Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in scott_bennie's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, June 27th, 2009
8:55 pm	Someone tried to break into our house this morning at 330 AM. Woke everyone up, thumping at the front door, trying to break it down with his shoulder, moaning incoherant words punctuated with the F-Bomb. This is the first time this has happened here. A bit scary, but we called the cops. Four minutes later, two police cars showed up. The guy, a man in his late 20s wearing a fake-tuxedo T-shirt, was in the driveway staring at a parked car when they arrived. He fell to the ground, apparently trying to fake being passed out in the hopes that the police would pass him by, but they hauled him to his feet, cuffed him, and stuffed him into the back of the police cruiser. After that, I wasn't able to get to sleep. Later, I inspected damage to the house; fortunately there was none. Hopefully, he was just some guy at grad time who did too much celebrating and went to the wrong house. Also, a couple of deer appeared in our back yard. On my birthday too. This was also the first time that's happened, and I've lived here most of my 49 years; I never thought there was enough bush in the area to support deer. I wonder if it's a sign of something. :) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
6:44 pm	Michael Jackson died today. I made the mistake of going onto a bulletin board (a normally sane place) with a displayed chat window at the top of the page. There I read the following text: "Michael Jackson is dead". "Good." I quickly switched to another page. While the sentiment may be understandable, particularly given the numerous allegations that were leveled at him --which we'll probably know more about over the coming days --that does not diminish the sadness of a life that seems punctuated by equal measures of talent, self-loathing, and longings that took him into the territory of the bizarre. I can't even remotely condon what he was accused of, but I can lament the waste. Nothing to celebrate here. Keep moving. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
7:14 am	Two nights ago, Edith Bennie passed away, aged 93, in Chatham Ontario. A lovely woman with a gift for graciousness and hospitality, she was the wife of my dad's cousin, Jack; having no children of her own, she was the last of that branch of the family. Jack passed away about ten years ago, dad passed away 28 years ago, mom 4 years ago, my uncle Bob died three weeks after mom. Bob's wife Audrey passed away when I was a kid, making Edith the last of her generation of Bennies. I didn't speak to her much in recent years: once a year at Christmas, and usually once at some time mid-year to check to see if she was okay. She was alert enough to hold a conversation, though, not wanting to tax her, I tended to keep them short, shorter than I'd like. My sister, who's far better at casual chit-chat than I, held her attention longer, and she was always enthusiastic in discussing the ins and outs of family and the pleasures of Florida vacations, the beauty of the Niagara Pennisula where she lived, and the other considerable joys of her life. I'll miss Edith, but I can celebrate the fact that she had a really good life. She and Jack had a very loving marriage that lasted over fifty years, she was in great health throughout most of it, never wanted for much, and died surrounded by those who cared about her, in her own home. Thank you, God, for putting Edith Bennie in my life, and please take good care of her. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
11:57 am	Computer is down again. Screen graphics come up as garbled colors on bootup. Please let this only be a monitor problem. I can afford to replace that (ie. I have another in storage). (Comment on this)
Monday, May 11th, 2009
11:07 pm	Canucks lost. Bleh! Blech! Blah! Anyway, props to Chicago, good luck to you. I finished the Archetypes section today, and I'll be nattering away at a lot of areas tomorrow, probably focusing on characters. Generally in a poor mood. Worries about employment and money, not helped by a "no one can find work in this climate" story on the local news. (Comment on this)
Friday, May 8th, 2009
10:36 am	Architects of Change Designer's Notes Working on the Hero System version of the Archetypes section first. Sixteen new archetypes (many of which haven't been on the web site): Clothing Construction Curses* Dance* Earthquakes Farming* Friendship Hands* The Internet* Law* Passion Peacekeeper Politics* Sex* Shadows* Travel *New to the book Hopefully, a good mix of practical ones players might take, and unusual ones which will help with world building for the GM. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 4th, 2009
2:27 pm	Well I'm considering doing an update book to Gestalt, but I don't think interest is there. I've canvassed the Hero site, the Green Ronin site and the Blackwyrm site, and had a grand total of three serious responses. Part of me wants to keep going anyway, and I still might (revising "Father I" after sixteen years has been illuminating about how my writing has evolved in the years since I wrote it) -- the other part of me says to let the setting die, accept it as a failure that appealed only to a few, and move on. It's not a fun feeling. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
