It Begins...

It begins today. Wish me luck.

Drow Attack!

First and foremost, the folks who run Endgame Oakland are awesome. I was in there yesterday and mentioned how hard it is to find copies of Keep on the Shadowfell, the adventure I was planning on using to start my middle schoolk D&D game. In response, the Endgame staff gave me a copy of Web of the Spider Queen, one of the latest D&D Encounters packs, complete with maps.

Now, I know that Web of the Spider Queen was a promotional product, made and distributed for free by Wizards of the Coast, but it still takes a special kind of businessperson to think of that, especially when it offers him no direct profit. My hat goes off to Endgame, and you should all give it a visit the next time you're in Oakland.

Moving on to the content of Web of the Spider Queen.

So far, I think this is something I can use. I'm a little concerned about how much of the art focuses on drow booty. I'm more than a little concerned about, you know, the black elves being evil, and you can tell they're evil because they're black. On the other hand, there's a fun plot and an endboss who really chews the scenery, uttering memorable lines like "I'll eat your hearts for the trouble you've caused me!" I can have a lot of fun with that guy, and the kids will enjoy fighting him.

There are two problems that are real stumbling blocks.

The first is relatively minor. There's a random treasure table - I like those, as callbacks to the days when magical items were part of the weird shit that happened to you as an adventurer, rather than an anticipated and controllable part of your progression - but about a third of it is stuff from Mordenkeinen's Magnificent Emporium... which I don't own. I'll pick it up if I can find a used copy - I'll hit Endgame's used section on Thursday - but I won't buy it new. Well, that's disappointing, but I can always fudge it using content from one of the other rulebooks I do own.

The second is just a little bit bigger.

Page 9, end of the first session, the characters get a sending from Elminster. Mother. Fucking Elminster. I have no time for bearded God-damned Mary Sues in my D&D games. I am also not tying myself to the Forgotten Realms. I'm going to have to invent some other suitably super - but not spotlight-stealing, thank you very much - wizard type to replace him. Then I can kill him at a later date and manipulate my players' little emotions.

Sometimes, being a good DM means being a bad person.

Anyway, tomorrow is the first session - wish me luck!

D&D With Middle Schoolers

Not as exciting as certain other "D&D With..." projects, but a lot less likely to create Internet uproar. Also, less likely to win me hundreds of followers, but with lesser risk comes lesser rewards. Also, I don't spend all day hanging out with pornstars.

So, I have decided to start a D&D game for some of the kids I teach. I figure this is as good a place as any to write about how it goes, and heck - we may all learn something from the experience.

Now, I hardly need to note this, given my readership, but I'm going to do it anyway. I think D&D has the potential to teach these - or, in fact, any - kids a lot. We've got social skills (following rules, taking turns, cooperating towards a mutual goal), math, storytelling, reading, writing, and critical thinking. We've got the opportunity for me to build closer relationships with some of my students. We've got a chance for me to teach all this in an environment where I only have to deal with kids who have already bought in to the setting. And we've got a chance to let off steam by killing gribbly critters - a therapeutic practice entirely on its own.

Let's start by talking about the basic premises, assumptions, and foundational choices made by myself and my players.

I know that this is going to be a controversial decision, but I decided to go with 4th Edition D&D. Specifically, I decided to go with Essentials. Why? Three reasons.

Firstly, 4th Edition D&D does an extremely good job of maximizing the fun factor. In my experience, there is always something fun a character to do, no matter what. This is intrinsically true of the fight scenes, but the free-wheeling, lightly detailed fantasy setting makes it easier for a clever DM (yours, truly) to ensure the same for the non-combat scenes as well.

3rd Edition and even 3.5 don't do nearly as good a job of maximizing fun. The attempt at a coherent system - in which things like magic and theurgy are treated as exceptions - creates a situation in which characters are frequently left with nothing to do. Cast all your spells? Bring a sword to a mage fight? Hopefully you brought a book. Sure, it's a consistent and flavorful nod to D&D's Vancian roots, but is it fun? I'm told that Pathfinder fixes some of these problems - of course, I've been told by Pathfinder fans that it's the best thing since sliced kobolds, and will also fix your receding hairline and relationship with your mother-in-law - but I don't already own Pathfinder. And I'm somewhat cynical about those claims, as I'm sure you've inferred.

Secondly, Essentials takes this one step further, and simplifies it as well. By reducing the number of powers the average character needs to juggle, making sure that low-level powers remain relevant throughout the game's progression, and making sure the powers are straightforward and flavorful, Essentials makes D&D much more accessible, and not just to middle schoolers.

