Pen & Paper: My Ever-Dying Character List

My role-playing career (as anything except a GM or DM) has been filled with short lived and extremely unlucky characters. Needless to say, here is a synopsis of my life's experiences compiled for your amusement...

My introduction to role playing was a 1 on 1 game with my childhood friend Julian who was running a pen and paper game... only without the pen or paper because we were only 7 or 8 at the time, I was illiterate, and neither of us owned dice. One afternoon he posed a question asking if I had an imagination and wanted to play a game of words and hypothetical situations. Not quite sure what he was talking about, I agreed and was instantly thrust into the life of an orc named Bleu He (a play on the word "Hebrew") with no real depth or description beyond "a green skinned orc warrior." The game ended almost immediately when the Julian informed me that I had entered a human village because my reaction (having just played Warcraft 2 just moments before) was to kill everything in sight and burn the village. Before the town guard caught up to me and ended my career, three maidens, two peasants, and twenty four elementary school students had been defeated by my hand in glorious combat. Bleu He didn't learn anything from the experience, but I learned a bit about how the game worked and how I needed to be thinking about self-preservation, lest my character die.

A few minutes later I created a new character known as "Jarvis The Chosen One," a blond haired knight who had fulfilled a prophecy of some sort by killing orcs that were attacking his village (I didn't see the humor in this at the time). Jarvis's extremely lengthy career (lasting a full day) consisted of him being hunted by evil knights with glowing eyes and glowing swords who seemed to burn every village he traveled to, fighting undead, exploring a ghost pirate ship, being chased by a Zaratan, killing the Zaratan, stopping evil priests from doing something vague but certainly evil, traveling through time to cure world hunger, and finally facing off against a multicolored dragon that seemed to be controlling the evil knights in the present time (for Jarvis). Having little knowledge of dragons at the time I thought it'd be a great idea to charge the beast directly, not fully understanding that dragons breathed fire. Lesson learned... Thus ended the career of Jarvis The Chosen One... Burned to death by multi-colored flames.

The next month I wanted to play again, this time as yet another nondescript character. Keep in mind that this was strictly a verbal game of storytelling without dice, probabilities, or any visual reference beyond our minds and i'm admittedly a non-visual thinker. I was a "bodyguard" (a word I didn't even understand at that age) in modern times with a gun who worked at a science lab. After some stuff went bad at the lab (hissing sounds, explosions, and flashing lights which it turned out were not a surprise birthday/rave party) I found myself trapped inside one of the rooms with an ill described monster-thing (which, in retrospect, it's release was a direct result of Jarvis's time traveling antics). As the thing slowly walked towards me breathing heavily and being generally creepy, I tried to escape the room through a giant glass window that led to the greater lab areas. I tried poking the glass, kicking the glass, and body-slamming the glass which landed me straight on my tailbone. As I laid on the ground, paralyzed with pain the monster killed me. It was about 12 seconds after being consumed that I realized that I had a gun... Lesson 3: Always write down what's in your inventory...

Julian started to get bored of my deaths and I became the regular GM in our group of friends. A few months later, Julian moved away, but before he left I was able to play one last game with him. I was a member of a super-advanced alien race (that doesn't age and that has unlimited patience) which wanted to observe other species. It was my job to monitor and test inferior races to see if we might want to contact them and invite them to our grand interstellar alliance. As the lucky alien assigned to "Earth" I somehow wound up capturing a few subjects and changed my form to match theirs (as I was bi-pedal and about the same size it wasn't that tough). Apparently I found out the hard way that my alien symbol for peace resembled the middle finger to the human race and was forced to mind-wipe my subjects and return them to their homes in Texas. I wasn't sure why I'd chosen to invade Texas (of all places), but he let that bit of information slip mid-game. Weird. After that, I somehow managed to capture the president (of Texas?) by beaming up a section of the (Texan?) White House, but during my escape into the atmosphere my ship was crippled by Texan gunfire just as I jumped to hyper-space. (I'll admit at this point that I might not have been the right alien for the job and wasn't the brightest tool in the shed...)

Because my warp-drive was sentient it helped me avoid an instant death and instead I crash landed on an alien world where giant zerg creatures that built colonies out of mucus attacked my ship. We (the president, secret service, and myself) survived the attacks by working together and preventing the creatures from getting on board while I worked to repair the ship. We eventually had to leave the ship to get a few parts and traveled through the old sewer system left behind by the older races. It was long overrun by the bug-creatures but we ultimately escaped. I remember noting that no real "boss" aliens were seen, just a few larger bug-things. I think the real strength of the enemy was in their numbers and many of the secret service guys died during the journey. So, after saving the president the human race overlooked the whole "you tried to kidnap and perform all sorts of horrible experiments on us" thing and our races became friends. I guess he was the president of Earth (perhaps Texas took over the world?) or something. Anyways, we took a sample of the bug-monsters for study (which I realized later is the monster that killed my previous character), advanced the human race centuries into the future with our technology, cured world hunger (a common theme in Julian's games), and lived happily ever after. I was starting to get the hang of Role Playing games it seemed...

It would be at least two years later (middle school) until I played my next game as a Player Character, this time with a new group of friends. My character (a nondescript human) was devoutly evil, betraying his king, his race, and home by helping the arch-fiend (generic bad guy overlord #1)'s minions enter the walled city through a hidden passage I somehow knew about. Once the forces of evil (grey-skinned humanoids) destroyed the city I was given rank within the bad guy forces and became the bad guy that the other PCs were working against. It was a game of paranoia where (having read many of the D&D Monster Manuals) I would regularly stab at my shadow, or strike people while yelling 'Doppeganger!' The game ended abruptly when I killed all of the other players involved (who were not playing concurrently, but rather in a series of 1-1 or 1-2 sessions) and I was told "congratulations, you beat the game!" Lesson learned: Killing everyone else involved generally ends the game.

