Lurking Happily

Dear Stan Lee:

For eliminating both Idiot Blonde Girl and Token, the Hebrew Wonder today, you have my gratitude.

I will accept this gesture as an apology for last week's elimination of Mindset.

Sincerely, Palette

Seriously, though, it should not have taken this long. I think the reason they lasted as long as they did is because Mr. Mitzvah is Jewish, just like Stan Lee, and because Ms. Limelight is 19 and therefore had the "She's just a kid" sentiment going for her.

(A brief aside to Tom Foss: You remember when I told you I hated the Wasp because she seemed to exemplify every "dumb girl" stereotype? Ms. Limelight is exactly that same kind of person. The stupid giggle, the nervous playing with the hair... I just want to beat her with the collected works of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley until she shuts up!)

Their exit interviews can be found here.

Wednesday Night Wackiness: L5R edition

... I really have nothing more to add to this.

Legend of the 5 Rings: Overview

So yesterday I talked about Legend of the 5 Rings, and I figured I could stand to tell you more about it, since it's partially responsible for my "Taste of Things to Come" post last month.

Last month? Eris on a pogo stick, I'm seriously slacking here. *sigh*

Before I continue, I want to get this out in the open right now: I hate writing book reports. I will never ever be a good journalist because talking about facts is boring; I'd rather inflict my opinions on you instead. So if this review is a little light on data, either deal with it or investigate the game on your own, because I'm going to spend more time telling you why this game is awesome.


L5R in a Nutshell
Quoting Chris Hepler:

"Let me get this straight," I thought. "You want me to play a fantasy RPG in which your characters bathe daily, are literate, polite to one another, and work in a team. You will be given a badge in the form of a pair of very sharp swords. Magic is considered a respectable, skilled profession among the upper classes, so five spellcasters in a group doesn't stretch plausibility. The warriors will be professionals with licenses to kill, but the second they overstep the bounds of their lord, they will be reined in, because the social order will be more powerful than any one man. There will be no mixing of incompatible characters such as thieves and ninja that inevitably lead to intra-party homicide.

"You want courtly love, moral dilemmas, and loyalty to your lord to play an inherent part of the game system. You will define the role of women among each of the clans, creating a stereotype intended to be broken. You will have a responsibility to those you guard both above and below you, and you will have a license to kill.

"In other words, I as a GM will have a plausible reason why a mixed batch of armed psychos will get into trouble every week from now until eternity.

"Twist my frickin' arm."

In other words, this setting can handle just about anything you could want from a game:

• Do you like killing? Then join the Crab Clan's thousand-year war against the creatures of the Shadowlands and their insane god-king Fu Leng who, when he fell from heaven, left a crater so deep that it literally tore a hole into hell.
  
• If you'd prefer a more socially refined setting, you can be a courtier and engage in political maneuvering between the Great Clans and the Imperial Families, where insults and marriages can start and end entire wars.
  
• Want angst and depression and to have your character suffer daily in an attempt to survive? You can be a ronin, who while technically still samurai in caste are considered to be criminals pretty much by default and can be slain without repercussion by "true" samurai.

Seriously, if that doesn't make you want to run out and either GM or play L5R, there's something wrong with you. In my experience, this game has appeal across the spectrum of RPGers, whether they're combat wombats, drama queens, or character-depth plumbers.


Coming tomorrow Thursday: either setting or mechanics, I haven't yet decided.

Weekend Update

So, some of you may have noticed that I didn't post anything on Friday. I decided to play hooky and have an early three-day weekend. Want to hear about all the fun stuff I did?

Of course you do!

Friday
I discover a neat game called Heroscape. This is probably old news, since it came out in 2004, but it's still nifty for a variety of reasons:

1. It has constructible, interlocking hexagonal terrain that can be used for just about any game with miniatures, be it Battletech, Dungeons & Dragons, or any of the Clicky-base games.
   
2. It comes with 30 pre-painted miniatures of approximately the same scale as HeroClix / Mage Knight, and you can buy more in non-collectible expansion packs. If I want zombies, then I can go out and buy a goddamn zombie 6-pack. As a miniature-using Game Mistress, this is of critical importance to me.
   
3. Finally, it has the best miniature I have ever seen in all my life: an orc using a T-Rex as a cavalry mount.

This is so ridiculous that it becomes awesome. I never ever entertained the possibility that orcs might ride dinosaurs, but now that I have seen the result, the argument is so compelling that now I must introduce dino-cav orcs into my next game.


Saturday
This is harder than it sounds, however, because the game I'm currently running is not D&D, but rather Legend of the 5 Rings, the Samurai RPG where damn near everyone carries three-foot razor blades and therefore are excruciatingly polite to one another.

This is a game system where a decent katana hit will seriously fuck up a PC, if not kill him outright, which has the advantage of making the players seriously consider the ramifications of combat before trying to kill everything. Even so, I have had to seriously school my players for making foolish choices, and more than one game session has very nearly ended in a TPK. If you're a fan of RPGs with high Bothan ratings, this is the one for you.

