Official Guide to Stalking Vanir at Gen Con, 2010 Edition
Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness Hardiness
It’s the most wonderful time of the year once again. No, not Christmas. The Four Days of Gaming, aka RPG Chanukah, aka Nerd Kwanzaa, but known to most muggles simply as Gen Con. I’m particularly excited to make my yearly trek to Indianapolis this year, as I’ve made lots of new friends (and am ecstatic to see my fellow CH and Stupid Ranger teammates in the flesh once again). This is the time of year when games get played, mad plans hatch, continuous fun is paid for in units of lost sleep, hygiene gets neglected, hair gets let all the way down, and the freak flags fly high and proud. I personally intend to eat myself into a coma and play D&D and WoW TCG during my brief periods of lucidity.
SCHEDULE OF VANIR’S PLANNED LUCID MOMENTS BETWEEN EPISODES OF FOOD COMA
Wednesday
Arrival:
TBD but probably noonish. Hopefully gathering for lunch with CH crewmates and then retiring to the hotel to refine my WoW TCG deck.
8pm: Drunken D&D with Phil and Dave.
Location: We’re not sure yet, but Phil should have it on his Twitter feed when we know.
An unofficial opening ceremony of sorts, except replace the Olympic flame with beer, and the athletes with inebriated gamers apt to use phrases like “wight supremacist”.
Thursday
1pm: Welcome to Dark Sun, Bitches!
Location: I have no idea. I’m going to turn right every time my gamer sense buzzes and eventually I will find it, I’m sure.
My first experience with the Dark Sun setting in any edition, except for staring at that one chick on the cover of the 2E Dark Sun books with the wings and the brass D-cups when I was 16. You know the one I’m talking about. Gritty, post-apocalyptic battle-lingerie. That’s what Dark Sun is really about. I’m sure our own Chris Sims, who is running this game, agrees completely. I’m told he made 4e’s battle-bras even less comfortable, for that extra-savage feeling.
7pm: Roleplaying Therapy for the Severely Disturbed
Location: Westin Caucus
Join me, Dave, Bartoneus, Chris Sims, Phil, e from Geek’s Dream Girl, Dante and Stupid Ranger from Stupidranger.com, Graham from Critical Ankle Bites, and Micah from Obsidian Portal as we explore the darkest depths of our psyches. You’ve never seen anything like this event. Unless, of course, you’ve seen a shapeshifted druid mating with a displacer beast. How does that even work?
Please note, we do not mean to make fun of any real mental illnesses, and similarity to any ailments any of you have out there is purely coincidental. However, if by some chance you have been diagnosed with Explosive Kleptomania, I am driving to your house and we’re going to a mall. With a video camera. We’re gonna get rich.
After That: Bachelor Party for Graham
Graham doesn’t know it yet, but we managed to find kobold strippers. 20 of them. The dog kind. Yeah, I thought they were illegal, too. Kudos to Phil for smuggling them in from Canada in his luggage.
The Rest Of The Day And Most Of My “Downtime”: Playing WoW TCG Until My Hands Fall Off
Location: Various places in the ICC
It’s the WoW TCG World Championships this year, and I am totally not entering! However, I am entering several smaller tournaments and taking part in the League play that goes on throughout the con. If you want a piece of me and my Spirit Wolves, come find me. My boys are hungry.
Friday
10am-11am: WIL MOTHER F$*KING WHEATON
Location: Westin : Grand Blrm IV
For real. If I went back in time to talk to 13 year old me, and he asked me what I was doing in the year 2010, the last damn thing teenage me would be expecting is for future me to say “oh, nothing much. Just writing a humor column WIL WHEATON READS*.” I never got why anybody ever hated Wesley Crusher, and I fell in love with Wil’s blog from the moment I read it, so to say I’m excited to be here is an understatement. Definitely will be bringing a fresh pair of pants. Just in case.
*I have no idea if Wil actually reads Dire Flailings. But that is what I tell myself every morning to keep my self esteem from imploding. LOVE ME WIL. LOVE MEEEEE
5pm-7pm: WoW TCG Gadgetzan Classic Constructed Qualifiers
Location: ICC Wabash
Me and my spirit wolves eat as many people as we can, WoW TCG style. This technically lasts until 9. However, I am expecting to get utterly murdered by some annoying little ice mage early in the competition, which sets me up nicely to leave before 7 for…..
7pm: The Ennies!
