It looks like today I'm going to have more than the normal amount of Paizo art. Oh, well. They've done some good stuff. Or commissioned some good stuff, more accurately.
A Wayne Reynolds piece where some of the iconics are fighting a bunch of demons and stuff. If I remember correctly, this is Mythic Adventures; the ultra-high level stuff. I think? EDIT: No, it's one of the Wrath of the Righteous covers. But that adventure path was the one that specifically highlighted Mythic Adventures content, so that makes sense why I got them mixed up.
A very skinny gnoll. Technically, it's actually Yeenoghu from a 3e era publication. But he's the patron demon-lord of gnolls and looks like a gnoll himself. There was much better 4e art of him, for what it's worth.
Although I don't remember where I got this, I think I can recognize Master Chief when I see him. Unless it's just derivative of Master Chief, which isn't impossible.
Two versions of the same illustration; orcs in New Paizo. Not a bad piece. These orcs are much more ape-like in many ways than most of their prior illustrations.
Paizo iconics again. Cribbed from the blog, I think.
And again. I know Paizo is proud of their inclusiveness, but in reality, what they do is favor pictures of "tough", unfeminine and unlikable adventure gals. It's a shame that their art is ruined by the use of so many of these iconics, which end up being the weakest link in much of their art.
Yet another.
I don't remember what this is from, but it sure is weird. It begs for some explanation.
Another tough nature girl and her kitty. Sigh.
Pretty classic imagery here, although updated to a "dungeonpunk" aesthetic, as it's often derogatorily (yet curiously accurately) called.
One of my favorite of the wrap-around Eberron covers.
It may seem cheeky of me to talk about rediscovering hardtrance classics from my collection that I only discovered myself a few months ago, but I've gotten so much material so quickly that some stuff sinks out and needs to be rediscovered, I suppose.
I've always liked Uwe Wagenknecht, and he's one of the early discoveries I had in the genre. He's one of the DJs that debuted during Wave I hardtrance but seamlessly made his way into Wave II. Most of his best work seems to have been collaborative, and he worked with a lot of other artists. Especially Mike Staab (Misar—together they were Cosmik Vision, Mikado, Nightclub, Pro-Active, and a few more, most notably Yakooza) and Martin Roth (M.R. or Y.O.M.C.—together they were DJ Wag & M.R., Pro-Tech, etc.)
One of Wag's early hits was a collaboration with M.R. called "Life on Mars" released on Overdose Records in 1998. It had a bigger release in late 2001, this time credited solely to DJ Wag, but featuring two new remixes; a DJ Wag Mix and a Y.O.M.C. Mix (keep in mind that Y.O.M.C. is Martin Roth.) Later releases, such as all of the Pro-Tech records which were a collaboration between Wag and MR were released in this same format; with a Wag Mix and a Y.O.M.C. Mix. It's kind of a cool idea.
Anyway, this 2001 Overdose re-release with new mixes is what went on to become the really big hit, and a somewhat modified version of the Y.O.M.C. mix is the best known version of the song today. However--the original vinyl mixes are the best ones, and they are begging to be remastered and re-released digitally. The Y.O.M.C. Global Mix is not structured as well as the original Y.O.M.C. mix and the DJ Wag mix, which sounds quite a bit different, just isn't available at all except on old vinyl or vinyl rips.
If you don't mind the vinyl hiss and a number of scratches and pops (some vinyl snobs actually argue that such makes the song sound better but that's just freakin' retarded) then check out these two mixes. Good stuff!
Normally, I like a good old pulp adventure, and Edmond Hamilton wrote some good ones. I do have to admit, though, that these names aren't very inventive. I think I probably used some of them in my early D&D maps when I was 12-13 or so. (I used to doodle during class, probably to distract myself from boredom. For a while, Christopher Tolkien pastiche maps of Middle-earth pastiche fantasy settings was my favorite doodling subject. I still love drawing maps, although I don't do it nearly enough.)
Anyway, from Hamilton's Captain Future stories (a character he didn't create, but he did do most of the writing for.)
