Not the megacorporations who avoid paying taxes and then get kick-backs in the millions on the taxes they didn’t pay. No, the engine in charge of educating our next several generations should put a dent in it.

You remember, the one that has a 50 percent dropout rate around these parts?

Yeah, let’s strip their ability to already not do their job.

Excellent target.

I mean, who stands by this decision?

I appreciate the money has to come from somewhere, but I I speak without hyperbole when I say this is the one place it cannot come from. You impress no one, and save too little money by attacking our teachers.

Or our police and fire fighters, for that matter.

I’m just going to go on and say it, if you voted Republican in the last mid-terms than you are a dummy.

This was the same group of people we had finally successfully outed. The people who foisted this financial crisis on us and left Obama holding the bag somehow convinced you they were best suited to save us?

Because they told you so?

Newsflash: If Trickle Down Economics worked? It would’ve worked 30 years ago. It didn’t because it doesn’t. As it turns out, the rich would rather just get richer.

The company that laid me off coming on two years ago could have hired me back within months. Months. They didn’t, because they’d rather scrape by with a skeleton crew and make twice as much money. Refill the coffers that took a hit… and then some. When they finally came around to needing more help? They hired a temp so they wouldn’t have to pay my salary or benefits.

That’s reality. It’s not an obscure or rare one.

The GOP isn’t about reality. None of this nonsense is.

None of the GOP’s current strategy — nor their lead up wherein they somehow convinced your stupid ass to vote for them again — has anything to do with the budget, or helping you on any level at all (unless you’re a billionaire maybe). It is an entirely self-serving turn at the political wheel.

Their bullshit budget proposal where they make wholesale cuts from such Democrat darlings as public information networks, education, labor unions, and women’s health centers? Pure politics intent to shut down the government and try and heap that onto the Democrats’ doorstep too.

These aren’t soft entitlements, these are essential services to be considered first fucking world, people. These are rights that your forefathers and mothers fought very hard for. They are fundamental freedoms. Period.

I’m sorry NPR has a liberal bias. It is because the facts have a liberal bias. That isn’t just a cute little idiom. It is a fact. Which as we’ve already established is liberal. However no one, no one, no one can look you in the face and honestly tell you that overburdening our school system even more while stripping our teachers ability to defend themselves will have any long or short term benefit to us as a nation.

No one.

Because it doesn’t and won’t.

Ever.

Under no one’s version of reality.

Because that’s stupid.

Like you.

Dummy.

It is past time to stop talking down to you if you don’t see how crippling our already crippled education system can do anything but churn out generation after generation of drop-outs, pregnant teenagers and gas station attendants. I don’t know if Aaron Sorkin’s assertion that there are more geniuses in China than students in the US is true, but I do know that they aren’t trying to make up their economic shortfall by stealing from their future.

And not in the cutesy GOP talking point way. Wherein we talk about when the Democrat-only bills come due. Not the two multiple-trillion-dollar wars our previous Administration started without a plan to pay for, nor the tax cuts for the people who already don’t pay taxes which cost us a demonstrable mint.

No, this is real theft from our future. Our children will be too stupid to pay off your debt. They will be unequipped to protect themselves from being conquered by basic arithmetic.

If you don’t see that hampering or eradicating labor unions — you know, the people who stopped kids from dying in mines, and protected the earning power of people injured in subhuman working conditions? — is anything but a stab at starving out the only consistent political contributor to the DNC, then you are blind or stupid or both.

That isn’t cute. It’s not good politics. It’s currently having recall elections called for in Wisconsin. Ohio is next, because, duh.

The only “good” thing to come out of this, is that the secret war where the only casualties are the middle class is finally far less secret. Unfortunately that’s because the casualties have finally risen to national emergency level. All while the GOP fiddle away all toasty and warm while the rest of us burn.

The worst administration fiscally in recent memory? Bush 2 who surpassed Reagan’s record. The best? Clinton.

But remember, Democrats are just terrible with money because the Republicans say so. Ignore pesky liberal facts.

Lastly, hey, I get it. You think abortion is bad. Just terrible stuff. You’ve been directly manipulated to think so, but we’ll take that for granted. No one wants to kill babies, right? Never mind that you have no plan to take responsibility for the unwanted children. Nor do most of you share that same sanctity of life view when it comes to walking, talking people. But yay fetuses!

That’s fine. You don’t get to tell anyone else what to do with their uterus, though. Nor their family, present or future.

You don’t.

That’s not up to you.

If it helps, you can feel very sour and judgmental about it. Like Christ would have wanted.

Women — you know, 52% of the fucking world? — still need the affordable and essential care that they get at places like Planned Parenthood. If you don’t or didn’t need it? Good for you, give yourself a cookie, and stay out of it. Millions do need it.

You see, you want to pretend that if you just ignore teenage sex it’ll go away. Like trickle down economics, abstinence only education is a (repeatedly) proven failure. Yet the GOP keeps pouring millions into them. Where’s your fiscal conservatism then? At odds with your need to make people live to your value system?

But cut Planned Parenthood’s funding who do provably good work because they also provide abortive services. Fuck health, we need to save a dollar sticking it to women, er, Democrats.

