The Magic of Zelda

As some of you know, I’ve been deep in the thrall of a powerful, senseless addiction.  It has eaten a vast portion of my recent time and caused me to neglect exercise, household chores, and friends.

I’m talking, of course, about The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Over the past week, I’ve spent about 20 hours playing Zelda, and, if it follows the Zelda formula, I’m about a third of the way through the story.  What eats at me, though, is that by all rights I shouldn’t be so addicted to the game.  Zelda is notorious for having every game be the same as every other.  I should note that I never played Majora’s Mask, so I’m not considering it in this analysis.

Let me count the ways:

1.  The hero
This factor has actually been addressed in recent games: Link, the Hero of Hyrule, is reborn again and again to face whatever threats exist to the kingdom.  That’s why in every game there’s a blond haired, blue eyed youth in a funny green hat as star of the story.  I think it’s actually a pretty elegant way to tie the various games together while still explaining why Hyrule changes so much from game to game.

2. The setting
Every console Zelda game that I’ve played (the original, A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Windwaker, and Twilight Princess) has been set in Hyrule.  Moreover, there are certain locations that keep popping up; Hyrule Castle is always in the center (logical, considering how harsh the world is), and there’s a volcano, a desert region, a lake, and a dense forest.  I should take a moment to address that while Windwaker was technically set in Hyrule, most of it was underwater, so you only got to see the tops of the mountains.  Even so, there was a Forest Temple, a Volcano, a Water Shrine (might be mistaken on that), and Hyrule Castle which was still, more or less, in the center of the kingdom.  In the handheld games, which are set outside Hyrule while Link is wandering the world after the adventure proper, these elements all show up in one form or another.

3. The gameplay
This is where you really notice that they’re all the same game.  You always start out as a hero with a crappy sword and sometimes a crappy shield.  You can only access a small region of the map, and as you quest, you find items that allow you to reach new areas and do more things.  Staple items include the boomerang, the heavy boots, the hookshot, the bow and arrow, and the bombs.  The bulk of the gameplay is in dungeons where you wander around solving puzzles, finding treasure, and fighting bosses.  Typically the key to beating the boss is to utilize whatever item or items you picked up in the dungeon; for instance, if you find Iron Boots and the Bow and Arrow in the volcano dungeon, you can bet your ass that those two items will be integral in defeating that dungeon’s boss.  I also count the sound effects and music as part of the gameplay section, but I’ll talke more about them later.

4. The Plot
There’s some variation in exactly what happens, but the basic story is always as follows: Boy in idyllic village encounters wider world right as a crisis threatens the kingdom, and then it’s up to Link, and Link alone, to save Hyrule.  Such salvation usually involves travelling into either a shadow realm, or into the past/future.

So, if each game is the same, why do I find each installment so damn addictive?  I think it has to do with two things: the familiarity, and the innovations.

Familiarity
One thing that’s nice about the Zelda formula is that you know what to expect, and you get a sense of satisfaction when those expectations are met.  There are certain touchstones, like the sound for completing a puzzle and the main musical theme, that make me all warm and fuzzy when I hear them.  Also, there’s a certain satisfaction in seeing the formula play itself out: getting the new item, seeing where you can go with it, and gradually gaining power.

Innovation
While each game is essentially the same, there are variations, and these variations are just enough to make each entry feel fresh, despite the number of recycled mechanics, art, and music.  Windwaker is set on the open sea, has a cel-style animation, and a quirky character design.  Twilight Princess has you turn into a wolf in the shadow realm, fleshes out the Kingdom of Hyrule, and introduces action-packed set pieces.  Moreover, while the basic formula is the same, there are variations in how it’s played out, so you’re never sure exactly what’s going to happen, and it’s fun to see how the designers tweak the formula.

Finally, it doesn’t hurt that they’ve hit on a solid formula.

In conclusion, I guess it isn’t so surprising that Zelda is still addictive, after so many iterations.  Yes, a lot of it’s recycled, but that’s a major part of its charm.

There Will Be Blood… or, At Least, Some Angst… And Maybe Tears

I’ve been mocking Twilight and its sequels rather mercilessly for a while now. First, I should explain for those of you who don’t know me that I mock everything.  I mock things I love (see Star Wars), things I hate (see Washed Up Former Music Star of Questionable Fame of Love), things I think of as guilty pleasures (Total Recall comes to mind), and even things I’ve never actually experienced, except vicariously, as is the case with the beloved saga of star trial patient for clinical depressants Bella and her creepy as fuck stalker beau Edward.

