Captain America
Captain America and his signature shield
I’m still in the middle of moving — new job and new home means very few blog updates, as I’m sure anyone who’s still following me has noticed — but I had a chance yesterday to catch the Captain America movie, and it demanded comment.
Captain America is a very interesting sort of superhero. He doesn’t follow the general arcs other superheroes do. By far the most common superhero character-development arc is Tragedy – Vengeance – Responsibility: something bad happens to the character that drives him to become a superhero, and once he’s addressed the situation, he feels responsibility to continue to pursue justice. This arc describes many Marvel heroes, including Spider-Man and Iron Man, as well as DC’s Batman, who is similar to Captain America in that he’s not a “true” superhuman but rather a human operating at the pinnacle of his abilities.
Categories: Comics, Manga, and Anime, Movies and Television, Reviews | Comments (2)
Cool Alone Isn’t Enough
So, it’s been a while. In the midst of that real-life stuff that I’m not going to get into, my games more or less evaporated, and lack of gaming leads to lack of inspiration to write about gaming. Things seem to be picking up on both fronts, though. Fingers crossed for the gradual relaunch of A Butterfly Dreaming. But on to the post…
I went to see Sucker Punch today. (No spoilers in this post, if you’re thinking of seeing it.) I was skeptical about it for a number of reasons, but I went anyway, because it looked like mindless, stylish fun, and I could use a little of that.
If you’re a gamemaster or aspire to be one, I’d recommend seeing it, but not exactly for the reasons you might think. It was not a good movie. Oh, it was stylish, and there were good moments in it, but in the end, as was said of Oakland, “when you get there, there’s no there there.” The reasons to see it? One, to steal the cool ideas for your games. But more importantly, two, to see firsthand why the movie isn’t good.
Cool ideas? Oh, yes. There’s a well-choreographed fight scene between a heroine and three samurai wielding, respectively, a naginata, a katana, and a chaingun. There’s a steampunk World War I pastiche that’s as good as anything I’ve seen since Inception. There’s an assault by armored knights and a bomber against a castle full of orcs and a dragon, which feels rushed but is still pretty cool. Tropes and genre blending: this movie has them.
What it lacks is substance. The underlying plot of the movie is obscured, but not in a way that’s interesting. The resolution, such as it is, is unsatisfying. The characters are not well-developed. There’s a twist, but it’s not surprising or affecting. The movie is over-the-top, stylish, and hilarious at points, but there’s no human element to it. (Aside from the early introduction, where the backstory is set up in pantomime prior to the title screen. That’s quite well done, but afterward the movie loses what connection to its characters it had begun to establish and never gets it back.) The dialogue is overwrought yet shallow.
I came out of that movie impressed by the execution of some of the ideas… and yet disappointed, and that disappointment is because there’s no emotional core there. Not even to the extent you’d get in better action movies like Terminator or Aliens. Sucker Punch is a movie with competent production values and imaginative ideas, but it has no soul, because its script and its characters are lacking.
The lesson applies to gaming. Cool stuff is good, and the active pursuit of cool is a worthy goal for a GM. But cool alone isn’t enough. Cool will get you memorable moments. A story and characters with heart will get you a memorable game.
Categories: Advice, Movies and Television, Philosophy and Rants | Comments (2)
Pathfinder Sells Out
Is it just me, or does that wizard look like the same one who's on the 4e PHB cover, aside from the hair color?
According to Paizo, as of Monday, their Pathfinder game’s core rulebook has sold out its first printing. Now, this is mostly distributor orders — not actual sales — and there’s no indication of how large the first print run is. Still, it’s a pretty impressive accomplishment. I suspected that the initial sales would be very strong, and I hope it’ll bring people to the hobby, and not be confined to the existing 3.5 audience.
I have my doubts, though.
I haven’t seen the final revision of the rules, obviously, but the beta was not promising. While the stated intent of the developers was to address some of the problems of 3.5e, and in particular to make melee characters a more viable choice, I found that the beta did the exact opposite — spellcasters were given a variety of bonuses. Some problem spells were addressed, like Glitterdust and death spells, but there remained a wide variety of “I remove the enemy from combat” spells — including some new ones added by Paizo. Fighters, on the other hand, were given more bonus feats… but they also need to spend more feats in order to achieve the same effect they used to get from a single one. For instance, the +4 from Improved Disarm? That takes two feats in Pathfinder.
Categories: Industry News, Philosophy and Rants | Comments (7)
Review: Divine Power
Divine Power
I was previously pretty happy with Martial Power and Arcane Power, and based on my initial reading, Divine Power
As I mentioned in earlier reviews of the Power series, this sort of class-focused supplement has been pretty common in D&D’s history, with varying levels of quality showing in the finished products — but the Power books tend to fall toward the top of the quality scale. This is still true of Divine Power.
I should mention, perhaps, that I’ve had a long-standing fondness for the cleric class, and that I’ve found avengers and invokers equally attractive since their introduction to 4e D&D. So maybe I’m a little biased. After looking through the book, though, I’d have to say even paladins come off pretty well now. This might be my favorite Power book yet.
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Foxbat for President: Sacred Cows and Hamburger
Sacred cows make the best hamburger, or so the saying goes. When it comes to RPGs, they tend to provide grist for the mill.
There are sacred cows aplenty in rules systems, of course. That’s one of the reasons why we have edition wars: change anything, no matter how inconsequential you think it might be, or how much better you think the new version is, and there’s sure to be someone loudly decrying the change and lamenting that the new version just isn’t the same game any more. No more assassins or cavaliers in 2e? Sacrilege. No more THAC0 in 3e? A travesty. No more Vancian casting in 4e? Well, that’s fine, but not for any game whose title includes the words dungeon and dragon.
That’s not the sort I’m thinking about today, though. I’m interested in the sacred cows within the settings. The characters, locations, and other elements that are always present, if only lurking somewhere in the background. The ones that define that setting, that — in a sense — make it what it is. The ones that are iconic — not Tordek and Mialee, but the real icons. The ones with names like Bigby, Mordenkainen, Raistlin, Elminster, Vecna. (There tends to be a good share of wizards among them. I don’t believe this is a coincidence.) The guys you know and love. Or hate. Sometimes both.
A campaign set in one of these published settings must acknowledge its sacred cows at one point. Either it kowtows to them, making use of the pre-existing body of lore that surrounds them (however nebulous it might be in some cases — how much do most D&D players really know about Bigby, other than that he’s the guy with the hand spells?), or it slaughters them, creating some explanation for why they’re no longer present or have no impact. The former option limits the GM somewhat; the latter often infuriates players who have a fondness for that setting. Witness the reaction of Greyhawk fans to Greyhawk Wars, or the more recent reaction of Forgotten Realms fans to the 4e redesign of that world.
Which brings us to Foxbat.
Categories: Philosophy and Rants, Reviews | Comments (6)
