Double Actual Play Part 1: Lady Blackbird

"So, a double AP post.

Here's the story. Saturday was Kris's last gaming session with us in person before he heads off to college and I have to Skype him in. As such, I really wanted to be able to do some actual gaming. Sadly, Daniel's and Kenny's schedules are a little weird. Eventually, we come to a point where Kris is staying for the whole time, and Kenny joins us a bit later, and Daniel leaves earlier than the other two.
Kris and Dan and I just hang, and when Kenny shows up we're chatting and trying to figure out what to play. Kris has been wanting to run Lady Blackbird, so we go with that. When we get to the end point for the night (you'll see what it is) Daniel's parents show up and he gets picked up, leaving just Kris, Kenny, and I. We decide that we want to try to get  through a Fiasco. Unfortunately, we're a bit slower than we hoped, and leave it right at the start of Act II.
So that's why we have two different half-APs."

LADY BLACKBIRD - SESSION 1
Starring...
Kenny as Cyrus Vance, an ex-Imperial soldier turned smuggler and soldier-of-fortune, Captain of the Owl.
Daniel as Kale Arkam, a burglar and petty sorcerer, first mate and mechanic of the Owl.
Myself (Ego) as Natasha Syri aka Lady Blackbird, an Imperial noble, in disguise, escaping an arranged marriarge so she can be with her lover.
and Kris as GM!

So, all of us have played before. Well, I've run it twice, but this is my first time taking a PC. The usual stipulation of "don't play a character you've been before" applied, locking out Snargle since I don't want to play him and both Kenny and Daniel have played him. A couple things are decided in a quick Q&A thing before we started.
* The Owl appears to be a mortician's ship. This helps because they smuggle bodies around the Blue. However, the bodies aren't the prize - Vance smuggles weapons inside the bodies of the dead.
* Vance was kicked out of the military for smuggling. He was a corporal before-hand.
* Lady Blackbird has no idea these guys are smugglers. I'm realizing now that she's Simon Tam - stowing away on a passenger vessel that secretly happens to be a criminal ship, trying to keep her own secret sealed up.
* Magic is true in all nobles's blood, but not only their blood. The Empire has been stamping out all non-noble magicians, but it's not complete yet.

A lot of the game was really something you'd need to be there for - a lot of banter. We started in the brig, of course, and jumped right into it with me yelling at Vance "Why the fuck did we just get dragged in here? I thought you fuckers were just a mortician's ship, why is a mortician's ship getting captured by an Imperial WARSHIP?!". We kept bouncing back and forth. Turns out that Cyrus Vance is a total asshole - that "honor" thing most of the time he gets played with just wasn't there. This was a "sell out your team" Cyrus Vance. Of course, I wasn't exactly playing the nice timid runaway Lady Blackbird - apparently, the Lady swears like a sailor. I'm deciding that it was something she picked up from Uriah Flint when they were together. She isn't defiant of her noble heritage or anything - she likes how her noble upbringing has made her better than others, and to a degree the swearing is to try to blend in with the commoners. Kale through the scene is being a bit of a sleaze and a pickpocket, creeping on Lady Blackbird. We're bickering and such when, partway through, another guard shows up and talks to the other guard about how we're on our way back to the Ilysium and that they know that's Cyrus Vance and that he's gonna be in prison forever for what he's done, if he doesn't get a death sentence. The two of them are now extra-alert and are standing guard over the door.
Now, about this cell. It is a solid room, with a solid bulkhead door, but with a small square opening about 3/4 up that's barred. There's a porthole.
We're all yacking at each other about how the hell to get out of here, and Vance and Kale are talking about how they might be able to pick the lock except the guards are there, when Lady Blackbird (who had been silent through this) gestures to Naomi to bust the porthole glass. Naomi, of course, punches right through. The Lady then reached out and called forth lightning in the roiling clouds outside and channeled it along her, blasting it through the little gaps in the bars and blasting right through the two guards, frying them to cinders.
We then spent a minute deciding what the hell reaction they would have to that. Turns out they just shrugged it off - I suppose that makes sense, being a crew of a sorcerer, a warpblood, and a goblin. This is when we defined the place of magic in society as a rare trait that the nobles are hunting down.
So now I've blasted the hell out of the guards. Kale goes ahead and picks the lock. Bam. Now we find these cinder'd guys and the ship is on alert - we can hear over the PA system that "Apparently, um, the ship seems to have been struck by lightning. All maintenance crews check your equipment." So I got lucky and they didn't realize it was magic, nor that it seems to have gone into the prison. We quickly stripped these suckers of their possessions (Lady B has a pistol now, Cyrus has a gun that he'd smuggled on him - that's just what we're saying, it was cooler than picking up a gun, and Kale yanked some knives out of his Ass of Holding) and started to look around. There were two other cells - one empty, but the other had another poor sucker in it. He's, well, a terrorist - a civilian ship bomber. But he could be helpful! So we bargained with him (and made sure he wouldn't kill us) and let him free as long as he'd help us (it is escaping me what we actually named him). We bickered about where to go, and found slipped down the hall until we found a map.
So now we're at an impasse. We have two real options of how to get to the hanger with the Owl: We could go straight through the bridge or down through the engine room. This caused quite a debate, seeing as Kenny and his gung-ho asshole Cyrus Vance was ready to rush the bridge, while Blackbird was advocating the engine room approach. Vance was all for rabid violence against the enemy leadership - he's angry, he wants his ship, he wants revenge, and he wants it fast. I'm all for safety and not dying and sabotaging the crew at the same time. We decide to split up and start trying to pull the rest of the crew to our sides. Kale, out of fraternity (and being ordered), is going with Vance. Naomi is of course with me, and the prisoner we took with us is totally on my side - he knows a suicide run when he sees one. Snargle was also ordered to go with Vance. And so we split!
Our route to the engine room took us through the vents, and our big conflict was that, when we popped out, there was a small group of engineers already there, suddenly asking "Hey, who are these people? You there! What are you doing in here?". I, as the only PC there, siezed the initiative and lied to them about how we were the support staff coming in to make sure everything is okay from the lightning strike. After a fortunate roll (and more spent pool dice) they believed me, and the all of us got out of sight in there and started our sabotage work. Cut to:
The Owl crew slipping through the halls, getting up toward the bridge. At the hall leading into the bridge, the guard there call them out and battle starts. Cyrus starts off by just advancing and shooting, and thanks to poor rolls seems to have managed to entirely miss, and got shot in the leg besides. That fucker's gonna get it - Kale runs forward to attack. Now, I was out of the room getting more drinks when they decided this, so I have no idea how they got here, but they seem to have gotten fascinated by Kale's Contortionist tag and ended up strangling him with his balls. I don't even remember whether they're using the guard's testicles or Kale's, but regardless that's quite a contortion. And so, there's only one outcome that could have come from that - a disastrous roll. Vance calls out his Secret of Leadership though, and lets him try again! He goes again and...what do you know, ANOTHER disastrous roll! Then Daniel's parents showed up to take him home. I'm 99% sure we're de-testicle-ing Kale next session.
That was the end of the session! I'm ready to see how this progresses, and yet I won't be able to this weekend.

