BrainWyrms

I don’t think this is old news yet, though I cannot seem to find anything in print that confirms what I heard in the latest D&D Podcast.   The closest I can find is a press release from Wizards that says “Organizational change is always difficult on those impacted”.

According to the podcast, the official D&D Podcast, Dave Noonan was let go as part of a restructuring. This annoys me mostly because Noonan and Mearles are basically the forward face of the latest edition of D&D. From what I have seen, 4E was represented by them. They had the answers and the reasons behind the answers. With the amount of crying about staying with 3.5 or moving to new systems, I don’t understand how Wizards or Hasbro could possibly consider it a smart move to get rid of half the friendly intelligent face that Noonan put forth as an ambassador of 4E.

Half the bloody reasons I wanted to get 4E when it came out, and still half the reasons that I want to actually play 4E, are a direct result of listening and reading what Noonan and Mearles had to say.

Gah!

Is it just me, or is the dice rolling mechanism amazing?

My last adventure, my dice rolls were as follows:
2
1
1
5
3
15

Two natural ONES! Aaargh. That’s even worse than my normal real life dice rolling luck.

I am finally up to page 26 of the 4E Player’s Handbook.  And so far it feels like a fun and simplified way to get new players and new DMs into the game and running faster than ever before.

It also feels more like a combat simulator/strategy game than like actual role-playing.

Isn’t it cute how they renamed the Bard class to Warlord?  I can actually imagine people wanting to play the class now that it doesn’t bring up burning nightmares of bad poetry.

PenChaft: Although I wish there was more Firefly, I’m glad that it didn’t go so
long as to get as tired as Buffy did.

Then again, if there had been more, there wouldn’t have been Serenity,
which was one of the shittiest pieces of full-length feature shit I’ve
ever had the misfortune to be subjected to.

Nomad Scry: You don’t watch many movies do you? Did you happen to see Riddick? Or The Horse Whisperer? Or … oh what was that fucking horrid movie… Steve Martin in… Novacaine, I think. That was WRETCHED. Serenity was not the best thing ever, but it certainly wasn’t bad. I mean, it didn’t have Jar Jar in it. Or Short Round. It was better than Iron Man. But then again, I just can’t connect to that character, so I am biased. Heh.

PenChaft: Riddick was fine, because I was with a friend and we were laughing at
Eomer’s hair.

I don’t watch films like The Horse Whisperer.

Serenity was just… it was Joss Whedon SHITTING on his fans. It was
one of the most disrespectful films - to the characters as well as to
the fans - that I have ~ever~ seen. ~Also~, the Reaver thing was SO
GODDAMN DUMB.

Iron Man was excellent! Its biggest flaw was a lack of action/srs bad
guys, not TOTALLY RETARDED STUFF HAPPENING FOR A FEW HOURS.

I’ve only seen episode 3 and half of… A New Hope? I think? The Death
Star blew up, I saw that bit.

Nomad Scry: I, uh, respectfully disagree. Riddick was the shitting on fans. Pitch Black was a brilliant film that has held up over numerous visitations. Someday I will rewatch Riddick as a FANTASY movie and it may be okay that way. But, as a sequel to Pitch Black, it is a travesty.

Another shit on the fan movie was The Bourne Supremecy (or whichever the second one was.) The entire premise of the trilogy is Jason/David and Marie surviving each other and surviving together. Killing Marie in the first act of the movie was, according to the director’s commentary, supposed to shake Jason out of the happy complacent place. !!?!?!!!??!! That’s why Ludlum had her kidnapped! ARGH.

Sorry, that one … I walked out of the theater angrily appologizing to Jade for “forcing her to see that pile of shit.” I was livid. Literaly.

Serenities biggest flaw was being predictable. It was telegraphed all over the place. It needed to be. It had to wrap up the entire universe in two hours. Pretty rough road when you just spent (how many episodes in the series?) hours opening the story world up and up… and then two hours to tie all the stories and characters together.

And the Reaver thing… was simply predictable. As long as Whedon didn’t want to introduce straight up magic, that is.

I don’t agree, obviously, about Iron Man. it was pretty. And shiny. Like metal shiny, not like Firefly shiny. But ultimately boring, because I simply don’t give a shit that a molly-coddled uber-rich jackass got pissy and used his inheritence to build himself a fighting suit. What a fucking wanker.

Which is utterly hipocritical of me, I know and don’t care, because I LOVED Batman Begins.

PenChaft: I didn’t view Chronicles as a direct sequel to Pitch Black. It was
more of a… spin off? I guess? in my head.

Haven’t seen any of the Bourne movies.

