WNW: 'Cause Blimps are Pretty Pimp

Some of you have been asking me, "Palette, whatever became of Heliumpunk?"

The answer is, real life got in the way. But don't worry, it's not forgotten. In fact, earlier this week I happened upon what can only be called the Heliumpunk Theme Song.

FACT: Hydrogen is kept far away from Helium so as to prevent Helium from kicking Hydrogen's ass.

Much Ado Aboot Nothing

Well, then.

It would seem that yesterday's post stirred up a bit more controversy than I intended. Indeed, the proverbial hornet's nest was given a good solid thwack.

I'm not going to bother explaining the intent of my post, because if you didn't get it, you'll just think I'm trying to cover my ass. All I have to say is, those of you who were offended by it probably came here looking to be offended.

I'm not going to apologize for it, either. From all the ad hominem attacks I've received, you might think I'd managed to personally insult every single person in Canada and their mothers. It wasn't my intent for you to feel insulted, but I have no control over how you folks choose to feel and react.

I will also say that it's the purpose of a writer to elicit an emotional reaction from her readers. Judging by the volume and intensity of the comments I've gotten, I'd say I've succeeded in that regard.

Speaking of comments, I'm quite enjoying the spirited discussion that is occurring in the comments section. I currently have no plans to intervene in the discussion or close comments. However... insults and personal attacks will no longer be tolerated. The moment this becomes a flamewar, I'm deleting those comments and quite possibly locking the section.

Additionally, anonymous posts are disabled. If you want to leave a comment, you have to put your name to it and own your words, just like I own mine. Registering with Blogger takes all of 30 seconds so I doubt that's an impediment to anyone with a serious desire to let their opinion be known.

And finally, to those people who have informed me that I have lost them as readers: well, I'm certainly sad to see you go, and I hope you change your mind at some point once you've cooled down, but the honest truth of the situation is that over the course of my writing career I'm bound to offend someone, and if you didn't leave over this then odds are very good that you'll leave over something else that I write.

So fare thee well, my Canadian readers. I truly do like you, truly meant no offense, and truly wish you all well, regardless of what you have said to me.

An Open Letter to Canadians

Dear Canadians:

I like you. I really do. I can't easily prove this, of course, so I hope you'll take me at my word when I say that I actually, honestly, sincerely like you and your country. In my mind, I see America and Canada as brothers, so when I say what I say, please know it's out of love and respect.

But seriously: shut the fuck up about American politics, okay? Please. You're trying my patience.

Look, I get the fact that our Conservative Republican Texan President rubs you the wrong way. I understand that American Foreign Policy essentially pisses in your poutine. I realize that as gross generalizations go, you are far more liberal and left-of-center than we, and that's why you're frequently so appalled at our actions.

But you've got to stop bitching about American politics. It's not a healthy mindset. I mean, you care more about our politics than we do, and there's precious little you can do to change our government. You can shake your fists and stamp your little feet and it will do bugger-all in the grand scheme of things.

You want to change our government? Immigrate, become an American citizen, and vote in elections. Then you can bitch all you want, and you might actually change something.

As it stands now, though? You're like the bitter ex-boyfriend who can't let go of being angry at his ex for breaking up with him years ago. You obsess about us, write screeds and diatribes and blogs about us, and it's really quite sad because, overall, we barely know you exist. Look, I'm not proud to admit my ignorance, but I will to make this point:

• I know that Felipe Calderón is the President of Mexico, a nation which doesn't share our language.
  
• I know that Gordon Brown is the Prime Minister of England, a nation which not only doesn't share a border with America but is also on the other side of the Atlantic.
  
• But Canada and America share a common language, a common border, and most (though not all) of a common culture, yet I still don't know who your Prime Minister is without Googling him.
  

In fact, I can only name two Canadian PMs at all: Trudeau and Diefenbaker, and I only know of the latter because of Due South (an excellent show which I enjoyed because it managed to poke fun at both American and Canadian stereotypes while at the same time celebrating our common bond of shared heritage).

So please, for your own mental and emotional health, let it go. Or dial it down a notch, at least. I mean, I couldn't stand Chirac, but I can count on my fingers the number of times I gave him enough thought to warrant even a slightly annoyed mood, much less a high dudgeon or good old-fashioned spleen venting. And when he lost the election to Sarkozy, I didn't throw a party; I merely nodded my head, smiled, and said, "Oh, good, I can like France again," and that's all the thought I gave it, because that's all it deserved. Much like psycho unstable exes, who are also better ignored than fretted over.

So please, Canada, I am imploring you: let it go. Let us go. We aren't going to change to suit you, much like you refuse to change on our account. Find a hobby, watch a hockey game, get drunk on your awesome Canadian beer; but if you keep obsessing about American politics, you're just going to end up on the White House lawn at three A.M., playing Peter Gabriel at top volume and begging us to take you back.

And no one wants that.

Love,
Erin Palette

OH NOES!!!

Quick! Engage Sims Protocol One!*

Ah yes. That should do nicely. And now for a suitably Kirby-esque benediction:

Chris Sims, the Count of Chin-Checks! Will he survive the ticking timebomb of face-fracturing calendric chaos known only as.....

... HIS TWENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY???

Find out, dear readers, in: "The Quarter-Century Suckerpunch!"



*A cute goth girl kicking people in the head.

RAC: Update on the Ship's Papers

Sources deep within my Radion Accelerator Corps tell me that the Ship's Papers will have a release date of August 25.

You heard it here first.

RAC: Ship's Papers

Pay attention, Browncoats! This is important.

Remember when I leaked the Official Press Release by Quantum Mechanix and I said that while I knew what Whitefall was making, I didn't yet have proof?