At one point Julian returned to town for a few days and when we were extremely bored I played a Zaratan. I did all sorts of cool things that a giant turtle with ESP would do... I took long naps, ate wayward sailors, submerged myself every few thousand years as people would try to build civilizations on my back, and hit on female turtles. It was pretty baller... All of this ended when I tried to eat a guy on a boat, followed him all the way home to his village and was murdered in an oddly familiar way. I was admittedly feeling a foolish after I'd realized what had happened, and we went back to playing Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 or a board game he'd designed out of legos and balsa wood. I don't think I learned any real lessons from playing this game except perhaps a few fun facts about turtles and their courtship rituals.

Unspeakable Evil!

I played a few goofy one-off session characters like a vampire who could hypnotize people upon eye contact (so i'd frequently challenge them to staring matches or say something like "Why don't you say that to my face?"), a pipe-organ bard (who admittedly didn't get out or do much of anything), and various PC-hunting foils that I would be asked to play from time to time. By this point there was not very much simultaneous play, just a series of 1-1 sessions affecting the same world where the plot is generally to kill the other players (at least from my perspective). I'd bribe bar-keeps to poison them, I'd pay beggars to give hand-drawn treasure maps to other players that would lead them to their doom, I actively financed dungeons, mercenary bands, and death-traps. I'd trap treasure chests (generally to release explosive or poisonous gas), I'd swap out signposts at forks in the road, and I'd build diverse splinter-cell factions of evil in every town I came across. I think the other resident GM (besides me) just ran out of ideas and wanted someone else to make challenges in his world because after a while it felt like I was the real villain in the game... Eventually the players put together my Professor Moriarty-like schemes, sought me out, and I found myself entering into a duel with one of the other characters (against my will I assure you). It was at that time that we concluded that we'd need some sort of system by which to manage player vs player combat beyond the GM arbitrarily saying "you hit" or "you don't." We tried a few systems like "I'm thinking of a range of numbers between 1 and 100," but this fell short of fairness. We concluded that since we called our game DnD we might as well learn how the real D&D (in it's shiny new 3rd edition) was played since we were now over the age of 12 (the minimal age requirement for playing). Because of an idiotic episode of 60 minutes and the 1982 film Mazes and Monsters a few of my friends had to stop playing when their parents found out we were converting to the real game.

Dual Wielding Ranger

Our first D&D game was run by our older friend, Tom, who had a well established world that was in the D&D 3.0 system which supposedly had almost become some kind of expansion book made by Wizards of the Coast/TSR. My character (well described, per my interest in completely filling out the detailed character sheet) was a gothic black-haired ranger with a hatred of plants, animals, and the proletariat I dubbed "the Red Terror." Armed with a hammer (medium weapon), a sickle (small weapon, important for dual wielding bonuses), awesome stat rolls, and a hatred of the outdoors it didn't seem like anything could go wrong... But because I had really bad luck at the whole "roll the dice" thing it didn't seem to matter how intelligently I played my character because I walked into more traps than cross-dressing bingo night. I'd volunteered to keep the night-watch only to critically fail the first roll and immediately fall asleep, I failed all of my intuitive direction rolls (making me a useless ranger), and critically failed a "knowledge divine" check that ultimately caused me to put my hand into the mouth of a statute when I thought I saw something shiny inside... The bite that followed killed The Red Terror immediately. In short, I was almost entirely useless largely because of my bad rolls, partly because I didn't have enough points in useful skills (but I could speak 7 languages). So I learned that you need to put some extra thought into making your character statistically useful or you won't last long no matter how well you role-play.

Wild Antics

The above experience was pretty demoralizing, so it would be a few years before I'd pick up the dice and try again... I played as a short gnome (even for gnomes) rogue named Swa Malescar Ekal Vizie-Vare the Twenty-Third, whose bad luck and misfortune was legendary among my social circles. Swa, a noble who left the high life after her mad uncle tried to murder her, was a well intentioned chaotic good character with a case of kleptomania (per the GM's specification). Posing as a traveling dwarf knight with a bucket helmet, and a beard of goat-fur, every roll I seemed to make resulted in taking me one step closer to death. For instance, critically failing a basic depth perception check while trying to use a parachute (don't ask), the GM being polite and saying I landed on a hay bale in enemy territory, critically failing a much needed stealth check to avoid detection from the guards who heard my impact, succeeding in my jump check to avoid getting caught and jumping out of what I thought was a first story window only to land in a moat. After critically failing while trying to swim in the moat, being "rescued" and tied up by the evil uncle (who happened to be there for some reason), failing to roll over "5" on a 20 sided dice with my 3 "escape artist" attempts, and failing a few other really key rolls shortly after, I was sacrificed on an alter to some evil deity he worshiped.

On a Boat

This was a part of a series of one on one games to try and get a better understanding of the mechanics of D&D with my friend Justin, when we went on a summer-long boat trip up the east coast of the US. Next I tried a Stone Giant character who was crushed to death by a herd of buffalo I accidentally startled, then a bug-controlling wizard who was beaten to death by peasants with newspapers and pitchforks after casting what I didn't realize was a harmful 'area of effect' spell in the middle of town after I got into a bar fight. Next a Lawfully good Paladin who considered "consorting with evil" a capital offense (I didn't fully understand alignment at the time) who the king had executed for treason despite my sound logic, and finally a Golumn-crafting sorcerer who didn't do a whole lot after I finally earned the ability to craft Golumns. The "Golumn Goddess" was sort of an interesting character because it took ALL summer to earn enough xp/gp to start crafting Golumns. The GM had me start off as a servant (who incidentally had magical powers) doing super-mundane household cleaning quests for noble families. Over the course of three weeks (in real time) I worked my way out of cleaning homes and worked as an apprentice blacksmith in the most mundane campaign ever conceived. I made HORSE SHOES for the next week, worked my way up to armor, eventually got better than the blacksmith I worked for, and reached level 12, having never entered into combat or any vaguely life-threatening situation. I was forced to "retire" the character as a master armorer, who ran a shop surrounded by hidden Golumns in a peaceful merchant town after my friend told me he had no ideas for a serious story line for that character now that I had Golumns. Justin later went on to work for city services (in real life) as a maintenance guy doing all of the chores he'd described for my character... He still doesn't have the ability to craft Golumns.

Characters Slightly More Useless Than My SWG: Teras Kasi Master!