I'll have the Fiasco one up soon, just didn't want to have to tweet another "Sorry it's taking so long" bit and get the content to you as fast as I can.

EDIT: I guess I'll do double music as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtyc_y_FlGI&feature=player_embedded
Someone needs to just upload a straight video of Stella Katsoudas of Sister Soleil (featuring Geo Lenardo)'s Killer and a Queen. I mean, it was on the Underworld: Awakening soundtrack, it's not like no one's heard it... In the meantime, enjoy it playing over some chick's boyfriends. Rip the video to mp3 or something. It's a good song (and the whole soundtrack to Underworld: Awakening keeps growing on me more and more).

End Recording,
Ego.

Art: Batman (collaboration with John)

So hey, how're y'all doing? I was planning on doing the AP posts today, but while I COULD do it it would be beneficial for me to have the character sheets/relationship map, and I don't have those while in Portland. I get home tomorrow, so that's when I'll do them - they won't be TOO tough.

In the meantime, I thought I'd do something unexpected and share some art I made earlier today. But first, some backstory...

THIS is John. THIS is John's Twitter. John is a friend of mine. He was one year below me through high school but lived in the same neighborhood as I do, so we're pretty cool with each other I think. He's one of my few friends who also shares a real interest in art. He's been trying to learn how to do some real good art, and he's definitely making progress.
A couple days ago, John made a Batman. John likes Batman. I also like Batman. John's art of Batman made me want to do art of Batman, but not enough to do a lot of work. Here is John's Batman.

Click for full-size, or, even better, feed his viewcount on the deviation and his profile!

So that's John's Batman. Now, you might be able to see where I'm going with this. Like with the Succubus and the Boy and His Dog, I pen tool'd over it!
I'll just cut to the chase and show it off.

Hey look. Batman! He would fit right in on a The Batman playbook. Anyway, I've actually got a bit more! I wanted to do some experimenting with the format, and I wasn't quite 100% on the shading, so I decided to try adding a middle grey shade as well. I like it!

Yup. Wooooo... Anyway, as I mentioned to John afterward, I'm not so sure on the anatomy of the original piece, and thus this suffers from a similar flaw. Still, I liked it enough to share, obviously. The face (the exposed skin bit I mean) is always one of the hardest bits. I think I did a decent job on the lips, but I woul dhave liked a more dynamicly lit face. Oh well, future experimentation!

So, uh, that's all for that. All that's left today is music!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t97u9qmgwN0&feature=player_embedded
Batman probably wouldn't approve of something so calming, but A Walk In The Woods is one of the best melodies in the Halo series. Also check Anniversary's "Lions And Tigers And" for a remixed one. I might do more Halo music soon-ish, been re-enjoying their soundtracks a lot.

Later folks.
End Recording,
Ego.

Movie Review: The Bourne Legacy

First off, RIP Tony Scott. You're a bastard for taking your own life and leaving your wife and children and brother, but RIP anyway, I don't know the whole story. You've had a storied career and I know I'll miss seeing any new movies by you.
Damn do I hate suicides.


So, The Bourne Legacy. No need to intro much on this one - it's the fourth Bourne movie, and isn't actually connected, plot-wise, to the events of Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum. For the record, I like Identity most of all but am a big fan of Ultimatum too. Supremacy is a good movie, but gets a little confusing; the Goa chase scene is fantastic though. All inall, I love them, and I really really love Matt Damon as Jason Bourne - that's one of the most pitch-perfect matches I can think of, and redefined the "spy movie" after several decades of it being a genre dominated solely by the James Bond image. In fact, nowadays, I'd say that Bourne is a far more relevant piece of spy action than Bond.

I admit, I had my concerns when I heard about the development of a fourth Bourne movie. It's been several years since Ultimatum, and jumping back in is hard. It's even harder since Ludlum only ever wrote three Bourne novels. Further confusion can be generated by the fact that Lustbader (the fellow who picked up the mantle of writing more Bourne books, having added seven of his own by now) wrote a book called The Bourne Legacy. The trouble comes from realizing that this movie is NOT based on the book (why they didn't come up with their own title is beyond me).
Bourne is not in this movie - not at all. Damon walked when Greengrass showed no interest in directing, although this connection based on interest rather than internal drama means that they can't be ruled out of showing up in further entries. There's a whole new protagonist, and the plot builds along the lines left by Bourne's exposition of Treadstone and Blackbriar without being about that specifically.
My initial concerns were that Bourne would be in the movie played by a different actor that wasn't Damon, and I vehemently oppose that idea. My fears were proved unfounded, thankfully. Edward Norton's name inspired confidence in me as usual. I wasn't so sure about Jeremy Renner (despite his name coming a lot in high profile places lately I'm just not that enthralled by him), but the Aaron Cross character in the trailers seemed promising enough. I came to highly anticipate this film as one of my main interest points of the year (along with Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, Dark Knight Rises, Hobbit, Hunger Games, and Prometheus).
On the plus side as well, Tony Gilroy wrote and directed this one, and he was a writer on the previous ones, so we did have someone who cared about the intergrity of the originals.
So how'd it do?