2:04 pm	It's been a rough week for friends. My sister's best friend after high school was a very good-natured young woman named Desire. Desi and Pat worked together at the Big Scoop, an ice cream parlour/restaurant in Clearbrook BC. I worked there as well, along with Desi's brother Tony. Tony died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 21 and Pat did her best to be there for the family. When Desire had a son, Sean, he looked up to Pat as "auntie Pat". This last week, Sean, now 21, was murdered in his car near Bateman Park in Abbotsford. According to the press, Sean had become involved as a mid-level drug dealer in the local scene, which thanks to the Bacon Brothers and the Red Scorpion gang, has become extremely violent. I don't really have the words to say how awful this is. I just learned a few minutes ago, via Lon Braidwood at RPG.NET, that my good friend Aaron Allston is now in the hospital recovering from a bypass. A genial Texan, we were drawn together by our love for Champions. Aaron edited my pulp adventure in Adventurer's Club #10 "Hands of the Strangler", and it remains one of the favorite pieces of writing with my name on it, due in no small part to Aaron's reorganization and expansion of the murder mystery section. Aaron brought me into his Champions APA, Rogue's Gallery, where I made numerous dear friends. And perhaps most importantly, when he turned down a job that Interplay offered him, Aaron recommended me in his stead, and that was enough to get me hired. My best wishes for a speedy recovery to him. And prayers also go out to Dave Arneson, a man I've always had enormous respect for, in his current health battle. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
2:03 pm	Le sigh I fixed my computer last week... I thought. Now the same issues are reoccuring after a week of use. Dagnabit. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, March 27th, 2009
10:45 pm	I Speak! Ew! I was recently interviewed by the fine folks at http://atomicarray.com/ about Gestalt. Check it out. And if you want to play the Scott Bennie drinking game, the key word is "basically". (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 16th, 2009
1:10 am	A couple of days ago, a person repped an entry I wrote on the Hero boards on Christmas 2006 defending the idea of United Nations sponsored super-agencies in comics universes. It was probably the most incidiary post I've written in the last few years, inspited by my dissatisfaction on the necessity of writing "but the UN is evil" section in Agents of Freedom. The entry was as follows: ------------ "People who cannot imagine a United Nations being significantly different in a long-established superhero universe have had their imaginations hijacked by politics. We don't insist that a man who can fly in a superhero world is absurd. We don't extrapolate that spaceflight in a superhero universe is going to be at exactly the same level as it is in ours, that NASA will make the same mistakes that it made in ours. We're quite willing to give them space planes and moonbases and big space stations and the other stuff of our dreams. Yet as soon as we get to the idea of a more cooperative world community -- bam! We hit a brick wall -- perhaps it's nationalism, perhaps it's because we pay too much attention to political yahoos and their unceasing diatribes. We assume that because diplomacy is slow, and nations naturally suspicious, and there's undeniably extensive corruption in many areas of the United Nations, that under *every* conceivable circumstance, any UN based security agency will be either unfeasible or (worse) an instrument of evil. No, a world where superhuman exemplars who regularly address the United Nations could possibly make the slightest difference in the course of events. Because UN forces are pitiably underfunded in our world, any similar agencies could never receive funding, even in a world where idealistic genius superheroes run multi-billion dollar foundations or high-tech nations and might well pursue assistance on a global scale. A world can suffer hundreds of alien invasions, but so what -- those couldn't possibly urge humanity to unite closer together. International threats like supervillains who are openly planning to conquer the globe couldn't possibly motivate nations to integrate some of their security forces against common threats. And while it's okay to nurse our space program dreams, heaven forbid that a comic writer or a role-playing game author should harbor idealistic dreams toward international cooperation -- that wacky notion of peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind, what were they thinking? -- and include them as part of a comic book or campaign world. It's okay to accept genre conventions and willingly suspend our disbelief on superpowers, but let's not do something as crazy as making genre more important than our political convictions. A man who flies only violates the laws of physics. Politics is something far more inviolate! So let's castrate UNTIL. And while we're at it, let's replace UNIT with a band of oversexed incompetents. We must be realistic! And if the pursuit of more "realism" in politics leads to things that are as wretched as Mark Millar's work in Civil War, which does as much to strip the comics of their charm as the "realistic powers" trend did back in the late 80s, well