Then, after finally getting used to the mechanics of D&D I was reintroduced back into the world of multiplayer (3+ people) role-playing games through Vampire The Masquerade... which uses a completely different ruleset. A good friend at the time was running a game and lent me the books for a week before the game. I spent a day and a half learning the system and making my first character, only to die about twenty minutes into the first session after one of the other player characters thought my character concept was stupid and shot me with a flamethrower. 

In his defense my character was a deranged and mentally unstable vampire (which is sort of the point with Malkavians, one of the main character options) but I was forced to create a new character while everyone else progressed with the story... I was specifically by the GM asked to make a character with a deep backstory that would work well with the other characters. I was also asked to avoid creating a combat-heavy guy "just because." Cool! Character depth was not really a new concept to me but I'd never tried intentionally making a combat-useless character before so I came up with Gav, a rich artist with lots of contacts whose only weapon was a lighter and a canister of silly string... Incidentally vampires are extremely flammable so this worked out alright. I sprayed, lit, and fled at the first mention of combat with maximum efficiency! However, I seemed to botch all of my diplomacy rolls (though the words I said were not poorly chosen), and generally found myself speeding home in my econo-Prius in frustration after the team would tell me to take the night off. Once home I'd horribly botch my craft-art rolls and feel bad about myself. Perhaps this guy was a bit too realestic... Once we realized that main story was going to turn south on us (the 'prince', who hired us to investigate a series of seemingly unrelated crimes was the bad guy, setting us up as the fall guys) I bough a bunch of C4 from my 'contacts', liberally "operated" on one of the vampire PC's (to where he had C4 inside himself and was able to heal up the wounds using "blood points") and drove away in my econo-Prius as he gave the prince a hug and detonated the C4. The whole experience sort of left a sour taste in my mouth (a lazy GM and a group of players that thought I was a bad RP'er because I rolled poorly) and I didn't play as anything except a GM using D20 systems for the next few years.

Castle Ravenloft...Vania (Instruction Booklet)

At one point my college family invited me to play a game, so I played a greatsword wielding monster-hunter in an extremely enjoyable Castle Ravenloft campaign. This was a "to the letter of the book" campaign that I found insanely fun and won't go into detail about because other people will undoubtedly try to play the game would would appreciate a lack of spoilers. The campaign ended abruptly after some sort of social fo-pah I wasn't a part of that ended with the GM breaking up with the leader of the social circle. Hrm... A few years after that I played as a psychic Pokemon Trainer in a Pokemon Role Playing game which was pretty awesome! Before you judge me, let me explain that I was able to possess people or pokemon, temporarily steal their abilities, and use sed abilities in any body that I possessed (except my own). The party received countless benefits, shout outs, free gifts, won the lottery, twice, and won every battle we took part in because no opposing Pokemon Trainer was able to issue attacks to their pokemon (whom I would possess). No one suspected the little "fainting" paraplegic kid in the wheelchair was behind it all, and we got away with outright murder (technically suicide, but the jumpers were unaware until after they'd jumped) in one or two instances. Sadly my mind-war of terror (that the other players were genuinely oblivious of thanks to an awesome note-passing system the GM allowed) was cut short when a wild Scyther impaled me through the chest, killing the 15 year old boy. He died with no regrets and I learned the importance of 'bug spray.'

Sometimes Games are Broken

My last conventional D&D game (as a player character) was a brush with 4e. I got to play a gnome fighter named Malachite and abuse just about all of the cantrips given to me. I'd magehand arrows from the quiver of archers, magehand a short sword or giant beach towel to distract enemies, prestidigitation the smell of bowl movements upon my enemies when I'd make intimidation rolls, etc. It was all going really well until I missed a game and in that week the entire party died. I told them that if they would have waited for me I could have certainly slain any monster, but in actuality I was only level 3 so it's unlikely that it would have made much of a difference. There's something to be said for the great balancing act of combat, especially in instances where PC's have no other option (e.g. a giant mono directional cave system) but to fight.

Picture From Blizzard HQ

My last Roleplaying experience (as a PC) was a fantastically run Call of Cthulu themed Nemesis-System (D10) game. My character was a mob hitman who got pulled into a giant conspiracy (with all the other player characters). In short (because I don't want to spoil the fantastic plot which is available for other people to play), when we found the 'bad guy' base in 1920's New York, I went in with one of the other guys armed with a Tommy Gun, a switchblade, and a healthy amount of TNT, and we wiped out 4 city blocks. 

As we raced across the world to stop their leader we were chased by the police for our actions in NY, which was kind of inevitable given the previous statement. A silly thing of note in the game was that one of our number (despite whatever dice he used) consistently got critical headshots to such an extreme that the GM actually started giving all of the bad guys magical bullet-proof bubble-shields on their heads. Because I was a combat-character, it was the Nemesis System, and I was still generally botching every important roll in the game I didn't last much longer than the first few sessions but had a great time because it was extremely story driven (as opposed to combat or XP/Loot driven). The GM even let me finish the game with the group as a nondescript sailor the party rescued from the clutches of the evil cultists in Egypt!

So that's been my botch-tastic experience with Roleplaying... Feel free to share your own memorable experiences...

Shadow of the Catlossus

Picture Blog: Day of The Florida Music Festival

By the time this posts, I'll be driving in a car, well on my way to Spectrum  Live. I will have been in the car for at least 5 hours by this point (and an extra 9 nine hours on the first day), listening to Brom's The Child Thief, with no end to the driving in sight.

I know this is completely off topic but it was a pretty interesting Friday a few weeks ago... And a picture is worth a thousand words or something... 

Awake. I started my carrier job, moving goods from one side of town to another.

I passed motels

some artistic buildings

and got closer downtown.

"Downtown, where everything's better."

I made the delivery

and had breakfast.

Then I worked for a few more hours.

On the way to the tour van I passed the airport

and the farms near the van.

I didn't realize at the time that the tour van was out of coolant, that two tires were low, and one tire was pretty much empty. I spent 15 minutes filling the tires and was behind schedule.

The heat indicator started to go crazy about an hour from Orlando, so vented the heat on MAX to keep the gauges low. It was already 85+ (f) degrees outside and I was going to be late if I stopped.

