RIP

Obituary of the late Mr. Common Sense

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; life isn't always fair; and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6 year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or a band-aid to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by his 3 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I'm A Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

Stolen shamelessly from a post on the HERO boards.

Late to the Feast - Memes 012607

Feast

Appetizer
If you could take lessons to learn any musical instrument, which would you want to learn?
Easy one - keyboards - I love Synth music.

Soup
Have you ever mistaken a person for someone else?
Yeah a few times, but never really embarresingly.

Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how well do you keep secrets?
4 or 5 - I can do it for important stuff, but I usually just suck at it.

Main Course
What's the closest you've ever been to a dangerous animal?
A couple of feet - in a zoo - behind glass.

Dessert

When was the last time you lost your patience?
Sometime driving this week

Music

Part one: Pick an emotion that best describes how you've been feeling lately. Tell us what emotion it is.

Enthusiastic/Triumphant

Part two: Top 5 songs that best convey that emotion for you.

We are the Champions - Queen
Regatta & Fugue Part 1 - Aztec Jade
To the Quasar - Ayreon
One Way Ticket - The Darkness
Tom Sawyer - Rush

Yeah I'm in Power Metal Mood. :)

Game Theory and playstyle analysis

This one is about personal playstyles than game design, but still using the analytical tools of theory - (GNS, GDS, re/pro active player, immersive or actor stance ect) and game choice.

I play for immersion. The absolute best times I have had at roleplaying games are when I loose myself completely in my character; that when the game session ends I blink and say "oh yeah, that was a game". Now for me, that is easier than many others -I play solo campaigns with the wife in addition to group play, and so scenes that may be embarrassing or verboten in a group I can play without problems solo.

As a playstyle I tend to be re-active. That is largely, I think, due to the fact that I play superheroes, in a classic sense, and so much of the genre is all about re-acting - a clue shows up, the bad guys robs something, someone turns up dead, and then the heroes get involved. But that is something I am comfortable with. Put me in a world and say "go ahead, do what you want" and I would feel lost and at ends.

Looking at rules, I'm of the camp (pure Sim here) where I think of the rules as the physics of the game world. They tell me how my character can interact with the game world. Once I know those rules, I know how those physics work, and I never need to consciously think about them again, and just worry about in character stuff, and being Immersed. This leads to a number of rather interesting things, and I think it explains some rules lawyers fits (I used to be one way back in the day).

As I mentioned my wife GMs me in solo games, so there is a higher level of GM trust there than in just about any other Player/GM relationship. Now she is amazingly creative, and has something of a Nar approach. Now years ago (we've figured out how to deal with it now) - I'd be playing and something would happen and my complete instincts are "There are no way in the rules you can do this" and a heated discussion would ensue... just like any rule lawyering. However, once I'd done my analysis I realized that that problem wasn't about me trying to make some munckin power character - part of my immersion comes from knowing the "game rule physics" and when something happens that I, as a player, know that cannot be done in the rules of the game, it breaks my immersion, and casts the entire world in doubt. Suddenly thoughts of "does this work this other way" and "can my character do this" start happening and I'm thinking about rules not character again.

I personally think that many of the "bad rules lawyers" are doing things this way, and just not realizing it. When they know the rules, and they see the GM "cheating" it breaks their suspension of disbelief, but not understanding why they just lash out with "You can't do this by the rules!"

This attitude also really influences what kind of games I look at and enjoy. Rules light games have so much GM mandate - as they don't have actual rules to cover everything - just set my teeth on edge: I never know where my character stands in the world - it's like physics breaking down around every corner. And a lot of Forge based / Indie games I have problems with. They come up with innovative mechanics or approach that focus the game on those things rather than on character (Capes is a good example, a single character immersionist like myself just doesn't want to switch character roll).

Here's hoping

Well, it's official.

Hillary Clinton is running for President.


And while the concept of her in the White House is something that makes me want to vomit, it could be for the best. She could cause a big rift in the Democrats, and screw up thier chances for the Presidency, and we get Republicans in again - only this time some that are a little more middle of the road.

The upcoming election is going to be interesting. And I'm sure very very acrimonious.

Sometimes I just want to leave the country the year before the election.

Meme-age 010/12/06

Holidays are over. Time for the memes.

Top 5 songs under 3 minutes long

Crazy Little Thing Called Love (2:44) - Queen

Closer to the Heart (2:55) - Rush

Time is Time (2:08) - Yes

Breath (2:45) - Pink Floyd

Jerusalem (2:44) - ELP

Yes I managed an all Prog under three minute list. Woohoo!!

Appetizer
What comes to mind when you see the color orange?

Rebel/New Republic Flight suits.
Soup
Did you ever get in trouble while you were in school? If so, what was it for?

There was a group of us in AP computers (pascal), back on Apple 2. We wrote and compiled a bootable fake pascal that you couldn't tell from the original. When you would hit the save command it would spin the disk, ect. When you tried to print, it printed garbage and swear words at you.

One day we snuck into the teachers room, backed up his pascal disk to another one. Then we put our pascal on his disk. Apparently he spend 4 hours coding, and then printing only to find that it was our fake.

We got in trouble. But we got A's. We did the fake in the Pascal we were learning. :)

Salad
Which topping(s) make up your perfect pizza?

Depends on mood - Peperoni Mushroom and Black Olive, or Ham and Pinapple, or Pep and Green Pepers.

Main Course
Do you believe in UFOs/aliens/etc.? Why or why not?

I believe there is other life out there. I don't believe in the UFO "phenomenon". As for why - too many stars and planets for life not to have evolved somewhere.
Dessert
What color is your bedspread/comforter/quilt?

Deep red.