General Stuff: I can say without a doubt that the film quality itself is superior, thanks to advances in high definition cameras since the last movies. It looks simply stunning. I unfortunately have to say that I really needed a refresher on some of the politicians in the film - they do a lot of name dropping of characters we ought to remember, but never out and out say what they did. I really should have watched the series before going. For your own viewing, try to remember who Noah Vosen is as well as Dr. Albert Hersch, Ezra Kramer, and Pamela Landy are. I only remembered those last two, even though I worked it out eventually.
Directing and photography-wise it seemed decent. There were some neat shots, but nothing that stays with me constantly. The plot moved quickly, but was rather straightforward, and I was actually quite surprised at the lack of progress Cross actually made against the government agents hunting him.
The movie's end was not super artistic. It came up fast, without much build-up, then exploded into a chase by a guy who didn't matter to the rest of the movie. In the other Bourne movies, the agents who came up as Bourne-hunters (like The Professor) were constant points through the movie, whereas this guy was just activated at the end and sent. He also wasn't all that interesting - he's a super-agent with integrated enhanced physical and cognitive abilities who's had his emotions drained out of him. It makes for a fun final chase scene, which ends up blending elements of the Goa chase with the trilogy's pair of great car chases (Paris in Identity, Moscow in Supremacy) to come up with a cool scene that's not quite the sum of those lofty parts. It's very cool still though, I think as an individual scene it's superior than any of those three individual components I mentioned minus Goa.
I'm being hard on the movie, I know. It's a lot of fun, but th main reason I keep coming down on it is because it's so closely attached itself to being a part of the Bourne series while still not quite fitting in, because...

Genre: This is not a spy movie. Bourne Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum are spy movies. Legacy is a spy movie only if you count Quantum of Solace as a spy movie though - it's first and foremost an action movie with bits of intrigue and conspiracy (don't get me wrong - this movie is FAR superior to QoS, don't worry). This would be okay, but tagging itself so closely to the spy movies makes it feel like they WANTED it to be the same type of spy movie, and it ends up being a bit more generic because it makes action its main point. Do NOT come looking for a spy movie or you will wind up slightly disappointed.

Actors: I came in confident because of Norton's name, and he didn't disappoint on his aspect. His part wasn't huge, but I love that guy. Renner, on the other hand...I just don't know what makes him special. He seems pretty generic to me. His performance was good, I just keep seeing the guy, and keep hearing his performances praised, and keep failing to be stunned. Weisz as Shearing was pretty good, though I like Marie and Nicky more, but that's not Weisz's OR the writer's fault; there's nothing wrong with Shearing, the other actresses's particular arcs were just more interesting to me personally. Plus I happen to like Julia Stiles.
I liked the LARX-03 character's actor's portrayal of him. It wasn't a particularly tough character from what I can tell - lots of just looking calm, collected, and emotionless while doing action and looking badass while walking through a crowd. Still, he pulled off the look well.  I wish Pamela Landy (Joan Allen's character) would show up more, she's very important to the plot of the whole series, and I suspect even more of her in any follow-up movies.
I wish Damon would've cameo'd in for something. Instead of just using that passport photo of Bourne on news clips, just have a new vid of him escaping or something. Not absolutely vital though.

Music: A lot of generic soundtrack stuff (though generic soundtrack stuff is often good nowadays), but I liked that pretty much whenever Bourne himself came up you could hear the echoes of the Bourne trilogy theme music go off in the background. Also, very glad to have heard Extreme Ways in the credits track, even if it's a cover, and not necessarily a fantastic one, but I would have been uncomfortable without it there. That said, without the trilogy's theme music as a tie, I didn't notice any particular theme as being thematic to the movie. Maybe I just need to listen to the soundtrack on its own.

Conclusion: So, what's the verdict. I've gone on a lot of back and forth here, mostly like this: "It's not quite as good as any of the other three Bourne movies, and this is why, and this is why, and this is why, but wait I'm not trying to say it's BAD or anything."
Watch This Movie If: You liked the Bourne trilogy's plot and want to see loose ends expanded upon, you like action (especially stuff like Casino Royale with Daniel Craig as James Bond)
Don't Watch This Movie If You're Expecting: Hardcore spy suspense with only a couple action scenes, mindless action (as it ISN'T mindless, despite me saying that the action is emphasized).
Take a Second Look: If you thought this was going to ruin the Bourne trilogy, if you're worried this is too tightly tied to the originals with too many different cast members.
Score: 8/10, B. Compare to my grades of the originals: Identity 9.5/10, Supremacy 8.5/10, Ultimatum 9/10.

So that should be it! Hope you go see it.
 Oh, and music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1dseXE4CXo&feature=player_embedded
This is the first song off of OCRemix's ARMed and DANGerous remix album of Wild ARMs. It's a great album, this is just a pretty great first track. Go check it out.

End Recording,
Ego.

Updates 8/19 (Pseudo-Schedule for Soon)

I would totally play an RPG titled Pseudo-Schedule For Soon. Moving on.

Y'all've all spoiled me. Seriously, when I look at my view counter and see 15 views and think "Dang, I really need to post something to get it moving again" I've been spoiled - it wasn't exactly very long ago when "Holy cow, I have 5 whole views today!" wasn't absurd. I mean, even if I know I have a good deal of regular spambots hitting my views, that means I'm significant enough to warrant those few spambots. And hey, when I tweet that I've got some stuff happening and a post will show up in the next couple days and I spike 20 views over the past several days, I get this great feeling of knowing that there ARE folks out there looking. That makes me really happy, so seriously thank you folks.

