I’m delaying my game-system flavor post again due to overexcitement. You see, I finished Old Man’s War yesterday and I just had to share my thoughts with you. In case you were wondering, I also started Old Man’s War yesterday. What can I say about this book that hasn’t already been better put by Cory Doctorow and Ken MacLeod? I suppose I’ll start with, “I was silly not to read this ages ago, because it’s really damn good.”
Seriously, this book has been sitting on my reading list for years, ever since my brother Nate suggested that I should read it soon after it came out in 2005. At the time, I had no idea who John Scalzi was or why I should like his work, and the title and concept simply didn’t grab me. Apart from the prodigious numbers of recommendations I had received telling me to read the book (and my growing infatuation with Scalzi’s writing), not that much had changed as of yesterday. Then I opened the book and read the first few pages, and boom, I was gone.
I really should have expected that something like this would happen again, given how I felt about Agent to the Stars and Redshirts, but I was once more taken by surprise and pulled right into the deep end. I barely came up for air, and dove through the book in the course of several hours. The short take? Read it. My more considered opinion? Read on…
Ok, so I was planning to post a piece today on game-system flavors, but then I just kept writing and writing. It turns out that that piece is going to be a bit longer than I’d anticipated. Instead, I’ll give you an easy one: Cordelia’s Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Ostensibly the first set of stories in the long Vorkosigan series, I came to this book only after I’d already read a number of the other stories. I feel that I benefited from the prior experience, and would recommend that you start elsewhere as well. Not because the stories in Cordelia’s Honor are in any way bad, but because some parts of them are harder to engage with when you don’t already know and like some of the characters. I feel like I had a deeper understanding and appreciation for the characters that I met because it wasn’t the first time that I’d met them, even though the events that I read about were obviously happening long before anything else that I already knew about.
My quick opinion before I get deeper into talking about the book? Read it. In fact, read all the Vorkosigan books. They are very hard to put down once you start, but at least they come in manageable, more or less bite-sized chunks.
I’ve been lax in my duties to this blog. My apologies. I should have explained further with my post last week: I’m in Portland, Oregon, and on Monday I spent all day running my Call of Cthulhu game for a number of fellow Reedies. Today I’ll be co-teaching a stage combat class, and Saturday will see a second run of the same scenario from Monday.
I’m afraid that all means that I won’t have new material for you this week apart from this apology. On the plus side, I finally cast my eyes upon RimWorld, a fascinating base-building simulation with an AI-managed event-engine that I’m itching to get my hands on and tell you about (yes, I want to tell you about the event engine, follow that link and read about it). I’m also moving ever closer to having a complete version of my Call of Cthulhu scenario, though I’m not yet certain whether my most recent alterations are progress or regression. Either way, I’ll be back here to bother you about cool stories, games, and story games next week.
I’m busy getting ready to run the seventh iteration of my Call of Cthulhu scenario, Temple in the Sands, and I probably won’t have anything for you this Wednesday due to traveling. But last weekend I had the chance to play a game of Shadowrun again, something I don’t often have an opportunity to do. I had a good time, but I think I realized why it was that I play it so infrequently; Shadowrun looks like a chore and a half to run when compared with all the other RPGs that I play.
Shadowrun reminds me a bit of a glamorous ass. You know what I’m talking about: one of those people with so much style, and with so many good stories told about them, that you forget just how frustrating they can be in person. If you spend enough time hanging around them the aggravation (mostly) disappears into the background noise, but there’s a lot of settling in and acclimatizing that you have to do first. And every so often (usually right in the middle of something that is pretty cool) you get a reminder of why you thought the person was an ass in the first place. But because it’s so glamorous, because it’s practically oozing cool, I keep wanting to come back to it like the sucker I am. I can explain, I swear. Continue reading →
I sure did say a lot of mean things about Dominions 3 when I wrote about it last time. I finished on a positive note, to be sure, but if you didn’t read that last bit it might have looked like very mild hate mail rather than an admission of my affections. I won’t take those comments back (I still think they’re true, confirmed through further play), but I do have a few other thoughts to add. First of all, giving me a copy of this game for Christmas is both wonderful and somewhat mean. Secondly, I’m (not so) secretly in love with the game’s manual. Third… well, my third thought is that the game is far more captivating than I had realized that it would be from my time as a spectator.
