Digital Alterity

Over and over again, I keep trying to read Justice League / JLA / Justice Whatever-They’re-Calling-It-This Year, and over and over, the book fails to keep my interest. I think that the repeated nature of my attempt to buy into the book speak to a certain desire to read Justice League stories, so I’m going to throw out the idea that I’m just not into the characters. No, I think the problem is strictly in the execution. Here’s what I want out of a Justice League book. If DC could consistently deliver this, I would buy every freaking issue.

• Emphasize the relationships between League members. You know what Claremont’s X-Men or Wolfman’s Teen Titans did really well? Exactly what this bullet point is about. I could read a comic that had zero punches thrown, zero bad guys apprehended, and zero big villain reveals as long as the team dynamic is being explored. I want to see team members with crushes on each other. I want to see tension between Batman and everyone else. I want to see Superman struggling to live up to his reptuation with newer members. I want to see Flash trying to balance the League, his solo career, and his family. Basically, give me a shoujo Justice League, dammit.
• Take some time building up plots. Yes, I understand that Justice League Unlimited was ridiculously successful. Comics, however, are not television. You don’t have to be done in one issue, six issues, or even twelve issues. Leave dangling plot threads — preferably plot threads that deal with the main characters’ lives.
• Admit that the Trinity will always and forever be in charge…and then move on. Black Canary is an interesting character, but she’s not the person in charge of the League. The whole bit where Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman were secretly running things behind the scenes was one of the creepiest things that Meltzer introduced. Make it those three officially in charge as co-chairs of the League or something. Once you’ve done that, then you can stop trying to explain why they’re not in charge and get back to telling good stories.
• Stop trying to team up the villains. It never really works. The tropes of the genre make it really hard for us to believe an evil team-up. Evil characters in superhero comics tend to be megalomaniacs. The Injustice Society bits stretch our suspension of disbelief just a little bit too much. Just make a single villain really, really scary, please.
• Don’t worry about the larger DC continuity. Seriously. I don’t want to figure out why Superman is suddenly blue and crackling with electricity. I don’t want to know why Batman can’t make it to this adventure. I’m a big fan of continuity in most cases, but this title just begs to be quasi-standalone.

If DC could deliver this consistently on a monthly basis, I would gladly pack four bucks an issue. Seriously.

Technorati Tags: Justice League of America, Justice League, JLA, comics, DC

Some time last week, I had an idea for a new D&D character that just wouldn’t let me go. Those of you who are writers probably have some inkling of what this is like. Suddenly, I was hit by character background, common phrases he would utter, appearance, cultural history — essentially everything I would need for a really detailed character background. After days wasting brain cycles on this thing, I eventually had to commit the character to paper.

Belgar is definitely a player character. I have no desire to “waste” him as an NPC when he strikes me as really fun to play. He’s very definitely a 4e character, but I’m tempted to fire up some kind of 3e warlock if we start lowbie characters sometime soon in my Gainesville gaming group.

Does this write-up inspire you? Feel free to use Belgar in your game. Heck, feel free to play your own version of Belgar. I certainly wish I were.

The Story Thus Far

In the early days of the world, when the world itself was still cooling from being forged by the hammer of Moradin himself, the Primordial Chaos was always one short breath away. Looking with boundless love upon his dwarven children, the Soul Forger gave unto them the mountains filled with sturdy stone, precious metals, and the finest of gems. Unto us he gave the bountiful stone and the wisdom to harvest the mountain’s bounty and even the sacred runes to inscribe the song of the earth itself. One thing he did ask of us: Delve not into the secret core of the mountain for that knowledge is not for mortal minds to keep.

If history were merely a record of the greatest deeds and most frightful tragedies of a people, then the tale of the Hammerforge clan of dwarves would be on the lips of every mortal alive. In their efforts to uncover ever more pure veins of precious metals, those ambitious dwarves delved too deep, opening a portal into the very Elemental Chaos that the gods had pushed aside to order the world into the realm we know. There in that realm of madness, the Hammerforge dwarves made the acquaintance of an eldritch being built from purest, most draconian evil. With honeyed words, the fiend convinced the dwarves to exchange their servitude for the power to drive the giants away from their mountain homes. Thus were born the first of the dwarven warlocks.

When the church of Moradin saw the success of Clan Hammerforge in their campaigns against the storm giants, they began to inquire into the sudden and overwhelming victories. When the bishops detected the brimstone stench of devils upon the Knight Generals of Clan Hammerforge, however, the mountain itself was torn into a vicious civil war. The church emerged victorious in the end and systematically purged all records of the Hammerforge Clan and even of the war itself.