Struggling from heat exhaustion and lack of water, Orlando traffic was an unpleasant sight.

I met up with the band and Moose showed me how to put coolant in the van. I think he hates this picture but I'm posting it anyways.

Showed up to the Florida Music Festival and set up. It's blurry because we were in a rush to set up.

We rocked the FMF.  It was fun. Once again Moose looks unhappy and I look like an accordionist-Shiva. (Photo by Kat Coffin)

I immediately left for the Tampa Intl. Airport to catch a flight to Atlanta for a wedding. I slept in the van until the terminal opened.  What a busy Friday...

Game Review: A Spoiler Free Review of Bioshock Infinite!

A lot of people gave Bioshock Infinite a 10/10 and are already calling it the game of the year. While I generally follow the school of thought "if you can't say something nice..." my time as a gamer is extremely limited as an adult and I'm forced to trust in the words of others to dictate what games I play. I felt kind of cheated while playing it, not just because I had unreasonable expectations but because I didn't enjoy playing it. In an effort to give like-minded individuals an alternative perspective, free of spoilers, I've written the following...

Plot: Without ruining the game's rather complicated plot (I actually had to read a series of wikia/blog posts after beating the game to understand it) let's go into a few vague explanations. The plot is complicated... So complicated that if you miss any of the well-hidden recording devices throughout the game (ala Bioshock, System Shock  2, Dead Space, etc) you're likely to miss a key plot point. While I admire the immersion they put the player through (heh heh, baptism joke) I don't like when I complete something, throw up my hands in confusion, and have to go online to read about plot points I was never was exposed to. Complications aside, the game does a very good job of making you feel like you're in a real world and the (basic) plot unfolds in a very powerful way. I felt the characters all had depth, I genuinely cared about a girl I expected to be annoying (this is actually a really huge feat), and I didn't see where the plot was going until I'd arrived at the end of the game... Actually a bit after... I like when games require the player to think. All of this aside I philosophically disagree with a large plot point/mechanic on which the entire story revolves around and don't think they fully committed to the mechanic. Had I understood the 'mechanic' (I'm using a vague neutral term to completely avoid spoilers) from the beginning I probably would have not played the game because I think it's lame. I'll be happy to discuss/argue it with any of you privately but I don't want to write any spoilers here. In short, they do a good job of showing us a story that I think is not a good story to begin with.

"Freedom": This game is linear. Period. While there are a few instances where you can explore an area or initiate combat (in places where combat is not otherwise necessary) the game couldn't be more linear if someone asked "would you kindly..." However, given the nature of the game's predecessors I didn't expect a great deal of freedom and didn't mind the lack of it. In relation to the rest of the series you are given a lot more exploration-based freedom and even a few instances where you can decide of a person lives or dies.

Gameplay: Ironically this is actually where I felt Bioshock Infinite was its weakest. Having just completed Thief, System Shock 2, and (still playing) Skyrim I've become accustomed to playing a stealthy guy who likes to avoid combat and make as little noise as possible. That just isn't possible in Bioshock Infinite, which wouldn't be a problem if the combat mechanic was good. You will literally have to force your way through what equate to an endless sea of choke points where enemies will head you off and attack en mass. If someone sees you battle music cues up and it's an instant aggro of every enemy on the map. It's all but impossible to evade combat by running away so combat (and not avoid it) is clearly a big part of the game. The previous games were sort of survival-horror but there's nothing scary about the citizens of Columbia you murder in droves. In combat, you basically have two guns (at a time) making it a Halo style FPS (All enemies take multiple bullets to kill unless it's a head shot), which is weird when you're fighting hoards of humans. To add to my Halo analogy you're also given a recharging super-shield and (like its predecessors) death has almost no penalty. Also like the other games you have access to a series of abilities that are integral to the gameplay. I found most of them to have roughly the same effect (basically a sub-elemental shoot-attack, combined with a secondary mode that drops a sub-elemental proximity mine) and though some of the later abilities were fairly interesting it still felt like a Halo-1912 hybrid FPS with supernatural elements. If you like Halo then you might like combat. If you prefer Call of Duty (roughly 1 shot, 1 kill) you probably won't. Since I fall in the second category it's understandable that I wouldn't enjoy combat, especially with the departure of the horror elements.

Click on this picture for a better view

Feel: The setting is awesome. Period. This game feels exactly like I'd imagine the 1910's were kind of like... Only with better technology (think 'Rapture'). There are promotions for a brand of children's cigarettes, lots of racism, huge religious overtones in the daily life of citizens you pass, and a strong pre-depression era American pride that makes even the most right-wing Christians I know cringe. I feel that the setting is the strongest feature about the game (besides the art-stuffs) and it's extremely powerful. They set off to take us into a completely different world and greatly succeeded. Expanding on this, the non-combat parts of the game where you walk through the city are fantastic. I found myself enjoying the exploration portions of the game, even though I thought combat was clunky and forced.

Art: The graphics are stylistic (color wise) and beautiful. The sound quality and music are top notch. The acting is emotion-evoking. Every little song being played on the street corners, the random parlor-singers, the dialogue between random people, the loading screens, and even the in-game advertisements (for just about everything) all add to the immersive experience. Top notch on all accounts.

Closing Thoughts: Bioshock Infinite was well done. It had a really good environment and while the story was well executed I didn't like it for the above reasons. I found it's main mechanic, combat, to be in the style of the original Halo which felt awkward when fighting human enemies that should die to one bullet. I didn't like the abilities you're given and felt like the game dragged on after about the first 45 minutes. I also felt like many of the plot elements after the the game really gets going were very Doctor Who... Meaning that we're dealing with a world where anything is possible and they can randomly introduce huge world-shifting plot points at just about any moment. Though I'm a Doctor Who fan, this greatly detracted from my Bioshock experience. I liked the characters, I liked the world, and I even enjoyed a few elements of the gameplay (just walking through the world was wonderful) but ultimately it didn't make the game worthwhile for me because of the combat-mechanics. The beginning was fantastic, the last 30 minutes were good, but the middle was like wading knee-deep through a seemingly endless swamp (without an idea of where you're going). I didn't like this game but you might. 