I hear you like adventures. How about books that come complete with steam, airships, weird science, and doomsday devices? Frank Chadwick’s new book The Forever Engine delivers action and adventure with all of those things, and good characters too. Even better, the story follows an active style very similar to what I’ve come to expect from John Ringo, but without the moments that make you want to yell “Oh John Ringo, no!” The main characters are competent, sometimes preposterously so, but they generally feel like whole people in a way that happens less often in action/adventure stories. Already sold? Go read the book! If you’re not quite convinced, try reading a little more…
Here’s an abbreviated dungeon-starter for Dungeon World, building somewhat on the material that I came up with for The Duke’s Men. Agenda, Goals, and Dungeon Moves are at the top as per usual. This is mostly focused on cultists and such, as the game itself was, but the basic storyline offered in my previous post could easily be altered to deal with any number of different kinds of threats.
I’m sorry, but this post will have spoilers. If you haven’t read Lord of the Rings by now, I can’t be held accountable. They are public domain now, metaphorically, and I will talk about them freely. We all know Darth Vader is Luke’s father, we all know King Kong dies at the end, and we all know Frodo takes the ring to Mordor.
I haven’t been able to put my finger on it for a long time, but there’s something that has disappointed me about The Hobbit’s movie interpretation, under Peter Jackson. This isn’t the “it’s not the book, so I don’t like it” mindset. I know what that’s like. Tolkien and his work were defining, both to the genre and to my young mind. When Lord of the Rings came out, everything about it disappointed me: the exception of Tom Bombadil and Saruman’s scenes in the Shire, the changes to the gates of Moria scene, and so on. Even when the movie perfectly mirrored the book for the first 10 minutes, I held it up only as a sign that I was about to be disappointed.
But I enjoyed the movies. I never once was at any threat of falling asleep. When Legolas stabbed an orc with an arrow, sure, part of my brain said “you can’t stab an orc with an arrow”, but most of it said “DUDE, DID YOU SEE LEGOLAS STAB THAT ORC WITH AN ARROW?” When Gandalf stood up to confront the Balrog, my heart rose up into my throat with suspense: would he survive? When Frodo was seemingly killed by a troll, my pulse jumped, even though I knew the mithril reveal was coming. When Boromir was shot full of arrows, my internal monologue screamed: no Boromir! Get up! You can do it! I could literally do this all day, because Lord of the Rings was a well designed movie. It had drama, it had pacing, it had a tone, and it was real. Did I like everything about it? No. Was I disappointed with my vision of the book as a rubric? Yes. But it was good.
The Hobbit has none of these. The Hobbit is a different book than Lord of the Rings. While The Lord of the Rings was inspired by Tolkien’s experience in World War I, and you can see it everywhere. Ultimately, Lord of the Rings is about the suffering that war brings on all people, but especially on those who are not the heroes. The commonfolk, the hobbits, have to simply soldier on in the face of insurmountable forces. It is epic and serious and grim. The Hobbit, on the other hand, is a children’s adventure book, with a lighter tone, more whimsical enemies, and a very fantastic, simplistic quest: find the dragon’s treasure. There are no earthshaking consequences, just an adventure.
In the very first chapter of The Hobbit, Bilbo begins worrying about the dwarves in his house: not why they are there, not about his potential adventure, not even about the dragon, but whether or not they will chip his plates. To one who is familiar with fantasy, this may seem a silly worry, but this is the tone of The Hobbit. Bilbo literally cannot comprehend the idea of his adventure, and so he focuses on what is real to him, the plates. Many viewers have fixed on this particular scene from The Hobbit as something they particularly hate:
But it is exactly this scene which sets the tone for his adventure. Bilbo is a reluctant adventurer, and what he brings to the adventure — the very reason why Gandalf wants him on the adventure — is his sense of quiet responsibility and attention to details and consequences. On the other hand, the dwarves are basically mocking him for focusing on something so unimportant given the context.
