Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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03:57 am
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Fireborn: State of the Campaign, Week 8
My first clue should have been when I overheard my players talking in the next room.
They were catching up with some friends during a LAN party in late December. Exchanging bon mots about the neat things happening in their life.
"-- awesome RPG. Everybody plays a reincarnated dragon," I heard as I walked within earshot. "It's got a really vivid and unique combat system. You describe everything that you're doing, string together those moves like in a fighting game, and your opponent does the same thing. Whoever rolls better gets to execute moves from their combo." He got more excited. "And you get to play both as your normal character and as your past-life dragon self ..."
Well, that's pretty neat, I thought. My players are talking up the system behind my back. I made a mental note to include it in my next state-of-the-game post and chalked it up to new campaign energy.
A week or two later -- seeking the weakest parts of the game for my ongoing "Fireborn GM tips" series -- I asked for their harshest criticisms of the system.
"Combat," it was immediately suggested. But then, almost immediately: "But I have to say, it's not as chunky as it seems. You'd think it's a hassle, but in practice it works."
If the toughest criticism they can level is "it works," I thought, maybe I really am onto something here.
Then the in-character journals started up.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) maggiesmusing is accompanied by not-yet-scanned character art (and a sketch of Mr. Snuggles, the party mascot who is developing powers and a backstory all his own). And suti_bun is managing to keep the campaign chronicle flowing at a pace matching the campaign itself, which is the first time I have ever seen that happen. When players set out to journal the in-game happenings -- and I speak from personal experience here -- the first session or two come quickly, the next few take months, and the vast majority of it only gets written in that vast Maybe Time in the future.
And this week, when we wrapped up game and sat around for 15 minutes afterward going over the high points of the session and slinging ideas back and forth, the mood was high.
"It's amazing. Everyone's staying in character."
"Two characters," I pointed out.
"Yeah! It's an experience switching back and forth between them. My characters are such polar opposites."
"Yeah," {M} agreed, and hit me with the kicker: "This is my first character ever that I've been able to take to another level."
Now, I modestly believe myself to be a good GM*, but this is high praise.
The system is definitely a contributing factor. Combat is vivid. Everything the dragon characters do is tinged with awesome. The parallel structure of the game -- the ability to reimagine the supporting cast as their character archetypes skip between the game's two eras -- is an arresting story mechanic. The quest for self-discovery, as the characters come to grips with their past, makes for amazingly compelling roleplaying.
Of course, the system's not the whole explanation; I've been putting in a lot of effort above and beyond the call of GMing duty. My "Player Handouts" folder has two different London maps, conversation flowcharts, custom dice mats, custom character backgrounds, and a "State of the Plot" summary to help everyone keep track of unresolved questions (which I've since turned into a Google Doc). This doesn't even count the answering machine messages I've recorded or the flashback soundtrack I've assembled. With that amount of work, any game can be memorable.
But somewhere in there, the game crossed the line from "memorable" into "epic."
I was noting tonight how the mechanics are worming their way into the narrative -- I nicknamed the main political factions of the Atlanteans the "fire," "water," and "air" groups, and it has stuck; and when {a} had a chance in a flashback to design the symbol for the Guardians Eternal, he took one of the elemental runes the game sticks onto its character sheets.
But this is happening at a more meta level as well. Our four core players seem to be falling into the elemental archetypes the game itself defines; we have a cool and patient ice dragon (water), a mercurial lightning serpent (air), a primal, direct fire dragon (fire) and a subtle and diplomatic forest dragon (earth), and as we talked about this tonight we realized their players have subconsciously aligned themselves so that the interplay of the group pulls between the opposing elements. There's something deliciously mythic in it. And for a game whose narrative is about characters reconciling their modern lives with their mythic lives ... that sort of metanarrative synergy hits you like a sledgehammer.
Plus, Mr. Snuggles.**
So how's the Fireborn game doing? Damn well, and I'm not doing it justice here. (That's because every time I type out one of the monster RP posts I've been writing, it takes me literally a day or more.) The players say they're excited -- this is one of those rare campaigns that has the potential to go from starting characters to the epic-level climax. I'm certainly excited -- excited enough to be staying up for over an hour in the middle of the night typing this up after game.
We'll see where that energy takes us. I feel good about the exploration.
--
* It's not ego if you believe this because your players tell you so. And I think I've had enough players to judge this fairly.
** mew
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  pleased
Current Music: Splashdown, "Karma Slave"
Tags: fireborn, roleplaying
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10:29 pm
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Roleplaying GM Tip: Adding minions to boss fights
As my regular readers know, for about two months now I've been running a game of Fireborn, an RPG where all the characters are reincarnated dragons living in human bodies in the modern world. Strictly speaking, this isn't a post about Fireborn, but I'm going to start it off with an illustrative anecdote from the ongoing campaign.
The players' first fight in their characters' full draconic forms was against a hydra -- a fully-powered fellow dragon with a range of formidable abilities and a massive karma pool (which powers special abilities and turns the tide in opposed rolls). It was about as powerful a single creature as Fireborn characters are ever likely to fight. The characters disabled it in a single combat round, wounding it severely in a counterattack and then crippling it with a combination of skills and powers that allowed {S}' paralyzing bite to land, even before {A}'s Disintegrate spell went off and instantly killed it. The characters didn't get so much as a scratch.
To this day, the same group of players still tell stories about an epic encounter from our previous AD&D campaign. The very first thing that happened in the fight was for the party's greatsword-wielding fighter to land a spectacular critical hit and nearly one-shot the Big Boss, who spent the rest of the combat desperately trying to escape and never landed a single blow. However, the Big Boss had help in the form of a mind-controlled spellcaster and a modest army of zombies, who engaged the PCs in a chaotic melee and very nearly wiped out the party. (Mostly thanks to Little Timmy the ENGINE OF KARMIC JUSTICE, but that's another story.)
They were both compelling boss fights with a dangerous foe presented as a serious challenge. Both bosses quickly fell to the party's superior luck or strategy. The difference -- and the factor that made the second fight so much more epic?
Minions.
