One day I found myself sitting in a movie theater watching something abysmal.
I can’t remember what it was, exactly, but a moment of inspiration came to me as I found myself almost about to fall asleep for the thirteenth time.
“You know what this movie could use?” I asked no one in particular. “Godzilla.”
I realized that if Godzilla had been in it, it would have been a much better movie.
It was then that the seed of the Godzilla Theory occurred to me. It goes something like this:
Sometimes I have trouble deciding on whether I think a movie is bad or good – and to be clear, I’m talking about the subjective definitions of “bad” and “good” that refer to my emotional reaction to a film, not the technical definitions used in art appreciation classes. So, when I want to be certain about how I feel, I just imagine what the movie would be like if Godzilla were in it.
If the inclusion of Godzilla would actually make it BETTER, then it’s a bad movie.
I can call it a theory because I tested it out multiple times back when it was but a lowly hypothesis. And it seems to work. Now, granted, it largely only provides a decent barometer of MY opinion of a movie, but I’m sure there are some folks out there like-minded enough for it to work for them as well.
The only kinds of movies this test doesn’t seem to work so well with are… well, giant monster movies. Because, honestly, what giant monster movie WOULDN’T be better with an extra dose of Godzilla in it? But all other movies are fair game.
For example, think about the two SchumacherBatman films. You know, those twomovies that I keep trying to forget ever existed and which seem to occupy a category of suck all to themselves (and which are the subject of an entirely different theory of mine that I might talk about some other time). Wouldn’t they be INFINITELY better if Godzilla were in them? Because, heck, if they’ve decided to throw causality out the window anyway they may as WELL get a giant monster with atomic breath involved.
Star Wars, however, would NOT work so well with the addition of Godzilla to the cast. True, they had a similar character in Return of the Jedi, but the Rancor’s method acting manages to sate my desire for giant monster mayhem in that regard. I mean, when you can eat an entire Gammorrean raw in every take and still manage to hit your cues on time, that’s quality. (And on a side note, from what I understand, the Rancor and Godzilla briefly studied together at Juilliard.)
Well, it seems to me that in the first and third Jurassic Park movies Godzilla would probably be redundant, so in my opinion they qualify as “not too bad.” The middle one, though? Yeah, it’s true they made a Godzilla joke in it, but it only reminded me of how badly I wanted to see the real Godzilla turn up and show the T-Rex who was boss. Plus I sometimes find it difficult to stare at Jeff Goldblum for more than a few seconds at a time without wishing for a giant monster to come along and eat him. (Sorry Jeff, but if you’re out there reading this, they tended to leave the camera on you for a tad too long whenever you were doing the “intense staring” thing in that movie.) So, I’ve got to put it in the “bad” category.
Similarly, some Jane Austen films pass the test and some don’t. Of course, I’m slightly biased in that I’ve always wanted to see Godzilla turn up in a Jane Austen movie. (“Is that rather crude gentleman known to you, Mr. Darcy?” “Which one?” “That tall, green one out there on the croquet lawn.” “The one engaged in fisticuffs with the giant moth?” “Indeed, sir.” “Certainly not, madam! The unruly cad has disintegrated your potting shed with his atomic breath and, what’s worse, he’s trampled your flower garden. I would never associate with such an uncouth misanthrope!”) I can only hope that one day the film adaptation of Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters will be half as riveting as the image I’ve built up in my head.
So, if you’re not sure how you feel about a movie, try adding a dash of Godzilla and see how it looks then. If it doesn’t work for you, then no harm, no foul. But if it does, you may find that there’s nothing more valuable than the sense of perspective you get from a giant lizard.
Click below if you’d like to hear me read the article:
(The audio of this interview is available at the bottom of this post!)
JR: I am talking to Eloy Lasanta of Third Eye Games and we’re going to be talking about his game Part-Time Gods. Welcome, sir!
EL: Hello everyone!
JR: First off, for anyone who might not be familiar, tell us a little bit about the game Part-Time Gods.
EL: The game Part-Time Gods is where you play characters who are just regular people who have been imbued with the powers of gods. And you are given this huge amount of divine responsibility that you then must go and enact. And there’s a certain amount of juggling that has to be done – as in, you have to juggle your real life versus your divine responsibilities, and going and trying to obtain power is actually the same thing as leaving your mortal life behind. And it’s a fun kind of balancing game that Part-Time Gods has become.
JR: Let’s talk a little bit about the Source. What’s that?
EL: The Source – oh, the Source is the entity within the setting that has released the energy that then produces what a god actually is. Way back in the day the gods actually sealed it away and found a way to kind of siphon its power and it has now recently erupted again and it’s trying to escape. And that’s why now, in the game, there’s a big surge of a lot more gods popping up in the modern day – very suddenly, and it’s because the Source is trying to come back. So you might just be walking down the street – all of a sudden, you get hit with this immense power and you find out that you’re the God of Sidewalks or whatever. And then all of a sudden you have this giant Cyclops coming after you at that point and it’s like, “Wait! What’s going on here?!” And it’s very much about that. It’s very much about a regular person – what if a regular person was put in these types of situations?
JR: So I guess the primary conflict… well, it’s that you have two different layers of conflict, which – let’s talk about that a second. I find that very interesting that you’ve got both the supernatural conflicts and then the mundane conflicts that you have to deal with. I’m curious how you weave that together in the game.
EL: Well, very… very awesomely, I’d like to think.
JR: It sounds it!
