Natural Twenty

Gantz: First Phase

2008-05-28T01:37:00.002Z

SPOILER WARNING

The first "phase" of Gantz ended around 240 chapters into it. While I have since read up to chapter 272 (the latest chapter) there are some thoughts that I had while reading.

1. In the last entry I said something to the effect that I wanted several of the characters back. Looks like that's not as far-fetched as I thought. This series is approaching DBZ levels of resurrection.

2. The fights still drag terribly. Seriously, they get really frickin boring. The first few were great. The very first in particular was excellent. It had only two aliens, one of which went down without a great fight. But it was tense, and visceral, and didn't outstay it's welcome. It was used to extend character motivation and was chilling in places. The current fight started about 30 chapters ago, and is still going strong.

3. There are still no significant advances in the plot. All we know is that there are some other Gantz spheres, and there may be a master sphere in Germany. The vampires are probably aligned with the aliens, but that doesn't stop them slaughtering each other if necessary. I really want to know more, but it doesn't look like I will any time soon.

4. The death of Izumi seemed a little quick. He had been built up for 70 or so chapters as a cool anti-hero. While his death is suitably epic, it seems like wasted potential.

5. I'll restate my opinion on the vampires. Seriously, katana wielding vampires are really original. Unless you count Anita Blake, or Underworld, or World of Darkness, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or any vampire fiction written since 1990. Why can't vampires go back to being solitary predators of the night? You know, scary.

6. Seriously. MORE PLOT! I read stories for the story. The violence is cool and all, but I really want the plot to kick in, and there's no signs of that happening soon.

Gantz has so much potential, but it seems wasted somehow.

Gantz: Enjoyable, yet infuriating

2008-05-17T20:07:00.002Z

SPOILER WARNING

Don't get me wrong, Gantz is a good series, but there are several things that pissed me off about it.

1. The fight in the temple, where the entire established cast bar one is cheerfully annihilated, including the coolest character in the series.

2. The fight scenes are epically long. The Dinosaur fight for example took almost 30 chapters to complete. It was a cool fight, but it dragged after a while. I actually tend to prefer the parts where fights aren't going on, as the plot and characters get their chance to shine. The fights have also lost the sheer, visceral horror that made the first couple of them so tense and fun to read.

3. Apart from the introduction of the vampires, which I'll get to in a minute, the plot really hasn't gone anywhere since the temple fight. I'm 167 chapters in and I still have no clue about any of the forces at work in the series. New mysteries have presented themselves, but none of the old ones have been resolved, in fact they seem to have been ignored entirely. This is unsatisfying to say the least.

4. The introduction of katana wielding vampires. Some people just might say that that is a little bit cliched.

5. The relationships between characters are developing nicely, but I still want some of the old characters back, especially Kato. The story is on the back-burner.

Still, the series is somewhat addictive, so I'll stick with it for now.

Gantz: First Impressions

2008-05-17T02:33:00.002Z

After finishing Suzuka I needed another manga to read, so I chose largely at random from the list of manga on onemanga. I ended up with Gantz. The story is...unique, to say the least. Sometimes, when people die, they get taken to a small apartment in Tokyo to fight aliens on behalf of a giant sphere that speaks only in leetspeak. No....really. Imaginative? Yes. Crazy? Yes. Still, it's a blast. I haven't read manga this fast since Battle Royale, and the series does actually share some similarities stylistically with that cavalcade of fetishistic violence and extravagent nudity. It's bloody, to say the least, and it does seem that it sometimes uses blood and gore as a standin for actual storytelling.

Still, it's fresh and original, and fairly dark too. The main character seems to be undergoing a fall from sanity, probably from gazing too long across the abyss. The character development is reasonably well done so far, and I look forward to seeing where this one is going.

Suzuka

2008-05-13T19:06:00.003Z

I just finished reading the manga series Suzuka. I was initially sceptical about it, and the terms that Onemanga described it in really didn't help. They said something to this effect:

Yamato is ready for a fresh start. So when his aunt invites him to stay rent-free in her big-city boarding house in hustling, bustling Tokyo, Yamato jumps at the chance. There's just one teensy-weensy catch: It's an all-girl housing complex and spa!

I was not convinced by this at all. If I was lucky, I thought, it would be a Love Hina clone. If I was unlucky, it would be a Hanaukyo Maid Team clone. The latter I don't want because they suck, the former I don't want because I've already read Love Hina and, while it isn't the greatest harem comedy around (that honour goes in my opinion to Akamatsu's other opus, Negima), it is about as good as the genre is ever going to get without going into other genres like shonen fighting.

So it was with trepidation that I approached the series. Fortunately, I was pleasently surprised. The manga is not a typical harem manga at all. There are a couple of characters who do play up the stereotype, but it's in a light-hearted way, and they are developed characters, not placeholders.

The main romance is handled well for the most part, although a little clumsily at times. There's just a little too much of the main character screwing up and having to work out why and how he should apologise. That gets tedious after the fifth or sixth time. However, the mature plot and well developed characters more than makes up for that fact. Yamato Akitsuki stands out in particular. Usually I hate the main characters in romance, and Akitsuki joins Keitaro Urashima and Kasuga Kyouske in the critically small list of 'romantic comedy protagonists that don't piss me off.'

The main female lead, the titular Suzuka, is an equally interesting character, albeit marred by a tendancy for the author to keep trying to make her motivations and thoughts a mystery to the reader even after we have figured them out, which leads to her being annoying at times.

Now one of my opinions, of which I have many, is that the quality of a romantic comedy can be assessed by how it handles secondary romances. That is, other people who fancy either the male or female protagonist. There are basically two ways I can see of doing this right. Love Hina did this well by largely ignoring all of them as potential candidates except for Mutsumi. Kimagure Orange Road, on the other hand, does it well by giving these other candidates personality and depth and giving the protagonists real reasons to think about choosing them. This is the more mature route, but it is very difficult to pull off. Most harem comedies try this route, and end up failing miserably, leaving them with a cast of bland, generic secondary females who exist for no other reason than to hamper the main relationship and provide fanservice.

Suzuka takes the Kimagure route, and does it well. Part of this is that there are only three other potentials in the whole series, one of whom does not appear very long. They all have their own personalities, none of them are annoying, and there would have been valid ways to characterise Yamato going with any of them. To top it off, they all have their own story arcs, which means that they are never there solely to try to get the guy. This is the way to do multiple potential romances, if you're going to do them at all.

That being said, the series is not without its problems. The ending feels rushed, and happens very quickly. I won't spoil the ending, but I will say this: while there is no doubt that it's a very happy ending, it might annoy people. It is certainly a fairly mature ending, and it is reasonable to imagine that real life might go a little bit like that, but there is a bittersweet tinge to it.

The art is good, but not spectacular by any means. The character designs are also nice, and all characters have a certain feel to them. The obligatory fanservice is not as intrusive as it can be in some mangas, and it takes a back seat to the story, which is the driving force of this series.

All in all I can heartily recommend this series to anyone who likes shonen romance. If you liked Kimagure, or Maison Ikkoku, then go ahead and read it. If you're into anything more violent, or with lots of fanservice, then give this one a miss.

In which an interesting weekend is described

2008-05-09T00:17:00.002Z

Friday 2nd: My birthday. We went to a Japanese restaraunt first, and then to the pub, where fun was had.

Saturday: Gaming was done...all day. I tried Tribe 8 for the first time. A post-apocolyptic science-fiction fantasy horror mish-mash....SET IN CANADA! Actually it's an astoundingly good game with a tight system and a rich setting. I will almost certainly try to get my hands on the rulebook at some point. A mammoth game of Arkham Horror was also started. And Arkham Horror is always good, although it steals your time and life away, much like the actual Cthulu.

Sunday: Mostly played Iron-Man DnD. Rolling 3d6 down the line has never been so entertaining!

Monday: The highlight of the day was without a doubt Classroom Deathmatch, aka Battle Royale the RPG. A class of Japanese schoolchildren dropped on an island and told to kill each other. The mechanics are geared for co-operative storytelling more than anything. Each character has a best friend and a rival. If you succeed on an action, your best friend describes the results. If you fail, your rival does it. There are no real limits on what can be described, so death is very common. But that's ok, because that's how it works, and you can always quantum leap into a new student. Scenes are set by all the players, even those whose characters aren't participating, and flashbacks can be used to get bonus dice. The only problem is that it is most definitely a one-shot game. The mechanics as they stand would not work for anything longer than that. Oh, and avoid the swim team; they're lunatics!

In which I apologise for being a closet powergamer

2008-04-13T00:58:00.004Z

I was statting up Star Wars characters today, as one does, and my train of thought actually caused me to stop dead. There I was putting together some kind of Zabrak fringer (I had the model, okay? It seemed appropriate) and I envisioned him as a sort of Scout/Scoundrel mix. So anyway, halfway through I realised that I was actually statting the character out for optimum efficiency. You know, I'll take this feat because it stacks with this talent allowing me to leap out of cover, shoot, and dive back it, all while never exposing myself to counter-fire. Isn't building a character like that, you know, being a munchkin?

Well not wanting to be thought a munchkin, I desperately tried to justify it. Perhaps min-maxing was ok, as long as you roleplayed properly. But wait, I hadn't even thought of a personality for this guy yet. Perhaps as long as I made sure the mins were there as well as the maxes. But wait again, that's what a min-max is. In the end the only justification I could come up with was that perhaps as long as I didn't annoy the others it would be fine. But that's a pretty lame justification. So in the end I did what anyone would do. Seek out the biggest powergamer I know for advice.

So he gave me some interesting things to think about. Principally that there is a difference between powergaming and being a munchkin, and I had to work out what that line was. So I admit it world, I am a powergamer. I love being effective in combat. I love stacking feats to create an unstoppable badass capable of offing stormtroopers and dark jedi in a single shot. I like being impossible to hit. Because you know what? Being a non-combatent sucks in a game designed around combat.

Powergamers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your dex bonus!

This just in, Tate not bad

2008-04-07T22:31:00.002Z

Well actually I saw the new episode of Doctor Who on Saturday, and I have to apologise to Catherine Tate. I assumed on the strength of her terrible comedy show that she wouldn't bring anything to the show, but she was actually not bad. No Martha or Rose, but certainly better than that awful woman played by Kylie Minouge (sp?) in the Christmas special.

I actually look forward to seeing what happens, perhaps she will grow into the role. Also, it's certainly nice to see some older talent joining the show (no offence to her, of course). Still, it seems we're still a long way from the Doctor being allowed heterosexual males as companions, like he used to be. Perhaps they could bring back Matthew Waterhouse, I hear that he's good, and it would be nice to get someone who remembers the good old days, because Russell T. Davies really makes me wonder at times.

Also, I saw the actual Buffy the Vampire Slayer film today. I never thought I would say that Luke Perry could rescue a film, but apparently he can. Damn he was cool as Pike. And of course Rutger Hauer makes everything good. Still, SMG is a better Buffy than Swanson.

Graduate your game-a followup.

2008-03-27T11:27:00.002Z

The Fear the Boot podcast talked about Graduate your game today, and the host, Dan, made a point I hadn't really considered. White Wolf are suggesting that people graduate to a game by suggesting that they should move not to a deeper style of game, but to a more powerful kind of game. That seems to be missing the point entirely, and suggests that Exalted is a game of dungeon-crawls, which it really isn't.

They seem to be trying to bring in powergamers by misrepresenting the entire game.

White Wolf, what the hell?

2008-03-13T16:02:00.003Z

As a lover of both World of Darkness and Exalted, you would think that I would love the publishing company, White Wolf. In truth my relationship with them is very hit and miss. I love their games, don't get me wrong. Some of the Old WoD stuff wa sub-par, and I think nWoD has a much better feel to it. Also, Storyteller 2 is a much better system than Storyteller. On the whole though, I love all the games of their that I've played. So why do I not like them so much?

Mostly, it's their arrogance. White Wolf can be incredibly pretentious at times. Just read the storytelling chapter of Changeling: the Lost and you'll see that in a hearbeat. Look at this section of it:

Imagine an artist's palette, first of all, a color-box from which you, as Storyteller, will "paint" your chronicle: the locales, the characters, the weird quests and dream-remembered promises. Don't consider the actual colors yet, though. Instead, think about the properties of those colors. Imagine the bleak, painterly neutrals of the Hedge and the sharp, dry-brush edges of the thorns. Imagine the oversaturated, high-contrast variety of colors present at an august Court function. Imagine the textured patinas of a lost artifact unearthed, an untarnished metallic luster yielding into verdigis, or perhaps the luminous nacre of a pearl plucked from between a dead man's chalky fingers.

What the hell does that even mean? Seriously, it's pretentious wank that tells you nothing in practice about how to GM a game of Changeling. (Incidentally, I wouldn't mind so much if Changeling wasn't in all other respects a fantastic game, probably my favourite of the nWoD line). So yeah, White Wolf can be arrogant as hell at times, but this takes the gold in stupid things that they've done.

The basic idea is that you send in your copy of the DnD Players Guide, and they send you a copy of Exalted in return. In itself, it's not a bad idea, especially seeing as 4th Edition is coming out soon. If they can drum up a big of interest in Exalted on the side, more power to them. It's the way that it's phrased that really annoys me. You're supposed to graduate to a better level of roleplaying.

Now you won't find me arguing that DnD is better than Exalted. I prefer Exalted, to be honest, but they're different beasts entirely. DnD is high mortal fantasy, with mortal characters in a fairly generic fantasy world. It is by no means a bad game, indeed I love it. Exalted is Epic level immortal fantasy. Your characters are, for want of a better word, gods. They are gifted with the power of deities, and capable of truly earth-shattering feats. It's at a much higher power level than DnD, and comparing the two in this fashion is simply not something that you can really do.