Most GMs have been conditioned by the age we grow up in (and the media we consume) to arrange climactic confrontations against a single overwhelming foe. We watch movies with gripping one-on-one battles and play computer games where our avatar faces down lovingly rendered huge enemies at the end of an area. This is, in itself, not a bad thing; your players have gotten that same conditioning and go into boss fights ready for a climactic solo standoff. However, not all media is created equal -- and pencil-and-paper roleplaying games have a number of factors that work together to make minions the better choice.
Here, then, for pencil-and-paper gamemasters both old and new, are:
( 10 reasons to use minions in your boss fights )
Current Location: ~/bedroom
Current Mood:  good
Current Music: Darkesword, "Metroid Prime Just A Little More" OC Remix
Tags: fireborn, roleplaying
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06:13 pm
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Post-FC report
Back to the grind today. One of those days:
Close support ticket #18927?> y
Reason> Voicemail is simply a fax machine beeping
Close support ticket #18928?> y
Reason> Voicemail is a different fax machine's beep
Close support ticket #18929?> y
Reason> I AM NOT A FAX MACHINE! I AM A FREE MAN!
On the other hand, my Further Confusion was fantastic. No con will ever be perfect, but this one was about as close as they come.
(The standard disclaimer to my non-furry friends: Furry conventions completely don't deserve their reputation. Don't take my word for it. Click on the link and read the experiences of a reporter who went to one undercover.)
It was a very chill con for me -- hanging out with friends all weekend, meeting a few old friends in person for the first time (most notably ceruleanst, hurrah!), and getting drawn into incredible conversation and gaming. I got enough sleep, kept my budget reasonable, and left before con crash or con crud could set in. The new hotel is ridiculously spacious, comfortable, and surrounded by great food.
Odd omission: I didn't get to dance* all weekend. Every time I started heading to a dance floor, I ran into someone I had been wanting to talk to, and let myself get pulled away again. On balance it was a really positive thing, although my inner unicorn (who looks the most forward to physical expression) is currently chewing the walls.
Also, there didn't seem to be a single panel on Otherkin/therian/furry-lifestyler topics, which surprised me. Furry has traditionally treated Otherkin like an annoying little brother -- talking smack to its friends about him at every opportunity, but basically tolerating his presence (and doing nice things for him every once in a while when it's positive nobody is looking). Considering that furry is about "animals with human characteristics" and Otherkin is (broadly!) about "humans with nonhuman characteristics," it's hard to argue that there isn't a place for 'kin under the furry umbrella! And that uneasy alliance has been the state of affairs for quite some time. My experience at previous FCs has been that those who came into the fandom from a 'kin perspective would have to go into the early-morning or shoulder-day panel ghetto to meet up at convention-sanctioned events, but there would at least be a formal place to meet up.
This year's FC had an entire spirituality track (filled with a lot of panels that seemed, from secondhand reports, like World Religion 101 lectures) -- but the closest anyone got to an Otherkin anything was a panel on traditional totemism that studiously stuck to its roots. I'm not going to get upset about this -- because I've staffed enough cons to know that the odds of this being a slap in the face are vanishingly small** -- but it's honestly bizarre, because Otherkin is the elephant in the "furry + spirituality" room, and is one of the points of having a furry-con "spirituality track" in the first place.
Sometimes when the spirituality track falls down, you can at least get leads to other 'kin in the species breakouts (the dragon panel*** in particular seems to attract a fair number of genuine dragonkin), but I attended the dragon panel for a few minutes before getting pulled away by a phone call, and it was pretty much just people comparing their characters' physical traits. (Other attendees confirmed that, beyond a token "Raise your hand if you take your character seriously" question in the middle somewhere, it steered well clear of spiritual significance.)
...
... Is it bad that I'm thinking about volunteering to lead an Otherkin spirituality panel now?**** By necessity of convention mechanics, it would be limited to the very basics -- but it would be much better than what's available now (nothing! Literally nothing! How did that happen?), and would give Otherkin/etc who are new to the convention scene at least somewhere to exchange ideas with those who take it seriously.
Would any FC regulars be interested in helping out, or could you recommend FC attendees from different segments of the Otherkin/therian/furry-lifestyler spectrum who take their spirituality seriously and might be willing to go in with me on this?
--
* I also did not trip on anything all weekend (despite my huge feet and the new hotel). Which was actually a nice change of pace from my clumsiness the last few cons.
** The way this works is that the Programming division wrangles volunteers -- both of the "Programming wants you to do a panel this year" sort and the "Hey Programming, will you put on my panel?" sort -- and slots in as many panels as they have rooms and moderators for. At most cons, this means making hard choices about who to exclude and who to counter-program against the popular events. But considering that there wasn't a single panel on Thursday and only two? (if memory serves) on Monday, FC Programming this year was starved, and I'd bet you good money that a volunteer for an Otherkin panel would have been hailed as a liberator welcomed.
*** The regular dragon panel, oh-so-conveniently cross-scheduled against the Masquerade. Not the adult dragon panel later that night, which has played to a packed room for years and is basically the moderators slideshowing a collection of dragon porn pictures. Not that there's anything wrong with that (or with my attendance last year to see what all the fuss was about).
**** This is purely rhetorical. Those who wish the opportunity to actually answer my question might consider the following, largely equivalent formulation: "Is Baxil insane to be considering this?"
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood: alright
Current Music: Asia, "After The War"
Tags: conventions, draconity
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07:23 pm
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State of the Baxil, 2010/01
Time for the semi-regular check-in! Department heads, report!
Dept. of Upcoming Events: "We are pleased to report that Baxil will be at Furcon over the weekend! Though he is arriving Friday night, your best chance to catch him will be Saturday or Sunday."
CFO's Office: "We look forward to not being perpetually broke. Someday."
Dept. of Video Games: "We were prepared to write off Final Fantasy XII as an uninspiring time-waster, until an underleveled battle with the esper Adrammelech that we won with 2 bleeding characters with a combined total of 200 HP (a 98%+ loss). It got our pulse pounding in ways that an FF game hasn't in years. Haste? Curaga? A Jedi needs not these things, only a desperation Quickening with two crippled, out-of-MP characters."