Finally, I am a busy man. There is a huge wealth of material available for 4th Edition D&D. I can run my kids through Keep on the Shadowfell, then use the Cairn of the Winter King, then see what the kids are into. Whatever they want to do - take on zombies, fight pirates, explore caves - I can find a module that will let me do it with minimal work on my part.

And isn't that what we all want? To fight zombies with minimal work on my part?

Regarding the kids, I have four of them, with a possible fifth and sixth joining in if they can get their shit together to come in and make characters. I'm going to go ahead and use the kids' first names, but not last names. I'm not actually under any confidentiality agreement, and I really don't think that anyone is going to try - or be particularly enabled - to kidnap a kid because they know is name is "Cameron" and he plays D&D.

Anyway.

My four players are two girls (Jada and Cassandra) and two boys (Ismael and Abdiel). Despite my best efforts, my two girls are both playing sneaky/support characters (thief and warpriest, respectively) and my two boys are playing in-your-face fighter types (knight and slayer, respectively). It took only minimal nudging, but I managed to convince the kids to play a pretty balanced party: so far, we have two melee strikers, one defender, and one leader. If I get another two players, I will nudge them towards the controller and ranged striker roles. I find that the average party really only needs one defender.

That said, the system really is flexible enough that the kids can play whatever they like. Once a party has the basics - one leader, one defender, one striker - everything else is gravy.

Now that characters are made, we will have our first proper session on Thursday, I believe. Possibly not. I may have a meeting. I can't be bothered to check my calendar right now. Either way, I'm excited, and there's more to come soon!

Some Story/Setting Thoughts

I thought to myself "let's have an update post where I complain about having insufficient motivation to write and how it's messing with my self image as a writer," but then I thought "let's just post about writing and save the wanking for my special private time."

You're welcome.

This is an idea I've been kicking around for a while. I'm eager to hear your thoughts on it, oh faithful readers.

The premise of the setting is, basically, epic fantasy all growed up. A world of sword and sorcery, having achieved not just an industrial revolution - that's arcane steampunk, and it's been done - but the same successive waves of urbanization, nation building, and advances in information technology that define the world we live in today. In other words, this is a world grounded in fantasy, but looking a lot like our world.

I'm not a big fan of magic/science as a black-and-white dichotomy, but for reasons that will become apparent later on, I am going to say that in this world, they are at least a little dichotomous. Magic is an inborn trait of many individuals and species. With practice, you can more or less count on magic to do what you want it to, but it maintains a personal, mystical nature. Magic is not repeatable or rational. Although you can use it to get results, it's ultimately irrational, subjective, and unreliable. In this world, science, on the other hand, is just science. Ultimately, it's rational, reliable, repeatable, and inherent to the entire world - and therefore, democratic.

In other words, magic is the old world. It's hierarchical; it favors the few and the lucky. Science is democratic. While I have no illusions - and this setting doesn't, either - that everyone has equal access to scientific training or the fruits of science, theoretically anyone can learn it and benefit from it.

Sorry about the commie digression there.

Now, to get us to the time and place the game is actually set in, there's a bit of fantasy history I need to cover.

About a generation ago in this world - roughly equivalent to the 1940s - the last independent Elven nation began the equivalent of World War II. They had been in decline for some time - think the fading Ottoman Empire - in part because of their traditional reliance on magic (a powerful force, but since it's unreliable, it's more helpful as a source of personal power than it is as the basis of nation-building) and in part because of their insistence on remaining a racial monoculture, led by an inbred monarchy supported by an unwieldy bureacracy.

So, the elves had a renaissance, but pre-war Germany style, they decided to blame everyone else for their problems rather than accept that the needed to change, and started a war to right old wrongs and reclaim their dominance.

The elven armies were crushed. Their territories were carved up among the nations who had united to defeat them. With no appreciable economy, an elven diaspora began, leading to elves living as underclasses in cities all over the world.

Which brings us to the modern day.

Before I continue with the actual story I actually want to tell, I want to acknowledge the holes.

• Other fantasy species? What about, I dunno, Gnomes? Hobbits? Dwarves? Are dragons monsters or an intelligent magical species (I'm inclined towards the latter) and if so, what is there role? If part of the appeal of this setting is "epic fantasy growed up," then I ought to include a selection of favorite tropes, the question is which and how.
• Magic. I went and put magic in. That means that there's still a lot to decide about how it works, its limitations, and so on. Since I decided that magic is actually magical, rather than just being science with the serial numbers filed off, I can cheat a little, but only a little.
• There are many details that would need to be fleshed out to tell a larger story. "The allies" who defeated the elves need histories, cultures, religions, and so on.