that's a small price to pay for being true and pure to what's important. Who gives a crap about Iron Man or Captain America or Reed Richards' characterizations? This trend reminds me of those leftists who can't imagine a patriotic superhero who defends the status quo being anything other than a fascist jackboot, the old Comics Journal crowd who surrendered their imaginations to the forces of their ideology. They can't imagine people or institutions being better than their worldview - and neither can "the US would never cooperate with the UN" crowd. Too damn bad for them." ----- I stand by the sentiments there (though Torchwood improved markedly in its second season), but even so, the level of sarcasm makes me cringe a lttle. Bruce Baugh posted an interesting article by Roger Eberts on snark and the culture of cynicism that I generally agreed with. However, given the lack of tesponse that my posts have received lately on some forums, I do wonder about the virtue of sarcasm in getting something heard or generating discussion. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 9th, 2009
4:36 pm	Watchman Review Watchmen (2009) d. Zack Snyder The foundation of "iron age" comics rests primarily on two masterworks: first, Frank Miller's _Dark Knight Returns_, and second, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' _Watchmen_. The latter has been considered unfilmable, at least by the persnickity Moore and some of those who've tried, like Terry Gilliam, yet the comic has made such an impact on self-confessed geeks over the last twenty years that no one's stopped trying to bring it to the silver screen. Now Zack Snyder, director of the 300, has finally done what some considered impossible: film a respectful version of the adult comic epic. It is not, however, the greatest comic book movie of all time, nor even a perfect Watchman. Adaptions live and die by their ability to cast people who fit the part. It's hard to come to up with someone who perfectly fits the zeitgeist of a popular work, someone who can satisfy the expectations of the broad spectrum of fans. Perfect casting, such as Sir Ian McKellan's Gandalf may only happen once in a lifetime. Watchman's casting is amixed bag. Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan and Jeffy Dean Morgan as the Comedian are both close to note perfect, even if the former's performance is mostly CGI and understated. Jackie Earl Hailey as Rorschach will probably be the most popular, but I found his Batman style gruffness brought a level of coolness to the role it really shouldn't possess; Rorschach is a scruffy scavenger of a man, and the "Batman-voice" works against it, though in all otnher aspects, he's excellent. Patrick Wilson's presence as Dan Dreiberg is adequate for what's essentially the show's everyman role; Matthew Goode's teutonic Ozymandius doesn't quite have the chops to pull off what's required of him. Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre is the biggest miscasting of them all; Laurie Jupiter is a fiesty (if damaged) woman who' fully capable of competing dramatically with her teammates and her mother, but Akerman comes off as bland and unimpressive. Moore's work is pretty much sacrosanct, but some of it has aged very badly. The scenes where the Comedian answers the question: "Whatever happened to the American dream?" now seems incredibly forced and stilted; likewise, the Comedian going into a diatribe about Dr. Manhattan's callousness after he murders a pregnant Vietnamese woman also feels unnatural. The midget villain at the prison, Big Figure, feels a little too over the top for the tone of the film -- it harkens back to the sort of satire one would have found in the pages of 2000 AD, Watchman's spiritual nursery, but here it's out of place. Snyder doesn't help matters by taking the violence over the top. It's appropriate for Rorschach and the Comedian, but applying the same levels to the fight scenes with Silk Spectre and Nite Owl make them seem more superhuman than they should be, at least in terms of an adaptation. To put it in RPG terms, they're stepping on another PCs' niche. It would have more effective for them not to so casually create gruesome carnage in a fight. The film abridges the work, but most of the cuts make sense. Hollis Mason's death scene is a pretty large omission, but it's not really missed. What the cuts unfortunately do -- and they're understandable, given the film's length -- is rob some of the scenes and vistas of some of the grandeur they should have had. Karnak deserved to be more than Bond villain's lair -- and Bubatis deserved better than coming into the story almost as an afterthought -- but it's not. Mars is wonderful, but a few minutes to explore that world would have made it an even richer experience. The necessity of playing to the film time is not altogether a bad thing; the film does the work an immense service by distilling the story into a more focused form than the graphic novel. The nuclear threat and the central "mask-killer" storylines feel much more visceral than their comic forms, and as a result, the film's probably more comfortable for a modern audience.The change in the ending is also an improvement, though they probably didn't need the Outer Limits reference. And Jon should have delivered the "nothing ends" line to Adrian. If the film isn't perfect, much