Game Review: Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm

I've been in a very Blizzard mood of late so I've spent what little free time I've had playing the single player modes of StarCraft II (Specifically 'Heart of the Swarm') and Diablo III. While it didn't seem like all that much time, it was apparently enough to beat Starcraft II and get more than halfway through Diablo III...  I'm not sure if that makes them both short games or if perhaps (more likely) that I'm having so much fun playing them that the time I've spent doesn't seem like nearly enough... This comes as a great relief after my last few modern gaming experiences left me feeling dissatisfied.

Plot: The story is presented in a mix of in-battle cutscenes (ala Starcraft or WC III), cinematic scenes and mission briefings (ala Starcraft), and through walking around your "ship" and chatting with the relevant parties that interest you between each battle (kind of like Mass Effect but with faster navigation). I'm going to skip any sort of detailed plot synopsis to avoid spoilers by just saying that you play as a solid protagonist fighting against an enemy that's easy to hate. It immediately brought me back to Brood Wars or the original Starcraft Zerg campaign (in a good way). The plot is well crafted, extremely linear, and is about what you'd expect from Starcraft. Despite being about one of the most ruthless characters in the series this installment of SC II has some of the most moving moments in the series, some really likable characters (some of which don't even speak), and even had me close to tears at one part. In short it's got a well constructed story that is expressed through a fantastically semi-interactive manner. You're not just watching a movie (Metal Gear), you really feel like you're taking part in the story. I should also mention that in the very beginning of the game (while it's installing) you have the option to watch a series of videos that give a synopsis of the entire series thus far.

"Freedom": There are a few times where you have 'options' that don't really affect the plot. These options are generally "do the mission," "don't do the mission," or "do the mission later" but they don't have an effect on the main plot beyond causing you to miss out on some of the finer details. There are also a lot of secondary objectives in each mission that give it something of an RPG element (they give you extra XP/advancements for your leader) and the new system of upgrading your minions by play-testing both types of upgraded minion in a brief skirmish is enjoyable. Despite being pretty much linear, that didn't bother me because I had the illusion of freedom and the story behind it was solid.

Zerg Rush!

Gameplay: It's an RTS and plays exactly like what you'd expect an RTS to play like. The difficulty slider should make it easy/hard enough for the most casual or hardcore of gamers who are interested in the series to enjoy it without the need for "On Screen" or "Zerg Free Radio".

Feel: This game also brought back the "Destroy and Conquer Worlds" feel of the original Starcraft that Wings of Liberty just didn't have. To explain, Wings of Liberty (Starcraft II, part 1) was more of a tactical game where you enter missions with a strike force mentality and complete your objectives before the enemy catches on to what you're doing and destroys you. Heart of the Swarm really feels like you dominate just about every battle you get involved in (though there are still a few tactical missions) and that's something I missed about the series. Though it certainly felt like a "New Blizzard" (anything post WC:III sort of feels a bit like WC:III) game, it felt like they were true to the original series from my childhood. Your Hero units are still super-powered, the missions stayed true to the original style of the series, and the physics and visual effects were solid.

Art: This is a Blizzard game and that means quality as far as i'm concerned.

It feels like it doesn't even need to be mentioned that Blizzard has once again produced a visual and audio masterpiece. Any problems I might have visually had with the game could be fixed by going out, buying a better graphics card, and scaling up the effects. Period. The audio was fantastic, the music felt right, and they met or exceeded all expectations I had. Some might complain about how the color scheme or effects resemble the ones from Warcraft III but it's a stylistic choice they made that I felt was fitting and in line with the series.

The Bad: I don't like the internet connection required to play the game but don't have a mobile computer good enough to play it on the run so I can't really complain...

Closing Thoughts: While the game felt brief, it completed the main story arc in something like 20+ missions. I don't know how many hours I've spent on it but I enjoyed every minute of this game. Where I casually liked Wings of Liberty, I love Heart of the Swarm. This is a solid game!

Tabletop: My Introduction to Infinity

Infinity Miniatures Painted by Chris Thompson

We interrupt the regularly scheduled blog entry to talk about a miniatures game I tried out this week: Infinity.

Let's start with the basics... From all the discussions I had beforehand (admittedly I was only half-listening because I was busy jumping Bears in Tokyo Jungle) I knew that it was a skirmish (under 20 miniatures for a full game) sci-fi themed miniatures game that used a lot of terrain, where the miniatures have excessive fan service at times, and that used some kind of D20 system. So, with this limited knowledge I was thrust into the role of the leader of a 6 man squad of robot-people called Aleph, to fight against the Space Templars (played by Stomphoof, also new to the game) in a practice game being moderated by a few guys who knew the rules. Our moderators set up the terrain, made practice lists for us, and slowly walked us through the rules as we encountered them...

The first thing I did was look at my forces chart:

I had over 3 special rules per character (Frenzy, 360 degree visors, Cube 2.0, etc), over 3 weapons per character, and more actions at my disposal than I understood. This is the miniatures game system I've been waiting for it seems. For simplicity I nicknamed each character by their distinctive weapon or ability:

Leader guy with a Mark 3 rifle (shoots 3 round burst).

Hacker chick.

Sniper chick.

Rocket dude (who can shoot 2 rockets per turn)

Flashlight chick (who has a gun that blinds people in addition to a submachine gun and a pistol).

Small arms dude.

All of my characters had fairly similar statistics in the double digits and it quickly became apparent that you want to roll under your statistic on a D20 in order to succeed at what you're doing. There are also D&D style modifiers making the game feel more like an engagement of well established D&D characters than a fight between useless minions.

