I don’t really go to see movies by myself as I don’t like movies as a general rule and don’t like movie theaters as a general rule.

It was okay.

I don’t know much about Dune.  I saw the David Lynch thing and liked it to some degree.

One of the problems I had with this movie was that I was just waiting for events to happen that I knew were going to happen.  Became increasingly a slog, then no resolution.

In talking to one of my friends I went to see the movie with I think I came upon a more profound epiphanic epiphany.

This will sound really weird.  Apparently, I like humor in my movies.  Whoa, whoa, whoa … back away from the ledge.  That movie was so humorless.  My brothers wanted us to watch some martial arts movie that to me was just tedious as it was just fight after fight after fight with no reason for me to care what was going on.  Amusing characters are more appealing characters to me.

Now, does this apply to entertainment besides movies.  Clearly with TV, where Legends of Tomorrow is good and other Arrowverse stuff is pretty much only good when it’s funny.  I wanted to like Into the Badlands, but I didn’t particularly.  It needed way, way more humor.  Just don’t care about deadly serious entertainment.

But, what about books?

What’s funny in John Carter stories?  Some of the secret identity stuff, I guess.  If you don’t know what I mean, it’s not that hard to figure out.

Elric stories have more obvious humor, methinks.

Thomas Covenant?  If you strain some.

It’s not slapstick I’m looking for.  Sardonic humor is still humor.  Just read an article on nine types of humor.  Yup, some are appealing and others are not.

So, how does this apply to gaming?

When I try to explain to people what I like about CCGs, it generally comes down to two things.  One, I want to see how decks I build perform.  Two, I’m interested in the transactions during play and not so much the results.  What sort of transactions?  Funny ones.

Yes, CCGs are all about humor to me, which is probably why I don’t get up for major tournaments.  Even deckbuilding is largely an exercise in humor to me.

RPG play – well, there’s certainly quite a bit of humor in the many terrible experiences I’ve had, though a lot of the humor came from telling others what it was like rather than in the actual play.  I can work on an argument that humor in play is what makes for better RPing experiences.

Feng Shui campaign – “Homo Omega is our neighbor!?!”

Conan campaign – “Wait, Rald is going to spend the whole session in a bathtub while we fend off demons?!?”

Princess Police – … Princess Police.

I can think of humorous items in HoR2 play.  Sure, in HoR1, HoR3, and HoR4 play, too, but HoR2 was more fun.

Vampire, especially VTM with Jan van Acker – that one session was insane … “A … man?”

Yup, gaming is all about comedy.  Took me a long damn time to realize it.

Well, that’s all folks …

It’s A Wonderful Post

Last night was the first time I had ever seen It’s a Wonderful Life.

When I say I don’t watch much in the way of movies, that includes movies on television.

Since I knew the general story, it dragged.  One reason that I don’t watch more movies on TV is that they are long.

What I had so little concept of were the details.  I started off surprised at the cosmic chitchat.  Felt much more B sci-fi flick at that point.

It was mostly depressing.  But, then, people already knew that.  I’m part of the way through a review that goes into exactly how the movie is much darker than people remember/think.

While hardly a George Bailey, I can relate to some of his problems.  Where I can’t relate is the extremely contrived plot that sets up evil versus schmoe.  But, then, as a spin on Job, well, it’s not exactly a surprising take.

One might wonder why I like Miracle on 34th Street, which is full of arguable contrivances to tell its story and not like the same in this story.  Difference I see is that one eventually glosses over the many years of misery that characters endure where the other has its ups and downs in a fairly short stretch.

It’s funny that so many Christmas classics are about the evils within capitalistic greed, but … there’s a reason for that.

Anyway, eventually need to bring this around to gaming.

Could segue on how gaming as an escape from each person’s Bedford Falls (well, George’s view of his home town).  But, that seems kind of a downer.

And, if there’s one thing I’m all about, it’s rampant positivity.

Gaming?

Let’s deconstruct Bedford Falls to use for one’s own RPG settings.

Villain

You have a clear villain.  The villain is really all about control through the typical mechanism of controlling money.  Now, while a L5R villain could have trappings of this villain, one of the features of the L5R world is that there’s always someone above you and where the Emperor actually does (in theory) own and control everything, so this strikes me as a poor L5R setting.

A more generic fantasy setting can use such a villain.  If.  First thing is that you may have to drop money as the root of power.  Magical control of people to have the really fun theme of preventing people from becoming indentured servants is theoretically possible, and I’m sure someone motivated to make this happen can come up with a plausible way it would work.  Now, I say may.  People are free to play low fantasy or videogame roleplaying where money, money, money matters.

Regardless as to whether keeping money as a tool to power or not, what makes this villain compelling?  I would argue nothing.  I don’t need all of my personae to be full of complexity and redeemability, but this guy is just an avatar for a boring source of evil.  The villain could have just as easily been a corporation his identity is so irrelevant.  This idea of replacing an individual with an organization, though, does have a gaming benefit.  When there’s a single villain that produces evil, what happens when the party learns Teleport?  The downside of an organization is the common problem of making evil faceless.  Who gets excited by mowing through minions of the Darkforce?  But, then, taking this guy out is hardly interesting.