I have proof now.

And, as promised, this is at the very least as shiny as the Serenity Blueprints, and probably moreso, since this is something you can touch/hold/play with/use as a prop.

Fellow Flans, I present to you... the Official Serenity Ship Papers:


As I mentioned before, Whitefall has a reputation within the Flan community as a quality maker of props and replicas. One of his top sellers was, you guessed it, Firefly Ship's Papers, so when I heard that he'd been hired by QMx my initial guess was that either the Ship's Papers or the Map of Serenity Valley would be his first official product. I didn't say anything about the papers, because they seemed too complex to make compared to a map and, quite frankly, I didn't want to say anything for fear of jinxing it.

"But Palette," I hear you say, "how is this new product any niftier than Whitefall's old stuff?" I'm very glad you asked me that, Voice in my Head, because here is why:

Old Stuff:

• Only 5 pages.
• Made one at a time... each packet took months to make.
  
• Cost between $200 - $300 when they were put on eBay.

New Stuff:

• No less than thirteen pages, plus an Alliance bribe and a designer's certification of authenticity.
• All sheets were made under the supervision of Geoff Mandel, the graphic designer of the Serenity movie, to ensure that each piece is as authoritative and accurate as possible.
  
• Access to studio archives means movie source art is included, so that the entire package has the look and feel of the Serenity 'Verse.
• One of the sheets is a "Crew Roster" with signature spaces. That's right, if by some chance you should happen to meet our Big Damn Heroes at a convention, you not only have a gao guhn place for them to put their autograph, but doing so only increases the value of your Ship's Papers!
• Of course, there's also the fact that since this is an official licensed product, buying this means that there will be more shinies being made by QMx for Browncoat consumption, and of course you don't have to get on a waiting list as each unit is made.

So as you can see, it's not so much an expansion of the original as it is a completely new and much better re-imagining.

Keeping in mind that such things are subject to change, here are the specifics as I know them:

• 13 full-color sheets, up to 8.5 x 14" in size.
  
• Certificates are hand-stamped with official Alliance seals, and hand-signed in both English and Chinese.
  
• They come in a fashion-grade leather wallet with brass snap fittings (for the cover) and a screw-down plate (to keep the papers in place).
  
• Limited to 1,500 pieces.
  
• Price: between $120 and $130. So for essentially half the price, you get twice the goods. Where in the 'Verse will you get a better deal than that?

Eris willing, my Bothan spies will be able to get me a review piece and then I'll be able to tell you in graphic detail why this product is so incredibly awesome, you'll want to sell a kidney for it.

But then, I suspect you're all rabid fans anyway, so I'm preaching to the choir. Still, I promied you bowel-looseningly cool, didn't I? And I delivered!

Edit: new information here.

Legend of the 5 Rings: Mechanics

Welcome to part ni of my L5R series. I had originally meant to talk about setting today, but halfway through I realized I was using concepts that really belonged in the mechanics section, so here we are.

Don't worry, I'll be gentle.

Character Sheet
I don't know how many of you do this, but when I pick up a new role-playing game, the first thing I do is go to the back and take a look at the character sheet, because it's a great summation of the game itself. I can see what the designers think is essential information based upon the kind of information on the sheet: where the stats are placed, how big certain sections are, etc. If you are like me in that regard, you can look at a PDF of the character sheet here.

Dice Engine
Now if you haven't been living in a cave for the past 15 years, when I tell you that L5R uses 10-sided dice you'll probably have a very good idea of how this game plays because, yes, it's quite similar to Vampire in that it's a stat + skill kind of game. What's different is how those rolls are made. L5R's core mechanic is what's known as "Roll and Keep", in which you roll your stat+skill but only keep your stat. I think this is very nifty because your skill rating gives you more dice to choose from, or "breadth" if you will, but your stat dictates the "depth" of your roll.

Example
Let's say you want to hack someone into pieces with your Katana. That's an Agility + Kenjutsu roll. Let's say that you're what I like to call "heroically average" and have a 3 in both. In that case, you will roll 6 dice (3 for Agility and 3 for Kenjutsu) but you only keep 3 for your Agility. You roll 6 dice and get the following: 3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10. Since you only keep three dice, you will in all likelihood choose 8, 9, and 10.

But oh! You rolled a 10, and in this game, tens explode, meaning you roll that die again and add 10 to it. If it rolls another 10, then it explodes again, meaning you can get some really heroic rolls. (Or some really gruesome damage totals, because tens explode there, too; you could conceivably kill someone in one hit with a lucky enough roll.) But in this example, when I re-roll it I get a three, which means my total is 13.

So! 13+ 9+ 8= 30, which is quite a good roll. The base difficulty for most skill uses is 15, but when it comes to combat, 20s and 25s are usually the norm.

There are only two other things you need to know. First, if you really need to succeed, you can spend a Void Point, which is measured by -- you guessed it -- your Void stat. A Void point can do many, many things in this game, but its biggest use is in a skill roll. By spending a Void point (and you can only spend 1 per roll), you can roll and keep an additional die. Wow!

Second-- and this is where it gets complicated, so if you want to know more you'll have to buy the book -- you can call a number of Raises on your roll. A Raise increases your difficulty number by 5, but if you succeed, you have a greater or more complete success. In effect, you're stating, "I can hit a 15 with no problem, but I want to do this with style and grace, so I'm going to bet that I can hit a 25." Raises can be used to execute difficult maneuvers, perform called shots, deal more damage in combat, or perform multiple actions in a single round.


That's the basics of the game system. If I've forgotten anything, I'll certainly feel foolish when I bring it up later, but for now I feel like I've blathered on enough as it is.

Tomorrow, I hope to cover the basics of the setting.