EL: (chuckles) The divine conflicts are mostly between the gods, themselves. So a lot of it is god-on-god. You and your other people in your group – they are the pantheon that rules that area. And a lot of the game is contingent upon the pantheon getting along, maybe doing things to countermand each other – kind of like how gods used to be back in the day. Also other gods coming in to try and take your territory or even if you and your group want to go and try and expand into other gods’ territory, you can do that as well. But the way that the game works and how it kind of interweaves the mundane and the divine is you create what are called Bonds during character creation for your character. And these are the things in their life that link them to their humanity, which link them to being a regular person. And as these things come under fire or get damaged, they then start to take on some of the worst aspects of humanity, basically. And then they start to kind of drift away from being a regular person and more into becoming a god. The reason for this is because it’s more to reflect kind of what the gods of myth all kind of represent. You know, and it was Hera – at one time – was a very motherly deity.
JR: Yeah.
EL: And then she was consumed with jealousy and hatred and all of these things, and these are very real things that can happen to your character – where, you know, it’s no longer the love of your wife that starts to motivate you, it’s the hatred for this thing. And it starts to become a balance of you becoming less caring about the things that a human would care about.
JR: How do you set up the mechanics in a game like this? What are the mechanics like?
EL: The mechanics for this game actually follow the DGS Lite, which is a slightly lighter version than the classic DGS – Dynamic Gaming System – which I created for my other two games, Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. and Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusade. And this one is broken down a little bit more, but just like the classic DGS it only uses a single d20 and it uses difficulties from 10, 20, 30 and up to 40. And you can go higher as you get more and more powerful but 40 is usually about the max that a starting character can actually get to. It’s a simple – roll a d20, add your attributes plus skills plus applicable modifiers and see what you roll and then see what happens. It works really nicely and the playtests for Part-Time Gods have come back and everybody’s very happy with the results so far.
JR: Okay, that’s very cool. And part of what I guess I was wondering when you were talking about that was if there was any sort of mechanic that had been put in there specifically to represent that whole balancing act.
EL: You know, when you get your Bonds, you have to have actually built them and they get numbers to represent the strength of the Bond. And these numbers are counterbalanced with the strength of your divine Spark. And the more powerful that your Spark becomes, you’ll eventually have to start giving up some of your Bonds or weakening the ones that you have.
JR: That is very cool. I really like that idea because it’s just so often that you see in RPGs where people seem to have superpowers of some kind with absolutely no consequences for wielding them.
EL: Exactly.
JR: That is very good. So where did you get the idea for this game?
EL: It came from me watching a TV show called Dead Like Me, and I was watching the show I mean, like, “You know, that would be really interesting. What if it wasn’t just grim reapers? What if they were just a collection of gods? What if they were a pantheon who sat in a coffee shop just talking about baseball? It kind of became the idea of these very mundane things where basically being a god isn’t what it’s really cracked up to be.
JR: Yeah.
EL: Being a god is actually more of a hassle than, you know, “I’m a divine person and I ought to go on mythic quests!” No, sometimes it’s like, “You know what, I really would just like to go home and eat dinner with my wife but I can’t do that because I have to go get this goblet from the Fire.”
JR: (laugs) “Sorry, I’m going to be late for dinner, honey. I’m fighting Titans this evening.”
EL: Exactly. That’s kind of where the humor of the game also comes out. Anything that I write has to have at least a little bit of humor. I don’t have it in me to write a completely serious thing. So yeah, it has to have a little bit of humor and that’s kind of the tone that Part-Time Gods is taking.
JR: There have been one or two other games that try to do something similar – I believe Scion is one of the bigger ones – and so the question would be what really separates Part-Time Gods from something like that?
EL: When you play Scion, first of all the power levels get ridiculously wonky as soon as you are not like a starting character. And so, I mean, there’s that. The whole thing about Scion was you aren’t really a regular person. You’re the child of a god and you have to go and you fight things that are just destroying everything and you are super-powerful and you eventually become a god yourself and travel and will join the pantheon and stuff. And Part-Time Gods actually leaves a lot of what you would expect from a quote-unquote “god game” behind and I’m trying to really kind of take a new angle at it. The other game that tried this was Nobilis, but then Nobilis is more of a – like you are a concept. Like you’re not a God of Death, you ARE Death. You’re not a God of Enlightenment, you ARE Enlightenment. And that’s why there’s no dice and whatever.
EL: Yeah, yeah. Like it gets kind of weird. And what I tried to do is I read up on both of the games and I’m trying to hit a nice balance between the two. When I say that you can be the god of fill-in-the-blank, you really can.
JR: Whenever I actually get around to playing this game I now have a terrible urge to play the God of Fill-In-the-Blank.
JR: Yes! “I can take any concept and replace it with another concept!”
EL: You know, if I was actually going to be the God of Mad Libs I would just make it sound like you’re saying ridiculous things.
JR: Yes, exactly!
EL: And you have no clue you’re saying it, but everyone else is hearing you saying ridiculous things.
JR: That would be so cool.
EL: It would be hilarious. I try and gear people away from that sort of thing when in the character creation (chuckles).
JR: (chuckles)
EL: You know, there really should not be a Goddess of Cheese or Jeff, the God of Tacos. There really shouldn’t be these types of things. Gods should be like big, mythic, flashy things. You know, like you really don’t need a God of Sidewalks.
JR: Well, the sidewalks aren’t going to go on existing by themselves, are they?!
EL: I mean it’s gonna happen, but I’m just saying… (chuckles)
JR: (laughs)
EL: I try to give people a way…
JR: Doing what tiny amount of damage control you can get in at this point?
EL: Exactly. I also give tons of examples so I try to cover all my bases and – giving lots and lots of examples of different things that you can do with the power sets and stuff like that. So, I’m hoping it goes off well.
JR: One of the interesting things about this project is the way that you’re funding it. You actually have set up a Kickstarter campaign for it. So what led you to decide you wanted to do that?