Would it be better if this guy was building up to something besides just methodically taking control of the world?  Because just trying to prevent the world from being taken over just sounds like a very dull existence for PCs.  It’s like how so many settings have a situation where the protagonists are trying to prevent evil rather than rooting it out.  Problem with this guy trying to build to something that could be disrupted is that that’s a different character.  This guy is a representation of capitalistic greed and grinding out the humanity in, um, humans.

Town

Small town, not completely isolated but separated from the rest of the world.  My problem with this setting is that it’s either too isolated or not isolated enough.  Violet almost decides to start over somewhere else, and it’s unclear why she doesn’t unless the afterparty with happy George ends up being a very happy George (with some fanfic happy Mary).  George can escape his Hell as long as he stops giving a crap about other people.

The town itself is not evil.  This is better than just dumping PCs in an evil setting which just sounds miserable to me.  The town, however, has an ethos, an ethos of being boring and having modest aspirations.  Hmmm … isn’t that like the exact opposite of a fun setting?  George wants to be a PC, instead is a Fantasy Townie who services the PCs.

Now, as a locale in an adventurous world, it seems like such a place could have good symbolism.  Either the PCs escape this place that tries to trap them in mediocrity and later find out how it gets swallowed by a demon or leave this town behind and come back to it later where it has been transformed into demonland.  But, instead of that trite storytelling, this could be a pass through location that the party engages with that represents the unadventurer.  That the PCs don’t fit this town in obvious ways and that the more they interact with it the more warped it becomes, not necessarily in a bad way as that would be depressing.

Taking characters from this town as flavor certainly works.  The noble cabbie.  The noble policeman.  The noble ethnic restaurateur.  The poorly run capital management institutions.  I guess.  What makes these characters more interesting than you could find in other fiction?

Cosmology

Does how God, Joseph, and AS2s work get you excited by including them?  If an AS2 can cause you to cease to be born, that’s harsh on PCs.  Of course, this setting was never intended for PCs, so the high fantasy aspects can be particularly arbitrary/unfair.

I certainly have no problem with guardian angels, but it occurs to me that I’ve spent no time thinking about a game where you had PCs who either had specific guardian angels or who were guardian angels themselves (in the more specific sense of being attached to specific individuals and constantly protecting them).

I’ll have to think about this a bit more.  I can imagine that it would be challenging for players to want to do more than a one-shot playing as dependent characters (in either case, it’s something of a codependency).  Actually, you could do this in L5R, where every PC is a yojimbo for a NPC shugenja/courtier, but I’m not clear on how this would work.

Next post:  the guardian angel campaign.

Themes

Responsibility versus selfish pleasure.  Adventuring seems very much a stand-in for more general hedonism.  Fooling around with naked chick gets defeated by responsibility, for instance.  This sounds like a terrible theme for a game.  The whole point of playing games is to escape from responsibility.  The act of the game is itself going to Europe or South America or even New York.

Greed is bad.  Again, kind of the opposite of gaming, at least a very common form of gaming.

Being the guy that fixes everyone else’s problems and only gets rewarded for it when you want to kill yourself makes for a wonderful life.  Nope.

Home is actually not as bad as it seems, even though leaving home gets you medals and wives and lots of money.  “You know what?  Instead of saving the world tonight, let’s just hang out and talk about our jobs and families and health problems.”

Anything can be used in some way, but the fundamental problem with using IaWL is that George is the antiadventurer.  He’s your butler who defeats all of the supervillain schemes to take over your base while you rescue “amazons”.

Vampires

One thing about the setting is that it seems a far better fit for a game like Vampire.  The isolation is enforced by the need to feed and the dangers of interacting with strange vamps.  The Prince (or whoever depending upon the setup) taking over more and more of your home sounds more plausible, if rather depressing.  Note that a spin could be that you are the Prince’s coterie while the Primogen keep trying to overthrow your inhibited boss.

Or, what about a Hunter game (human hunters, not Hunters) where you can’t off the Prince because way out of your league, but you can loan money to the tramp so that she can continue to flirt with everyone?  Not sure what you would spend your time doing, actually.  The IaWL villain doesn’t have minions, yet the obvious place to start is by defeating Evil’s minions.

Misery Until Winning

I just read a review where the review is much like IaWL – it dwells on the dark/negative, then gives the “happy” ending where we all cry with joy because … winning.

Nope.  I was in some game where it was all misery with the idea that you, then, win at the end (I think, I’m actually struggling to remember the particulars).  This is antifun.  I don’t play games for misery.  I play games to escape misery.

Put another way, gaming itself is the “I want to live”, the “Merry Christmas”.  I sent out my annual Christmas/New Year’s/Holiday emails (because I hate writing physical cards and have no interest in mailing more than what I have to).  So many of them are directly or indirectly due to gaming.

See my geniusness.  Merry Christmas folks.  All you had to endure was the unrelenting negativity before winning!

Rok And Rule

I watched Thor: Ragnarok recently.  On TV, on TNT, actually.  For the first time.

I actually wanted to see it.  For, you see, Thor was one of my preferred comics and … in my watching Marvel movies long after they came out pretty much just on long flights, I was not offended by Marvel movies as I thought I might end up being.  So, where I’ve never been a Captain America fan and I’ve rarely felt much for Iron Man, why not watch Thor stuff?  Besides, I caught some of one of the movies at one point – Dark World.

