Mar 9th
Exercise: Haven’t been to the gym but once in the last week. Need to change that. When I go to the gym, I’m motivated to do more, make more gains, eat less bullshit, keep on the game. Got caught up in a cycle at work where I was tired, so I didn’t go to the gym, so I ate crap, and became tired, so I didn’t go to the gym… Going again tonight. Even a few minutes makes a huge difference.
BIG-XX this Fall: Looking forward to it. I didn’t go to my high school(s) reunions, college reunions, but damn I won’t miss my social group’s reunion. I hear the campus has changed a lot, will have to see that with my own head-orbs…
Spring is Here: I can tell because I have a sore throat and my nose won’t stop running.
Investing: The next game is getting an account at options.scottrade.com, and start applying what I’ve been learning about Diagonal and Vertical Spreads. Low-risk calls making 10-25% a month? (30% if I’m more aggressive, risky?) Yes, please. I turned $2500 into $10,000+ last year as a hobby/messing around, I wonder what I can do this year starting with that 10k… Only problem is that these take more research and control than regular options trades, so I have to be that much more careful.
Gaming: Been a slow month. Haven’t done actual role-playing games in a few weeks, as my main group has been between campaigns, playing Rock Band, boardgames and the like. Tomorrow we start up with Mouseguard, and will go from there…
Robot Unicorn Attack is far more fun that it should be at a glance. Very addictive. Also, Erasure. Woah.
The Wii Life, Monday thoughts
Mar 2nd
*Thanks to Mark C, been a busy beaver. Well, an unbusy beaver with things I should be working on, but busy with leisure:
** Fatal Frame 4: CLEARED. This game is not coming out into English because Nintendo is stupid: They are forcing TECMO to implement some sort of changes or bugfixes that TECMO doesn’t have the money to do, and thus everyone loses. And yet, while the game was overall pretty ok (gameplay) to great (story), it could be that Nintendo is protecting western audiences from the MOST ANNOYING BOSS BATTLE IN YEARS.
** Oboro Muramasa: The Demon Blade: Cleared 3 of 6 endings, watched the other three on Youtube. Incredible game. If you’re learning Japanese, this game is basically Level 10 of your learning cycle. It is endless awesome of middle-ages spoken royal grammar, with both keigo and low speech cranked up to “11″, and tooooons of references to classic Buddhist references: Various Boddhisotvas (Acala/Fudoh-Myou-oh? Shinra-Bansho/The Universe? Sweet). It’s 3 kin of Japanese culture in a 380 monme bag.
** Fragile/Goodbye Ruins of the Moon: I mentioned before that this is like a Feelgood Anime Fallout 3. Gotta revise that: It is better described as “Sorrow and Loneliness: The Roleplaying Game”. If you like unique experiences in console games, you GOTTA check this game out. Admittedly, there’s some boring bits with long empty hallways, and the inventory system is a little shady at times in the length of menu switch times, etc. But overall: Holy crap, got choked up a few times.
Why? We don’t know what the incident is, the game doesn’t talk about it at all and is likely not to. But at some point most of humanity dies, billions and billions of people. And the thing is, they all knew it was coming and had time to prepare themselves. So you encounter these artifacts, toys and books and items and stuff, and when you pick them up you hear the story of their owners: Abstract pictures appear while the narrator tells a small story:
- A wedding ring. A father in law talks to his daughter in law, welcoming her into their family. Later, you find another item where it’s the father in law railing about the sorrow that his son and new daughter will never have a chance.
- A dog collar. The dog narrates, licking his master’s face as he cries.
- A school class picture, and a kid laments that he loves those school days, and is afraid of dying alone.
It’s a very similar overall theme to Fallout 3, but man the emotional punch this game packs is both brutal and exhilarating, far more than Fallout. It’s hard to reconcile that with the fact that the game looks and feels so anime sickly-sweet.
Anyway, I count it as a *must-play*. If you’re into light console RPGs. And gut-punching sorrow.
If you were interested in the teaching power of manga/comics, watch this…
Feb 24th
So this show called “imagine-nation” is running in Japan: It’s a show in English about mostly “otaku-y” stuff like manga and video games, interviews with artists and producers, etc.