Belgar Stonebreaker was born in the mountain halls that marked the ancestral home of his clan for countless generations. However, at a young age, his family was chased out of their caverns after a siege by frost giants and settled in a predominantly human township. His family, indeed a large number of his clan, maintained a close-knit dwarven culture in the town, creating something of a dwarven ghetto. The humans gladly took the dwarves in, viewing the weaponsmiths and gem-cutters as a welcome boon to trade with the neighboring settlements. The cross-cultural relationship over the years has been a strong one born of mutual benefit.

Belgar was always an apt pupil in the subject of history, looking to connect with the dwarven heritage that he felt deprived of. He spent nearly every spare moment in the temple of Moradin, digging through old birth records, military histories, and census data. The dusty tomes and delicate scrolls became a refuge for young Belgar, a home that no giant could ever drive him away from. The lay priests welcomed Belgar’s dedicated efforts and came to depend on the bright young scholar’s efforts to categorize the mountains of information that the church had become the caretakers of.

In leafing through a shipment of uncategorized tomes sent from a distant temple, Belgar stumbled upon the tragic tale of Clan Hammerforge, a legend that gripped his heart in a way that wouldn’t leave him. The fascination quietly became an obsession, and Belgar kept an eager eye open for any scraps of forbidden knowledge related to the Hammerforge Pact. His search eventually led him far afield of his town and his clan and into the libraries of the larger cities. After two years of searching, he found the keystone that pulled together all of the secret knowledge he had gathered thus far. Belgar had found a timeworn ritual that claimed to be the exact rite that the Hammerforge clan had used to bind the infernal powers to do as they bid. Secretly gathering together all the materials for the rite certainly proved to be an ordeal, but Belgar’s obsession wouldn’t leave him until he at least tried the binding.

In dark shadows of the mountain he believed to be the exact mountain the marked the genesis of the Hammerforge Pact, Belgar scribed all the right ritual circles, chanted all the right liturgies, and burned all the right herbs as incense. When the apex of the ritual beckoned, convinced by the swirl of arcane energy he could feel coursing through his spirit, the dedicated scholar thrust his left hand into the very embers of the ritual fire, expecting that the magical energies would certainly protect him from harm.

Since that day, Belgar commands infernal forces as a warlock of the Hammerforge Pact. No being has contacted him to collect on the bargain, but Belgar now understands that ritual bound him to service and not the other way around. Belgar remains committed to the side of ordered civilization and dwarven virtue, but he knows full well the danger of the powers he has dealt with. He intends to use evil’s own power against itself, and if he has to sacrifice himself to save the world, he’s willing to go down fighting with a dwarven curse on his lips and the taste of ale in his throat.

Mannerisms and Minutia

• Belgar has been away from his clan for going on three years now, but he maintains strong ties with his family and with the remnants of his larger clan. His letters home, entrusted to caravans and merchants along the road, tell of the faraway places and interesting cultures he encounters in his travels.
• Belgar always wears a pair of black leather hand gloves that he uses to hide the lingering scars on his left hand from the binding ritual that gave him his powers.
• Like all members of his clan, Belgar is trained in the use of warhammers and chain mail.
• When Belgar inflicts an enemy with his warlock curse, a ghostly pentagram appears on their foreheads.
• The infernal forces that power the Hammerforge Pact are bound to the lower planes by Moradin’s own hand. In order to affect the world, they can act only through the warlocks that serve as their agents. The fiends depend on their warlocks who in turn depend on their devilish patrons for the power to affect the world.

Technorati Tags: D&D, Warlock, Roleplaying, RPG, Dwarf

Talking Head: Statistics show that more Americans than ever are now obese. Childhood diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity-related ailments are in the news almost every day. Traditional weight loss requires diet and exercise, but what if you could easily and safely loses weight by thinking happier thoughts? That’s the premise of an exciting new book from BigPub Corporation, entitled Weight Off Your Back. Joining us tonight we have the author of that book, health professional Ronald King.

Vapid Idiot: Hi, TH. Glad to be on the program.

Talking Head: In addition, we have Dr. Wayne Parker, respected scientist at the world-renowned Peer-Reviewed Research Institution.

Respected Scientist: Good to be with you.

Talking Head: Ronald, why are Americans becoming so fat?

Vapid Idiot: Well, TH, if I could boil it down to one cause, it would have to be all the negative energy we take in by thinking depressing thoughts. Those negative thoughts make us hold on to all the fat in the food we consume, making us fat. In previous generations, the world was a much happier and safer place, so we were able to eat even fatty, homestyle food without getting fat.

