[Misc] November Update

[jordangreywolf]

Work Update:
I've been busy at work, but mostly OUTSIDE my office. I was in "limbo" for a while, as our sub-leased office spot still didn't have its own internet connection, and I was told that I couldn't be mooching off of our host's wi-fi (especially not when they were hosting a project, and several other people might be using that wi-fi as well). Therefore, I ended up having to work from home a lot, when I wasn't already traveling off-site for a project.

This caused some issues, what with the tendency for the DNS lookup to inexplicably fail for internet in my area periodically, or for the power to brown out or shut down when there's poor weather (or sometimes for no apparent reason at all). (Mind, this isn't all that frequent, but just often enough for me to be worried.)

Well, lately I've been flying out a lot for projects, so it's been mostly a moot point, but still a challenge when I'm told to "print off X copies of this, this, and this document in color, double-sided, and bring it when you," when I no longer have a working printer, because someone higher up decided to exit our printer lease, without arranging for any sort of replacement. No scanner, either. Actually, there are a LOT of things that somehow disappeared during the move, as I think there were a few people just a little too over-eager to say, "Hey, since you're closing the office, you won't need THIS anymore. *YOINK!*" (Or, just as likely, "*TRASH*")

Not that I can even name names, if I were inclined to. Things were hectic.

Fortunately, just this week, a technician came in and installed a modem for the office, so my work laptop can get an internet connection when I'm in there. Yay! I can work in the office again. I still don't have a phone, though, save for my smartphone, and it's not much fun to be holding up to the size of my head for hours for a webconference (and the speaker quality is iffy for just putting it in speaker mode).

But, hey, things are improving. I'm also slowly learning my way around the new neighborhood -- after getting lost several times, that is.


Games
I'm still in two Pathfinder campaigns -- the "Kingmaker" campaign run at my house by Goober_Chris every other Saturday, and the "Rise of the Runelords" campaign run online on Fantasy Grounds by Digital_Rampage every other Sunday. Saturdays are largely untouched by my work schedule, so the only disruption was Necronomicon. Sundays have been more of a challenge, as I sometimes have to travel on Sunday to get to a project, but Gwendel hardly uses her laptop anymore, so she's let me borrow it for trips -- I'll travel to the location early in the day, set up in the hotel, my "Elite Gold Membership" usually gets me free high-speed internet, and so far I've been able to get a good connection on a Sunday night. (During the WEEK, however, that same connection might get spotty. I gather there just aren't as many guests in a hotel on a Sunday night to compete with the "high-speed internet" bandwidth.)

I enjoy the company of the players. I don't terribly care for the campaigns themselves. The Pathfinder crew made a noble effort to keep the d20 system alive with "version 3.75" (so to speak) after Wizards of the Coast decided to abandon 3.0/d20 and to go with the bizarre video-gamey "4th edition" -- and there's some pretty awesome art from Paizo -- but I've not been terribly keen on the quality of writing for the Paizo Pathfinder "adventure paths."

Of the two, I find "Kingmaker" to be more interesting, with its attempt at a "mini-game" of sorts for kingdom management, and the idea of a domain that we can explore more-or-less at our leisure. However, there are a lot of very arbitrary, board-gamey mechanics to the "kingdom management" aspect that detract from the fun. (There are times when the kingdom is plagued by Cultists or Slavers, and there's simply no in-game option for the heroes to put aside their Kingdom Mini-Game to go CLOBBER those slavers or cultists, rather than just sitting back and hoping that the problem resolves itself naturally. This is an RPG. Even if the adventure is geared to guarantee that the PCs will FAIL in their attempt, we ought to at least be afforded the chance to TRY, rather than to sit on our hands -- but at this point in the game, the rules are very concrete -- and, therefore, to my mind, "immersion-breaking.")

"Rise of the Runelords" suffers from three primary problems:
1) It is excessively gory. Rather too much glee is put into the "artistic" usage of viscera by in-bred ogrekin, or the extremely gory "skinsaw" murders, among other things.

2) The adventure occasionally plays at being a "murder mystery," but the PCs are given nothing to go on -- no roster of suspects, no clues to speak of, no opportunity to go and confront the killer before he kills again. Rather, it's a series of encounters, with "clues" that are of no use in preventing further mayhem ("Gee, the murder was RITUAL!" "And that helps us how? He's still dead, you know."), and the PCs are basically railroaded into the "final" showdown.