However, I know several fans of the series, who tend to ask me what, exactly, I have against this tale of a tragic love between a mortal and a vampire.  As answer, I am going to address several of my concerns with the series, as well as some armchair analysis.  So sit tight and enjoy the ride.

First, some disclaimers:

1. I have not actually read Twilight or any of its sequels.  Nor have I seen the movie.

2. While the purpose of this post is not to mock, my blogging voice will shine through and make fun of the subject even as I analyze it.  I can’t help this; it’ll hopefully make what would otherwise be a totally lame, dull post into one that’s, in a word or two, crazy awesome.

3. Much of this post will draw heavily on what I’ve heard from people who’ve read the books, as well as my own independant research (mainly the Twilight wiki).

Ok, disclaimers done.  I have several primary problems with the Twilight series (aside from Ms. Meyers’ writing style, which makes me want to reach for my red pen and is largely responsible for why I haven’t read at least the first book in its entirety).  Problem one: Bella, Edward, and their relationship (this is technically three issues, but I’m combining them for brevity’s sake).  Problem two: the core messages of the book.  Problem three: the ideas that the book is conveying to the young women who read it.  Problem four: the way vampires are treated in the work, and what it implies for everything else.

Of Mary Sues, Stalkers, and Abusive Relationships
Bella is a Mary Sue of the worst kind.  Keep in mind that everyone loves her, no one can stop talking about how pretty she is.  Aside from a lack of self awareness and a certain amount of clumsiness (both acceptable “drawbacks” for Mary Sues, as neither is really a negative trait), she has no negative traits.  I think it is also worth mentioning that the Twilight wiki spends one line describing her non physical characteristics, when a lengthy paragraph is devoted to her looks.

I should add one negative trait to her: she’s stupid.  This will become more evident down the line, but make no mistake, the girl is missing something upstairs.

Anyway, even though Bella is beautiful, supposedly intelligent, and beloved by everyone in school, she’s miserable.  She hates all the attention and just wants to be left alone, but those damn admirers won’t go away (maybe I should list ungrateful as a character flaw).  She just can’t find any peace and quiet, at least, not until she encounters ultimate bad boy Edward Cullen (played by Cedric Diggory with a terrible accent in this movie).

I’m going to take a moment to talk about Edward (just a moment).  First and foremost in the fans’ eyes, he is beautiful.  When there’s no sun, his pale skin, full red lips, and deep eyes draw mere mortals in, and when the sun comes out (or maybe just on an overcast day?  never really was sure what degree of sunlight these vamps could stand) he glistens like a beglittered raver in a strobe light.

I could argue that his beauty is really his only true positive trait.  He’s obsessive, controlling, abusive, manic-depressive, brooding, possessive, and far too overprotective.  From what I can tell, he is frequently deciding things for Bella, and then manipulating or bullying her into accepting his decisions.

This leads to my issue with their relationship.  In essence, Bella is an abused spouse: she is attached to a manipulative, controlling stalker who resents allowing her to be a complete individual on her own.  More disturbingly, the author endorses this relationship as an ideal one.

If you were to take away Edward’s vampirism and write a novel that applauded this sort of relationship, I doubt you could get an agent to touch it.  Nowhere else in our society do we tell young women that it’s ok for men to stalk, bully, manipulate, kidnap, and emotionally abuse them into doing whatever the man wants.

We are not in the fifties, and I’d like to see our popular literature reflect that.

I’ll leave this section with one thought for you: Edward is 90 years old and hitting on a 17 year old girl.  Again, take away Edward’s good looks and vampirism, and this scenario gets a whole lot more creepy.

On Sex, Abortion, and Broken Backs
Ms. Meyers’s core message in the first book is laudable.  Distilled to a single sentence, it would be “Don’t have sex until you’re married.”  I would personally amend it from “when married” to “when ready.”  I think premarital sex is important; many many marriages (forgive the lack of a citation) have ended almost as soon as they began because the two partners weren’t sexually compatible, and so the marriage ends in a shambles.