People who like DnD aren't necessarily going to like Exalted, and White Wolf have basically shot themselves in the foot by saying 'come and play a better game, leave those plebs who play DnD behind, what do they know?' The sort of person who would think like that is not the sort of person I want to play tabletop roleplaying games with.

That's not to blast those people who would make the swap because they are moving up to 4th edition anyway, I have nothing against them, and that's a good way to get yourself a little extra out of the bargain. But people who would make the swap solely in order to feel superior to DnD players, which seems to be what this deal is implying, you aren't welcome in my games, ever.

Now I'm sure that this has been in the works for a while, but they have done it at a truely, spectularly disrespectful time, considering that Gary Gygax only passed away last tuesday.

Shame on you White Wolf. Your games are great, we know, but stop being so arrogant about it.

EDIT: People of various forums are now suggesting that this move was done with their tongue firmly within their cheek. If that's the case, then I apologize profusely to White Wolf. Either way, I think it's pretty tasteless, but not so malicious as I thought it was.

But you're still pretentious!

RIP - Gary Gygax

2008-03-06T22:14:00.002Z

I haven't been around for a week or so, firstly because I attended Minami-con in Southampton over the weekend, and then because of some personal things in the week that I'd prefer not to go into, but I was devastated to hear the news. Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away on tuesday.

His influence on the RPG industry is unquestioned and, while other people may have come up with tabletops, given time, the fact remains that he is the one who did, and he is rightly called a pioneer and father of Tabletops. Dungeons and Dragons is, and remains, the most popular and the most well-known of all of them.

Blogs and webcomics everywhere are mourning the occasion, and Penny Arcade replaced their strip with a memorial to him.

Thank you Gary, and good luck with whatever next life there is. The impact you had on our lives can not be overstated!

Points of Light, or How I learned to stop worrying and love 4th Edition

2008-02-26T19:07:00.006Z

Any RPGer who hasn't had their head in the sand has probably heard by now about Fourth Edition DnD, announced at GenCon last year. I have to admit that when I first heard about it, I was very sceptical. Wasn't this just some way for WotC to make a bunch more money by releasing the same sourcebooks over again? After all, 3.5 only hit shops in 2004, and 3.0 was printed in 2000. Surely there was no need for another edition?

Well, perhaps that is part of it, especially on marketing, but everything I've read about fourth edition makes me want it more and more. So what was the turning point? Quite simple, it's summed up on the phrase "Points of Light in a big, dark world." (Article requires a free membership to view)

What does that phrase mean exactly? The site itself explains it quite well:

Most of the world is monster-haunted wilderness. The centers of civilization are few and far between, and the world isn’t carved up between nation-states that jealously enforce their borders. A few difficult and dangerous roads tenuously link neighboring cities together, but if you stray from them you quickly find yourself immersed in goblin-infested forests, haunted barrowfields, desolate hills and marshes, and monster-hunted badlands. Anything could be waiting down that old overgrown dwarf-built road: a den of ogre marauders, a forgotten tower where a lamia awaits careless travelers, a troll’s cave, a lonely human village under the sway of a demonic cult, or a black wood where shadows and ghosts thirst for the blood of the living.

That's quite an interesting way of looking at things, and it does something to distinguish DnD from legions of generic fantasy games. It conjures up images similar to those from authors like Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock. This is taking Sword and Sorcery back to its original, pulp fantasy roots. I really hope that it actually gets rid of the Tolkein feel that DnD has had so far, and makes something slightly fresher. I know it will keep the trappings, Elves, Dwarves and Dark Lords, but those are pretty seminal in fantasy. The feel, however, seems completely different. Characters are more powerful, combat is cooler, and enemies are more numerous. You really could see Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser adventuring in this game, you'd never have seen them in the old Forgotten Realms.

This is a real example of where the feel of the game can really get me excited about something. I had assumed that this was a financial decision to boost WotC, but it really seems like they know what they're doing here. I can't wait!

The World of Darkness- Session Four

2008-02-26T01:07:00.003Z

So with news that the Doctor was stable, our three heroes head home to sleep. In the morning, a full-scale investigation is scheduled of his computer. Not much is found, except for some map co-ordinates revealing the location of a small village about thirty miles outside of London called Greensville. Known for being quite pretty and near a set of caves that was a tourist destination until some people died there about thirty years ago. Surely this bared investigation!

Meanwhile, scientists work on the serum that they found, identifying all of the key components but one, which refuses to be identified under any scientific tests. Doctor Johns, meanwhile, lies comatose in a bed in the discrete lab of Parasol Corp.

Hopping into various cars, they sped towards Greensville as fast as they could, arriving in time for a pub lunch in the Fox and Goose. However, raised voices with angry locals, and repeated insistance that they will go into the caves eventually forces them to flee to a friendlier pub, the Green Dragon Inn, so named for an old folk legend. Here they find out that the other pub is a haven for members of a group called the Julian Society, a supposedly benevolent organisation dedicated to the improvement of the village.

After lunch, they head off to the caves, spending a little time looking around the tourist section. They get a little bit of information. The first cavern is open to the public, and while they can't be prohibited from entering the rest of the caves, it is not advisable, they will need breathing apparatus, and the management can not be held responsible blah blah blah. Breathing apparatus is summarily requested from London, and soon it arrives. Time to enter the caves.

The walls are dripping with water and covered in fungi and moss. Samples of all are taken. Progressing through the cave reveals something odd, there is a door set into one of the walls, with the sound of screaming from behind it. It is quietly opened, and a man is calling for help, chained against the far wall, behind what looks like an altar that would neatly sluice blood into a small basin. He screams at them to unchain him, and some fiddling around with lockpicks gets him out. He thanks the heroes. Meanwhile, exploring one of the pools of water, Thrace finds a secret tunnel which leads into a small bedroom, not the sort of thing you'd expect in a cave. He steals the small battery lamp that's there.

When he gets back, sounds are heard of people approaching. The heroes hide, but the intruders notice that their captive is missing and run over. Throwing a rock into a nearby pool, Thrace distracts them for a critical few seconds, enabling them to get the jump on their opponents, using his own time to capture one of them and use them as a bullet shield. Their new friend, William Kursus, goes first, running at one of the thugs before his knife can be drawn and delivering a sucker punch to the gut. Fisher moves in to combat another...before pepper-spraying him to the face. Thrace notices a gun on the hip of one of the men, and fires, his fine-tuned military reflexes serving him well as he hits the man in the gut. The various thugs, shocked from this initial offensive, scatter and attack various groups. The one who had been shot is woozy, but still manages to score a glancing hit, shooting Fisher in the shoulder. One of them struggles with Kursus, and another attacks Thrace with his knife, but misses and slices his own friend's shoulder open. Finally, Burns, hiding behind the altar due to his lack of weapons, calls out that the men should surrender.

Kursus scores a devastating hit, flipping the thug over his shoulder and leaving him unconcious on the ground. Thrace shoots the man with the knife, hitting him in the arm and causing him to drop his knife. Fisher runs over to the woozy man with the gun and similarly manages to score an excellent hit, kicking the man backwards. His head hits the wall, and he slumps down, either unconcious or dead. The man in Thrace's grasp rips free and runs for the gun that his companion dropped, but the other man with the knife attacks. However, Thrace steps to the side and the knife cuts nothing but air. Burns agains repeats the offer of surrender, but the thugs refuse, shouting out that their sacred spot has been defiled and there can be no mercy.

Kursus captures the thug running for the gun, pinning him from behind, allowing Fisher to deliver several punches to the stomach. Meanwhile, Thrace plays a game of cat and mouse with the knife-man, moving from cover to cover firing off shots. This game ends when he steps out and delivers one final shot to the head, killing the man instantly. The last man is swiftly knocked unconcious. The man who had been pepper-sprayed is subjected to a brief interrogation in which he reveals that he is part of the Julian Society.

Making good their escape, the heroes head out of the cave and take their samples back to London. The doctor has woken, and an interview with him reveals that he manufactured the serum for an unknown paymaster, and that he himself was doing it in a purely disinterested pursuit of knowledge. The missing ingredient definitely comes from the caves, and shows up on all of the samples they brought with them. Clearly the connection between the serum, the cave and the Julian Society bore further investigation...

TO BE CONTINUED...

New purchases

2008-02-23T17:38:00.003Z

I recently ordered 2 new World of Darkness books from Amazon Marketplace. The first is their newest WoD game, Changeling: the Lost. This I have wanted for a while, and the number of positive reviews from everywhere sealed the deal. I didn't like the original Changeling game, its focus on capturing childhood innocence at the expense of anything resembling maturity smacked of Michael Jackson, and didn't sell the game at all. I never actually played it, but just looking through the book made me feel uncomfortable.

The other book I bought was the new splat book, Midnight Roads. It's about characters who travel, and basing campaigns around them. I shall have to work it into the Chronicles of Storge somehow.

The World of Darkness- Session Three

2008-02-17T21:27:00.002Z

Scarpering from the scene of the crime, the three unlikely heroes make their way back to various places. Eventually the rendevous at Parasol, and discuss what they know. A strange drug is in production that makes people go insane and wild, and then quickly die of a heart attack. The most recent test subjects were people abducted from an insane asylum. A report comes on, which talks about the events of the warehouse, and mentions that there were people trapped in the building, who were swiftly rescued by the police. Cursing at the lack of insight from the cops, Fisher calls his contact, who tells him that the people bribed their way out of the situation. Clearly the Met is corrupt from top to bottom. He mentions that the escapees from the asylum were probably abducted with the help of an insider. Clearly this bore investigating.

Organising a tour of Bedlem Asylum is easy, they simply show up at the gates and request one, which starts about half an hour later. It is initially led by Dr. Crick, a rather high-strung woman who wastes no time in starting arguments with our heroes about how much more seriously they should take mental illness, and asking them not to pry into questions of security. Eventually she gets annoyed, yells that she has work to do, and leaves them in the care of the much kindlier Dr. Johns, who takes them to the third floor. While in the course of the tour, he is clearly shifty at some of the questions they are asking about security, repeatedly asking them not to pry into things that weren't their business.

Eventually, he leads them into an empty ward, and then immediately turns, locking the door behind him with them still in the room. Calling back over his shoulder, he points out that he told them not to pry. The door across from them starts to be pummeled from the other side, and there are yells and calls from the other side. Thrace tries to unlock the door, eventually unpicking it, but not before the other door bursts open, disgorging several rage-infected inmates into the room. Fisher engages in a little fisticuffs with one of them, but neither are able to do much to the other. Thrace calls for them to leave, backing out into the corridor. Burns climbs onto one of the bed, while one of the inmates claws at his legs. Stunningly acrobatically, he leaps over him, kicks off his back and lands running for the corridor. Meanwhile, Fisher backs away and makes for the corridor as well. The inmates chase them in, but the first three to do so is met by a flurry of pepper spray from Thrace. They fall to the ground, apparently trying to shred their own faces to stop the pain. The next one suffers chemical burns when Burns empties a CO2 fire extinguisher at him. Finally, Fisher manages to jam the door closed and they make a run for it, carrying one of the flailing people with them.

Having to stop to unlock another door, they are soon accosted by an orderly, who they cajole into helping to carry the body. He helps them down a fire escape and to their car, before they throw him out of the car and speed off. In the rear view mirror, he can be seen taking a note of something. They speed to Parasol, stopping only to change the plates. The body is taken to one of the more clandestine labs for dissection, and an autopsy report is hastily put together, which doesn't say much that they didn't already know.

However, they have a lead, and the techie is put to work finding everything he can about Dr. William Johns. In the meantime, a safe-house is organised, as the heroes are now wanted for abducting an inmate of a local asylum. Some of them go for changes of appearance, while Burns is confident that an extravagent false moustache will throw off the persuit.

That night, they stake out the house of Dr. Johns, whose address had been uncovered by the techie. He is still clearly awake, and can be seen moving around upstairs. They stealthily move in, and start looting the downstairs. A comedy of errors ensues, however, when one of them knocks a lamp over and another trips over a wire. Clamour can be heard from upstairs, and seconds later a very dirty, clearly homeless man charges through a door at them and begins to run down the stairs towards them. Thrace fires three bullets at him, but in the dark they go wide, and only one clips the guy's arm. He falls down the stairs, clattering to the ground, where Burns throws a sheet over him, innefectually. Fisher kicks for the head but misses, and Thrace cooly shoots him again, missing completely and hitting the floor. The guy rips the sheet apart and leaps up, as Thrace finally plugs him through the head, killing him instantly.

Upstairs, it becomes clear that the doctor has escaped through the window, and Thrace runs after him while the other two loot the house for research notes and chemicals. The guy is caught, but as he is cuffed a dart hits him and he falls unconcious. There are no signs of where it comes from. He is dragged back into the kitchen, and a private medical team summoned. Before they can arrive, he wakes back up and starts going wild, showing all the same symptoms as the previous rage-infected. The medical team arrive and, knowing that he has valuable information about what is going on, do their best to stabilise him.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Dark Heresy, what the hell?

2008-02-16T18:45:00.002Z

I flipped through a copy of Dark Heresy the other day. For those of you not in the know, Dark Heresy is the new Warhammer 40K RPG dealing with the Imperial Inquisition. The story is kinda odd.

1. Games Workshop has already done fantastically well with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP). The game is astounding. The production values are really high and the system is well designed.

2. Fans eat it up, and clamour for a 40K RPG.

3. GW announces that they'll make one. In fact, they'll make three. One focusing on the inqusition, one on other humans, and one on alien races.

4. Dark Heresy is announced. It sells out during pre-order and you can't find copies anywhere.

5. Dark Heresy is released. Already sold out.

6. Less than a week later, GW announces the termination of the 40K roleplaying line.

What the hell is wrong with this picture? The only rational explanation I can think of is that the RPG is a niche product. The wargame is far more profitable. Why make £25 selling a chunky hardback with fantastic writing and and artwork, with a lot of thought that has gone into it, when you could make £25 selling a few dis-assembled, unpainted figures that the player has to put together themselves? If this is even close to the truth (I am shooting in the dark) then it's exactly the same attitude that makes me hate GW in general.