Taking potshots at sacred cows

This is a comic book rant. Deal.

I'm going to comment on my feelings about a number of writers (mostly the Brit crowd) who are held in especially high regard by comic fandom, and I can't for the life of me understand why.
First off, one that is not considered all that great. Mark Millar. Some of his stuff is okay (see the Ultimates). But he can't make a deadline, and if he deals with characters he didn't invent, he cannot do characterization at all - if he were a roleplayer I'd be deducting XP for being completely out of character. Anybody he gets his hands on are bent all out of recognition - take a look at the Civil War in Marvel - this guy is the Rob Liefeld of writers.


Now on the cows the thread title is named for. 4 guys - Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Alan Moore, and Neil Gaiman.
I'll start with the worst of the lot Garth Ennis, here is a guy writing comics books, and who has spent half his career doing superheroes. Guess what, he has mentioned he hates superheroes. So that seems a really good career choice, Garth. His Hellblazer sucked, Preacher sucked, his Authority sucked (well all the Authority comics suck), Hitman was annoying, and his current claim to fame is writing a character that is a rip off of ghostwritten action novel hero Mack Bolan.

Next up Warren Ellis. Authority - he created that travesty so we came blame him. Transmetropolotan was one of the most annoying comic books it was my displeasure to try to read. He does have some bright points though; his work in the Ultimate universe has not been bad, and Planetary is one of the best comics out there- in this comic he wrote the story he was born to write - he doesn't have to do any more.

Neil Gaiman - not bad as the others are, but just, well, boring. His continuation of the horrible Moore Miracleman was incredibly average (which was an upscale from the horribleness of the Moore stuff), Books of Magic was derivative, and his seminal work, Sandman started off well, but - I got so bored reading it I drifted off after the second or third trade paperback, and never felt the need to try and finish.

And lastly Alan Moore. One of the biggest jerks in the industry, but personality issues aside, the guy is so erratic in quality that it feels like Let's make a deal - you either get a car or you walk out with an ant farm. His good stuff (Watchmen, LXG) are amazingly good, however in both cases he uses other peoples characters (a thinly disguised Charlton characters, and even more obvious in LXG*). Killing Joke was average, and the only good that came of it was the later writers creating Oracle from what he did for shock value - according to reports he was running around the office shouting "Kill the bitch, kill the bitch" about the sequence. Swamp thing was near unreadable. Read the trade "The DC work of Alan Moore" and be prepared to cry - I read almost every one of those and hated them all.

Sorry for the rant, but I keep seeing these guys held up as demigods of modern comic writing - I had to vent. If you want to look for good comic writing look at Kurt Busiek, Geoff Johns or even Judd Winnick (most of the time).

* One of his biggest complaints about the V for Vendetta film was how they changed things he created. I'm sure the writer of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm would have a few words to say to him about his handling of the character in LXG. Hypocrite.

Some musing and The Next Haul

Yeah, the infrequent part of the blog title is in full force. I find myself discouraged blogging, I never see comments; and maybe it's that I am so used to messageboards, and quick responces there, but when I cry my calls into the wilds of the internet, I guess I like to hear something back. *Shrug* At least I identified the problem. Now figuring out how to solve it.


***********

I turned 40 yesterday. We had been saving up for some time so I had a fair chunk of change for my birthday. And I like to shop, I'm a collector and I like to get things in great big handfulls. One of my niftiest birthday memeories was when I was 13 or 14. I got $100 for my birthday - so I went to Toad Tape (a now defunct record store - this was years before CDs). The average price on an LP was 6.99 - 7.99. With me spending a hundred, they gave me 10% off. I walked out of there with something like 14 records. Some are still my favotires - Romantic Warrior by Return to Forever was one of them.

Well as an adult, this last few days I repeated the process.

My wife has been the main PS2 user in our house. I mostly been playing on my computer (and now that I have a 3-d card, I can get some decent ones). Well we got a computer game that the wife was interested in - Fable. So if she is going to be on the computer that means I get the PS2. So I needed some games.
Hooboy.
I had four (Timesplittes, Tekken Tag, Street Fighter EX 3, and Gungriffon Blaze )
For my birthday I bought:
Barbarian
Hypersonic Extreme
Rygar
Shifters
Virtual Fighter 4 Evolution
Wipeout Fusion
X-men Legends
Yu Yu Hakusho Dark Tournement
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy.
Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter
Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance
Defender
DOA 2 Hardcore
Gun
Jak and Daxter: Precursor Legacy
X-men Legends 2
Power Drome
Red Faction
Red Faction 2
Maximo
Soul Caliber 2
Shadow of the Collusus.

So I got 22 PS2 games for the birthday for a total of 26 (as opposed to my wife who has something like 60 - almost completely RPGs)

Now one of the nice things about not feeling the need to get the newest game RIGHT NOW, is that I'll let games slide into the "greatest hits" status and thus become SRP $20. Or buy them used. Or wait for sales. Or all of the above. My total cost for the 22 game I bought was under 200 dollars.. I think the average game cost was somewhere around 8 bucks.

So now I have a whole bunch of nifty stuff to play. :)

Next - saving up for a ram upgrade on my current computer, or to just get a new one. I need a really speedy processor and some decent RAM to run the Saturn Emulator at full speed, and I miss playing Radiant Silvergun (and yes I have an actual copy that I bought at normal price when it was first out... and no I won't sell it).


Let the Video Gaming commence.

Oh yeah, I also ordered all the CD singles for the band The Darkness - each one has two non album B sides*, so with the 5 singles for thier first album, that is an entire 'nother CD. Plus one from thier second album. 12 new songs - Woohoo.

* Well one has a couple of remixes, I ignored that one.