But that’s not what I’m here to argue.  My main issue with this first message is the heavy-handedness with which it’s delivered.  According to Twilight, sex=death; from what I understand, Edward doesn’t want to have sex with Bella because if he does, he’ll lose all control and eat her (in the bad way).  This, in some strange fashion, seems to fuel Bella’s lust; something about the threat of death from a guy just gets her (and from what I’ve heard, the readers) all tingly.  So we’ve got three books (I think), of Bella obsessing about Edward and his hot, hot love, and Edward obsessing about Bella but not doing anything about it (“I’m not gonna do anything with her, but she’s MINE”).

Then they get married, and there’s love, joy, undead, happiness, and SEX.  LOTS of sex.  Like fifty straight pages of True Blood-Style Vampire Humping.  See, kiddos, once you’re married, sex is ok.  It’s actually a good thing to spend whole days humping while you ignore other responsibilities.

Don’t use birth control or condoms, though; those are still evil.

So after their sexual marathon, Bella finds out that she’s pregnant with a devil-spawn that is trying to kill her.  Moreover, it WILL kill her to give birth to it, but she won’t abort it.

I’m sorry, but that’s just dumb.  I like to think that the women I know are a bit smarter than that; having kids is relatively easy.  On the other hand, surviving to reach maturity without a mother is a hell of a lot harder of a thing to do.  Look to nature: if a mother wolf and her cubs are starving, the mother will let her cubs starve, not because she doesn’t care, but because if she dies, they’re dead anyways.  If the mother lives, she can always birth more pups.

Oh, and then the baby breaks her back and she gets turned into a vampire.  So I guess all is good, since someone was around to save Bella’s ass.

Submission, Stupidity, and Weakness: What Twilight is really saying
So, if you’ve been reading carefully, in these novels, Ms. Meyers is saying that the ideal relationship is one where the man protects the woman, makes all her decisions for her, tells her exactly what to do, lets his undead baby break her back, and then turns her into a vampire so she can enjoy an eternity of cooking and cleaning for him.

Seriously, that’s what seems to be going on here.  And everyone seems to love it! “Oh,” I hear fangirls croon, “it’s so romantic how Edward protects Bella.”  No, it’s not.  There’s a difference between protecting and coddling; he’s doing the latter.  It’s not being protective to prevent you from deciding who to hang out with; it’s being a douchebag.  It’s not romantic to break into a girl’s room to sit and watch her sleep; that’s just being a stalker.

On the other hand, it IS being protective for him to rescue Bella from her attention-grabbing suicide attempts (which, considering her antipathy for attention seem counter-productive), so he gets a point there.  However, Bella loses fifty for being a fucking idiot.  I’d like to pull in a passage from Mark about Satan tempting Jesus to jump off a mountain to see if the angels would catch him, but that’d be giving the author too much credit.

So girls, according to Twilight you need to find a man who will provide, think, and decide for you while lavishing you with enough attention; if you ever feel like he’s neglecting you, go try to kill yourself, and he’ll come save you.

Just don’t do any fucking until you get the ring on his finger.

Oh, and it’s TOTALLY okay to hang out with the minions of Satan, as long as they’re dreamy looking.

Seeking Closure
I’d like to close with my complaint that these vampires are totally neutered, but I’ve done posts about neutered villains before, and I just don’t have the time or the energy to do it again.

Long story short: vampires should be terrifying creatures, the corpses of the damned who want nothing more than to drain the blood from your body.  Vampires are not lovers; they’ve forgotten how (hmm… I sense a decent post in that sentence).  I don’t care how strong Edward Cullen is, or how many girlfriends he beats up; the dignity and ruthlessness of Count Dracula would smack him and his hippy family down in zero flat.

Vampires are all about lust, which is one thing that Ms. Meyers seems truly against.

Finally, let me know how I did.  Like I said, I haven’t actually read the books, so if you can give me a compelling argument as to why I’m wrong, I’ll promise to at least consider it.  Alternatively, if you can get me a version of the book that keeps the plot, characters, and themes intact while making the actual writing bearable, I’ll give that a shot, too.

Begin final countdown to unemployment…

Once again, I find myself apologizing for a deplorable lack of updates over the past week. As I’ve said before, my goal is for at least an update a day; however, I refuse to post anything along the lines of “Here’s a post, KTHXBAI.” My posting schedule isn’t helped by the fact that as my layoff date approaches, everyone seems to be trying to find stupid, random jobs for me to do, resulting in an unusual dearth of free time. I actually did have an amazing post (with pictures!) written out about Lovecraft, WoW, and where they intersect, but wordpress deemed it unsuitable for human consumption and devoured it summarily.