Dept. of Writing: "Our long-term plan remains to edit 'The Time In Her Eye.' However, recent interdepartmental transfers to VG and RP have left us short-staffed. Yes, VG, we're looking at you." (*pointed glare*)
Dept. of Muses: "Oh, hey. Did you know that the classical Japanese syllabary -- their equivalent of our 'ABCs' -- is a poem about mortality?"
Dept. of Relationships: "Though our overall sector is tanking -- with three divorces in progress among various friends -- we are pleased to report that our own holdings remain solid, with year-over-year snuggles holding steady and lengthy conversations still within acceptable tracking bounds. The increase in generalized Insecurity Index from the turbulent love market is having a negative impact on plans for acquisitions, but we're tentatively pleased with overall conditions."
Dept. of Aliases: "It has been experimentally determined that Baxil's drag-queen name is 'Pashmina Opa.' However, 'Lola Licks-A-Lot' made an unexpectedly strong showing in the popular vote."
Dept. of Roleplaying, GM Division: "Christ, my Fireborn posts aren't enough?"
Dept. of Roleplaying, Non-GM Division: "Q1 2010 is shaping up to break new ground in the field of character self-maiming, thanks to early innovation from Sascha the White, Bax's variant Monk in Mike's AD&D 3.5 campaign. While under magical boost and using an ability called Decisive Strike that doubles damage, she fumbled a punch and drew a card from the fumble deck: 'The attack hits yourself and is a critical threat.' The critical was confirmed, and she rolled 49 HP out of her total of 61! If she hadn't just gained a point of Damage Resistance as a class ability (or if she didn't have cold resistance as a racial trait), she would have done 50+ HP to herself, blown the Fortitude save vs. mass trauma, and died instantly."
Dept. of Internet References: "So basically what you're saying is that Sascha pulled a Tyson Fury?"
Dept. of Roleplaying, Life-Imitates-Art Division: "So, the last Fireborn session ended with two characters being grilled by Special Inspector McSweeney after some flagrantly illegal violence. The characters feigned ignorance; he had nothing solid to pin on them, so he gave them a verbal warning and let them walk away. The first thing that happened after Bax wrapped up game and left for home? He got pulled over by a cop for going over the speed limit. He feigned ignorance, so the cop gave him a verbal warning for 10-over and let him walk away. Bax reports being very glad he decided to let the characters off the hook."
Dept. of Spirituality: "Every time the staff meeting reaches consensus about whether to say anything on the topic of Na'vi Otherkin, someone gets cold feet and drags us back into deliberations again. Fortunately, though productivity is down, staff morale is high due to the joint project with RP/GM."
Dept. of Email Answering: "The few staff members who weren't decimated by November's meteor impact have either quit, given up in disgust, or perished in valiant holding actions against the mutant cockroach raiders. We're currently desperately seeking staff. Pay is low, morale is nonexistent, the backlog is an OSHA hazard and we're bleeding goodwill like a sword cut in a samurai movie. In other words, business as usual."
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  amused
Current Music: Rick Astley, "Never Gonna Give You Up"
Tags: misc life updates
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03:38 am
[Link] |
Fireborn: First Impressions - The Fire Within
Previously in "First Impressions": Character creation | Gameplay/Combat
I recently talked my roleplaying group into starting up a game of Fireborn, an RPG where all the characters are reincarnated dragons living in human bodies in the modern world. This is my continuing documentation of our gameplay experiences, in hopes of providing fellow dragons and fellow roleplayers with a detailed look inside the system.
 In mid-December, we finally managed to sit down and officially kick off the campaign. Although I am including a vast amount of homemade material, the core of the campaign is the published Fireborn adventure titled "The Fire Within." It advertises itself as "the official introductory adventure for the FIREBORN roleplaying game. ... This adventure showcases the best that FIREBORN has to offer, helping you start your new campaign off with all the power, mystery, and savagery of an elder dragon."
Well, it certainly is an ambitious adventure, I'll give them that.
"Act One begins by throwing the characters full-force into the action," it promises, and it does exactly that. The first two tasks that the players face are (in a flashback) averting a war through impromptu diplomacy and then (in the modern day) fighting desperately for survival against an oncoming mob of fanatical enemies. They're both big, dramatic scenes, and in theory could be a smashing introduction to a new adventure -- but in practice, with both players and GM still feeling out the rules, it overreaches.
This is not to say that it is a bad adventure. On the contrary, it's a rich source of ideas and atmosphere, with great plot hooks for an ongoing campaign. Once it recovers from its initial stumbles, it's tightly written and hard-hitting. It's just not the "perfect beginning to any FIREBORN campaign!" that they promise on the back cover. At least ... without preparation, it isn't. The good news is that, knowing what to expect, you can route around the worst of its problems.
( How it went, how it should have went: Largely spoiler-free, but long. Includes many GM tips. )
Closing Thoughts
Should you use this adventure module in your Fireborn campaign? Yes. Which is to say: Given the choice between including its content in your campaign and ignoring it, you could do worse than to include it. However, you must plan ahead and find ways to minimize the front-loaded problems, so that you can push through them and enjoy the good bits.
Even if you're not going to run The Fire Within, it's worth a read -- you can strip-mine it for ideas, and its expansion of some of the modern-era content from the GMG (such as how LN-7 will evaluate and treat the characters once the two groups come into contact) should be considered essential.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  productive
Current Music: "Secret of Mana - Dragon Song," Harmony (OCRemix)
Tags: fireborn, roleplaying
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06:20 am
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Daily Random Thoughts
(via LoudTwitter)
Tags: 140 characters
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12:34 pm
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Zeroes, zeroes, zeroes mean so much
The current playlist of the moment on my hyPod*:
"One More Mile," Muddy Waters
"10 Miles," Infernal
"100 Miles," Bad Company
"1,000 Miles," Vanessa Carlton
"10,000 Miles," Mary Chapin Carpenter [or Juno Reactor]
"100,000 Miles," Spearhead/Michael Franti
"Million Miles," Bob Dylan [or Fuel]
"10 Million Miles," Patty Griffin
"93 Million Miles," 30 Seconds To Mars
(Other notables: 8, 20, 25, 500)
See also.
