Thoughts on events, music, books and the whole enchilada of my human experience

  Since I was a wee geek of eight years of age, one of my goals in life was to attend GenCon, a gigantic gaming convention (30K+ people, by all estimates). This last weekend, I fulfilled that goal, staying for the whole enjoyable//grueling four days of games, gamers, celebrities, half-celebrities, enthusiastic retailers and outrageous costumes.

Needless to say, I had a blast.

I see fellow blogger Andy has done a good job of general comments, so I'll stick to specific moments that stick out in my mind.

* I attended not one, but two, events centered around Bablyon 5 stars Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin) and Jason Carter (Marcus Cole). The first was this Q+A session with about 30 attendees, meaning I was about twenty feet from them even sitting in one of the back rows. They were absolutely hilarious, alternately making fun of each other and thems with regards to careers, fans, characters on B5, penis size and other matters of varying taste. The second function was described to me as an improv comedy event, but turned out to be an actor's studio in which the two guys goodnaturedly critiqued participiants' acting abilities. Since I'm just watching the show for the first time now (approaching the end of Season 4), both events were a real treat, and a highlight of the whole con.

* Worst t-shirt: all black, with this in white: "Carpe DM".

* Best RPG session for me was "Omega: Assimilate", an adventure for Decipher's Star Trek system, run by one of the game's gurus, Don Mappin. The TNG-era plotline involved a expedition into an abandoned Romulan science lab. We managed to choose the most useless positions available for this mission (I was the Flight Officer, and the others were Ship's Counselor, Chief Medical Officer and Security Officer) and still pulled off the mission successfully. It reaffirmed for me that small groups (<5 players) are ideal for RPG'ing.

* Worst game session, by far, was an All Flesh Must Be Eaten session. The hopeless and incomprehensible "plot" involved a virus let loose in the city that causes people to become zombies when they die. We played a group of civilians (I was the video store clerk) who were given weapons by a U.S. soldier and told to fight against the zombies. Then followed three and a half hours of rolling dice against "Guns (Handgun)" and "Dodge" skill. There was only one type of enemy, the "zombies" (that was all the description we received), and nothing in the way of problem solving or roleplaying. While the session was miserable, I had a great time ripping apart the session afterwards with follow participant Andy. See the blog entry below for more details.

* I tried out a whole bunch of board and card games that were new to me: "Killer Bunnies", "Monkeys on the Moon" and "Atlanteon". I enjoyed all three of them

* Best song: "Chainmail Woman", to the tune of "Pretty Woman".

There's a lot more I could say, but I think these snippets should give sense of the thing.

Highly recommended to those with an "Inner Geek".

posted by Jon at 9:54 AM

  I have a general GenCon blog written, but I wanted to post this first. This is an e-mail I wrote to the coordinator of Eden Studio events at GenCon:


Derek,

You replied to a post I put on rpg.net (under the name Sherlock) expressing frustration with the AFMBE session I played in at GenCon. I would like to explain in more detail.

First off, before becoming negative, I would like say that the Friday night session of Terra Primate I played in (by Charles, I think -- forget his last name, maybe Strauss or some such, sorry) was fantastic. The GM, who said he hadn't run any games in ten years, did a wonderful job of including all the players and filling in all the little details. He was running the adventure in the back of the book, with the pre-generated characters, and I can say I would consider picking up this game after this experience.

The Saturday session, "Tower of Flesh", was a completely different matter. I got a strange vibe when I sat at the table, as the GM wasn't very friendly or talkative. Then, someone with a generic ticket came up and asked what the game was about. The GM then EXPLAINED IN DETAIL the entire adventure (including how it ends) while the rest of us sat there. That player left.

The adventure itself (written by the GM) was incredibly poor. Every scene was a battle between the PC's and "zombies". Now, I was expecting an AFMBE session to go into a little more detail about zombies than "there are 5 zombies here". It would seem to me that a system with such a specific focus would allow the players to learn a little bit more about zombies in general. We received no description whatsoever. In fact, I tried a zombie lore roll and received in response "Maybe you can shoot him in the head". That's it.

Beyond that skill use, and one other player's single use of Hacking, the only skills we used were Gun and Dodge. Again, that's it. Every scene was us pulling up to a location and receiving "There are 11 zombies moving around here. They turn and attack." Then we would fight them and move on. Sort of like an RPG version of Double Dragon or Mario Brothers -- move from left to right, kill things, keep moving right. The final "boss" in the session, a mad scientist with a tommy gun (?!?), went down on the first shot by the first player firing.