Mountains of Darkness... on the dark side of Mercury. As it turns out, Mercury isn't tidally locked anyway, so there is no light side, dark side and twilight zone. But that's a common trope in a lot of earlier science fiction.
The undersea city of... Sea-Fuk! lolwut? I know Neptune is pretty bluish, and of course, it's named for the Roman god of the sea, but did people really think that it was a big ole water planet?
Northtown, Southtown and Jungletown! Well, those are... creative... names!
And here's Mars. Not nearly as clever as ERB's or even Leigh Brackett's, but serviceable enough, I suppose, from a mid-century pulp perspective. There's a lot of forgotten versions of Mars out there from Planet Stories and other pulp mags that are very similar.
Anyway, when I first saw these maps, I was kind of excited about them. There are some great maps of Skaith, for instance, or Barsoom. Heck, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a freakin' genius when it came to inventing names; he has some really great names, especially on Mars.
But it looks like that wasn't one of Hamilton's skills. Oh, well. He did write some great stories nonetheless. Here's one of first ones of his that I read; I didn't even realize that it was his until years afterwards, because I didn't pay enough attention to who wrote what. But I read this from my public library when I was 11-12 or so. With that cover, too!
Looking briefly over the Pathfinder 2.0 playtest material, I'm a little struck by roles (i.e., classes) in D&D. I recently re-read one of my older posts where I discussed the Thief archetype, which is a very old archetype in D&D. It actually predates the printing of the game, although it wasn't included in the very first printed version of OD&D, and didn't come out until the Greyhawk supplement in 1975, after the basic game had been out for about a year. But it was in play at the very first conventions where D&D was played, prior to the release of the game.
The problem with the Thief, I think, and why it occupies a very controversial role among old school grognards, is that it really isn't meant for the dungeoneering environment. The fictional archetypes on which it is based—the Gray Mouser, Bilbo, Cugel, etc.) spend very little of their time in dungeons and they offer very little material to work with in a dungeoneering environment. In fact, they work quite well for a number of other roles that require a game that does stuff other than be stuck in a dungeon the entire time. Of course, we're reliably informed that the dungeoneering environment is the only proper old-school environment for gameplay to take place by many in the OSR movement and elsewhere. I'm not very sure that Gygax or Arneson or any of the other old school principals literally believed this of course, but many gamers today believe it, and even the mantra at one point during 3e's development was "back to the dungeon." But if the Thief archetype doesn't really fit very well in a dungeoneering environment, well, how can that be? Begs the question doesn't it?
In any case, although my tastes were formed very early and are largely in line with a lot of stuff that is very early in D&D, I don't consider myself old school, merely old fashioned. And certainly I'd never be inclined to worry about whether or not something I liked fit into a certain box or not. If I like it, I like it, and I'm not very concerned with whether or not I can fit my tastes into a specific "style" or not. There are elements of the "old school" playstyle that I strongly dislike even though there are many other things about that style that are right up my alley. The same is true for nü-style D&D too. In fact, one could probably fairly say that D&D itself simply isn't my game, even though my FANTASY HACK game is largely based on D&D for much of its structure. It's my own personal fantasy heartbreaker, I suppose.
Anyway, in the Pathfinder 2.0, we have a pretty standard array of classes, with a few additions. I'll list them and talk very briefly about how well I think it belongs in the game.
Alchemist. This is a new archetype for Pathfinder (as opposed to more standard D&D) although of course it's been an optional archetype in D&D for quite some time. I personally think it has limited utility in the game, and I don't like roles that are primarily support because they're usually not very fun for most people to play.
Barbarian. I always thought that some of these "alternate fighter" archetypes kind of were splitting hairs. That said, for the most part, the fighter class is kind of boring, isn't it, in most versions of the game. So I've often liked this class specifically even as I think it should be folded into the fighter class, which should be better designed so that it can be broad enough to have a barbarian archetype embedded within it as a option.