of it is damn good. Snyder is slavish in following the original material, but the musical choices are pretty inspired, and the opening montage is effective at condensing the original backstory; even if filmgoers don't quite understand the Incredibles irony of Dollar Bill's death or recognize that the dead lady in the bed was Silhouette, it's still a good mood-setter. And, mercifully, the fight scenes don't jiggle-cam, and there' very little use of slo-motion and reverses. Given their overuse in today's genre films, those count as major triumphs. The best sequences are those involving Dr. Manhattan. Played with stately understatement by Billy Crudup, once one gets past the character's anatomical correctness, Manhattan allows Moore -- and Snyder -- to wrestle with big ideas and present themselves on a more mythic and heroic stage than the grimy noir world of Rorschach or the mundane world of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre. The Mars sequence is beautiful, and the time-jumping flashback of Manhattan's life is wonderfully realized. If the movie Superman is Jesus, then here's His Old Man; seemingly detached and mysterious, sometimes horrifically violent, and yet still caring under the facade. It's Big Blue who elevates this into a more substantial film than a standard superhero flick and we should be grateful for it, even if most of the snickering teenage boys in the audience wanted him to put on some pants. Should we watch the Watchmen? It's a glib question, but an easy one for me. Despite the unnecesary levels of violence and a few less than perfect performances, yes. It's not a perfect Watchmen or even the best adaptation of a Moore story ("V For Vendetta" blows this away), but it entertains, it honors its creators, and if it forces people to wonder about the value and worth of life in general (and humanity in particular), it's all to the good. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
2:15 pm	No Line on the Horizon, U2, 2009 One of the lessons that I’ve had to learn in rinsing some of the geeky fervor from my personality is that I don’t own the artists I love, nor the characters, stories, and other works they’ve created. So when Bono and the gang at the Last Great Band on Earth decides to go in a direction I don’t especially care for, instead of whining about it, I’ll nod and appreciate it as I can. No Line is being compared with Achtung Baby in approach (though not always in quality) and the comparison is apt. Critics who cite Achtung Baby as U2’s best, probably do so because it rocks the hardest. It’s an unquestioned masterpiece, but I always preferred The Joshua Tree by a wide margin. In particular I found the persona that Bono adopted for it, the Fly, to be insufferably obnoxious and suspect that Bono’s exploration of the persona was responsible for the band’s subseuent decline in the 90s, when they felt less like U2 and more like adjuncts to the Fly. Well, No Line on the Horizon feels like the return of the Fly, the side of Bono who’s a rocker interested more interested in play than in saving the world, particularly in songs like Stand Up Comedy, but he’s grown up now, more contemplative about his life, looking at his reflection in ATM machines and not recognizing himself. This collision between the arrogance of play and the humility of real life contributes to a feeling that No Line is a mid-life crisis of an album, where one song can trumpet about not wanting to talk about wars between nations, while other songs can be the elegiac last words of a soldier in Afghanistan or the musings of a muttering Lebanese war correspondent. Um, can you make up your mind, Bono? He can’t, and that frustration is the drama of the album. This dichotomy between themes – particularly in the middle section of the album, where Get on Your Boots is -- makes it hard to really get a grip on what U2 is trying to accomplish here, a reinvention to be sure, but into what? There are no really great melodies here (except for White as Snow, which borrows its tune from the classic Christmas carol O Come O Come Emmanuel to an amazing effect), no hint of a One or It’s A Beautiful Day or Rock On, relying on Adam Clayton’s steady bass lines to drive their songs. As it’s the melodic U2 that most captivates me, the album is as frustrating to me musically as it is thematically. Yet, there is an undeniable power to its drive, particularly in Unknown Caller and FEZ – Being Born and I wouldn’t trade those tracks for anything. If the last two albums were back to basics music designed to appeal to fans like me and frustrate those who prefer Achtung Baby to the Joshua Tree, No Line is largely the sound of Bono giving me the proverbial middle finger and doing what he wants, and daring me to spit or let go. Unlike Zooropa or Pop, I’m not taking the dare. I’m not “in the sound” that Bono so desperately strives for in “Get on Your Boots”, but I’m not kicking him off my lawn either. Speaking as one man in an ongoing middle life crisis to another, I can wink at Bono and wish him luck in his reinvention – and pray we don’t get another musical breakdown in subsequent albums as we did after Achtung Baby. However the future will take care of itself, for now, U2 is both a good listen and a challenge, and how many thirty year old bands can boast of that in today’s musical world? (Comment on this)