So the one, best anonymous sexual care and education center in America takes the hit so you can go back to feeling good that no more fetuses are peacefully and safely aborted so countless young women can rescue their futures and educations from a single adolescent (or adult) mistake. Who cares about the countless lives and futures put in danger? Think of all the still-forming, unfeeling goo you saved but won’t take any more responsibility for.

You really do have a problem with education don’t you?

So your ignorant daughter gets herself knocked up because she thought pulling out was preventive, or gets an STD because she thought blowing her boyfriend or taking it up the ass wasn’t sex. That’s real. That happens fucking daily.

Now what?

Where will she go?

Not to you.

You got her in this trouble in the first place.

By voting like a dummy.

Verdict:

Yeah, yeah, all politicians are scum, and Democrats have been caught with their hands in no end of cookie jars and scandals and lies. That is false equivalence at it’s best and it’s seriously time to knock it off.

One party is actively lying to you right now. Glibly misrepresenting facts and figures they know you won’t look up. Willfully crippling our future in exchange for another election they hope to trick you into winning for them.

And hey, if unions — the thin gray line protecting legions of workers from the caprice of tax-dodging management — are dissolved in the meantime? Bonus!

One side is attacking your teachers, cops, unions, and all the rest of the middle class, and one side isn’t.

One side only has a problem with the budget when it’s a Democratic President.

Look it the hell up.

The GOP aren’t creating jobs. They’re not reducing the deficit. They’re not fixing our infrastructure, or rooting corporate interests from Washington. They are merely standing in the way of progress by appealing to your worst fears and suspicions.

No, don’t read one more chain forward from any of the various GOP email lists you got yourself onto.

No don’t get lost in lies about how financially poisonous the bailouts were (they were paid back, also they were Bush’s), or the President’s birth certificate (which was produced long ago, as well as the birth announcement in the local Hawai’ian paper, it’s really quite conclusive).

Don’t listen to one more pundit or loud mouth.

Not even me.

Look up those liberal, liberal facts and quit shooting yourself — and our country — in the foot.

In short: Stop being a dummy.

Bad form, possibly.

I can’t do anything about that, other than provide a link and offer all the ineffectual prayers to ineffectual deities I can muster.

And while I do want to take a minute of your day to talk about a tragedy, it’s an entirely fictional one.

Final Fantasy X, to be specific.

So, come on in if you want a quick escape to a tragedy you can turn off and walk away from.

As is clear, I’ve had a lot of Final Fantasy on the brain lately. Having replayed all my favorites over the past two years in search of nostalgia, solace, and potential blog seeds (that only recently bore fruit).

So while I did the dishes and folded laundry today, I turned to that modern outlet for fandoms both broad and frighteningly specific: the YouTubes.

It started with just wanting to hear “Eyes On Me” from VIII, since it’s topical to the game I’ve been playing. That led to “Melodies of Life” from IX — entirely competent little ballads that get me right here if I don’t watch myself.

Which led even more inevitably to “Suteki Da Ne“.

For as much as I’m thrilled by VII, and chilled by VIII, and skilled at VI, I am killed by X.

Every time.

I hear the opening piano to “Zanarkand’s Theme” and I want to cry. I don’t mean I get a little misty. I mean fall to my knees and claw at the drapes kinda emotional.

Now, as a reasoning adult, I’m able to resist long enough to boot up my game most days. I ain’t made of glass, per se.

Shut up, there’s something in your eye!

The entire experience of that game is a slog through heart-wrenching, grueling landscapes. Filled with pitfalls and switchbacks, and loose scree aplenty.

At least that’s how it exists in my memories of it.

Plenty of questionable dialogue and weird side trips abound. Blitzball isn’t likely to force anyone to question their station in an uncaring universe or how inevitable is fate — unless you’re bad at it, I guess. Same goes for Chocobo racing and lightning dodging while we’re on the subject.

My wife was being a champ and trying to get into the series for me. Only paying half attention we got to the infamous Laughing/Screaming scene. Coming on the heels of the incredibly trite Sports Movie that just played out, she was already turned off.

She turned to me, and in the language of our fathers’ just said. “This is really gay.”

And while that scene is entirely heterosexual in most cultures, I listened with fresh ears, and yeah, it’s awful.

The scene is awkward at best, and the forced laughs and screams are incredibly hokey. That that is part of the point, or that other characters go on to tease the participants later doesn’t matter. At that moment, this game lost my wife’s attention for good.

On the other hand, every time Yuna whistles, a part of me sobs and dies of a broken heart.

I don’t really have a whole thesis built or anything. I was just watching the YouTubes when my brain demanded that I type thinking thoughts. Here they are. Such as they are. Sorry they’re not more salient, or that I’m not clever enough to make a half-ass stab at relevance by tying this to today’s very real tragedy.

I’d feel awful even for trying.

Anyway, here’s the totally competent fanvid that made me need to write thoughts down. If you’re curious.

Caveat to anyone who’s played the game… fuckit, you know you’re going to get all misty if you’re half the nerd girl I am.

Verdict:

Yuna’s reaction when she finally realizes what’s happening?

Ugh.

I offer a serious and earnest challenge for someone to find a more effective modern tragedy.

