YouTube – Vin Diesel reveals his inner geek

I knew that Vin Diesel was an avid D&D player, but only recently saw this interview. Enjoy.

~AoB

YouTube – Vin Diesel reveals his inner geek.

Roll-playing Redux

Almost two years ago, I posted a little rant on the use of the term “Roll-playing“. Yesterday, Gleichman included some debunking of its use as a part of his “Complexity series” (which I’ve been greatly enjoying). Anyway, I went back and read the post and thought that it might be worthy of reposting. It didn’t garner much interest two years ago, but it might now (what with the growth of my readership). So here it is.

~AoB

Roll-playing – now how do you mean that?

It always irritates me when some-one uses the term “Roll-playing”. It is typically used to differentiate games that have a lot of crunch, have a gamist (GNS) agenda, or otherwise fail to fulfill some essential role-playing criteria of whomever is using the term. It is essentially a derisive term and I think it is a disservice to the gaming community for gamers to continue to use it. I mean, we’re all geeks….what do we mean by saying “Roll-play”, that “I’m a better geek than you are?” Jeeze, that’s what we need more of….

Roll-playing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Roll-Playing is a pun on the phrase ‘role-playing’ (as in role-playing game) for when character statistics and rolling dice (especially for combat) become more important than role-playing or telling a story. It generally is used to refer to hack-and-slash games such as Dungeons & Dragons. The use of the phrase “roll-playing” is generally considered to be derogatory, and snobbish.

It is also sometimes called ‘Rule-Playing,’ when the mechanical rules of the game become the most important part of the game.

If confronted with this, some users of the term will add caveats, “Dude, its not for me to say how you ought to play…I’m just describing a style of play that I don’t happen to care for…”. Its like saying “That’s so gay…..not that there’s anything wrong with that…”

Many people use the term seemingly unaware of the negative connotations associated with it (Stephen Chenault attempts to use it as a positive in the forward to the Castles & Crusades Players Hand Book, “Where Rollplaying and Role Playing Meet”). The fact of the matter remains that one would be hard pressed to find many who would stand by the statement, “I prefer Roll-playing over Role-playing”.

The term implies that somehow types of gaming that fall under the nebulous umbrella of Roll-playing don’t quite qualify as Role-playing or are an inferior types of Role-playing. What’s up with that? “I am the Uber-Geek! Behold my d20 and cringe in fear!”

Now, there will be some who think that I’m picking nits and there may be some truth to that. But I’m not just talking about someone knocking specific sub-types of gaming. I am talking about the precision of meaning, however.

What do they (oh, yes I’m talking about them) mean when they use the term “Roll-playing”. If not to be derisive, do they mean “games that use dice”, “games that provide a strong tactical focus”, “games that are rules-heavy”, “games that limit GM fiat”, “games with random-generation of characters, encounters, treasure…”, “games with a heavy combat focus”, “games that resolved social interactions, etc. mechanistically”, etc?

The point of using a buzzword is to make it immediately clear to your reader (or listener) what it is you mean. “Roll-play” doesn’t do that. Not by a long shot. So I wish they’d cut it out.

If you’re one of them…you know those guys who use the term “Roll-play” and don’t mean it in a bad way, please leave a comment that explains what it is that you do mean. And be precise! Who knows, I may be completely off my rocker…

~Adaen of Bridgewater

The Guild Companion

In my email today, I got my monthly notification that The Guild Companion is out. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the Guild Companion is a free online publication that supports Rolemaster, HARP, MERP, and Spacemaster (all Iron Crown Enterprises products). Though submissions have been low for some time now, they keep chugging along. For a free, unaffiliated publication, I think they do rather well. If you’ve ever had any interest in those games, take a look. Lately, I’ve felt a little nostalgic for my Rolemaster/MERP days so I’m going to flip through the latest installment (#129) during my lunch.

 

Greetings from the Guild Companion,

The November issue (#129) is now available at http://www.guildcompanion.com

In this month’s issue, Dan Henry’s epic work on analysing the social
implications of Spell Law concludes with a look at Evil Mentalism,
plus we have two “alien” races in Rolemaster terms and new Bardic
items, plus musings from the Editor on Something Wicked and other
matters.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

–
Dr Nicholas HM Caldwell, CEng CITP MBCS FRMS
General Editor for The Guild Companion
http://www.guildcompanion.com
Author: Mentalism Companion, GURPS Age of Napoleon, Construct
Companion, College of Magics, HARP Sci Fi

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To unsubscribe, e-mail: merp-unsubscribe@merp.com
For additional commands, e-mail: merp-help@merp.com

~AoB

Movie Review – 9

The movie 9 is an animated post-apocalyptic story about some reanimated dolls and their struggle to survive.