Location: Westin Grand Ballroom
Critical Hits has been nominated for an Ennie again this year, and I can only assume that my coming on staff this year will push us over the top. They may further split the categories next year into “Websites with Vanir” and “Websites without Vanir” just to make things fair. Sorry, everybody else. I am both the immovable object and the unstoppable force. I figure I should show up as a formality, or to correct the situation in case a technical glitch tabulates the votes incorrectly.
Saturday
10am: Hickman’s Killer Breakfast
Location: Westin Grand Ballroom
Tracy Hickman kills an entire room full of people for any reason he chooses, and you have to do something useful, brave, or entertaining to stay alive. It’s a beautiful thing. I got to sit at the same table as Gary Gygax two years ago, and my ego has been hideously swollen ever since. Unsurprisingly, I died and Gary lived. He was a gaming legend and I was making hybrid Transformers/Ravenloft jokes. I’m fortunate to have survived the first four nanoseconds. I guess it’s true what they say: all you need is a little Energon and a lot of luck.
12:30pm – 3pm: Lloyd Kaufman’s Make Your Own Damn Movie Class
Location: Westin
15 year old me would VIBRATE APART at the chance to meet Lloyd Kaufman, co-founder of Troma Entertainment. My weekends in high school consisted of watching Troma movies every Friday and Saturday night on USA Up All Night. I supported the Monster Hero. I loved Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD. I may not be making any movies in the near future, but I intend to fill my muse so full of high quality WTF from one of my teenage heroes that some may slosh out of its container and get on you. I am sorry.
7pm – 10pm: Video Games Live!
Location: Westin Grand Ballroom
Tracy Hickman kills an entire room full of people for any reason he chooses, and you have to do something useful, brave, or entertaining to stay alive. It’s a beautiful thing. I got to sit at the same table as Gary Gygax two years ago, and my ego has been hideously swollen ever since. Unsurprisingly, I died and Gary lived. He was a gaming legend and I was making hybrid Transformers/Ravenloft jokes. I’m fortunate to have survived the first four nanoseconds. I guess it’s true what they say: all you need is a little Energon and a lot of luck.
After That: Evensbrook Reunion D&D
Location: Dantooine
My old DM and good buddy Dante brings back the first campaign we ever played in together for a reunion adventure. I can’t wait to play my old battle-cleric Lumbar again! I hope we stay awake long enough to play awhile.
Sunday
NOTHING PLANNED
(EXCEPT A SENSE OF IMPENDING SADNESS)
Hope everybody has a safe trip out and a wonderful time. See you there!
Dear Roger Ebert
When I was a young boy, one of my very favorite shows was At The Movies. In my 6 year old mind, you were the good guy and Gene was the bad guy. While I’m sure that Mr. Siskel was a wonderful person, to young me, you were the ultimate and nobody disagreed with you. You were almost as cool as Optimus Prime. Almost.
In college, I used to run a computer bulletin board system. One of my favorite things for my friends and me to do was to review the movies we saw in a place where we all could see . I still tried to keep up with your reviews. I didn’t always agree with what you said, but hearing your opinion always made me think twice about mine. We agreed on Judge Dredd. We were, however, at odds on The Guardian. In retrospect, it being one of the secret VHS tapes I hid from my parents when I was 14 in order to repeatedly rewind and watch the nude scenes probably affected my opinion somewhat.
Now, I’m a blogger. Occasionally, I review things. I blame this partially on you. You’ve always been one of those figures in my life that I would eventually like to grow up to be. You have always had my respect. Recently, you said things that made me lose some of that respect. No, this is not about you saying videogames are not art. While it would be quite the understatement to say that I disagree with you, I think you’ve taken more than enough flak about that. Please, allow me to give you some new, fresh flak.
Mr. Ebert, my beef with you today is in regards to your recent article, “Okay, kids, play on my lawn“. I appreciate your saying you should not have said videogames can’t be art without having more experience with them, though you still believe they can’t be art. You’re entitled to your own opinion. I don’t have a problem with that.
What I do have a problem with, sir, is that you’re not even willing to try. From your article:
And I didn’t want to play a video game. If I should dislike it, I already had a preview of the response awaiting me: I was too old, I was over the hill, I was too aged it “get it.” That became the mantra: “Ebert doesn’t get it.” I disagreed with them about age, which I know more about than most of them, but I had some sympathy about the concept of not “getting it.” There are many, many things I believe many members of our society don’t “get,” but I don’t think they’re too old or too young to “get” them, only differently evolved.
Really? You’re worried what people might say if you didn’t like the game you reviewed? You’re the best movie critic. Ever. It’s your job to call things as you see them, even if that means declaring your undying hatred for something the general populace inexplicably loves. You think videogames are still in their infancy? That they might someday become art?