Bard. I've never had any interest in bards at all as a character class. While I've (very occasionally) known good players who enjoy playing bards, there does seem to be a high correlation between bard players and drama queens who hijack the game to be all about them. I think something about the class just attracts that type. And in any case, I can't even think of an adventure type where the bard is a good class to add to the mix unless it's as third string support. No thanks. I'd can the entire concept.
Cleric. I've never liked the cleric either, mostly because it's a grab-bag of tropes jammed together to fit a role needed in the tactical combat game of D&D rather than an actual archetype that's clearly delineated. My games don't feature them as an option at all, although if for some reason you really liked playing clerics, you could mimic them easily enough if you absolutely had to, I guess...
Druid. This is really just an alternative spin on the cleric (like barbarian is an alternative spin on the fighter archetype) so I have as little use for it as I do for clerics.
Fighter. This is, of course, one of the most iconic archetypes in the entire fantasy genre, but to be truly fair, it's more of several related archetypes boiled down. The fighter class hasn't always been good at modeling the nuance of, say, a swashbuckling fighter as opposed to a heavily armored knight-like fighter, or some of the other version of the archetype. But that's a failure of the mechanics, not of the concept itself.
Monk. I personally have always thought this archetype was too esoteric to fit into D&D. Plus, its source is not part of the canon of Western Civilization really—so its inclusion is oddly uncomfortable, and a lot of times both developers and players are a little unsure exactly what to do with the class. I'd rather just not include it.
Paladin. While this is indeed an archetype that is recognizable, it's also probably too specific to have general use in the game. I'd prefer it, again, to be a variation that could be done with the fighter class rather than a class all its own.
Ranger. In theory, you could say that this would be a variation on the fighter class too. You'd not be wrong, although I'll admit for purely personal reasons (because I like the archetype so much) I don't mind it standing alone whereas I have less use for the barbarian or the paladin as separate classes. But that's a personal quirk. I think the ranger as a sub-class of the fighter as it was in AD&D means that the fighter class should be broad enough that the ranger archetype could be created within it. Of course, that might mean that it's not a specific Driz'zt or Aragorn type character and more of a generic "hunter" type archetype, but that's fine too.
Rogue. Well, I just talked about the thief archetype above. Of course part of the problem is that there's been a lot of role and archetype confusion with regards to the class over time. But y'know. The basic concept is about as core to the genre as you can get.
Sorcerer. This is a new spin on the same archetype as the wizard, and while of course it's iconic to the fantasy genre, you could also make a case that it's not so much a player class archetype as it is either a patron/mentor archetype (Merlin or Gandalf or Ningauble and Sheelba) or antagonists (Thoth Amon or Xaltotun, etc.) I think at this point, though, if you don't have some kind of wizard or sorcerer option, you'll probably surprise, disappoint and otherwise disillusion your players, unless you're doing a very specific kind of fantasy that excludes them from play. But there's no reason to have two classes doing the exact same archetype. The way 3e tried to make sorcerers the "X-men" compared to the wizards being the Avengers was just as stupid as it was in the comics; why are mutants feared and reviled while other superheroes aren't? It makes as little sense in D&D as it does in the comics.
Wizard. See sorcerer above.
Of course, there are nuanced archetypes, and Pathfinder (1.0, at least) explored them a lot. Many of these were less archetypes than they were simply tactical alternatives, or even concepts that the designers just made up that had absolutely no archetypical resonance at all. Which is totally fine—arguably even a good thing, especially in such a rule heavy system as Pathfinder. FANTASY HACK has the advantage that because it's much less rules bloated, you can play a concept like, say, "tower shield specialist" you can without having to have a bunch of new, specialized mechanics to back it up. You just make your tower shield your signature equipment and because the game is rules-lite, that's sufficient.