Friday, June 27th, 2008
8:25 pm	Now in my annual post-birthday funk. It's not a fun place to be, but we'll live with it. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 5th, 2008
12:33 am	Feeling funky... And not in a good way. Worried about the future, worried about health... you know the drill. (Comment on this)
Friday, April 11th, 2008
10:38 pm	[BSG] Season 4 I haven't watched the new season of BSG yet. I realize I haven't not because of the quality of the show, but because I'll be drawn to fan forums if I do, and last year the fan opinion of BSG and Heroes was so much at variance with my own that I don't want to give myself over to the enthusiasm vampires again. Sigh. (Comment on this)
Friday, April 4th, 2008
8:50 am	[NHL] Oh NO! Someone Was Wrong on the Internet, So I Had to Post This at 1 AM! Last night -- heartbreak again. The battered and beaten Canucks couldn't put together a stretch drive. Naturally the fans came down on Naslund, who I thought gave some truly courageous performances in this last ten or so games. Anyways, here's a response to a post on a different forum: -------------- I'm with you on this Jim. No, we didn't get his A-game all of the time this year. We haven't consistently since... well, the Moore incident. However -- with the exception of those who have been conditioned by the Team 1040 whiner call-in squad -- you could see him giving his all, this game and every game over the last stretch. Little girls don't throw checks on Jarome Iginla. Little girls don't have two Oilers cross-check them from behind when they go to the net, as we saw tonight. He's the team's all-time leading scorer. Okay, he's not worth his current salary. A lot of players, including some who are even pricier than Markus, didn't meet the expectations warranted by their salaries. Unlike some of them, Markus earned that contract. People seem to forget that he cut down his salary demands years ago to afford to help the team out during the West Coast Express era; I don't begrudge thar he got repaid for it. He's not the flashiest player, nor the most eloquent. However, among his peers, he's one of the most respected in the league, If you think NHL players tespect "little girls", you don't know hockey players. You don't need to run off at the mouth or give great media sound bites to have passion. People criticize captains in every major hockey market. I've seen Avs fans go aftet Sakic, Flames fans go after Iginla, and everyone's seen what Sundin's gone through in Toronto, They're insane, but bad stretches and missed playoffs make fans say stupid things. They seem to think the letter "C" on their chest is a letter "S". If Markus is going, and it seems likely, he deserves to go out with a little more resoect. No, he didn't win us the Cup, or take us to the finals like Trevor and Pavel did in '94. On the other hand, he led our team to divsion titles, good (if heartbreaking) playoff runs and scored plenty of pretty and clutch goals. He deserved to win the Hart in 2003. There are only a handful of people who have ever worn the jersey whom I'd say were better players (at least as long as they wore our uniform). I'm as disappointed as anyone over the Canucks' failure to make the playoffs this year, and hope we make some major changes in the off-season. That won't stop me from appreciating what Markus has done for this club, and wishing him well regardless of what happens to him. Same goes for Trevor, of course, The same goes for Morrison, if he doesn't come back. If I were to ostracize every player who ever underperformed, or didn't win us a Cup, I wouldn't be a Canucks fan. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 31st, 2008
10:02 am	[Gaming] What Ifn't The last of the old columns. I'll have to come up with new ones for the May sweeps. ----------- What Ifn’t? I’m sure if you’ve been around Internet or message boards, APAs, or your average game convention, you’ll get a chance to listen to the Mouth of God. The Mouth of God is a GM with delusions of grandeur. He builds worlds. Loudly. He has built his own campaign world, and he’s damn proud of it. He’ll proclaim its features to anyone who’ll listen. And did I mention he’s very loud about it too? And he tears apart any published world: the more popular the better. And he likes to trumpet how his world doesn’t do all those bloated munchkin things that the published world he despises does. In fantasy worlds, his pantheon is much more logical, his geography is much more realistic, he has a campaign history which (unlike that other world) is much more consistent… well you know the drill. All of these ambitions are great and noble things, and excellence in such details is something to which all world-builders should aspire. However, when you strip away the technical aspirations of most of these realized Mouth of God worlds, what are you left with? You’re left with something which satisfies the need of the individual campaign, a developed world of which the creator can be proud, but it’s not usually all that much different than the stuff that’s been sold commercially at some point in the hobby’s history. And while I can’t in good conscience attack someone for being creative, the majority of original campaign worlds I’ve heard about just don’t strike me as all that great. The classic era of science fiction was based around a single question – “What if”? It’s a great question. It opens the imagination to the worlds of the possible. It demands revolutionary, not reactionary thinking (and if I could say the words “out of the box” without retching, I’d say it demands “out of the box” thinking). Unfortunately, it’s not a question that gets asked a lot today; we greatly prefer the question “what ifn’t?”