EL: You know, I actually hadn’t heard about Kickstarter until a friend of mine actually mentioned it and they said, “I saw this kickstarter for Do.” And I’m like, “What’s a kickstarter?” So, they sent me a link to this game called Do and it’s pretty cool, and I went ahead and contributed to that and I started thinking about what I could do. And I like the setup. It reminds me of back in the day when the kings would become a patron to an artist and would take an artist under their wing and pay their room and board and make sure that they had all the materials they had and everything. Then like the king gets to say, “I found this artist and look at all of the wonderful things that I have allowed him to do!” It kind of reminds me of that, only instead of a nobleman, it’s all of the fans. All of the fans get to let me make a game for them. It’s a really fun concept and a fun way of approaching it versus the, “I’m going to release a game and I hope people like it.” You know, it’s more of a, “Hey, here’s what I’m doing! If you are interested in this type of thing, preorder.” Because basically I’m using it as a preorder but I’m also giving lots of incentives, T-shirts, stuff like that. Trying to make sure that anybody who does give to the kickstarter is gonna get their money’s worth for helping up front.
JR: It’s an interesting thing because you feel kind of like you’re a part of the project…
EL: Yeah!
JR: …when you contribute to it.
EL: And I’ve even gone through and I’ve started taking some chances on a couple of smaller projects to see if they go through. You know, and that’s kind of the thing, is – Kickstarter isn’t guaranteed. If you don’t make enough money then…
JR: Yeah.
EL: …it all kind of falls through and then whatever. But if you hit your goal, then it’s awesome!
JR: As of this recording, you’ve still got a bit over a month left if anyone wants to go on and contribute to this project. I think it’s really cool and I’m looking forward to playing it – I really want to play this game. So I really encourage folks to do that. Before we sign off here and we give information for people who want to go and check that out, is there anything else that you’ve got going on you want to give any quick little plugs for?
EL: Yeah, most definitely! The newest sourcebook for Wu Xing: the Ninja Crusade, my second game line of warring clans of ninja, just dropped its first sourcebook and it already has a 10 out of 10 review. So if you guys are waiting for a review, it’s got a perfect review on RPGnet so yay! Just got that today – so happy about that. And the newest sourcebook for Apocalypse Prevention, Inc., which is Demon Codex: Spectrals just dropped a couple of months ago. And it’s getting also very good reviews, so if you’re a fan of Apocalypse Prevention, Inc., don’t forget to go get that thing.
JR: Cool, awesome. I actually have some friends in a gaming group that I think are wanting to try out API sometime soon, so there may be more of that happening.
EL: (chuckles) Well, and we’re also working on an API: Savage Worlds Edition.
JR: Oh, cool!
EL: …which I’m really, really hoping that I can get out by GenCon. I’m REALLY, really hoping that we can. (chuckles) It’s hitting all of its playtest marks so it’s looking like there should be no issue, however it COULD not make it, but I’m really, really hoping it does.
JR: Nice! Me too, that sounds great. Savage Worlds obviously being a system I’m a lot more familiar with, so… (chuckles) That always makes me happy.
EL: Savage Worlds is a setting that I kind of fell in love with from the first time that I played it. And you know it has a different flavor from the Dynamic Gaming System that I designed, but both are really fun ways to play. So, API: Savage Worlds Edition – we’ve been working really hard to make sure that it keeps the feel that the DGS has, but reflecting in Savage Worlds rules and it’s coming along VERY nicely.
JR: Yeah, Savage Worlds is moldable enough that you can do a lot of different things with it.
EL: Most definitely.
JR: So that’s always very cool that that’s working out. So if anyone wanted to go online to find you or your site or the Part-Time Gods project, where would they go?
As you may have noticed from the audio of the monologue at the end of my previous post, I’m a fan of caffeine.
The problem, though, is that the further I creep into that thing which, for the sake of argument, we’ll call my thirties, I find that I’m becoming more a fan of the IDEA of caffeine than the actual caffeine itself. As I get older I notice that caffeine has a much subtler but more pronounced effect on me than it did in the past.
Back in the good old days when I was ridiculously young and agile and crazy like a jackalope, I would guzzle down caffeinated beverages like there was no tomorrow. Back then the only real work I did was for a theatre company and the rest of the time I was a professional wastrel. I’d usually stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning regardless of what I’d been drinking that day. Even so, I’d be able to go to bed mere seconds after I’d had caffeine and not have the least bit of trouble getting to sleep.
While cola, tea and the like were staples for me, they seemed to have little or no effect. But coffee was a different story. One sip of java and I’d be bouncing off the walls.
Nowadays, if I drink ordinary caffeinated beverages, I seem to get very little in the way of an energy boost from it. To all appearances, nothing significant happens… until I try to go to bed. If I’ve had more than, say, a couple of thimblefuls of caffeine in the last few hours, sleep is utterly IMPOSSIBLE.
But one thing has remained consistent, and that’s my reaction to coffee. One sip of java and I’m bouncing off the walls. Okay, maybe it takes TWO sips these days, but the effect is the same.
This is how I eventually came to admit to myself that my reaction to coffee is probably a placebo effect. I came to this realization not too long ago when I guzzled two frappucinos in preparation for participating in the morning show that’s produced at my broadcasting school’s radio station. The idea that coffee can turn me into a wired and witty cartoon character is so powerful to me that when I drink the coffee, that’s what happens.
But sadly, it’s naught but an illusion. The truth is that caffeine doesn’t really GIVE me energy. It just changes WHEN I have it.
Does it matter, though? We do all kinds of crazy things to motivate ourselves – you only need to see footage of any random sports rally to confirm that. So why not let me have my fantasy of a magical concoction that throws my personality into overdrive? If it amuses me and helps me get things done at the same time, I call that a victory.
What this really means is that while I’m not drinking nearly as much caffeine as I did in the old days, I’m more determined than ever to harness my power of self-delusion and use the resulting tide of caffeine-inspired wackiness for the greater good.