This time, they have a huge interview with Saibara Rieko. Who is hands-down my absolute favorite manga artist in Japan. I’ve been a fan of hers every since I saw her stuff back in 1998 in Tokyo Walker, and her “Chicken Head Travel Journal” manga series about her travels all over 3rd world asia. She does awesome things, then uses manga (and often interjects real photographs as well as a kind of “Scrapbook”) to describe those events.
Here’s a lengthy Japan Times article about her, including translations of some of her manga.
I was flat-out shocked that someone did a piece on her: Even though she’s really popular with adults in Japan, she has absolutely zero “otaku power/cred”. NOTHING. Her drawings are cheap and sweet and often terribly offensive, her journeys through south asia and south america are incredible and interesting and full of cool vignettes but nothing about Akihabara or panty shots or mecha. None of her works are becoming (or can become) anime, so no one will ever hear of her in America, which is a total fucking shame.
Anyway, after reading her unique comic style I pretty much became obsessed with this kind of “travel journey” manga, and even saw the format replicated in RPG-themed actual play manga as well. In fact, I’ve kinda waffled on doing my own slice-of-life/journey manga about stuff that I did in Japan, or stuff that happened at work or the like.
Anyway, Saibara Rieko: Awesome. Adventurous. Tumultuous. And an explorer of using manga in totally new ways.
Here’s a link to the d-addicts torrent post: http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_82786.htm
Here’s a direct link to the torrent file: http://torcache.com/torrent/8038072E8EB14D13B08E680015B97424CF5CE3C3.torrent
Japanese Fantasy RPGs, A Brief History of Disappointment
Feb 17th
So I’m aiming to at one point run a medium-length Dungeons and Dragons 3/3.5e game set in a fantasical asian-themed setting using the excellent E6 hack (max character level = 6) by Ryan S. To that end, I picked up the Rokugan sourcebook for about $2 at some sale or other, and recently finally acquired the Oriental Adventures handbook for 3e as well.
I earlier ran a modified Legend of the Five Rings game, removing some aspects of the setting I didn’t like, and adding others in (namely religion, and names that don’t sound dumb). It worked ok, but since it was based on L5R’s d10-pool system, combat had no real tactical crunch: It all comes down to “roll some dice, look for “10s”; if you don’t have at least one 10, you fail (as all the PCs were “from the Crab clan”, they have these outrageous armor bonuses and the like).
So I thought about using D&D 4e: Soon in the PHB3 there will be Samurai and “Oriental” (yeah, I said it because I mean it) classes and rules hacks (“Ki!”) and the like. However, my experiences with 4e have been mixed between “better than OK” to “man, combat is *awesome*, but anything that isn’t combat feels contrived and silly”. I’m still gonna get Dark Sun when it’s released, and it’s idea of Kit-style “bolt-on/template classes” is exactly what I think a “Samurai” or “Ninja” needs to be. But honestly, core 4e supports orientalized-Japan pretty well: Tough warriors, samurai, mountain bushi are Fighters. Glamorous or skilled swordsmen are Rangers (with 2-weapon style, but simply have them fight with one katana simply making 2 attacks with it). Ninjas are Rogues. Taoist Sorcerers (Onmyoji) can be Wizards, Sorcerers or Warlocks depending on how you describe your character. And so on.
Anyway, since I’ve had a lot of luck running and playing 3e with the E6 hack, I figured I’d take a stab at buying the 3e Oriental Adventures/Rokugan material, and hacking it into something that I think could be some awesome Japanese-themed fantasy.
So I was reading through it last night, and man while I still think the core conceits of the Rokugan/L5R setting are pretty cool, there’s still a lot of just plain can’t-get-around-it *stinky* in there. I can’t work with this stuff. A lot of OA is recycled crap from 1st edition that didn’t work then.
Anyway, It started my mind chugging along, though. A hack. Oh yes, a hack. Possibly D&D 3.5e with some modifications, ruleswise. But more importantly, a setting hack: Something that feels a bit historic, a lot fantastic, builds off of core Japan/Chinese myth but evolves it as well.
The main inspirations for this direction were the anime 12 Kingdoms (classical Chinese monsters, basically giant normal animals, made scary; plus, all that culture); the Wii video game I’m playing now called Oboro Muramasa, which incidentally is awesome; and elements that rang true from my last L5R campaign. There’s definitely some Tenra Bansho Zero influence in there (it’s hard to distinguish anymore which parts of my inspiration were lifted from TBZ and which ones weren’t), but I was thinking something that was more fantastical, less extreme…
This is a project which I’ll engage in after TBZ is done from my end, but I’ve come up with a foundation and guidelines:
* Genuine setting material, complete with unique lands and people.