. Y’know, “What if this thing was not like something else?” (Okay, “ifn’t” isn’t a word, but as long as you get the drift, the lexicon police can get stuffed). “What ifn’t” isn’t concerned with new or original ideas, rather, it reacts to old ones. “What ifn’t” doesn’t create new worlds and new characters – it writes endless amounts of fanfic to correct someone else’s “mistakes”. “What ifn’t” doesn’t discover breathtaking new genres – it tinkers with the old. “What ifn’t” doesn’t look for the holy grail – it finds its favorite cup and polishes it endlessly (although it never gets shiny enough to satisfy it) and then complains that the holy grail isn’t out there. How’d this all come up? Well, lately I’ve made the mistake of reading Internet message boards, particularly reviews of Kingdoms of Kalamar and the Forgotten Realms Campaign System (revamped for 3e). I haven’t seen the Kingdoms of Kalamar book yet, but I’ve been reading a lot of reviews and fan accolades, and it strikes me as the appeal of the setting to its fans is the “what ifn’t” factor – bluntly, that it’s not the Forgotten Realms. And their advocates are very proud it’s not the Forgotten Realms – in fact, they’re gleeful about it, like little goblins dancing in a circle surrounding some poor sod who’s tied to a flaming stake. And that’s all very nice, except we’ve already had other “what ifn’t”s to contrast against the Realms (Living Greyhawk, Birthright) and I’ve yet to see any of Kalamar’s champions come up with comparisons against those worlds. Maybe there’s something compelling about Kingdoms of Kalamar that its advocates haven’t mentioned. Or maybe Kalamar is merely a momentary spark in the eyes of this hobby’s reactionaries, destined to be confined to the dustbins and e-bay dollar sales when the next Great Non-Big-Bad-World Hope comes trundling into town. When I think about the great RPG worlds, the true gifts to the hobby, I think of worlds that were trying to achieve more than just “we’re not Greyhawk or the Realms”. Neither Tekumel nor Glorantha were “what ifn’t” worlds, they were “what ifs”. Would someone kindly show me the “what ifn’t” gaming world that is more creative than either of those? Perhaps these worlds, developed in the pre-Cambrian age of gaming, benefited creatively from not being exposed to a large number of developed campaign worlds (not to mention they were developed as worlds first and then adapted to gaming, rather than being worlds designed for the constraints of a game system and described through the filter of game mechanics). Now there’s going to be a certain degree of “what ifn’t” involved in any creative endeavor where there’s a large body of work to draw from, as designing an RPG in a complete vacuum is impossible for anyone exposed to the industry. Outrage is a great source of passionate energy, and the perceived wrongness of an unjustly popular world is something that generates the creative fervor needed to actually create a detailed campaign world. One look at Elminster’s “munchkin” stats, and get mad, put on our game face, and storm the word processor, but once you’ve created that world without an Elminster, what then? If you’re going to commercialize your work, or even boast about it, then the final product needs to be significantly better than the works that are being railed against. With the d20 system at its current popularity, and .pdfs as accessible as they are, we have a chance to build and distribute a large number of original fantasy worlds. But unless we stop trying to niggle over what we perceive as other people’s flaws and spend more time on innovative concepts and original visions, we aren’t going to advance the state of world-building, and eventually we’ll trap ourselves in a generic ghetto. Twenty generic “what ifn’t” d20 worlds cannot compete without doing damage to the hobby (and I’m not talking about commercial damage). Instead of asking “is this unlike the uncool thing?”, try looking yourself in the mirror and asking that simple but hard-to-face question “is this cool”? If the Realms or Greyhawk or Riftworld or the Champions Universe or whatever you’re railing against didn’t exist, would this world be worth anyone’s time? If you feel you need to make comparisons, have the courage to pick something that it isn’t a straw man. Don’t just pick a fairly generic D&D world like the Realms or Greyhawk, boast loudly that “my world’s got a lower power level, therefore it’s cooler”, and pat yourself on the back for being less of a munchkin. It’s been done before. Don’t pat yourself on the back because “my elves aren’t Tolkien” – that’s been done before too. Ask yourself some hard questions. Is your mythology better than Glorantha? Is your world’s economics better than Harn? Is its history better than Tekumel? Is it more creative than Icfrom? Do your cities have as many plot hooks as the old Judge’s Guild’s City State (or Al Amarja)? Does it have as much of a sense of wonder as the world of Feng Shui? Are its NPCs as good as characters in