Talking Head: Interesting. Dr. Parker, you response?

Respected Scientist: I’m really astounded by Mr. King’s claims. There is a strong correlation between a high-calorie, low-activity lifestyle and increased body mass. We have a lot of excellent, peer-reviewed experiments that indicate that the only way to lose weight is to increase your physical activity, decrease your calorie consumption, and generally take in fewer calories than you burn with exercise. There’s no credible argument to the contrary in the health community.

Talking Head: Ronald, it seems like your book has the scientific community in something of an uproar.

Respected Scientist: Not surprising, TH. The information in my new book really turns a lot of the “old thinking” on its head. Losing weight doesn’t have to be a painful exercise. My methods provide a safe, easy alternative to traditional starvation-based dieting.

Talking Head: Well, it seems like this is one debate that’s going to be raging for sometime! Again, that new book is Weight Off Your Back by Ronald King, available in bookstores everywhere.

While on a recent vacation, I bought the Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Players Handbook. I immediately launched into reading it during a marathon Starbucks session. After finishing up the PHB, I went down to the bookstore and immediately bought the other two core rulebooks. I’ve made my way almost halfway through the Dungeon Masters Guide, and I finally couldn’t bear not sharing my thoughts here on the site.

Save versus Wall of Text…

Things I Like About 4e

Rudimentary tanking is built into the core game mechanics. As readers of this blog and followers of my life likely already know, I’ve been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately. One of my favorite parts of any MMORPG is the specialization of roles that PVE combat provides. Generally speaking you have a heavily armored tank up front taking hits and generally keeping monsters interested in / hating him, so that your damage dealers can kill off the monster with relative safety. Add in a dedicated healer to keep the tank from dying, and you’ve got the holy trinity of online RPG combat. The first time I experienced this style of combat, it felt like an absolute revelation.

The problem is that this style of combat has never really worked in D&D. Generally speaking, as a DM, you tried to target the healers and the mages since they were the biggest threat. This inadvertently shifted fighters into more of a damage-dealing role. In other words, rather than attempting to hold the line and take the hits, D&D fighters typically have had to just attempt to kill the monsters before they start chewing out your wizard’s spine.

In 4e, fighters and paladins can “mark” or “challenge” individual monsters. This doesn’t explicitly force the monster to attack him, but the enemy is at a rolling disadvantage (-2) when attempting to attack anyone other than the figher or paladin that marked him. In addition, fighters get to take a swing if this happens, and paladins get to deal radiant (holy) damage. This strikes me as kind of a “free market” approach to tanking. The invisible hand of the game system guides monsters to attack your defenders.

Skill challenges provide non-combat encounters with the drama of D&D combat. I have a habit of playing characters that are somewhat gimped with respect to combat. Some of my favorite 3e characters have been purely designed for roleplaying and therefore supporting roles in their party. My rogue/wizard/cleric might not be able to singlehandedly down a dragon, but he can probably con the local duke into sending a garrison of troops to do the dirty work for him. There’s not a lot of drama in this though, and it also has a very real tendency to become a one-man show. While one character is making skill checks against various esoteric DCs, the other people at the table are tuning out.

Enter the skill challenge. Everyone at the table rolls initiative — just as they would for a combat. The catch? They take turns rolling skill checks applicable to the situation in an attempt to meet a threshold of successes before they accrue too many failures.

An example is probably in order. Your party is trying to convince the local church of Lathander that a murder cult of Cyric has infiltrated the city.

DM: Okay. This is going to be a skill challenge to convince the bishop of Lathander that the cult is here in the Dalelands. Your key skills for this one are going to be Religion, Diplomacy, and History. You need to get eight successes before you get four failures. Everyone roll initiative.
PC1: Okay, I got an 18, so I go first. I’m going to use my Religion skill to remind the duke of the dark tenets of Cyric’s faith and how serious this matter is. I rolled a 21.
DM: (Checking against a DC of 20) The bishop nods his head. “You’re right on that one, lad. Cyric worshippers are not to be trifled with.”
PC2: Okay, my initiative was 14, so I’m up next. I’m going to use History to speak about past incursions from the Cyric worshippers. I got a 25!
DM: (Checking against a DC of 18) You remember that Cyric himself was active during the Dalelands during the time of troubles. When you tell the bishop this, he gets a pained look on his face. You can now use the insight skill once in the course of this challenge.
PC3: I’m up next, and I have Insight trained. I’m going to use my Insight check to see what’s wrong. I got a 16.
DM: (Checking against a DC of 15) It seems to you that the bishop might have lost someone important during the time of troubles. You remind him of those dark times.
PC4: I’m not really trained in anything relevant to this sort of thing, but I’ll try a Diplomacy check try and convince him that we can help with this problem. Aw crap! I rolled an 8!
DM: (Checking against a DC of 18) The bishop seems a little darker. “I see how this is…you come butter me up with honeyed words so that you can get paid to solve a non-existent problem.”
PC5: No no no! I’ll attempt a Diplomacy check to convince him that we’re not con men. Whew…Natural 20, so…28.
DM: (Checking against a DC of 18) “Okay, lad. I believe you’re being honest with me, and we all agree that Cyric is a serious threat. But how are you so sure that we’re dealing with a Cyric cult?”

