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And Now a Look at Mad Scientist University
What with Christmahannukwanzaayuladanivus coming up, people have begun scrambling about like ants in a recently-stomped sandbox searching for original-looking gifts to buy. As it happens, I have a suggestion on that front.
Not too long ago I got the opportunity to try out a very interesting game called Mad Scientist University. It’s been available from Atlas Games for a couple of years now, but with the influx of independent card games we’ve been seeing lately, many folks might have lost it in the shuffle.
I think one of the most interesting things about it is that even though cards are used, it’s NOT actually a card game. This is more of what we’d call a storytelling game. As the name implies, players each take the role of a student at a university full of mad scientists. Three to seven people sit and take turns as the Teacher’s Assistant (or TA), handing out a card to each other player. Each of those cards has a single Unstable Element listed on it such as Mud, Kitty Litter or a Rubber Chicken. The TA then reveals the randomly selected Insane Assignment, which can be anything from winning an election to mapping a black hole. Each player must then come up with an explanation of how they can use their Unstable Element to complete the Assignment. Whoever the TA decides has the best plan gets awarded an Insane Assignment card. Then another player becomes the TA and another turn is begun. Play continues for at least three rounds, at the end of which whoever has collected the most Insane Assignment cards is declared the winner – and has thus beaten their fellow mad scientists to the top of the class!
This game was a lot of fun to play. Of course, being an incorrigible ham probably helped me out a great deal with that. Taking on the role of a megalomaniacal college student is not for the easily stumped or embarrassed! Thankfully, I myself have very little in the way of shame.
I very much like the way in which the game promotes the idea of the players throwing themselves into their roles, the TA in particular, who’s encouraged in the text of the rules to behave as an insane demagogue! You certainly don’t see THAT in every rules document. The rules are also presented quickly and simply, on the underside of the game box – which is pretty small and easily portable; after all, the only things you need to carry are the cards. This means you can pretty much just read the rules and get going without having to deal with much of a learning curve.
I can see this game working pretty well as a gateway to get friends and family members interested in new and different kinds of games, though it helps if they’re inclined toward the Weird to begin with. There’s also an expansion planned called Spring Break that looks like it’ll bring in some new and interesting twists.
When my friends and I played this game, we had a very good time with it, though you should keep in mind that the more players you have, the longer the game will take. In our second game we were at the upper limit of seven players and I found that quite a few folks were about ready to move on to something else by the time we got into the second round. I should point out, however, that we were all veterans of RPGs and were rather specific and grandiose in our descriptions. There was also beer involved – though, granted, a few of the players said the beer enhanced the experience for them rather than detracting from it.
All in all, the only problem I really have with this game is that the suggested retail price of $24.95 is a little bit steep. However, that said, I still recommend it as something you may want to look into picking up this holiday season. With the massive number of games out on the market, finding one that stands out AND that encourages the use of the imagination can be a real challenge, and Mad Scientist University does both in spades.
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The Confession of a Talismaniac
I discovered the board game Talisman back in the 90’s, when it was just coming out with its 3rd edition. I had a bunch of friends – henceforth known as “pushers” – who initiated me into the ways of that game with its 2nd edition. We only played once or twice but that was enough to engender a deep and sometimes disturbing addiction.
I eventually got a hold of the 3rd Edition of Talisman, which most of my friends had never seen before. It wasn’t long before we were having regular games of it over at my house once a week – sometimes more often than that. We couldn’t get enough of it. It was like a drug that had grabbed hold of our brains and wouldn’t let go.
Two of the things that made this game so horrifyingly addictive – and still do – are that 1) it’s easy to learn and 2) it has expansions. The game is very accessible and appears to have infinite potential right from the start! For someone like me, that kind of game is nigh-impossible to resist. That’s especially true when you consider its D&D-like fantasy setting and the fact that you’re all playing characters who you can choose to move in any available direction when you roll the die and whose stats you’re trying to improve enough to make it to the final challenge at the center of the board. All qualities that sucked me in like a tornado.
And then of course you have the expansions – separate boards you can enter, whenever you like, to fight different kinds of monsters and earn rewards that help boost your stats in different ways. When the 3rd Edition came out they started making those expansions L-shaped so that they could fit together with the main board – with the exception of a 3-dimensional tower that you could put at the board’s center. That little innovation only served to make the game look that much cooler and, naturally, that much more addictive.
Now, in reality, while the game IS very replayable, after you’ve played a few times you pretty much know what’s going to happen. The players are going to try to build themselves up as fast as they can. The process will inevitably take at least a few hours and will continue until one of the players calculates he or she can’t possibly lose and decides to charge to the center and end the game.
