As sorry as I am to rip off Stelios' gimmick here, I wanted to share this one, as I recently re-watched this film. Perhaps you may be thinking, "What? Really - that silly, goofy one with Grace Jones that killed off the franchise for so many years?"
I admit, I'm not too happy about A View to a Kill either. Leaving the shortcomings of certain Bond films aside and getting back on track, it's surprising to hear this caliber of music in a film that is, arguably, more of a parody of the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian than it is a sequel. Fortunately, the one area in which this film was not a huge step down from its predecessor was in the soundtrack. Of course, nothing can really replace Basil Poledouris' stirring themes from the original movie, but here the result was not a complete aural betrayal of everything the first film did right.
Ordinarily, I would embed a video below (as Stelios typically does), but YouTube won't let me embed this one clip. Less fortunate still, this piece of score has yet to be officially released on CD, so I had to use the actual scene from the movie; the orchestral strains are still pretty prominent nonetheless.
Sit back, and enjoy!
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
"Break Out Your Wallet and Buy About 30 Games"
This snippet is originally from a comment I was going to make on this post by Alexis; I excised it because it started to get a bit long for a comment. Still, it perfectly sums up my feelings towards the current "market".
Me? I realized several years ago that it's not necessary to keep buying things for a game in order to continue playing it. At least, that's how a game should be designed. From what I understand, this is still largely true with 5th Edition; after buying the Player's Handbook, and then the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual if you're a DM, you're good to go. (The original intent was to have this also be true of the free Basic Rules PDFs, but evidently those are less useful to DMs than they should be.)
And yet, the other club people were SO FREAKING EXCITED that they might get an official gunslinger class. As I've repeatedly stated to several friends, why is there a need for a separate gunslinger class? If the DM is one to include firearms in their campaign (for the record, I'm not), then why not just have the gunslinger be a ranger and have the character buy a gun? Or, in 2e, even a plain old fighter - who could take advantage of weapon specialization to have a further bonus to hit with their gunshots?
Even worse than this was one 5e game I played in where, apparently, fighters didn't exist... but gunslingers did. Because a cast piece of steel with moving mechanical parts and explosive powder is more common than a stick. (I really need to write a full post on this yahoo's game soon.)
One GM whose Pathfinder game I played in for a while was in the habit of bringing their rulebooks with them in a milk crate. And apparently Paizo has rewritten part of the dictionary and included it in one of those tomes, since the very definition of "core" has apparently changed in Pathfinder. Core classes are not just the ones included in the Core Rulebook, no ma'am; core classes also include the ones from the Advanced Class Guide, Advanced Player's Guide, Occult Adventures, et cetera. It baffles me that anyone would voluntarily subject themselves - and worse, their players - to this level of rules bloat.
If the original D&D rules were released today, they would be seen as mysteriously backwards. Not only with how primitive some of the mechanics are, or the poor art, or the laughable lack of organization. I can imagine a modern "conspicuous consumer" type gamer looking at it:
"You mean that's it? Just three booklets in a box, and you don't have to buy anything else? How are you supposed to keep your players' interest, if you're not constantly adding new shiny books and buying more elaborate dice?"
Someone else would then step in and try to explain the value of, you know, running a game that people actually want to keep coming back to because they're having fun, but without a literal sales pitch hawking TSR's reheated leftovers, the CC gamer would quickly lose interest.
There is enough stuff here already. There are more RPGs on the market, past and present, than any one person or group would ever be able to play. I read an interview with Bob Dylan where he said something similar about music, and I tend to agree. RPGs are an even more special case; a huge portion of the product is pre-written modules and settings, which back in the old days were not as widely used. Instead, the DM would actually write their own material.
Now, the simple fact of a DM creating their own campaign from scratch - rather than just reading boxed text out of a hardcover book with boring artwork* - is bizarre to people like those that make up my gaming club. They refer to such strangeness as "homebrew". They spent over one hundred dollars on tools allowing them to make their own games, and rather than do so, they continue to pay other people $50 at a time to make the games for them. And not just once or twice, so they can see how such a thing might be done; they have to invent a label to "other" those weirdos who actually sit down, pay attention, and put in the necessary work to make something of their own.
It's depressing, really.
*The artwork for most of the 5e books is not bad from a technical perspective, but it's so boring. Curse of Strahd and Tales from the Yawning Portal both just have a person sitting or standing there, Dungeonology (yeah, not technically a rulebook, but a lot of people in the club have bought it) shows a picture of a monster that most characters will not meet until much later in the game, and all of the core books except for the Monster Manual fail to give an impression of what actually happens in the game. Compare them to the original Players Handbook (or even the Rules Cyclopedia) and you'll see what I mean.
Even worse, there's this almost universal fixation on the current, inaccurately-numbered "edition" over virtually anything else; I keep telling my sympathetic friends that what the hobby really needs is gamers who can sit still for five minutes without chasing after the nearest shiny object. These same players, rather than using things that are quite visible within the books they already own (and that see little use as is - gnomes, anyone?) feel compelled to buy the latest expensive hardcover that is literally a repackaging of something that came out 20 or 30 years ago.A lot to unpack here. Recently, the tabletop club at the university of which I am an alumnus was all abuzz about the live stream of Wizards of the Coast's presentations at some industry convention or other. Much excitement about this stuff that brought back some character or other from 2nd Edition.