Apologies aside, I still need to pick a topic. Give me an hour to think, and I’ll see if I can have something up later today.

EDIT: Underestimated the number of stupid, silly tasks I’d be assigned (along with the non-show of the mail).
As an aside, once I find new employment, it’ll be difficult to meet my quota, but I’ll work to do that anyhow.

No new post today…

…but there is a new Page!  It’s only 700 words, but it’s the start of something that I plan to work on a lot over the next few months.

Meet Felix and Kane, and tell me what you think!

The Bum Mentality

As many of you probably know already, I’m losing my job at the end of this month.  I will be able to draw unemployment, and I will go on a rehire list, where I will get called (in order of seniority) for jobs I’m qualified for.  I filled out paperwork today with a list of state positions that are at my pay grade or lower and for which I’m qualified; now personnel will verify my qualifications and put me on the list.

However, I’ve heard some things around the office that seem to imply that I may get to keep my job.  I told Aimee about this yesterday, and she asked a very pertinent question: Do I want to keep my job?

On the one hand, it’s a pretty sweet gig.  I’m basically paid close to thirteen dollars an hour to kill time online for most of the day.  I’m getting paid full time wages for what is essentially a part time job; I just have to be here for a full 8 hours.

That said, I loathe it.  This is different from the standard “I hate my job” schtick.  I really, truly loathe this job.  Part of it is the tedium; amazingly enough, you tend to exhaust work-safe internet pretty quickly when you need to kill upwards of 30 hours a week.  Part of it is that one of my very few actual tasks is opening and distributing the mail, which I can charitably describe as odious.  But really, I hate it because it really is just wasting time; I don’t do anything of value here.  I’m ashamed that I’m basically wasting my life in a pointless job, embarrassed to tell anyone what I do, and generally just unhappy with it.

A big part of what’s going on is that I’m feeling terrible guilt about being unemployed.  I’m actually looking forward to staying home and trying to work on some other things on the dime of the State.  If not for the decreased income and the moral issues of leeching off the public, I’d be overjoyed about getting layed off.  It’s like a year long sabbatical!

To answer Aimee’s question: no, I do not want to keep my job.  But at the same time I feel guilty for not wanting to keep it.

So I’ll share my plan, instead.  I intend to draw unemployment; if I’ve read the packet from Personnel correctly, then being on the rehire list counts as seeking employment for the purposes of the unemployment check (but if not, I’ll set aside some time each week to hunt for jobs).  Meanwhile, I will treat each weekday as a workday: get up at a reasonable time, get dressed, write for several hours, take care of business, work out, write some more, and have leisure time in the evenings.  In short, I need to avoid falling into the bum mentality, and wasting my funded time off.

If I play this right, it could be one of the greatest opportunities I’ll get to write professionally.  If I screw up, it could get really ugly.

The Girl Who Wants All the Bad Guys to Want Her

As I’ve mentioned before, many songs have strong emotional ties with various episodes in my life.  Several years ago, I was smitten with a girl named Rachael who, alas, did not return my affection.  It’s a shame, too, because we got along really well, there was chemistry there, and I maintain to this day that if she and I had dated, we would both have had a lot of fun and quite possibly have altered each others’ destiny.

The argument is moot, really.  You see, while I was smitten with her, she was similarly smitten with Matt, our leather and metal wearing friend.  It was about at this time, while I was smitten with her, she was smitten with Matt, and Matt felt bad for both of us (we were all friends, you see) that the song “The Girl All the Bad Guys Want” by Bowling for Soup began to get heavy radio play.  Just so you have a frame of reference, here’s the song; wallow in the nostalgia and catchy, snarky-yet-happy attitude:

Now, when Rae and I used to hang out, her pining for Matt and me bravely lending moral support while hoping she’d see how noble I was (I was a little more tolerant of this sort of BS back then), she used to play that song and tell me that it reminded her of me.  You see, in her eyes, I was the narrator, and she was the girl that the bad guys, like Matt, wanted.

The only problem with this theory, that I’ve never pointed out to her, is that she really wasn’t the girl the bad guys wanted.  She was the girl who wanted only the bad guys, and it led to some very bizarre dating choices for her.