They really suck when it comes to giving good deals to their customers.

The World of Darkness- Session Two

2008-02-11T21:21:00.000Z

Here is the second part of the campaign:

Thrace kept the gun leveled at the advancing Frank Johnson, and after repeated attempts to get him to put the weapon down, he shot him in the leg. Handcuffing him to a railing, he went after his friend.

Meanwhile, Fisher was desperately trying to catch up with the fleeing man, and not having much luck. The man made it to a car park, throwing himself into a white van that was parked up and powering it up. Fisher slowed down, taking a note of the numberplate, and thinking it was best to retreat. As he was doing so, the back doors of the van opened, and a huge dog leapt out. A gigantic german shepherd, feral and beserk, started to chase him. Waiting until it was within a few yards of him, Fisher fired a taser blast, the probes catching the dog in its haunch and stunning it to the ground. In its jerking about it manages to catch Fishers arm with its claw, giving him a nasty, but not deeply. It seems then to have a heart attack and go limp.

Going back to see their unconcious friend, they wake him up, before interrogating him as to what was happening. He isn't talking, however, so Thrace knocks him out again, planting evidence of his crime on him (all for the greater good, right?) and scarpering. Stopping only to torch the car they arrived in, they both go home.

The next morning, they are called into the office by Mr. Bryson, who asks them what they'll do next, and tells them two things. Firstly, Frank Johnson was arrested the previous night, which they pretend to know nothing about, and secondly, the security guard who they had arrested the previous session had died in custody. Apparently going insane, he killed two police officers before succumbing to a heart attack.

Fisher contacts an informer he has in the police department, who agrees to get him the autopsy report, and information regarding the vehicle that he had chased the previous day. This quickly gets back to him, and tells him that the vehicle is registered to a Sam Marwick, the address of who he supplies. He also says that he can't talk much, as a situation is developing. Eight people have disappeared from a local asylum.

A late night breakin nets some interesting clues. A laptop and a hard drive are recovered. Once cracked open, most of the information is useless, but some of it is good, including extended exchanges of emails between Sam, Frank and numerous others. Experiments are mentioned, as is a sinister formula. A map to a warehouse is provided, and a newly arrived email provides directions that Sam should come to the warehouse as soon as possible.

Heading down to the warehouse in Adam's car, they spot several people heading inside. Finding a back entrance that leads into the office at the back, they peek through the door to the main area. On the balcony that runs around the inside, several people can be heard talking about the experiment, mentioning that the fatal side-effect of the drug is still there, but comes into play much more slowly as will be shown by the next test.

In the centre of the room, several people can be seen stirring in a cage. They appear dishevelled, but feral, and they immediately begin tearing at the cage door. All of them wear uniforms marking them as inmates of a local asylum. They tear through the cage, running for the front door of the warehouse and freedom. The three intrepid heroes leap into the car, and the semi-psychotic Thrace started running them down. A couple ran back into the warehouse, so he called the police, fled the scene, crashed the car intentionally, sabotaged his own brakes and claimed to have been in an accident.

As the police vanished towards the warehouse, with the fates of the conspirators unknown, our heroes take stock of their situation.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Review: Romeo x Juliet

2008-02-10T21:52:00.001Z

So here's something a little odd, an anime series that draws from the works of Shakespeare. Perhaps that's more common than I realise, but this is the only one I know. Anyhow, it's a loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. And by 'loose adaptation' I mean 'the characters have the same names'....well most of them do.

As the story opens, the floating city of Neo Verona has been ruled for 14 years by the tyrannical Duke Motague, who acquired power by overthrowing the rival Capulet house. The only survivor of that house was Juliet, who was rescued from the coup when the royal knight Conrad intervened and spirited her away. She has lived the past 14 year pretending to be a boy named Odin, under the care of Conrad, two other knights Camio and Francisco, and her best friend Cordelia. She spends the bulk of her time running around the city dressed all in red acting as an odd Zorro-like figure called the Red Whirlwind.

Meanwhile, the Duke's son, Romeo, is fast maturing and finding out that he really doesn't like the way that his increasingly insane father is doing things. Along with his friend Benvolio, he spends more and more time out and about. Eventually he bumps into Juliet on one of the few occasions that she has her hair down. Needless to say, the two fall in love and go through many happy adventures trying to keep that love alive while Juliet is trying to avoid being killed by Romeo's father.

It may seem like I'm mocking the plot, but this is a really good series. The plot is well paced, and has several points where it actually raises real questions. How far can you go in persuit of justice? What's the correct response to collective punishment? Can collective punishment ever be appropriate? How can you balance your freedom against the suffering of others? The show tries to make you think about all these and more, and for the most part it succeeds without being preachy.

The graphics are good. The lines and colour are crisp and clean, although somewhat lacking in shading. The music is without exception superb.

The characters are also pretty well done. Even the insane Duke Montague is in some respects a sympathetic character. There are a few who are less so. I couldn't get my head around the slimy coutier Mercutio, he seemed to have no redeeming features whatsoever. I'd have to say my favourite is the tragic lover Hermione. She seems to have Romeo in her grasp, before he's snatched away by Juliet. She convinces herself that Juliet must have wickedly seduced him, and is unable to handle it when she finds out the Juliet is actually a quite nice person!

The voice acting is all very good, but props have to go to Kazukiko Inoue (also Kakashi in Naruto) for his work portraying a character who is basically Shakespeare himself. Portrayed as quirky, effeminate and somewhat philosophical, his dryly humourous comments and annoyed barbs steal the episodes in which he appears.

All in all I would recommend this series. It's 24 episodes of fantastic action and romance. Go watch it now, if you're at a loss for what to do.

The World of Darkness- Session One

2008-02-10T12:52:00.000Z

I'm currently running a World of Darkness campaign. The first session was the other sunday, and the second starts in about an hour. The campaign is set in and around the London offices ofParasol Incorporated, a pharmaceutical company with a slightly shady reputation. Yeah, shamelessly ripped off from Resident Evil, but they story is going in a different direction.

The characters are the following. Donald Burns, who is on the board of directors. David Fisher, who is a Private Investigator, and Adam Thrace, who heads the security team. This is a coincidence, but it more or less means that there is a mental character, a social character and a physical character. Anyhow, this is what happened last week.

Mr. Bryson, the Chairman of the Board, called all three into his office. Fisher had been called in to find the source of a leak in the company's security. He had been partnered with Thrace, the head of security, and put under the command of Burns. A quick search of the research room, which required a code to enter, revealed a dead body there. Whoever it was had been completely eviscerated, and was unrecognisable. A scan of the cameras revealed that they had been tampered with, completely covered in static and white noise.

Fisher took a closer look, and realised that the footage and sound still existed, but completely covered. A techie was quickly summoned, and he began work on the video and footage. He said, however, that it would take a while.

In the meantime, the body was identified as David Kaplan, a low-ranking member of the security team who had been on security duty that day. Thrace is shocked, and immediately summoned the person who had taken over from him, demanding to know what happened. A quick questioning session revealed that he had hadn't seen Kaplan, who was supposed to have passed the shift off to him. Not only had he not investigated, but he hadn't brought the anomoly to the attention of anyone. He was immediately put on unpaid leave, pending a firing.

The sound was restored to the video camera footage, and it revealed a conversation between Kaplan and an unknown voice in the research room. It appears to be a conversation about stolen research. Kaplan demands a bigger cut of the profits, and is swiftly dispatched.

It is realised that Adam Weaver, the security guard who had just been fired, might hold a valuable clue. He is brought back in, and a makeshift interrogation room is set up in the basement in the janitor's office. Thrace fills the room with various nasty looking implements. Weaver is clearly shocked at the room, and his defences swiftly crumble. He admitted that Kaplan had promised him £3000 if he said nothing about disappearing early. With gambling debts looming, Weaver had no choice but to agree. However, he had no idea that Kaplan would end up getting killed. The last piece of imformation he could give was that Kaplan had said he was meeting a man from a rival corporation, Solomon Corp.

Fisher was volunteered to infiltrate Solomon Corp, and he started by taking a guided tour of the building. In one of the labs he heard a voice that sounded very much like that on the sound of the footage. He is introduced to Frank Johnson, a supposed genius researcher whose research topics synched eerily with those stolen from the research room. The tour swifly concluded, and his finding were brought back to Parasol. After a long argument, it was decided that they should search for more evidence on Johnson before alerting the police.

That evening, Fisher and Thrace stake out his house. At about 2Am, he leaves the house and begins walking down the street. Thrace breaks and enters, while Fisher follows the man. No incriminating evidence is found in the house, and Thrace gets a message from Fisher telling him that the man was meeting with another person in the local graveyard. Thrace makes his way there quickly and the two of them hide behind a tombstone. After a few minutes of quiet talking, Johnson leaves one way, but quickly draws a machete and starts walking towards their hiding place. The other man scarpers behind the church.

Pulling out his gun as Johnson advances, Thrace yells at Fisher to follow the other man.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Wii is where it's at!

2008-02-09T18:46:00.000Z

The seventh generation of the console wars has seen Nintendo come from behind to win a startling victory over the other two competitors. As the oldest of the three currently fighting, they had a lot to live up to, but they had seen steadily declining sales culminating in the Gamecube being beaten by a coffee table...errr...X-Box.

Anyway, the Wii was a masterstroke on their part. Realising that there was a significant number of people out there who didn't need better graphics and special effects, they focused instead on re-defining the way that video games are played. The Wiimote seems a little gimmicky when you first use it. Surely this can't be the way forward? But after using it for a while, you realise its potential. As soon as game developers start realising that as well, the true potential of this devices will be seen.

The 360 and PS3 are fighting it out to attract the hardcore gamers, and the Wii has cut right through the centre and stolen all of the casual ones with its low cost and the perception that it is the most 'fun' of all three of them

That's why I bought one, anyway. That, and I'm a raving Nintendo fanboy......Princess Zelda so wants me.

Review: Advance Wars: Dark Conflict

2008-02-09T18:14:00.001Z

WARNING-SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Advance Wars series has always been a beacon of excellent design and storytelling on the GBA and DS. Turn-based strategy is a niche market even on the PC, and on consoles there are very few that are well known, unless you count things like Final Fantasy Tactics. So it's to the credit of Nintendo that they've managed to get this series right. They combine an excellent story and character driven single-player experience with a truly addictive and limitless multiplayer.

Dark Conflict brings a lot of new stuff to the table. Firstly, the world and characters from the last few games are completely gone, and the game itself has gone post-apocolyptic. I loved this, but they I love anything post-apoc. In the ashes of a world devestated by a cataclysmic meteor shower and dust cloud, a few survivors live on, scavenging for food and continuing old hatred. Ed is your first Commanding Officer, and is the only survivor of the Laurentian Military academy that he studied at, and is then rescued by the First Independant Laurentian Batallion under the command of Captain O'Brien and his subordinate Corporal Lin. I rate the story as one of the best in the series, partly due to it's post-apocolyptic nature, but also partly because it's less obvious who the bad guys are. In all three of the others, the answer was always 'Black Hole did it.' The characters also get better development through various cutscenes, and it's the first time in the series that I remember them killing major COs off.

The game, like all the others, is heavily mission-based, and you can gain points for completing each mission based upon your speed, power and technique (basically: how many turns it took, how many things you destroyed, how many of your things were destroyed). I was a little upset to see that the system that you could use in Duel Strike to spend points on upgrades for your COs was taken out, but it means that the focus of the game shifts to the units themselves as opposed to the people commanding them, making for a slightly different style of gameplay. On that note, the power differences between units has decreased slightly. In Duel strike, a Mega Tank was incredibly powerful, and could take repeated batterings from bombers and live. Infantry were next to useless against it. Now, the differences are still there, but less pronounced. Infantry have a role to play besides captures, which is good. Indeed, you can make a coherant strategy out of an infantry wave. This is something they tried in previous games with COs like Sami and Sensei, but never managed because of the focus on the CO themselves. I still bemoan the lack of infantry with decent anti-air capabilities, but there are enough anti-air units to go around.

The role of COs in this game has been dramatically scaled back. CO powers are far rarer and are no longer as game-ending as they could be in Duel Strike and the GBA games. The individual abilities of COs are also less pronounced. Of note is the ability of COs to command particular units. For example, you can plut your CO in a tank, and they will generate a command zone. In this zone the attack and defence of all unit is somewhat increased, but make sure to protect that unit. Leave it exposed and you might just lose. This is a nice touch, but doesn't come into play all that often.

The unit roster hasn't changed dramatically. What were fighters are now interceptors, and the unit called fighters are a sort of hybrid of battle copters and the old fighters. There are missle-boats which basically act as landers with a single attack, meaning that transporting of troops across large bodies of water is significantly easier. There are motorbike units, which are basically fast-moving infantry, and various units have small tweaks in how much damage they can do and how much punishment they can take.

Basically, if you're a fan of the Advance Wars series, this is an addition that I heartily recommend. It has all of the creative storytelling and tactical gameplay that has made the series great so far.

I'm back

2008-02-09T18:12:00.000Z

I know this never got many (or perhaps any) readers, but I'm gonna start it up again anyway, just for the lulz. I have a lot to write about, so why the heck not?

Anime Stuff

2007-06-14T00:55:00.000Z

Been watching a lot of anime recently. Most of it was stuff that I had seen before, although there have been a few new ones as well. I've rewatched Haruhi Suzimiya, Haibane Renmei and Now and then, here and there.