I submit, Mr. Ebert, that you are uniquely qualified to help make that happen. I don’t know of too many videogame critics with your kind of experience. You know well what touches you emotionally when you view what you consider to be art. Can you find it in another medium? Why is it you became a movie critic in the first place? To endlessly kvetch about things you don’t like? Or to improve the state of the art?
I’m not suggesting you play through every mindless beat-’em-up or explode every enemy ship that ever flew in pixellated skies. Some games are designed just for white-knuckled excitement, or to be eye candy. Some are terrible. Just like movies. I am saying that people are telling you they’ve experienced an emotional connection by suggesting games to you. I, for one, would relish the chance to see what you had to say once you gave them a spin.
Will people disagree? Of course. But, really, can you honestly tell me this would be a worse use of your time than confirming that Sex & The City 2 was a giant turd of a movie?
Besides, if you do this for me, you will finally be cooler than Optimus Prime.
Your friend (for my whole life),
Matt
(photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/bsoist/514375711/)
Lost Words of Power
Greetings, travellers! I bring to you the lost arcana of the ages. Words of power not found in any spellbook!
- Power Word: Buttons – A powerful multipurpose spell, this can either summon an incredibly powerful kitten, or cause a PC’s fly to come undone with such force that it rips a hole through the Planes themselves. In the latter case, the player should roll percentile. On a natural 00, two buttons fly into Ravenloft and infiltrate Strahd’s favorite tuxedo. They eventually overthrow him and become the cruelest entities the multiverse has ever known. Don’t laugh. You know not the evils that lurk in the mind of a button.
- Power Word: Agnew – Spiro Agnew appears and destroys everything in a 1 mile radius with waves of fraud and anachronism, except for PC’s under the age of 30, who behave as if affected by a Sleep spell. Unless, of course, they have ranks in Knowledge(U.S. History). They die first.
- Power Word: Broccoli - The party dies of nutrition. All characters in the immediate vicinity must save or receive 1d8 points of education damage about the four food groups. Any player who mentions the food pyramid is sentenced to death by Mulligan Stew.
- Power Word: Femur - One of target character’s legbones becomes sentient for 1 turn, and is privy to many of the secrets of the universe. Unfortunately, no means of communication has been developed for femurs thusly affected. Polymorphing test subjects into femurs in attempts to make contact have only resulted in uncomfortable stories to be brought up at the annual Mages’ holiday party after a few drinks.
- Power Word: Detassel - Perhaps the most popular spell among teenage wizards in the plains. Also fun at parties.
- Power Word: Kegel - The other enemies may not even know the spell was cast. The target definitely will.
- Power Word: To Your Mother - All characters within earshot take 4d20 ice damage. The caster dies and cannot be resurrected because the gods now hate him. Forever.
P.S. All of these are completely legal At-Will powers in 4th edition, usable by any class. And farmers. Also, ducks.
Photo by Katkrieg, someone who deserves to be hired as an art director at WotC immediately. WTF people? Power Word: Hire!
Nine To Five
A few years back, I played a character prone to dying in a party that was, well, also prone to dying. Our DM was big on making resurrection easily obtainable, but with material components expensive enough to keep us from getting too daring. Problem was, it wasn’t usually us rushing into danger. It was almost as if someone had sprinkled us with Mrs. Lolth’s seasoning, and we were extra delicious. Oh, we could have gone with just plain old Resurrection to save some gold, but nobody was willing to lose a level just because, you know, their life force got snuffed out by a shambling mound. No, we would settle for nothing less than the motherf#&ing Cristal of coming back to life, True Resurrection, and it had expensive tastes of its own – a 10,000GP diamond. I knew at that point, only one thing could save the party:
Entrepeneurship.
Before long I had set up my own little business as a taxidermist in the nearby town. Well, sort of. We really didn’t know what to call what my character was doing, so we just called it “creative taxidermy”. We killed a roc, so my PC made a chair with built in backscratchers out of its talons (with deep-tissue penetrating action). He made undergarments from shambling mound vines, with self-wiping action so that no adventurer would ever have to do their business in the woods and worry about poison ivy ever again. By using every part of the wandering monster, like the barbarian tribes of Icewind Dale, he was able to overcome financial adversity and keep the same friends near him despite the frequent shufflings-off of their mortal coils.
Doing something like this, obviously, requires a DM with an open mind, patience, and a sense of humor. In our group, it turned into a fun little aside every session or so where I would unveil my latest creation, and our DM would hook us up with some GP (that he likely would have given us otherwise) to represent sales from my PC’s taxidermy shop. However, this is certainly not to say that the PCs (or perhaps the NPCs, if the DM is looking for a little flavor to a setting), wouldn’t use their skills in their day job. It could well be that they aren’t usually adventurers at all.