Anyways, I suspect she played the song so much to try to taunt me, but what I think really bothered her was that I never did change for her.  I think she wanted me to do as the narrator in the song does; to try to be one of the bad guys, but that’s just not my bag.  I am, always have been, and probably always will be, a nerd; what Rae didn’t realize was that I was trying to convince her that what she needed was a nerd.

Flash forward some seven or so years, and who is she engaged to?  That’s right, a nerd.  Oh, she still likes to think he’s a bad guy by saying that he’s a cowboy, but really his primary claim to being bad is that he plays Vampire LARP, which is a whole different kind of “bad.”

As for my argument that he’s a nerd: he told me at Allen’s wedding that D&D 4e sucks, and that 3.5 was the apex of the game.  Now if that’s not nerdy, I don’t know what is.

It’s Friday!

How about some movies?

First, courtesy of Allen, some more D&D cartoons:

I like the gnome in this one:

Who doesn’t love Illithids?

Oooh, I found another!

I tweeted this yesterday, but worth another nod:

Speaking of stop motion, here’s something cool I saw a while back (but forgot how freaking surreal it is):

Finally, a little WoW vid for those who haven’t seen it on the BTL website (or Wow.com):

If you have any vid recommendations, post them in the comments!

Edit: one more.

All Over the Place Today

I’ve got a whole bunch of things on my mind today, none of which are worth a whole post of their own, so it’s time for another scattershot post.  Away we go!

Fallout 3
I finished Fallout 3 this last weekend, and I’m very very irritated at it.  It was a wonderful game; it was immersive, detailed, and, most importantly, malleable.  Playing through, you felt that your actions really mattered.  You could destroy the slavers or become the biggest baddest slave catcher around.  You could save Megaton, or you could blow it up.  You could create a detailed, handy guide to surviving in the Wasteland, or you could fudge the details and write a useless piece of shit.

Regardless of what you did, you impacted the world of the game.

And then came the ending.  There you are, in front of the device that’s capable of providing clean water and new life to the Capitol Wasteland.  The bad guys have been routed (though, in a preview of what’s to come, it doesn’t really matter if you let them go peacefully or killed them).  However, there’s a problem!  The equipment has been damaged (ostensibly in the fighting, though I fail to see how if you didn’t fight the bad guys), and the control room is flooded with lethal levels of radiation.  SOMEONE has to go in there and activate the device, and they won’t be coming out.

That’s my issue.

At this point in the game, you can choose to go in yourself or send in Sarah Lyons, the squad leader of the Brotherhood of Steel who provided your escort to the device.  Now, I had a stockpile of Rad-X (increases your resistance to radiation) and RadAway (takes your radiation count to zero).  I played around with it, and by popping a Rad-X, I had plenty of time to get in, run around the room several times, make a sandwich, and enter the code before the thing blew up and I saw the ending for “failing.”  So I reloaded the game, popped the Rad-X, entered the code, and – died.  Never mind that my radiation counter was nowhere near lethal, never mind that I could have easily escaped, the game called for a character death, and the game got one.  I was getting irritated, but I wasn’t done yet.

“Aha!” I thought.  “I recruited this super mutant who has demonstrated that he’s immune to radiation effects!  I’ll send him in!”

No.

Once again, never mind that he was able to walk through a maze of corridors flooded with rads to get an item and bring it back to me without so much as a single tick on the geiger counter, he WOULD NOT go in to activate the code.  Despite the fact that it would force his allies to die when he would easily live, he wouldn’t do it.  Once again, the game called for a death.

So, just to see what would happen, I sent in Sarah.  And the game spent the next ten minutes telling me what a tool I was for doing that.  She points it out, the game dialog points it out, her death animation is painful to watch, and the closing cut scene tells you, once again, what a douche you are for sending her in to die.

So, in short, the ending of Fallout 3 is just a different, less elegant version of the Kobayashi Muru test from Wrath of Khan.

Apparently I’m a lot like Kirk: I hate no-win situations.  I hate them more when I come up with several feasible, reasonable solutions, and the rules of the game won’t let me implement them.

To repeat my tweet about this: Great game ruined by a shitty ending.

The Wheel of Time (Yes, Again)
Last night, someone pointed out that they think the Wheel of Time is awful.  That’s fine, they’re entitled to their opinion, but I think they’re missing what Jordan was trying to do with the stories (just as I’m sure that he thought I was missing what George R. R. Martin is trying to do with A Song of Ice and Fire).