I’ve just described almost every Talisman game I’ve ever played.
Of course, by the time my friends and I discovered that little fact, the game already had its hooks in us, and knowledge of the endless cycle we were now facing didn’t really matter. We still played in marathons that seemed to last days on end as late nights would bleed into early mornings. Then we discovered Drinking Talisman, and it was all downhill from there.
There were no real rules for Drinking Talisman – not the version we came up with, anyway. We’d take a drink whenever somebody won a combat… or was turned into a toad… or crossed into a different region… or pretty much whenever we felt like it. We would all begin chanting “TOAD! TOAD! TOAD!” whenever someone was possibly about to be Toaded – a chant that would only become louder and more elaborate the more inebriated we were. One night after nursing a particularly large bottle of Scotch for a while I started going and lying down in the next room between turns and, despite my drunken stupor, always managed somehow to figure out when it was time to come back and sit down to take my next turn. I’m told that, disturbingly, the only thing different about me on each occasion was that my hair had become wilder and more chaotic every time I returned to the table.
2nd Edition Talisman in play. Photo by Wikipedia contributor “Frecklefoot.”
This kind of addiction doesn’t seem to fade. Even though I’ve moved twice – and the game has gone out of print twice – since falling prey to it, I’ve continued to play whenever I can convince my friends to do so. I still wander around online every now and then looking for fan-made add-ons to the game (I highly recommend the Talisman Island site for that, by the way). I try going cold turkey every now and then, but sooner or later I always find myself breaking out the game board in a cold sweat and caressing it lovingly until I can rope someone into playing. There is no hope for me.
The game is now in a revision of its 4th Edition and is currently available from Fantasy Flight Games. I have the original 4th Edition, but I haven’t had a chance to buy anything for the revised version as of yet. Fantasy Flight has already put out three expansions for it and there may be more on the horizon. As you can imagine, I’m chomping at the bit to get a hold of them. Especially if the revisions help with some of the afore-mentioned predictability issues I’ve come to know and loathe over the years.
In the mean time I’ll continue applying house rules and fan material as needed. And alcohol, when desired.
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And Now an Interview with J.C. Hutchins
(The audio of this interview is available at the bottom of this post!)
JR: Welcome to the experience that is Jim – Yes, THAT Jim, the blog that is constantly stumbling over itself trying to figure out what it is.
JCH: I’m just glad I actually know who “that Jim” actually is now!
JR: I’m still figuring it out, really! (laughs) So, first off, I guess for anyone who might not be fully familiar, tell us a bit about the whole 7th Son thing.
JCH: Sure! I started writing 7th Son way back in 2002. I began writing a book that I knew was going to be big. I’m highly influenced by Stephen King – I love the guy and I love his work – and my favorite novel of his is The Stand. That’s not to say that he hasn’t written great books since then, but that’s one of the books that I really love because the stakes are pretty much at their highest in a book like that. I love high stakes fiction.
JR: Oh yeah!
JCH: And, so I kind of set out to write
a story that kind of rivaled his The Stand in length and scope the best I could. And, you know, have the whole end of the world kind of thing hanging in the balance with my story as well. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. And I finished writing a 1200 page manuscript in 2004, so it took me two years. Actually it was longer than that, but I then spent the next year, 2005, editing it down to 1200 pages and then sending it out to literary agents because this is how the publishing business works. You can’t really submit your manuscripts to publishers and editors if you are a nobody. You need a champion. You need a middle man. You need an agent.
JR: Oh yeah.
JCH: And so that’s what I did. And I received universal rejections because the publishing industry – deservedly so – would not make an exception for a nobody author who had written a 1200 page book that couldn’t be sold. Because of its length alone. (chuckles) So I was kind of heartbroken but during that time I was also listening to podcasting and came across the work of Scott Sigler, who was one of the very first podcast novelists, and he was releasing his unpublished manuscript online in free, audio podcast format, serialized week to week. And by the end of 2005 I was like, “Well, you know, if I can’t sell this book I might as well share it.” And that’s when I started recording 7th Son and releasing it on the internet. The book is a high-tech thriller that takes place in present day and it’s about human cloning, genetics, nature vs nurture, the nature of human identity and a villain apparently hell-bent on global chaos and destruction.
JR: Excellent! (laughs) If I may briefly quote here from one of the gentlemen on the back, from Patrick Lussier, “Breakneck storytelling at its absolute best. Characters – dark, duplicitous, and fascinating – stalk through a rich techscape that’s so real, so plausible, it compels and haunts.” The “techscape” word really is something I latched onto in my little hindbrain. What did you do as far as sculpting the world – how did you decide you wanted to start to create that “techscape” as they’re calling it?