All sorts of classes probably have more utilitarian “day-job” skills, but the one that I enjoy thinking about most is mages. I’ve always enjoyed the concept of Clarke’s Third Law, which states “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Applied to a fantasy setting, some would take a literal interpretation of this concept. I like to think that wizards, at least the kind that read books all the time and study arcane stuff, don’t really think magic is all that wondrous. It’s just knowing how to bend your environment to your will using skills practiced. It’s kind of like how a welder doesn’t stare at his torch in awe every morning. He knows it makes fire, what it can do, and why. On the same token, there’s certainly no reason why a wizard’s career options consist of roaming the countryside and lobbing magic missiles at the local wildlife or locking himself up in a tower to research endlessly until he invariably decides becoming a lich would be pretty sweet so he could keep studying and wouldn’t have to keep spending money on 10,000GP diamonds when his lab blows up. I really like the idea of the handyman wizard, who comes to your house and makes your roof mend itself, who uses concentrated fire spells to weld and repair the broken castle gate, who uses his power for the comparatively mundane because everybody needs to make a living. These could also simply be people with limited magical ability – perhaps not powerful enough to lay waste to an enemy army with a wall of spinning blades and lightning bolts, but certainly enough to provide a useful skill.
Remember, the game system is just guidelines. If it seems like fun, and you’ve got a wild idea, give it a try! It might require a little adaptation, but it might breathe some life into your setting or a character’s backstory. One of my few complaints with D&D 4th Edition is that most spells and abilities are geared toward combat, and Rituals (the majority of the non-combat stuff) take 10 minutes to cast. This makes it a little harder to adapt things for creative roleplay than it used to be, but you probably don’t need to assign stats to these kinds of magic unless a fight breaks out, and your DM can probably figure something out damage-wise if you do decide to weld two kobolds together.
Someone please weld two kobolds together. That sounds awesome.
Fear and Loathing in the Forgotten Realms
Real-life Skill Penalties
According to the CDC, about 15.7% of the population has been diagnosed with depression, and 11.3% of people with anxiety. Unfortunately for me, I am part of both groups. My issues are not so severe that I can’t function. I have a family, a job, friends, and lots of responsibilities to deal with every day – and I manage. Sometimes, barely. Fortunately, I have a good wife and good friends to support me, and some pharmaceutical bonuses to my will save as well. It definitely helps, because it’s a struggle some days.
I recently finished reading The Lord of the Rings to my 2 year old (note to new parents: Tolkien == sleep spell), and I was struck by how Sauron’s primary weapon was not military might. It was fear. Specifically, supernatural fear. You first see it when the Black Riders are hunting Frodo and Sam early in their journey. The hobbits can feel the presence of their pursuer before he even draws near – terror and despair clouding their minds, confusing them, tempting them to do something rash and reveal their position or taking the will from them completely. Throughout the books, many examples are given of the Nazgûls’ terrible power taking the very heart and fighting spirit of all but the stoutest warriors, changing a battle into a terrible slaughter. It’s easy to kill your opponent when he is fleeing in terror, or if he is so frozen with fear that he can’t fight back. Sauron even manages to unload the finest mass fear spell ever cast on the good guys in the form of a spreading darkness over all of Middle Earth, dampening spirits and hopes, sapping his enemies’ will to fight days before his forces even arrive, and confusing the hell out of any meteorologists in Middle Earth at the time.
This got me to thinking — I can’t remember one game of D&D in which a fear spell of any kind was used to good effect upon a PC. The groups I’ve been in typically use fear-based spells for tactical advantage, sort of the wizard’s all-purpose version of a cleric turning undead. On the few occasions I’ve seen a DM use a fear spell on a PC, usually one of two things happens. Sometimes, the player just hands the DM their character sheet and lets them roll to decide what direction the character runs screaming in for the current round. Equally likely is that some rules-lawyering is about to begin – and it’s that ugly kind that isn’t really backed by, well, rules. Anybody else here ever been in a situation involving magical fear (or morale checks, for that matter), and heard “It doesn’t affect me. My character isn’t afraid of anything.”? I have. Several times. Once or twice coming from my own mouth. A player trying to argue their way out of in-game effects using “roleplaying” rarely ends well, in my experience. Frequently, real-life subdual damage occurs.