When reading WoT, there are three things that Jordan really seems to play with:

First, how would people behave if there was a manifest Power for good and a manifest Power for evil?

Second, how would people behave if there was gender equality?

Third, what would be the results if prophecy and legend in fantasy followed the patterns of legend and history in reality?

Regardless of the flaws in the series (and there are many), these seem to be the primary ideas he’s playing with.  All in all, I think he does well.

In regards to the good versus evil, you have the Creator and the Light, who don’t really communicate with the good guys, versus Shai’tan (the Dark One) and the Shadow, and he (and his followers) are quite communicative with their subordinates.

This makes for interesting situations, especially on the side of the Light.  Much of the strife in the stories comes from people serving the Light who believe that theirs is the only true way, and the people who aren’t following their route are just as bad as agents of the Shadow.  Sound familiar at all?  Meanwhile, since the Shadow values strength and chaos, the Dark One pits his servants against each other quite frequently, causing further strife, as well as confusion on the part of the good guys.

What’s truly interesting to me is what the two sides seem to embody.  The Light is ostensibly all about order, justice, and kindness, but it has no overarching organization to speak of, it values individual freedom and individual choices.  In a very real way, the Light, which embodies order, is anarchistic and libertarian.  On the other side, the Shadow, which is paradox and chaos, has a very regimental and structured system of ranks and priveleges, and its agents are careful to follow them to the letter.  So the Shadow, which embodies chaos, follows a strict internal order.

It’s contradictions like these that make the series worth reading for me, and the nature(s) of the Creator and the Dark One is/are what I ponder the most when I ponder.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the Creator and the Dark One are one and the same, and that Rand’s actions at the Last Battle will ensure an equilibrium between the two halves.  If in doubt, look to the symbols and themes throughout the story: wielding the power is a balance between control and surrender; the two halves of the Power are in balance; the symbol for Aes Sedai is a half white, half black disc; blademasters constantly talk about balance and “the oneness;” finally, hinting at the next topic, the genders have strengths and weaknesses which complement each other and work best in a balance.

The second theme Jordan plays with extensively is gender equality.  He asks what would happen if women held the power and men were viewed in a negative light.  Instead of being the weaker gender, they’re considered dangerous, stupid, and unpredictable.  I’m going to skim over this because gender politics aren’t my bag, and, besides, I don’t think Jordan was very successful.  The women are still portrayed as manipulative, conniving, and needy, while the men are portrayed as honest, stubborn, and a little stupid.  What’s more, neither gender really understands the other.

Of course, that could be the point Jordan was shooting for.

Finally, we get to the idea of fallible legends and opaque prophecies.

To understand how revolutionary this idea was when Jordan first started using it, you have to understand the nature of epic fantasy up until The Eye of the World was first published.  While Howard and others played with the genre in the thirties, they didn’t get too deep into the details.  Conan was a barbarian who became a king, and he was a brutal man who fought against even worse foes.  The past, and the future, didn’t really matter except to throw up ancient threats to Conan and his kingdom.

Then Tolkien came along and changed everything.  Instead of writing several disconnected short stories all set in the same world, he wrote a titanic novel that fully fleshed out the world, its history, and its people.  Most importantly for my discussion, he introduced the elves as ancient, immortal beings with perfect memories.  If someone recites a legend in The Lord of the Rings, you can be damn sure that it’s accurate.  After all, many of the participants in the events of the novel were there for the events legends reference.  Hell, Galadriel was there in Tirion, and she probably saw the Silmarils.

What this means for Tolkien’s world is that, regardless of what happens to the physical records, the elves remember it.  As a result, any given myth or legend is at least 99% accurate.

Since Tolkien was so successful, and his work was the first of its kind to make any headway, epic fantasy after that also tended to have perfectly preserved prophecies and legends.  It was just a matter of doing what the legend said, and your heroes were golden.

I should also mention the other major side effect of Tolkien on epic narrative: the idea of a single task or item that must be completed or discovered to destroy the singular bad guy.  This is another genre trope that Jordan turns on its head.

So, back to Jordan.  He decides to write a story where not only do you have immortal beings with perfect memories, but you also have such a chaotic history that records are destroyed every hundred years or so.