As for new series, I've watched Gunslinger Girl and DNAngel. GG is a fairly good series about psychologically brainwashed schoolgirl assassins, although it's a serious series, not a comedy. DNAngel is a sort of fantasy/drama/romance series. Both are fairly good, although I can't recommend them in the same way I could recommend any of the three series that I rewatched.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't watch them if you get the chance, but I wouldn't go out of your way to see them.

Blood Bowl

2007-06-10T20:48:00.000Z

I spent a lot of today playing Blood Bowl. Basically someone looked at Warhammer, and thought to themselves 'what would it be like if these guys were playing American Football instead of fighting? And what if there were basically no rules, and players were free to kill, injure and maim each other?'

Well, it turns into a really fun game. It takes about five minutes to set up, and a game can last anywhere from 1 hour to 3 or so. There is a great strategical element, and also a great luck element, as all good games should have. What's more, if you are playing in a league, you keep your team throughout, and your team and players can get better, get more skills, and improve themselves, so you really start to care for your team.

So last week, my team, an undead team unimaginatively called Storge's Zombie All-stars played their first game, losing narrowly to the Spitberg Soulstealers, a Chaos team. This week I wa up against the league's top team, the Dark Elf Har Garrath Harpies, and I didn't really think I had a chance.

The game started well, and within three turns I had taken out four of his players. This allowed me to score a touch-down just before the first half ended. In the second half I was able to score again pretty quickly, and then sail to victory, although he did score a touchdown out of pride just before the game ended.

In fairness, I had a great deal of luck going for me, and the other guy kept rolling 1s, so I shouldn't really have won, but hey.

Play this game. You will love it.

Magic in fantasy

2007-06-05T15:25:00.000Z

You'd be hard-pressed to find a fantasy setting that doesn't use magic. Indeed, it has pretty much come to be that magic defines fantasy. A fantasy setting is a fantasy setting because it has magic. Any yet, there are so many different variations on the same basic theme that it almost feels like there is no single thing called magic. However, in reality there only seem to be two variations on magic that I can really find. Within these two catagories there are innumerable sub-variations, but it seems like all magic belongs to these two. Most systems of magic that I have seen actually use some combination of the two, tending towards one of them. So what are these catagories, you ask?

Well I like to define them as 'artistic' and 'scientific' magic. The basic definition of scientfic magic is that of rules. In order to use magic, you need to say the right words, or use the right ingredients, or draw the right magic circle. Just about every video game uses scientific magic, the reasons for which will become apparent. Any system where you choose from a list of spells is scientific. Books can also be like this, the magic in Harry Potter, for example, requires the right codewords, and is therefore scientific. Alchemy from Fullmetal Alchemist is very scientific magic, in my opinion. You have to draw a transmutation circle, and re-combine the thing you are transmuting into something else.

Artistic magic, on the other hand, is about imagination. The magic does what you want it to, without reference to scientific laws. Note that this does not make the magic unlimited. A good example would be 'The Will and the Word' from David Edding's Belgariad. A wizard imagines the effect of his magic, wills it to be, and then speaks a word. If he required a specific word, it would be scientific. As it is, the word is merely a conduit, and any word will do. A wizard could imagine a house burning, will it to be, and shout 'turkey' and the house would catch fire. Artistic magic would be terrible in computer games, and even roleplaying games, as the player has to have something to define the magic by. It has now way to tell what he is imagining. I also find that many films use artistic magic, rather than scientific. In the recent LotR films, for example, what magic there was seemed to be based around what the Wizards wanted to happen. Books seem to use them both in roughly equal measure.

Note also that this doens't mean that scientific magic requires no imagination, or that artistic magic is lawless. This whole discussion has been about clearing my own mind on the subject, and is therefore rather disorganised. Artistic magic has laws to it also. There are limits. In the Belgariad, for example, the magic actually tires the wizard out and they can't use anything that is beyond their own mental strength. Similarly, I'm not saying that scientific magic systems have no imagination. Look at FMA for example, when Edward Elric transmutes stone into the shape of a door in order to escape from a building. There is not 'stone to door' circle that he could draw, it's more that he imagined the stone reshaping itself.

So most systems are a mix of the two. I know this has been a rather serious post, but fantasy is one of my favourite genres, and I wanted to clear my own mind about the magic.

Objection!

2007-05-26T02:37:00.000Z

So I mentioned that I had picked up a Nintendo DS. To that effect, I yesterday picked myself up a copy of 'Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney'. I got it in the bargain bin at the local GAME, and to be honest, I didn't have high hopes for it.

My fears were put to rest soon. I love this game. Basically, you are Pheonix 'Nick' Wright, a defence attorney fresh out of college, and you are in your first real case. Your best friend, Larry Butz, is up for Murder 1, and it's your job to prove he didn't do it. Well, that case is basically the tutorial, showing you how to go through witness testimony and find contradictions and falsehoods. After all, if Larry is innocent, then the witness who claims he saw it must be lying, right?

After that you get thrown into the game headfirst. You must talk to people, examine the scene of the crime for clues, and then battle it out in court to prove your client's innocence.

This game could have been a real dud, and the worst mistake they could have made would be to have a series of completely unconnected murders for you to solve on by one. This game instead has an actual storyline. For example, for the first two major cases the prosecuting attorney is Miles Edgeworth, and there are masses of rumours surrounding him. They say that he hasa never failed to get a guilty verdict, and isn't above faking evidence, hushing up testimony and surpressing clues that don't help him. You can see how this could have gone wrong? He could have been a cardboard cutout who escapes at the end of each trial screaming 'I would have got away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!'

No, Edgeworth has a storyline, a background, and reasons for doing the things he does. In fact, it seems that both Wright and Butz know him from before. This storyline all comes down to the line in the fourth chapter, where the defendent is Edgeworth himself and the prosecutor is his erstwhile mentor.

I won't say more for fear of spoiling it, but I will mention a few problems I had with the game. Firstly, it is too dependent on dialogue trees, and it never feels like you have quite enough freedom to say and do what you want. Secondly, it always seems like your are about to lose, and there is nothing you could have done to stop it, when suddenly some deus ex machina comes in to save your ass. This is somewhat lazy storytelling, and detracts from what I was saying about the otherwise high quality of the storyline. The last major flaw is that, once you have played the game through, it does not have great replayability, as you have already learned the dialogue trees that will get you victory.

Overall, however, this game is a superficially flawed, yet fundamentally innovative and interesting concept. I will definitely be getting the sequels.

Glory of Glories!

2007-05-22T07:10:00.000Z

So I recently got my mitts on a Nintendo DS. This is news in and of itself, but crucially it has allowed me, for the first time ever, to play Final Fantasy III. Now, the game isn't exactly as it originally was on the NES. It's had a facelift, and the graphics are more-or-less equivalent to the graphics of FFIX. The story is a fairly conventional early Final Fantasy story. Warriors of Light have to bring balance back to the world by collecting power from crystals, each of which represents an element.

The job system is fairly flexible, although it is a little annoying that if you switch jobs, your character has a breaking-in period where he/she is less powerful. Now, this makes sense as something to stop gratuitous job switching in dungeons, but you would think that resting should stop it happening!

Anyway, more on that when I finish the game.

Future Shadowrun campaign

2007-05-22T06:55:00.000Z

Over the summer I will be GMing a Shadowrun game. The story takes place in and around Las Vegas, and is focused on investigating and eventually toppling a very powerful drug dealer. There will be only three players (there was a fourth, but he decided to accept a work placement scheme in London instead. Talk about poor priorities!), so I'm throwing in a couple of NPCs as well.

The story will start with all of the characters awakening and finding themselves in a small room, which looks very much like a high-security prison cell (mostly because it is a high-security prison cell). They all have envelopes in front of them with various instructions on how to escape which will only work when combined. With any luck they will escape the prison, and will then have to find their way to Las Vegas, the nearest city, whereupon Mr Johnson (for those of you who aren't Shadowrunners, "Mr. Johnson" always refers to a person who hires shadowrunners, in order to disguise whatever their true identity is) will contact them, and offer them a job. Although they don't know it, he was in fact the one who put them into the jail cell.

The job he offers them is to take down a local drug dealer and shut down his operation. It isn't a difficult job, but if the players dig a little deeper into the situation, they will find a tangled web of evidence suggesting that Mr. Johnson himself is the one who supplied the dealer. Either way, Mr. Johnson will continue to give them jobs of various kinds, one of which will bring them into contact with a group who claim that Mr. Johnson is poised to betray them. Whether or not they beleive these people, they will soon find themselves attacked by thugs.

Various things happen and, with a dash of luck, the campaign will end with the overthrow of Mr. Johnson's operation. He may or may not be the 'final boss'. Of course, players have a nasty habit of throwing your plot off course, so I have a few sidequests prepared for if such a thing should happen, which will give me time to prepare.

More on this as it comes in.

XIN

2007-05-22T06:48:00.000Z

Here's something worth watching.

Watch the series called XIN. It's a wuxia style flash animation set in a dystopian future in which physical beating and abuse has replaced expulsion and detention as punishment in schools. Student gangs are rife, and fighting in school is commonplace. Yeah the idea is a little absurd, but the story makes up for it in many ways.

The characters are hella cool, but special mention has to go to Legend, Ghai and the titular character, Xin, all of whom kick ass. The music is fantastic. The fights are really high quality for a flash series. Everything is very tight and well put together. The later episodes especially are very professionally done, although the animation in the earlier episodes is a little less well done.

Go. Watch. Now.

Ten things I hate about you!

2007-05-21T15:39:00.000Z

The 'you' so prominently referenced in the title is of course, my arch-nemesis, video games. Now before I go any further, let me clarify. I love video games. I rarely find a video game I don't like. However, they are also the most annoying thing on the face of the planet. So here, mostly to clear my own thoughts on the matter, are the top ten things that annoy me in video games.

1o. Loading screens with no progress bar: Loading screens themselves are pretty bad, but those without a progress bar, or counter, or percentage, are the worst of the crop. This is my thought pattern when I see one: 'Oh, loading eh? If you insist. But wait! How long are you gonna be loading for? I've seen fricking long load times before! Can I go make a sandwich, or if I do will I come back to find it loaded, my character dead, and 'Game Over prominently displayed?' Seriously, if you must have loading screens, at least put a progress bar.

9. Repetetive Music: This one should be a no brainer. Music should be varied and interesting, or the player (namely, me) will get bored and restless, and project that onto the game itself. Final Fantasy has always been really good at this. Nobuo Uematsu is a fantastic composer though, and most game companies can't be bothered to get someone even approaching his calibre.

8. Requiring you do repeat the same pointless task until you finally succeed at it: There are some very bad offenders at this, but one of the worst has to be Super Mario. Remember that video I posted a while back? That ain't so far from the truth. The only difference was that that video was funny.

7. Game Over: The very idea of game over sickens me. It's like the game telling you that you aren't good enough because you can't complete it with a certain number of lives. I hate the 'game over' screen more than just about anything else apart from the rest of the items on this list.

6. Lack of progress: In most games, after a game over, you just have to re-load and try again, knowing that you are no closer to your goal, indeed you are further away because you have to fight your way back to the scene of the game over. How should this be done? Well, look at the much underrated Pokemon games. If you lost a battle, your character may lose a bit of money, but all progress that you made is kept, and any experience your pokemon gained, including that gained in the battle that you lost, remains. All you have to do is walk back to where you lost and challenge the person who beat you again. No trainers on the way will challenge you, as you have already beaten them. That's a good system, where game over doesn't exist, and losing is a setback, but not an annoyance.

5. Random Battles occuring too frequently: 'Ah, a random battle? Piece of cake. There I've won. Doobie, doobie, doob- what the crap, another one? I hadn't walked three steps!' Random battles I understand, mostly because games did not used to have the capability of rendering those monsters in real time. I don't mind random battles at all. If they are set to occur every two paces? Fuck that.

4. Jumping puzzles in games patently not designed for them: By 'games patently not designed for them', I obviously mean first-person games. In games designed to switch between first and third person, like the Jedi Knight series, they are acceptable, as you can switch to a view much more amenable to the idea of jumping puzzles. In first person games, get rid of them, they suck.

3. Irritating music at game over screens: Super Mario is guilty of this to the greatest extent I know. I have already pointed out that the game over screen shouldn't be there, but if it is, don't put annoying music there. Especially if that music seems to screem 'hahahahaha you suck' at the player. Seriously, at that point, the player is probably annoyed and frustrated, so putting bad music is like kicking them in the crotch when they're down.

2. Unskippable cutscenes: Cutscenes are good the first time around. They build story and character, they get the player from one place to another, and they often look damn cool (Final Fantasy VIII's 'Dollet Landing' scene is one of the most brain-defying great video game moments of all time.) They aren't so nice the second time around. Or the third. Seriously, make it so that your cutscenes can be skipped. Players don't want to watch them over and over just because they keep failing.

1. A lack of save points: Does this one really need explaining? Seriously, put adequate save points in the game. I don't want to fight through a dungeon, lose to the boss, and then have to fight my way through it again. The golden rule of video games has to be 'always put a save point before the boss.'

Let me reiterate. I love video games, but they can be hella annoying.

My current manga collection

2007-05-15T23:47:00.000Z

Because I wanted to quantify exactly how much manga I had, I will list them here. This also serves to display my arrogance at the fact that I have a shocking amount. This is from memory, so I probably have more.