Thor: Ragnarok is bad.  Not offensive to someone who used to collect comics and would follow the adventures of Beta Ray Thor, just a bad movie.

It was ponderous.  I was in the mindset to watch a movie on TV, something I normally hate as I don’t like interruptions in movies.  I was looking to kill time, which was the whole reason for stopping to watch a movie rather than watching some terrible Food Network show or whatever.  I kept waiting for the Revengers to get to where the action was.

Meanwhile, I cared nothing about what was going on in Asgard.  Asgardians seemed pathetic.  Asgardians aren’t normal people, except apparently in these movies.  Hel/Hela is a perfectly decent character, but Cate Blanchett wasn’t sexy enough to hold my interest, while the character was monotonous.

I thought I was going to like Valkyrie, as I’m kind of inclined to like Valkyries.  Nope.  So, adult Asgardian who’s basically along the lines of Luke Cage in my mind.  Not because they both have darker skin than me [*sigh* 2020] but because Luke Cage comes to mind as a streetwise brick.

I’ve never liked The Hulk.  When he finally goes Bruce, that was somewhat better, but I’m not a fan of the movie version of Bruce, either.

I was already familiar enough with Loki’s schtick to just find it tiresome.  The Grandmaster, who might be a play on The Collector for all I know, was Spaceballs level parody/camp.

I totally watch superhero movies to watch spaceships shooting at each other.  Oh, wait, I don’t.

Which sort of gets me to my topic.

I have unlocked everything I decided I would care about for Miya Tatakisu’s mechanical advancement.  Sure, I have thoughts on further advancement, but I don’t feel like anything is truly missing, anymore.

Most recent mod play gave another opportunity to flesh out the character.  Spiritual/supernatural mods are just the best.  Gee, it’s almost like someone who finds L5R attractive for Asian Fantasy and not for Swords&Social(TM) likes when the fantasy aspects are in the forefront.

I had a mechanical choice to make.  One interesting option was not available when I reread something.  That left good stuff shore up a weakness, good stuff make better at important stuff, really shore up a weakness, or option four.

I finally decided on option four.

This is what finally gets us to our topic.

The rule of cool.  Applying it and not just mentioning it as if it adds to one’s nerd-popularity.

What makes superheroes cool?  Ridiculously good looking guy shirtless cracking jokes so that people who are into hot men will find him that much desirable – also get a decent haircut?

Yes, there is that even in comics.  But, it’s down the list for even other people, not all other people, a lot of other people.

Superheroes, to me, since I’m going to say something that other nerdy fanboys won’t agree with when I finally complete both a sentence and a thought, are about cool uses of superpowers.  This is why I have zero interest in The Bat Man.  Well, the Adam West show is entertaining both for the jokes and the ludicrously hot women.

Rather than focus on Thor’s realizing he’s a god and not just a superhero brick, repetitive smashing of things.  Now, I’m sure the intended audience finds Michael Bayness appealing.  But, there’s no drama to the typical smash.  Not just this movie but any of them spend too much time on fighting when the fighting doesn’t feel like it means anything.  Arrowverse also has this problem, especially with Ollie.

Fights are important.  They are important for highlighting what makes the super distinctive.  Or, they are important for telling a story.  There is meaningful fan service in the Marvel movies, but there’s also just smashy smash much of the time.  Thor v Hulk is supposed to be a big deal, but, then, I don’t care about The Hulk, so maybe other people care more.  Thor v Silver Surfer, if could ever do justice to SS, would be a big deal.  While their classic fight back in the day wasn’t as cool to me as, even, Thing v Hulk, the concept is totally there of two of Marvel’s Superman wannabees unleashing.

And, that’s why I went with option four.  It’s easily the least important option.  Playing to a strength might sound like a good idea in RPG play, but it’s not so much in Miya case.  The strength is already clearly defined, and there are diminishing returns where the other three options don’t have that feature.  It’s all opportunity cost, of course.  The context being that I could have leveraged mechanics better choosing any other option.

The rule of cool.  Option four was the most thematic decision.  I’m trying to really focus on thematics with Miya, now.  I neglected focusing on thematics because this isn’t a home game where you can do really inefficient stuff and it not be a party problem.  But, it’s more fun.

It’s more meaningful.

If going to watch the movie of Miya Tatakisu on TNT with commercial interruptions, want the weird, flavorful Herald of G-… rather than boxchecking IR-4 “courtier” with a path.  Just occurred to me that I could, like, use an image of my PC so that the billions and … billions of his fans could be enraptured.

“courtier”

 

Brave … Old? World

Been a while.

I was flipping through channels on this ancient device known as a TV using this ancient content model known as cable TV.  I came across Brave Archer 2.

For those who don’t know, Brave Archer 2 is a martial arts flick from the late ’70s.  It is part of a trilogy of movies with Brave Archer in their names, while the actual story doesn’t end with Brave Archer 3.

No, I didn’t watch it in Cantonese with Chinese subtitles.  This was part of a martial arts flicks marathon on an English language station.  Yup, dubbed.

After my mind was blown, I checked some reviews.  Somehow, people didn’t think the back two-thirds of BA2 and BA3 were utter insanity.  Something about being based on a famous book and having historical relevance.