So don’t kill my buzz, man! Don’t rain on my parade! Don’t repossess my euphonium! Lest my army of encaffeinated ninjas descend upon you!!
Er… or words to that effect.
Click below if you’d like to hear me read the article:
I’m making a little entry here to let you know that I have a book coming out and it has just gone into pre-order! The book is called Abduction Etiquette and it contains about 50 or so monologues that I wrote to perform at open mic nights at coffee houses and the like. They’re all very short pieces and I have performed each and every one of them in public. So, these all come pre-tested for audience reaction!
I am incredibly excited about this. Right now it’s looking as though the publication date is going to be some time in August, but that may be subject to change depending on the number of pre-orders we get.
Now, the cover price of the book, when it’s published, is going to be $14 (plus S&H) but right now there’s a pre-order sale going on! Anyone who pre-orders the book right now will be able to get it for $9 (plus S&H).
Now here’s where I’m going to ask for a little bit of help.
If you’re interested in ordering the book, by all means, feel free to do so. I’ll be more than happy for you to. If you’re not so sure, then that’s okay. BUT I’d appreciate it if you let anybody that you know – who you think might be interested – know about the book. So if you have any friends who are into acting or comedy or who like strange poetry, people who are involved in theatre or in university theatre departments, actors, acting students or folks who just like silly character pieces, I would very much appreciate it!
Before this book can come out I’ve got a target of at least 100 pre-sales I need to make. If it doesn’t make 100 by August then the publication date may get pushed back. If, on the other hand, we make 100 pre-sales well before the publication date, then it may come out early! And of course nothing would thrill me more, and I’m sure anybody else who actually goes in and pre-orders it would be cool with that coming out to them early as well.
With your help, I think we can definitely pull it off.
This is the first time I will ever have an actual book out. I am ridiculously excited about it and I thank you very much for having the patience to let me ramble about it a bit.
And now, if you’re curious about what kind of monologues these are, there are three samples on that site, but I’ve also recorded one for you and will be putting it at the end of the audio file for this blog post.
Thanks again and I hope you enjoy it!
The monologue, Kingdom of Java, is at the end of the recording! Click below to listen:
I’m sure if a cyber-cop pulled me over on the Information Superhighway and gave me a virtual breathalyzer test I’d be several points over the legal WoW limit.
Why am I so captivated? What is it about this game that’s got me wondering if I need to join a 12-step program?
When he's not busy fighting for the Horde, Gorbirian likes to kick back and do some bass fishing.
Is it the Immersion?
Have I begun to slip heedlessly into a fantasy world and lost all sense of reality? Nah, probably not. I’m more of what one would call a “casual gamer.” I understand the fear of entering a game world and feeling as though one is more a part of it than one’s own life. That’s often the kind of problem one sees in science fiction stories about people entering virtual reality and losing all sense of self. But the truth of the matter is that World of Warcraft is pretty cool, but the Matrix it’s not. Heck, even the Matrix MMO wasn’t. Besides, I don’t have all that much of a sense of reality to lose in the first place.
Is it the Simplicity?
World of Warcraft is very easy to play. The controls are easy to learn. There’s very little in the way of resource management (aside from how much space you have in the bags you carry around to stuff quest items, fishing poles, alchemy bottles and magical pairs of pants into). You receive instructions, get pointed in a direction and usually go off to either kill things or pick things up off the ground – sometimes both. Not a lot of thought is required. If you want to interact with other players, you can, but recent updates to the game mean that you don’t really have to socialize if you’d rather go solo. I must admit that the game’s convenience factor is a pretty big deal. The fact that I don’t have to devote a lot of time to it means that I end up… devoting a lot of time to it.
The world of Azeroth. As you can see, there's a high pressure system currently moving in on southeastern Kalimdor and a Level 6 Maelstrom in the vicinity of the Lost Isles, so goblin commuters are urged to proceed with caution.
Is it the Potential?
One of the major draws for me with games like World of Warcraft is not what you can do with it, but what you COULD do with it. Azeroth is a huge, new, shiny, undiscovered world (okay, maybe a bit less shiny since the Cataclysm) and I haven’t visited every single corner of it yet. I’m one of those obsessive bastards who tries to see ALL of a game’s available content. Some of it – like, say, any given dungeon – requires you to team up with other players, which is something I don’t usually have a lot of time for, but I still feel a need to keep quests involving said content on my to-do list. Even though it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever get to them. If you add to that the fact that they’re regularly updating the game with MORE shiny, new things, you can see that this game may be holding my attention for a very long time.
Is it the Adventure Gaminess?
Back in the crazy, carefree days of the 1980’s, we had these things called “adventure games.” Among my favorites were the games in the Quest For Glory series. These were games in which you had a character with RPG-like stats and the freedom to have him wander around, fight monsters and explore different plot threads. The developers at one time had an idea to make it into an online game, but that plan never came to fruition. World of Warcraft seems, to me, to be the closest thing to what they had been hoping to do. So maybe I play it as a way of trying to recapture my youth – which I’m told is much safer and cheaper than the usual method of buying a muscle car and treating every road as though it’s the Daytona Speedway.
But, anyway…
My gnomish wizard, Map. He's currently working on a degree in Engineering.
I think that if I try to be brutally honest with myself, World of Warcraft – or any other MMO, for that matter – is, more than anything, an excuse to listen to a bunch of podcasts. I like the game music and only listened to it while playing at first, but as soon as I got comfortable enough with the game that it didn’t require my full concentration, I started playing podcasts in the background instead. MMOs and podcasts can make an awesome combination. I’ve already blogged about my deep podcast affliction, so I won’t go into detail about it here. But I think it’s interesting that I’ve essentially got two addictions that feed into each other. If one desperate need wanes, the other will always be there to drag me back to my plush Obsession Suite in the Junkie Hotel overlooking Dependence City. Lucky me.