Lots of people play at tragic. Tragedy is very en vogue. Especially among the young — when everything in life seems unfair and you need that reflected in your fiction. As an older man I’ve become far too jaded by far too many creators trying far too hard.

I don’t need or want 11th hour death because the author realized he was in the last act and not enough people were dead yet (see the collected works of Joss Whedon, Brian K. Vaughn, and every independent film director ever).

I’m talking stories full of irony and Pyrrhic victories and the swell of hope lost as the rug is swept out from under you in ways you didn’t see coming as you mouth the word “no.”

Also, fuck you, Rober Ebert.

I have trouble with questions of favorites.

If you then summoned and compelled my spirit to answer the same question, it would end up a really wordy tie between VI, VII, VIII, and X.

Which I will refer to hereout as 6, 7, 8 and 10, even though I don’t prefer it, it will be easier on everyone.

I’ve replayed each of these at least three times apiece, and the only one I haven’t broken out every couple of years since is 8 — which we’ll get too in depth in a minute. Thus adding to my thesis that if you don’t care about backward compatibility in home gaming, it’s because you don’t play Final Fantasy.

Anyone following me on Twitter may remember that (as is my birthday tradition) I recently replayed 10 on a speed run that petered out when I discovered that I had none of the patience for lightning dodging and Chocobo racing that I was once capable.

Recently, conversations with @Dsaile have orbited the awesomeness of FF7, including buying the soundtrack, driving @Marysaile to eventual, inevitable homicide, and more recently a rap album dedicated to the subject.

Since I had played 7 in the last couple of years, I thought I’d go ahead and try and tackle 8 again, as both are available on PSN, which is one of only a handful of things PSN has ever done right ever.

After starting a playthrough of 8, @Dsaile and @Jonesylovesbeer have both started 7 which eroded what little will I have. So I started another 7 playthrough too. All in the interest of a series of blog posts, I assure you.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll replay all my favorites, and then opine on what was good and new and not-so-good about each one.” That’s a total font of words right there, amirite? I can bore even Hironobu Sakaguchi himself to death talking about Final Fantasy.

However, even after clearing Midgar in 7, and getting Balamb Garden up and flying, the most sapient thing I can put together is: “Oh man, remember these fucking games? Man, they are just tits on motorcycles. Look at– oh man, remember her? Shit yeah, this part!”

Much as has been my problem putting into words why I like Zeb Wells’ New Mutants, I am reduced to a stammering fanboy, more than a stirring thesist.

The good news is, each of them holds up. While I haven’t played 6 in two years, I’ve played it in recent enough memory to assure you that SNES-era bastard (it was called III here) still holds its own as well. Hell even IV (2 here) holds up with a grain of salt and a fondness for 8 bit nostalgia.

Seven’s graphics have been surpassed a hundred times over (the going word on a modern remake has moved from “If” to “When”), however they still get the job done with a few chuckles and minor complaints. The acting they got out of these little polygonal homunculi is still fairly impressive. The story still surges forward and wows you right out of the gate. The sensation of stepping out of Midgar into a whole, wide world is just as vertigo-inducing 15 years after it’s release.

Eight suffers a little more. Not so much from graphics, although it has a kind of setting-boringness that has settled into the latest entries in the franchise. A lot of the environments are just kind of bland or ugly more than badly rendered.

No, it’s entirely the fault of the sloggy gameplay, and slow-moving story.

Eight really dedicated itself to being as realistic as it felt it could get away with. Random adventuring is a job you go to school for. You spend the first five plus hours walking around your college quad, taking tests and playing cards. You have to take trains and rental cars (which you need to buy fuel for) places. Status ailments carry over between battles and you need a tent or cottage to stay healthy. You pick up weapon magazines to find upgrades you can make, which you then apply with materials you find around the world. Nothing randomly drops money (not even human soldiers), you earn a paycheck based on your rank.

In some ways it’s a really impressive design decision.

In other ways it’s the most lifeless of the settings. It drains the fantasy down to almost nothing, which takes away all the wild dynamicism that 7 had. The maps are hard to navigate, even harder when you are trying to drive. The graphics are okay up close, but using the same models for every shot from close up to far shot makes for some really sketchy scenes.

And for all it’s realism, it makes the weird parts all the weirder.

You summon other-dimensional, amnesia-inducing, guardian monsters? The badguy is a time-condensing, body-swapping reincarnatrix singularly obsessed with your childhood friends? The moon hosts a surging monster population? Is putting a gun onto a sword really that great an idea?

Weird parts are weird.

And yet I love it.

The subtleties of the story are really engaging. The main character is still my favorite insomuch as I identify with Squall more than any other protagonist from the series. I know Rob Donoghue dislikes Squall because he spends most of the entry being a total jerkwhip to everybody. But I see it as a guy who has to learn to stop internalizing and find a way to communicate with the people around him, thanks to the quirky girl that imagines herself a Revolutionary. Something you may find it hard to believe that I identify with very much.

That all the characters are basically a bunch of doubt-riddled losers who all went to the same elementary school is kinda touching.

The problem, as I had feared, is that old devil gameplay.