--
* Term via momentrabbit, though I am really stretching its original usage: "a hyPo-thetical musical Device that plays songs that don't exist yet". (source) Here I'm speaking more in the sense of "my imaginary music player that has whatever arbitrary (albeit real) songs on it that I need to in order to make my current point."
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "How Many Miles To Babylon," Yngwie Malmsteen
Tags: multimedia
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06:46 pm
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"Sherlock Holmes" in 30 seconds
Robert Downey Jr.: Hey Watson, check me out. I'm House!
Jude Law: No you're not.
Robert Downey Jr.: I totally am. I'm an irascible slovenly guy that mistreats his closest friends. I even gave myself his five-o'clock-shadow beard and rumpled hair.
Jude Law: Stop that. Hugh Laurie is House. You're Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: Okay okay okay. Fine. I'll find another shtick.
Jude Law: You don't need a shtick. You're Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: Wait, I've got it. Watson, check me out. I'm Batman!
Jude Law: *sigh*
Robert Downey Jr.: Master of disguise! Best bare-knuckled fighter in the world! Singlehandedly defeating crazy occult supervillains with my superpowers of kicking ass! And being smart.
Jude Law: Christian Bale is Batman. You're Iron Man -- I mean, Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: No, I'm serious, I'm totally the mutherf--king Batman.
Jude Law: This movie is set in Victorian England. You are not the Batman.
Robert Downey Jr.: Three words. "Gotham By Gaslight."
Jude Law: *sigh* Just play your role already, Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: I am!
Jude Law: Your Sherlock Holmes role. You are Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: *mumble* You should talk, Mr. Taller-And-Skinnier-Than-Me. "Oh, look at me, I'm Dr. Watson, I have perfect vision and I never got shot in Afghanistan --"
Jude Law: What's that? I didn't quite hear you over the sound of the giant explosions.
Robert Downey Jr.: Oh, nothing, nothing.
... So, yeah, meh. kadyg liked it -- or at least wants to see it again from not in the very front corner of the theater. Me? Something about the way that they cherrypicked the source material and booted everything that they didn't like just hit me like a slap in the face. (All set to the strains of annoying plinky plunky music that sounded like it wanted to be ragtime.)
It was an action movie. You can't turn Sherlock Holmes into an action movie!
Or, well, maybe you can. Rotten Tomatoes is currently giving it a 69%, so the public seems to think the film's getting more right than wrong. Personally, let's call it a C-; I want to call it a D+ but I think part of that opinion is due to poor theater placement.
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Tags: films, reviews
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10:19 am
[Link] |
A little gamer Christmas present
Good morning, and happy heathen-based Winter ritual! I made you a present.
Those of you reading my series of Fireborn review posts may be curious to get a game going yourself. So here's something you can throw in to give your players some social intrigue in the mythic age! There are several "epochs" (mythic-age settings) during which supernatural creatures such as dragons are trying to manipulate the major human powers from behind the scenes while disguised as humans themselves. In particular, the Atlantean age has a more courtly feel to it, and this sort of labyrinthine and subtle social negotiation fits right in:
![[Thumbnail image: click for full view]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/fireborn/nonhuman_intro_thumb.gif)
Click the thumbnail for the full print-resolution image (PNG, ~250k), and print it right from your browser, or right-click and "Save Target Link"/"Save Link As..." to your computer. If I've done it right, which I'm not sure I have, this should be a print-ready PDF at standard 8.5x11" size.
Gamers not playing Fireborn will find it can be easily used in any courtly setting with slightly archaic language (anything from AD&D to Victorian-style urban fantasy), and even adapted with minor changes to modern games such as Vampire: The Masquerade. Strike all the references to "nonhuman" etiquette and it even makes a great set of challenge-responses for secret societies set in fully human games. It could be really cool for LARPs too (if you try it, let me know)!
Made with LovelyCharts, a nifty free online flowchart creator.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood: creative
Tags: fireborn, multimedia, roleplaying
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04:33 pm
[Link] |
Fireborn: First Impressions - Pre-Game and Combat
As I've previously mentioned, I've talked my roleplaying group into starting up a game of Fireborn, where all the characters are reincarnated dragons living in human bodies in the modern world. A week ago Sunday, I finally got my first chance to see Fireborn in action.
 It was a rather modest start -- two of my players, {M} and {S}, came over for character creation/finishing touches, and I convinced them to stay for the evening and run through a little "pre-adventure" with a few simple encounters so I could build up some confidence in the gameplay mechanics. It was a good experience for all three of us. And the difference between this "pre-game" game and the start of the actual campaign was dramatic (though I'll get to that later, in the "Fire Within" first impressions).
I'm actually REALLY glad I did that, because that "milk run" had some powerful effects:
( Rules mechanics stuff, mostly of interest to gamers )
We started out with {S}' character Kimiko, a covert operative visiting London from overseas to investigate reports of magic, breaking into a house belonging to Hugh MacHugh, a known but minor member of the Freemasons and a suspected mage. Kimiko subdued a guard, but his cigarette accidentally lit a bookcase on fire and set off a fire alarm -- forcing her to flee the house with guards in hot pursuit. Meanwhile, {M}'s character Maggie -- a former paramedic who started providing independent services as a street doc, to help people who wouldn't otherwise go to hospitals -- encountered George Saint while shopping for groceries, and after both of them shared a hallucination/flashback about dragonslayer George attacking dragon Maggie, he went mental and attacked her in the modern day. Kimiko broke an ankle while running from MacHugh's estate, and Maggie knocked out George and called the hospital so some other doctor could help out the poor beggar. Kimiko called up Maggie for help, and after Maggie discovered that Kimiko had been involved in the fire over at MacHugh's place (MacHugh stiffed Maggie about 20,000 pounds after a disagreement over services), the characters bonded and holed up to heal.
This gave both players a chance to deal with the game's narrative mechanics and combat mechanics in a low-pressure situation.