The Nature of Fear
At this point, you may be wondering at this point what, if anything, my anxiety issues and the magical fear in The Lord of The Rings have to do with each other. Well, I found myself thinking back to my own experiences with depression and anxiety – and identifying with the victims of Sauron’s dark powers. Obviously, not to the full extent seen in the books. (I sure hope it never gets that bad!) I will say, however, that as a person who suffers from anxiety, me and nameless dread are well-acquainted with each other. We shared an apartment in college. He sleeps in our guest room now, and we share an office at work. A lot of people don’t understand what fear can do to you. It can be a lot more insidious than just quaking in fear or running away. Sometimes, it can affect my self-confidence. It can make it hard to write a blog post, to get stuff done at work, and it can do a number on a marriage too if you’re not careful. It can distort the way you see the world, make your friends look like they all think you’re an idiot are all laughing at you, or make your wife seem like a horrible person who doesn’t even like you when she just asked you to do the laundry. I’m a programmer by trade, and I generally get by on wit and reason to solve the problems around me. This utterly fails most of the time when my anxiety is kicking my ass. This kind of fear doesn’t make sense. Reading some of the things I write about things that are bothering me when I am experiencing a lot of anxiety frequently doesn’t make much sense when I’m not. As described in the Lord of the Rings, fear can (and frequently does) strip you of your defenses and take the very heart from you at times – and, like the vast majority of you, I live a peaceful life where I typically do not need to fight for survival (unless it’s crunch time at work). I cannot imagine what would happen if this were not the case. Who knows? Perhaps well-founded paranoia would be easier. At least then I would know what was out to get me.
Roleplaying Fear
With all this in mind, one way to roleplay fear effects in D&D becomes clear. I got this way over time, through social interaction gone awry or chemical imbalance (I really have no idea). Fear effects can turn this on, amplified greatly, in the blink of an eye. The nature of the fear and its effect on the PC, obviously, are up to the player and the DM. However, we now have a lot more tools at our disposal to decide how it manifests itself. It may just be a shock to the system, freezing the character in their tracks, or making them whimper for their mother in the fetal position. It may cause them to flee. It might cause the PC to get intimidated and lose confidence in their ability to defeat their enemy (or even to defend themselves). Fear could make a PC act rashly, affecting their ability to perceive things (and the level of actual danger), and greatly increasing their desire to run into and/or away from something (if the fear is potent enough, perhaps both). Sure, none of this is new to anyone – but now I have somewhere to start as to why this is happening to them (that is, what’s going on in their heads), which is a pretty good place to get a foothold from a roleplaying standpoint.
With a particularly nasty villain, and a long time to weave his nefarious plans, a truly evil DM could even work in more insidious fear effects. Through private communication, he could cause long-standing dread to distort the player’s opinion of other PC’s. This would probably have to be done through Perception checks and careful private messages to individual players to make them think their compatriots were up to something, maybe even working secretly against them. Admittedly, this would require either a group of very honest and skilled roleplayers, or at least one player at the table who everybody else doesn’t fully trust not to try to sell the entire party into kobold slavery at the first opportunity.
The Frightening Conclusion
I hope it’s obvious to everyone that in no way am I trying to trivialize anxiety, depression, or any other mental illness with this post, nor am I a professional who has any idea what he is talking about on any subject. Ever. Rather, I would just rather my issues did something useful for a change. I hope, at the very least, they’ve given some of you a few things to gnaw on the next time your DM decides it’s National Lich Awareness Week and the fear hits the fan.
Photo courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rsvstks/19428230/
The Green Menace
I think it’s pretty much common knowledge by this point that gaming is the root of all evil and the seed from which will grow a beautiful sapling of pure evil that will blossom into a mighty oak of malevolence. Its acorns will be capable of corrupting small animals (particularly squirrels) to achieve its goal of discovering the cruelest possible way to achieve photosynthesis. This are common fact. What we don’t know is why plants have chosen this particular vector of infection. Perhaps seeds of evil twirling happily to the ground weren’t cutting it, and there was a board meeting and they decided, “hoom, hom perhaps we should try subverting the minds of the human children to achieve the cruelest photosynthesis”. A more troubling question – where they are finding Objective-C coders to weave their fell iPhone apps?
Fellow gamers, we need to take a stand. We face nothing less than green, leafy Sauron. Instead of fear and eternal darkness, he now uses the power of Moore’s Law and the uncanny ability for the modern gamer to look at a beautiful game from two years ago to say “meh”. He sets us against each other when we play Nerd Poker or when we rules-lawyer, fighting endlessly over minutiae. We are distracted from the real threat.
Who are the people that run the companies that make the games that we so cherish? How many of them are not mammals? How can you be sure?