3) The campaign horribly manages the passage of time. There are numerous character options -- making of potions, crafting of items, working of professions, retraining -- that simply aren't available to the players, because of the urgent need to rush to the next fire to be put out. We'll be told, "Oh, here, you have tons of money. Feel free to buy magic items in town!" But then, "Oh, sorry, it will take X days for that item to be produced." Like we're going to sit around and wait for mail order while we're supposed to be rushing to save lives?

Unless ... the game is simply written in the mode that the players CAN spend several days in town shopping, retraining, etc., and it will have no bearing on the adventure, because whenever they reach Encounter Point X, THAT will be exactly the point where they only have 5 rounds until the evil ritual is going to be completed, in order to defeat the bad guys, etc. I *hate* that sort of artificial setup. It basically punishes the players for taking the in-game urgency seriously. "Rush to save the world" plots don't mix well with "spend time to train up your character" development.

I would be pining for Savage Worlds by comparison, but that game is undergoing an overhaul (there's an ongoing Kickstarter for the new rules), and I'm totally out of the loop. I would opine about various areas where Savage Worlds could use some improvement, but the time has long passed when I had anyone's ear on that.

In the meantime, Dr_Rhubarb has gotten enthusiastic about "Gaslands," a miniatures game where each player fields a small team of 2-4 Hot Wheels/Matchbox-style toy cars, modified up as "Mad Max" style road-war machines, in "death races" and "zombie runs" and other crazy post-apocalyptic scenarios. I've shopped around in thrift stores and dollar stores for a few toy cars (and dug around in my garage for some even older ones) that I might convert over for the purpose. However, lately I just haven't had the TIME to devote to it, since I often have to work on my weekends. (In fact, I really "should" be working right now, since I'll be busy tomorrow and traveling on Monday ... but I really needed a break. As per usual, I've started and aborted several Dreamwidth entries over the past several weeks, but this time I'm just gonna ramble and TYPE SOMETHING anyway.)

Otherwise, I stumbled across a web site where some fellow mapped out the old "Temple of Apshai Trilogy" games from Epyx. I remember Temple of Apshai from an even earlier time -- when Epyx was Automated Simulations -- and that was my first "video game" on a home computer, circa 1979 (on a Commodore PET 4032 -- on cassette tape). I've toyed around in Photoshop and started trying to recreate the map for level 1 in a fairly low-res style so that I could upload it as a level map for Fantasy Grounds (best to keep it low-res so players aren't bogged down loading an overly-large file size of a map) and thought of trying to "convert" the game over to Pathfinder -- or maybe even 5e -- to run online. In the past I've thought about running it as a tabletop game, but I'd have to get a bunch of bug-monster minis and I'm a little soured on how much I've invested in minis already for campaigns I wanted to run but my regular gaming group wasn't interested in (i.e., Deadlands Reloaded, Fallout). Better to do it online, where I can just use "pogs," and maybe the work I put into it could be shared with other Fantasy Grounds GMs who are so inclined. (Perhaps I could put it on my rebuilt web page.)

I don't know whether I want to write it up as Pathfinder, or as 5e. Gwendel played 5e at Necronomicon (3 sessions!) and that made me sit up and pay a bit more attention. I hear good things about 5e ... but only vague things. Comparatively, I'm underwhelmed the more I hear about "Pathfinder 2nd edition." Pathfinder largely came about as an alternative for people who weren't on board with abandoning d20/3.0 to go with 4e and its video-game-on-a-table wannabe format (where terms such as "DPS" and "TANK" would actually get used), particularly because people had mountains of d20 material (adventures! custom bestiaries! etc.) that they didn't want to have to toss out.

Well, Pathfinder 2e would defeat that purpose, since it'd render all the old Pathfinder 1e stuff incompatible ... but also, it's no longer competing with D&D 4e, but rather a D&D 5e that many people are speaking well of. Digital_Rampage has been chanting about Pathfinder 2e Playtest lately -- it's the brand new shiny thing! -- but I just haven't heard much to make me CARE about it.

I have a natural resistance to learning new rules. I'm getting old. I'm getting it all muddled up in my head. But it sounds as if 5e is similar enough to old 3e as to not be totally alien, but somehow "simplifies" things. How? I don't know. I guess I need to read up and find out.

Anyway, given that I have some reading to do before I can figure out what to do next, more on that project later.


