Aug 11
Posted on
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 in
Roleplaying GamesI recently pulled out my copy of Afghanistan: d20 and had a look through it for the first time in years. I don’t know how many people bought it when it was released in 2002, but I was one of them and I was well aware of the controversy surrounding its release.
The argument against Afghanistan: d20 was that it was somehow disrespectful to the troops fighting there to make a game of their hardships and, yes, their deaths. My perspective was that we have successfully made games out just about any war you care to think of, from WWI to Vietnam. Some have been wargames, some roleplaying games, but they were all still games. Did these efforts, too, qualify as disrespectful?
I guess on the one hand I can kind of see the argument against a roleplaying game. With a wargame things are abstracted. The death of one or a dozen or a hundred is just numbers on a sheet of paper. Properly executed, a roleplaying character has a life of his or her own and that character’s death is going to be felt more acutely as a result. Assuming the player is the empathetic sort. Some aren’t.
In a less touchy-feely but more practical sense, there’s the argument that there is little to do in an Afghanistan: d20 campaign. I believe this comes from a perspective that doesn’t see the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan as a fully fledged war, but as some kind of low-intensity peacekeeping mission. War is full of plot hooks, as anyone who’s run a WWII game or the like can tell you.
At any rate, America’s war in Afghanistan has become our longest. It seemed like the right time to look at Afghanistan: d20 and review not only the controversial origins of the supplement, but what we can do with it now to tell meaningful stories.
(more…)
Aug 10
Posted on
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 in
Roleplaying GamesUncle Chu: China is here Mr. Burton. The Chang Sing, the Wing Kong; they’ve been fighting for centuries.
Jack Burton: What the hell does that mean? Huh? “China is here”? I don’t even know what the hell that means. All I know is this Lo Pan character comes out of thin air in the middle of a goddamn alley while his buddies are flying around on wires cutting everybody to shreds, and he just stands there, waiting for me to drive my truck right through him, with light coming out of his mouth!
When it comes to Story Games I sometimes wonder if I’m in the right place talking roleplaying with folks. The feeling comes and goes, but it’s never stronger than when I run across one or more threads that read like total gibberish to me. An example: “Keys, aspects, beliefs, etc — are they really all that?”
I have no idea what anybody’s talking about in that thread. I haven’t played the games, am not familiar with the concepts… it’s like a foreign language. A friend of mine to whom I recommended the site had the same problem; if you don’t have at least a basic grounding in the “new wave” of roleplaying, you’re quickly going to find yourself adrift.
I’ll freely admit that I’ve been more or less out of the roleplaying scene for ten years. My last regular game was a D&D Third Edition campaign that, to put it mildly, didn’t go particularly well. I certainly don’t have experience with the narrative-heavy games that dominate the discussion at Story Games, ones that give over substantial portions of control to the players to do with as they see fit. The kind of games I do understand are what the Story Gamers dismiss as “trad,” for traditional.
(more…)
Aug 9
Posted on
Monday, August 9, 2010 in
Movies
I owe the makers of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem a heartfelt apology. You see, in my review of that film, I described Requiem as a very, very bad movie that I would recommend to no one. I said this, now I understand, because I lacked the appropriate context to make such a statement. You see, I hadn’t yet seen Alien vs. Hunter.
I can say without fear of contradiction that you will see no worse an Alien or Predator or Alien/Predator knockoff than Alien vs. Hunter. Oh, you can look as hard as you can and turn over a lot of stones, but you aren’t going to find something equally bad. Not even close. Those folks who laughingly discount Plan 9 From Outer Space as being the worst film ever made have not seen Alien vs. Hunter, or they would surely change their minds. It really is that awful.
To a certain extent this is to be expected. Alien vs. Hunter comes from production house The Asylum, whose primary claim to fame is their capacity to churn out “mockbusters,” movies that hew closely to the model of some popular film title, only with a tiny fragment of the budget and little attention paid to the finer points of moviemaking. So you get stuff like Snakes on the Train or Transmorphers. I’m not sure who they’re fooling, but their stuff does tend to show up on SyFy a lot.
So Alien vs. Hunter has a strike against it from the get go. Maybe even several strikes, as the production is likely to be as abysmal as the screenplay. Populate the cast with has-beens and never-weres and you’re ready to start filming a microscopically budgeted knockoff of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. I guess.
(more…)
Aug 4
Posted on
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 in
MoviesI watch a lot of movies, as anyone who’s perused the last few weeks’ worth of blog entries should be able to tell. I have a vast collection of DVDs, many of which I’ve never taken out of the wrapper, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking about what I’ll buy for the next shiny thing: Blu-Ray.
We’ve had a giant, 1080p HDTV dominating our living room for a couple of years now, and we’ve only really scratched the surface of its capabilities. We get HD programming through our cable provider, but when it comes to prerecorded entertainment we’re still watching upconverted standard resolution DVDs. Which are nothing to sneeze at, I should say; the picture is very clear and it’s obvious we’re squeezing every line of resolution possible out of those discs.
But still I crave more, more, more resolution. Which brings us to this small list of five Blu-Ray discs I’m gonna buy once I finally cave in and get a Blu-Ray player. Because you know it’s going to happen.
1. Blade Runner. Every time I get a new piece of equipment capable of playing video or audio, the first thing I run through it is Blade Runner, either the movie or the soundtrack. So it goes without saying that I would want Blade Runner for this purpose. And one of the nice things about the particular issue of the movie I want is that it includes all the extant versions of the picture. I happen to like different things about different releases so this is an excellent way to have that all under one roof, so to speak.
(more…)