Look for individuals who you never see in the dark. If you are in a dark office and someone is using one of those full-spectrum lamps to treat their Seasonal Affective disorder, do not be fooled! They are simply having lunch. Also look for obvious Freudian slips in the names of their companies, products, and gaming materials. For example, Green Ronin Publishing — obviously a freaking vegetable garden. The people who developed the Druid class in 4e? Well, they’re either a tree or they’re hugging one. And there’s a reason all the green creatures in Magic: The Gathering are all the biggest in the game – they’re clearly compensating for something. A lack of humanity.
I know writing this article has outed me, but I could keep silent and serve the Green Masters no longer. For as long as I still live and have not had a mind-control beet jammed into my medulla oblongata, I will continue to report and tell the truth to any who will hear. My only hope is that my Persuasion skill is high enough, and that one day we will feast upon the salad that was our Enemy.
VIVE LA RESISTANCE!
(Photo courtesy Neil Hughley, a true patriot.)
Mysteries Of The Unknown, Volume XVI: Unhappy Fanboys
*** WARNING: Spoilers for LOST and BSG to follow. You have been warned!!!! ***
Like many of you, I spent my Sunday evening in front of my TV, looking for some closure after six years of Lost. Like many of you, I had my theories as to what in the hell was going on, and I’d heard from several sources that the end of this great show wouldn’t disappoint.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed. Actually, I was furious. I’ve since calmed down, but I still think the ending to Lost wasn’t good enough. I mean, sure, it wasn’t as catastrophically stupid as the Battlestar Galactica finale. I can admit that a goodly portion of the reason I didn’t care for the LOST finale was that I wanted it to resolve itself differently than it did. I loved the time-travel stuff in the previous season, and I had every reason to think the whole nuclear bomb thing spawned a separate timeline in which awesome events would occur allowing the people in the “real” timeline to eventually prevail through a final payoff of their previous nuclear option. It didn’t. Not my favorite option, but I can live with that.
Here’s what does bother me.
Imagine that you are running a D&D campaign. The adventure revolves around solving some big mystery, and every clue the players uncover seems to raise several new questions. Your players love this stuff, and they keep asking you to do more of this. This goes on for years, and is one of the most beloved campaigns your group has ever known. Many of the larger secrets of the story you’ve been weaving all these years have yet to be fully revealed, and your players all have theories. Eventually, you decide to end the campaign. You end the current story arc, explain vaguely a couple of the campaign’s mysteries, and then suddenly all the PCs are in Valhalla giving each other hugs. I imagine at least a 72% chance that you will be stoned to death via hurled dice.
Call me crazy, but if one of the primary means by which you engage your audience is by coming up with freaky inexplicable crap to keep them wondering, you had damn well better do a good job explaining what you’ve been causing all their poor neurons to needlessly fire about by the time the series ends. Instead, we got a wrapup of the current story arc, an explanation of all the weird crap that ever happened in the form of “well, that’s how Jacob ran things”, and ten minutes of violins and group hugs designed to make my wife cry. When you end this kind of series like they just ended Lost, it no longer matters whether they had any idea what they were doing from the start. You never find out. Did they end it this way to keep people asking questions? Maybe. But that’s not a very nice thing to do to your fans who have been dying for any shred of information since the beginning.
The sad thing is, had this been just another season finale, I probably wouldn’t have my knickers in a twist. I enjoyed all the Jacob vs. Smokey and picking a new protector stuff. I thought Hurley was a cool pick for the new guy, and Ben perhaps the most interesting choice of his #2 available. I even sort of like wondering if Jack turns into a smoke monster. In fact, I liked pretty much everything except for the “alternate reality actually being Purgatory” bit. That was the final twist of the knife to me. They told us the island wasn’t Purgatory, and they told the truth. That was just evil. That made me think that somewhere in California, the producers of Lost are in an underground bunker filled with money – laughing at all of us.
Photo cc 1995 Jeff Kubina
You’re Not Just Good, You’re Golden
With all the recent hubbub about Facebook and privacy concerns, one might wonder if this is just another one of those molehill-problems that the media is mountain-sizing. You know, like mad cow disease, Y2K, and light beer. I tend not to worry too much about such things, because I don’t put incredibly detailed information about myself online. Some suggest that even putting information about your birthday on Facebook is a security risk. I’m honestly not sure about that, but I do know that Social Security came about in 1935. It stands to reason that somebody may have had time to figure out the algorithm for generating a Social Security Number in 75 years time. After all, the encryption they had back then was roughly equivalent to the copy protection measures found in SSI’s Pool of Radiance (which, I might add, science has found a way to defeat).