The egregious, long-running, unskippable summons are nightmarish to sit through — little “Boost” mini-game or no. The Junction system is neat enough, but really easy to make an early misstep that can take higher math to undo. Not to mention all the perspective skipping leaves you unequipped often if you’re not on the stick.

Then of course, there’s Drawing.

Oh sweet meth-addicted Jesus, Drawing.

Proof of an uncaring god, Drawing.

In trying to revolutionize RPGs a few more times, 8 has no magic points. You have to “Draw” magic spells out of badguys and stockpile them (up to 100), or you can cast them immediately. I’m sure that sounded fantastic at the time. The reality is that every time you get into a fight you’re checking to see if the badguy has any new spells — and as they often do — you then spend the next five to ten minutes standing in one place, Drawing until everyone has 100.

Especially early on this means you are constantly standing in one spot not fighting.

I would say a full third of the time I’ve spent playing 8 has been spent Drawing and playing Triple Triad.

It’s worse when it’s a boss fight.

You get to some climatic plot point, and are put up against the big bad du jour, only to stand in one place and suck Esunas by fives and sevens for the next ten minutes. It blows any immersion they’re trying for with all this “realism”, and is just boring as hell.

Verdict:

It’s so bad it has kept me from replaying it over the past several years.

While I’m glad to be slogging through it in order to retell this story — seriously, the botched assassination of Sorceress Edea is among the finest moments in gaming history — it is prohibitively annoying.

I might replay 6 soon too, or I might not (hey 7 fans, would it blow your mind that 7 is just 6’s greatest hits retold?). There may be more blog posts in it, there may not be.

Ugh, especially now with Dragon Age II out, which I want to play less than I want to finish these games. However, thanks to GameStop’s consistent failures as a customer focused retail experience I have to run out and buy it which defeats the entire purpose of putting it on hold.

You damn betcha.

It’s been ruling my mental freespace lately, the way it does. And the reason the game is still relevant going into it’s fourth (fifth?) decade.

I even started making notes and drawing maps for a new/old campaign setting.

Because I’m a dummy.

However, this isn’t about that. Not yet, anyway. I’ll be back to bore you about what a nerd I am about orcs some other time.

This is about something a little different.

Watching the birth of two roleplayers.

Now, if you’ve been following, we’ve been getting in a few hours of D&D over the past couple weeks. Thus have @dsaile and @marysaile been enjoying the rolling of dice and slaying of various paper and plastic monster tokens.

Roleplaying in a technical sense perhaps (as @dsaile isn’t truly a half-dragon proselyte for his platinum holiness), but not anything that most White Wolf alums would considering a complex exploration of morality or waning humanity.

However, that wasn’t what anyone was looking for from this particular campaign.

In fact, when Heslin asked at the start, our newbies were quite specific that they didn’t see themselves as being into all kinds of improvisation or pretending to be anyone else.

Move here, roll to hit this guy, roll damage, high five, who has the Skittles?

Good enough for a few hours of D and D, and only getting more exciting for all involved.

Hell just the other night we actually played some D and D where we killed an actual D in a D. A little one, but a D nonetheless, and you never forget your first one.

We overcame long odds, and beat the crap out of the scaled tyrant of Kobold Hall.

Now including a fourth member to our merry troupe, my buddy from the old school: Cappy. Who lives in Florida and is brought to us by the fucking future. Seriously, the future is rad.

Anyway, dead dragon. Yay!

That wasn’t the mission, however.

The mission was to recover some dragon hide — not the one attached to this, now, ex-dragon — for a local merchant. Finding a real, living, (ice-)breathing white dragon at the adventure’s end was a bonus.

A terrible, terrible bonus.

What we didn’t find, was the dragon hide.

We were left to shrug at each other and figure maybe the guy was wrong or lying or what have you. Maybe the plot — such as it was — thickened, maybe it didn’t. We were alive, the dragon wasn’t. Plus we had some correspondence hinting to our next adventure, so all around a good night’s work.

Then we got back to town, and the place was alive with hails for the returning heroes.

Shit yeah, right? We were heroes. We were returning.

The returning heroes who had cleared out the kobold menace and rescued the smith’s dragon hide from Kobold Hall!

Yeah!

We… tried to skin that white dragon. It didn’t go great, but I mean… they’re talking about us, right?

When we arrived back at the smith’s we found out they were not, in fact, talking about us.

While we had rested between encounters some other group of jackholes snuck into the manor, and made off with our goal. Leaving us to deal with all the badguys, including the aforementioned D… er, dragon.

As the smith scoffed at our crappy and punctured dragon hide and our day-lateness, while lauding the sneak-thiefs who had snuck-thefted our booty and made off with our reward, Kriv, the dragon man saw red.

Suddenly David and Kriv, the dragonborn were of one mind. The line between Aldrina and Mary was similarly blurred.

Someone had scooped us and taken our gold and XP.

We charged down the street to the inn, where Kriv had some trouble holding back his anger at our newfound opposite numbers (our “Hellions” if you get the reference).

For all our heated words, it was too late. We’d been bested this time.

An interaction that led David to ask about how one goes about changing their alignment and other — intensely roleplaying focused — questions about his character and his future interactions with the world.

And thus Heslin used an old trick on new dogs. Instant roleplayers, just add in-game antagonism.