I don't pay all that much attention to what Paizo is up to anymore; their system has gone the opposite direction I have gone, and their aggressive and offensive cultural Marxism makes their material difficult to swallow lately. But, I still check in from time to time, and heck—if nothing else, they're a good source of some interesting artwork. Seeing an all new playtest cover, by Wayne Reynolds on his Facebook page, I thought it'd be fun to go see what was up, and of course, the playtest for Pathfinder 2.0 is free. I got it, because even if I do nothing else with it ever, I'll extract a big version of the cover art (I bought a program that extracts images out of pdfs a long time ago. I use it more than my actual pdf viewer with Paizo files sometimes.)
Playtest for original game cover art
The bundle also came with, in addition to the rulebook, a bestiary (without any art, hardly), a character sheet (that looks substantially different from what I'm used to), a tracking sheet so feedback from the playtest can make its way back to Paizo, a few tactical battlemaps, a pdf telling you how to access some sound effects, and... an adventure path. Not really in the full sense, but a 6-module adventure that kind of reads like a truncated adventure path and which is meant to put the game through its paces to get playtest feedback, I presume.
Needless to say, I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I'm going to do a PAIZO DECONSTRUCTED discussion of it anyway, breaking it up into its constituent "chapters" or separate modules.
The premise is that Aucturn is acting up, trying to converge on Golarion and destroy it. Think: Yuggoth is actually a sentient planet and is going to eat the world to give it power to become a virtual god itself. PCs run around doing things to disrupt cultists, reclaim artifacts being used, etc. There's a whole backstory about how this came to be, but as with most module backstories, it's really just fan fiction for the GM's sake, because I doubt most if it will find its way into the hands of the players. But it's an interesting playtest adventure path—it is rather Spartan and old-school in many ways, lacking in much in the way of lengthy set-up, setting info, and heavy roleplaying opportunities, and much more of traditional location exploration modules (not necessarily my favorite kind, but I'll give this a try.) You're not meant to play through it with your characters; you sometimes swap to different characters, and arbitrarily level them up several times through the adventure path. It makes some minimal references to the passing of time and the events of prior adventure paths; notably, the part that explores the Worldwound, for instance, asserts that the Worldwound was closed as per the City of Locusts module in the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path.
Cover art for new edition playtest
Anyway, I'll spend some time going through the big module and doing my deconstruction routine. I doubt I'll find much to utilize, because the point of this is to playtest new rules, not introduce new content, but I'll do it anyway. I admit; my curiosity is at least a little bit piqued.
Because my wife really wanted to, I went with her to see the sequel to Mamma Mia last night. She'd already seen it once with my daughter. It's a testament to the phenomenal skill and talent of the foursome that their music is so charismatic. There is hardly an ABBA song that I don't like (although I don't pretend to have listened to everything that they've ever recorded, of course) and the songwriting skill of the boys as well as the performance talent of the girls simply is hard to overstate. ABBA was one of the most talented groups of an entire generation. My wife and I have had lively debates about the merits of some of the individual songs (she's convinced that "Dancing Queen" is clearly their best number, while I think that "Take a Chance on Me" and even "Mamma Mia" itself are better. By better, I mean more fun to listen to, of course—songs like "Fernando" or "One of Us" or some others show more musical complexity and maturity and are thus arguably "better" in an objective sense, although that doesn't make them any more fun or memorable to listen to, of course. We've also had rather lively debates about how well the songs have penetrated the popular consciousness. I tell you, I knew all but one of the songs in the first movie, but had only ever heard half of the songs in the second movie. She doesn't believe that I haven't heard them before, especially "Andante, Andante" which she claims that I introduced to her. Even though I've never heard it before.)
So making a musical using their songs wasn't a bad idea, by any means. Although a handful of songs feel forced, most of them work pretty well given the story structure. And the movies themselves are fairly charismatic and charming most of the time too. I laughed. I felt emotionally tugged. I had a good time.