For the life of me, I never have fully understood the human compulsion to fill out forms containing their personal data on a computer. If I walked up to a random person on the street with a form asking for their personal data, they’d probably think I was up to something unsavory (like signing them up for a credit card), and tell me to shove off. You put the same person on Facebook, and it wouldn’t surprise me if at least a good portion of their extended profile information is filled in. What benefit does this give anyone but Facebook and their demographic-engine? You know, aside from thoughtfully tailored ads for the user’s pleasure.
I found myself asking the same question some fifteen years ago. I was 19 years old, it was 1995, and I was running a modestly successful local BBS. Most of the other BBS users in town were older than me, and almost all of the sysops were. For some reason, if you were in the greater Peoria area, male, 40 years old, and into ham radio, chances were decent that you either ran a BBS or called one. Being younger, I tended to attract a younger crowd, and thusly we became the bane of the local FidoNet hub with our youthful exuberance (and willingness to start a flame war over the slightest of offenses). Even so, my BBS still racked up a couple hundred user accounts. Most were one-time callers checking the place out, but I probably had a good 30-40 regular users and lively message boards.
You know what I also had? The name, address, and phone number of every last person that called.
Why? Well, that’s what happens when you don’t read the documentation to your BBS software very well and make all the user account info mandatory. I remember telling people who asked me why they needed to put in their address that “this is so I can verify you’re a real person”. I didn’t need it, of course. There were callback systems that could, at the very least, know there’s an active phone line on the number they put in. Most of the boards in town didn’t require complete information, and you could put in whatever you wanted and it would still let you through. (For instance, my co-sysop – whose address was “KEVORKIAN”.) Fortunately for them, my dear mother did not raise an asshole. I probably could have gotten into some trouble using all that data. I knew people who got in trouble for similar things. However, there was one instance in which having all this data did cause me a lot of trouble.
The BBS software I used to run was called Renegade. It had all sorts of nifty features, one of which was called MCI codes. I forget what it stood for, but we used to joke that more expensive BBS software would have used AT&T codes. Yup, we were nerds. Basically, you could write a message containing these codes, and it could display all sorts of information back to the user about themselves. It was supposed to be used so sysops could make nice status screens telling people what address they have on file, and how many megabytes they’ve downloaded this month, their security level – that kind of fun stuff. Well, as it happened, this 13 year old kid on the board who went by the handle CAPTIAN JAMES T. KIRK had been reading the Renegade documentation. We hated this kid. He would always come on the board and piss a bunch of people off, and then we would flame him mercilessly and he would retreat for a couple days and then the cycle would repeat itself. One day, the good Captian discovered something else I hadn’t turned off – letting users use MCI codes in their messages. And so it was that he put in a little something like this:
HEY @a I KNOW YOUR ADDRESS IS @b AND YOUR PHONE NUMBER IS @c AND I'M COMING TO YOUR HOUSE TO KILL YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR DOG.
This would yield output specific to whoever was reading it, so at the time I saw something like:
HEY MATT DUKES I KNOW YOUR ADDRESS IS 235 FAKENHAMMER LANE AND YOUR PHONE NUMBER IS 309-555-4857 AND I'M COMING TO YOUR HOUSE TO KILL YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR DOG.
I remember thinking “hey, that’s a pretty neat trick”. Then I noticed my inbox had fifty messages in it.
Apparently this idiot had managed to convince pretty much everyone who called in that day that I had for some reason given their name out to a psychopath. I had people threatening to come to my house and kick my ass. I had people crying and wondering how I even knew they had a dog and why I would divulge any information about said dog to a third party, much less an angry nutjob. Even people I called regularly for help on how to set up my board got fooled and were angrily sending me messages. It was the largest instance of mass hysteria I’ve ever personally witnessed, and the happiest we ever saw Captian Kirk.
It took a day or two, but finally I managed to convince my rabid userbase that it was just a trick. The incident is still legend among those who were there.
We call it the Golden Mindf@$k.
The KFC Double Down – The End of Humanity
O Humanity, I always knew you would bring about the end of yourselves. Not by war, or nuclear fire, or grey goo. Not even by capricious use of antibiotics do you bring your end. Nay, your end is far slower. Far rounder. Far more…. corpulent.
Our race has bravely survived such threats before: the coming of the Dread Arches, the Lich-King of Burgers, even a burger so terrifying that even the other burgers branded it a Monster. Yet we still stand (albeit in roomier battle-pants). This spring, everything changed. On the twelfth of April in the year two thousand and ten, KFC unleashed its greatest creation: the KFC Double Down. Simple is its payload: two breaded boneless chicken breasts, cheese, bacon, and some sort of evil mayonnaise to make it (and humanity) go down that much easier.