Verdict:

Poof, two new roleplayers were born.

Since that altercation with “Victor” (the total biter Eladrin), Kriv has gone from a pre-made dragonborn Paladin, to a green dragonborn who is trying to subvert his evil nature in service to the church of Bahamut.

We had a good one to two hours last night which was our party in a tavern hall chatting up the local Lord about what services we could provide to his town, while our drunk got dwarf with other drunks.

Nothing was rolled (sorry, the dwarf had to make Fortitude checks or something), but there was plenty of roleplaying.

That made me smile quite a bit.

Welcome to the nerddome, nerds.

It’s a helluvalot of fun in here.

I would like to say real quick, in defense of LARPers. I have only LARPed twice, and I had a great fucking time doing it. These guys are having more fun on a regular basis than many of us can safely claim. So while some overweight people in bad facepaint makes a funny image punchline, I sincerely have nothing but applause for these guys commitment to their hobby.

Also getting honeys.

Alright, not that last part.

Check my ass out after the jump:

“MC Henley was a pleasure to work with. From initial audition to final product, he responded quickly and delivered on time. Of course, we were also quite pleased with the quality of his voiceover work. He’ll be the voice of our company for years to come.”

John Rood

President, Next Step Test Preparation

Verdict:

I don’t really get caught up in the who’s whos and what’s what of Hollywood. But even within my nerdier, niche hobbies, I don’t do it.

I was certainly sad when Gary Gygax, and Dave Arneson passed, but not in any personal way. Just by extension of being a nerd who directly benefited from their nerdiness.

By and large, I don’t know these people and their passing means less to me than to their real family and friends to whom we should all yield the floor.

The closest I’ve come to being shocked by a celebrity death was Michael Jackson, but let’s face it, the guy I liked had already been dead for at least 15 years.
And George Carlin, even if his was less shocking in general because he was an old ass man.

Which brings us to Dwayne McDuffie.

This one has hit me hard and settled in deep.

I don’t really have any words that would do my feelings — or him — justice.

I don’t have any revelatory personal stories of the man.

We never met.

I will regret that forever.

He was absolutely top five comic creators I wanted to meet, shake hands with, and stumble desperately to have something memorable to say to.

If you’re not a fan of comics but have kids, you may know him as one of the brains behind Ben 10 (now Alien Force), or further back to Static Shock. He also notably wrote some episodes of What’s New, Scooby Doo that weren’t so bad.

He’s probably most popular to we nerds as being heavily involved in the DC Animated Universe, including the main credit on their latest release (just yesterday tragically enough) of All-Star Superman.

It will be said better by others — more directly affected by his work and life — but McDuffie got characters.

These are larger than life, modern demi-Gods flying around, lifting cars, and performing derring do on a level only available to the imagination, and he made them people.

Sometimes they were black people, and we are better for it. Sometimes they were other “minorities”, and we are better for it. Milestone was revolutionary in ways we don’t even have numbers to count yet.

However they were always people. If he wrote Reed Richards or Superman (the two whitest guys I can think of), they still came alive under his direction with every bit of nuance as Hardware, or Static, or TV’s John Stewart.

If he had favorites, it rarely showed, as everyone he wrote seemed to get an equal share of his pen.

If you ever get the chance, read Milestone Forever. It came out to little fanfare thanks in part to DC pretty much screwing the guy over. A screwing he profited from nevertheless, but still a fairly public screwing all the same. In it, Dwayne writes an epilogue to Milestone, before folding it into the DCU proper.

It is elegant comic books, sending off individual characters with the care of a father, while letting them go into the collective ether that is comical books. DC made some deal out of getting these characters and by McDuffie’s estimation really only wanted Static.

If you have any class, DC, you need to give these characters a chance to mix and mingle and enrich the DCU as they did all of comics near 20 years ago.

For Dwayne.

Verdict:

Too talented, too young, too human.

I don’t have language for how much of a shame this is.

Last night in his honor, the family watched various Justice League episodes.

In particular I made sure to watch the one below. I’m sure the whole episode wasn’t his, but the season’s direction of “Straight up, Legion of Doom” is attributed to him, and this bit is definitely him.

A bit he claims he’d been trying to work into a comic for at least 20 years. It is an instant classic.

Just like the man himself.

R.I.P., Mr. McDuffie.

Exactly the kind of close you want if you’re going to hook new people on the joys of roleplaying — for life — even in the RP-lite style of Dungeons with Dragons in.

As with all great things, it all started with a critical hit.

No wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, yeah, the triumphant trio of Pouch Picklestar, Kriv, and Gundrifol Keptcabbage (of the Cabbage Hill Keptcabbages) struck camp and decided that after a good night’s rest we’d get back to bringing the ruckus of justice to those Goblish a-holes what run game on the nearby hamlet of (Season + Geographic Feature).

After listening at the door, Kriv revealed that the word for “open” is the same as “kick down” in Draconic. Now you know.

This inevitably set off the complicated alarm system of “you woke up a wolf“. One of two wolves, turns out. The littler of the two. Who then woke up everybody. Including the giant-ass Dire Wolf kept at bay by a very convenient portcullis.

At least to start.