Stomphoof  (on the left) and The Game Board

Before the game started it was explained that our objective was to hold a strategic objective (an outhouse) in the middle of the table and that we had 3 turns to do that in. Shomphoof and I shrugged and got started by rolling to see who got the first turn and who deployed first. I won the roll and got the first turn. Stomphoof got to pick the table side and forced me to deploy first (an advantage because he can see where my forces are before deploying his guys). With a 12'' deployment zone on my boarder of the square table, I set up my guys in cover, and my sniper on top of a tall gun emplacement/missile silo that had a clear view to the objective. I was told that this game uses a model's line of sight (meaning that if the model can physically see another model, the two can both shoot at each other) and that immediately made me happy to hear. Stomphoof had a "linked" unit, which moved as one and shot as one but all of my models were entirely independent. I watched as he deployed his guys behind cover (you have to be "touching" cover to get the benefit of cover) in his deployment zone.

Turn 1. I got a number of Orders equal to the number of models I had alive +1... So 7 orders. Each order can be used to either "Move/Move", "Move/shoot", "Shoot", or on some other actions (like climbing buildings) that we didn't get into too much. The first thing I did was move my Leader guy into line of sight with the enemy on the complete other side of the map. He got an immediate "reaction" to this and decided to shoot at me... Reactions are pretty cool and make it so if you run past an enemy's line of sight, they can either "dodge, shoot, or ignore" you, before you declare your second action. If you move out of cover at any point during the first move you don't get the benefit of cover as they shoot at you. Solid enough rules that I agree with. Now I had to start thinking tactically. So, after moving from cover to cover I shot at the guy who decided to take a "reaction shot" at me. His shots missed, and 1 of mine hit (pictured below). You roll based on your statistics, reduced by range, and special abilities (my guy has an optical disruptor, giving people a -6 to shoot at him and cover, which is an additional -3 to hit). I rolled a 4, which was well under what I needed, so I hit him while he missed me. Then he got an armor save (you roll OVER your armor value, which is modified by the gun's Armor Piercing value) and by fluke his armor deflected the shot. After being hit and not being wounded, he took a Willpower test (for being shot and surviving) and failed, forcing him to hide behind cover. I was feeling pretty good about this, so I moved rocket dude into the line of sight of another bad guy and shot at him with my rocket launcher (which shoots 2 rockets at a time!!). I rolled and got one hit, but Stomphoof's reaction was to shoot at my Rocket dude. Because his guy succeeded in hitting me, and rolled higher than my guy (who also hit his target) Stomphoof's rocket guy hit and cancelled out my shots. My Rocket dude failed his armor roll and was knocked out (0 wounds = unconscious, -1 = dead), but because we lacked medics this effectively meant he was dead. Upset at this I declared that my sniper would shoot at Stomp's rocket guy in revenge. His reaction was to shoot back at my sniper with his last rocket. The exact same situation played out and his rocket guy killed my sniper chick.

By this point I was seeking revenge because this guy effectively no-scope blind-fire murdered 1/3rd of my kill team BEFORE IT WAS EVEN HIS TURN. It reminded me of X-com: Enemy Unknown in a good way. The rest of my turn was spent moving my Leader guy forward and (successfully) shooting Stomp's rocked guy to death while evading incoming fire. In this game you can spend multiple Orders on the same unit each turn (no cap), which is justified thanks to the whole reaction phase of the game. (Every time you shoot at someone, they can shoot back).

My First Roll of the Game

Despite a few people in the shop muttering about how difficult the rules to Infinity were, Stomphoof and I picked up in the gist of the game in under 20 minutes and found them infinitely (no pun intended) more simple than Warhammer, 40k, or any variations therein. True line of sight (with both models being able to shoot each other if one model can see the other), their approximate range modifiers, and the low model count make the game (once you understand the basics) go by fairly quickly without much room for rules disputes and it's already my favorite miniatures game this side of "Warhammer: Path to Glory." 

Stomphoof's turn was one of tactical movement. We learned how to interact with terrain (physical checks where you roll under your relevant statistic after modifiers are calculated based on the terrain) as he jumped through windows, into a half-pipe sewer system that led to the objective, and safely hid underneath a bridge without getting a single successful reaction shot from my side. His models were mostly close combat orientated so it made sense that his goal was to run towards the objective without being seen.

True Line of Sight

On my second turn, with significantly less actions this time around, I climbed a building (at the wrong part of the building admittedly, exposing myself to lots of unwanted but unsuccessful reactive gunfire in my direction) and shot at the guy under the bridge from a vantage point. In short, he returned fire, killed Flashlight chick, and was killed by Leader guy. I was told that his Leader had died (which normally causes all sorts of panic) but this his forces were religious fanatics and didn't care. My Leader guy took a bullet to the face and also didn't care because he's a robot and never falls unconscious, despite dropping to 0hp. I moved the rest of my forces into position to take the objective and ended my turn with everyone in cover. Stomphoof's second turn allowed his linked squad to see my Leader guy and shoot at him while they were jumping through a broken window. Despite my best efforts, Leader Dude was shot to death and I pondered why I hadn't used the visibility blocking smoke grenades earlier. It was at this moment that we learned about the rule that if a player drops to 2 models or less, they immediately run away/forfeit.

Game over and I still felt really good about things. It's a smooth game where your turn never really seems to end (because of the reaction phase) and I felt like I fought an evenly matched battle. I was already itching for a more tactically played rematch the moment we shook hands but time constraints prevented this from happening.

Now, a few days later, I'm in the process of figuring out which army I want to play... I'm including my thoughts here and should/when I get to building/assembling models I'll also share that in future posts.

The Factions:

Pan Oceania: They're the ultra-prosperous super-nation. Tech-heavy but still very human, the models seem like a crusader army mix of man and machine in an art style that doesn't appeal to me. They seem like a tough opponent though. I think this is what Stomphoof played last game.

Yu Jing: They are regularly described as a mix of ninjas, samurai, and transformers, which doesn't interest me much. The models look neat, very Cyborg Ninja, which isn't my thing despite being awesome.

Ariadna: They are modern tech highlanders, were-wolves, French, Russians, and Americans in a sci-fi world. While that makes them sort of redneck (using early 2000's technology in the year 2150) it's in the running for the faction of choice. I never really understood the kilt thing, and am not really all that into werewolves (being in a band that specializes in hunting them), but a Russian-American-French army seem kind of neat.

Haqqislam: Harmony seeking Islamists aren't normally my style but it looks like a very hit n' run army, which greatly interests me. This would be a sniper-town army.