* No “non-human” characters, or at least very few (“spirit folk” would be about it).
* Rules for combat: 3e/4e/burning wheel-style tactics, not L5R style “stand toe to toe, roll a bunch of dice and get high numbers until the other guy falls over”
* Rules for social stuff: Unknown.
* Rules for CULTURE. This was a point of inspiration last night. GUMSHOE/Trail of Cthulhu style culture skills (instead of investigation skills); including things like Calligraphy, tea ceremony, painting, haiku/composition, music/instrument, yuujyou/makura-jutsu/”pillow arts”, buddhist/sutra lore, shinto lore, cooking, war history, craftsmanship, and so on. Every adventure would involve one or more of the above, and when the appropriate culture element came up, the person with that skill on their sheet (every member of the group would have at least one of these in a small amount) would step forward and strut their stuff, getting the clue, talking to the lord (“Oh, your tea ceremony style is unconventional! Please, show me again how you do that…”), and so on. While seeming to require its own system, this hack can easily be grafted into classic 3e/4e.
* Monsters: Monsters are cool and fun to hunt and defeat. Unfortunately, every attempt at western RPGs bringing in Japanese-themed monsters has failed IMO. Either they use stuff that doesn’t make sense (Rakshasa), or they use stuff straight out of the Japanese lore-book: Which might have been scary 300 years ago, but by our modern standards sounds lame or dumb (“a woman with a LONG NECK, OH SHIT!!!” “a WALL SEGMENT that is REALLY REALLY WET!!!” “An umbrella, but it’s one one eye and one leg and it hops around!!!” “A wooden wheel, on fire, with a mouth on it OMG!”). Every game I’ve seen, from D&D to Sengoku to L5R has basically taken these monsters, kept them as-is, and stapled hit points on them. I thought for a time that there was nothing to be done about this, but Awesome Video Games proved that wrong:
- Ookami re-invents classical monsters in a really stylized, cool form.
- Oboro Muramasa does the same, and on top of that it also creates a new type of monster that both pulls from classical mythology but layers modern sensibilities on top of it. THIS was the true visual inspiration that told me “This can be done: It is possible to create new monsters for a Japanese-themed fantasy game, keep them rooted in the classical mythology, but reinvent them so that they are scary and cool and not just archaic and lame-sounding.” For example:
Anyway, just some thoughts that were rolling around in my head. I’ll be digging deeper once TBZ is done. Likely this will turn into an open setting project compatible with any game, with stats for a few.
-Andy
Checking out the Wii…
Feb 15th
So, Mark C lent me his Wii for a bit, with a big pile o games to check out. Here’s some quick impressions of some games I’ve been playing with:
Fragile: Imagine this: Someone wants to make a Japanese version of Fallout 3 into a heartwarming anime-like experience. As weird as that sounds, that’s exactly what Fragile feels like. It’s creepy as hell, Tokyo is in shattered ruins, but you help ghosts find the afterlife in a heartwarming way (but the lead up to them screams “they died horribly, in terrible sadness and pain”). It’s very weird, and extremely cool thus far.
Zero (aka Fatal Frame) 4: OK, I’m hooked. Unfortunately, they couldn’t design a Wii interface for crap: It uses nothing at all “Wii-like”: The Motion Controller only registers “up and down”. So when you look around or use your camera, you have to use the nunchuk to steer left and right, and the motion controller to do up and down. They really should have just included a PS2 controller, because that’s all it is just split up over the Wii. Story so far is good, and sufficiently creepy.
Silent Hill – Shattered Memories: I like what they’re trying to do, but the run-away scenes involve too much waggling. I’ll probably pick it up on sale on the PS2 (where, to throw a dude off your back, you have to “press one button”).
Oboro Muramasa: Hot damn. HOT DAMN. Why didn’t they make this a cross-platform game? It doesn’t even use the Wii motion stuff at all… I totally would have paid $50 for this on the PS3. Bastards.
Imabikisou: Interesting use of the “audio novel” (basically a long-form choose-your-own-adventure kind of text game, with pictures and some fragments of animation): Lots of text, head kinda hurts. Makes me want to play 428 even more (will probably import for the PS3).