Now, you're not here to hear me talk about my view-counter - I do too much of that as it is. I wanted to catch folks fully up to speed of what's happening in the next little bit. Here's what I've got on the dock to do:
* The Bourne Legacy review. I saw this last night (as my Twitter readers know; what, you thought you could escape me advertising my Twitter?) so the review is coming. If you're itching to know, it's good - I don't quite think it's of the calibur of the other Bournes (especially Identity) but it's still good. Kris was saying that he actually likes the other Bournes and Legacy equally, but in very different ways, and I mostly agree. My opinion is that Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum were first and foremost spy/conspiracy movies, whereas Legacy is an action movie with overtones of secret-agentness and conspiracy. It's a different beast. This has been Rapid-Fire Reviews does Bourne Legacy I guess.
Hmm. Other than this I'm caught up on movies.
* Wrath of the Lamb review. I'm in the process of writing it, don't worry. Seriously though, again, if you need an immediate opinion: Go get it. It does tons of good, and while it makes the game harder overall if you're starting with it at least you'll have cut your teeth on it instead of suddenly getting a second wave of having to adjust. Shoot, now that I've mentioned it I need to go play it...
...
Okay, yeah, that run didn't go all that well. Eve to Womb 1, died to Conquest. At least while my Winamp was going I found the song to stick on this post.
* AP stuff, I need to write up the Rapid-Fire Go Play NW post. That'll be Microscope, Commando World, Geiger World, 3:16 CatS, and Metamorphosis: Omicron.
* AP for tonight's games! I just played 2 halves of 2 games. See, we were off our average schedule, and we were playing Lady Blackbird (Kris wanted to run it) and eventually Dan had to go, so we decided to set the game on hold - not crazy, we've done that before. Afterward, we decided we'd see if we could fit a game of Fiasco (with Kris, Kenny, and me) inside the remaining time, and  got through Act I and the Tilt before packing it in - hopefully we'll finish next time. If you're wondering, we're playing the Last Frontier playset, but with a zombie infection uprising. It's actually going really well.
* Art stuff. If you've watched my Twitter, you may have seen a WIP image of another Bit.Trip image. It's pretty cool. Also, with classes starting again soon I'll likely wind up drawing more Art of the Pantheon finally.

Okay, that should be it. Real fast I want to talk about a few things RPG-wise.
1) Tonight was Kris's last game with us in person before heading back to university. As before, we can Skype him in, but for the next week, maybe next 2 he won't be gaming with us.
2) This doesn't necessarily mean we won't be gaming! We have games that run with only 3 people, right? That's what we played before we got Kenny back, so hey, cool. The one I've been working to sell them on is getting to play Apocalypse World. Seriously, I love the game to pieces and it does break my heart a little that Kris isn't really into post-apoc stuff (though I don't begrudge him that - he doesn't like it, I won't make him play it. We're all here to have fun, not just me), so now that we're almost definitely going to have weeks where Kris just can't make it, I'm going to try to make it work with the others on those otherwise-dud days. Now, it would probably work better if the group size gets back to four...
3) Luke is a former group member of ours. He played with us very intermittently through high school (he'd come in, be super-excited, start a campaign, and end up with a million excuses why he couldn't make it each week). That's fine, it's the past. He's a pretty cool dude, and currently lives a significant distance away (several states worth), but he's been close with Kenny thanks to a shared Warhammer 40,000 interest, and has been inquiring about possibly being able to Skype in to game with us. Honestly, story games and their structuring is VASTLY more appropriate to the sort of game style Luke liked to play. Here's an anecdote: We're a party, four of us. I'm the wizard, he's the rogue. Everyone but me walks into a room (since I think it's trapped but they don't) and they all pretty much just get nuked all to hell and all three of them manage to fucking DIE. So here I am, and I call upon a patron deity for divine favor and get it, and he lets one of the party members, at random, be revived. Luke the rogue gets it! First thing he does is to grab stuff off the bodies and start running. I realize after a couple moments that he has a giant diamond on him that, if ground up, could easily revive both of the others. He won't share, and ends up attacking me! So I shut him down - a house-ruled magic item that is FAR more powerful than it should be tears him to little bits. That's really inappropriate for D&D! That's also par for the course behavior in Apocalypse World. Fun.
Unfortunately, that means I need to Skype in both Luke AND Kris. Which means it's time to upgrade to their premium thing, I guess. The things I do for this game... (thankfully, Kenny is willing to pitch in to help with the cost on that one maybe so it shouldn't be that bad reall)
4) Well, Luke's going into the military. Doesn't matter much in terms of the game - where he Skypes in from doesn't matter. Dan, though, is now ALSO in the military - he got himself sworn into the Air Force in the past couple weeks! (Congrats man). His ship-out date for basic is a little up-in-the-air, but I could pretty soon be having more Skype players than physical ones...

All in all, what this adds up to is: A scheduling nightmare. Kris's classes, Daniel's no-driver's-license, my own classes, Kenny's work (and classes I think), Luke's being multiple time zones away and busy, I have my hands full.

Anyway, stuff should start going up pretty soon-ish. I'm heading out to the Portland area for a couple days starting tomorrow (Sunday) but I ought to be able to post. I'll tweet for a more up-to-date schedule. Aaand here's a song!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u5AnQgKJh4&feature=player_embedded
Been really enjoying Hyper's 2006 album We Control. It's really good, as is this song. Later folks.

End Recording,
Ego.

Art: Commander Video and the Bit.Trip

So hey. I'm pretty much entirely at a loss tonight. I know I have things to put up, but it's one of those lazy nights and I'm having trouble concentrating. View count is stabilizing again after the firestorm that was Tuesday (over 80 views! In 1 day! My previous record was about 60, so this is exciting for me to actually have people seeing things). Still, I want to keep up being daily, at least for a little bit longer. So tonight is something from both yesterday and this morning that I pulled together - an art of Commander Video from the Bit.Trip games!

Now, I'm a huge fan of the Bit.Trip games. I've beaten Runner (by some fluke - I've only beaten the final pre-boss level one time and cannot repeat the feat), beaten Flux, and haven't beaten anything else. I'm on the final level of Beat, can't beat even the first level of Core or Void (Void would be SO much better if they'd abandoned the circle pad and let us use the touch screen on Saga), and am on like Level 4 of Fate.