The Reaver thing’s not predictable, it’s ~DUMB~. When we walked out of
the cinema (I saw Serenity as a special preview screening surrounded
by fellow SF fans) we started dicussing how utterly dumb the Reaver
planet, the Reaver band, the Reaver backstory etc. was. NOT GOOD LOGIC
OR SCIENCE AT ALL ARGH.

But he didn’t HAVE to wrap it all up (and kill it all off at the same
time). He could have just had a glorified episode and WE WOULD HAVE
BEEN OKAY WITH THAT. And it’s not just the plot that annoys me and
makes me think he just didn’t care. There’s no touching on any Jayne
subplot/characterisation, several of their accents were ~horribly~ off
in the first third of the film. OH YEAH, AND THERE WAS ALSO (arguably)
RETCON.

Iron Man was fun! I saw it twice (first time was a free screening). It
was just ~fun~. And they’re going to deal with the alcoholism and
stuff in the next movies, and I can respect their reasons for leaving
them out of the first one, and it was just so ~fun~.

Batman Begins is, however, ~~~THE~~~ superhero origins movie. <3 <3 <3
You might like these videos:
http://greyreviews.livejournal.com/16936.html (also check out the
other I’m a Marvel/I’m a DC, they’re all funny)

I don’t like Superman, though. Now THAT’S a boring character.

Nomad Scry: http://www.epinions.com/review/Superman_Returns_44832383/content_301537005188

That’s what I have to say on Superman.

PenChaft: I’ve never liked the character, and then when I saw that travesty of a
film? UGH. Lex Luther was the only (mild) saving grace.

That kid was such an awful, awful, AWFUL plot device.

Nomad Scry: Did you watch any of that Kevin Sorbo scifi show? Andromeda or something? I don’t think there is much else that could have been done with the Reavers that wouldn’t have simply turned them into the Maggog. Which would have been pendantic and boring because it was just done. (And from the little I saw of it, done well.)

PenChaft: I haven’t, no.

Nomad Scry: One of the neat things about Serenity is that you can very clearly imagine it as the story told over a session of the Firefly RPG. So yeah, some of it is pretty geeky lame… which is what makes it better. Walsh dies, for fucks sake. Why, man, why! Heh.

Hey, look! It is me… but fancy. [ nodnodnod ]

This is the “original” picture. Notice the spooky eyes? I had just returned from an eye exam and thought that the dilated pupils were too much to pass up on. And I almost always have an ear bud dangling from my head, ‘cuz I’m a wannabe cyberpunk.

Heh.  Thots return to market.  I crack myself up.  Yes, that’s right, Thotmarket is once again in a open to the public beta.  I’ve logged in for a grand total of five minutes, but it is looking more stable than the last time I spent time there.

In other good news, the IE8 team has either fallen under the pressure of the web elite… nah, they must have realized that the previous plan of standards implementation was simply “naf.”  So now, when IE8 goes into standards mode, it will work the way that standards mode does.  Which is too say, it will do it’s best to interpret and display the page according to STANDARDS.  Way to go Microsoft.

Unfortunately, I also wanted to mention that Gary Gygax passed away today.  I’m kinda bummed about it.  From everything I’ve heard about him, he was a real ass.  The few podcasts I heard with him seem to reinforce that notion.  And I don’t even mean the kind of jerk that I look up to usually, this was beyond that.  And yet, somehow, I had it in the back of mind that I was going to meet up with him someday.  You know, in the dream world where I am a successful fantasy author making rpg supplements and hanging out with the big boys of the geek world.  And so I am saddened to hear that he is gone now.

R.I.P. Mr. Gygax.  My life would be a very different thing if it weren’t for you and Arnebeck.

I love the theory of crafting good role-playing games, but the stories that come out of a good RPG campaign are even greater. ChattyDM has a bit to say about both in a recent posting.

Still, when he grasped his sword, a foul looking evil piece of death-dealing, he realized that he was reconnecting with a lost part of his soul.

I really enjoyed reading about the adventure his players had gone through. I got quite a thrill reading about it.

Even better, practically speaking, is how he dissects the session afterwards. I think the one that I most need to keep in the back of my mind is this ::

Never isolate a player, even if the story calls for it. Give them atrocious choices, screw around with their background and belief, but don’t make them the enemy of the rest of your world just because ‘the story logically needs to go there.

An excellent quote from the Chainmail Bikini comic-ontary.  Perhaps the most logical anti-LARP comment I’ve run into so far.

Fear the Boot

LARPing is no laughing matter. If it gets to the point where your players would rather exercise than roleplay, then something has gone seriously wrong with your game.

LARPing is bad for your game and poisonous for the hobby in general. The last thing we need is to introduce elements to RPG’s that would allow the Jocks to dominate and despoil our once-great hobby.

“If you stand up, you’re LARPing” - Adam Pinilla