Dragonball: 42 volumes
Naruto: 37 volumes (technically cheating as some is computerised. English manga hasn't been released that far yet, so I have to get scanlated manga, which is actually better quality translation!)
Oh! My Goddess!: 26 volumes
Battle Royale: 15 volumes
Love Hina: 14 volumes
Negima: 13 volumes
One Piece: 13 volumes
Great Teacher Onizuka: 9 volumes
Ikkitousen: 8 volumes
Arm of Kannon: 8 volumes
Chobits: 8 volumes
Priest: 6 volumes
Psychic Academy: 4 volumes
Ai Yori Aoshi: 3 volumes
.Hack// Legend of the Twilight: 3 volumes
Deus Vitae: 3 volumes
Azumanga Daioh: 2 volumes
Saiyuki: 1 volume

So there you have it. 226 (if my maths is good, which it usually isn't) volumes that I recall, probably a couple of dozen more that I don't. At between 5 and 7 quid a time, that totals a shocking amount, although I got a lot of them on special deals. For example, I bought a lot of them at this small comic shop near where I live. The guy who owns it is cool. He gave me pretty much all of Dragonball free when they were clearing stock because he knew I liked it (and I bought the first dozen or so volumes.)

Manga is cool, and looks cool while displayed on a shelf in alphabetical order.

Dungeons and Dragonballs

2007-05-15T23:25:00.000Z

So I was thinking about a topic that I have rambled about before. Power progression in anime, specifically Dragonball Z. How, they continuously power up until they are not just in a different league to how they were before, but playing a completely different game. In the first few episodes of DBZ, Goku gets clobbered by a saiyan warrior named Raditz, and eventually has to sacrifice himself to kill him.

Within a dozen episodes, Goku is at a level far higher than Raditz. Maybe five or six times stronger than him, all told. By the end of the anime, Raditz simply doesn't measure up. Goku is literally maybe five or six million times stronger than him. His son, Gohan, is even stronger. Goku could literally beat infinite an infinite number of Raditz clones without breaking a sweat.

Thinking back over this, it shocked me how similar it was to the character progression in Dungeons and Dragons. In DnD, there isn't a huge gap between levels. You gain a few extra hit points (3 or 4 for a spellcaster, maybe 10 to 15 for a barbarian with the rest of the classes somewhere in between.), you might gain a feat or a class ability, and you gain a few skill points. You don't go up a huge amount in terms of power.

And yet, a level 20 character is far more than twenty times more powerful than a level 1 character. It literally gets to the point where, even if a level 1 character can get an attack in before dying, they will only be able to hit the level 20 on a roll of 20, and that's only because a natural twenty never misses. Even if he hits, the level 20 will undoubtedly have some method of preventing the damage going through, or nullifying it when it has.

I have never played this out because it would take forever, but I would imagine that you would need somewhere in the region of a thousand level 1 fighters to bring down a level 20 fighter who is nominally only 20 times more powerful than they are. And you would have to be lucky.

So how does this come back to Dragonball? Well the powerups that the characters seem to get at various stages roughly correspond to levelling up. They don't always become that much more powerful, but it all adds up.

I guess it works along the principle which I will call the Einstein principle. It has nothing to do with Einstein himself, I am merely using him as an example. Einstein was more intelligent than I am. I don't know exactly how much more intelligent because to me, him being ten times more intelligent and him being one hundred times more intelligent look very much the same.

Similarly, Goku being five times more powerful than Raditz, and Goku being five million times more powerful than Raditz? It really doesn't make a difference unless you introduce someone more powerful to set a benchmark. Enter Vegeta, stage left.

Is there a point to this? Hell, no.

Sky Raiders of Champion City

2007-05-10T00:12:00.000Z

So the local geek shop recently had a four day gaming convention. Literally 10AM-2AM every day from last friday to monday. There were loads of one-shot RPGs, board games, card game tournaments. And of your yours truly was there for most of it, and enjoying it intensely.

I played, for the first time the RPG of Legend of the Five Rings. I have to say that I was incredibly impressed. The setting is lovely, the mechanics manage to be fluid and easy to use while simultaneously encouraging roleplay to a huge degree. It is also one of the few RPGs I have played where social interaction is at least as important as combat, if not more. Most games have several different stats for social interaction, but they are so rarely used. In contrast, Five Rings has those skills, but they actually get used. For example, there is a skill which represents your familiarity and expertise in strategy games like Go and Shogi. This skill is actually useful, and I myself used it twice in a four hour one-shot. What is more, social characters are not just characters who have a small bonus at talking but still do fights. My Kitsuki Courtier was completely incapable of any combat. She carried a wakizashi, but whenever combat came up, I had to duck behind my Yojimbo. In other words, completely realistic.

I also played some Deadlands. I like the setting mostly because it reminded me of the manhwa Priest, zombie steampunk in the wild west. However, I wasn't so sure about the mechanic of increasing your die-type as you improved your stat. It just seemed that you could either succeed completely or fail utterly. There didn't seem to be a mechanic for 'you succeeded, but not very well,' or 'you failed, but made some progress or had some positive effect.'

However, the main point of this post is the game I played on saturday evening. Most people were playing one game or another and thsoe of us who had just finished a game, or had been playing something shorter were all sitting around one of the tables waiting for something to come up. One of my friends, Ash, got some of the more bored people together and asked the most profound question ever:

'Why is there no steampunk RPG involving catgirl sky-pirates, bowler-hatted dwarven anarachists with bombs in each had, Bob Marley and ninja pizza-delivery-boys?'

Well obviously no-one had any idea. I'm sure you get the general direction this is going. Within 10 minutes we were playing 'Sky Raiders of Champion City', an adventure that Ash was GMing pretty much on the fly. The mechanic was made up on the spot. Each character had one major skill and one minor skill. You rolled 3d6 for the major skill, 2d6 for the minor skill and 1d6 for absolutely everything else. We moved on to character creation. We ended up with the following:

My character: Dr. Von Herzelberg, pizza-delivery ninja.
Major Skill: Ninja Antics
Minor Skill: Pizza Delivery

Trixie's Character: Guy Incognito, Master of disguise
Major Skill: Disguises using things beginning with the letter 'J'
Minor Skill: Gentlemanly Discourse

Beef's Character: Holland N. Barret, Blind Pirate Gunslinger
Major Skill: Blind gunslinging
Minor Skill: Monkey control

Alex's Character: Sir Spiffenburg, Gnome of Hats
Major Skill: Things to do with hats
Minor Skill: Ferret-charming

The other guy's (I didn't know him, and then forgot his name) character: Boris Von Helmutt, Sky Pirate Barman
Major Skill: Piloting an airship
Minor Skill: Mixing Martinis

I will post soon about how the game turned out. Twas a great story indeed.

Birthday!

2007-05-02T00:10:00.000Z

It's my birthday! Woot!

Soon I'll have my kendo armour, and all will be well. Only cost me £210, and it is worth every penny.

Meme: Sci-fi books

2007-04-26T01:35:00.000Z

This meme was emailed to me by some friend or other.

“Below is a Science Fiction Book Club list most significant SF novels between 1953-2006. The meme part of this works like so: Bold the ones you have read, strike through the ones you read and hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put a star next to the ones you love.”
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (Read it, liked it, not up to the hype though.)
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov (Again, good, but not up to the hype)
3. Dune, Frank Herbert * (Love it. Read the sequels also, all brilliant)
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin*
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett (Even with about thirty Discworld books to choose from, I still keep returning to this one)
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card* (Love it so much that I've just finished re-reading it. Vying for my favourite on this list)
~~23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson~~ (Not really bad, just bland as hell)
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
~~26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling~~ (Really a case where the hype works against it. I came to it expecting a masterpiece and was horribly disappointed.)
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley[?]
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein* (In some ways similar to Ender's Game, but I do prefer the former)
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

To be honest, I was surprised at how few of them I had read. Still, Neuromancer I am starting in a minute, so I will be able to catch up a little.

Reflections on cherished manga

2007-04-24T23:14:00.000Z

I recently re-read the entirety of Dragonball. That's right, all 42 volumes of it. I first read it not so long ago, maybe a couple of years ago, but it never ceases to amaze me just how different in tone the later volumes are to the earlier ones. Personally, I much prefer the humourous fantasy that so characterised the first part. As soon as it hits what the translations call DBZ it starts to go downhill. Don't get me wrong, I still love it, but it does start to take itself far too seriously.

I'm fairly certain that Toriyama wanted to quit writing it long before he actually did. Look at all the chances he gave himself to stop writing:
1. He could have finished with the end of the Piccolo Jr. Arc. Goku has become the most powerful on Earth. The demon Piccolo is still a threat, but we know that he can't really beat Goku, so all is well.
2. He could have finished at the end of the Frieza Arc. Goku has beaten Frieza, the most powerful being in the universe. Piccolo, having re-discovered his Namek heritage, is more or less a good-guy. Even Vegeta probably won't try anything too evil, so all is well.
3. He could have finished at the end of the Cell Arc. Goku is dead, and wishes to remain so. His story has come full circle. Rising to become the Earth's defender, and then passing on the torch. Gohan has assumed his duties as protector of the Earth. With Piccolo, Vegeta and Gohan protecting the Earth, all is well.

The absolute absurdity of the Buu Arc (Gohan goes to school! The entire population gets turned into chocolate! The fusion dance!) suggests very strongly a kind of 'I'm gettting tired of this, I want to end it and try something new' thought chain from Toriyama. Any of the aforementioned points would have been excellent ending points, and if I bet Toriyama would have been happy ending the series at any of them. So why didn't he? In a word, money. Dragonball was a cash cow for Shonen Jump, and they didn't want him to stop writing it.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Buu Arc. It's wackiness is remeniscent of the early volumes of the manga. I love all of the characters introduced in it: Videl, Goten, Trunks, Vegito (Yeah, yeah he's a fusion I know, but he's almost certainly the most powerful being in all of the Dragonverse including the awfulness that was GT. He's even the World's strongest coffee candy!). I love that the Earth is finally given the oppurtunity to save itself and almost turns it down.

However, I hate the idea that Toriyama might have burned himself out writing Dragonball. He is a very talented artist, and I first came across his work seeing the character designs for the legendary Chrono Trigger (Yeah, that was him).

Anyway, I guess the main point of this is that, even now, I still love Dragonball.

ZOMG! Teh funnies

2007-04-21T17:16:00.000Z

Check out this video here. For everyone who's ever been stuck on a video game that they just can't complete no matter how much they try.

Review-Final Fantasy XII

2007-04-18T22:17:00.000Z

It's a month to the day since I last posted, mostly because I have been at home, where the internet is....sporadic at best. However, a few other things have been in the way of posting.

1. I have read pretty much every manga volume I own over again.
2. I have watched the entirety of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yeah, all seven seasons. And yeah, I don't have a life, get over it.
3. I have been practicing my kendo a lot. My strikes are so much better now than they were a month ago.
4. I have done a lot of reading for university.

However, the thing that has taken up by far the biggest time, Final Fantasy XII, is what I want to talk about today. My initial suspicion was that I would call it a great game, but not as good as VII, and I think that's pretty much true.

First things first, the plot: Constant tension between the Archadian and Rozarrian Empires has led to annexation of many of the smaller kingdoms between them, including the Kingdom of Dalmasca, from where our hero, Vaan, hails. Two years before the start of the story, Dalmasca was invaded by Archades and put under military rule. The king was assassinated by the top general, Basch, and the princess Ashelia committed suicide. Thinking to get back at his oppressors, Vaan breaks into the palace on the night of a celebration welcoming the new consul from Archades in order to steal things. Here he meets not only the sky pirate Balthier and his companian, the Viera Fran, but also a member of the Dalmascan resistance calling herself Abelia.
This leads to a grand, epic quest, which I won't describe for fear of spoling the game for you.

The plot is, in my opinion, the weakest element of the game. It's fairly linear, and has few of the twists and turns that characterise other incarnations of the series. The bad guy is clear from the start, yet rarely shows up once the game has really got started. What this often leads to is the player having no clear sense of what they are doing or why they are doing it. It doesn't help that the characters, while fairly well fleshed out, have none of the style or memorability of characters from FFX or any of the others. The setting is also not as memorable as it could be. Spira from FFX was a vast, well-designed world with original and imaginative customs, religions, sports, groups. The world of FFXII, by contrast, seems shallow and underdeveloped. This is something that could easily have been rectified by making the game a couple of hours longer in order to showcase such things.

That's the extent of the bad, however, and even those problems really aren't as big as I have made the, seem. The thing that everyone knows about, the new battle system, really shines through as a positive. In my opinion, the best FF battle system so far is FFX's conditional turn-based one, but this one comes a very close second. They have stealthily hidden a turn-based battle system behind active-time feeling with a clever use of wait bars. This means that you watch the battle unfold in real time, while still being able to have turn-based control. The potential downside of this is that the player might feel overwhelmed by the whole thing, but that is mitigated by the clever gambit system, which allows you to set up what a character automatically does in any situation. For example, I could use gambits to make my white mage character cast Esuna on anyone with a status-ailment, then cast Curaga on any critically wounded party members, then cast cure on any party membe on less that 60% health, then cast protect on all characters, and then finally attack the monster with the lowest HP. All of this will be carried out automatically, and with a few second of adjusting, I can change the order in which they are done or remove some of them altogether. If you have an order for a character, outside of this system, they will always perform it first, so you never come into conflict with your characters.

The License board system is nothing special, it's basically the Sphere Grid from FFX but with a lot more freedom of movement, so you can make your characters what you want them to be. Wheras in FFX you characters all had defined roles (Yuna= White Mage, Lulu= Black Mage, Auron= Heavy hitter etc), in FFXII you can basically choose which character fulfills which role.

One thing that I think deserves a lot of praise is the Quickenings, which basically replace limit breaks. Each character can have three Quickenings which are hidden on the License Board. Each time they gain a quickening they get a Mist Charge. Different quickenings use different amounts of these charges (the 1st one a character gets costs one charge, the second costs two, the third costs three). When a character launches a quickening, other characters can follow up with their own quickenings, and you will sometimes get the option you gain mist charges anew, thus continuing the chain. Get a sufficiently long chain and it will result in a concurrence (a finishing attack which does massive damage to all enemies in range.) The better your mist chain (ie, the longer it is and the more high-level quickenings used), the better the concurrence you will get. However, your mist charges are linked to your mana, so the more you use, the less mana you will end up with.