Saturday Quick Thoughts
Jan 30th
* It snowed a ton last night (comparatively for this area). Kids are sledding in the street. Since it’s been like 4 years, I put on my Wisconsin-purchased snow boots and hiked 4 miles round-trip to the coffee house to sit and read for a bit. Tipped big. It was a great feeling, the sliding, crunching snow and the peaceful silence. The stinging cold was a nice reminder that I’m alive. I miss this northern ceremony every once in a while. But I don’t miss midwest weather.
* I’m slapping my forehead for a finance dumbshit move: I forgot to write down/notify myself of when the quarterly earnings reports go announced. So I missed the wave (and it was a pretty big wave this quarter) where all the stocks go up about 5% in a few days as financial analysts buy in to stocks they know are doing well, and then the mass sell-off which drops the stock 5-10% right as the earnings reports are read off, as the analysts get out and the average joes buy in. Missed out on an opportunity to reign in a free $1200 or so for zero effort. Oh well. I’ll just wait a week or so and watch the stocks go back up and be more way next quarter.
* I got pretty far in Popolocrois II. It’s a wonderful gem of a PSX game, a true “honobono”/”feelgood” experience. The battle system is about as complicated as… uh… ok, metaphor failure: It’s not very complicated at all, and that’s refreshing. Cute art, wonderfully light plot and heartwarming story line up into an unparalleled experience. I’d love to see more of this kind of game, but it’s hard to sell a low-graphics RPG in the PS3 world of “Killer Graphics and Multi-Million Dollar Budget or GTFO”.
* My birthday is tomorrow. I turn 35. Huh. At least this year I’ll remember how old I am. Incidentally, I found out that I share the same birthday (and year) as a Japanese porn star. I should send her a card.
Oh hey, Justin Timberlake’s B-Day is tomorrow, too!
* Week one of my vacation is nearing a close, and I feel rested. Mats W from work was right: Us Americans have no fucking clue how to *take a break from work*. While I don’t necessarily believe we need the same ample vacation time as our European counterparts, it really does take 2 weeks to wind down and really relax from work: It takes one week to relax, and the second week to “have your vacation”.
* Finished a few books. Currently reading Greg Egan’s latest anthology, Crystal Nights. Man, he may be my favorite SF author and probably the greatest SF author of our generation (BAR NONE. SERIOUSLY), but he really has a hard on against Buddhism. This is like the fourth time I read a thinly veiled anti-B screed in his works. Then again, I’ve met really pretentious practitioners that would have made me vomit screeds as well.
* I finally beat the boss on Final Fantasy XIII after about 12 tries. Whomever says this game is easier than previous titles is simply a liar who has never played it. You play three bosses in a row, and while the first is long and mildly difficult, and the third a breeze with a good strategy, the second one is a boiling pit of YOU LOSE. The boss employs a lot of cheap maneuvers that result in one-hit kills. More on that later. The end movie was pretty, but made about as much sense as any other Japanese cinematic experience.
* While the movie PANDORUM never promised to be that great, I still feel that they had a great premise killed by the need to pander to a dumb audience. It could have been much sharper. And a lot of the editing and cuts make it really look rough at times. I love the fact that they had a Vietnamese guy who spoke no English and didn’t “suddenly learn it” or whatever as well as No Subtitles for him (not even in the Subtitle options!), that was ballsy (he’s a badass K-1 fighter in real life, too). The movie also employed not one, but TWO twists at the end that really made the movie that much more awesome (“Where are the stars??”). In the end, the awesome outweighed the dumb, but by barely.
* Next week I might vacation from the Greater Internet altogether, we’ll see.
* Incense is awesome, but never light it a few hours before you plan to sleep. You might as well have a cigar smoker blow ash into your lungs.
* Last week I could do one pull-up. Now I can do four. I’m getting back on track. I can also do about 70 push-ups, once, before blowing out my arms and any further weight training using them for the evening. I’m slowly building to 100. Also upped my weights on squats (front and back), bench press, and upright row.
* “Iron Yoga” is nothing more than doing plain normal yoga, while holding 5-12 pound weights in each hand. It’s also kinda badass.