JCH: Yeah! Well, first off, I mean like that is the coolest quote in the world, from Patrick Lussier, one of the coolest guys. And I have the good fortune of saying I personally know him and have personally met him. He’s the director of My Bloody Valentine 3-D, White Noise 2, Dracula 2000 – I mean some of my favorite genre pictures he’s done – edited the Scream trilogy – OMG! The guy’s just freaking amazing and the nicest man you’d ever meet! Anyway, he picked up on that – you’ve picked up on that, and that’s something I certainly wanted to build into the 7th Son universe – was that I wanted to make the surface of the 7th Son universe as absolutely pedestrian and normal and as well-rooted in reality as WE are rooted in reality. But also kind of build just beneath the surface a 60 (at LEAST 60) year legacy of conspiracy theories and clandestine technologies and government arrangements with other countries and stuff that simply is not publicly available and CANNOT be publicly available because it is protected under a super-secret – beyond top secret – classification called Code Phantom. In the world of 7th Son, only ten people on the planet have access to what is called Code Phantom Clearance and the kind of super secrets that fall under that security clearance. And really what all this was is I wanted to build a plausible history and mythology that could support the core conceit of my novel, which was not only that human cloning exists but that it has existed for at least 15 years and that in addition to that the ability to record human memories – which is, to me, the key ingredient in a great human cloning story – that that has also existed for 15 years. And how could a government create a program like that? And how could it fund it? And how could that exist without people knowing about it? And who would want that technology? And who would be willing to do anything to obtain that technology? All that stuff. And that’s kind of like the superstructure or the foundation of this building all kind of funneling up to the core premise which is human cloning isn’t near – it’s already here! (laughs)
JR: Ah, yes! And we actually heard that quote – we saw that quote in that wonderful promotion that you did where you “hacked” everybody’s blogs.
JCH: Yeah! That was great!
JR: This very one that people may be staring at, at the moment, included (where I got to do my slightly hamfisted Kilroy2.0 impersonation). That’s one of the really most innovative things, I think, also about this whole thing – is the way that you’re promoting it. And that is not just through podcastery but also through this various-blog-hacking stuff. And the music as well!
JCH: Yeah!
JR: Actually, something that I thought was just a brilliant idea was when you took music written by one of the characters in the book. Essentially, you decided to put out songs – actual MP3 files of songs that this guy, John Smith, had written. And I’m just curious – how did you come up with that?
JCH: It just popped in my head! I like to play “What If?” It all starts with, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” And that’s how all of my fiction starts and that’s how all of my promotion ideas start. And a lot of my promotion is a form of storytelling in its own way. There’s usually obviously a participatory element, but whenever I can build a mythology into what we’re doing as a community to support 7th Son, I do it. For instance, the 7th Son Ministry of Propaganda, which is basically an online street team. I mean, at the beating heart of it, it’s a street team, and there’s nothing really unusual about that. That’s been going on for years. But what I did was that the Ministry of Propaganda is being led by a Russian woman named Natasha who is imperious and doesn’t ask you for your help, she COMMANDS you to help! And so, kind of building a mythology around Natasha, I think, helps people playfully buy into this fake history and have more fun with the experience! And that’s really what this is all about. It’s that, yes, I would LOVE if you supported 7th Son by spreading the word, but if it’s a fun experience then you’re 1000 times more likely to do it.
JR: Oh yeah. And I’ve got to say that I think your stuff has the most awesome extras I’ve ever seen of any author, pretty much!
JCH: Well, you know, in kind of getting it back into the John Smith songs, one of the things I did was I was just kind of sitting there, and *POOF!* Wouldn’t it be cool if John Smith actually recorded and released some of the song titles that he mentions in 7th Son: Descent? And these titles are actually mentioned in the text of the book, which was written years and years ago. And I thought, “Well, yeah, that would be cool. What would I need to do to do that?” Well, I’d need to find a musician to collaborate with who could take my notes about the ideas that I had for these song titles and some mythology and history about John Smith and have him write and perform the songs. And that’s exactly what I did. I reached out to a dear friend, Matthew Wayne Selznick, who is also a podcast novelist. Fantastic lyricist and performer, period! I’ve heard him play acoustic Folk live and it was SO freaking cool!
JR: Yeah, it’s really good stuff!