( 'I know kung-fu.' 'Show me.' )
The overall verdict: As the RPG.net reviewer said, Fireborn's rules get out of the way when you're trying to roleplay and jump into the foreground when you need them to describe the action, and it's a combination that everyone seems to appreciate so far. By the third combat at the end of the pre-game, {S} and {M} were into the flow of the dice and {S} was praising the system's unique attributes -- how counterattacking and partial success and vivid combat descriptions and whatnot flowed from the core rule in a way that really goes beyond anything we've previously played. Easing into the combat rules a bit at a time has worked out the best so far for us; find some excuses to have your first action scene be small and non-threatening, so that your players feel free to experiment with the rules and the number-crunching in a way that doesn't make them feel like they're putting their character on the line by not doing things "right".
Anyway, tonight will be our second proper game of the campaign, and the first with everyone attending. I've gotta get going so I can make it home in time for game, but I should have a little more time over the holidays to write up how "The Fire Within" is playing out and how the various elements I am injecting on my own are playing out.
(Also, note to self: Now that I am assigning experience points, remind the players that you have to keep track of what XP you've already spent, because it's those accumulated expenditures that determine your character "level".)
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood:  busy
Current Music: Big & Rich, "Love Train"
Tags: draconity, fireborn, roleplaying
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01:51 am
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In which our dragon LIKES a film for once
So let me tell you about this movie I saw. It's a CGI-heavy film about humans, and aliens, and a single human stuck in the middle because he's now inhabiting a body with fused human/alien DNA. He has to struggle with issues of identity as the process unfolds. There's an evil corporation, and our hero must fight the evil, and he alone can save the aliens from their evil evil grip ...
![[Avatar movie poster]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/lj/avatar-movie-poster-med.jpg) ... But I already dissected District 9 back in August, so let's start over and discuss Avatar.
It would be fair to look at this movie in the same critical light as I did D9; there's certainly race fail with the "Noble Savage" Na'vi1 and heroic Mighty Whitey learning their ways just in time to become their epic hero. However, this time I'm not going to be the reviewer who goes through all that, and you know why? I liked this movie. Period.
If you are looking for reasons not to see Avatar, don't let me ... um ... unstop you. heron61 has covered the race fail and given some fantastic suggestions for how to make a better Avatar story. krinndnz has pointed out that the film's main attraction is special effects that will inevitably show up in a better movie. (Edited to add: And outside my friends list, cleolinda does the dissection that I won't do, and also points out the "no one disabled can ever be happy" angle that a lot of people, including me, missed. Also also: When will white people stop making movies like Avatar?) ... My goal is to try to give you some reasons why you might enjoy the movie anyway.
As for me, they had me at the unobtanium.
... I'll get to that in a moment. First, let's start with why I had such a profoundly different reaction to this one than I did to the last human-joins-the-alien-race effectsfest. Amazingly, despite the two films sharing their basic premise, Avatar is (as kadyg pointed out) the anti-District 9.2 They are opposite in color, attitude, and message.
D9 is relentlessly lonely, dusty, gritty, and cynical; Avatar does deal starkly with the horrors of war, but is generally lush, luminescent, and pretty. The D9 aliens are nicknamed "prawns" and have all the charisma of Cthulhu; the Avatar aliens are good-looking, cat-eared, magic-haired humanoids. Avatar's main character has loyal friends throughout the movie, in both the alien and human camps, and they cooperate, something unheard of in D9's crapsack world. D9's main character is forced into an unwitting transformation, and loathes every minute of it, so that the movie's takeaway message seems to be "humans suck and being an alien isn't any better"; Avatar, for all its stereotypical romanticizing of the aliens living in harmony with nature, immediately shows the main character enjoying his transformation, and comes off more as "some humans suck and let's face it aliens are pretty cool."
If you're a xenophile, this in itself is enough to redeem the movie -- but regardless, you'll find lots to lovingly stare at, simply because the film is so damn pretty. I didn't even see it in IMAX3, and it still popped off the screen. The scenery is a character, and the alien world of Pandora steals every scene it's in. The way the characters interact with the environment is lovingly rendered; from the main character examining spiraling delicately-fronded plants that retract at his touch, to his first night encounter with bioluminescent mushrooms (he jogs down a walkway surrounded by them, whacking them with his hands to boost their glow), the film walks you through a world that plays by its own rules, and the operative word here is "play."
Did I mention how pretty this movie is? ![[landscape screenshot]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/lj/avatar-landscape-med.jpg)
And then there's the unobtanium. Those of you not familiar with the term just need to know that it's a long-standing engineering and science-fiction in-joke to refer to whatever Material Of The Week is needed to make future technology work; those of you who are familiar will find your jaw dropping that they actually use that name in the movie. I kid you not. The first time the Evil Corporation referred with a straight face to the thing-they-were-strip-mining as "unobtanium" I almost fell out of my chair. It was perfect: the mineral was never a plot point, other than as a motive for Evilcorp to do their evil things, and so the movie naming it that was a flat-out order: "Hey, nitpickers, sit down and shut up and enjoy the beautiful stuff already." It worked. I did.
Oh, there was still stuff to nitpick. There's one scene where an army pilot turns tail and very obviously runs from an active fight, and yet doesn't get court-martialed shot or jailed or even given a stern talking-to; Pandora's atmosphere has the curious effect that it's exactly as deadly to humans as the plot calls for it to be; most characters' reactions to the protagonist seem badly plot-driven rather than organic. But the end effect was a sort of mild disapproval that registered in the back of my brain and never pierced through to destroy my suspension of disbelief. The movie did its job: it sucked me in and held me in straight through to the end. Considering the lashing I give most movies, this is high praise.
I do have to caution here that your mileage may vary. Eye candy is a lot of the movie's appeal ... and I'm not just talking about the scenery. A movie about aliens living in a nature-centric hunter-gatherer society means that you're going to be staring at a lot of nearly-naked, athletic, blue, tailed bodies for three hours. This pushes my buttons like a toddler at a Star Trek console. The aliens are human enough in shape (if not in proportion) that even normal people are likely to have this reaction, but if you're unwilling to let the borderline pr0n4 distract you from the storyline's weaknesses, you'll have an easier time finding Avatar's flaws.