All kidding aside, though, I’ve gone several months at a time without playing WoW, and if my schedule requires it, I’ll go cold turkey once again. I’ve done it voluntarily before – most recently when I hit a point in the game at which I felt I couldn’t progress further on my own and decided to just park my characters in a corner and wait for the Cataclysm. And, lo and behold, when the Cataclysm happened, there was enough new content to pull me back in. I’m not sure what it says about me that it takes a near-apocalypse to garner my interest these days, but that’s another topic entirely.
To return to somewhere in the general vicinity of the point, I’m sure that what with all the various things I’ve got going on my life, sooner or later I’ll need to take another break from WoW. It will be a sad day indeed but I’ll find some way to survive. After all, there’s always City of Heroes.
Click below if you’d like to hear me read the article:
I was going through the contents of an old disk and stumbled across some answering machine messages that I’d recorded and done some audio editing on back in the 90′s – sort of an early example of me playing around with audio from some of the earlier strata of my life. And I thought it would be amusing to play them for you.
I’ve got two answering machine messages. The first one used samples from Young Frankenstein and the second used samples from Return of the Jedi. And I know I have a couple of friends that I had told about these messages and they were wondering if they’d ever get a chance to listen to them.
So here they are, guys. Be kind!
The messages are at the end of the recording! Click below to listen:
JR: I’m here at ConCarolinas and I’m talking to Joel Kinstle, who is Vice President of Pinnacle Entertainment Group!
JK: Well hello, folks!
JR: Greetings, sir! And the specific thing that I wanted to talk about today is the Showdown rules, skirmish rules for Savage Worlds, because I don’t think that gets very much attention.
JK: Well that’s kind of sad. They’re actually very nice rules and, special bonus: they’re free!
JR: Yeah, that’s always the really awesome thing. You guys are giving things away left and right. It’s like, every time I go to the web site, they’re giving away more stuff and I’m like, “I hope they can stay in business!” (laughs)
JK: That’s because we love our fans so much and are such foolish business people that we’re desperate for milk for our children. All donations are welcome!
JR: (laughs) Awesome. Just for those who may not be familiar, how do the skirmish rules differ from the regular RPG rules in general?
JK: The skirmish rules differ from the regular RPG rules in general in that they focus pretty much on the mechanical aspects and tabletop use. All the Hindrances and most of the social Edges that you might run across tend to be washed out or transmuted into something that would apply on the tabletop. Some of the Edges that tend toward being social or like a quirk that may be in how you play a character get defined mechanically in a way that you can repeat on a tabletop setting. That doesn’t really make for a good role playing experience, but the role playing experience does not translate at all directly to a pure minis game.
JR: How many different Showdown settings do you have out right now?
JK: The Showdown rules, themselves, the 2.0 version, are somewhat recent. Probably out for about five months or so…?
JR: Okay.
JK: But, my brain’s something like tapioca, so you’re gonna have to take that with a… well, grain of tapioca.
JR: I know the feeling.
JK: (chuckles) But, what we have out right now for them is… we have a couple of scenarios that are not really so much setting-specific on the web. We have Raid on Fort 51, which is a Deadlands-specific scenario. It’s really more of a mini-campaign. It’s a series of engagements that things change for one engagement based on what happened in the prior engagement, and the force makes changes a little bit as the story unfolds and that’s a product for sale on the web site. We’ve got a Weird War II scenario that will be coming out on the web site hopefully soon. I’m not sure what will be the next piece out but it can be easily suited to any of the settings. If you could’ve played it in Savage Worlds, you can play it with Savage Showdown.
JR: That’s cool. Now, I remember Rippers started as a Showdown setting, didn’t it?
JK: Well, for the history of Showdown – for those folks who remember The Great Rail Wars, which was the minis version of Deadlands – Deadlands Classic – that was the game that’s kind of turned into the Savage Worlds game itself.
JR: Yeah.
JK: And so, distilling it back down to minis only wasn’t so tough since a lot of that had really already been done. But with prior rules and trying to get everything balanced out there was still some work to do to it. So, the minis game that came of Deadlands Classic turned into Savage Worlds, which produced, of course, Deadlands: Reloaded. (chuckles) So really, it’s all very much related. There’s a lot of similarities amongst it all. Rippers: The Horror Wars was sort of a Great Rail Wars or Showdown-ification of the Rippers setting. There’s nothing out there right now for Showdown 2.0 that is in the Rippers setting, but that’s a setting that’s rife with stuff that can be turned into Showdown.
JR: Well, it seems to me that virtually any setting, because of how simple Savage Worlds is… and by simple I mean easy to play with!
JK: I know what you mean!
JR: (chuckles) It seems to me that any setting – any of your settings could easily be converted over to a Showdown setting.
JK: Oh, they really could. But what you don’t tend to have is a lot of the social, discussion, investigation. Because at that point you’ve turned it into a me-versus-you or us-versus-them fight game. Which I’m not about to say is a bad idea! There’s a lot to be said for sitting down and going, “You know, that boy needs to die.” And putting him down. There’s a LOT to be said.
JR: Well yeah, sometimes you’ve just gotta go bust some heads. But, er… I know that there was probably another question in there… floating around in my melon and I… have to now fish for it…
JK: For the younger folks out there, tapioca used to be a form of pudding that only old people like me and my father ate.
JR: (laughs) I remember tapioca! We used to have that served to us in my grade school cafeteria, and that’s probably… I’m going to try to blame the fact that I can’t remember my next question on the fact that I was served tapioca as a child somehow…
JK: I will admit that I’m wandering very far afield here, but when I was in elementary school our lunch ladies tended to like to make homemade chocolate pudding, which was great! The pudding was excellent. But they really did make homemade-cooked pudding, so they would always end up with this not quite inch-thick layer of skin on the top that they would pull off, cut into squares and give to children who wanted it. And there were FIGHTS for that stuff, man.