Now, the story.

Personally, I think there's a lot of potential here to tell a lot of interesting stories, but the story I want to focus on is something dear to my heart. I kind of want to write a story about a teacher in an impoverished, partly elven neighborhood in the equivalent of an inner city. I like the idea of mixing all these big ideas and fantasy tropes with the job I've come to know so well. I like the big history, and how it provides lots of complicated causes for the current events.

So... well, I guess I don't really need to know what you think. I'm happy that I got a chance to put my thoughts all together and in print. That said, I'm curious to read any thoughts any reader might have.

I don't know where this story is going to go, but it's good to be creative again. Catch you later.

Burning Hobbit Experience

Getting ready to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has been an unexpected rollercoaster for me. My emotions have ranged from hope and excitement when the movie was first announced, to joy and delight at the initial trailers and sneak peeks, to fear and dismay when they announced that they were stretching the movie to two, and then three movies, to disgust and despair when I learned about exactly how they were padding the movie to triple ticket sales, and finally back to a tentative hope when reviews from friends and Internet acquaintances showed that it wasn't as bad as it was feared, and might actually good.

I'll be straight with you here: my feeling swelled to glory and delight with the opening scenes... and quickly descended into a solid, abiding disappointment - the kind where there aren't enough good things to talk about without dipping into things that were "ok" or "could have been worse."

Will I see the next two movies? Certainly, and not just because it's The Hobbit. Will I love them in the same way that I loved the Lord of the Rings films? Is The Hobbit film a similarly brilliant testament to a sub-culture's love of a seminal text? No on both counts. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is mediocre at best, actively bat at times, and contains only a few gems of true greatness.

Let's break it down.

The Good

The first thing I liked about this is a weird one, because I'm also going to criticize it: the much-storied frame rate. 48 frames per second created a weirdly crisp image. Overall, however, I liked it. It was sharp, dynamic, and realistic. I'm looking forward to seeing more movies filmed and presented in this way.

The phrase, however - "looking forward" - is key. I feel like the director didn't quite know what to do with this new technology. The special effects weren't up to the task of the greater frame-rate, and looked unrealistic and pasted on. The customs and prosthetics that made the orcs orcs and the wargs wargs made them look like muppets. Even some basic movie things, like lighting and colors, weren't quite right.

But I'm patient. These things take time. I'd rather see movie-makers attempt to move into the world of this new and crisper technology than sit back and hang out in the world of the old, tired technology, just because they're afraid to be the first. I don't mind that they started with The Hobbit - in fact, I'm honored. Just... get better at this, ok? I felt like I was watching a moderate-budget BBC historical rather than an epic tale of, well... The Hobbit.

Also despite those problems, some of the visuals were striking. The first glimpse of Rivendell, for example, was as beautiful as it always was. The shots of Erebor, for example, and the way they contrasted with the probably-it-has-a-name-but-I-can't-be-bothered-to-find-it-out goblin city, were pure gold.

I also feel like the creators did a good job of capturing the spirit of The Hobbit. Oh, sure, there were problems - and you'll hear about them in good time - but their hearts were clearly in the right place. This was still the Middle Earth we all know and love, just a little brighter, gentler, and sillier. In other words, this was Middle Earth at the end of the long peace that preceded the War of the Ring.

Finally, there were the changes I liked. I know this is a sore topic among my fellow nerds, but I have long subscribed to the belief that some things need to change when a book becomes a movie and when an old work (guys, The Hobbit is 75 freaking years old) becomes new.

I liked that the dwarves developed distinct personalities and styles - even if it meant that Fili, Kili, and Thorin became man-candy. Let's face it, The Hobbit had four characters: Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin, and Bob the Dwarf Blob. While that might have flown in the 30s, it doesn't work with modern audiences and isn't actually good writing. Giving the dwarves distinct styles, writing them some actual dialogue that actually distinguishes them, is all to the good.

I also liked some of the Silmarillion-esque digressions. The initial digression I could have lived without - the 1977 animated version did just as well in a third of the time by turning the dwarf song into a brief flashback - but I rather enjoyed the scenes that showed Gandalf's maneuvering and manipulation behind the scenes. Sure, the stuff about Radagast was kind of odd, and I'm not sure why they decided that they had to make the Necromancer (AKA Sauron in a funny hat) a modern occurrence, rather than something Gandalf had dealt with already... but all in all, it was a fun digression and it added to the sense of building tension, that this fantasy romp was more than it seems.