Vacation, Day One
Jan 25th
Yep, as expected, did the thing where I shoot awake, mind racing, thinking “OMG I’ve got to do that analysis for work!!” I’ve got to break myself of that for this vacation. Also realizing there’s so much stuff to do, I don’t know where to begin! For those watching from home, I haven’t taken more than one day off in a row since last June or something.
Today will be doing all the local errands that have been stacking up for a month. Will also clean up around the house, clear a workspace, set some goals. I’ll also have to meditate a little on the fact that I am not going to do the thing where I suddenly make mad plans or feel the need to do something drastic and not relax (like, “I’ve got two weeks free, why not visit Nikolai in Milwaukee or Drew in San Francisco for a day or two, I’ve got the frequent filer miles!”) just because I’ve got the time.
I plan to finish writing/editing the game I’m working on in the next few days, but I need a few days of downtime before swapping out one workload for another.
Nope. Today’s gonna start the vacation off small:
Clean up my bookshelf.
Run some errands.
Go to the art museum.
Check out the new Herman Miller chair at the showroom.
Work out a bit.
Come up with some goals re: Continuing Japanese.
Bust open the first section of Popolocrois II.
Finish the movie Gamer.
Maybe spend an hour or two on FFXIII.
I’ve got two weeks, I’m going to teach myself to relax again, and stay open to new challenges.
Tuesday Thoughts
Jan 19th
* It’s been 11 years since Heisei 11.1.12, which means I’ve been married for 11 years, going on 12. So far: Awesome. Looking forward to 11 more.
–Incidentally, this is the first year in three years where I didn’t have to cancel/move anniversary plans due to working late putting broken shit back together. So that was a nice touch.
* Jason Thompson’s King of RPGs comes out today. If you are into tabletop RPGs but do not seek this manga out, you are dumb. I saw it about 7 years ago when it was done up comic style, before the anime facelift, and it was some good, light fun. I can’t wait until my copy is delivered.
* Rah Digga went to college for Electrical Engineering in New Jersey. Wow. My dad was always pushing me (lightly pushing, mind you, not like Burning My Sociology Books or anything) to become an engineer like him. Who knows, if I had followed in his footsteps I might now be pursuing a lucrative career in rap.
* Recently listening to: Hearts of Space. All the time. Best internet radio subscription I’ve ever purchased. These soulful, moody tracks are the soundtrack to my workflow.
* Two weeks of vacation start in 3 days, and they can’t come fast enough. I need to remember to take vacations with better frequency to avoid total burnout.
* Alternative writing software: Look into PageFour, Liquid Story Binder (likely the latter, as it has visual organization tools that I like). Scrivener for Windows would be a dream, though.
* My new glasses allow me the power to fire lasers out of my eyes.
* I might tire of Busta Rhymes’ focus on lyrics about money, but I will never, ever tire of his style, his lyrical flow or his phenomenal beats.
* I love reggae, it’s one of my favorite types of music: But only live. The only “reggae albums/studio songs” I can listen to are Bob Marley, period, and hate just about anything else (even the songs I like hearing live). I have no idea why this is.
* Will probably start blogging more about the Japanese I’m learning day to day. For example, all this time I never knew the Sen (銭) in Sentou (銭湯, or “Japanese public bath”), of which tou = “hot water” or “bath” was actually the same “sen” which used to be the standard for money before the Yen (“Oh, it’s THAT /Sen/. I never knew. Huh.”). Like 100 sen = 1 yen or something IIRC. Sen isn’t used any more, I think the last batch was printed around 1944, so they’re kind of an artifact.
* I love my Gunnar Optiks computer glasses (model: Shredder), I just need to find a way to get prescription lenses in these things so I can wear them longer. Unfortunately, it looks like “If you don’t live in California, you’re screwed”. Oh well, will keep trying.
Amazon Prime…
Jan 18th
So normally I get most of my friend-feedback and comments on the crosslinked posts to LJ, Facebook, etc and I doubt this will be an exception.
Anyway, for my friends that have Amazon Prime: You guys pretty much talked me into trying it out for a year, considering all the home goods you can get without paying for gas/time to get to the mall, etc.
However, a question: What the hell do you do with all the cardboard boxes? Do you have any room in your recycle bins with all the box that you go through?
Just curious on that point: While Prime may save me some trips to stores and hook me up with awesome prices, the return in “labor of cutting up boxes and feeling white guilt at the mound of recycling matter” seems a tough balance…
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