Also a Hobgoblish Warcaster, who I hope is rotting in a special Hell just for assholes.

Once again proving I should never play a Rogue, Messier Keptcabbage leapt out, missed with a dagger, and got promptly butt-humped, bloodied, and drug down into a pit within, like, fourteen seconds.

Luckily, once I crawled back out, I gave the wee-er wolf the old Keptcabbage Reacharound (named for my dear, sainted Nona, aka the Cabbage Hill backpat), then promptly got kill’t.

This would be a theme.

After a series of hilarious misses came another series of hilarious misses.

This would also be a theme.

Thankfully whoever wrote the encounter had a really low opinion of Hobgoblins (evidenced by often referring to them as “Those People” and “Dungeon [N-Word]s” within the text). So instead of loosing 600 pounds of Dire fury, he decided to go toe to toe with a half-Dragon Paladin.

Which unfortunately for us, really worked out for him, due in no small part to his Thunderstick.

Some time in between our Paladin dying the second and third time, the DM apologized that the introductory adventure would apparently be our grave. He did, however, offer the solace of character creation for dessert if we wished.

Upon two of our three having used their second winds, and subsequently missing with our Dailies — all while our Paladin awoke from making his third and final Death Save — we finally managed to clear the room.

Just in time to watch the Dire Wolf break free with the glint of… well, we don’t have a word for it. In Goblish it’s basically a combination of murder, chewing and dry-humping.

Each of us in single digit Hit Points.

Our Cleric currently stuck in the aforementioned pit.

It was up to the Scion of Cabbage Hill to gird this group. I mean obviously.

So with an entirely empty call for everyone to remember Bahamut was e’er watchful, this halfling Rogue promptly missed the broadside of a barn with a dagger.

But then it happened.

Probably thanks to my halfling’s conversion to the Church of the Platinum Dragon.

@Dsaile rolled them bones, Bahamut nodded, and he came up twenty. Au natural.

Max damage. Mad pluses.

Then he died again.

But with this, his third or fourth fall, the hopeless had become the hopeful.

After a couple rounds of maneuvering, climbing out of holes, picking away Hit Point by Hit Point, and taking turns dying; finally two of us were alive enough to get Combat Advantage on our Dire roommate.

Which to a Rogue is like halfling Christmas Bahamutmas.

The Cleric hit with a Lance of Faith, lighting up my little daggers with Bahamut-sponsored righteousness.

The Keptcabbage Reacharound Redux (Holy Fire UK remix!), this time with added “slide three squares” effect which I used to throw the Big Bad Wolf down the pit that gave our Cleric so much bother.

And finally, our Cleric beseeched her God of dragony goodness to please add a new hole to El Lupe Grande.

Said God obliged.

From the very large jaws of defeat we snatched a Bahamut-approved victory.

High-fives and disbelief were passed around in equal measure.

Thereafter Kriv apparently murdered his companions, took their stuff, and went on to form a new adventuring company.

This time with less pre-gen’d characters and a freshly found +1 Longsword.

Verdict:

I mean, shit yeah, right?

As with most recaps, some of the details have already passed into legend.

And as with most recaps, you sort of had to be there.

Sorry.

It feels good to be playing anything again. Especially after I think I accidentally killed our Summertime Exalted game by being depressed on one of the rare Sundays we could get a quorum. Which is a shame, b/c it was a good enough time run well enough by the illustrious Quaff.

Still, this is better suited for the few hours on a weeknight schedule that punctuates our adulthood.

When next we meet, Kriv’s second(?) adventuring company will take to the road.

If you’re local, and love D&D, we might could use a fourth or fifth member.

Just saying.

I love spinning shared world narratives involving mist strewn back alleys, moral ambiguities, and navigating monsters through worlds populated with other monsters.

I love negotiating thoughtscapes and exploring the human condition through various viewpoints and guises.

I love pondering the very nature of my humanity by shedding it for a time and embracing my darkest impulses.

You know what else I love?

Backstabbing goblin douchebags while someone nearby says stuff like “long sword” and “hit points” and “do you have any chips? I feel like this needs chips“.

Yeah, I love playing D&D.

And last night I got to do a little of that thing I love.

Herr Heslin was able-minded enough to drop some 4e science on my nerd-ass along with a pair of n00bs the likes of @dsaile and @marysaile.

To say @marysaile is obsessed — considering she already bought dice, and has called for continuing adventure — is probably putting it lightly. She was the only one that felt 11 was too early to put up the chairs.

@dsaile was borderline excited almost more than once, and made a fine leaderish type. He soaked up goblin attention and rat bites like a true champion of whatever half-dragon gods he keeps with.

They both did more than fine. Thanks in no small part to listening through the artful introductions of the Penny Arcade/PVP podcasts.

Thus dice were rolled, high-fives passed around, hilarious mispronunciations of braziers uttered, the purpose of a Rogue was acrobatically misunderstood, newish nicknames were nomenclated, and hoots of triumph both small and large were ululated.

Verdict:

And so it got writ that the human Cleric, Pouch Picklestar; Dragonborn paladin, Kriv; and halfling Rogue, Gundrifol Keptcabbage (perhaps you know his Nona?) put the fear of at least two gods into the goblinese dickfores of Wherever-we-were Keep.