JCH: Yeah! And that’s kind of what I did. And so the whole kind of goal was to, again, create art and create an experience that not only entertains the listener but also kind of draws them into the 7th Son world in an unconventional way. In a way that enhances their pre-existing knowledge of the book if they’ve already read the book or informs them on what to kind of experience as John as a character if they purchase and read the book. And it’s also kind of cool because you can actually compare the song list of the EP we recorded and the names of the songs in the book and be able to say, “I have actually listened to that song!” And how cool is that?
JR: Oh, that’s great.
JCH: I’m releasing those songs on my web site in weekly installments.
JR: Yeah and actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to – after this interview – play one of those songs. I see we’re almost out of time, here, so I just wanted to go ahead and ask the last question, which I’ve actually shamelessly stolen from another podcast called The Game’s the Thing, because they do awesome work. And that question is what one fact about you might your fans not know?
JCH: My favorite piece of apparel – that I wear regularly – is my robot boxers.
JR: Ooh! (laughs) So, actual boxers with robots on them?
JCH: Robots. Robots are awesome.
JR: Robots.
JCH: Robots are awesome. And whenever I wear these boxers I feel twice as awesome as I would on my best day.
JR: Well, they ARE our future masters so it is good to make sure we pay the proper obeisance to them.
JCH: That’s right! You know, I’m always smelling emerging trends and I figured I’d get on this train pretty quick.
JR: Well, that’s great! (chuckles) J.C. Hutchins, thank you very much for coming and talking about this. I really appreciate it!
JCH: Jim, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much!
Song – Winter Love by John Smith
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Personal Branding (Yeeee… Ha?)
Howdy, partners.
I expect some of y’all are curious about the art o’ Personal Brandin’. Step on up to the fire-pit and grab a hot iron, if you think you’re ready. It takes a brave one to do it, but once everybody sees that there emblem on you, the folks’ll flock to you like a flight o’ rabid condors! It’ll only be a few seconds before you pass out from the pain, so come on! Who’s first?
Okay, okay, tempted as I am to finish this whole article in character, I’ll drop the accent and get a tad more serious.
I’ve taken a few tentative steps into the wading end of personal branding and will probably need to try sinking or swimming very soon. Something I’ve been learning is that writers – writers of pretty much anything – need to advertise not only their work, but THEMSELVES. What that essentially means is that they have to find ways to make themselves memorable to their readership.
Mur Lafferty (author of “Heaven” and “Playing for Keeps”) talks about this fairly frequently on her podcast. J.C. Hutchins is doing it all over the place – remember him, by the way? The guy whose Kilroy2.0 character “hacked” this blog and a bunch of others on October 27th to promote the release of “7th Son?” If you do, then he’s evidently getting it right.
I’m still working on it. I really need to get in gear, though, since I may very well have a creative project to promote sometime next year (more on that if and when it comes to fruition). I recently came across an article by the inimitable Miss Destructo that discusses the creation of a personal identity and an accompanying press kit. All I can say is that when the time comes for me to put a press kit together, I’ll be referencing it heavily! It also shows that there are clearly a lot of steps I have yet to take in defining my own “brand.”
But, that said, here’s some of what I’ve done so far. Hopefully it’ll be helpful for someone out there who might just be getting started.
Who is this OtherDoc guy, anyway?
I use the handle “otherdoc” for things like instant messaging services, bulletin boards and various online community sites – basically anywhere that you’re encouraged to go by a cool pseudonym instead of your real name. I’ve been using it ever since the late 90’s, when I needed to give my then-local ISP a user ID. “Doc” was already taken, so I went with “otherdoc” instead – and it stuck. And no, I’m not a real doctor in any sense of the word. The “doc” aspect was a throwback to my fascination with both Doctor Who and Doc Holliday. Merge the two and you get a cantankerous smart-alec trying to use his wits to make the universe a better place – which is kind of how I’d like to describe myself – well, an idealized version of myself, anyway. The “other” aspect, while initially just a way to stand out, has come to represent that sort of “alien” vibe I’m told I tend to give off (if you’ve met me, you probably know what I’m talking about). It also works nicely as a way for my humility to come out and prod me every now and then, reminding me that I’m not necessarily the idealized “Doc” composite to which I aspire – I’m the OTHER “Doc.”
Regardless of its origin, using the same handle wherever I go means that people will hopefully recognize me no matter what site I’m on. If you’re picking a handle out for yourself that you’d like to use in a similar way, choose something that you won’t mind being remembered as because you’ll be stuck with it for a long time.
What’s with the eye?