I had to record BA2.

I point to Darkest Knight 2 as an example of appealing to my sense of humor.  DK2 was nowhere near as ludicrous as BA2.

Sure, I missed the beginning where I’m sure it was totally explained why like 20 characters all just show up in this sparse ruins of a town to talk and fight while two main characters hid, palming each other.  And, sure, I have yet to see Brave Archer, where those two characters apparently did more than listen in on conversations or watch fights by an endless stream of who the f* are these people?

I think that makes it better.  Let’s randomly chase someone around this desolate town(?).  Then, guy being chased just says “stop chasing me” and … cut to other characters.

I watched BA3 to see if there was any resolution to BA2.  Also, to see if we ever get an actual archer character to appear, ever.  Spoiler …

I got to thinking about how to model a martial arts RPG.

Actually, Feng Shui (assume I’m talking about 1e unless otherwise specified) models the idea that there are vast differences in ability between characters until there aren’t quite well.

AV may be a pretty terrible game mechanic, in that it is rather the end all and be all of FS while also making various characters far too impotent.  But, that’s what your typical old school MA flick is like.  Protagonist gets owned until training montage into owning antagonist.

Now, FS already exists, but let’s say you wanted to do my own mechanics.

You have your kung fu score where, let’s say, master level runs from 10 to 12.  Then, grandmaster is 13 to 14?  Supreme master is 15?  This score means most things.  Want to cure someone of poison, kung fu the poison/venom.  Want to read minds and teleport, kung fu that.  No, I’m not ignoring Dragonball Z.  That’s entirely how Goku worked.  Train under 100 times Earth’s gravity and you can read minds.  Train on some obscure planet and learn how to interdimensionally teleport.

Sure, I still figure you get Strength, Speed, and Endurance.  They don’t do much on their own, perhaps, but they act as prerequisites for various styles.  Because styles is where it’s at.

Mountain Style?  Endurance certain level, maybe Strength too.

Like FS, you get schtick paths so that you unlock Yin-Yang Finger Pressure Style or whatever.

How to deal with being utterly destroyed by certain enemies until you undergo additional training?  Well, this is where games and fiction run into a bit of an issue.  Even if the players buy into this genre convention once, how tired does it become after that first time.

This is one reason I may want to do something besides FS.  FS combat is pretty not so interesting.  Comes across as exceedingly repetitive with PCs doing the same things over and over.  I actually like the time war with its factions in FS – I like the themes more than the mechanics.

But, couldn’t you say that most games involve doing the same things repetitively?  How many times is it “free action draw wak, five raises extra attack, …, Luck”?

The training isn’t about the mechanics of gaining a situational +2 KFS against Hopping Devil Tiger.  It’s about your sifu having you swim to an undersea world to gain the Pearls of Harmony to de-idiot your grandsifu who was mindcrushed by the Mesmerist Mantis, where you must tornado punch sharks while free diving.

See, enthusiasm may not be my thing, but jumping from genre to genre totally is.

I should watch more MA flicks.  Again, my list of movies I’d actually want to someday see is predominantly a bunch of high end MA flicks.

So, I have been looking at the Elric series, the one that has six books starting with Elric of Melnibone and ending with Stormbringer.  I kind of forgot how long it takes for the Elric stories to get … grooved.  Book one is origin story and my least favorite.  I forgot how much two is side quests.  I forgot how long it takes before Elric blows up *his* world.  Book four is where you get into what seems the established Elric adventures, which lasts all of what?  Until the end of book five?

I’ll get to the point, eventually.

So, Arrowverse.  I’m just not that into Arrow’s last season.  Aged William is good.  The rest just seems so repetitive.  The series has always had problems with following through on cool.  What is that cool about what’s happened so far?  Flash is very Flashlike, too.

There are certain fundamental questions to … let’s stick with … gaming.  One of which is “What makes a game cool?”

Elric’s origin story is important, but it isn’t cool.  Cool is summoning gods when the plot requires it.

Arrow has its moments.  I don’t care much about Moira showing up again, unlike so many others.  But, it so often misses its mark [ha, ha ha].  Old Elric stories just push forward with new and weird.  Arrow dwells.  What Arrow probably needs is more Brave.  Get it.  *sigh*

More training sessions.  Yes, I realize father/daughter training happened.  But, that was repetitive training.  Train like you are learning Flowing Beetle 10,000 Kicks Style.  Maybe spend some time making gadget arrows rather than using them.

There’s some RPG application in here, somewhere.  I’m sure it’s totally obscure and impenetrable.

And, so we end yet another clearly coherently conceived composition.  What do you mean I haven’t gotten to a relevant point?

Change.  I guess that’s the theme I thought of after writing the first thousand words.  When playing a game is just doing the same things over and over, then it’s too much Arrow and not enough silver-covered Elric.  Even if insane levels of change, like Brave Archer totally ignoring any sort of resolution to its possible plots, change things up.  Sure, this is like saying variety is good.

Okay, it’s almost entirely like saying variety is good.

Well, it was kind of a similar Thanksgiving in some ways and a totally different one in others.  Variety is good, I guess.

Thanks for … things and stuff.

Kućna Biljka

When is a gaming blog not a gaming blog?