If you need that translated to Goblish you let me know.

Man, I love Dungeons.

Also Dragons.

When I finally got a thing in mind, Chuck already blogged about it. And proving that we occasionally share one mind, I pretty much agree. In summation, being a teacher is hard. Kids are assholes. And this lady is not all that wrong-minded to point it out.

Now, I think she’s trumpeting her position as the last bastion of sanity in an insane world a little too loudly. As much to win over the court of public opinion. One way or the other — and I expect the law will bear her out, so it’s important to gird her image now — she’s going to have to go back to work in a school system she just famously slagged.

May as well try to do so as a holy crusader returning from exile.

I don’t know Natalie Munroe, but I know people who do, and they seem to think she’s a total twat.

Be that as it may, the school has no conduct policy that covers blogging, or online social media of any stripe — emblematic of how far behind our school system actually is. All told, the infraction is fairly mild, she never named names, or did much more than anyone else who might blog about a co-worker they hate.

And she’s right.

Kids are self-entitled little assholes, crammed into too-crowded rooms where one person is charged with shouting over all of them about math or history they don’t care about for three quarters of an hour before they go back to finger-banging each other in the hallway.

Then their parents come in and shield them from all criticism because they hated being told they weren’t good enough when they weren’t; all while our Puritan-based governance refuses to educate them about why their pants are on fire, or to acknowledge that they are aswim in a drug culture that speaks more directly to them then any teacher will ever have a chance to.

It’s a losing battle, and as I saw on the news this morning, we’re losing it by half in Philadelphia School Districts. The drop out rate is 50% up in this piece. For reasons ranging from: the kids are bored, or bullied, or afraid to go, or falling behind the curve, or already on drugs or in gangs which have way more influence over them, or just because they’re kids with no concept of tomorrow so they throw away their today.

That’s not a failing of teachers.

That’s only partially a failing of the kids or their parents.

It’s a failing of the system.

Too old to speak to modern youth, and too over-burdened to change.

They knew classrooms were too crowded ten years before I went to high school, and nothing has been done.

Natalie Munroe is probably not going to be the match that starts the revolution or anything. But seriously, the Grecian style needs to go, and we need to find a way to drop some science on these knuckle heads before they teenage-pregnancy their way into our nation’s future mediocrity.

We need to stop fighting video games, and rap music, and every generations’ counter culture and get it to start working for us.

Verdict:

Anyway, so I don’t really have much else this week, but I’ll try and do better next.

My “trial” has officially ended, and while I didn’t get to see it all, I saw enough. Right before hitting the wall called Level 30. Wherein you can no longer solo, and go from feeling like a competent and powerful super person, to an ineffectual avatar made of tissue paper. Please, fire whoever’s fault that is.

I do have to say, I’m letting my membership lapse with some sadness.

I was having some fun. Moreso when I was playing with my buddy, Cappy, out of FLA.

However this product is too flawed, too short, and entirely too misguided to waste any more money on. I will, however, hold onto the game. I won’t trade it back in on the off chance they lower the price (to nothing?), or fix my every problem with the game.

Which I doubt, as my largest problem continues to be somewhere at the very heart of the experience.

At some point during development, the focus came away from “how can we give people the DCU experience” to “does this physics engine allow for enough particle effects” and “how can we stop the Booster Gold terminals from disappearing” (which they eventually seemed to get figured out) and a dozen other technical concerns that I imagine — and almost hope — is what took them away from repeating that first ruling principle like a daily mantra.

My closing thoughts on DCU Online….

First, some errata, so to speak. Just in the interest of fairness.

1) Not all the voice acting is bad. In fact, I’d say most of it is fairly good. You still have the kind of passionless mission uploads from talented voice actors that I complained about. However, the barks and bursts you hear on the street are actually fairly well done; often amusing, and competently delivered. It’s the mid-tier characters who seem to be the worst. The Flash and Cyborg spring to mind; as well as some other mission handlers and one-off NPCs that sound as if someone’s cousin had a free half-hour to jump in the studio.

2) All of the Police Stations (and presumably the various villain clubs, but I really hated the villain stuff* so I stopped before I got that far) have different personnel and missions to do out of them. I don’t know if I wasn’t paying close enough attention, or got confused as to where I had teleported or what. But when I said the later stations were just the same place with the same people, I was wrong. The layout is largely the same, but I came to appreciate that part. Otherwise, my fault.

And, that’s it.

Most of my other complaints stand.

What could DCUO do to keep me? Well, I don’t know. For starters… be free?

I’m not just being glib either, they don’t have the content to justify $15 a month. They don’t. They offered me the reduced rate of $10 for three months, and it wasn’t low enough. Simply put, they don’t have three more months of game in them (yet?). And while I was looking forward to reaching level 30 with a friend so I could actually see some of that content, not enough to pay them more money.

Which brings me to another bullet point. Ummm, if you’re going to brag that your game is entirely soloable, don’t cut that short when I reach the top. If I’ve been soloing for the 30-ish hours it took me to get there, I don’t want to suddenly have to make some friends to go do Superman’s will. I just joined the JLA and single-handedly saved Superman, but a trio of Security Guards at Strykers can kill me in three shots?