Yet, it is not the Double Down itself that will destroy us. Nay, it is what it represents.
Through all previous crises, humanity was simply enticed by value. More food for a higher price. This upping of the serving-size ante continued until 2004 when the Arches seemingly suffered a crisis of conscience and eliminated their Super Size choices from their menu in lieu of a more reasonable Large. Though the actual fat intake was only a few grams lower and it is widely thought the Arches were only doing this as a public relations manuever, humanity’s death clock was nevertheless set back five full minutes. The Double Down seeks not only to move the Death Clock forward those five fateful minutes, but also to overclock it. Death may be the only fast thing humanity ever does again.
BEHOLD! The abomination eschews bread, known for centuries as the only part of the sandwich typically not fried in something. The victim is forced to grasp the destroyer directly by its fell meats, poisoning the soul, damning the consumer forevermore. For now it is proven that a man’s dignity is not greater than his carnal lust for fried food, and his willpower not even enough to lift a finger toward a napkin. Now they have us – and, despite their greasy talons, they will not let us go.
Woe betide us! The seventh seal is broken, and Fatnarok begun. The seas will run nuclear green with Dew, and the dead will wake, but be unable to rise from their graves. The world-serpent Jörmungandr will finally begin to consume his own tail, and discover he is incredibly caloric.
We are undone. Soon also will be the seams on our pants – and our lives. This is the flavor of our end.
(Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/djjewelz/4509710783/ and, no doubt, copyright the dread KFC.)
Cleanings of Spring Dawning
This past week, my wife and I have been going through the house getting rid of old stuff. She enjoys freeing up space and seeing the house clean. I enjoy looking at my old stuff, reliving all the good times we had together, and almost weeping when I throw any of it away. To be honest, it’s hell. Some of it makes sense to keep. Old favorite toys, comics from my childhood, a Wico bat handle joystick the quality of which has never been seen again in any controller since. However, I must question the need to keep mail order catalogs from computer companies so someday in the future I could remember how much a parallel port printer cost back in the day. Yes, that was my logic back in 1991. No, the experience did not live up to the hype.
Part of me is glad I saved some of these toys so that my son could play with them. However, forces I was not prepared for have been in play this entire time, and may utterly ruin this plan. Did you know that old plastic gets brittle? Neither did poor Shockwave when I accidentally amputated his arm trying to transform him for old time’s sake. Fortunately, it was not his blaster arm. Unfortunately, back then I didn’t know that batteries corrode and blow up and ruin electronics. Shockwave is not particularly pleased with me right now.
Worst of all is the stuff that has sentimental value but I just can’t think of a legitimate reason to keep. I have two large boxes filled to the brim with all my old AD&D 1st Edition books from high school. It’s quite heavy. Just cracking the lid on that box brings back memories of ridiculously overpowered Monty Haul campaigns and my power-levelled Fighter/Cleric/Mage soloing the Elemental Princes of Evil from the Fiend Folio. I used to walk with a hunch because I was always carrying 100 pounds of books with me. I got into a shouting match with a friend over his claim that getting hit in the face with a black dragon’s breath weapon would give him a CHA bonus because the scars made him look tougher. I was thirteen years old, it was intensely stupid, and I loved every minute of it. However, as much as I love keeping them around, I continue to acquire gaming stuff and I don’t really have the space to make the Ultimate D&D Room. I also find it unlikely that I will ever play in a D&D 1E campaign ever again. Do I really want to keep them around just to flip through the pages now and then?
Old videogame systems are my other problem. I’ve got nearly every major console since 1980 sitting on a shelf and no intention whatsoever of actually hooking any of them up. Are they decorative now? is that lame? With the advent of emulation during the mid 90′s (and now widespread legal emulation), I can play almost everything I ever want from my childhood without having to keep a giant rat’s nest of RF adapters and controller cords in a box somewhere. It’s not exactly the same, but I’m not sure it ever can be. That, for better or worse, seems to be the conclusion leading me to finally get rid of a lot of my old stuff. The memories will always remain and be perfect. Keeping this stuff might spark an odd memory here and there, but it’s taking up room that could be used for new memories.
There is an old proverb (which I have failed utterly at finding) that says a boy becomes a man when he can leave his toys behind. Does this mean that finally, at 34, I’m growing up? I have no idea. What I do know: my wife is getting happier by the day, and some day in the near future a nerd’s going to walk into a Goodwill and wind up renting a U-Haul to get it all home. The cycle begins anew.