Altogether, Final Fantasy XII is a great game, but sometimes marred by the desire to go for style over substance. The mechanics and graphics are great, but the story suffers as a result. Since Squaresoft merged with Enix to become Square-Enix, this has happened a lot (where do you think X-2 came from?), and it needs to be rectified. None of this stops XII from being a praise-worthy game, but it does have a slight could-do-better feel to it.

Score: 9/10, well worth it.

On my to watch list

2007-03-18T21:19:00.000Z

The anime line-up I currently have is as follows:

1. Ranma 1/2. I know it's something every Otaku should watch, but I just never got around to it. Soon though, soon.

2. Samurai Champloo. My friend recommended it to me. Based on his description, I don't have high hopes for it. It all sounds far too Quentin-Tarantino doing an anime.

3. Mushihi. Another that I have heard of pretty much on the many forums that I frequent. Don't really know a whole lot about it, but have been told it's great.

4. Hikaru no go. I have played Go on occasion, and an entire anime series based on it sounds fascinating.

5. Hajime no Ippo. Another one I'm not too sure about. Sports anime have never wowed me at all, but I've been told that this one is different.

Miyazaki

2007-03-16T18:35:00.000Z

My word what a legend this guy is. I know it's very cliche otaku behaviour to go on about him, but he is that talented.

What's brought this on, you ask? Earlier today I finally saw Porco Rosso. I ain't going to say much about it now, other than you should watch it if you get the chance. It's well worth it.

Why I like anime

2007-03-16T18:18:00.000Z

A lot of people ask why anime in particular? There are a lot of western cartoons which are excellent. A straight answer would be: I don't really know, so I'm going to try and distill it into a few points.

1. Anime, as opposed to any western cartoon, has a plot, as opposed to just a premise. A cartoon premise is something like 'deadbeat delivery boy has wacky hijinks in the future' (Futurama, incidentally one of the few cartoons I actually like as much as most anime series). Anime on the other hand has a story to tell, and a number of episodes to tell it in. This means that it can tell you the story, and doesn't end up dragging on well past its sell-by-date *cough*Simpsons*cough*.

2. The animation in anime tends to be of higher quality. Just compare a typical cartoon with a typical anime series, looking particularly at things like light shadow, perspective, how the human form is drawn, how colour is applied. In all of these the Japanese are light-years ahead of us in terms of sophistication.

3. Anime represents a whole new culture to unlock. 4-Kids may not like having anything vaguely Japanese in the anime they translate, but I love it. I love coming across something I don't understand in anime, be it a particular phrase, maybe a cultural signifier, an example of japanese cuisine, manners, holidays, festivals, technology. I love then diving into the internet and finding out precisely what that might mean to a Japanese person.

4. Anime is far less afraid that most cartoons. Partly this is a viewer thing. Most viewers don't want real violence, real nudity or real issues in their cartoons unless they are handled in a non-serious manner, like in South Park. Anime in that sense is far more daring.

5. Anime tends to have excellent music. I know this is a very personal thing, but listen to the soundtrack of a cartoon. Bland? Uninspired? Boring? Pretty much. Anime, on the other hand, can have incredibly good music.

Well, those are just a few reasons. There are cartoons that I like as much as some of my favourite anime series. Well, a cartoon, the aforementioned Futurama. However, in almost every way anime tends to be better than western animation.

Memories of Final Fantasy

2007-03-16T18:02:00.000Z

It's about a week until I get to play FFXII, and currently I'm salivating at the prospect. I have avoided all internet spoilers so that I will have no idea what is going to happen. What it is making me do, though, is reminisce about my experiences playing Final Fantasy.

Like a great deal of people, VII was my first exposure to the series. When I was about nine I was at a friend's house and he had just got a copy of it (it's hard to believe that it came out 10 years ago now.). Anyway, we did it co-op in a sense. We would work out all the puzzles together, and if there was a fight that one of us had trouble with, the other would take over. I remember that in one night we got as far as fighting Dyne (about midway through the first disk), which ain't a shabby achievement all things considered. However at that point, while I enjoyed playing it, it didn't wow me greatly. Partly that was because I was young and stupid(er), but mostly because at any given point I had only a limited idea what was going on. Try explaining the complicated and multi-faceted plot of that game to the typical nine-year-old and you'll know what I mean.

Anyway, after that it wasn't until I was 14 that I got really into the series. Another friend had the really rare PC edition of it, which I borrowed. I was hooked almost straight away. I think i still have his copy of it :S

After that I sought out the next one, FFVIII. I didn't enjoy it as much, but it was a sound game with some jaw-droppingly cool scenes in it (the Landing, anyone?).

Then I made the PS2 jump, gettting hold of FFX. I loved it. I have probably racked up more hours on that game than any other. Squaresoft have always been good at making immersive new worlds for you to play around in, but Spira was in a league of its own. The actual game wasn't as good as VII, but the graphics, the sound, the story and the characters really endeared the game to me.

After that I had that niggling moment that I think every FF fan gets if they play it for long enough, where you realised that the first game in the series you played was called VII for a reason. I managed to rent out the playstation double edition which contained I and II. I enjoyed I, principally because of the class-system they had. II, however, is my second favourite in the series so far. It was the first to introduce characters (the ones in I were faceless sword-carriers), had one of the best plots in the series, and I loved it's system of increasing your stats by using them. Use a spell lots? Its power goes up. Take a few knocks to the head? You gain HP. Smash something with an axe? Have a point of axe skill! It wasn't the first game to do such a thing, but I'm willing to guess that it was the first to do it so well. Well, I have since played all of them except III, which I don't think ever even got translated.

So yeah, Final Fantasy fan here. Just don't mention X-2 and we'll be fine, mmmkay?

Manga: is it worth the money?

2007-03-15T00:03:00.000Z

I'll preface this post saying that I buy a lot of manga. However, the problem is, as with most things, price. A volume of manga from tokyopop bought in Waterstones costs £7. I beleive Tanoshimi manga to be £6, not a whole lot cheaper. Bought online, you can still expect to pay at least £5.

Is it worth it? Now, depending on the style of manga, it takes me between twenty minutes and sixty minutes to read a manga volume. That's between 8p and 35p per minute of enjoyment. Compare that to the most recent book I bought, a new copy of Raymond Feist's 'Magician' (my old copy has literally disintegrated due to being read too much). I paid a whopping £9 for it. However, it takes me at least seven or eight hours to read it. That's a mere 1.9p/minute, about the cost of an average landline phone call, and over four times better value than the best value manga.

Of course, these statistice are horribly inaccurate, being as they don't take into account the fact that I tend to re-read everything, the fact that there is relative levels of enjoyment (some manga I enjoy a lot, other manga I continue reading literally because I don't want to leave it half-way through.)

Will this stop me buying manga? Don't be silly.

P.S: It seems like a huge difference in manga reading times. I'll just say here that the manga I read fastest tends to be things like Battle Royale, with it's huge panels, limited dialogue and abundence of double-page spreads. The manga that takes me the longest is probably Love Hina, with it's tiny panels, massive amounts of dialogue and virtually no DPSs.

Final Fantasy XII

2007-03-15T00:00:00.000Z

Amazon just said that my copy has been dispatched, meaning it will arrive home a couple of days before I do. Man, I can't wait to play that game. Don't expect too many posts for a few days after that, and then one really long one about how the game is absolutely incredible but not as good as VII. What? I'm a VII fanboy, at least I admit it! That game is GOD.

DnD Campaign setting

2007-03-14T18:15:00.000Z

I've recently been working on a campaign for DnD that I will start DMing hopefully some time this summer. I decided not to go with any of the pre-made worlds. Nothing against any of them in particular, but I prefer to have control over the World (and critically, I prefer that the players not know everything about it). I haven't yet given the World a name, indeed I don't know if I will, but It's been fleshed out quite nicely so far. The PCs start in the country of Cavin, which for twenty years has been at war on-and-off with it's neighbours. No side now has the capability to field the vast armies that they once did, and fighting has been reduced to skirmishs involving smaller groups.

The first three adventures are based in and around a military emcampment at Helga's Hollow, which guards a vital bridging point over a large river. These are very railroaded, mostly because several of the players won't have played DnD before and I'd like to give them a chance to get to grips with the mechanics before anything really complicated happens. However, after that, I hope to allow them greater choice, and so have in many places included alternative adventures that they could pursue.

I have also introduced a mechanic for nationality. Basically, the archipelago around which the entire campaign is set was colonised hundreds of years in the past, and this has prevented the nations being based around a particular race. They have their own languages, but it isn't sort of 'this nation is elves and this nation is dwarves'. For this reason everyone must also choose a nationality, which will effect how NPCs view them and also provide some bonuses and penalties.

I have also not included a pantheon of Gods. Usually in most settings people can worship a God, who is assumed to be in conflict or alliance with different Gods, much like the pantheons of ancient Greece and Rome. I took a slightly different route. There are five major religions, not all of which admit the existance of other religion's deities. Indeed, at least one of the major religions is basically atheistic, and another worships ancestors who are held to be Gods. Due to this, divine magic comes from faith, rather than definite theistic intervention. There is no mechanic to represent that, it's just one of the ways of working around the ubiquitous idea of pantheons (which I'm not fond of).

I don't actually know how the story will turn out, but I have it planned up until the point where the PCs will be level 9 or 10.

Review: Now and then, here and there

2007-03-12T22:42:00.000Z

This is another series that I watched very recently (meaning the last couple of days). To be honest, I wasn't expecting much of it, given that 'boy falls into another world' plots usually turn out to be brainless action pieces. This one however, quickly shattered my preconceptions.

Plot: Matsutani Shuzo (Shu) is coming home from a kendo session in which he totally messed up in front of the girl he has a crush on. Climbing to his favourite contemplation spot on top of a chimney in an abandoned factory, he finds it taken by a mysterious girl. He only manages to get a name out of her, Lala Ru, before he is attacked by mysterious people in snake-like robots who are after this girl. Trying to stop them, he is pulled into another world with them. (It is never stated in the series to my knowledge, but the opening text of every episode basically tells you that it is Earth in ten billion years time.) He finds himself in a mysterious stronghold, Hellywood, populated by soldiers (mostly drafted children) and overseen by the insane and maniachal King Hamdo. Very quickly, he finds himself drafted into Hellywood's army, to fulfill Hamdo's wishes of world domination.

Review: This is an incredibly dark anime series. If you are watching for action, you'll get what you want, and a whole lot more besides. This is one of those series that tackles real issues head on and never flinches from showing you their horror. Children die, a girl is kept and raped over and over (although thankfully never onscreen), the horrors of war are shown in their totality. What is more, bullets kill people, knife-wounds kill people. This isn't the sort of series where characters can survive any injury because they are main characters. The best and nicest aren't necessarily the ones that live. People who deserve to die, live, and some who deserve to live, die. This could be used to make a really banal point along the lines of 'war bad, un-war good' but it combines showing the futility of war (a point really easy to make), with the self-sustaining nature of war (a much more subtle point). Don't watch if you are expecting a light action series. This series will depress you. However, it will also make you think very hard.

Characters: There are some very good characters. The main character, Shu, is one of those tireless optimists who never fail to try to do the right thing. Usually these annoy me, because directors shy away from making them suffer the consequences of their actions, and equally shy away from ever letting the audience know that they might be terrified underneath it all. This is not the case here. Shu suffers, and gets tortured mentally and physically, he almost gives in, but in the end wins through, and is an incredibly strong character for it. Equally fascinating is the teenage soldier Nabuca, who commands the squad of Hellywood soldiers that Shu is drafted into. He is a character who has sustained himself on the fantasy that one day it will be all over and he can return home, and does everything he can to convince himself that it is true. He follows Hamdo's orders, and does really terrible things, because he just wants to keep his head down and survive. His line, screamed at Shu for shielding some children from orders that they be killed, 'only killing people can end war' sums up both his character and the entire series. Equally interesting is the other boy from the same village as him, Tabool. Tabool is the way Nabuca could have gone, to start relishing in what he does, and allowing it to change him. Where Nabuca eventually deep down wants to be redeemed, Tabool doesn't anymore.

What I love is that almost every character's motivations can be understood, if not supported. Elamba, for example, is another character that does really bad things in his desire to stop Hamdo's machinations, but it is easy to see why he does it, and in his circumstances I would be tempted to do the exact same things.

Visuals: These are pretty good, although the character designs are very simple. The dark, twisting corridors of Hellywood and the open light airyness of Zari Bars are well animated.

Music: Excellent, really emphasises the mood of every scene.

Overall: Not an easy series to watch, this is nevertheless a series that every anime fan should watch at least once. Trust me when I say that few series come close to being as dark as this one.

8/10. Excellent, if difficult.

Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

2007-03-12T22:10:00.000Z

So here it is, the long-awaited review of this most excellent series.

Plot: On his first day at high school Kyon is surprised when, during the mandatory introductions, the girl behind him announces that she has no interest in ordinary humans, and wishes only to meet aliens, time-travellers and espers. This turns most of the class off, but Kyon talks to her. At first her replies are bored and sarcastic, but a spur-of-the-moment comment gives her the idea to start her own club, with the intention of enlivening peoples' lives by finding the things she is looking for. Kyon is drafted, not entirely willingly, into this idea of hers. It soon turns out, however, that everyone in this club has a very good reason to be there.

Review: I love this anime. I'll say that straight off. It is a wacky, weird and wonderful anime series that balances side-splitting comedy with real drama. The plot is superb. Without giving away any spoilers, I will tell you that this anime plays fast and loose with timing, and the episodes are not aired in the order that they happen chronologically. This could have been used as a gimmick, or otherwise completely screwed around with how the anime flowed, but it does not. What it does allow is for us to gain a really good insight into the characters. It is also strange that, of the 14 episodes, only 6 are directly connected to the main plot-line. The rest are all side-stories that broaden our knowledge of various characters. Again, this works really well. I have to caution though, the first episode in the series is a wacky side-story that puts many people off the series altogether. I found it hilarious, and an apt way to begin such an eccentric series, but if you don't like it, don't worry. The entire series isn't like that.