So, you might have noticed that picture of my left eye that appears on my web site, as album art for this blog’s audio files and on virtually every web site and communication service to which I subscribe that allows the use of a personal icon. Honestly, like my net handle, I stumbled onto the use of that, too. I had a web camera at one time and tried to get silly and artistic with it. That photo, showing my left eye in the light and my right eye in shadow, was probably the best of all the ones I took (which probably gives you a good idea of just how pathetic I am at photography). I’ve used it – or at least the right-most part of it on those occasions when I have to use an icon that’s completely square – as another way people can recognize me. If they won’t always know me by my face, then by thunder they’ll know me by my eye!
In other words, faces can be forgotten, but if you have some kind of logo – even if it’s just an extreme close-up on one particular feature – people are more likely to remember it. Maybe not at first, but if you get it out there enough, they will!
Like I said, these are just a couple of small steps. There’s a lot more for me to do to get where I’ll need to be. In the mean time, I’d be curious to hear what you folks out there in the digital ether have been doing as a way of branding yourselves? What do you do to shout your identity to the world? Don’t be shy – mosey on over to the blog’s comments area and throw down some responses. We’ll keep the fire-pit ready and the irons hot!
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A Quick Announcement… and a Retraction
Hey, folks!
Just in case anyone might still be wondering, no, I was NOT really hacked! That last blog entry was a promo. So, no need to worry about that!
Just wanted to record a quick update and let you know that I shall be conspicuously absent for the next few days because I am going to ICC.
What’s ICC?
Why, the International Camarilla Conclave! (Or, in layman’s terms, “the big meeting of all of the people who are in that pretending-to-be-vampires club that I’m in.”) So, I’m afraid no new journal entries until after this weekend, but just wanted to give you the heads-up on that and record at least a tiny little something so that you know I am, in fact, still around and desire to continue to produce content for ya!
Take care, folks. See you later!
——————————-
Um…
Looks like some last minute issues came up and it turns out I will not be going after all.
So. Feel free to ignore everything I just said.
Ha ha ha ha… ha. Ha.
Right. As you were!
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The Evils of So[ CONTENT OVERRIDE: KILROY2.0 IS HERE!!! ]
Something has been seriously bugging me lately. I’m not sure how long this has been going on, but have you noticed something peculiar that’s started to happen when they stick an animated character into a film?
I thought I was imagining it at first, but after the most recent batch of summer blockbusters, I realized I was seeing the same thing over and over. It hasn’t been very noticeable but I’m pretty sure I’ve finally worked out what’s actually going on.
Here’s the deal.
>>> [ WARNING ::: DATABASE ERROR ::: CONTENT OVERRIDE ::: SOURCE: EXTERNAL ] <<<
> source terminal location: UNKNOWN
> source terminal identity: UNAVAILABLE
> source login information: ENCRYPTED
> message begins
the post you are now reading is designed to dull your senses to THE TRUTH. do not live the life of the worker bee, the cog, the well-oiled piston in the MACHINE OF DECEIT!
there is a grand CONSPIRACY afoot. you have been taught to believe that you are UNIQUE, one of a kind. THIS IS NOT TRUE. long ago, a cabal of scientists created technologies to ensure that ANYONE’S MIND AND BODY can be duplicated.
human cloning isn’t NEAR. it’s already HERE. discover the truth at http://JCHutchins.net
you are being DECEIVED. break free from the cogs, flee the hive, become A PROPHET OF THE TRUTH!
kilroy2.0 was here … kilroy2.0 is everywhere
>>> [ CONTENT OVERRIDE CEASES ::: DATABASE STATUS: RECOVERING ] <<<
probably keep happening until the word “maudlin” is almost totally obscured.
That’s the scary part. This kind of thing will keep going on in movies, literature and even podcasts without anybody realizing what’s really occurring.
I’m just glad to have caught it now, before someone had to break the sock puppets out to explain it to me.
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Do I Want to RSVP for the Marvel/Disney Wedding?
So, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last month or so I’m sure you heard that Disney purchased Marvel Comics. For the most part this doesn’t bother me too much. These kinds of things happen all the time. I understand that Disney has many departments and isn’t necessarily the evil empire a lot of folks make it out to be. I realize they’ve been taking a hands-off approach to a lot of things and will likely do so with Marvel for the most part (maybe getting more involved with the Marvel video games and the syndication of the older Marvel cartoons than anything else). I’ve also read over plenty of articles stating that this is a good thing for Marvel and will give them the financial backing they so desperately need right now.
But, that said, there is one little thing that worries me.
How will this affect future Marvel films? Will I want to go and see them?