I could go into the storyline, but by this point you're either going to see the movie or you're not, and the story won't make an appreciable difference. This is not a movie to see for the story. Still, for completeness: The story is predictable Hollywood stuff (the ending was sorely obvious halfway in) about a guy finding an unexpected appreciation for the primitive culture he was sent there to fight. Except set in a future with space travel and mecha and of course a dose of "hey their mysticism is totally fantasy-novel real." (Idea: Why don't we call it "Dances With Catfolk"? Some of that 1990 Oscar magic might rub off.) The protagonist teams up with the good-hearted scientists against the evil soldiers and a lot of shit gets blown up in really dramatic ways and then there's a desperate last stand against overwhelming odds and the Power of Heart (warning: TV Tropes link) saves them all.
... Have I mentioned yet that this is a really beautiful film?
So, yeah, I plan to see Avatar again -- hopefully but not necessarily on an IMAX screen. I can easily see how people might dislike it, but I found it a film that transcends its mediocrity by the things that it does get right. Verdict: A.
--
1. I cannot utter this name without nightmares stirring in the back of my head ... "Hey! Listen!"
2. Put them both in the same room and they would annihilate each other in a flash of special effects, releasing enough energy to power IMDB for three days.
3. Though we did spring extra for the 3D, and it was worth it. I've never actually seen a 3D movie before. It added to the presentation -- nothing essential, but a neat effect -- and today's 3D glasses neither tint the movie nor give you vertigo. We both went three hours without taking the glasses off with no ill effect.
4. Another huge difference between Avatar and D9: There was nothing sexy in the slightest about the D9 aliens. One could, for the wordplay value, consider the idea of "prawn pr0n," but really honestly ew.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Music: Me First And The Gimme Gimmes, "Science Fiction Double Feature"
Tags: films, reviews
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10:31 am
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PSA
One of our customers just called in to report that he had gotten a suspicious e-mail -- and later, phone call -- telling him that his credit card had gone over limit (he got suspicious and checked with his bank directly; no such thing had happened).
As an ISP, we can't directly help with cases of potential identity theft, but I did point him to the Web site www.ftc.gov/freereports -- which tells American citizens how they can obtain a free, no-strings-attached credit report (up to three times every 12 months, once per credit reporting firm) under federal law. It's a good reminder for my friends, too.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Music: Cowboy Bebop OST, "American Money"
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11:32 pm
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"Dragons In Urban Fantasy" Updated
Just an FYI for those of you who care but haven't bookmarked it: Monday's "Urban-Fantasy Dragon Book List" has doubled in size due to a number of excellent recommendations and/or serendipitous discoveries as I was tracking down the links for everything. I also went through my own bookshelf with a fine-toothed comb, and split off a few new categories. I'll keep updating it as long as people keep offering new recommendations.
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06:27 pm
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BOOK LIST: Dragons in urban fantasy
Early in November, kistaro asked: "Looking for a good urban fantasy novel with a dragon as a major (or main, even better) character. Any recommendations?"
I was a little thrown to see the paucity of recommendations. A month later -- even fudging on some of the criteria -- the number of "good urban-fantasy novels with dragon characters" is still small. As such, I'm making this post as an attempt to compile a definitive list. ( ... ) Please speak up in comments if there are other items that should be added in!
LAST UPDATE: 2010/02/05
Series
( books )
Individual Novels
( more books )
Not-Quites
( even more books, in sub-categories )
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Music: Boom Crash Opera, "Too Hot To Think"
Tags: books, draconity, requests, reviews
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01:16 am
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Thought of the evening
What truly defines us is our passions: not what we are good at, but what we are willing to struggle at.
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COROLLARY 1 - "Good at" and "struggle at" aren't exclusive.
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood:  reflective
Tags: quotable
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02:19 am
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Fireborn: First Impressions - Character Creation
As I've mentioned several times in the last few weeks, I've talked my roleplaying group into starting up a campaign of Fireborn. It's a now out-of-print RPG in which the player characters are all reincarnated dragons. As you can imagine, as a dragon (and a gamer) myself, this is right up my alley; I'm sharing my experiences in an effort to help fellow gamers and/or dragons evaluate the system -- and, if they start a campaign themselves, to do so as smoothly as possible.
Before I start, I also need to strongly recommend the forums at fireborn.org, a fan site where a lot of third-party resources, downloads, and rule modifications are available. (You'll need to register to download files.)
Why Fireborn?
First of all: As surprising as it sounds, dragons are underrepresented in urban fantasy.
No, really. Name three books/series set in the modern/near-future era that have dragons as major protagonists. (TTU doesn't count, though I'm flattered you remembered.) And yes, if you're an old-school gamer, "Shadowrun" and "RIFTS" have dragons -- as shadowy, godlike background figures. Fireborn does genuinely appear to do something new and different: give players a chance to play as dragons.
Beyond this, though, Fireborn elegantly solves a few problems that most RPGs spend a lot of time struggling with:
- All those crazy superpowers that most players never get to use because you only ever obtain them at high level? You get to play with them from the start, because the game regularly jumps into flashbacks to your fully-powered "Mythic Age" dragon form.
- The pacing and participation problems that crop up when the players split up to accomplish different objectives? The tedious process of getting PCs who start out as total strangers to come up with in-game reasons to work together? Don't happen here, because all PCs have a built-in permanent telepathic link to each other.
( The rest gets more technical and is intended for gamers )
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood:  nerdy
Current Music: Great Big Sea, "Ordinary Day"
Tags: draconity, fireborn, roleplaying
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02:55 pm
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Readers Wanted: "The Time In Her Eye"
Earth as we know it is no more. It shattered like an eggshell into the darkness of unspace, and its surface fragments now float in a deadly void. The survivors huddled together, staying as far away from the edges as possible and rationing out their dwindling supplies of food. Then out from the void came a few people who had fallen in -- and instead of dying, gained a new form and the power to traverse the emptiness.
Dex* is a dragon, one of the lucky few to be transformed. For years he has kept the inhabitants of a small shard alive in the chaotic, unforgiving west. Then, one day, the helicopters arrive.