When it’s ajar, a jar, … *sigh*.

I can get into TV reviews, movie reviews, book reviews, food reviews, and make some loose tie in to gaming to justify my whims.  Then, there are the travelogue posts that tend to be even sketchier when it comes to fitting this blog.

But, hey, I didn’t take any games but I totally played some (not mind games, well, not intentionally).

In the beginning, was a city.  A city with an airport.  And, an airport shuttle bus.  And, a Metro and a Decathlon on the way to the AirBnB.  Oh, right, there’s only like one or a few people in the world who would understand why I took note of the Metro store and the Decathlon store on the way in.

We were a group of seven.  Five convicted murderers and the other six in the group.  Uh … Germany.  So, I met up with two of the party in Frankfurt.  Success.  Shelter.  Success.  Well, time to declare victory and call it a week.

I headed to the Diocletian Palace area because 4.5 movies on the first flight left me full of chi.

So, I may have said something about not being a movier.  I have in my decrepit old age of traveling an airline a bunch for status (not gaining me much since I dropped from gold) become the moviemeister, Baron von Movie.  Or, Baron von Ultimate Yahzee.

I finally saw Solo.  Watched Deadpool 2, Kingsman: Golden Circle, Monkey King 3, and most of Deadpool.  My early filter didn’t show Deadpool, thus the sequencing.  It’s refreshing when characters actually say what they think.  Yukio is adorable.  I can see getting tired of the Deadpool schtick, though.  Solo – terrible beginning, not exactly all that afterwards.  Golden Circle just bad.  I can understand the value of Bond parody, but, even with the cheesiness of Bond movies, they exude some stylin’ and profilin’.  But, then, I don’t watch action movies so much for action [just like I don’t eat massive quantities of meat because I care that much about the meat … oh never mind, Andy].  Monkey King 3 is not what I have in mind when I think of martial arts flicks, but my lukewarm feelings had more to do with the beating over the head of gender relationship stuff.

We eat at Maslina.  You know, I’m not going to spend a lot of time reviewing food.  I’m hypercritical, I mean, hyperanalytical and mostly complain about how my food and drink don’t rise to the level of … of … really great food.  I did learn to not order lemonade in Europe as I’m not entirely sure who drinks unsweetened lemonade.

Get this out of the way, now.  If you don’t get breakfast and lunch served everyday, then Croatia is about eight gelatos a day for, like, $12.  No matter what tourist port you are in, somehow, they will present gelato to you right as you get off the ship.  If you just need to scavenge for dinner, like us, then knock out your three gelatos for $4.50.  Now, you could order smoothies, like someone who drinks copious amounts of sugar, but just say yes to $1.50 cones and “suffer”.

Obligatory Port Shot

On to Makarska.  Weather was unkind early on …

Hindshadowing

So, what’s a group of young folks and a blogger going to spend time doing when not rafting or kayaking?

Heads Up!.  Yup, Heads Up!.  Cards Against Humanity.  First time, for me, and it was just like Apples to Apples (from a certain perspective).  I even played Uno and mansplained some on why I’m not into games like chess to someone who had just played some chess.  I’m just going to assume any time I say anything, I’m doing it in a manly way because of my early nurturing.  Also, much later in the trip, Exploding Kittens.

See, gaming content.  I’m nothing if not focused.

Night one of the trip, I didn’t get to sleep until after 4AM.  In fact, I was playing solitaire at 3AM … gaming, booyah!

Yup, me and all of the other kućna biljke [not sure this is as kosher as I think it could be] just notpartying late into the night.

So, that gave me a perfect opportunity to bail out on the next night’s socializing.  Not that I qualify for Navigator cruises, Contiki, et al, but one can just imagine.

Not the “Marco Polo”!?!

Tourist joke time!

I left a review for Sail Croatia.  Quite happy with this ship, though, to be arguably unfair, it’s not their ship, they just lease vessels from ship owners.  Might have been different if I shared a cabin with a stranger, but can worry about that the next time …

Sand not shown.

So, I didn’t take a lot of pictures.  I took no pictures while dune buggying as I was the seventh wheel, the wheelman.  All alone in my buggy (the second one as, of course, the first one wouldn’t turn over).  Anyway, one thing about our trip was lack of connection between beaches with sand and being in the water.  This beach would have been an opportunity for that, but the weather was still gloomier than usual.

Back to the lightning storm in Korčula.  Dinner at a nice restaurant and it didn’t rain at our sea wall locale.  Not here but near here.

Europe …

I also took no pictures while kayaking Malo Jezero (malo) and Veliko Jezero (Most-ly, sic humor FTW), while zip lining (see, gaming, as Andy and I discussed how Zip Line is a stealth card due to the squealing sounds matching the frequency of bats), or on …

Not Old … Town

The walking tour.  The Game … … … of Thrones walking tour.  Who loves irony?  Who?  I’m sure there’s a fantasy oriented sort who suffered through all of the Wheel of Time books (if not all of the chapters) who has never watched a complete episode or read any of the books who would be into such a tour.  Pretty safe bet.

I was definitely impressed at Dubrovnik Old Town.  Those three tourists, yum.  Anyway, Dubrovnik is one of the (numerous) locales on the trip I would have been interested in spending more time.  In this case, I felt like I only scratched the surface of touristdom.