I understand that they’ll be better funded. I also know that there are plenty of folks who don’t like a lot of Marvel’s recent films and think this will only make them better. As it happens I’ve actually liked the majority of the Marvel films that have been coming out lately, warts and all, but that’s a different subject.
The issue I have about the quality of future movies will likely come down to whether or not Disney wants to put their name on them. For the next couple of years that’s not going to be a problem since Marvel’s current film contracts with various studios aren’t being affected. It’s what happens after those contracts end that concerns me.
Disney does plenty of things through secondary studios (Touchstone, Miramax, etc). If it goes that route I don’t see there being too big a difference in the movies except for an increase in budget along with whatever side effects there will be as a result of the terms of standing contracts with individual writers, directors and actors. Though, admittedly, the contract issue is usually a concern no matter WHAT studio is involved.
If, on the other hand, Disney DOES want to put their name on the movies, going through their main studio – Walt Disney Pictures – then I believe I see shadows on the horizon.
I realize that the quality of the live-action movies to come out of Walt Disney Pictures has improved vastly since such euthanasia-inspiring wonders as Operation Dumbo Drop and the heavily-butchered adaptations of My Favorite Martian and Inspector Gadget. Somewhere around the release of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie (or “Ca-Ruh-BEE-in” if you’re going with the official Disney mispronunciation), characters in live-action Disney films started behaving somewhat closer to the way actual human beings do.
However, there still remain quite a few issues over what can and cannot be done in a movie with Disney’s name on it. Since I’ve already brought up the Pirates franchise, let’s stick with that as an example. Spoilers ahoy, by the way, in case you’re waiting for the Mayan Apocalypse to pass by before you rent the DVDs. I liked the first movie quite a bit. The second was pretty good too if you ignored the fact that they messed around with the characters’ motivations a bit and that just about every third word spoken in the film was “pirate” (though, granted, the first one suffered from that as well).
In my opinion, the third movie was decent, but I had a fairly serious problem with it. I’ve heard that the 2nd and 3rd movies were made at the same time so I’m not sure why I didn’t notice this as much in Dead Man’s Chest, but it seemed as though At World’s End was seriously dumbed down. It seemed as 
though EVERY joke had to beat the audience over the head. Everything had to be extremely obvious, obnoxious and over-the-top.
Now, I know that to an extent it was SUPPOSED to be over-the-top. I’m confident in saying that I enjoy swashbuckling adventure as much as the next guy. But it was still too much. Maybe there was a good excuse for it. Maybe they had to rush the edit to get the movie out on time and ended up giving it to a bunch of interns. I don’t know the true reason, but I do have a sneaking suspicion that someone at Disney wanted to make sure the movie was marketable to the lowest common denominator and made that known to whoever was cutting it together at the 11th hour.
And, of course, there are Disney’s standards and practices to consider. I’ve heard plenty of my friends say that they love the wedding scene that takes place in the 3rd movie on board a ship in the middle of a massive sword fight. I’ll be kind here and say that I know they tried – they really did – but it just didn’t work for me or for my badly-abused suspension of disbelief. Especially after I realized that the scene likely only came into being because the happy couple have sex near the end of the movie.
After all, you can’t do things like having intercourse out of wedlock in a movie with Disney’s name on it, can you? I’m sure there are quite a few other things you can’t do as well.
THAT is what worries me about future Marvel movies. How much of a straight jacket will there be on this massive Avengers initiative that’s now building steam? Will Wolverine have to quit smoking – AGAIN? Will Spider-Man have to stop and explain every single joke he makes in the heat of combat?
Only time will tell. Until then it is my fervent wish that these two companies just stay good friends without taking their relationship to the next level. I’ll be listening out in the hope that we don’t hear the dread toll of wedding bells – because if we do, we’ll know it won’t be long before Marvel assumes the position.
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The Grinder vs The Showboat in RPGs
Here’s a question that comes up from time to time when I’m playing role-playing games. Is it better for your character to have a mechanical advantage on its character sheet or to have a non-mechanical advantage gained through role-playing with NPCs and interacting with the plot?
I realize that with a question of that level of complexity the immediate reaction is probably, “Wha… huh?” So, let’s break this down and analyze it a bit. There are a couple of types of gamers that personify the extreme end of each option: the Grinder and the Showboat.
1: The Grinder
In the lingo of MMORPG players, a “grinder” is someone who goes out and kills things repeatedly just to get the experience necessary to level up. This term has mutated a little and drifted over to tabletop, where it refers to a player who’s only interested in gaining more and more of a mechanical and tactical advantage – and often does so by focusing solely on the hack and slash elements of the game.