Which is why, of course, the Mamma Mia movies are so dangerous. Because underneath that charming, likable surface is a grab bag of civilization destroying content. All of the characters are broken and dysfunctional, engaging in behavior that is irresponsible, immature, depraved, debauched, frankly kind of retarded, and to make it all worse, the movie romanticizes exactly all of those things. I've flippantly (although completely accurately) summarized the first movie by saying that it's the story of a washed up older ho and her bratty princess syndrome daughter jerking around a whole bunch of different men, who for reasons that are completely inexplicable to the audience, they put up with. The story is awash with r-selected feminism (but I repeat myself) tropes, including the "empowered" women who, like I said, always come off more as bratty and bitchy than powerful. As always, feminists covet the alleged social and political power that they think men have, but haven't the foggiest notion of the responsibility that that power entails, or where it comes from, or how to maintain it. It's nothing more than the ability to indulge their narcissistic fantasies, which ultimately, this movie is.
The men are all inexplicably beta, and pine after women in a way that makes no sense, especially because these women make no effort to be attractive, really—in fact, they go quite a long way towards trying to make themselves off-putting and unlikable. Everybody gives up their dreams to go chase after women that, in many cases, they haven't seen in years or even decades. Somehow these men still cling to romantic notions after decades—which is clearly nothing more than projection on the part of the women writers (actually, I notice that out of three writing credits two of them are men. Biologically, at least.)
Nobody should ever watch this film and feel that the characters are anything other than pitiable, broken people, engaging in ridiculous behavior. As much as I thought the movie was kind of charming, I most certainly do not recommend it. Do yourself a favor and just go buy ABBA's Gold and More Gold collections on Amazon and listen to them instead.
Now, a more interesting development, of course, was the announcement that Star Wars: The Clone Wars is going to be revived. Lucasfilm made a major mistake when they cancelled it in the first place, and replaced it with the much less compelling Star Wars: Rebels. And hey, it's a great idea to actually try and do something that the fans have been really wanting for a change, after the flaming bag of crap that was The Last Jedi. Now, of course, it's hardly enough to stem the hemorrhaging of fans that Rian Johnson, Kathleen Kennedy and even Jar Jar Abrams have caused, but it's still an encouraging sign that at least someone with some pull at Lucasfilm isn't a total idiot. I have no confidence that they won't screw it up, though. In fact, the distribution is already causing me to roll my eyes; it's going to be the flagship content of the new Disney Streaming service that's supposed to launch at some point to compete head to head with Netflix and Amazon Prime. Just what I wanted; to get a whole 'nother streaming service. Just so I can watch Clone Wars and Marvel movies that I'll either buy on blu-ray or not worry about watching again anyway. Sigh.
Meanwhile, Galaxy's Edge continues to go from strength to strength and Vox Day has already hinted at work to bring not only books and comics (which he's already done) but even visual content—movies and TV shows—that turn their backs on the traditional industry and ignore it entirely. That can't come fast enough.
My son thinks that for sure it's going to tank. After all, all of his half dozen or so friends that he talks to about it have no interest in Disney Streaming, and he's kind of a Debbie Downer anyway who always finds something negative to say about whatever is going on around him, so we don't take his prognostications of doom for every new venture all that seriously.
But I admit that I'm both wary and cynical about this venture myself.
That same son also swears that he's seen evidence that the old Teen Titans TV show is going to be revived too. I haven't seen any evidence of this myself, but why not? That's a relatively engaging show too, and one of the early ones that proved that even being targeted towards kids, it can gain a broader audience by simply being good material, good stories, engaging characters, etc.
It used to be for most of Western civilization that there wasn't really a difference between entertainment aimed at children and entertainment for others. It's long past time that we get past that false dichotomy, which is another legacy of the nannying, totalitarian Puritans and their attempts to purge Western civilization of everything of any real virtue. Let's just make good stuff that appeals to everyone. If that means its animated because it's easier to do some thing in animation, that's fine. I think in the era of mainstreamization of anime, whatever stigma there is attached to animation is long gone except for the relict Boomers still kicking around trying to tell everyone else what they should do.
I was out of state white water rafting last week, but here's a belated art attack, just for fun. Then I've got some other stuff to talk about for a bit after I get unburied enough from stuff that piled up while I was gone to actually do so.
There is nothing more pulpish than European colonial powers in pith helmets fighting dinosaurs.