The day after Dubrovnik was, I believe, when I had this sense of the trip being incredibly dense.  Sure, you don’t spend a lot of time in any given port (unless you stay up until 4AM doing … whatever), but each day is different to where there’s a lot of feeling of activity.  Also, weather improved and we actually hit swim spots.

Swimming.  I don’t actually swim much.  Kućna biljke aren’t known for mobility – all about the floating.  But, between being dumped in the middle of placid water, it being chilly, and whatnot, I even coordinated using arms and legs at the same time at times to achieve water-based motion.  I know, pin a medal on me right now.

I drink my sugar.

Oops, forgot to put this picture in the Dubrovnik “section”.  Most pictures of food I take for coworkers.  At least one of our group consumed the products of these dispensers.

Blocking the nudist beach.

The back half of the trip had a group humor moment.  Probably had to be there.

Gender bias – 40 kuna.

From here.  Okay, fine, I’ll explain.  At various times, we were low on cash and lots of things were cashy.  Now, ATMs are everywhere, so this isn’t actually much of a challenge, but one groupster would have more cash than another.  So, five of us went into the fortress.  I paid for myself and another male.  The third male paid for himself.  His fiancee was going to be covered by a female.  The ticket dude was having none of this outrageous chivalrouslessness once he realized we were “together”.  So, the two non-males saved some precious gelato-producing materials.

Oh, the adventures I could …

Getting to the end.  Last swim spot was most involved for this one, heretofore known as the “Water Wheel”.  If only someone had a Go Pro, someone who switched helmets with me to mount an electronic device and if only someone with a bumpy skull was into taking pictures while in motion.

Oh, which reminds me.  Safety is a six letter word.  When we had to sign waivers and wear safety equipment for ziplining, given that to that point our entire safety instruction was “Put the life jacket over your head, pull the strap around, and buckle.  Life jackets under the beds.” and at no point when I went kayaking by myself “Do you know how to swim?  Have you been kayaking before?  Do you want a life jacket?” to the point where I think I technically crossed out of Veliko Jezero into the sea, we figured there was a 10% kill rate on ziplining.  Bucked the odds, again.

Almost Splitsville.

Back in Split was trip-py.  It was an odd feeling to me to be back in a “city” where not everything was touristful (Dubrovnik outside of Old Town might have been that if we were ever more than a hop, skip, and jump from Old Town).  Also, the “return” of, er, returning to our starting point.

Return trip was ending of Deadpool, Black Panther, Infinity War, and lots of Yahtzee.  Because, gamer, yo.  Dice forever!

While I still don’t have the enthusiasm to cinemize, except when with family or the like who are more cinematic than I, I guess I’ve got to realize that it doesn’t really bother me to watch superhero movies, anymore.  I was reasonably entertained.

While not a tournament report, thanks to Athena for the invite on her trip and the groupsters for sharing gelato.  Thanks to the crew for not forcing us to use life jackets.  Thanks to Lara for mucho guidance.  Thanks to fellow passengers.

Now, when could I possibly fit in a return trip, where, of course, a V:TES tournament and Traveller feature prominently?

Wait, more gaming.

So, one thing about watching five years’ worth of movies was philosophizing upon the idea that entertainment can be less than great and still, somehow, be good.  In the next three thousand words, I’ll – …

 

Anomaly Log

I could rehash about no snakes in Ireland [did I ever hash?], how boring my day has been, and whatnot, but I can blog about gaming.

For, you see, I was in Virginia for a while.  And, North Carolina.  And, Maryland.

I got into VA on a weekend, did a family brunch on Sunday, but two brothers were out of town and other siblings had stuff to do so there wasn’t much group activity after brunch.  Monday, I drove to Raleigh … and back.  That was another clear instance of low life wisdom.

Why Raleigh?  To pick up True Dungeon tokens from someone I had never met.  Because … I have a game blog for a reason.

I showed him Traveller, briefly.

Tuesday was more normal for me and the scene and I had a lunch in Glen Echo with my mother’s cousins.  Cuz, there’s no shortage of people I know in the DC area.  I displayed to people who aren’t gamers our two-player starter set box and some of the cards.

Wednesday, I caught up on sleep until the point that three of my brothers came over to learn Traveller.  Now, a four-player game is not the best way to teach something as intricate as a customizable card game, especially not to people who aren’t card floppers.  But, we tried, and one brother got out to a lead, another felt like he was learning the game when we called it, and the third was the one who was interested in learning.

Thursday, was Steve’s demo of Traveller at Huzzah Hobbies in Ashburn.  I did not really expect to do a lot of driving on the trip outside of the casual run from Fairfax to Raleigh and back.  But, that’s because I wasn’t thinking through what I was committed to.  Steve’s demo went fine, with one person being completely new, the others having been shown before, and two people being interested in another demo who didn’t demo the game.

I got rid of our sample playmats.  We expect our cut when those things go on eBay for $1000+.  I figured that mound of playmats would just get replaced with tokens and one suitcase would work well.  Foresh-, um, foretelling – no, it did not work well to carry 40 pounds of tokens back with one suitcase, a gamebag, decks of cards, books, and a laptop + accessories.