All of a sudden, all bets are off.  Characters frequently find that things don’t match the stories, and Rand is consistently frustrated by the opacity of the Prophecies.  Also, everything combines to make it so that the good guys really aren’t sure what they have to do in order to win, and it adds suspense to the whole proceeding.

I’m not really sure how to tie this thing off, so I’ll just end by repeating that if there’s only one thing Robert Jordan contributed to the genre, it was the idea of unreliable history, and speculative fiction will be ever richer for it.

Closing
Ok, I guess that WoT post could have stood on it’s own.  It’ll kinda have to, since whatever else was in my head is gone now.  If I remember what I forgot, I’ll be sure to share it.

Bye now.

Afternoon Stalling

You know, I had a whole amazing post about music planned out, complete with clips and pictures and lots and lots of words, but between the afternoon craziness here and the irritation I’m feeling at WoW right now, that post is gone.

I’m not sure what to talk about in its place.

Leadership is a funny thing.  Some people are absolutely amazing at being second in command, or the wise councillor, or the power behind the throne, but, for whatever reason, screw up when they’re on the throne, so to speak.  They might freeze under the pressure, or feel so pressured to take action that they take the wrong action, or suddenly forget all they knew, start abusing their power, or just find that when they lead, no one follows.

To me, an ideal leader is one who can look objectively at a situation, calmly develop a plan for a solution, execute the solution while allowing for unforseen circumstances, and inspire their followers to perform at their best.  Naturally, very very few people in history have been able to meet those criteria 100 percent of the time, so there are a few more to add.  First, a strong leader needs to surround themselves with varied, honest, and capable advisors.  Second, he must genuinely listen to those advisors and take their advice into account.  In the end, the leader must make his own decision, but it has been a rare occurance where a leader has ignored the advice of good councilors and found a result other than disaster.

I’ve never really aspired to be a leader; I’m much more comfortable being an advisor.  It could be that’s why Zhuge Liang, and not Liu Bei or Sun Quan, is my favorite character in Three Kingdoms (though Cao Cao comes in at a close second).  Zhuge Liang is the ideal councillor: he is wise, capable, objective, and genuinely has the best interests of the kingdom at heart.  It is worth noting that Shu’s worst defeats came when Liu Bei or his lieutenants went against Zhuge Liang’s council.

Again, Zhuge Liang is the ideal; he’s the sort of man all advisors should try to match and all leaders should keep an eye out for.

I am certainly not a Zhuge Liang.  I’m probably not even on the level of Zhou Yu or Jiang Wei.  However, I do believe that I am objective, fair, moderately intelligent, and I have the best interests of whomever I’m advising at heart.  That’s why I get so irritated when my advice and my arguments are ignored wholesale.

Hmm.  I feel better now.  Also, maybe it’s time to reread Three Kingdoms.

You Have Entered the Door to the North

This last weekend I sat down with Aimee and Allen (who doesn’t have a blog; maybe I should link a video instead) to play a little D&D 4e.  My main goals were to see the rules and the characters in action, so it was extremely light on description and story; I was focusing on getting the complicated rules right.

To simplify things, I was running a mini-dungeon straight out of the Dungeonmaster’s Handbook, while Aimee was playing Tatsu, a Dragonborn Fighter, and Allen was playing The Pro, an outcast Eladrin Ranger.  The setup was that before the Guild elevated them to the rank of Cartographer, they needed to prove that they could handle themselves in dangerous situations.  The guild had discovered some old ruins nearby that they’d like to study further, but a band of kobolds had taken up residence.  The PCs were to go in and clear out the Kobolds.

Now in a normal campaign, I’d let the PCs try to talk to the mobs or find other ways through, but, once again, we were there to practice some D&D combat.

The first room had a sludge pit, a side room, and a narrow hallway, as well as several Kobolds.  From what I can gather, the sludge pit was supposed to be a major terrain feature, with PCs getting pushed in by monsters and monsters getting pushed in by PCs.  However, Tatsu moved to the hallway and blocked those Kobolds from getting out while allowing her to mow through them one at a time, and the others got sniped from across the room by The Pro.  No combatant even got near the sludge pit.  Regardless, it was a super easy encounter, especially considering that this adventure was written with five players in mind, and we only had two.