That is not an exaggeration, that is not an imaginary tale. The first mission I tried after joining the JLA, I could not get past the door. I entered the building and encountered three guards; they turned and shot me, I died. I respawned ten feet away. I rushed in and set them all on fire; they turned and shot me, I died.

But now they’re on fire, I thought.

I rush in, set them on fire some more and hit one of them twice; they turned and shot me, I died. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Finally I killed them. Now my equipment is broke, and I’m weaker in every way, but I did it! So I go to the next room where seven guards are waiting.

Ragequit, throw controller, fuck this game forever.

(Honestly, I tried for over a half-hour to kill even one of those seven guards. Couldn’t do it. Using the same tactics and power set that had gotten me to level 30. I fixed my equipment, respecced, went back, and the same exact result happened. So, yeah, ragequit, throw controller, fuck this game forever).

Moving on: Let me save my partners’ lives. You have ~10 seconds to rescue someone once they’re KO’ed. If you’re hit, you have to start over. They’re timer doesn’t stop counting down once you interact with them — so even if you complete your action but their time expired, they still have to retreat to a rally point. So, what’s the point of letting me even try past those initial seconds? And why give the knocked down person the option of hanging out if it’s not extending my chance of saving them? We’re superheroes, we save people all the time.

Why make it take so long or be interruptable? You’re not even bringing them back with full life. The rescued person will have to fly or run away, presumably from an active combat since I won’t have time to clear the area before saving them. Who thought this was fun or challenging? It’s just aggravating as piss, and does nothing to make anyone involved feel super. Especially when you’re sending me back to the beginning of a closed mission instance. Where even if I rush back, I’m cut off from the boss fight. So now I have to wait for all my group to die so we can start over. You know, like in the comics.

I mean listen, I get that there has to be some videogamesmanship to it, but this whole philosophy has got to stop. Again, it’s not making your game more fun, or challenging. It may be prolonging the experience, but not in a good way, and in fact, just takes a longer time to realize you can’t win (again, your equipment breaks and you only get weaker per “death”). Cappy ragequit in the middle of one such tautological nightmare: Rush to the end boss, get handled — no one can get to you to save you — respawn 10 seconds later, repeat. We did this for twenty minutes. And yes we did change tactics, and tried other approaches, but as only two of us could communicate there was no way to come up with a better gameplan.

Oh yeah, that’s a major one. FIX YOUR MOTHERFUCKING CHAT!!! (sorry to have to yell). I understand that by playing on a console (a console I bought to play your game, so thanks for putting out your bare minimum effort to secure a release date that looked cool) I took away a whole half of my ability to communicate in the keyboard. That’s on me. But the Blue Tooth’s constant failure, even among my group of two? I get that this is PSN’s fault as much as SOE (seriously, PSN blows), but that did not come as a surprise. It was a problem in Beta and you released it anyway. That’s on you.

Things me and Cappy did to communicate? Put our phones on speaker and just left them open. Used X-BOX LIVE which had all this figured out years ago. Yes, we used your rival’s effortless connection to communicate while playing your game. And finally Skype, which was the best option so we stuck with it.

Besides all that — which are pretty major fucking issues, moreso than whether or not you have a marketplace — and all the stuff I’ve complained about in my previous posts, you simply needed to have more.

I appreciate you designed a game to be played in three or four hour stints. That’s very considerate of my time, thank you. On the other hand, even with that schedule I flew through your game with more than one character (experiencing little to anything new) in less than a month with time to spare. Letting me replay previous missions on impossible has never been a very effective way of adding replayability (for me, I appreciate some challenge seekers out there might like getting killed thirteen times in the opening lobby. Good news for them).

Verdict:

Not on your life.

I am your mark DCUO. I am exactly the person your game was designed for, and you failed me. I bought a PS3 just to run this game. Sure, there are other games I’m interested in, but I saved up and bought the system to play your game. Now, I’m not blaming you for that part. No, my fan entitlement stops short at telling you I was your audience and you missed me. Because I was (am, technically) and you did.

You also missed Stew. You missed Cappy. You missed this cat, Mason I know. And a couple dozen other grousers I saw chatting around your world. In fact, I have yet to talk to someone who is enjoying your game without reservation.

I will be very interested to see the membership numbers over the next two months. You were all congratulating yourself over selling out your first run — and rightfully so, as an early watermark you have nothing else to go by.

But number of units sold will not be the number of members still playing when the trial is up.

Not by a long shot.

*Oh yeah, the villain model was entirely wrong-minded. Like, as a hero, it’s expected I’m at least interested in good guyness enough to rescue some patients, and help Superman out just b/c he asked. DC villains aren’t lackeys though, and going on missions to fetch crap for Lex Luthor seems disingenuous. Not to mention, inhuman. The stuff they had me doing wasn’t fun, or the kind of villainy I wanted to be up to. I wanted to be jacking banks, looting museums, and playing at being a Mastermind. Not injecting college kids with Parasite juice (forcing them to eat their friends) as Lex Luthor’s bitch boy. So I skipped most of the villain stuff. Overall, it did seem as if less people were playing villains. So, I wonder how widespread that sensation was.