Friday, I got together with people I knew due to V:TES.  I showed Traveller – three straight nights of demoing.  We played other games.

We played Shadow Hunters.  It was amusing how Pete kept getting attacked by his fellow hunter.  It was down to two of us and the other hunter fully healed while I didn’t.  Then, we played again, and the same two players won, this time as shadows as the neutral sprayed machine gun fire all around killing most of us, though I thought maybe he could win playing the steal equipment dude as there was enough equipment in play to steal, but he couldn’t steal all of it in one shot.

Then, down to four people, we played Star Trek: Five-Year Mission.  Not to be confused with other Star Trek dice game?  The owner discovered they had been playing stuff wrong and the game was not too easy.  We failed.

Saturday, I slept in.  Finally getting moving, I drove some more.  To Occoquan.  Because, who doesn’t casually drive to Occoquan when the need to buy birthday presents is afoot.  It was reasonably pleasant, with my not realizing George Mason’s main campus was just South of the house.  This has to do with gaming, how?

I drove to Occoquan to buy jigsaw puzzles, as we are all wont to do.  Now, I don’t recall how many decades ago I worked on a jigsaw puzzle.  But, it was something my sister mentioned for presents and, since the birthday celebrating early thing was not well known to everyone ahead of time, this seemed fortuitous.

Sunday, dim sum followed by birthday and unbirthday stuff.  Then, played a movie game that one or more of the siblings came up with.  It was enjoyable, but, since I don’t watch hardly any movies, it was hardly a surprise when I came well in last.

My youngest brother got in Saturday and did not have to go to work Monday, so we did what I do all of the time – we went and saw a movie.  I didn’t realize Red Sparrow had such mediocre reviews until after I saw it and read some, er, reviews.  Doesn’t really matter to me, since it’s not even the sort of movie I make some effort to see (Star Wars, …, …).  It would have done well in the movie game if the right categories came up.

Speaking of reviewing things that don’t have to do with gaming, I did not find Flash:Flashtime remotely comicbooklike nor remotely good.  To me, it was very TVepisodelike.  I got to trying to think of what TV episodes feel like comic book stories and I couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head besides the crossovers even though the Arrowverse does have normal episodes that likely qualify.

No V:TES.  No L5R (talked about it some with game store guy demoing Traveller).  No Shadowfist (didn’t make any effort).  No mahjong (Traveller instead, possibly to the regret of some).  Only a bit of solitaire at the airports.

Well, that was …  Why the title of this post?  Well, if you played Traveller, you might know how Stellar Anomaly Log is goodsome for Type S Scout Survey decks.  Survey.  Like as in travel around and explore.  Because I had never been to North Carolina and Optimist Park (yup, I went there … the place I was meant to be), Ashburn, Glen Echo, Occoquan.  See, my titles are superduperclever.  So clever.  And, not remotely obscure with injokes that only like one person in the history of the human race gets.

The Last-est Review

Of course, I need to comment on The Last Jedi.  And, of course, I’ll come up with some flimsy justification for how this has anything to do with gaming.

2.5 stars

People keep asking me “Out of how many?”  Um, four, like normal critics use, as opposed to the enormity of what happens in the interwebs.

I’m sure I’ll spoil in some manner, so I’ll drone for a while before getting into specifics.

I was traveling and didn’t have a lot I needed to do, so my father and I decided we would use some of our time together to see the movie.  On Saturday.  Not today Saturday, a whole week ago.  I was worried about lines.  Nope.  There was a line for some group event, but there was no one in line to get into the theaters normally.  I estimate about 20% full in the theater.

So, I rarely see movies any time close to when they come out because I don’t much like movies.  But, for adventure movies, comedies, whatever, you kind of like audience reaction.

Still droning.  Resaw it again today and had no new reactions.  Sure, was less surprising, but it didn’t reveal anything different.

I enjoyed Force Awakens more.  Now, you can hear the screaming of the tortured souls of people I know who were incredibly offended by Force Awakens for reasons I don’t exactly get.  I was somewhat offended by John Carter for getting the main character wrong, not having impactful book events be all that impactful, and generally messing with the setting.  But, one, whatever medium I experience something in is going to cause me to have some level of disdain for another medium’s offering.  Two, Lynn Collins was entirely respectable.

Force Awakens was not perfect.  While I may have already reviewed it, what worked for me was that I found Rey and Finn likable.

So, let’s get into where The Last Jedi didn’t Zahn me.  Rey and Finn weren’t on screen enough.  Oh, I’m sure someone else could have worked for taking up more of Poe’s screen time or Porg screen time.  Problem with Poe is that he seems so artificial, so much like a caricature trying to be passed off as a character.  If he was Wedge’s kid, then maybe he would be likable.  As is, just a space bro.

The humor was sometimes humorous.  Other times, forced.  In general, the movie just seemed kind of cheesy.  Like it was trying to get away with what Return of the Jedi got away with (argued about how Ewoks were not that offensive at the time, recently).

Stuff with Luke and Leia neither bothered me nor fired my ion cannons.  I did like the animesque scene.  I didn’t think Luke’s character was assassinated.  Nor was I bothered by what the Force can do.

I didn’t think there were too many subplots, as some did, as the most complained about subplot has reasons for existing besides special effects.  I didn’t have a problem with the new characters, per se, though how badly would you want Billy Dee to show up?