Characters: Every character gets ample screentime, but they are all overshadowed by the main girl herself, Haruhi Suzumiya. I mentioned before how she fast became my favourite character. She is a character who, at first glimpse, seems like she is absolutely insane, with her cheerful misanthropy and desire to meet aliens. However, it soon becomes clear that there is a certain logic to everything she does. When you finally find out what makes her tick, everything falls into place. She doesn't boss people around because she is naturally bossy, she bosses them around because she beleives that they see things the way she does, that life is boring and that must be rectified. She isn't at all embarrased about dressing up in a bunny costume in front of the school gates because she simply doesn't see the point of wasting time with embarrasment. In her view, the crazy people are running the asylum, and she is the sanest of all. She isn't misanthropic and uninterested in humanity because of any flaw in herself or humanity, it's just humanity is generally so boring to her that she wants to meet any interesting speciman it has to offer, and can't be bothered with the rest. Usually in anime bossy, confident, self-obsessed characters are meant to be annoying, but Haruhi is the one exception, mostly because the things I have mentioned above.

While Haruhi is the centre of attention, the other characters deserve their mentions. Kyon, the deadpan narrator, works really well as a subdued, sarcastic foil to Haruhi. Yuki, the quiet, mysterious girl, was also an interesting character, and her revelation is the first genuine surprise in the anime. Mikuru is also pretty interesting, although shy, timid girls who end up in a variety of compromising positions are a staple in anime. Finally Itsuki tends to be a little annoying, although this is at least partly due to the fact his character is supposed to be an annoying suck-up to Haruhi.

Visuals: Superb all the way through. The lines were crisp, the colours were sharp but not gaudy.

Music: Good, but not outstanding. The music complemented the anime pretty well, but not enough that I would want to buy the soundtrack.

Overall: I love this anime. I love love love love love love love love love this anime. I'm forced to admit that most of this comes from the fact the Haruhi Suzumiya is the greatest anime character of all time. Ever. At all. None better. Whatsoever.
9.5/10 Top notch. If they had created a soundtrack that wasn't merely 'good' then I would give this series a perfect 10.

Stuff

2007-03-11T23:57:00.000Z

There haven't been any posts today because I've was playing DnD all day (my monk died :'( and I'm real beat up about it. Oh well, characters come and go), and after that I went to Kendo practice. I got back in maybe an hour ago and just had supper.

Tomorrow I will post reviews of two series. One is 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya' and the other is a series I just watched yesterday and this morning called 'Now and then, here and there.' Both are worth watching if the opportunity arises.

Warlord Tournament

2007-03-10T21:02:00.000Z

I spent today at a tournament of the CCG Warlord: Saga of the Storm.

Mostly I utterly lost (partly because I've only been playing a few months but mostly because I suck), although a few games I won. You play a person in three games (best of three). My deck was a Deverenian deck based around Baron Bastein.

The first person I played was using a Nothrog deck based around Grantuk Rageblade. Two frontline fighter warlords, so we were pretty even. I won the first game quite convincingly. The second game I was dominating, until he used the spell card 'Chosen', the item card 'Gloves of Mercy', and the frontline fighter card 'Trugg' (who allows people behind him to make melee attacks from the second rank) and wiped my warlord out in one hit. So it comes down to the third game, which he won after a long slog.

The second person I played was using an Elf deck based around a warlord called Etra. Now, Etra's ability is that you can spend a druid in your army to move a character in your opponent's front rank back a rank. This can be used to great effect to create illegal ranks. (Basically, for those who are unaware, in Warlord you have battle lines. Any given rank cannot be bigger than the rank in front of it, or there is an illegal rank which must be rectified by moving characters into the next rank.) Since you spend when you fall forwards, this ability quickly spends your entire first and second rank. Then it stuns them. Finally your stunned characters have to start falling forwards. If a stunned character falls forwards it takes a wound. This means that the smaller characters who are there to soak up damage are quickly wiped out, and if your warlord has any health left then he will be pounced upon and torn to peices by your opponent's front rank. Needless to say I lost two fairly convincing games against that person.

Third round was against a Dwarf deck based around a warlord who I don't recall, which I lost narrowly to 2-1.

I was out at that point. The odd thing is, in the friendly games that went on around the competition, I won about 50% of my games, but under the pressure of the tournament I fell to pieces. Still, I have a few extra cards through trades and now I'm putting together a Free Kingdoms deck, which I hope will kick some serious behind.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

2007-03-09T23:32:00.000Z

I just finished this series (yeah, I watch an appaling amount of anime, you have a problem?). I will post a real review tomorrow, as I'm too tired to do it now.

Watch the series, that is all. Haruhi herself is, bar none, the greatest anime character ever created.

My Neighbour Totoro

2007-03-09T04:19:00.000Z

So I just saw, for the first time, Hayao Miyazaki's 1988 film 'My Neighbour Totoro' (Tonari no Totoro) and I have to say I was gobsmacked. This isn't going to be a review, just some thoughts that sprang to mind as I watched it.

Firstly, if you want a film packed full of action, witty dialogue and evil bad guys, look elsewhere. Totoro is a slow, quiet film about a couple of young girls find nature spirits in the woods around their new home. I have little knowledge of Japanese culture, which is a shame as I'm betting such knowledge would have greatly enhanced the film's meaning. However, even I could guess that the spirits (headed by a lovely, gentle, bear-like creature called Totoro) represent elements of the Shinto religion. The cat-bus spirit was a great thing.

Another thing I noticed was that, although all the way through the film it seems light-hearted, like a child running and jumping after a butterfly (as indeed happens at some points), the viewer knows that there is something a little more menacing about it. We know that their mother in hospital might be suffering from something more severe than she told the girls. We know that money may be tight, which is why they have moved to a rickety old haunted shack in the country-side. These two sides are kept deliberately seperate. However, the film need only remind you of them, and the wall between them becomes thinner, the film darker. By maintaining a constant threat to do just that, the film succeeds in being both very dark, and incredibly light-hearted at the same time.

The characters are incredible. Miyazaki proves once again that he can define a character effortlessly with a few lines of dialogue, and then smack you down with a few more and completely re-define the way you think of that character.

That's all I'm going to say for now, but I strongly advise you to watch this film if you get the chance.

You know what bugs me?

2007-03-09T00:49:00.000Z

I've been thinking about popular shounen anime series. By that I'm talking about series like Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Dragonball Z. Any long-running butt-kickers where the heroes go from fight to fight.

Now, I have no problem admitting that I like watching them. They are fun, they don't require a massive knowledge of Japanese culture, you don't need to think. They get a lot of snobbery from the otaku community but in the end they get the job done without any pretensions.

However, they all commit the exact same error. See, in them the ability to win a battle is the only important thing, and the only way to win a battle is through strength. This means that if the writer wants to create tension he has to introduce an enemy who is stronger than the main characters. Since the only way to win battles in these series is by strength, that means that basically the heroes have to train until they win. Then, when the story continues, a new enemy is introduced and they have to be even stronger, requiring further training. DBZ was the most honest about this phenomenon, even introducing a numerical power level to let you know who was going to win. Goku starts off the series at power level 400 or so. Within a couple of volumes he is at power level 9000+. So the only thing the creator can do is introduce Frieza, with his base power level of 530,000. Let's continue DBZ as an example.

1. An enemy who is stronger than Goku arrives (Raditz). Goku and Piccolo team up and defeat him. Not too bad so far. However, Raditz warns them of the impending arrival of an even more powerful enemy, Vegeta.

2. They train. They beat Vegeta.

3. An even stronger enemy appears in the form of Frieza.

4. They train, they beat Frieza.

5. An even stronger enemy arrives in the form of those androids.

6. They train, they beat those androids.

There is no sense that battles can be won any other way. This produces some really wierd things. Frieza was supposed to be the most powerful being in the universe, yet by the end of the series dozens more people who are stronger than him have appeared.

Look at the same phenomenon in Naruto. The first major villain is a renegade ninja from the water country named Zabuza. Now, he is a jonin-level (high) ninja and, with his strong sidekick Haku, is a force to be reckoned with. So what do Naruto and his companions do after their first confrontation? They train. They fight again and eventually win.

Then in the next arc their enemies are genin-level (low) ninja, such as Gaara of the Sand and Hyuga Neji, and still they are more of a problem. So what happens? They train, they defeat them.

Now in fairness to Naruto there is at least one character who wins his battles on intelligence, which is what I would like to see more of. What I would really like is one of these long-running shows to have a hero who stayed at about the same level all the way through, and instead win their battles by outwitting their opponents. What this would mean is the opponents needn't necessarily be significantly stronger each time. It would also be more interesting to watch, and it would feel like the hero had earned their victories, instead of having them handed to them because their power level was higher than their opponents.

EDIT: I just realised the other reason why this bugs me. The main character tends to gain a lot of power much more quickly than anyone else. Look again at DBZ, where first Yamcha became irrelavent, then Tenshinhan, and then even Kulilin (my favourite character, btw) to an extent. In Naruto it's the same. There are twelve genins who could be said to be 'sidekicks', roughly equivalent to the Z senshi from DBZ, yet at this stage only Naruto, Sakura, Neji and Shikamaru actually DO anything. It's been far too long since we saw what Shino, or Hinata, or Tenten, or Ino could do! When you start to like certain characters, and then find that they basically get written out, it really gets annoying.

Any ideas?

2007-03-08T23:02:00.000Z

So I play DnD, which is pretty much high fantasy, although is very adaptable. I play Exalted a little, also a sort of high fantasy. I play WoD, which is pretty much gothic-punk, and I play Shadowrun, which is very cyberpunk.

Are there any good RPGs (table-top not computer or video games) set in a sorta Steampunk setting, or anything post-apocalyptic, that people can recommend? Both of those genres are favourites of mine, but I've never come across a good RPG based around either.

Does anyone know of any?

My top ten anime series

2007-03-08T21:48:00.000Z

Here are the anime I like best. They aren't in strict order, but the ones towards the top are the ones I like more:

1. The Vision of Escflowne. I love this one, it's a series that keeps you guessing, and maintains a strong plot all the way through.
2. Trigun. This is hilarious and serious in a way that no other anime manages to my knowledge.
3. Fullmetal Alchemist. An excellent long-running series that contains some seriously cool fight scenes!
4. Paranoia Agent. The biggest mind-fuck I've ever seen! I love it!
5. Haibane Renmei. I only saw it the other day, and it's already on my top ten. All of the others I've seen at least twice.
6. Stellvia of the Universe. An excellent serious sci-fi. This one takes itself seriously, unlike a lot of sci-fi anime, and it is better for it.
7. Azumanga Daioh. Simply hilarious.
8. Grave of the Fireflies. I dare you to watch this and not cry.
9. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. An excellent fantasy anime film. Superb.
10. Spirited Away. Well known, and fully deserving of its Oscar.

So, any here that you think are terrible? What would you have put on the list?

Review: Love Hina

2007-03-08T20:48:00.000Z

This is a review of the manga, seeing as I haven't seen most of the anime. First the details: Love Hina was penned by Ken Akamatsu, who is also known for the manga 'A. I. Love You', which I haven't actually read, and Negima, which I have read 12 volumes of. Love Hina is 14 volumes long and available in English from Tokyopop.

Plot: Fifteen years ago the then-four-years-old Urashima Keitaro made a promise with a girl that they would meet up again at Tokyo University. Unfortunately he hasn't seen the girl since and he has since been rejected from the University two years running. After he decides to apply for a third time he is kicked out of his parents house, and goes to live in the inn owned by his elderly grandmother. He arrives, only to find that the inn has been converted into a dormintory for girls run by his aunt. Of course he doesn't find this out until the usual ecchi hijinks have ensued causing a huge amount of misunderstanding. After a few arguments he is allowed to stay at the dorm when his grandmother passes the title deed to the building to him by fax.

Review: Firstly, I want to go over what I thought of the plot. From the summary I've given you it would seem to be just another harem series. This is not the case. The narrative skillfully weaves several plotlines including Keitaro's desire to get into Tokyo University, his growing relationship with one of the girls in the dorm, and subplots involving most characters. The relationship that Keitaro develops with one of the girls throughout the series is actually rather well-founded. Most harem series tries to confuse you as to which girl the main character will end up with, resulting in a relationship out of nowhere towards the end. Akamatsu takes a different route. By the end of the first volume we can tell exactly which girl Keitaro will eventually get together with, which leaves Akamatsu the rest of the series to develop a believable relationship between them. Many people are put off by the traditional humourous violence that is inherent in the genre, but you have to look past it.

Art: I once read that Akamatsu-sensei used to draw hentai, and the skill with which he can draw the human form makes me inclined to believe it. Because most of the series is set in and around Hinata House (the girls dorm), backgrounds tend to be used again and again.

Characters: The main characters, Keitaro and Narusegawa Naru, are very well developed, although I find Keitaro a little annoying. The other characters start as very simple archetypes, such as the crazy foreigner (Koalla Su), the shy one with a juvenile crush (Maehara Shinobu), the reserved swordswoman who isn't sure how to deal with the opposite gender (Aoyama Motoko), and the money-loving gambling alcoholic prankster (Mitsune 'Kitsune' Konno). All of them are traditional archetypes for the genre (although the swordswoman isn't always a swordswoman, just somewhat reserved!), but the subplots which Akamatsu integrates into the manga mean that they rise above these simple stereotypes. The only exception to this is Kitsune, who is still the same character near the end as the beginning. To his credit, Akamatsu mentions this in the notes included at the end of one of the volumes, but that doens't make up for not giving her more to do. She is most often used to further the plot, often by accidentally revealing information. Again, to Akamatsu's credit, he has a character much like her in Negima who does get the screentime she so richly deserves.