Nomads: Bandits, traders, and ex-cons who've banded together. This initially was my choice until I saw the models and realized that they're basically an anime faction. While some of the models look absolutely awesome the fact that their forces include a cat girl automatically excluded them from being a viable faction in my eyes.

Combined Army: A super faction of alien races. Stomphoof called it the "Monkey Man and Bug Army" and I can't really disagree with his assessment. While Stomphoof said he'd pick this faction and I agree that the models look awesome, bugs and monkey men are not my thing.

Aleph: An AI faction filled with cyborgs, Tron-bikes, and references to Greek mythology. It reminds me a lot of System Shock for some reason and I'm interested in them for that alone. I'd probably make a robot army led by a SHODAN look alike.

Tohaa: Bio-tech aliens that strongly remind me of the Council Races from Mass Effect. This faction strongly interests me for aesthetic purposes, and the fact that bio-warfare means extra damage with each hit. The downside is that they only seem to have 9 different models available at present. I'm told that they're the newest faction in the game, which would help explain this, and i'm not above converting models if the rules for the army aren't horrible.
Mercenaries: Corporate warriors and a large slew of awesome models. Sadly they seem banned in most games that my friends take part in or I'd likely pick them.

I'm really leaning towards Tohaa, Aleph, Ariadna, or Haqqislam but am at a bit of a split decision.

While i'm in the process of picking which faction I'm going to play I welcome any comments suggestions and thoughts you might have on the topic.

Music/Creative: A Recording Guide: The Making of Unavenged

"Live For Revenge!" (photo by Tiffany Mueller)

This is kind of a continuation from the 'Making of Self Titled'... Aka: My personal growth as a recording musician, or a cautionary tale of things to think about before going to a studio... Aka: The ghost of Credit Cards Past...Due. 

So where I ended the last post it was 2010, I was close to $7000 in debt from recording an album, my entire band had quit, and I was just about to quit my semi-public career as a musician. Somehow, less than a month after the band played its last show I was optimistically performing shows with a final and present incarnation of the new band of the same name. I'll skip most of the details here, so just accept that Rook, Moose, Kit and I were enthusiastically performing as the band Random Encounter (occasionally with our friend Konami) for about a month when we decided to start recording a new album that represented us, as opposed to the previous 'Random Encounters.' Our goals were well defined and fairly simple: to record all of the tracks we performed on an album called 'Unavenged!' So I called up the local recording studio again and explained that I had a new band that would actually show up to record their parts; No bs, no experimenting with arrangement for 4 months. We booked weekends at the studio for a solid month and a half.

A New Band is Born!

The recording process for Unavenged was fairly straight forward. The band (driving together from Orlando) showed up, recorded parts, and went home. We were all there for moral support, discussed what we wanted on the album, and even made lists for each bandmate of "things to record" and "things to re-record" until we were happy with how it sounded. It was insanely fun and I personally remember that we (the band) started to really feel like a family of sorts. Notably I also wan't the only person putting in money either (the unemployed in our number sold blood plasma to help contribute). It was a really pleasant experience and the only strange thing about recording the album was the fact that we didn't actually know how to play all the songs before we started recording, nor had we finished really experimenting with them. There's a grey area between waiting too long to record something (stunting the growth of a new band) vs recording too soon and while we definitely could have recorded a better album had we waited a few months I don't think we would have had as many good opportunities if we'd waited, so I'm still happy with our decision. It's also worth mentioning that you should trust a professional engineer to make what you have sound good (setting up mics, mixing, etc) but you ultimately should know your equipment (and what you want to sound like) better than anyone else. Don't let someone else dictate the FX/EQ settings on your guitar, bass, or amp if you have a specific sound you're going for or else your preferences will just become what the engineer thinks sounds good... Which can be really generic.

In The Studio, Late at Night

When it came down to my parts it was similar to the experience with the last album in that I went to the studio alone with the engineer, recorded, and edited for (a few) days on end. There were some things that we were ultimately unable to change due to time constraints (I wanted the album done in a very short period of time) such as: Re-recording the first pass of -72 hours-, which i'd originally thought would be hilarious at 72bpm only to discover that it felt too slow (for me... that and no one seemed to get the 72bpm, 72 measures joke), or that we forgot to record an introduction to Gerudo Valley (which I had to personally make happen), or the way I'd sort of envisioned Still More Fighting's intro. I also reached the same point as I'd reached in the last album, where I noticed that we were pretty much done recording but felt like something was missing... However, this time we were prepared.

Rook's Lucky Doll Head, Masha

A month or so before recording we preemptively requested assistance from a few friends to record parts with the anticipation that we'd need help to reach our deadline. The biggest contributor was Konami (the same awesome guy who later joined as a regular band member). He was insanely busy at the time helping NASA or something but graciously recorded parts for more than half the album on his guitars to help fill in some of the gaps. It wasn't that Kit couldn't learn and record the parts, it was that Konami already knew them (because he performed with us) and could record while we worked on other parts of the album, further helping our very restrictive schedule. Other guest musicians on the album included Elaine Li from Select Start, who drove 4 hours to the studio through a bad storm, was involved in a car accident on the way to the studio, and still showed up 10 minutes early to deliver some of some of the best performances on the album! It's also very much worth mentioning that Moose enlisted Sir. Dr. Robert Bakker from The Protomen as I enlisted Johnny "On The Spot" Frank to record parts on some really intense acoustic guitar tracks (Gerudo Valley and Unavenged respectively) from their respective states while the band was in the studio in Florida. The sound engineer and I also recorded a fun "Clank" sound for Boletarian Syndrome by smashing a piece of iron with a 2 handed mallet, which is technically a sort of guest instrument. The only other guest-oddities of note are that I'd started working with "The Great Juja" and "Auriplane" shortly before the band disbursed and re-formed (in 2010) on a Sonic medley called "The Sonic Suite" (The drums were recorded by Adam "One" during one of the self-titled recording sessions and accordion was recorded at my home using a slightly nicer vocal microphone than the $50 one I started with), which found it's way onto the album. In an effort to tie our album into the previous Random Encounter incarnations we also re-recorded the Introduction Theme from Final Fantasy 6, using it as a 'starting point' of sorts to (somewhat personally) acknowledge that previous incarnations of the band existed but to signify that the name had evolved into something different. We used the original piano track from Neo Symbiance (recorded years earlier by Helios!) to complete it. Lastly, we included a pleasant piano track Helios had recorded and forgotten about (but that I got permission to include) called "Miss You," which I found burred in an old computer he'd asked me to scour for specific data before formatting.