Fortunately for my players, they have learned from their schooling and no further lessons are required today. In fact, they show a shocking degree of cooperation and adaptability. Since I want to encourage this kind of behavior, I refrain from dipping into my bag of dirty NPC tricks and let them succeed after only beating them nearly to death.

Afterwards, some of us decide to go out for a round of miniature golf. Naturally, I pick the black golf ball, which leads to comments about it actually being a goth ball, and thence to jokes about playing miniature goth: Each time I miss a putt, I put my hand to my forehead and aaaaaaangst about it. Complicated puns about Nietzschean philosphy abound, but I'll spare you that exquisite agony.

Afterwards, we adjourn to the Daytona Ale House for food and drinks.


Sunday
I sleep late, recover from my gaming hangover, and do domestic chores like laundry.

I play City of Heroes, do prep work for my next L5R game, and in a burst of insane creativity that actually woke me from sleep, I invent the most beautifully deranged motivation ever for the Big Bad in the story I'm currently writing. It's so twisted and brilliant I can't stop giggling.

Finally, as a sorbet to cleanse the Palette, I watch part 1 of The Company, a nice little miniseries about the early days of the CIA. It's brainy in all the ways a James Bond flick isn't, and makes a rather nice companion piece to last year's The Good Shepherd.

Suitably refreshed, cleansed, entertained, prepared, and creatively fulfilled, I retire to my lavender-scented coffin for sleepies.


Edit: Moved Chris Hepler's quote to a different post.

Okay, I call bullshit

Let me see if I've got this straight, Stan Lee.

Of the three heroes you put up for elimination today, two of them were on the chopping block last week as well, and one of those is up there for the same reason as he was up there last time. And instead of kicking one of these repeat offenders, you boot Mindset?

Fuck you, man. I call bullshit.


1. Idiot Blonde Girl can't even elucidate what her power is, which should have gotten her kicked out immediately. How many auditions did she have to go through to get to this stage? Isn't she supposed to have a carefully crafted persona that she must live 24/7, and which will be tested throughout the course of the show? Add to that the fact that last week, she saw someone in distress and chose to do nothing. And then there's the falling apart in tears when Mindset basically calls her on her "ditz" act... ah, she's fucking useless. Each episode she remains a contestant is an insult to everyone else who failed to make the auditions.

About the only good thing I can say about her is that when her faults are pointed out and she is challenged to grow -- either by Stan, or by another teammate -- she does manage to improve. This, I suspect, is the reason she hasn't yet been cut.


2. Then there's Token, the Hebrew Wonder, who has consistently proven that he is not a team player, does not like the other contestants, is in this thing just to win, etc. Worst of all, he has a magical Star of David ping-pong paddle.

A magical,
Magen David,
Ping fucking pong fucking paddle.

Why couldn't it have been a shuriken? A "Throwing Star of David" would've been fucking awesome. There are plenty of Bible stories about amazing heroes of Jewish legend, and both stealth and cunning in battle have been highly prized qualities among the Israelites. A Jewish ninja would've been incredibly cool.

Oh well. If you want to see a good example of a Super-Jew, Seraph will not disappoint.


3. Finally, there is Mindset, whose only real flaw this episode seems to be zero tolerance for bullshit. I admit, there were better ways for him to have made his point to Limelight, but I think she totally overreacted and took insult when none was really intended. (But she's 19, so what do you expect? At that age, everything's so dramaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatic.)

And you know what? I completely agree with his reasoning in the "Spelling Bee". If a villain can make you concede anything, no matter how minor, then all that proves is that you are susceptible to coercion and can be made to do it again. This is why our government has a strict policy of "Never negotiate with terrorists."

Oh hell, just go watch his exit interview, he makes his points better than I could.


I am appalled that, of these three, Stan keeps the two asinine repeat offenders and dismisses one of the few people there with a great concept, the wherewithal to stay in-character through multiple challenges, and a well-considered, well-articulated, and well-argued position: "A hero doesn't lie just to get out of a challenge. The truth is more important than discomfort."

What I think irks me the most, however, are Stan's parting words. I don't have the transcript in front of me, but he said something to the effect of "A true hero thinks of his team before himself."

*cough Spider-Man cough The Hulk cough Daredevil cough Silver Surfer*

Pardon me. I seem to have a contradiction caught in my throat. You created those rugged individualists, didn't you, Stan? Those misfit loners?

I call bullshit.

Brief Reminder

If you missed last week's Who Wants to be a Super Hero, there is a repeat of the first episode tonight at 8pm EST on the Sci-Fi channel, followed by an all-new episode at 9.

And then at 10, a program called Mind Control, where a strange British man compels people to give him their wallets, and buys rings with pieces of blank paper.

Just FYI.

WNW: Anime Girls Rock Your World

Today's anime may be done on computers and be visually perfect, but it's often soulless. Anime from the 80s and 90s had HEART, dammit!

The Look, starring: Yuri and Kei, aka the Lovely Angels, from Dirty Pair: Project Eden; Priss Asagiri from Bubblegum Crisis: 2032; Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop; and some chick from Kimagure Orange Road (I never watched that series because it was this wacky soap opera with psionic siblings and there were, like, a bajillion episodes made).



Empowered women who kick ass and look hot while doing it.. one of the main reasons I love anime.