Overall: This was one of my first manga series, so naturally I look back on it with some fondness. In fact, writing this review had made me more than a little nostalgic about it, so I will probably read it again when I get home from University. If, in a couple of weeks, you have a post here rubbishing it, that's why. However, until then, I have very few bad things to say about it. It takes the usual harem genre and completely subverts it and shows that it can be done really well.

8/10: Excellent series that everyone should read.

Thoughts on playing DnD

2007-03-07T15:03:00.000Z

I love DnD, I really do. However, let's be honest, not a lot of roleplaying actually goes on in it. You roll up your character. Your class tells you how you kill monsters, and hence which attributes you use. If you're a Fighter, Barbarian or Paladin, you pummel them. If you're a Sorcerer or Wizard, you cast magic missile at them. If you're a rogue, you sneak up from behind and stick them with a knife. If you're a Ranger or Druid your animal companion rips their throat out. There are two support classes, Clerics to heal and Bards to buff. That's about it.

You then choose skills. There are about four skills you actually use. Spot/Move silently/Heal/Bluff. That is about it.

You then decide feats. Feats give you handy ways to increase your killing or surviving powers. Either you take a feat like Cleave, allowing you to kill another monster after this one, or a feat like Lightning Reflexes, allowing you to survive a trap.

You then fall into a pattern which goes something like this: Get plot hook, go to dungeon, empty first floor, loot corpse, kill monster, kill monster, find treasure, go to level two, kill slightly harder monster.................find dungeon boss, kill dungeon boss, go back to town, hand in dungeon boss's ear to plot hook giver, get new plot hook...repeat.

I'm kidding to an extent. I have played brilliantly scripted campaigns with exellent storylines and superb villains. However, a lot of them can still be broken down to this basic formula.

That said, put a D20 in my hand and tell me my attack bonus and damage, and that dice will be rolled before you can blink.

So, if you don't play DnD for the story, what do you play it for? Partly it's a social thing. Six or seven people sit around a table making endless jokes and snide comments for four hours. Roleplay happens, but in a jokey, lighthearted way. Partly it's as simple as the fact that many-sided dice are so incredibly fun to roll. A D20 is a lovely thing, and rolling it is almost a spiritual experience. One of the reasons why games like Neverwinter Nights can never match up to table-top is simply because of the lack of dice. Finally, DnD allows you to be nothing more than a fighter with a sword hacking his way through an endless swarm of goblins. We have always wanted to do that at some point.

Other systems are much better for roleplaying. Look at the World of Darkness Storyteller System, which encourages playing a role much more. However, none have quite the same effect on me as DnD. I don't know why that is.

Review: Stellvia of the Universe

2007-03-07T13:55:00.000Z

Today I'm going to review a series I first saw almost a year ago. Stellvia of the Universe is an introspective sci-fi series that is really based around characters.

Plot: 189 years ago Earth was devestated by an electromagnetic shockwave caused by the explosion of a star 20 light years away, dying space an eerie green colour. Humanity rebuilt itself and has reached the stars again, and stands united against the threat of the Second Wave, consisting of the rubble of the star. There is a plan for the Great Mission to defend Earth against it. Against this background Katase has entered the Academy in one of the Foundations (Space stations orbiting various planets) named Stellvia to teach her to be part of the Great Mission.

Characters: All of the characters are good fun. They have well-defined personalities which are allowed to develop nicely and the series really tries hard to focus on secondary characters to prevent them from becoming mere plot points. The male protagonists (Otoyama Kouta) is annoying, but that is what his personality is supposed to be like. All characters do get at least some screen time. There are two characters in particular, who develop a very slow, very believable romance, which is finally announced in a beautiful scene in the closing moments of the final episode over a ships radio. Nothing I have said does this relationship justice. Oh, and it happens to be two girls, which puts the icing on the cake. :P

Plot: The main plot-point, dealing with the second wave, takes up only the first third of the series, after which the plot changes entirely. It really takes off, dealing with how humanity, which has been forced to unite in the face of an external threat for almost two centuries, starts to fall to pieces when that threat is removed. There are times when it really seems very close to war between the foundations. I really liked this aspect of the plot.

Visuals: The animation itself is medium-quality. The characters are well designed and there are few mistakes made. However, the space-ship designs are bland at best, and the CGI tends to be intrusive. The spaceship scenes would have been much better if they were animated in the same way as the rest of the series.

Music: The opening theme, a sort of J-Pop composition, is excellent, and the Background music tends to be very nice. However, there are times when the music doesn't quite fit. Nothing particularly out of place, but some of it could have been better thought out.

Overall: This is a good series, but not the best. The animation is not the best, and some of the characters can be annoying. The music is good, and the plot and setting are excellent. I would recommend it for anime fans of any stripe, and it even serves as a fairly good introduction to anime.

7.5/10 Very Good.

A few misconceptions about anime

2007-03-07T12:10:00.000Z

So a friend of mine saw me watching anime the other night. Of course, he asked what it was, what it was about etc. He is one of the more open-minded ones. There is a lot of prejudice about anime that goes around, and a lot of misconceptions. My friend was nice enough to actually ask things about anime, many wouldn't, and would instead recite some spiel that they had 'read on the internet somewhere.' I'll try to clear a few of the false ideas up here. This list is by no means exhaustive.

1. Anime is for kids. This is one of the biggest and most common. I think it's actaully an understandable mistake. Anime is inevitably seen as Japanese 'cartoons', and cartoons are very much a thing for kids here. I think it doesn't help that the only well-known anime (outside of anime circles) in the west are kids shows that get put on. You know the drill, right? Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, DragonBall Z. I will admit that at one time or another I have had love affairs with all of these (except DBZ, which was broadcast before my time, leaving me to read the manga). However, there can be no doubt that the demographic they are aimed at (once they have been dubbed, edited and butchered by western distribution companies) is about 8-15. People seeing them will inevitably assume that all anime is for children.

2. All anime is violent or sexually explicit. This is the other end of the spectrum, and it comes from looking at the other sort of anime that is often translated. You see popular and well-known anime like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion. These are far more adult, they all contain at least some nudity and are all pretty violent. This mis-conception is less widespread than the first, but it is there. This misconception is also aided by the massive amount of hentai available over the interwebs at the click of a mouse button.

3. Anime can't be an art form. People who think this are taking misconception 1 to it's most logical conclusion I guess. However, it can be refuted with four words, Grave of the Fireflies. I dare anyone to watch that film and tell me that anime can't be art, can't provoke thought, can't showcase a range of human emotions.

4. Anime has only one style. Again, there are similarities in the style of many anime, especially the way that they are drawn. There is the whole big eyes thing (which is actually fairly limited), a lot of people are turned off by the typical, hyper-deformed reactions. You know what I mean? Where the characters go all chibi and throw hissy-fits. These are seen a lot in well-known anime. Many serious series, however, wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot stick.

5. Anime is a single genre. This misconception is not one that I understand. Anime covers so many different ideas, genres and styles that I honestly don't know how it came about. Right now for example, casting a cursory glance at my anime DVDs, I could watch a serious sci-fi character study (Stellvia of the Universe), a long fantasy/steampunk series (Fullmetal Alchemist), an absurd comedy about teenagers in high-school (Azumanga Daioh), a mecha-fantasy series with religious overtones (The Vision of Escaflowne), a thoughtfull series about the human condition with overtones of cyberpunk (Paranoia Agent), A plain fantasy series (Scrapped Princess) or an introspective mecha sci-fi series (Neon Genesis Evangelion). That represents maybe a quarter of my total collection of anime, and is just what I brought to university this term. However, it represents maybe 1% of the total genres out there, which range from light-hearted ecchi harem comedies like Love Hina, to deeply philosophical thought experiments such as Haibane Renmei.

Well, I won't go into any more detail now, principally as I can't be bothered, but also because I'm hungry. If you like what I said, post a comment. If you don't like what I said, tell me. If you have experienced misconceptions such as these, I'd love to hear about them.

Creating Characters

2007-03-07T11:54:00.000Z

I don't know about you, my dear readers, but in my humble opinion the best part of playing any sort of tabletop roleplay is the creation of characters. So many stats to be decided, so many skills to purchase and abilities to consider. You start with the vaguest of concepts. For a recent Shadowrun character, for example, I started with solely with the idea of a an former motorbike-gang member. I imagined him/her doing really really cool things, like jumping on his bike off the roof of a high building, smashing through the window of an adjacent high building and laying into whatever was guarding the place with a shotgun in each hand. Of course, the characters you create never quite match up to those initial fantasies do they?

I'm sure every one of us can remember at least one time when they spent two hours looking through the Dungeons and Dragons PHB in an attempt to twink a character to do really cool things. Like you managed to create a Fighter who at level 20 could have an almighty seven attacks (plus Great Cleave, because naturally this fighter can kill ANYTHING in a single hit) a round. You envision him standing in a swarm of monsters smaking them down one after another. Of course, then the campaign starts and you get owned by a small badger in the first adventure. *Sigh* I love DnD.

I am not ashamed to say that I create about three characters a week. Understand that I will never use them at all, it's just nice to imagine how they will be used.

I think I'll treat you guys to a view of the Shadowrun character I was talking about earlier (yeah, I did create them in the end). However, that can wait until I find his character sheet!

Anyone else have any thoughts on the creation of characters? Am I the only one who takes extreme pleasure in making and never using them?

Review: Haibane Renmei

2007-03-06T23:41:00.000Z

So I'm going to start this off by reviewing an anime I saw very recently, Haibane Renmai (Charcoal Feather Federation) By very recently, I actually mean earlier today, when I sat down and watch the whole thing in a single sitting. (Nerdy, I know, but who are you to comment?)

Plot: A girl dreams that she is falling through darkness. In the dream a crow is attempting to help her by pulling her upwards, but she tells it not to worry and flies off. When the girl awakens we find that she is in a cocoon, inside a building populated by strange humans with small, grey wings and halos called Haibane. When the girl hatches she finds that she to is a Haibane, as she soon sprouts wings like them. She is given the name Rakka (the infinitive: To fall) as all Haibane are named after the thing they dreamed about while in a cocoon. The Haibane live in and around a town called Glie, which is surrounded on all sides by huge walls, which the Haibane are not allowed to go near. They are only allowed to own second-hand items from the normal people who live in Glie with them (note: This isn't cruelty, it appears to be a rule that the Haibane have imposed on themselves) or things that they have made themselves. The Haibane live under the guidance of a council called the Haibane Renmei, which appears to look after the walls. I won't give any more away for now.

Review: So what did I think of this anime? First off, the characters: These are a mixed bag, Rakka, the main character, and Reki, another main character, are both incredibly well developed and defined. They are both complex, flawed, believable and ultimately human characters. However, in a show only 13 episodes in length, this meant that the development of other characters was a little stunted. There the bookish one, the tomboy, the happy optimistic one, and the somewhat introspective one. They are all good characters, but they fail to develop beyond archetypes.

Next, the plot: It's a very very complex mind-fu*k. The plot is one of those in which loose ends are purposefully left loose, and while I personally like that as it gives me a chance to tie them up for myself, but some people won't like it. While the main plotline is ultimately resolved, giving some sense of closure, what exactly is happening remains a mystery that the viewer is left to puzzle out for themselves. This means that otaku will love it, as it gives us an opportunity to argue endlessly in internet forums about what was up. Casual viewers should avoid this one until they have at least some knowlegde of anime. It really is rife with symbolism and hidden meaning. It's no coincidence that it comes from the pen of Yoshitoshi ABe, who also wrote the uber-symbolistic Serial Experiments: Lain.

The visuals: These were generally very good. The characters were all well drawn and the animation was top-notch. There was some CGI which looked a little out of place, but not so much that you want to smash your screen in.

The Music: Perfect. 10/10 without a shadow of a doubt. The lyric-less opening piece is one of the most beautiful and fitting that I have ever come across. The background music never fails to set the mood of the scene. This series eschews the fast-paced music that you find in many shows for gentle orchestral pieces that are a joy to listen to. I already have the OST on order.

Overall: This series is not for everyone. It moves at a slow, leisurely pace and unfolds the story in its own time. Surprisingly little happens in 13 episodes, and it is mostly a study of the two central characters, Rakka and Reki. However, if you give it a chance this series will delight you with its intricate, clever plot, its astounding music and its central themes of redemption and forgiveness.

9/10. Superb.

Otaku of Opportunity

2007-03-06T23:27:00.000Z

So, if for some reason you've stumbled across this new blog, you're probably wanting to know a little about me. I'm an 18 year old student/avid geek/anime and manga otaku.

I even conform to the stereotype. You know the drill, right? Bookish, somewhat antisocial, overweight, obsessed with all things Japanese. I play all sorts of table-top roleplaying games. Principally Dungeons and Dragons but also Shadowrun, World of Darkness and a little bit of Exalted. I also play TCGs (and if you don't know what that stands for then what are you doing on the blog of this humble nerd?) such as Magic and Warlord: Saga of the Storm. I love computer games, have an active World of Warcraft account (although I tend to get to about level 20 and then start a new character), have about £500 worth of manga in book form and even more on my computer (although a lot of them are backup duplicates), have a similar amount of anime, and am trying to learn Japanese.

However, I don't know the last thing about computers, can't code, can't build a computer. So I'm not completely lost to nerditude!

I have also recently started learning Kendo, which is great fun indeed.

Yeah, that's all I'm saying about myself. Drop me a comment if you drop by.

As to what this blog is? Mostly it's about my geekiness. I will attempt to post at least once a day on topics close to me. Specifically, geek stuff. Anime, manga, my learning of japanese, RPGs, card games, that sort of thing.