Grinders can be fun to play with if you’re not taking the game too seriously. Unfortunately, they can also kill the role playing element by encouraging the rest of the group to focus solely on the game’s tactical or mechanical aspects. Now, some groups are fine with this. If you have a group full of Grinders, then there isn’t really a problem.
If the group is a bit more diverse, however, then having one or more Grinders can become more of an issue. If they just keep going on unchecked without considering the rest of the group, they can hog attention and make the game less fun for everyone else. Similarly, if the GM or other players crack down too hard on the Grinders in a group, then that means less fun for the Grinders, which isn’t good either.
So when I feel like grinding as a player I try to keep it reined in enough that it won’t stomp all over other players’ fun. When I’m running a game with a Grinder in it, I try to make sure that there’s enough action to satisfy him or her without it getting too ridiculous for the other players.
2: The Showboat
The term “showboat,” while originally referring to a paddle-wheel steam ship used as a traveling theatre, has also come to mean a person who likes to show off for the sake of attention. I’m sure anyone who’s played a lot of RPGs has run into their fair share of individuals who like to role-play their characters and are very good at talking. That’s all well and good and even encouraged in most games, but when they overdo it to the point that they’re showboating, it can become a problem. I will admit that as a former theatre student, this is a trap I’m a bit more prone to fall into.
Like Grinders, Showboats can draw a lot of attention away from other players if they don’t watch themselves. Some will deliberately play their characters to the hilt with the express purpose of hijacking the game’s narrative. That means they can end up taking control of the plot to make their characters more important or to gain advantages that aren’t mechanical but effectively exempt a character from game mechanics the other players still have to deal with.
When I feel like I’m starting to show off too much I try to take it down a notch. These kinds of players can be tough to keep in line, but the important thing for a GM to remember is to keep paying attention to the other players as well as the Showboat.
Whether you’re dealing with mechanical rewards or story rewards, the key is moderation.
As a GM, I think it’s important to have a good balance of rewards in a game. Offering both mechanical and story rewards will encourage players to go for both. Keeping an eye on what aspects of the game each player enjoys and scaling the different elements of the game accordingly will go a long way towards keeping the players happy.
As a player, I think that having mechanical advantages on your character sheet is very helpful – after all, it’s much cooler when your character’s effective – but those advantages always need to line up with the concept you have for the character. That includes how you’re going to role-play him or her. Similarly, gaining power, influence or other story-based perks through role-playing is great, but not to the extent that you completely undermine the game’s mechanics.
So which kind of advantage is better? Neither. Or both. It really depends on your playing style, but in my opinion if you try to set a balance between the two, you’ll get a lot more out of the experience – without having to grind OR showboat.
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Thought Without Thinking
Whenever I talk about my own thought process, I feel as though I’m about to attempt an impossible task. After all, it’s not possible to talk about what a maze looks like from the outside when you’ve never been outside the maze, is it? It’s like trying to see the top of your own head – without the aid of mirrors.
Nevertheless, let’s give it a shot.
I have a little issue with getting tasks done.
“But Jim,” I hear someone saying, “you’re writing an article for your blog right now, aren’t you? Isn’t that a task that you’re getting done as we speak?”
Sure it is, but all that means is that the issue isn’t completely insurmountable. It IS pretty overwhelming, though. Also, this article is pretty short compared to the plethora of other tasks I need to be working on, so that makes it easier to finish.
The issue is this: I think too much. A shocking revelation, I know.
A few years back I came to the conclusion that I have the ADD/OCD cocktail. This means I have trouble keeping thoughts in my head and am distracted fairly easily. It also means that I obsess over pretty much each one of those fleeting thoughts for the duration of its brief stay in my cranium. When I’m working on something, I analyze it to the nth degree and try to get it as close to perfection as possible… until I’m distracted by something else (which I then proceed to work on to the nth degree and try to get as close to perfection as possible… until I’m distracted by something else… and so on and so on and so on…).
I don’t have much in the way of direct experience of this, but from what I’ve heard, when you have a child it becomes incredibly difficult to hold onto a thought for more than a few minutes because the kid is constantly distracting you. If that’s truly the case then I think living in my head must be somewhat analogous to running a day care center. I spend a lot of time chasing down individual thoughts that are important to me and trying to deal with them while all of my other thoughts are yelling for attention. I can keep them all quiet if I play a video game or watch a movie, but if I then try to do something else, they all start acting up again.
The easiest thing to do, of course, is to follow the path of least resistance and just do whatever I feel like doing. Unfortunately, this has made me a champion procrastinator. It has also led to a lot of half-finished projects.