Me? I realized several years ago that it's not necessary to keep buying things for a game in order to continue playing it. At least, that's how a game should be designed. From what I understand, this is still largely true with 5th Edition; after buying the Player's Handbook, and then the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual if you're a DM, you're good to go. (The original intent was to have this also be true of the free Basic Rules PDFs, but evidently those are less useful to DMs than they should be.)
And yet, the other club people were SO FREAKING EXCITED that they might get an official gunslinger class. As I've repeatedly stated to several friends, why is there a need for a separate gunslinger class? If the DM is one to include firearms in their campaign (for the record, I'm not), then why not just have the gunslinger be a ranger and have the character buy a gun? Or, in 2e, even a plain old fighter - who could take advantage of weapon specialization to have a further bonus to hit with their gunshots?
Even worse than this was one 5e game I played in where, apparently, fighters didn't exist... but gunslingers did. Because a cast piece of steel with moving mechanical parts and explosive powder is more common than a stick. (I really need to write a full post on this yahoo's game soon.)
One GM whose Pathfinder game I played in for a while was in the habit of bringing their rulebooks with them in a milk crate. And apparently Paizo has rewritten part of the dictionary and included it in one of those tomes, since the very definition of "core" has apparently changed in Pathfinder. Core classes are not just the ones included in the Core Rulebook, no ma'am; core classes also include the ones from the Advanced Class Guide, Advanced Player's Guide, Occult Adventures, et cetera. It baffles me that anyone would voluntarily subject themselves - and worse, their players - to this level of rules bloat.
If the original D&D rules were released today, they would be seen as mysteriously backwards. Not only with how primitive some of the mechanics are, or the poor art, or the laughable lack of organization. I can imagine a modern "conspicuous consumer" type gamer looking at it:
"You mean that's it? Just three booklets in a box, and you don't have to buy anything else? How are you supposed to keep your players' interest, if you're not constantly adding new shiny books and buying more elaborate dice?"
Someone else would then step in and try to explain the value of, you know, running a game that people actually want to keep coming back to because they're having fun, but without a literal sales pitch hawking TSR's reheated leftovers, the CC gamer would quickly lose interest.
There is enough stuff here already. There are more RPGs on the market, past and present, than any one person or group would ever be able to play. I read an interview with Bob Dylan where he said something similar about music, and I tend to agree. RPGs are an even more special case; a huge portion of the product is pre-written modules and settings, which back in the old days were not as widely used. Instead, the DM would actually write their own material.
Now, the simple fact of a DM creating their own campaign from scratch - rather than just reading boxed text out of a hardcover book with boring artwork* - is bizarre to people like those that make up my gaming club. They refer to such strangeness as "homebrew". They spent over one hundred dollars on tools allowing them to make their own games, and rather than do so, they continue to pay other people $50 at a time to make the games for them. And not just once or twice, so they can see how such a thing might be done; they have to invent a label to "other" those weirdos who actually sit down, pay attention, and put in the necessary work to make something of their own.
It's depressing, really.
*The artwork for most of the 5e books is not bad from a technical perspective, but it's so boring. Curse of Strahd and Tales from the Yawning Portal both just have a person sitting or standing there, Dungeonology (yeah, not technically a rulebook, but a lot of people in the club have bought it) shows a picture of a monster that most characters will not meet until much later in the game, and all of the core books except for the Monster Manual fail to give an impression of what actually happens in the game. Compare them to the original Players Handbook (or even the Rules Cyclopedia) and you'll see what I mean.
Saturday, May 14, 2016
My A to Z Reflection post
Just thought I'd share the reason that I won't be returning for next year's Challenge (this is copy-pasted from the survey I took):
I enjoy blogging in general, and I'm actually thinking about starting up a blog about one of my other hobbies - music. But yeah, both in the blogosphere and in my real-world social life, I'll be taking a break from blogging. In the second area, I'm going to try to wrap up the current "story arc" of my D&D game in order to (hopefully) hand the reins to one of my very left-brain players, who I feel would do an excellent job of rules mastery and internally consistent world design even if said Schrödinger's DM would make a few mistakes - hey, we all do on our first attempt.
So... hiatus, I suppose?
"I found the daily schedule draining creatively, with finals going on at the same time as the latter half of the challenge; it also felt stifling to have to stick to a prescribed theme (even a self-prescribed one), and as a result several of my posts were far shorter and of much lower quality than I would have wanted them to be."My few semi-regular readers will undoubtedly have noticed that I've been mostly quiet since finishing the Challenge, and this is why. The key word to take away from this is burnout - I'm feeling burnt out, and I honestly don't have the enthusiasm to write up any of my (relatively few) gaming stories or ideas... not even the marathon seven-hour AD&D2 session I ran is getting me excited enough to write another real post.