This moderately interesting movie garners a 6. Put the rating and the title together, and it might rate a higher level of entertainment.

The animation was very nice but not dramatically impressive. Don’t get me wrong; it was visually enjoyable on the big screen, just not groundbreaking.

The plot is the typical post-apocalyptic story – a good survivor finds others and struggles against the evil survivors. 9 is the protagonist – a burlap bag-skinned doll with a zipper to access his electric innards. He is pretty clueless as to what he is or what is going on and proceeds on a journey of discovery in the desolated remains of a nameless city. Various snippets of the past show us that a semi-fascist (very Germanic looking – is it intentional or coincidence?) society hijacks a scientist’s discovery of how to give robots artificial intelligence, creating military robots that eventually turn against mankind. Not at all like Terminator…

The story is a bit disjointed and quite improbable in places. The ending seems pointless and illogical but doesn’t make it impossible to enjoy. I have read that it becomes more clear and enjoyable after a second or third viewing. No thank you. I suppose a little bit of mind-altering chemicals would make this a lot more believable and fun. Try that and let me know what you think…

The voices are supplied by a notable group of actors: Elijah Wood as 9, Christopher Plummer as 1, Martin Landau as 2, John C. Reilly as 5, Jennifer Connelly as 7 and Crispin Glover as 6. The voices fit the characters very well. No complaints on this aspect.

 

~Elric the Damned

Movie Review – Surrogates

Surrogates is a thought provoking peek into the possible future of humanity.

This thoughtful action drama earned a solid 8. I saw this with five of my friends at the theater. Five of the six thought this was a very good movie, and the other one gave it a not-so-much.

As will become obvious by my lengthy review, this movie was very enjoyable and interesting while touching a personal chord. There are no significant plot spoilers in here as is typical of my respect for the surprise factor for those who have not seen the movie yet (people who ruin the surprise for others are evil and should be violently castrated!).

In the future, humans do not leave their homes. Instead they venture out via a surrogate robot to which they are connected by a super computer connection. A person is able to experience every sensation that the surrogate feels, sees and hears without any physical risk. Life is now “safe.” Humans go to work and recreation via their surrogates while lying on reclining tables with video masks and electrodes attached to their heads. The streets are full of robots that look very much like humans. How people maintain muscle mass and slender figures while spending all day as the ultimate couch potatoes is not explained.

Detective Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is called in to investigate the bloody death of a human who has died while connected to his surrogate. Of course, this is impossible because the technology has been thoroughly tested and has run live for many years without an incident. Almost every human is tied into this system. If this problem were possible, it could be bad… It might even cause a panic.

As you would expect, there are groups of humans that refuse to use surrogates and live on reservations as outcasts and reactionaries. They are led by the charismatic and mysterious Prophet (Ving Rhames). Naturally, the creator of this technology, Dr. Canter (James Cromwell), now lives in seclusion and has a role to play. Greer’s wife, Maggie (Rosamund Pike) loves living her life through her surrogate and refuses to spend any human-to-human time with her husband in their apartment despite Greer’s requests for together time.

Greer is somewhat disenchanted with living his life through a surrogate and eventually must venture into the real world with his real body to solve the mysterious deaths that are beginning to pile up in what could be a catastrophe for humanity. It is not made any easier by the fact that he is quite capable of dying and none of the other “people” out there can be hurt. From the beginning, it is obviously not a simple software glitch.

The plot is very well done and has many complexities. This movie will make you think and perhaps feel a little uncomfortable if you think hard enough. But it is a good uncomfortable that we will need to address eventually as a society and as individuals. The Internet has already enabled many of us to live a large portion of our lives online instead of in human-to-human interactions. How much is too much and when do we begin to lose a sense of community or humanity? It is time to start thinking about this as we are on the way to having surrogates or living completely through our minds (The Matrix, etc.).

The cinematography was well done. It was almost startling to see the difference between the human Greer and his surrogate. The surrogate had a slightly more stiff (almost plastic) face and a full head of hair (not a very flattering cut by any stretch!) compared to the very human and weathered head of the human Greer (Willis). This difference was consistently maintained for all of the characters in the movie. The special effects/make up artists did a fantastic job with this. Kudos!

The acting was also superb. For some reason, I really enjoy Bruce Willis in science fiction movies (The Fifth Element, Planet Terror, Sin City, and the non-sci fi Die Hard flicks). There is just something about his solid presence that fits the cop/detective/officer stereotypical role that he always seems to get. He is a stud, a man’s man, a lone wolf and looks really cool with his head shaved. The other actors held up their end of the movie, too.

Please see this excellent piece of cinematography and possible vision of our future.

~Elric the Damned