This is not tonight's feaured image. I made this on my own a bit ago for no particular reason. Click for the full size - it's quite large. Commander Video (btw if you don't know who that is, he's the guy running on the ground here and is the main star of the series) is actually pixel-for-pixel identical to his in-game iteration, but I made up what his friends Commandgirl Video, Meat Boy, Junior Melchkin and Radbot look like in silhouetted rainbow-caped form. I actually intend to go get this made into a poster cuz I like the games so much.
Anyway, moving on to the main feature:

Watch out, it's fucking huge. Anyway, this is just an image of him running that I drew on a 3x5 index card with pencil first and then went over with sharpie. You can see the pencil lines where I started to draw the rainbow and then realized I should stop before I mess up what I already have and start snapping photos. This is the picture I ended up liking the most (with B&W filter, obviously). Also, if you're curious that's D&D 3.5's Heroes of Battle underneath the card - picked up the book at GPNW at the free table and been reading it and using it as a drawing platform when I'm bored of looking through it. You couldn't care less about this though, so let's move on.

Now, I ran into the same exact issue as I did when I drew the Angel: turns out when you zoom in on sharpie the lines are awfully wobbly and blotchy. Also when you Posterize/Color-Reduce it turns out it takes the lines and makes them into jagged monstrosities. And so, I spent like an hour cleaning it up (thankfully Commander Video is built with swooping curves without much variance along them so it wasn't as horrible of a time using the pen tool) and like the result enough to use it on a day without much else going on. Not to degrade the accomplishment; I do like how it turned out.

DEFINITELY click for full view. So yeah, tried to futz around with transparency but nothing looked good. I liked the look with the text there. Also I know the rainbow bands aren't the same width all the way down and that they're supposed to go all the way to his feet, but I didn't like it like that. His hands are also just a stylistic thing btw, I have no idea what official word says about what his hands look like.

So yeah, that's what I have for today. I'll likely also post up a mini-thing about the Dungeon World pre-release pdf, but I don't have much new to say there. Oh, have some music!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSFmSQOQmE4&feature=player_embedded
I am a dubstep hater. Yes, part of that is me hating it cuz it's popular. Also part of it is because 99% of it is really really bad. However, my intense love for the No More Heroes soundtrack and OCR's high standards and stellar track record told me to give it a shot and, well, this is how dubstep should be. Heavy, distorted, but the melody is clearly identifiable and recognizable, unlike anything Skrillex has ever done. If you're a dubstep hater too, give this a shot. I want this remix in the next No More Heroes (it seems like it would suit Suda 51 to give us a dubstep themed boss tune anyway - dubstep is the new punk, stylistically, after all).
So yeah. Go play some Bit.Trip and listen to some No More Heroes, it'll be a fun night.

End Recording,
Ego.

Fiasco Actual Play: Boomtown!

Okay, so we all got together again. There was a minute of discussion about what game we should play, and Kenny brought up Fiasco again as one he wanted to do another round of. This time through we had a full house - Me, Daniel, Kris, and Kenny - so we collectively pitched it to Daniel and he agreed to try it out. I showed off a bunch of playsets, and then focused in on the ones we'd discussed further last time.  Daniel's input helped us narrow it down until we had our destination:
Boomtown.

If you don't know, Boomtown is one of the "core" playsets in that it comes in the rulebook itself. It's one of the 4 in there. Boomtown is a Wild West town just waiting for outlaws and indians, sheriffs and gold, revolvers and quick-draws.
I must say, I am disappointed in one regard by the playsets in the book: All the additional playsets have, on their opening pages, a section called "The Score" that sets the tone and serves as very evocative read-aloud text for pitching the playset. The book playsets don't have one, and that made me sad since I'd been using those to pitch the playsets to the group and why I'd forgotten about the book ones last session. But without further ado:
Here's an image of the character map we made in the setup!...except not. I lost it. It's wherever the one for the Salem game is, and I have no idea where I put them. That's the peril in waiting three bloody months to write up the AP...Never doing it THAT late again.
But here's what I remember:
EDIT: I found 'em! Real character names incoming.
Kenny as Wilson Slater,
Daniel as Ethan Edwards,
Ego/Max as Jim Lockerton,
and Kris as Yong Lin Chu.
Relationships:
Wilson Slater - The Past, War Adversaries - Ethan Edwards. Wilson was the South - it gave Kenny an excuse to his his George W. Bush accent the whole session.
Ethan Edwards - Work, Ranch Hands - Jim Lockerton. This was modified slightly; Ethan is the current interim Sheriff and as such is not currently workign on the ranch. But we have history is what the relationship established for us.
Jim Lockerton - Crime, Chinese Opium Seller (Kris)/Addict (Ego) - Yong Lin Chu.
Yong Lin Chu - Crime, Crime Boss (Kenny)/Toady (Kris) - Wilson Slater.
The other stuff:
Between Jim and Ethan: Location, Across the Tracks, Town Jail.
Between Ethan and Wilson: Object, Information, A Faded Wanted Poster.
Between Wilson and Yong Lin: Need, To Get Away...with a magnificent swindle.
Between Yong Lin and Jim: Need, To Get Free...of a Crushing Debt coming due.

So what do we have? In this town, we've got the bigwig high-time well-to-do rich-as-hell white guy southerner Wilson Slater, holding ownership of the town saloon while at the same time running a major opium operation under everyone's nose. He keeps an old faded wanted poster of himself with him as a point of pride, as evidence of how badly they want him caught, but it was the only one of its kind here so no one knows he's a criminal. Beneath him is Yong Lin Chu, who was a very very chinese man who was directly in charge of the opium den under the saloon. He spoke with a heavy chinese accent, and Kenny decided his character could barely understand a word he says, and as a civil war southerner, he wasn't exactly the most politically sensitive guy to the asians. Yong Lin has control of a group of enforcers (his Ghost Dragon Warriors he called them). The two of them plan to get out of town after pulling an enormous job. My character, Jim Lockerton, was down on his luck - I'm an opium addict with a shit job on a ranch and I definitely can't pay my outrageous debt that I've racked up with Yong Lin, who has, for reasons unknown to me (the actual reason is because they're getting ready to blow town), been pushing for collection. I'm a former coworker of Ethan's. Ethan Edwards is now the interim Sheriff of the town after the last one died, and has been doing a pretty good job of it. His goal is to bring down the opium lords of the town, and he knew about my opium habit, so now that he's sheriff, he's dragged me up to the jail, which of course is in his office. That's where the game started.