the best fantasy fiction? Show me a world that “what ifn’t”s those worlds, that does most of it better than those, and you can sign me up as a customer right now. And I’ll even preach for you to anyone who’ll listen. The Mouths of God probably isn’t interested in answering those questions, or answering to standards of excellence set by products that aren’t on their immediate radar. Many of them probably could care less about anything that doesn’t fit into their agenda, their crusade. They only want to find the things that annoy them, destroy them, then move onto the next annoying thing. And the next thing, and the next, and the next. The more they destroy, the louder they get; the more popular the thing they target, the louder they get. For, to paraphrase Pink Floyd, noisy desperation is the modern way. (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
6:53 pm	[Personal] These Feets Were Made For Walking I received some good news yesterdday. As I mentioned, I had an Indium scan done a week and a half ago to check the foot for bone infection. That came iback negative. The burns are healing quickly, the other wound is healing more slowly but there's finally progress -- and the doctor's taking me off antibiotics, which I've been taking for 2 1/.2 months and which have done a real number on my system, I'll see a podiatrist next month to develop some strategies for foot care, so hopefully we can keep them healthy. So thank you for praying, and praise God for answering! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
4:21 am	[Christian] Christmas and Easter It's become fashionable in Christian circles to slam Christmas at the expense of Easter. Easter is brief (at least in the Protestant tradition), quieter, and holier: a time that's dedicated almost exclusively to faith. In contrast, Christmas is long, stressful, and infected with the noise and values of the secular world. Christmas celebrates the beginning of Christ's story. Easter celebrates the climax. Christ's birth is a very small part of the NT. Christ's death is a substantial part of all four gospels. I'm going to speak from a different perspective. The fact that Christmas is long, stressful, and challenging is its strength. Easter is easy. Easter is the Gift from God. Easter is when we hold our hands and, undeservedly or not, receive our portion from our Creator, the portion of Grace. For orthodox Christians, that's powerful. That's beautiful. However, if Christmas is the beginning of Christ's story, then Easter is only the beginning of ours. The famous love chapter of 1 Corinthians says that " if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." Love is genuine only when it is tested, otherwise it's infatuation. Love is tested not in the time when we are on our knees in tranquil supplication, instead love is tested in times of stress, times when we don't get a chance to put on our makeup or catch our breath, times when we are called to live to the highest ideal and must struggle as hard as we can to do so. Christmas, where we have to share the season with rude unbelievers, crass commercialism, and a press on our time and credit cards (a strange way to celebrate the already elusive ideal of "peace on Earth") is about as stressful and as testing as it gets. Christmas is a season where we are called to love, even though the world makes it extremely difficult. Is there anything more Christ-like than that? Of course we are called to love at all times. I'm sure many wonder whether Christmas ie even necessary. Hpwever, we might ask the same question about Easter. Are we not also called to remember Christ's sacrifice whenever we take communion, and with equal reverence and circumspection as the Holy Week? Many point out that Christmas is non-Biblical. This is true. However, by the same token, do we really need to link our festival of remembrance to a Jewish custom and make a special time of what should be a far more frequent event? (Communion is Biblical; Easter, though a very early church tradition, is not.) We know of Christians who only celebrate their faith only once a year, at Christmas, and some would blame the season for facilitating such seeming hypocrasy. However, is the twice a year Christmas/Easter Christian any less hypocritical? It's clear that neither holiday is *necessary* for the Christian's life journey. However, I do not advocate their abrogation. Tradition aside, both holidays provide wonderful opportunities to reflect on our Savior, who He was, what He represents, and to practice what He preached. They remind us of our historic roots. Christmas bespeaks our childhood memory, but also the Judea of Herod the Great. Easter takes us back to the time of the Old Testament and the time of the Exodus. It is good to remember each of these. Because I am a contrary creature, and because my childhood memories of Christmas are warm, I'll happily champion that season, which is becoming (if not maligned in some Christian circles) unfairly characterized. Both holidays, when infused with God's spirit, are good and Holy. May your Easter, your Christmas, and all the days in-between be pleasing to the Lamb who was set apart for us. May you live in the ideals of both days in all days. The important thing is not how you celebrate the holiday, but how you act on the days that follow. That's the real celebration. (Comment on this)