I enjoy blogging in general, and I'm actually thinking about starting up a blog about one of my other hobbies - music. But yeah, both in the blogosphere and in my real-world social life, I'll be taking a break from blogging. In the second area, I'm going to try to wrap up the current "story arc" of my D&D game in order to (hopefully) hand the reins to one of my very left-brain players, who I feel would do an excellent job of rules mastery and internally consistent world design even if said Schrödinger's DM would make a few mistakes - hey, we all do on our first attempt.
So... hiatus, I suppose?
Friday, April 1, 2016
A is for Alignment
(Thanks to Stelios for pointing out that I need a theme for the month. Okay, the theme is... Classic D&D! :D )
Law, Neutrality, and Chaos represent a character's ultimate goals. A Lawful character seeks to create and/or solidify order in a given group or society. A Chaotic character seeks to dissolve any existing order, and prevent further order from forming. A Neutral character either seeks a balance between the two, or doesn't care too strongly one way or the other.
Good, Neutrality, and Evil represent a character's reason for seeking their goals. A Good character wants to give life, liberty, and happiness to as many creatures as possible, and is altruistic. An Evil character wants to deprive creatures of the same, and might be described as power-seeking. A Neutral character wants what's best for themselves, and might include others in their goals or not.
Lawful Good: Order for the sake of security and fairness. The Paragon.
Lawful Evil: Order for the sake of personal power and control. The Machiavel.
Lawful Neutral: Order for order's sake. The Bureaucrat.
Neutral Good: Balance (or status-quo) for the sake of tranquility and contentment. The Peacekeeper.
Neutral Evil: Balance (or status-quo) for the sake of maintaining personal power and control. The Tyrant.
True Neutral: Balance (or status-quo) for its own sake, or for some mystic reason. The Independent (or The Druid).
Chaotic Good: Disorder for the sake of liberty and happiness. The Dionysian.
Chaotic Evil: Disorder for the sake of personal power. The Destroyer.
Chaotic Neutral: Disorder for disorder's sake. The Wildcard.
Some examples from fiction:
Law, Neutrality, and Chaos represent a character's ultimate goals. A Lawful character seeks to create and/or solidify order in a given group or society. A Chaotic character seeks to dissolve any existing order, and prevent further order from forming. A Neutral character either seeks a balance between the two, or doesn't care too strongly one way or the other.
Good, Neutrality, and Evil represent a character's reason for seeking their goals. A Good character wants to give life, liberty, and happiness to as many creatures as possible, and is altruistic. An Evil character wants to deprive creatures of the same, and might be described as power-seeking. A Neutral character wants what's best for themselves, and might include others in their goals or not.
Lawful Good: Order for the sake of security and fairness. The Paragon.
Lawful Evil: Order for the sake of personal power and control. The Machiavel.
Lawful Neutral: Order for order's sake. The Bureaucrat.
Neutral Good: Balance (or status-quo) for the sake of tranquility and contentment. The Peacekeeper.
Neutral Evil: Balance (or status-quo) for the sake of maintaining personal power and control. The Tyrant.
True Neutral: Balance (or status-quo) for its own sake, or for some mystic reason. The Independent (or The Druid).
Chaotic Good: Disorder for the sake of liberty and happiness. The Dionysian.
Chaotic Evil: Disorder for the sake of personal power. The Destroyer.
Chaotic Neutral: Disorder for disorder's sake. The Wildcard.
Some examples from fiction:
- Randall Flagg in The Stand is a good example of Lawful Evil. He establishes a draconian regime that militarizes against Mother Abigail's "Boulder Free Zone" (based on the events in the miniseries, I'd call them Neutral Good for the most part). His methods are extreme, but they get results, and he's able to attract a large group of people that would probably be Lawful Neutral under a more benevolent leader.
- By contrast, Flagg in The Eyes of the Dragon is Chaotic Evil. He is explicitly stated as seeking to cause chaos and bloodshed, somehow feeding off of it. Note that his methods are not necessarily crazed or random, as many tend to think of Chaotic Evil; he plans methodically, playing a long game in the hope of creating utter, violent anarchy when his machinations come to a head.
- The priests of the Temple of Syrinx (from Rush's suite 2112) might be Neutral Evil; they do want to maintain their power, and head up a hierarchy to do so, but they don't really need to create further order as they already control everything. Their destruction of the guitar seems to be motivated more by spite than by a desire to maintain the hierarchy; otherwise, their behavior might occupy a grey area between Lawful Neutral and Neutral Evil.
- The Vogons from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are extreme Lawful Neutral. Few of them seem to enjoy causing death and destruction, but they aren't bothered by it so long as it's done according to the proper procedures. Their destruction of the Earth is amoral, yes, but not malicious; Jeltz mutters "...apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all." This seems to imply that they would have happily left the humans alone if they had bothered to get down to the planning office and register a formal complaint; the hierarchy is paramount. (Side note: I wonder how strongly the Modrons were influenced by the Vogons...)
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