This is the end of the round. The players currently have four successes and 1 failure. See what I mean about exciting non-combat encounters? Can’t you feel the drama? Skill challenges engage everyone at the table, and they turn dry skill check rolls into something memorable.

The DMG includes tons of actual general-case DM advice that I wish I had years ago. The first few chapters in the DMG have almost no 4e-specific information. Instead, they seem intent on helping novice DMs understand player types, group dynamic, and game management. The breakdown of player types is fair, helpful, and non-judgmental. The concrete advice on how to track initiative is the sort of thing you always wished some other DM would share with you. Moving all the magical items out of here and into the PHB opened up space for more DMG-appropriate information.

Building encounters seems a bit easier and more formulaic. I really like charts. I’m less of a fan of calculation. Yes, I could and did calculate out encounter levels for monster groups in 3e, but 4e really seems to take almost all of the work out of it. The DMG even provides handy charts of different (relative) levels of monsters that you can throw together to build just the encounter you want. Everything is broken down by monster roles, and they even include some rudimentary tactics for the squad. I honestly feel like I could throw together an impromptu night of gaming with just an hour to prepare.

At-will powers make all characters feel exciting to play every round of every game. If you’ve ever played a low-level wizard in previous editions of D&D, then you know what it’s like to feel useless. When you’re all out of magic missiles for the day, you get the joy of sitting back and rolling to hit with your crossbow against monsters designed to challenge the fighters and paladins. 4e take a novel approach to fixing this. Every single class becomes something like the sorcerer.

Every class gets daily powers that they can only use once per day, encounter powers that can only be used once per encounter, and at will powers that can be used without worry about running out of uses. Wizards and clerics don’t have to pre-memorize spells. You just choose a power off your list and use it. Wizards can use magic missile every single round of combat. Indefinitely. Likewise fighters rarely have a reason just make a basic melee attack. While just swing for damage when you can swing for damage and do damage to an adjacent enemy at the same time for free? Even when your encounter and daily powers are gone, you’re not reduced to doing things your class simply isn’t good at. No one chooses to play a wizard because they love standing in the back and having a 25% chance to hit with a crossbow every turn.

Combat seems like it would really fly. Early levels in 3e fly. You have limited choices for actions, and you only get one or two things to do each round. As you begin to near epic levels, however, full attack actions start taking a bit of rolling to resolve. In addition, you have so many spellcasting choices that it can take some time to decide your best course of action. Of course, our characters need to become more powerful and more useful as they gain experience, but what’s the best way to do this without drastically increasing the time spent resolving combat? 4e seems to approach this game requirement through the use of powers. Powers allow for a game that scales up as you go up in level without having to give each character 6-7 attacks. Rather than making multiple swings, 4e scales up the damage of your powers as you level. In addition, powers seem to just target one defense rather than requiring a to-hit roll, a spell resistance roll, and then a will save roll. And for those times when you really do need an extra action to finish off a dangerous enemy, you can always just spend your action point and take that extra action.

Things I’m Not Thrilled About in 4e

The lack of certain classes/races in the PHB makes me fear an avalanche of supplemental books. The number one thing I hated about 2e was the sheer amount of books full of kits and strange races and optional rules. When 3e came out, I was thrilled as could be. The game was enjoyable with just the core rulebooks. Nearly any character you could dream of could be created with some weird alchemy of multiclassing. Shaman? Sounds like a druid/sorcerer/barbarian to me. A samurai? I think you mean a monk/paladin. I’m not really a fan of supplements. The economic side doesn’t really bother me since there’s no real requirement to buy them. No, the part that bugs me about them is that they’re generally not as playtested for balance. This is especially true of third-party supplements. Yeah, there are some awesome gems out there, but there’s also some totally imbalanced stinkers. As a DM, you have to keep a very watchful eye on which supplements you allow. With no druids, bards, or monks, I fear what people are going to whip up in the interim while we wait for the PHB2.

