Basic misunderstanding of the game
EDIT: Short version of the rant that was in this spot:
Many commenters on Slashdot are fools.
Now I will go and try to write something else that’s actually interesting.
The Secret Ingredient is silicon
So Christmas has begun early – as it often does in my house, for some reason. Starr got me the Wii I have been waffling about since its introduction: I wanted one, but couldn’t really justify one (which makes it an awesome gift, if you think about it).
As I mentioned on Twitter, she also picked up the Iron Chef America game, which I found surprisingly entertaining, and potentially Repetitive Stress Injury-inducing. I think it’ll go over well when we have friends over, as it’s fairly easy to pick up and a round plays fast. Plus it’s got the voice acting talents of the Chairman, Alton Brown, and Masaharu Morimoto, so you can’t go wrong.
Now that I have this new console, a quick poll for purposes of future wishlisting: what games on the Wii are the most awesome and should really be in our library?
CQ … CQ …
I technically have Internet now. “Technically” meaning that I keep losing signal temporarily. I think something’s wrong with the wireless router – even the wired machine seems to be having issues.
Anyway, I have a lot of email and online errands to catch up on. I also have many hours of housework I’ve been putting off, so we’ll see how that all goes.
Reviewer to Battloid mode
Four years after the OAV series concluded in Japan, I have finally found time to sit and watch through Macross Zero. For my part, I was disappointed in the show.
The CGI effects of the Valkyrie fighters made up a high point – the opening chapter demonstrates a drawn-out Fighter-to-Battloid transformation sequence that nearly made me drool. Sadly, the actual plot and characters brought me right back down. The series suffered from prequel-itis: I knew the Earth wouldn’t be destroyed, because that job would fall to the Zentraedi in four years. For the same reason, I knew that Roy Focker wouldn’t be killed in combat, making his dogfight duels mildly tedious.
A repeated subplot is the preservation of the ancient ways of the island people, which again felt moot with the coming holocaust; and the bad guys only received the personalities of one-dimensional psychopaths. I expect better than that in anime. One of them had the nerve to try a sympathy ploy on the audience minutes after napalming a village of non-combatant islanders. I just wanted them to hurry up and get killed in combat so we could get back to the real plot.
Oh, and late in the series, there’s the standard anime “I have taken it upon myself to decide that humanity has reached a dead end so I shall cause their destruction in order to pave the way for the next rulers of the Earth” scientist. Isn’t that one on TV Tropes yet? Boring. Lame. Move on.
Still, I feel more “caught up” on the Macross mythology now, so I’m ready to hit Macross Frontier next. As always, your mileage may vary.
Digital dysfunction
Due to the red tape of services transfer, I will not have Internet at the house tonight or tomorrow. Not the end of the world, but nevertheless an annoyance.
Also in the FAIL department: instead of the nap I’d intended, I spent 30 minutes finding the old TeeFive character sheet, another 60 locating and installing the legacy software on an emulated OS 9 machine to open said sheet, and then another 30 looking for and failing to find the ACTUAL document, which I’m beginning to fear I no longer have.
Feh.
Back into the shadows
We began prep on the new 2nd Ed. Shadowrun campaign last night. Looks like we’ll have a core group of a detective, a freelance bodyguard, an ex-corporate enforcer, an Amerindian shaman, and a street mage; with decker and shaman ‘guest stars’. This is subject to change as the characters all get fleshed out, but it looks good. The decker’s player is moving in two weeks, and will only be able to attend by webcam, which I think is amusingly appropriate.
Two elves and three humans make up the racial mix, which is fairly standard for a new group; I don’t know yet if the guest stars will be metahuman or not. We’re off to a good start, though. I encourage weirdness in my campaigns, because I think it adds to roleplaying and tone; Jesse and Dwight have already surprised me with their character ideas. I love it.
I’m already planning to have old friends make a cameo or two. “Skid” Dersitaliantis and Mister Zeta will pop up, though I don’t yet know if I want to get the GSSC involved. Hey, TeeFive players: did you know that next year is the game’s 20th anniversary? Some of our original ‘runners should be in their forties or fifties by now.
I’m sure we’ll need at least one more character creation session, then we can get to adventuring. One thing I want to do this week is extract the old TeeFive custom character sheets from the OS 9-era PageMaker and make PDFs for the group. I have to say, from a design standpoint, that I love that I could lay out the core game mechanic in about 10 minutes last night! Naturally, I also recommended Blade Runner to everyone who hadn’t yet seen it.
We’re going to hold the game sessions at my new place. This will make my GM duties much easier, as I won’t have to haul the library back and forth. I’m also considering making the game a bit meta: for example, setting up gmail accounts for the characters to use during downtime. I wonder if the players would get into that. The decker ought to get one, right?
Thank goodness this will only be twice a month, as I could really submerge myself into this if given a chance. 🙂