Don't remember where I got this, but it's a pretty cool picture.
Using actually lizareds and stuff on a green screen looks very unlike dinosaurs, but it's not uncool, by any means.
I think this might be a Hollow Earth illustration.
Another paper miniature ilo; labeled so it's clear.
Fan illustration of the warriors of Khand, a colorfully named country in Middle-earth to the southeast of Mordor. Other than it had been there for a long time (mentioned briefly with both the Wainrider incursions and the War of the Rings thousands of years later) and that its inhabitants were called Variags, we don't actually know anything about it, but it's been interpreted as a pseudo-middle eastern nation.
Always room for more undead.
I do a lot of fantasy; time to make sure that I keep my space opera involved too.
I often avoid things that are so iconic (like dragons) to the fantasy genre, but I need to occasionally throw one out there.
Although I've usually liked WAR's stuff, I'm not really a fan of the 4e iconics. The Dragonborn race was an idea of... mixed merits, let's say. It wasn't all bad, but I don't think it was great either, and I'm not sure how well it really went over. Do they still have Dragonborn in 5e? Or did they at launch, I mean?
I've always been a huge fan of early pre-age of sail shipping in fantasy. The combination is sometimes "anachronistic" at least in terms of historical eras that it resembles, because I sometimes take a more Medieval approach to life on land and a later approach to shipping technology, but whatever. It's fun.
The Darkness at Sethanon book cover; a great book by Raymond Feist. Unfortunately, his whole series is now in "unedited" "director's cut" format, and the versions that I originally read aren't available anymore very easily (and sadly, my copies of all by the last of the first four Riftwar books inadvertently moved to Portland with my neighbor and got lost.)
I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but hey, it's cool, right?
4e concept art for the aboleth, which wasn't a major redesign visually from what it had been. But, still, it's a bit more snaky and tentacly than it used to be.
A snake demon of some kind from Paizo.
Speaking of demons (and 4e) here's some fighting some characters. I actually think that green guy is a PC, not a demon. Sigh.
Some Eberron artwork; those big mural-style covers that they used to have during the 3.5 era. Good stuff. This is fighting some abominations underground, it looks like.
And here, some Paizo iconics fight a bulette. One of my very early exposures to D&D was the Official AD&D Coloring Book, and those guys got attacked by a bulette on the second plate (or was it the third?) so they've always kind of stuck with me as an iconic weird thing. I also used to have the weird little plastic toys that the bulette was supposedly based on, which came in a big back along with a rust monster, and a few other weirdos.
I had kind of forgotten the last few updates I did in this series to include a scenery picture. I love Colorado in the fall. From the Elk Mountains, not too far from Gunnison.
1. DM describes. 2. Players decide what to do and describe their actions. 3. DM adjudicates their actions and describes the new situation.
This is roleplaying. Anything which enhances this cycle is good. Anything which detracts from it is bad.
You may accidentally obscure the issue. You may get caught up in great Internet wars (or arguments at the table) about the right dice, rules, classes, play styles, adventure design, and so forth. Just remember: all of that is secondary to the fundamental cycle of play. Get that right—practice until you get that right—and the other things almost don’t matter at all.
This is the core of roleplaying. It is not an optional part. Do it well or do it badly (preferably the former), you and your players must do it or the game’s gonna suck.
As a GM, you focus on describing the game world (not the mechanics, the situation and events in the game world), providing enough info that the players know what’s going on. Then let the players respond. If necessary, ask the players “What do you do?” to prod them along.
As a player, you focus on listening to the description, deciding how to respond (as quickly as possible), and communicating your character’s actions to the GM. Again, not the mechanics. What your character does in the game world. Description, not dice.
As a GM, you listen to the players describe their action, and adjudicate what happens as a result. Maybe you need to roll some dice, maybe the players do, but always remember that rolling dice is the option of last resort, only to be used when you have no other means of adjudicating their actions. Maybe the GM had players roll dice to adjudicate the situations above, maybe he didn’t. The important thing is he made a judgment, then described the new situation, and play continued.