Converting 3e characters is a practical impossibility. I think it’s quite fair to say that 3e D&D had more flexible character building options. You could multiclass all to hell. You could take cross-class skills. You could spread your skill points all over to build just the character you dreamed. Now, it’s not at all a negative thing to have less flexibility in the character design of 4e; frankly, it’s a design decision. Heck, even if you’re trying to convert a single class character, moving that character into 4e will seem like an out-of-body experience. If my gaming group converted to 4e and we wanted to have our favorite PCs available for high-level 4e play, we would really have to resign ourselves to treating our characters as completely new entities that coincidentally have the same life experiences as our old 3e PCs. I’m reluctant to even put this on the negative list because I actually respect the clean break aspect. Unfortunately it adds a bit of inertia when it comes to considering the switch.

Technorati Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, 4e, D&D

I finally got exalted reputation with Orgrimmar in World of Warcraft this morning on my day off. I promptly zoomed off to the orc capital city and got my spiffy new timber wolf mount.

I have spent so much of my gaming time working for this mount that I actually feel like I’ve accomplished something. I understand that I just increased an integer in Blizzard’s database(s) above a required threshold, but that tiny little SQL update feels like I just earned something.

And, yes, people I don’t know, this in my main character in WoW. I’m the last person alive who doesn’t have a level 70 character.

So, I’ve spent most of the afternoon drinking Diet Coke. This is hardly unusual for me, and it’s really not the crux of my post but rather the subtle event that leads toward rising narrative action and an eventual literary climax. In any event, because biology works, all this beverage necessitated a trip to the restroom. Again, hardly newsworthy stuff here.

Upon arriving in the second floor bathroom, I discovered a scene of pure Lovecraftian horror. Someone, in an apparent fear of pestilence, had unleashed some sort of unholy bathroom ritual involving yards of toilet paper draped across the toilet set in a roughly circular fashion and a conspicuously unflushed toilet. I’m pretty sure they were trying to summon dark elder gods or some such. The horror took ten years off my life.

I’ve never understood people who live in this terrible, debilitating fear of catching diseases. This admission is not a request for attempted explanations for such behavior because, frankly, I’ve already thrown all those who worry about such things squarely into the “summarily worthless” bin. Nonetheless, I can’t help but ponder the strange dementia that leads to such behavior. I mean, if you’re that concerned about the horrible germs on the toilet seat, maybe using a public toilet just isn’t for you. If you’re too terrified to actually sit down on a toilet sit and then pull the lever to flush when you’re finished, either go home to poo or go buy some adult diapers.

The truly sad thing is that someone is going to have to clean up the results of this mental malfunction.

1. Masters of the Universe
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
3. Voltron
4. Thundercats
5. GoBots

1. “Happy Birthday” by The Crüxshadows
2. “Big A, Little A” by Crass
3. “Shine” by Rollins Band

If you’re not sufficiently motivated after listening to all three of those songs in a row, check your effing pulse. You’re probably already dead.

I’m in a game-playing cycle right now.

My interests/obsessions tend to move in rapidly shifting cycles. For weeks, I’ll want to do nothing except read manga, and then I’ll suddenly shift to playing Battle For Middle Earth 2 on my Xbox 360. People not used to the enthusiasm with which geeks tend to devour our current interests are often confused and frightened by the level of single-minded dedication we can display. But honestly, if you watch us over a long enough period of time, you’ll see that we’re actually pretty well-rounded; you just have to change your scope.

I continue to be obsessed with comics (especially super hero comics), but beyond my comics (which only show up at my office every other week), I want to just fill all of my free time up with playing games on the computer. When I’m not playing World of Warcraft, I want to be playing Warcraft 3. I’m enjoying the hell out of interactive entertainment basically.

The dilemma of the day comes in when I think about what I brought to do on my lunch break. I’m reading through Lies My Teacher Told Me, a book about the teaching of American history, and while the book continues to be pretty interesting, I find myself thinking only about how much more fun I could be having if I had brought my laptop or my PSP with me. I’m sure my book will be a fine way to occupy my lunch break, but I’m halfway tempted to just listen to comics podcasts instead.

Basically, I feel just like this.

Because I clearly don’t have enough widgets in my life, I’ve set up an account on Twitter. Want more details on the minutia of my life (until I get bored with it)? Follow me on Twitter.

Blame the whole thing on Penny Arcade.