Oh, and before I forget, if Gun and Dodge are going to be the only skills used in a session, why were we given the pregens from the book? Basically the Soldier and Police Officer did all the good fighting, while the rest of us Video Store Clerks and Hackers missed like crazy.

Oh, and there's even another thing -- in AFMBE as this GM interpreted it, every roll of 5 or below means you shoot another player. WTF? Even with a pretty good skill of 2, you're going to shoot another player 30% of the time, as opposed to the 40% the time you'll hit a zombie on 9+. Can that possibly be right?

There are a few other things that couldn't be foreseen (one cheating player reading the adventure as the GM turned pages -- though the adventure as written was just maps, and also the GM was losing his voice the whole session), but the bulk of my complaint would be with the scenario and the GM. Honestly, I can't say this session really showed off any strengths of the system or genre. It was probably the worst RPG session I've ever played in.

Now, I don't want to end on a negative note, so I'd like to say that what I saw of the Unisystem in action in the Terra Primate session, I liked a lot. We weren't shooting each other 1/3 of the time, and non-combat skills came up a lot. It was really a great session, and helped me to see that the AFMBE game was more the fault of the GM than Eden Studios. God help me if I hadn't had that preparation -- honestly, I probably would never pick up an Eden product, whereas right now I'm still on the fence about AFMBE and am pretty enthusiastic about TP.

Anyhow, thanks for letting me vent.

Jon

posted by Jon at 9:22 AM

  Submitted for your approval...


evidence that I am the coolest uncle ever


< insert diabolical laughter here >

posted by Jon at 11:26 AM

  It's been a good two months since the last post -- all apologies to my three or four readers.

Browsing through RPGnet, a great source for geeky discussions of all manner of topics, brought me this morning, by way of link, to this fascinating article in the Observer.

< Here, you should take a moment to look over the article. >


< no, really! >

Returning to our originally scheduled blog, already in progress -- can you believe there are parents out there that find this treatment of their sons and daughters acceptable, even preferable? I've wondered before about the level of control some parents wish to have over their kids. In extreme examples, such as the virtual prison camp described above, the parents are clearly valuing good behaviour in a disproportionate amount to happiness. But where is the gray area?

Is it the father who decides his son will follow in the steps of his own career? (I've known one like this.)

Or those "Dear Abby" mothers who need to decide every detail of their daughter's wedding?

Are these parents more concerned with their children or with themselves?

I guess I'm pretty loose about who my (at the moment, imaginary) children will grow up to be. My parents gave me a choice whether to go to college or not (though they definitely encouraged me to do so). They were happy with any academic interests I decided to pursue. They accepted Kim-Loi immediately. Really, outside of the reasonable amount of supervision any parent should give his or her child, they were pretty laid back, letting me find my own way.

I can't believe I'm going to say this, but... my parents are kind of cool.

< cue that commercial where children thank their parents for invading their privacy >

< or, even better, don't >

posted by Jon at 8:48 AM

  Confession time: I once kind of liked reality television.

Sort of. A long time ago.

I mean, the first season of Survivor was pretty good programming. A new premise: a bunch of people trapped on an island competing for a million dollars. I had never seen anything like it before and found it interesting enough. I even gave the first season of Big Brother a chance and kind of, sort of liked that one as well. Yes, the experience was both tedious and faintly voyeuristic, but I hadn't seen a bunch of people trapped in a house for long periods of time before and it was something to see how unhealthy an experience that is.

Then the whole newness of the "reality" TV experience started of fade and I've avoided every other one since then.

Why am I bringing this up?

Because of this article.

An all reality television cable channel. No joke.

As a basic cable subscriber, I already get junk like the Golf Channel, G4 (the video game network), Speedvision (stock car racing), QVC and STARZ True Stories. Pretty soon this reality channel will be added to the list of things I support unwillingly.

Why don't cable providers just let you pick and choose cable stations? I'd happily pay one-quarter less than we do now to drop half the channels we get. Heck, just give me the networks, A+E, TNT, Comedy Central, Sci-Fi and HBO and that would really be enough. Instead, my hard-earned dollars are soon to be supporting reruns of Celebrity Mole and I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! Oh, well, I already support Scare Tactics, so maybe the damage is done.

As a footnore: I know I'm supposed to feel guilty about publicly admitting I like television. Maybe I should go ahead and say something like the standard "I really only watch Discovery and The Learning Channel" to cover myself. What I've never understood about that statement (which I've heard from numerous people) is that those stations haven't shown good educational programming in years. Now it's all "In Search of Bigfoot" and "Strangers from the Skies" and "OMG!!!! I just saw a &**#!! alien! LOL" and other tripe. Sci-Fi's started to lean in that direction, as well.