There’s a lot of other complications that come after you get the cycle right—rules heavy or light, skill or class based, miniatures or no, etc.—but all of that, ALL OF THAT, is secondary to understanding, practicing, and implementing the Describe->Decide & Describe->Adjudicate & Describe game cycle.
This IS roleplaying. Nail this, and everything else will follow.
Arguably, that's something that was obscured as d20 games (and others) got lost eventually in mechanics. 4e and Co. were barely roleplaying games based on that criteria; this is a common complaint, and to some degree it's overwrought, but it was a miniatures combat game with the potential for some roleplaying elements, if you did them "offline". Pathfinder amped up the problems with 3e, and I haven't ever even read or played or done much more than a very casual, quick flip-through of 5e.
But it's fair to say that in the roleplaying community there are plenty of people and plenty of games and designers that have either forgotten what roleplaying is, or have rejected that premise in favor of something else.
And that's fine, I suppose. I try not to get hung up on labels and policing for wrongthink in the hobby, or whatever. But it's important to note that there could be some major assumption disconnects if you are expecting roleplaying and getting something else.
When I say that I'm not old school, but I am old-fashioned in my tastes, this is exactly what I mean. I don't like the specific old school games very much (like retroclones such as Swords & Wizardry, etc.) but I do want games where that core of roleplaying comes to the fore, unadulterated and uncompromised and not confused because of mechanics or any other issue. In my experience, it's hard and unnatural for most people to get to that core if the game is too prescriptive or detailed. It's hard to get past the system if the system isn't designed specifically to fade into the background and just allow you to roleplay. So my tastes have moved towards games that do exactly that; fade system into the background and focus on the roleplaying.
I admit that what is "lost" here is protection from bad experiences with players who aren't on the same page about how the game should be run; but ultimately, that's a suboptimal place to be if you're playing with players who aren't more or less on the same page anyway. There's only so much of that that you can tolerate before it starts to break the game down and you'd rather just do something else with those people rather than try to play a game where you're not on the same page about what it's all about. Much of the codification of 3e and Pathfinder in particular seem designed with this priority in mind; replicate the experience, protecting players from the vagaries of personal interpretation. In theory, this was the priority of AD&D too, which is kind of ironic, given that hardly anyone I've ever talked to really ever played AD&D "as written" because doing so was so esoteric and Byzantine.
But I've completely lost the interest in doing anything like that anymore. Give me players that I enjoy playing the game with, not just hanging out with (although they better be that too if we're going to be successful) or don't give me any players at all. I've got a lot of constraints on my free time, and suboptimal gaming just doesn't make the cut anymore. If I can't have good gaming, I'll go do something else instead.
Well, I have not made any posts in two weeks; in fact, I've been very busy and distracted by a family vacation foray to the Sandwich Islands, which for reasons that I don't really agree with, we have stopped calling by our good old fashioned English name and now use the native label (even though natives are not the majority population there) of Hawaii for some time now. There's a movement to actually change the name again, slightly (adding an apostraphe diacritic, basically—it is often written Hawai'i, even though the official name of the state is Hawaii. It is often also pronounced as if the w were a v. I'm not sure what's driving this; the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, I presume, but again, I don't understand why anyone else cares about it. I still kind of like the name Sandwich Islands, myself.
Anyway, as is usually the case when visiting the Sandwich Islands, the climate was pleasant, the beaches were pretty and fun to swim in, I got pretty tan (a bit red, even, which peeled and then turned to tan—the legacy of my very thin genetic lineage of non-British ancestry) and everything was expensive. Surprisingly, I ate less seafood and a lot more hamburgers than I expected to. Luckily, in spite of the fact that I ate a lot of calories (as is often typical when on vacation) I burned a fair bit too doing sea kayaking, swimming and body surfing, paddle-boarding, etc.which kept me from gaining any more weight than I already have, and I'm already (hopefully) on track to reduce that back again and actually lose some.