Star Wars
I started reading "Thrawn: Alliances" on my latest trip. It's a pretty good read, though it doesn't appeal to me quite the same way that the earlier "Thrawn" book did. I think the problem is that it features both Thrawn and Darth Vader in what feels like an oddly contrived circumstance -- essentially embarking on a mission WITHOUT a coterie of elite stormtroopers around them. (I mean, yeah, Darth Vader can do that -- he's a Sith with force powers, a lightsaber and whatnot. But this weird Thrawn-and-Vader adventure just strikes me as ... well ... WEIRD, which I guess is what I already said at the start of this sentence. No, I'm not feeling particularly articulate.)

I still enjoy it more than most of the post-Disney-acquisition Star Wars material out there.

Bleah. I really miss "Legends Luke." Or, rather, the Luke Skywalker of the "Expanded Universe" (and the original movies). I wish I could have seen THAT Luke in some post-ROTJ movies. I know, I know -- if I had my way, I would edit so many things: No Ewoks. No Jar-Jar. No Boba Fett flailing through the air shrieking, then banking off Jabba's sail barge to tumble into the Sarlacc Pit (burp!). And even then I'd probably find something to be critical of. I had plenty that bugged me about "The Force Awakens." REALLY bugged me.

But "The Last Jedi" just CRUSHED the life out of the franchise for me. I hear now that "Solo" is good, but I didn't bother going out to see it when it was in theaters, because I still had a bitter taste in my mouth from TLJ.

I could do a bit laundry list here, but mostly it was just the mean-spirited nature of it. "Subvert expectations" is not enough in and of itself. Nor is, "Defuse every tension by cracking a joke, EVERY SINGLE TIME." It was as if Rian Johnson heard of my concerns about JJ Abrams' take on Star Wars and then went, "Oh yeah? Well, is THIS what you want?" (*Proceeds to tear up everything JJ Abrams set up for, just to SUBVERT EXPECTATIONS, then wads up Star Wars and tosses it over his shoulder.*)

Good luck, JJ Abrams, fixing this mess now that it's back in your court. I don't know that I'm even going to bother with Star Wars IX. I hope I hear something to change my mind.

...

AUGH! There I go again! Ranting about Star Wars! What is WRONG with me? Haven't I already played all that out already? Blargh.


... Anyway, was going to write about a few other things, but maybe I'll come back to that later. I just HAD to bring up Star Wars, and that exhausts me anymore. ;)

Comments

[tuftears]

Huh, Savage Worlds is undergoing a kickstarter? I guess it could use one, just to pull the various rules-and-houserules together, but on the other paw, if they're planning to change it around significantly, that could backfire because of balance issues and campaign playstyle clashes.

I liked Last Jedi mostly, I enjoyed Solo, but neither really enter the realm of 'legendary movie' for me just now. I'll wait until the last Star Wars trilogy movie to judge the trilogy as a whole.

[jordangreywolf]

Re: Savage Worlds: As I understand it, the same basic mechanics will still be in play, but with some popular house rules formally adopted as core rules, an overhaul of the Chase Rules (which were never stable from version to version anyway, and IMHO a "one-size-fits-all" approach to abstract "Chase Scenes" is doomed to failure), and generally an attempt to address some of the key player complaints.

It just doesn't seem to be addressing any of MY key complaints ... but then, I need to come up with some better SOLUTIONS first. It's one thing to complain -- it's quite another to propose a solution that could be adopted.

Re: Star Wars:
On the flight here to Texas, I saw "Solo" on the little entertainment screen built into the back of the chair in front of me. I'd heard it was good. I watched, and I agreed -- and I went into it expecting that it was going to be, "Meh." I dare say that of the post-Disney Star Wars movies, it is the one movie that made me feel *enthusiastic* after watching it.

I mean, it's not PERFECT. (What movie is?) But it felt far more like it belonged in the pre-Disney Star Wars universe than any of the other movies since. I certainly enjoyed it much more than The Last Jedi, and I had far fewer "what the HECK?" thoughts about the implications than The Force Awakens ... or even Rogue One, for that matter.

All in all, it's making me far more hopeful about these "Star Wars Story" side-stories than I am about the "new trilogy" itself.

[tuftears]

Well, let me know when the Kickstarter goes out, the old rulebook you got me is kind of falling apart so it might be worth picking up a new copy. };)

I enjoyed Solo, but now I'm kind of wondering when the droid rebellion is going to happen. >_>