JR: Wow.
JK: There is no accounting for the taste of children. But since I never had it, in full fairness I can’t claim it was horrible.
JR: (groans) I can’t imagine – just the… They get into fights over pudding skin in a school cafeteria… I think…
JK: I grew up in a rural area. (chuckles)
JR: Well, you know that actually… You’re talk about kids getting into fights in a school cafeteria over pudding skins. That… You may be coming up right now with a possible new Showdown setting.
JK: That could EASILY be a Showdown scenario! Special bonus points if you dunk the nerdy kid straight head-first into the pot.
JR: That would be great! (laughs) Well, let’s see… Is there anything that you can tell us that we might look for in the future at some point with respect to the Showdown rules?
JK: The Showdown rules are broad and kind of all-inclusive and occasionally when you try and use the building tools to simulate a specific setting very closely, you can run into a few points mismatches. You can produce something that just seems like, “X seems more powerful than Y, but really, shouldn’t Y cost less, I mean something’s wrong here…” They’re kind of rare, but when you’re trying to pin something down PRECISELY, if you’ve got that persnickety feel that you know exactly how that setting ought to go, it can go a little bit around it. And one of the things we’re considering doing is making setting-specific packages for Showdown. Like, perhaps – and this is pure speculation – perhaps repackaging an actual Great Rail Wars-specific set of Showdown bits.
JR: That would be cool!
JK: Or something like that for some of the other settings. I would say the ones most prone to having so much combat that you’d want to do that for would be Great Rail Wars and the Weird Wars lines. What I CAN promise, though, for sure, are more actual Showdown scenarios that’ll be up on the web site and maybe some more freebies for it as well.
JR: Awesome. Well, believe it or not – perhaps it was the ingestion of tapioca, I don’t know – but my brain has returned to me the question I wanted to ask.
JK: Oh, so we’re getting to the ambush part of the interview, is that it?
JR: Potentially, potentially.
JK: You can’t prove I was there, I tell you!
JR: Ah ha! I’d like you to look at these photos and tell me your immediate reaction…
JK: Never seen that girl before in my life.
JR: Wait… those are the wrong photos… never mind. (chuckles) ANYWAY. Well, one of the questions I wanted to ask is have you had a chance to play the skirmish rules at all at any point?
JK: A little bit. I’ve honestly not played a whole lot of them myself because when I have gamer buddies handy, they tend to be handy in big “we wanna role play” clumps. I don’t tend to have the occasional gamer buddy show up and just want to blow stuff up.
JR: Ahhh.
JK: If they’re mad, they just want to blow stuff up, they don’t come looking to me. (laughs) I’m not sure exactly what that says but it tends to be true.
JR: (laughs) Well, you know, yeah… I was gonna ask what you think your favorite setting might be for use with the Showdown rules?
JK: My favorite setting… One thing I’d really like to see done in Showdown rules which I think would be very nifty – and now that you’ve brought it up I think I may have to set somebody to it – is some material for Sticks and Stones. Sticks and Stones had come out as a minis game a long time ago and we’ve reproduced it in a different format. Last year it came out as a card game. The actual role playing game is in the works. So, yes, I’m sure somebody out there will have an “Ooga Booga” stat, but… (chuckles) or perhaps it’s a skill, I’m not quite sure. It’s not finished yet. But having some scenarios for Sticks and Stones I think would be a lot of fun.
JR: I’d love to see that. That would be great. If people want to come and find your products and they’re roving about online, where do they go?
JK: They would go to the Pinnacle home page, which is www.peginc.com.
I think I’ve just figured out why Doctor Who is so important to me these days.
I know, it’s shocking – a geek like myself being a fan of Doctor Who. I’ve been one since I was about seven years old. I’d been hearing for years about that odd, British, science fiction show about a dimensionally transcendent police box and a guy who can travel in time and change his appearance, and at that time I’d never been interested enough to look at it. But then, one day back in the early 1980’s, I happened to catch part of a special early evening showing of The Five Doctors on PBS – not too long after it had first premiered in the United States – and thought I’d go ahead and give watching it a try. After that, they showed the regularly scheduled story for that week, The Creature from the Pit. By the time I got to the end of the evening, I was fully hooked and would never miss an episode if I could help it.
photo by Andrew Wong
The show was like a life-line for me. It encouraged people to revel in being different – which meant quite a lot to me. To say I was a bit odd as a child would be a gross understatement. My horrifyingly bad grade school experiences kept beating the idea into me that being different was bad, but here was a TV show giving me a completely different message – and in a much more entertaining way than I’d encountered from the name-calling bullies on the playground.
I kept watching the show right up until it went on what we can now happily call a long but temporary hiatus in 1989. Then there was a long dry spell punctuated only by an American TV movie and a few books from Virgin that I managed to pick up every now and then. I no longer had Doctor Who in my life in a significant way (though I’d go back and watch episodes that I’d recorded every now and then). But I was okay with that.
The dynamic changed again, though, when the new series started in 2005. I put off watching it for a while, but then when I did I became utterly hooked on it once again, and was soon as deeply attached to it as I’d ever been. The new series had begun acting like a life-line for me again.
I didn’t realize why that was the case until a very short time ago. It wasn’t because of the whole “being different” thing – that’s pretty much a given at this point – but because of the struggle the Doctor goes through in the new series.
You see, for all practical purposes, my life pretty much fell apart in 2005. It had started falling apart long before then, but 2005 was the year of the final collapse. I won’t go into too much detail about it right now, but suffice it to say that I went through some very difficult changes that left me a depressed shell of a person for quite a while. Eventually, though, I started learning once again how to interact with people and even how to trust them.