A scene later and we have the famous troll scene, with dwarves tied up and who has to save them? Why, who else could keep the trolls distracted until sunrise but Gand — Bilbo? It is here where we first see Peter Jackson’s inability to understand the themes of The Hobbit — although it’s not the first time he’s committed this crime of stealing Gandalf’s credit and giving it to a hobbit; he had Frodo solve the gate of Moria riddle as well — Bilbo at this point is not an agent in his own adventure, but rather an experiencer.
After their capture by and escape from the goblins, when Bilbo emerges from the Misty Mountains with the ring, the dwarves — in the book — are considering leaving him, whilst in the movie they are mourning him. Yet again, this sets the tone difference. Bilbo is not a protagonist, at least not yet. They continue running — as a group — from the goblins until the giant Eagles rescue them.
And there you have it: that’s the whole of movie #1 of The Hobbit. No need for Ratagast scenes to sec the background, no need to actually foreshadow Sauron, no need for any of the epic backdrop that Peter Jackson attempts to instill upon The Hobbit. This is precisely the cause of the 3-part nature of The Hobbit movies: the attempt to make something epic out of something that is simply put, just an adventure. The dwarves cannot simply float into Laketown, they must be brought in by the descendant of the archer who is destined to kill Smaug, while simultaneously being oppressed by an evil king. The Dwarves can’t be looking for gold, but instead, just the Arkenstone (although it should be noted in the book that Thorin is fixated on the Arkenstone in a way that the three Hobbits are fixated on The Ring, a clear sign for Tolkien’s belief that power corrupts).
It is all this that made The Hobbit so much more interesting than other fantasy novels: it was never about destiny, or only one person. It was about small, unimportant people making brave choices. Thorin is not the hero because he is the descendant of the king, but instead, Bilbo is the hero by his choices. Bard doesn’t need to be the descendant of a legendary archer, he is just simple captain of the guard, and so on. Peter Jackon’s rendition loses this low-born, everyman’s quality to The Hobbit, and replaces it with an overly epic interpretation.
But the overly epic also overcomes the very tone of the novel. The Hobbit is a children’s book, with bad jokes, silly villains, and is essentially a kid’s adventure. There are moments where this childlike comedy pops through, such as the video above, the barrel scene, the trolls and goblin’s nature, and so on, but then it is immediately replaced with an epic and serious scene that leaves you wondering which tone is out of place.
Overall, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit fails to deliver a coherent movie in tone, and imposes themes onto the book that were never present, leaving an all-around awkward patchwork. This, combined with his penchant for drawing every scene out 30 minutes longer than it ever need to be, makes The Hobbit a movie to be slogged through, not enjoyed.
A few days ago, I ran a game of DungeonWorld for two of my friends. It went so well, and ended up feeling so much like a classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure, that I thought I would share the basics of the game with you. It’s somewhere between an actual play and a scenario description. I’ll put up an honest-to-goodness Dungeon-starter soon, and with a little creativity you should have an easy time converting it into your own single- or double-episode game.
We didn’t look too closely at the backstories of our heroes, but please allow me to introduce you to the adventures of Kate the thief and Jonah the ranger (and Jonah’s wolfhound, Erasmus), the loyal representatives of Duke Blackforest. What follows should allow you to live out their adventures for yourself, or change things slightly and experience the adventure anew with other people.
I read this book in halting installments; not because I couldn’t get through it quickly, but because I read each section as it became available, starting two months before its ostensible publishing date. I don’t know whether that says more about the book or about my love for the series started by Eric Flint‘s 1632. I can say that I would certainly recommend this one to anyone else who has enjoyed the previous books in the series. Read on past the break to find my more nuanced thoughts on Iver Cooper‘s 1636: Seas of Fortune.
Fistful of Wits 