Because as we all know, it is.

Finally, I can't leave without talking about the songs. Tolkein's songs are another controversial point. Some of us can't live with 'em, some of us can't live without 'em. I'm one of the latter. I still sing the songs from the '77 Hobbit when I'm bored. I enjoyed this movie's rendition of That's What Bilbo Baggins Hates and Under the Misty Mountains Cold. I'm glad the creators of this movie chose to include them, and feel that they added a lot to the atmosphere.

The Meh

What could I have taken or left? Where's the "meh?"

First of all, as I mentioned previously, I wasn't a fan of Dwarven History 101 with Professor Mithrandir. Perhaps it really was too much. Perhaps it's just because I've seen that twenty minutes of movie handled with a five minute monologue (thank you, '77 Hobbit). Either way, I thought it was, frankly, sloppy.

Secondly, I just wasn't impressed with the violence of the movie. It didn't break my heart, either, but the fact is that they managed to cram eleven fight scenes into the first movie alone. Eleven! The Hobbit is supposed to be a story about how "if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." Frankly, The Lord of the Rings is about the same thing, but at least that story is intended to be story of the heroism of folksy regular Joes against a backdrop of the horrors of war. The Hobbit was not as bloody as The Lord of the Rings for a reason... a reason that the creators of this movie seem to have forgotten.

Ultimately, however, I wasn't surprised. Just a little sad that we live in a world where gore and glory is so important. "If more of us valued food and cheer and song" indeed.

Finally, there were moments that just seemed mailed in. The Goblin King is one example. He didn't sound like a goblin or move like a goblin. He spoke clearly and moved like the final boss of the Gobling City level of the inevitable video game. He was a joke, a delivery engine for one-liners, and a midboss, and it was a missed opportunity. Similarly, Azog (pardon me - Azog the Defiler) was insufficiently nuanced to be a three-dimensional villain and insufficiently evocative to be a force of nature villain.

The Bad

I know I try to be the kind of nerd who appreciates the need for change, but there's one - and only one - thing that just pissed me off, and it's a change, and I think I can make an argument for it.

Azog the motherfucking Defiler.

Seriously, was that really necessary?

The Hobbit already has a personified villain. It has Smaug. It already has plenty of midbosses, from the Great Goblin to the giant spiders of Mirkwood and the King of the Wood Elves. It has metaphorical villains in the suspicion and selfishness of the Dwarves, the clannishness and cowardice of the Hobbits, and, in the background, the fears of the Elves and the weakness of Men. The Hobbit didn't need Azog or rather, it shouldn't have needed him. Honestly, he was a cheap trick, included as a sloppy patch for the inertia the project lost by being between one and two movies too long.

The Last Math

In the final arithmetic (see what I did there?), The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was mediocre. In this effort, Peter Jackson's reach exceeded his grasp, and the studio's mercantilism exceeded his spirit. This movie may have been a labor of love, but not the kind of love that really understands and cherishes. I don't doubt that Jackson loves The Hobbit, but he he doesn't understand it. He wants to take The Hobbit out on a date, but doesn't get what The Hobbit really wants. He dragged The Hobbit out to see a movie and paint the town red, but The Hobbit really just wanted to cuddle in front of the fire, maybe watch a rom-com on Netflix.

What we have here isn't really The Hobbit. It's the Star Wars prequel. It's The Lord of the Rings: Part 0. It isn't bad, but it isn't good. It was fun, but I've basically already forgotten it.

The War Is Not Over

Google Drive.

Technocracy.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a problem.

Check It Out!

This is not my first painted mini, but it is the first painted mini I've had the guts to post to this blog. I hope you enjoy him. Painting him was a blast and a challenge. This was my first time painting in a darker skin tone (I've done pale humans, red and blue lizards, and grey-skinned abominations, but no dark skinned humans) - a process that (unsurprisingly) doesn't get as much attention or support in gaming circles. Also, he's an Infinity model, and as I've been known to say, these models are incredibly detailed and not for the faint of brush.

I am eager to hear your amazed praise and commentary.

Speech bubbles courtesy of Speechable, which is a truly hilarious website. I don't think it's the one the Abigail used to send me those amazing encouraging messages last summer, but it is similar.