It’s still not easy, though. I’ve gotten to the point now that I can behave as though I’m alive and can go out and do things with friends from time to time. But there’s always a struggle to keep myself from sinking back into the abyss.
In the new TV series, the Doctor’s life has fallen apart as well. He’s lost nearly everything he cares about. And he’s always struggling to keep himself from falling into the darkness. Since the premiere of the new series there have been three new Doctors, and no matter which one of them you look at, you can see that struggle going on.
Maybe it sounds a bit nuts, but it’s an interesting parallel, and nuts or not, it’s working for me. After helping me deal with the pressures of early life, my childhood hero went away for a while. But when I needed him again, he came back.
The Doctor has his ups and downs, but when it counts, he’s able to remind himself that he’s not alone. Despite everything that’s happened to him, he’s continuing to reach out to people. He’s trying to befriend them and learn to trust them again, even to the extent of taking on new traveling companions. Even though he had to watch as so much he held dear was destroyed, he’s still trying to keep going – to get back to living his life.
And if the Doctor can do that, then maybe I can too.
Click below if you’d like to hear me read the article:
Just wanted to let you know about a few things of mine that are seeing the light of day.
A couple of my monologues were recently published in Main Street Rag, which is a local magazine. It’s the first time any of my monologues have seen print and I am very excited about that!
Also, the From the Dark Side anthology has just come out. It’s a charity anthology benefiting Letters and Light – that’s the organization involved with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). So if you’re interested in helping support and encourage new writers, I suggest you check it out. The anthology includes a short story I wrote quite a while ago called The Looking Glass at Lughnasa, where I kind of put a fey twist on a few of Lewis Carroll’s ideas.
You’ll see the links to both of those in this article and as a new part of the general sidebar on my web site as well. It’s a really great honor to be included among the very talented writers in both publications and I’m really happy about it! And I’d be very pleased if folks would go and take a look at them.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. See you suddenly!
Click below if you’d like to hear me read the article:
(The audio of this interview is available at the bottom of this post!)
JR: Welcome to jimyesthatjim.com, the blog that continues to exist in spite of itself. For those who are listening or reading this I am online with Jennifer Hudock, who is the author of Goblin Market. The thing that I find most interesting actually that I wanted to just sort of address first is that you are a full-time writer, and that is something that is incredibly impressive to someone like me. And, I just was wondering, how did you end up doing that?
JH: I went to college when I was 26, and the funny thing is that I actually went at the time – I mean, I’ve been writing since I was a little kid. It’s all I’ve ever done. I had tried to get things published traditionally before I went to college, and when I went to college I actually went for Criminal Psychology. I was on campus for about a year before I switched my major over to English and Creative Writing. And my advisor at the time thought I was insane and said, “I know somebody who went into that major and I’m going to tell you right now, she graduated four years ago and right now she works at Pizza Hut!” And that was discouraging, but I’m a pretty determined person so I told myself – before I had gone back to college I had worked in retail, I had worked in restaurants and offices – and I told myself that after I graduated I was NOT going to get another job like that. So, once I graduated I started looking into freelance venues and I started working. It wasn’t even writing at the time, it was more internet research for a company that had just started off at that time. And because I was working with them, I got introduced to other people who were working for another company who was more focused on a combination of freelance writing and research. And I worked for them for about two years and somebody that I worked with through that company had moved on and was actually editing a blog for another company. And he really liked my writing and we had a good work relationship and he actually invited me to come and work for him. So, I have been working from home, freelancing and now writing full time for the last three years.
JR: That’s wonderful. I aspire one day to perhaps get to where you are if I can overcome my own sloth and other issues. (chuckles)
JH: (chuckles) It’s not easy. It takes a lot of discipline. I mean, there are days where I wake up and I would rather stay in bed and sleep in until noon like I used to do but because I have to focus on my work like that it’s more disciplined. And because I learned that discipline of having to work at home and being responsible completely for your own income it motivated me in a lot of other ways, too – I mean, even with podcasting and writing fiction. You have deadlines and you have to meet them so, it’s been a help in a lot of different ways.
JR: Do you use any of those two years of Criminal Psychology in your writing at all?
JH: Actually, this is really funny. The thing that prompted me to go into Criminal Psychology was my love of The X-Files.
JR: Ah!
JH: I wanted to be like Mulder. I actually wanted to join the FBI at the time that I applied to go to college. So, I did have about two years’ worth of psychology before I really switched my major. It’s interesting because – psychology – you learn a lot about how the mind works and I definitely do use that when I’m creating characters because one of the things, being inside a character’s head, is knowing how they psychologically process things. So, it does help. Yeah.
JR: Cool, absolutely. Goblin Market, your podcast, is coming to an end, is it not?
JH: Yes, I have one more episode to record and it will be done! I do have to go back – the first seven episodes, the sound quality was just atrocious because my equipment was poor. I went back and I rerecorded the first episode. I haven’t put it out yet, but after that I have six more that I need to rerecord before I can put it up on Podiobooks.
JR: I really liked it. I’ve been enjoying it for some time now. I first heard about it I think when I was – I’m following Mur Lafferty in her feed – in her Twitter feed – and she mentioned it. And so I went and I checked it out. And it’s really cool, I think! I can see very clearly your fandom of things of the ilk of the Rossetti poem and Labyrinth and all that, but you’ve also gone in other directions with it and I think that is cool that you’re coming up with newer ideas to apply to that kind of thing. Where did your primary inspiration for Goblin Market come from?