Daniel started with the first scene. We're down in the Sheriff's office, me locked up and complainin' away at Ethan. I couldn't understand why he would suddenly bust me - he worked with me, he's known about my opium habit for years! Why suddenly bust me? Turns out now that he's sheriff he's supposed to do these things, and he needs to know where I get my drugs from. I squeal, and let him know about how I do a meet down along the tracks with a chinaman who gives 'em to me. On further pushing, I tell about how I've got a meet with him again at sundown, but that's all I know, I swear! Daniel leaves to go start setting up to ambush 'em. The following scene, my scene, was Yong Lin Chu coming into the sheriff's office with a couple of his Warriors and he was all intimidating me and stuff about how I had to get him the money right away, and I basically said I didn't have it in here and would get it to him later. He bought it (cuz I totally didn't have any cash) and left. Then came Kris's scene, which was the actual meet between Yong Lin and Ethan. In a twist, Ethan's surprise doesn't work very well and Yong Lin's Warriors overwhelm him. They leave him unconscious and head back into town. Meanwhile, Wilson decided to come have a little meet with Jim down in lock-up. Wilson's come with his shiny gold revolver to make sure he gets his money. Jim realizes who Wilson is - the crime lord - and Wilson gives him a choice: Give him his money or he'll give me a new whole in my head. Oh, but why does he need it so fast? Wilson replies that he's gonna be coming into some money soon, and then shortly after some trouble with the law, and that he's getting out of dodge, and he needs my cash before he goes. Jim's a bit of a coward, but of course, he's got no money. And so I do what I must: Jim confesses that he's got no money, but WAIT, I'll work for you! Let me in on your job, I'll do whatever you need me to do, just don't kill me! Wilson thinks it out and agrees, taking that fancy revolver and blowing the cell lock and we go off into the night. And the first round of play ends!
The second round starts, and Ethan is waking up. He's in the general store looking for something when he runs into Wilson Slater, who says some devious things that sound innocent unless you know that he's behind Yong Lin. Their debating the war and such and Wilson goes to leave when Ethan notices a piece of parchment in Wilson's back pocket. He asks about it, but Wilson just deflects it as a piece of business for the saloon. We know better - that's the Wanted Poster. Anyway, my turn comes and I'm in the opium den with Wilson and Yong Lin. Yong Lin is furious that I'm here, that he's sure I was the one who set him up for the sheriff. I'm confessin' it, but I had no choice! Wilson is pretty sure that I'm on his side, and describes the Big Job to us: we're hitting a bank vault. He starts talking about it, and eventually Yong Lin is arguing with me about my role in it, but it goes well for me and Wilson reprimands him, sending him off to go prep his Warriors. I don't remember the rest of the scenes in this round, but it's mostly us preparing and Ethan investigating. Oh yeah, one of them is again Ethan and Wilson, this time at the saloon, Ethan trying to track down the chinaman and the opium den, but having no luck.
Act 1 End. Tilt time! We roll it up, and I dunno who got to pick pieces, but we got:
* Paranoia. The Thing You Stole Has Been Stolen.
* Tragedy. Confusion, Followed By Pain.
So how'd we work it out? Well, the Tilt was the heist! Middle of the job and it turns out someone got out and now the fuckin' sheriff is here. We're all disguised, but bullets start flyin' away. Most of the Warriors get killed, as do a bunch of deputized locals, and Jim gets a hole blown in his leg. But we've got the stuff, and high tail it out of there. I'm bleeding like crazy, there's a huge body count, and we're sure as hell paranoid. But we got away clean, right? They dont know who we are, Wilson and Yong Lin and Jim's masks were good, we're free to get out of here? Tough luck - the thing you stole has been stolen. And I don't mean the money. In the battlefield of the bank, interim sheriff Ethan Edwards found a piece of paper; a wanted poster, for Boomtown's very own Wilson Slater. He rounds up another deputy and starts heading for the saloon. Begin Act II.
Okay, so we did something special out of the book for Act II: I'm pretty sure we played it acclerated. There's an option in the book about how if you don't think you can fill a whole Act II, just do one round of scenes and then pass the last rounds dice out like usual.
What were the scenes? Daniel had a scene of trying to find the opium den, and eventually succeeding. I took over the scene next and kept it playing, and Ethan stormed the place and we had another gunfight, with Yong Lin and Wilson getting out with the money. But not Jim. Jim is shot in the leg and can't run, and now he's shot in a couple more spots. Jim dies with his former friend over him. Next we got Wilson and Yong Lin loading the train to go. Yong Lin tries to usurp Wilson with his two remaining Warriors, but that ain't happenin'! Wilson blows one away before he can get close and the other one bails. For the insubordination, and because he's a treacherous bastard, Wilson shoots Yong Lin in the belly - he's gonna need medical attention or he's gonna die. Wilson finishes up loading as Yong Lin lies in the dust as the cops close in. Just as the train is leaving, Ethan leaps aboard. Kenny's scene is their shoot-out! I actually don't remember how it goes for sure, but I'm pretty sure it goes bad for Kenny. It ends right, with a quick-draw duel between the crime lord southerner and the sheriff from the north. Bang.
See, that's the trouble. I don't have the aftermath stuff written down. But here's what I'm pretty sure happened:
Jim is dead. That's it for him, just a tragic addict who got in over his head, shot and killed by his friend.
Ethan is doing great. He took down the whole opium network, and stopped a bank heist. He is instated as permanent sheriff - a ranch hand no more.
Yong Lin and Wilson aren't doing too great. Neither of their bullet wounds killed them, and now they've both betrayed each other, which is why they're cell mates now. Sucks for Wilson that he doesn't have a gun anymore, because Yong Lin knows how to fight in close quarters...