From there, the PCs went down a staircase and found a chamber with several sarcophagi and two kobolds frolicking on the far side of the room.  Tatsu charged the length of the room, somehow missing all but one of the pressure plates that activated the arrow traps, and proceeded to lay into one of the kobolds.  With the trap revealed, but not the pressure plates, The Pro was very careful to step only where Tatsu had stepped while picking off the Kobolds.  The PCs discovered an altar to Tiamat (though neither could identify it, Allen had his character make a sketch, playing out the Guild’s mission nicely) and a sack of gold.  They looted and moved on.

It was getting late, so we took a break for the night, Allen rolled up a Cleric to play alongside the party because we realized that the fights were going to get pretty difficult from here on out, and we tweaked some stuff on Tatsu’s character sheet to make her hit a little harder while being harder to hit herself.

The next day we met up and played two more encounters.  In the first one, Tatsu, The Pro, and Random Cleric Guy interrupted a game of Skull-skull, where the Kobolds were hurling a rock on a rope at a pile of skulls to try and knock them into another sludge pit.  Tatsu wound up getting a little isolated, and got knocked unconscious at one point, while the kobolds seemed to have trouble knocking any players into the sludge with the Skull-skull rock.  It was a grueling little fight, but the players managed to clean out the room, after which Tatsu looted the Skull-skull stone, and is eager to find a use for it.

Next the players found their way into a large chamber that seemed to have originally been a gathering hall of some sort.  As they entered, a giant boulder (think Indiana Jones) rolled off the altar and began rolling around the room in a circular path, crushing anything it came into contact with.  This fight was the best designed one so far.  The Kobold Leader, a wyrmpriest, buffed his allies while throwing out a solid amount of damage.  His pet drake flew around dive bombing players, and two kobold slingers chucked pots of glue from the heights, snaring the cleric in the path of the boulder.

Things looked pretty bad for the Cleric until Tatsu managed to bust through some doors (with a natural 20, natch), climb the ladders to their fortifications, and mark one while the Pro finished off the other.  The marked Kobold fired another successful glue pot at the cleric, and it looked bad for him, until Aimee said “He’s marked and not attacking me.  Do I get an opportunity attack?”  She did, the kobold was killed, and the cleric managed to just sneak out of the way of the boulder.

Meanwhile, the Pro was taking potshots at the Wyrmpriest and the Drake, and the Drake was starting to seriously harry him.  The Cleric helped finish off the drake, and then he and Tatsu made their way over to confront the wyrmpriest and his bodyguards.  The wyrmpriest unleashed a dragon’s breath attack that bloodied Tatsu and sent the Cleric into negatives.  The fight became a race against time: not only was the cleric making death saves every turn, but the boulder was working its way back around.

Tatsu and The Pro managed to finish off the remaining Kobolds and stabilize (and revive) the fallen Cleric.  All told, an epic little fight, especially considering that the PCs were only level 1; you usually don’t get epic fights at level 1.

Thoughts On the Adventure
First: Fourth edition does combat really well.  It’s been streamlined, it’s been beefed up, it’s now FUN.  In previous editions you had to wait till 10th level or so until you started to feel like a badass; not so in 4e.  The characters all have fun powers, and I need to see some other strikers in action, but it seems like the ranger is incredibly overpowered.  He’s got an at will that lets him do two attacks each turn; Allen was frequently taking mobs out in a single round.

Second: Most of the encounters were pretty bland (especially the first one).  4e seems to be trying really hard to get players and DMs to think about the terrain, but in this adventure, they made it incredibly easy to ignore the terrain features.  Except for the last battle we did, that is; though the last battle was also the most memorable.

Third: There is plenty of room for description, roleplay, and story; it’s just really easy as a DM to get so involved with getting the combat encounters right that you forget about the rest.  Yes 4e emphasizes combat, but it’s up to the DM to make that combat mean something.

Fourth: the character creator tool is amazing.

Conclusion
All in all, it was a pretty successful little game. Both players seemed to enjoy themselves once we got into the swing of the game, and every character had a crowning moment of awesome.  That said, in the campaign I’m going to have Allen choose one character to stick with and then design encounters around the lack of healing.

One last thing: I am irritated that in order to get the minis you basically have to play the lottery with the random booster packs, so I probably won’t use actual D&D minis that much.  Warhammer and Rackham minis are the same size, and I can at least choose what I’m buying there (even if it means we probably won’t be playing with painted minis).

So there you have it, an inside look at America’s most terrifying passtime: Dungeons and Dragons.