JH: It was kind of a cross between Labyrinth and the Christina Rossetti poem. The very first chapter of the novel is sort of the younger sister who goes into the market in the Christina Rossetti poem. And I actually introduce it in the podcast with four lines from the poem – you know, “We should not look at goblin men.” And it was kind of a cross between that. And the funny thing is – and a lot of people probably don’t know this – some people might if they’re big fans of Brian Froud and the Labyrinth – but the Goblin Market was originally a Labyrinth fan fiction that I wrote.
JR: Oh, really?
JH: And after I finished it I realized I had put SO many elements that had nothing to do with the original story into it that I could go back and change a few little details and it would be original. So I did that. The Darknjan Wald, which is the bizarre, disgusting, rotting forest that they have to travel through to get to the goblin castle was originally the Labyrinth. So, there was a lot that you could twist and turn into something that had nothing to do with the Labyrinth itself.
JR: That’s very cool. Yeah, I noticed that – that the environment starts changing and it gets less and less recognizable – I guess more alien – and I really liked that.
JH: Thank you.
JR: It’s very cool, it’s very cool. Well now, once Goblin Market ends, you’ve certainly got plenty of other irons on the fire, I think, to keep you busy right now! The Dark Journeys anthology – tell us about that.
JH: Well, the Dark Journeys collection is a collection of short stories. They are completely unrelated to each other and I put one out pretty much every Friday on Amazon and Smashwords for download for 99 cents to $1.99. I only have one right now that’s $1.99 and that’s because it’s novella-length. But they’re all completely unconnected to each other – but yet, they’re connected by the fact that life itself is a journey. And I twisted it into these dark elements that sometimes we face things in life that are really difficult to overcome. But instead of just focusing on difficult life elements I took it more to a supernatural level. One of the stories, Portrait of the Dead Countess, is about a young boy who becomes enchanted by a haunted portrait in his family’s summer home that is connected to the devil. And through the devil in this portrait he becomes mesmerized and he kills for this portrait to sustain its life – because the woman the portrait was painted of gained immortality by selling her soul to the devil, and the portrait itself was actually painted on human flesh – like, the canvas was human flesh.
JR: Nice!
JH: So, I mean, it’s completely against his will that he’s doing this – like, he’s committing murders to sustain the portrait’s life…
JR: Interesting…
JH: I mean, which, you know – that happens every day. (laughs)
JR: Well, yeah! (laughs) I was almost thinking sort of a reverse Dorian Gray type thing there, where you’re just doing all you can to keep the portrait safe. That’s awesome, that’s great. So, what prompted this sort of buck-and-two-buck fiction thing going on?
JH: My fiancée, James Melzer, started a Deviant Dollars series a couple of months ago where he was selling short stories on Amazon and Smashwords for 99 cents. And I thought to myself, he’s a genius! Because I have been trying to sell my fiction for years and every single story in this collection has been shopped out or previously published on smaller venues like online zines or journals that are so obscure you would never even know about them. And I thought this is a good way to get your work out there so people can read it!
JR: Cool! And are people buying it?
JH: Yeah, yeah! I mean, surprisingly enough, some stories do much better than others. Two of the stories are zombie stories. I have the Zombie Double Shot, which is the shortest thing in the collection and it actually has two stories in it – it only comes to about 3000 words with both stories combined, but that one has outsold all the other stories like four to one.
JR: Well, that’s great! I look forward to seeing how that comes out because that sounds like you guys may be onto something there!
JH: Yeah, a lot of people are actually doing it now, and I’m not sure if they’re having success with it. I tend to approach it from – you know, if you help me out and help me spread the word about this I’m glad to give you the story for free. So, I think that helps a little bit. And the funny thing is that a lot of the people who do blog about it or spread the word about it, they’re like, “No, no. I want to support you. I’ll buy it.” And that’s touching.
JR: That IS great.
JH: Because the community that we’re a part of is just so amazing – I mean people just have no idea. (chuckles)
JR: Absolutely, absolutely. So what’s next? You clearly have, like I said, a bunch of irons on the fire. Any of them that you’d care to pull out and have us bask in the glow of?
JH: Well, I AM working on two collaborative anthology projects. I have the From the Dark Side anthology, which is a charity anthology. I have a bunch of people who are submitting work. We’re going to put the anthology together and sell it through Amazon and Smashwords, and if it does well I would like to actually put it out in print as well. We’ve had some amazing people who are just willing to give their stuff over and we’re going to donate all of the proceeds from the sales to the Letters and Light organization which is affiliated with the National November is Writing Month forums.
JR: Which organization was that?
JH: Letters and Light. It’s a charity that helps promote creative writing in classrooms for kids.
JR: Cool. Excellent.
JH: So there’s that that I’m working on, and I’m also working on the Farrago anthology, which is another charity sort of anthology. It’s not as official, but my friend Michael Bekemeyer, who is a filmmaker, needs to raise money so he can actually put his film vision into the works. So, I mentioned it on Twitter: “Hey, would you guys be willing to donate a story to this anthology so we can help Michael raise money for his film project?” And I was just blown away by the amount of people who came out and were like, “I’ll do it! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” And, I mean, by the end of that day I had so many e-mails from people who wanted to help Michael out – people that didn’t even know him – that it just blew my mind!
JR: Awesome. Well, I am definitely looking forward to that. Give us your web site! How can we find you?
“You know what this movie could use?” I asked no one in particular. “Godzilla.”
e also working on an API: Savage Worlds Edition.
BUT I’d appreciate it if you let anybody that you know – who you think might be interested – know about the book. So if you have any friends who are into acting or comedy or who like strange poetry, people who are involved in theatre or in university theatre departments, actors, acting students or folks who just like silly character pieces, I would very much appreciate it!
http://www.crucibleofrealms.com/
http://www.everyworldnews.com/
http://www.rpgdebate.com/
Abduction Etiquette
Farrago on Amazon Kindle
From the Dark Side on Amazon
Main Street Rag – Spring 2010