Sure, it was long and slowish.  After the fact, you realize that there’s an inherent weakness to primary plot number one.

Kylo is still hard to take seriously as a villain, but I would agree that he was less painful this time around.

Okay, bigger problems for this movie, then bigger problems for the trilogy.

There’s a subtle problem with the movie that I think various viewers feel but may not articulate in the typical brilliant way that I’m about to.  Star Wars is space opera.  It captured people’s souls by being mythical.  A quintessential element to Star Wars that you saw in even not so great Extended Universe books but was clearly evident in the better books, like the first Zahn trilogy, was that “try” becomes “do”.  In other words, if you attempt to fight the good fight, there is a reward for doing so, even if lots of people die and lots of other people remain subjugated.  TLJ has this underlying problem that there was no reward for doing the right thing.

The villains in the trilogy suck.  Was there a decent villain in Force Awakens?  I can’t think of any other villains of consequence besides the losers we are saddled with in this movie.  Vader was a good villain.  The Emperor was an okay villain.  Okay, some of the others weren’t all that.  The Jar Jar Trilogy had some incredibly forgettable villains in that I only know they were in the movies but don’t remember them doing anything besides he-who-does-not-speak-while-doublebladed-fighting.

One of the scenes that some reviewers went gaga over actually offended me.  Let’s just say that doing the obvious after lots of people die is not nearly as cool as doing the obvious before lots of people die.

Okay, moving on to general trilogy problems featured in this movie.  WTF is going on?  Force Awakens made no sense with the political situation, this movie doesn’t help, throwing a bone to why The First Order is suddenly that much more powerful.  Totally unsatisfying why the situation is what it is.  Related and part of this problem is one of the villains.  Well, kind of two of the villains, but at least one has a background.

I fully expect an attempt at some payoff on certain threads that felt like they were abandoned in this movie in Episode 9, but it still comes across as “wait, you have a 2.5 hour movie and can’t follow up on this thing that could have been cool?”

I could have mentioned before the ship in the water, which I don’t expect to go anywhere, but it kind of falls into the “setup with no payoff” problem.

There were pretty scenes that didn’t distract me but enhanced the experience.  This is totally unlike the Jar Jar Trilogy, where special effects seemed to exist to just get people to look at special effects.

It was okay.  It was worth watching.  It just wasn’t a great movie and didn’t have even the entertainment value that Force Awakens had.

So, gaming.

We played like one or two sessions of a Star Wars d20 campaign that maybe would have worked because I was playing with people I already knew who were more cognizant of genre play.  Other than that, my recollections are all terrible games set in the SW universe that had nothing to do with SW.

The Last Jedi actually does a pretty good job of presenting examples of reasons why SW RPG play doesn’t end up working.  The codebreaker is much more along the lines of what a lot of PCs are.  Now, I expect the next movie to do something with the character, but where A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back did it right by having the characters have some sort of arc, this was just a dude in this movie.  And, that’s a general problem with a ton of RPG play – why do people want to play games where PCs are just dudes?

Next, the pacing is too slow.  The original movies mostly moved at lightspeed.

Is there silly in SW from the original days?  Perhaps.  There was certainly some slapsticky humor.  But, there are times when this movie feels like a parody, and that’s not what provides the experience people seem to want out of a genre.  I don’t want parody of Eternal Champion or parody of Lord of the Rings or parody of supers.  I want to capture what attracted me to the genre in the first place.  RPG play so often dips into the realm of parody.

There isn’t enough Force except when there’s too much.  A huge problem with RPG play is that people want to be Jedi or their ilk, yet the good movies have a balance of Jedi and … no, not edge of the Empire scum, sealife aliens, etc … heroic types good at things actually relevant in RPG play.  Han, Lando, Chewbacca, Wedge, Ackbar … okay, Ackbar’s skills don’t translate great to adventures at least not his movie skills.  And, R2 is completely overpowered, just as BB8 is.  Anyway, the Force.  There are scenes that I just think to myself “Here’s where the PC spends a Force Point.”  So, there’s that.  But, the Force as something more than a mechanic feels missing from SW play.  Space opera.  It’s just high fantasy or comic book supers in another form.  Destiny, interconnection of events, soap opera aspects are not what I’ve gotten out of gaming.

I’ve gotten – we have to smuggle stuff, how do we make credits from this job, alien mechanics, interpreting Force rules.  There’s a dearth of epic.  I realize that the scale of going X-Wing versus Star Destroyer gets to be an issue and that even Tie-Fighter vs. X-Wing leaves out PCs who aren’t flygals.  But, that’s SW.  You have to have epic space battles.  Wars in the Stars.  I have no recollection of ever feeling like one of the good guys in a SW RPG session.  Not to say it never happened, but it’s a sign that I never recall it.

Of course, it’s not like SW has the only problem failing to hit the genre feel/conventions.  Supers, high fantasy are both genres I don’t recall playing where I felt it often enough.  Actually, a few times with supers it may have felt right.  Martial arts gaming also has some issues, though I haven’t had that many opportunities to play that.

So, I have a long weekend.  I hope to bang out some posts, including a post about what new cards (maybe even new decks) I’m interested in for L5R.