Sound Check

Back to editing: Around that time I'd started taking private lessons for rhythm (specifically snare drum) to improve my sense of timing and also saw a dramatic improvement in detecting if something was 'off rhythm' in the editing phase. The ever-developing "ear for editing" was also kind of a curse because there's no way to turn off the ability and I annoyingly found things I wanted to "edit" when listening to music recorded by other artists I'd previously found soothing. It was a feeling akin to discovering that movies are shot in multiple "takes", as opposed to all at once, and now being conscious of continuity or dubbing errors. The sound engineer also expressed that he experienced the same thing and made a game out of finding mistakes in songs on the radio. In short, I became a significantly better editor during the project (practice makes perfect) and started coming up with creative solutions and "fixes" that the engineer didn't even think was possible. I started to think I was pretty awesome until it came to the part where I had to record vocals...

Kit Enjoying my Vocals

 From day one I immediately loathed working on vocals, especially my own, and there were some big moments during the project where I'd strongly considered stepping down as the band's vocalist altogether. Atonal vocals? Fine. Happy Joy? Fine. Songs with vocal variety were another matter altogether. In working with Melodyne (a program that shows you exactly what you're singing on a grid, kind of like Rock Band), I saw that I knew nothing of how to sing on pitch. To make matters worse, early exports of the vocal tracks I'd shared with a friend got me the single brutally honest criticism of "you sing with no emotion whatsoever." He was correct though, and accepting that fact was invaluable to my growth as a musician. I started taking vocal lessons to improve my pitch and during the recording process I did everything to try and sing "with heart" in the studio. I thought good thoughts, brought pictures of pets and loved ones to the sessions, and ultimately sacrificed some pitch for emotion (Worth noting: I was also still revising the lyrics to -72 hours- and Unavenged during the recording sessions) because I wasn't able to start vocal lessons until after the recording sessions had begun. People have since seemed generally happy with the vocal tracks (or at least didn't comment negatively on them) so I feel a lot better about my vocal abilities (and limits) but I was very upset during this process. I also found it frustrating trying to sing notes you've never heard sung before, pitch-perfect, like when you're writing a new vocal melody. A final note on vocal recording is that I recorded the vocal 'harmonies' during some of the chorus sections on the spot, completely improvised, just for laughs and (surprisingly enough) kept most of them. Looking back I should have thought the vocals through more, practiced them, and recorded them at a later date but we were able to make many of the backing vocals sound passable through the magic of editing.

Fall 2010

After what felt like a month or so of recording and another month of editing (I kid you not, we were billed for exactly "72 Studio Hours" of recording) we sent the tracks off to Rob Kleiner. I can equate the experience of sending our tracks to a true industry professional to the story of the princess from Rumpelstiltskin spinning hay into gold. I only had a small understanding of how professional mixing and mastering worked but even then the differences were easy to hear. While this was being done the band sat down and had deep discussions about our branding, back story, and "age rating." I feel it's worth mentioning that once again we cut the new set of extremely explicit introduction tracks I'd recorded and again cut 'What's Up People', which has allowed us to share our music with a lot of (very young/old) people I wouldn't have thought possible over the years. We also agreed to produce a high quality album on a jewel case (as opposed to "sleeves" or a digital-only release), because we felt strongly about wanting to present ourselves as professionals. While I worked on finding a printing company, Kit worked on our Kickstarter, Moose scheduled an album release show, and Rook worked with Dennis Hansbury on the album art.

Original Album Concept by Rook

Somewhere in the all the above chaos the band had commissioned our friend Dennis Hansbury to make the album art without much of an idea as to what we wanted. Did we want video game iconography, to focus on the Russian monster-hunter mythos, or something else entirely? During a brainstorming session at Yogurt Land while Rook and I were gushing about the Russian artist Ivan Bilibin, (my memory is hazy as to how, but) we finally concluded that we wanted to recreate a sketch Rook had drawn of the band, in a style similar to Bilibin's, focusing on the band's conflict with Koschei the Deathless. Moose mentioned he wanted dilapidated buildings and someone (Kit?) said that profiles might be cool. Dennis gave us some alternate concepts of Koshei, took reference photos of the band members, and eventually the drafts we received quickly evolved into our album art, despite Dennis fighting a rather horrible cold at the time. My favorite piece is definitely the disc art/backing with the needle-egg-duck-rabbit-chest-tree. It just fit really well together.

Rock Party, Fall 2010

Where Self Titled was released quietly and kind of fizzled, Unavenged had an album release party complete with guest musicians, Protomen, and home baked goods! We also got a mention on BadassOfTheWeek.com and the opportunity to introduce people to our album on an east-coast tour of the U.S.! On a financial note, even if you technically 'break even' on the cost making an album, the sheer amount of effort involved with getting your music in front of people (shows, driving to shows, gas, interviews, promotional stuff, giveaways, the great migration from Myspace to Facebook, and your tour van breaking down every other show) comes at a large cost. At the risk of sounding like a corporate tool I'd still like to say that the tools we found most helpful on the post-production side were Kickstarter (crowd-sourcing which helped cover some of the costs associated with making the album), Bandcamp (which helps us conveniently share our music with people who can't afford our album), and CDBaby.com (which puts your music almost everywhere music is sold and has really solid reporting/remittance).

Random Encounter Photo Shoot (Fall 2010, (photo by Tiffany Mueller))

This certainly isn't a Disney success story by any means but it's the journey I've undertaken to learn more about how recorded music is made. I hope that my misadventures are amusing and perhaps insightful. I also can't wait to write one of these about the upcoming Random Encounter album I'm currently working on! ...speaking of which.

Full Band (Photo by Ben Trivett)