And that was Fiasco Session 2: Boomtown! We all loved it. I'm so happy with how both games went, and very little could have made it better. Well, maybe if I'd had this post written a little sooner... Anyway, we love Fiasco and it's always sitting there ready for the day we don't know what to do. It's not too much narration and it's not that hard, it doesn't take too long, and you're bound to have fun. Go play a round. As made quite clear on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop episodes, Fiasco works great with brand new folks, folks who have never gamed, or old pros. It's a great intro game to roleplaying for those storytellers you know, and anyone who likes improv acting should take a peek at it for fun. I can't recommend it enough.

And tonight's song is by The Megas! They're a great band who does covers of Megaman songs with lyrics of their own writing. Get Acoustic, the acoustic remix album of Get Equipped, is my favorite of their's. Seriously, go check 'em out, it's pretty great. This is The Quick and the Blue!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXNnPuIme48&feature=player_embedded
Tomorrow? I'll see if I have enough to talk about the new pre-release PDF of Dungeon World to fill a post. If not, I'm thinking art. Less impressive than two days ago's, but still fun. Later!

End Recording,
Ego.

Movie Review: Total Recall (2012)

Sorry I'm later than usual, I got back at like 9 and then had to actually WRITE the review.
So it seems that today's planned content, the Fiasco Session 2 AP, isn't written yet. That's okay though - instead of writing it, I was watching Total Recall. No, I didn't jump back into old stuff - if you hadn't noticed, there's a new one! And so I watched it after the trailers impressed me with their portrayal of a very sci-fi culture.
I made a good choice.

First, my own background on this one.
* I am an enormous sci-fi buff. Somehow I've managed to NOT see the original Total Recall though. From what I can tell, it was pretty much just an Arnold Schwarzenneger action vehicle. A decent one I hear, but still an action movie about him, not a sci-fi movie with action.
* Neither have I read "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick. I am perpetually fascinated by that man's writing, but I have NOT read the basis of Total Recall. I want to though. To be honest, everything I've seen says that this film doesn't really have much to do with it (and the same was admitted even before release), and I can see that, but it still interests me about it.
* This review will probably be a little kinder to it than most. My weighting of things puts a bit more emphasis on stuff that Total Recall happens to have done right.

General: Alright, I'm just gonna talk. For one, the directing is fine, the cinematogrophy is fine, etc. They weren't particular stunning, but you could see they had enough skill. Wiseman did a decent job of directing every one, and I was never particularly unhappy with decisions.
Save one. Okay, we do have an issue - flashing. ESPECIALLY in the first few minutes, there is a lot of blinding white flashing, and it is extremely annoying and hard to watch. Later one it returns from time to time, and it ends up obscuring some of the action scenes a bit. As far as I noticed, they didn't have any real issue with shaky-cam, which I was actually expecting this movie would be quite prone to using. Glad to be proven wrong.
Now, the writing is an odd spot for me. In general, the writing was decent in my opinion. More than anything, I felt it was very flowing and natural dialogue to have, none of it sounded like they were pushing it since it's a movie. A scene between Douglas and Harry in a bar early on before he goes to Recall is particularly intriguing for me, as was the guy who actually got him into the Recall machine. Unfortunately, Lori's dialogue in particular often seemed pushed to me. In general her character was one-dimensional - she was "hunt and kill Douglas no matter what" and lots of appearing on the scene and him panicking about it.
A strange continuity point is that the synthetic police force's ability to resist bullets changes from scene to scene depending on what would look cooler. One moment pistol shots are bouncing off their bodies barely harming them, the next they're being oneshotted. Admittedly, Douglas's defeat of the master-synthetic (the black one) was fast and a little anticlimactic, but at the same time made perfect sense as a clever means of leveraging his wits against it. It was just over really fast was the issue.

And that brings me to an entirely separate point.
Pacing and Genre: The pacing in this one is somewhat odd and clashes with what I'm about to say: I'm not convinced that Total Recall was a sci-fi movie. It had a sci-fi setting, but the movie wasn't ABOUT the sci-fi. It was about the action. I listened to an episode of The Walking Eye (an RPG podcast) the other day in which Kevin interviews Joshua A.C. Newman (a prominent sci-fi game designer) about what exactly sci-fi is and how it is classified and how you would DEFINE sci-fi, and then they compared it to how that works in games. Even if you don't do RPGs, if you're a sci-fi lover I hugely recommend it as a listen - Kevin was doing it as his final project in a sci-fi literature course and despite not getting the gaming talk really his prof gave him a perfect score for the discussion of sci-fi in general. The big thing I got out of it was this idea, and I'm not entirely sure if it was what was intended but I still found it neat: Sci-fi isn't about settings or the future or aliens. Those are things that are often elements of sci-fi, but they aren't the defining factor. Sci-fi fiction is a science experiment on reality - change one major factor (sometimes several, but the more factors the more watered down it is) and follow through with society, see how society reacts to the change or what would be different. I, Robot was an experiment on if technology awoke. Blade Runner was an experiment in what happens if Replicants happen. Frankenstein is what would happen if reanimation was possible. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is an experiment in what would happen if we could implant memories. THIS? Total Recall is not about what happens if memories could be implanted. Total Recall is an action movie with the pretense that he's not sure if it's real or if he's inside the memory, but it isn't ABOUT that, that's a background detail. The political dealy-o with the UFB and the Colony is the main feature of the movie, not Rekall.
Still can't see the difference? Here, let me try an example from some other things. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Water World are both shifts to the standard world in that the world has flooded, restarting civilization (the differences between the two's scenarios actually doesn't matter here). Water World is about them reacting to the changed variable, and the movie is an example of what happens when people are forced into living with that new change. The Wind Waker, on the other hand, uses The Great Sea as a setting only, and the game itself is about stopping Ganon's triforce-grabbing again. It's an adventure game on the Great Sea, not a game about how the Great Sea changes things. Oddly enough, most modern zombie fiction (and less oddly most post-apocalypctic fiction) is this sort of experiment. On an opposite note, I'd say that Star Wars is NOT science fiction in this regard, which is something interesting that Joshua brings up in the podcast.
I gotta say, hearing Joshua talk about it and coming to this realization really makes Joshua's game Shock: Social Science Fiction look incredibly appealing. I really GET it now.
So back to Total Recall. The movie is an action movie in a futuristic setting. That's why it's a bit odd that it has a sci-fi movie's pacing! Action movies are usually a lot less talk-y and investigate-y than this one. This was a lot of discovery and thinking for an action movie. Unfortunately for it, it really should have picked, as you're left thinking either this was a very shallow sci-fi movie or a remarkably slow action movie.
Note that me saying that is saying in comparison and when taken as a whole. The action itself is not slow, and it's actually a lot of fun. Especially a chase near the beginning which showed off a ton of the city stuff was very fluid and exciting, despite Kate's one-dimensionality. I think that I'm being a bit hard on it here - Kate' presence keeps flashing me back to Underworld: Awakening, which was the most solid action I've ever seen (not a good thing) but it's making this seem slow in comparison. She definitely carried over the simplicity of Selene over to Lori.
All this said, I thought it was fun as an action movie and the futuristic setting was incredibly cool. It's just a curiosity of classification.