So, how do I get past this to be a good, productive, drone-like member of society? Is there a way to harness my childlike, multi-headed thought beast and make it work FOR me?
Honestly, I haven’t worked out a COMPLETELY satisfactory solution yet, which is likely why I’m still unemployed, but I have at least started to get a tiny bit further on my creative projects. Granted, this is about like Sisyphus just getting an inkling of how to position himself to move the boulder up the hill, but at least it’s a start.
So, what did I do to make it possible to write this article? True, I haven’t finished it yet, but if you’re reading it now then that means I must complete it sometime in the near future. Either that or we’re about to experience a rift in the space-time continuum.
“Maze” courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The truth is that when I do something, I have to trick myself into not thinking about it. This is an especially strange process when writing because the words have to form in my head before they appear on the page, which of course means I’ve thought about them. But how to think about something WITHOUT thinking about it?
There IS a way. It requires sneaking up on my psyche and suddenly leaping into action without any thought whatsoever beforehand. If I begin working on something without warning – even though I’m really just going through the motions because I have no Earthly idea what I’m actually doing – it seems to kick some part of my mind into a state that can only exist AFTER all the necessary decisions regarding the task have already been made. If I’m lucky, the rest of my brain will then play along and supply me with the bits I need to keep doing whatever I’m doing. Thus far I’ve been able to get it to work better for shorter tasks and I’m hoping that with practice I can sustain it over time.
I don’t understand how the process works. It shouldn’t be possible to just skip to the second step of doing something if the first step involves figuring out what the second step IS. And yet it must work somehow, because I see that we’ve just about come to the end of this article. I’m sure that if I spend too much more time trying to figure it out, my head will explode.
So in the interest of maintaining my cranial integrity, for the time being… let’s just say it’s magic.
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Why I Use Emoticons
Do you do a lot of texting? E-mailing? Tweeting? Facebooking? Livejournaling? Other web-related things?
I do a fair amount of all that and more and I freely admit that I make use of emoticons. You know, those little symbols people make out of their keystrokes to show that they’re smiling :), winking ;), frowning 😦 or that they’re Abraham Lincoln ==):-)= or Cthulhu (:€.
I’ve noticed that for the most part people tend to be divided into two camps over the use of emoticons. Either they love them or they hate them. Emoticon lovers tend to slather all their posts with little smiley faces, “leet” speech, acronyms and deliberately misspelled words and phrases (which are often called “lolcatz” for reasons it would probably take most of a second article to fully explain). Haters of emoticons decry them as ignorant and childish and tend to characterize people who use them as annoying zeebs with cuteness fixations who don’t know how to properly express themselves in writing.
I’m not deeply enamored of emoticons but I do make fairly frequent use of them. Why? Because they’re handy communication tools.
The trouble with the vast majority of internet-based communication is that there’s no way to determine the tone of the person writing to you. Let’s say you’ve just sent out a text message letting your circle of friends know you’re about to go on a date. You immediately get a message back from Bob that says:
“Don’t stay out too late!”
Now I’m sure you see the problem here. Is Bob actually telling you not to stay out too late or is he joking? Does he actually think that you’re still a teenager and that you can’t take care of yourself or is he just doing some harmless ribbing? Is Bob being a supportive pal or an overbearing jerk?
The fact of the matter is that Bob has made a perfectly innocuous statement. But now it’s spinning around and around in your head. When you go to meet your date you’re so angry, frustrated and nervous that you mistake them for a valet and toss them your keys, upon which they angrily get into your vehicle and drive off. So, now, having no car and having realized your mistake there’s nothing you can do but sit at the bar drinking yourself into a depressed stupor until they throw you out. Then you wander the streets drunkenly until you’re accosted by muggers and beaten to a bloody pulp.
But, fear not! With the use of a single emoticon the whole nightmare scenario can be avoided!
Imagine if, instead of sending the message, “Don’t stay out too late!” Bob texts, “Don’t stay out too late! ;)” You see that? Bob is winking at you! That means he’s just kidding around! He’s really wishing you well on your date after all. What a scamp Bob is! Now you can go out on your date with a clear head and perhaps have sex later in the evening.
So that’s pretty much why I use emoticons. Not only does it help prevent people from being beaten into unconsciousness by roving gangs of angry youths, but it also helps keep people from thinking I’m a total jerk. 😉
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Jim Ryan
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Abduction Etiquette
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Main Street Rag – Spring 2010
Titanic Jocularity!
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Jim - Yes, THAT Jim by Byron James Ryan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Jim - Yes, THAT Jim 