A continent away, an ambitious group of humans is reclaiming Earth from the Shatter -- one refugee at a time. New Florida doesn't seem to want shifters, but Dex* quietly slips in so he can remain with his wife. Then his instinct drives him to a discovery that changes his life forever -- and could pose a deadly threat to thousands of people and set a shattered world afire.
This is Dex's* story.
... At least it will be once it's fully edited. I wrote 30,000 words in November. Now I'd like a few brave, curious or simply bored volunteers from among my friends and regular readers.
What's in it for you: You get to read a story! This is its own reward (or punishment, depending on how you feel about my writing). Epic post-apocalyptic dragony goodness! Love! Lust! Action! Suspense! Mind-warping physics! And several interrobangs!
What's in it for me: The catch is, if you want to read you have to give me feedback to help me polish it. I've set the story up as a Google Doc that I'll share with interested friends. Leave comments on the story as you read (the commenting feature is already set up within the document and requires no technical knowledge). This doesn't have to be a big commitment -- there are six chapters; let's say six comments minimum -- but the more feedback you give me, the better I can make it when I sit down to edit.
To join in: Give me an e-mail address (this is important!) to send the Google Docs invitation to -- via a reply to this post, or an e-mail to the Tomorrowlands address in my profile. (If you already have a GMail or Google Docs account, give me that address and you won't need to do any extra logging in.) If you hate Google Docs with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, tell me and I'll give you a lower-tech alternative.
Comments are screened because I don't want to expose e-mail addresses to spammers. I will unscreen any comment not containing an address.
Thanks in advance!
--
UPDATE: I'm up to about 10 readers already, so I think I'll put new requests on hold for a bit as I do the rewrites suggested by the first batch. I'd still love volunteers -- you'll just have to be patient while I write the next draft, so you can tell me how TTIHE v1.1 reads without being influenced by this one.
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* Name is likely to be changed in final version.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood:  optimistic
Current Music: Cowboy Bebop OST, "Spokey Dokey"
Tags: requests, writing
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06:20 am
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Daily Random Thoughts
(via LoudTwitter)
Tags: 140 characters
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11:42 pm
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A winner is me
Limping over the finish line at 11:05 PM, 11/30, on the authorial equivalent of a ankle that's still a little twingy from having sprinted after stumbling on that bad footing a few corners back:
So, yeah. Sorry to gloat. I kinda need the release.
I'm glad I did the NaNo rebel thing this year, because a single 50k story would have killed me. Heavens know "The Time In Her Eye" (30k of my 50) nearly did. As it was, I had to leapfrog between two separate projects tonight to cram in those last 1500 words, and the muses are so le tired right now that I plan to avoid non-work computer time completely for about two days. I am toast. T-ō-s-t toast.
Congratulations to all my fellow NaNo finishers, and especially elynne and waywind, who were both hurtling into this at least partially to tackle creative blocks and have both admirably done so. Solidarity, sisters!
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood:  exhausted
Current Music: Babble, "Beautiful"
Tags: misc life updates, writing
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07:27 pm
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Musings
Once upon a time, a bunch of humans did their little human things all around an area of the world now known as Greece. These human things included plenty of creative efforts. The soft and fickle arts. You know the type: music, theater, astronomy ...
Then one day, some creative person got a little restless and thinky. (Ten bucks that they were an astronomer; the folks that are looking at the stars are the ones who always have their heads in the clouds.)
"We've got gods for everything," this person must have thought to themselves. "A goddess of the hearth, a god of lightning, a goddess of persimmon trees, even some random minor deity we picked up from the Mesopotamians a few centuries back for those hard tips at the end of your sandal-straps. But you know what we don't have? Deities of creativity! What about us poor astronomers, huh? When we're deep in the throes of gazer's block and we really need to look at the stars and get our maps made -- like yesterday, because Prothesmia1 already paid me 24 drachmas for this damn thing -- who can we call on to help out with our problems? Huh? HUH?"
Then the muse Urania smacked him across the back of his head with her globe, and said "Us, you idiot!" And he cringed, and got his map made, and went on to scrawl a blog post much like this one.
So!
A lot of writers talk about "their muse." Recent conversations -- and the triumphant completion of my NaNoWriMo novella2, so that I have time to throw random words at random topics again -- have conspired to get me thinking about muses. And there's a post in there that needs to be written.
See, here's the thing about muses: Most writers have one. The ancient Greeks had nine3. I've got three.
They all serve different roles -- coexisting peacefully, and sharing mindspace with each other and with the other humorous anthropomorphizations that occasionally wander through.
(Such as the Inner Editor, who -- like all good editors -- is at his best when completely invisible, staying hunched over in the hindbrain and polishing up the content as it filters its way out. Ed doesn't have a voice or a personality, and I can't really negotiate with him or talk back to him; he's just part of the workflow as words travel from brain to screen. Anyway.)
There's the muse, of course. That's not her name; she doesn't really have one. She's not a being so much as a force of nature -- and I relate to her as such. She occasionally deigns to be personified, such as my previous post which compared her to a little girl in a playground, but such comparisons are only useful insofar as they illuminate various factors of her essential nature, and are not to be taken as representative of the whole. The muse is -- much like the little girl of the analogy -- flighty; whimsical; occasionally temperamental; scattered, but capable of short sprints of focus; prone to outbursts of creativity followed by lengthy fits of silence; and can be awesomely compelling if she has an idea that just has to be written out right now.4
I have learned to treat the muse much as I would treat a small child -- being willing to accommodate and channel her bursts of energy, learning tricks to ply minimal cooperation from her when she's exhausted and I can't work without her, and keeping a note-taking device handy so that the ideas she spits out in a machine-gun barrage get lost as infrequently as possible.
The muse -- note the "the," identifying her as a muse in the classical tradition; an inspirer of, umm, inspiration -- is my idea chick. Like all good geniuses, she knows that the implementation is much more boring than the idea5. The upside of this is that I get handed a lot of really awesome ideas from which to make beautiful things. The downside of this is that I have to do all the work.