Art Direction: That said, this was the sticking point for me. I came to this movie because of the setting and cool futuristic world that it looked like they'd built, and they did not disappoint me. In fact, I went in with high expectations, and they knocked them out of the park. It's made of a couple elements.
* It's made of the tech you see. This is probably the biggest difference between what was available to us 10 years ago and now is what we can do with our CGI to make technology. His hand phone is brilliant, the Rekall machine's interface was gorgeous, the holographic tatoos were unbelievably cool for being so unimportant. The tech that wasn't all holographic was very industrial looking, as was suiting with the pseudo-post-apocalypctic vibe they had. One concept artist, Stephan Martiniere, was art director on RAGE, and was worked on such things as the new Star Wars movies and The Fifth Element and Tron: Legacy, so I see a lot of his previous works coming together here.
* The robots. The synthetics had a very sleek, futuristic look, and yet were very functional. Seeing some of their guts in the factory Doug worked at was interesting too. The master-synthetic (the black one) looked super-cool and I want to absorb that design coolness. Too bad he died so fast :/ .
* And what am I DOING? I'm skipping the big guy! The cultural environment. And one piece steps forward and says "This film was me all over" and that film was Blade Runner. Especially the bit where he's walking through the seedier part of town looking for Rekall, everything everywhere said "I LOVE BLADE RUNNER!" The east-west fusion, the rain, the fashion, the bizarre dark underworld was everything I could have wanted it to be. And you know what, I'll take this one step further: This is the world that Blade Runner was tryign to show us. Blade Runner sticks out as, even today, one of the coolest works of art direction in film, and in my opinion, this kind of world of the dark side of the Colony, was what Blade Runner would have been showing us if they'd had the technology to do so. Ridley Scott even proved recently with Prometheus that this sort of tech was something he'd wanted in Alien and couldn't do to full extent until now, and I think this is a similar case with Total Recall and Blade Runner.
Seriously though. This is some fan-fucking-tastic design work. I would pay to see it again to marvel at it.

Sound: I gotta say, the music under there never really drew attention to itself, but it was pretty good! Considering finding the soundtrack, I liked it quite a bit. It was sometimes not so clear if soemthing was a part of the music or was sound effect (thanks to the efforts of the sound mixers of course) but I hope the music is clear enough for standard listening. Better than the standard action suite though!

Is It Real Or Is It Recall: Sound familiar at all? That's been the movie's tagline. Now, I must admit that when I went in, I figured the movie would have him moving in and out of the machine, and it would start being unclear which we were in at any given time. Instead, they give us a single large mystery: he plugs into Rekall and we see the fluid hit him (and he's being given a Secret Agent experience) when things go wrong and the attendant accuses him of being a spy (you can't have any shred of truth shared with the implanted memory) and to get him out of the machine as fast as they can before the fluid take effect and he goes through the movie as a spy and all. It's brought up midway through that Harry tries to convince him he's still under and that he needs to kill the gal he's with to reject the memory and come back to them. He doesn't believe him though and doesn't do it. Through the rest of the movie, we are never given any indication of the truth of the matter. In my opinion, what it gave us was the Inception ending: are we still under, or was it real after all, and it DOESN'T ANSWER. Thank god. It's making me think. It really boils down to if the machine started working the moment the fluid hits him - if so, the alerts of him actually being a spy were part of the delusion that he's a secret agent. If it WAS possible to pull it before it affected him though, he actually experienced it. I'm not sure which side I believe, and I think they did the right thing not telling us. Hell, I'm not trying to take a side even, it's better to leave it ambiguous than to try to twist the minutae of the film to support my choice.

Conclusion: I feel sort of conflicted. I really like a lot of the things the movie did, but on the whole it's a fairly average action movie with some very cool elements. I think I'll be positive though - the Real/Recall element and the extremely amazing art direction get heavy weight from me.
See This Movie If You Like: The best futuristic worlds CGI can build, fun action
Don't See This Movie If: You're looking for a redo of either the '90 movie or the short story, you're looking for sci-fi with lots of focus on the Recall device.
Grade: 8.5/10. B+. Worth seeing in the theater - the big screen makes the art direction even more awesome. I didn't see it in 3D, but I imagine it would be GREAT in 3D if it was done right.

So, what else? The song for tonight doesn't quite match up with the content, but I don't actually care. So the song of the day is December, by Collective Soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6exsatE-DUk&feature=player_embedded
So I hope you enjoy it! I'll be back with Fiasco tomorrow! Looking forward to going to see Bourne Legacy soon (likely over the weekend, Sunday is my guess). And guess what! This marks 7 days of straight content! Hope to keep up the cool stuff for a bit.
Uh, that should be it! Later folks.

End Recording,
Ego.