But what struck me much more this time than last time I was in the Sandwich Islands nine years ago is how much like a Third World country the place really is. Much of this is based on the ethnicity of what you see walking around the street (although that can be misleading because so many tourists, many from Japan, which are on the Island during the summer); the population according to the census has a plurality: 38% of Asians, from many backgrounds (but especially Filipino and Japanese) only 24% American (i.e. "white"), 23% mixed race, and 9% native Hawaiian (although many of the mixed descent include native Hawaiian.) In other words, it feels like a Third World country because you're walking around seeing very few Hajnal Line first worlder people. Just walking around, you might be forgiven for thinking that you're in the Philippines rather than America. (Remember when the Philippines were part of America? Yeah, that was a long time ago...)
Another part of it is the poverty and poor infrastructure. The roads and parking lots are inadequate, poorly designed, cramped, etc. Housing is often old and rather squalid looking. Income distribution and modern conveniences are often skewed and sketchy unless you're right in downtown Honolulu or the Waikiki beach area, or other "nicer" neighborhoods, like parts of the east side of the Island around Diamond and Koko Head, or Lanikai or Kailua, etc. The western edge of the island is quite dry and fairly poor, on the other hand, and has a bad reputation as being unfriendly to non-natives, or at least non-locals.
And finally, is the behavior. People joke about "island time" and the laid-back attitude, and things like, yeah, there are rules and laws and whatnot, but people don't really care about where you park, or how you drive, or whatever. But this is all behavior that is common to the Third World, and uncommon in Hajnal Line core western civilization, and it stands in pretty stark contrast to what those of us from a western civilization background are actually used to. Now, I'm not saying that it's necessarily good nor bad; it works for them, of course, and a lot of people of ours come to love that laid-back lifestyle, but it isn't First Worldbehavior. It's Third World behavior. And the end result, if you have enough people who practice Third World behavior, is that your country is a Third World country.
It's interesting to see the evolution of much of California, for instance, from being the Golden State a couple of generations ago, to becoming a Third World country right before our eyes. Although few "mainstream" sources care to document it, San Francisco, for instance, has a trash and human waste problem that is almost unbelievable to someone like me who hasn't been there in 25-30 years. If I hadn't seen L.A. with my own eyes a couple of years ago, I wouldn't have believed how much that place has gone downhill; Anaheim itself is now a trashy neighborhood that you almost want to avoid.
Anyway, I'm back. I have no idea what I'll be working on blog-wise for the time being. I'm behind on all kinds of stuff (most especially, reading the Tyrus Rechs Galaxy's Edge book, which I'm disappointed that I couldn't seem to make any time for while on vacation.) And then I'm off again for a few days next week to go white water rafting in West Virginia.
Sometimes even I have to go back to some classic fantasy tropes.
I've never read the Dark Tower series, and I actually doubt that I'd like it, but the concept of fantasy that's Western rather than Medieval as it's base is something that really appeals to me a lot.
Dark Sun, as a kind of grim and gritty take on Barsoom through the lens of AD&D, is another concept that always struck me with its relatively exotic high concept.
More of Tron and Star Wars combined.
Again with using awakened apes in place of orcs. I'm pretty much convinced that that's how I need to do my next setting, which does have an orc nation. But it's going to look more like this than like Warhammer or even Lord of the Rings.
I'm pretty sure I've highlighed some of this artwork before, but this with the grayscale outline behind it is pretty nice.
A street scene from Destiny; the space opera that didn't quite deliver.
Although the twee kumbaya of Dinotopia always got on my nerves, the actual artwork I always loved and thought that there needed to be something that was cooler but based on a similar high concept.
I grabbed this image a long time ago as an AD ASTRA iconic pirate/smuggler space ship. I still love it.
More of the type of wretched hives of scum and villainy that urban centers tend to be in my fantasy. In reality, urban centers are wretched hives of scum and villainy in real life too, I'm coming around to believe, so it's hardly a stretch.
Some older Wayne Reynolds undead. A Dread Wraith or something, but whatever. It's a ghost, y'all.