So I'll go ahead and proudly admit it: I watch and enjoy The Wire, Six Feet Under, The Daily Show and reruns of Oz, ST: TNG and Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Maybe enough watching of those will make up for all of those hours I spent in front of reality TV.

posted by Jon at 3:55 PM

  Today's the one-month anniversary of my last blog post. Woo-hoo!

Yes, I've been lazy and unmotivated. I could blame this on a busy work schedule, or other things going on in my life, or maybe even a loss of Internet connectivity. But those wouldn't be valid excuses.

The only thing I can point to is the weather.

You see, I am on a seasonal schedule in terms of creativity. Normally, my energy and excitement towards creativie projects explodes with the new weather of the Spring, is steady through the long, hot Summer, begins to wane in the Fall and then dies in the Winter. Then the cycle starts all over again and it's great again.

What am I finding this Spring, however, is that my Muse is grown not simply by chronology, but also by weather.

Normally, the Spring is a time of bright light and open windows. I feel alive when I can start wearing thinner clothing, get up easier in the morning and go for long, pleasant walks. But this year has been cloudy day after cloudy day, with the temperatures nowhere near as high as they should be. (A coat a week before May Day? C'mon!)

So, my mood hasn't been as high as usual and my creative side is still hibernating.

Let's pray for a change in the weather and soon!

posted by Jon at 1:52 PM

  Kim's off a retreat for her job, so things have been pretty quiet here at Casa de Mergenthaler-Fry. I've managed to fill up most of my free time while she's gone with church activities, an impromptu game of Risus, and of course, hours in front of the computer playing Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood.

...which brings me to Westerns. I'm not quite sure how it does that, except that the Merry Men were outlaws of a sort, but we'll pretend that the jump is an easy one to make. I'm in the mood to talk about Westerns.

A while ago you couldn't have gotten me to watch a Western by hook or by crook. Tough white guys with chaps and lassos? Sounds like something out of L+O: SVU or a Village People concert. Ineffectual women that rely on men for very survival? Not likely to fly in this house. The main reason I never explored the genre before was a sense that it was boring, like how many people feel about old movies before they ever really watch any.

It turns out I was missing a lot of great stuff.

It all started about two years ago. A general dissatisfaction with science fiction led to me to start seeking out other genre fiction. I read forty or so mystery novels and burned out quickly on that genre, so only a few options were left to me: Fantasy (most of which I find poorly written and derivative), Romance (uh, no), Thrillers (maybe), Horror (maybe) and Westerns. I chose the latter to explore first.

I still haven't found much Western fiction I can digest, though some of the short stories I've read have had promise and there was one Louis L'Amour novel, Sitka, that I enjoyed but didn't love. I've also tried my hand at Western RPG's, picking up some stuff for GURPS and Deadlands, and a stand-alone game called Dust Devils. It's Western television and movies, though, where I've really struck gold.

Bonanza and Gunsmoke are both surprisingly enjoyable. The former focuses on the activities of a the family, the Cartwrights, and the ranch they own, the Ponderosa. Sci-Fi fans will recognize Lorne Greene, who plays the patriarch Ben Cartwright, as Commander Adama from BattleStar Galactica. Michael Landon was also a cast member. Really great acting on this show and the way it's filmed (read: bright technicolor) is pleasing to the eye. I'd consider myself a casual fan by now.

The better show was Gunsmoke, however. Trivia buffs may know that Gunsmoke was and still is the longest running program in TV history, with a mammoth 20 consecutive run that included over 350 epsiodes! To give you an idea how much television that is, that's more episodes than Cop Rock and Team Knight Rider combined! Seriously, though -- this was a superior program, featuring a really versatile cast, a wide variety plot lines and some evocative dialogue. I'm genuinely surprised how well this program has aged. Give it a shot with an open mind and you might be surprised how good this show actually was.

I'm running out of time, so I'll make the movie portion short: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is the best Western movie I've found, and one of the best films period I've ever seen. The plot, though simple, explores the issue of history and historiography deeply. Is it more important what happened or what people believe happened? The Old West, a place where history and legend existed side-by-side, is the perfect backdrop for exploring this issue and the script is intelligent, witty and exciting. Add direction by John Ford and acting by John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart and you really can't ask for much more from a film. Highest recommendations.

I would really like to hear other peoples' opinions and recommendations regarding the Western genre. I still consider myself a neophyte, though the Western Channel (yes, that's a real network) is going a long way to correct that. Have any of you favorite Western movies/TV/books/games/etc.? Why is it such an enduring genre? I'd love to hear back.

Finally, in the immortals words of Smitty: "Go West, Young Man!"

posted by Jon at 10:58 AM