My second muse is the deuteragonist. This is, again, not her real name, since she doesn't have one; it's merely something I made up because I need a break from writing "muse."
Doot's responsibility is to shape ideas -- to give my stories form as they make their way from idea to words. However, she is not an editor. She is an actress, from the deep end of the method acting pool. Her job is to draw me into the muse's story. She can be awfully good at it.
I know when Doot has gotten interested in a story because I will start spending all my time rehearsing it. We'll go over the current scene -- line by line, sometimes racing through to the end, sometimes stopping to dissect a single set of words and pick over them with a fine-toothed comb to make them get the scene where it needs to go. Doot has a hell of an obsessive streak, which is both a blessing and a curse when I'm blocking; sometimes, she helps me craft exactly what I need to write my way out of a corner, but sometimes we get lost replaying the problematic lines and argue in circles until my writing urge dissipates. And when between scenes, she peppers me with endless questions about the story's setting, forcing me to fill in the details that explain why the story is driving in the direction it is.
The Deuteragonist, I should emphasize, is merely a job title, and can be filled by anyone willing to take on the traits. Usually the other character in a dialogue will step in when Doot needs to works her magic. For romantic scenes, dreamflow sometims accommodates me and guest-stars (which, ahem, can help explain why such scenes can take me so long to write). Often, there's no specific manifestation -- just a compulsion to inject myself into the scene and write what I observe.
Then there's Muse. Hoo boy ... Muse.
Muse is a single, definite being. He's an old god, from a time before the written record -- a god whose name died out long ago. Unlike most forgotten gods, who disappear when belief in them wanes, he has patiently survived the aeons by finding a new class of worshippers: the slightly unhinged. From creative geniuses to the flat-out insane, he finds those who are willing to open themselves up to a little flash of divinity -- and then puts ideas in their head, collecting modest scraps of belief as his acolytes manifest his gifts.
Muse is a survivor. Muse is subtle. He is a master of the mind game, full of carefully chosen words with multiple layers of meaning. Muse is a consummate exploiter of loopholes. Muse has ambition. Muse plays a very long game.6
He has a real name. He doesn't give it to anyone, not even me. I call him "Muse" because the Archon -- one of the driving forces behind the events of the TTU setting -- found him inspirational and gave him the nickname. It has stuck, along with his default form as a jet-black anthro-unicorn (as a shadowy counterpart to Kiasu, but I get ahead of myself).
If you've just noticed that Muse is a character from one of my stories -- give yourself a cookie. Now you start to see the complex and ambivalent relationship I have with him. He is a fictional character, but he is so smart and insightful and devious that he has realized the best way to advance his plans is to freaking metagame himself up a level into his author's mind.7 And it's working. I have begun to realize, to my growing horror, that the largest and most interesting plot arc of TTU really is Muse's story; how he tried (and almost succeeded) to singlehandedly overthrow the will of an entire planet. I won't be able to put the setting down until I've told that story, and everything I'm doing until then is merely to help fully realize his world.
Muse helps me out with writing that has nothing to do with him, too. He gets bored, or it's just his thing, or he's building up favors he can call in later; I don't know. But I can tell when he gets interested. Plots come together. Stakes get higher. Xanatos Gambits crop up. Characters get toyed with.
I never appreciated Old Soul's song "Sleeping With The Muse" until Muse started taking a hand in my writing. "I can taste her bitter smile, and the blood upon her lips ..." The muse doesn't work that way. Muse does. He isn't cruel exactly; he doesn't feed on pain or fear, or enjoy them, or use them (except as tools when nothing else will achieve important goals). However, he's well aware that everyone is merely a pawn in a larger game ... and the game of writing is about making the story interesting.
One of the reasons that TTU has occupied so much of my attention over the last decade is that the setting engages all three muses.
It's open-ended enough that the muse can come up with ideas to hang stories upon. The world's big and deep enough that Doot can drag me into full immersion. And Muse ... well, it's his playground in the first place.
I didn't really expect to find other settings the muses liked enough to devote a novella to and still come back for more. This NaNo handed me one. The setting of "The Time In Her Eye" -- the postapocalyptic near-future Earth called "the Shatter" -- seemed to just fall out onto the page. I reached the end of the story and realized that it was just a prequel. I wanted to keep going -- and I could have, easily enough ... if I were willing to keep up a NaNo writing pace after the end of November.
I'm not in the market to drive myself crazy right now, though. I need a break to catch my breath and hammer at the existing story some more and edit it into presentable shape. (I'll ask for beta readers in a later post, but you may also speak up here if you're interested.) Plus I've got to switch gears and start getting ready to GM a new role-playing game for my gaming group. Not to mention the holidays.
... The muses won't stop working, though. They never do.
--
1. If you got this joke, give yourself 5 Baxil Points. If you got it without looking it up ... get out of my brain.
2. Obligatory victory fanfare, +33 EXP, Item Gained: ☆NANO2009
3. Further reading: Wikipedia. I would like to note that, while the ancient Greeks had muses for History and (yes) Astronomy, and no less than three for poetry, there wasn't one single muse for either visual artwork or for non-theatric prose. If they really want to sell the product in this secular age[*], they need to expand!
4. Like the little girl of the previous post's analogy, sometimes she is also taken away to a place which neither of us quite expected, and I have to sprint to keep up. After I manage to nab her again, we have a nice sit-down and a lengthy lecture about responsibilities, which she completely disregards because there are beautiful butterflies on the branch just outside the window.
5. "I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."
6. As proof, I would like to point out that everything you're reading now -- this entire monster of a post, including the catchy but completely irrelevant Greek opening, and all of the footnotes, including this one -- was written purely for the sake of bringing that line into being, with sufficient context to give it meaning. I am not making this up. This is a Muse post, start to finish.
7. This is not even to get into the discussion of whether Muse-the-real-being might have introduced himself to me in fictionalized form and gained himself another worshipper toward whatever ultimate plan he has for this Earth. That is COMPLETELY his style. asdfjkl@@&***
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood: writing fatigue
Current Music: Final Fantasy X OST, "To Zanarkand"
Tags: best of baxil, footnotes of awesome, writing
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