Weekly Geekly Rundown August 4, 2023

Solving Mazes with Mechanical Rats

There has been a lot of discussion about Artificial Intelligence in the news lately. That news ranges from “it’s going to destroy the world” fearmongering to very real concerns about copyright and plagiarism and how to navigate the seemingly overnight emergence of this technology. The fact that we’ve been using spell-check, grammar check, translation software, and talking to our Alexas and Siris for years now doesn’t quite seem to have impressed upon people that AI isn’t coming, it’s already here and we are already pretty dependent on it. Nor does it do much to help people understand how AI works. What is it that AI is actually doing?

Well, it isn’t learning in the same way that you and I learn, but it does work in amazing ways and a pretty cool way to appreciate how AI works and what it is capable of are mechanical maze solving rats. For decades there have been competitions where engineers program mechanical mice/rats to solve mazes as quickly as possible in competitions that combine mechanical and logical challenges. This recent video by Veritasium, one of my favorite YouTube channels, discusses the link to AI and the innovations in the competitions. It’s really worth your time. Check it out.

Classic Game Systems Being Revived

Given the success of Ready Player One, in both book and film, and the growth of nostalgia channels like Perifractic’s RetroRecipes and GenXGrownup, it shouldn’t be surprising that there is a movement of sorts to revive obsolete game systems from the 1980s. By this, I don’t mean the manufacturing of emulators that run the games on the older systems like The C64 or The Atari Flashback. No, I mean actual support for the actual old game systems. Atari, yes that Atari, has been selling exclusive limited edition versions of their classic games for their 50th anniversary, but those are as much an art item as they are a functional game to use in the old system gathering dust in your parent’s attic. It also includes recently developed games that can be plugged right into the old console and played.

It might be that $59.99 is a bit too expensive for my tastes, and for how many hours the game would likely get played, but I think it is pretty awesome that Mr. Run and Jump is coming out for the Atari 2600.

Weekly Luke Y Thompson and Courtney Howard Film Article Cavalcade

I’ll keep this week’s cavalcade simple. Since there is only one new film worth considering watching this weekend The Meg 2: The Trench, let’s see what our two critics thought of the film.

Courtney Howard found the film extremely disappointing and not for the reasons you might assume. Read her review for full details, it is very much worth your time, but here’s the skinny. It seems that the screenwriters didn’t have enough trust in the material and felt the need to add narrative elements to make the story more sophisticated. When Howard writes, “The populist “turn your brain off” argument holds no water when applied here. Our brains, even in a borderline comatose stasis, would find the proceedings disappointing and disheartening,” she’s touching on a time tested film viewing concept. Jon Boorstin, in his book Making Movies Work, discusses the importance of engaging the audiences vicarious, visceral, and voyeuristic eyes. If you fail to engage these “eyes” then the audience’s critical eye comes into play and that way lies failure. By not trusting the material and taking over an hour to get to anything compelling, it looks like Howard’s critical eye was given too much time by the film makers and that’s not a good thing.

Luke Y. Thompson likes the film more than Courtney does, but he still doesn’t think it is cinema. In fact, he praises the studio for having alcohol available at the screening. Guess that means I’ll be drinking some of my Koenig Distillery 7 Devils Barrel Proof when I eventually watch this at home, though I’ll buy it since I enjoyed the first one so much and I want there to be a sequel…so long as it gets better than what this seems to be. Speaking of Koenig Distillery, if you live in Idaho you should check them out. I like their 7 Devils line so much, I joined the Whiskey Club for the quarterly exclusives.

Classic Roleplaying Game Recommendation

Given that this week saw the release of the Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game, I wanted to take a moment to praise one of the games that influenced Matt Forbeck’s new design. Matt has worked on a number of superhero role playing games, including the Cortex Plus based Marvel Heroic.

The Cortex Plus system is a step-die system where stats and skills are rated in die values and those dice are used to roll against a target number. For example, you might have a Strength of d8 and need to roll a 4 or better to succeed. It would be easier for you to achieve than someone with a d4 or d6 Strength stat. You can read more about step-die systems and how they work in my prior post “There’s More to RPGs than Rolling a d20.”

There's More to RPGs than Rolling a d20

Some games in the Cortex Plus system include Marvel Heroic, Firefly, Leverage, and this week’s recommendation Smallville. Even though Smallville influenced the new Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game, it wasn’t in the use of a step-die system. Marvel Multiverse uses a 3d6 + modifier system that is closer to Champions than to Smallville. Where the influence of Smallville can be seen is in the inclusion of the player agency increasing “Fantastic” rolls mechanic in Marvel Multiverse. In Marvel Multiverse, one of the d6s rolled as a part of the 3d6 roll is a special “Marvel” die that has the numbers 2 to 6 and a special “Marvel” side instead of a 1. If that Marvel side is rolled, then the player has rolled a “Fantastic” roll. I’d have called it a Marvelous roll, just so that a perfect roll of 6 1 6 would be called a “Marvelous Ultimate Success” and refer to both Marvel and the Marvel Ultimate universe, but that’s neither here nor there.

If you manage to roll a “Fantastic” roll, which is any roll with the Marvel logo and not just a roll of 6 1 6, then something special happens. If you succeeded, it’s a success AND effect. If you failed, it’s a failed BUT effect. In both cases, the player is given agency to describe what the AND or BUT effect is. There is also some connection between the two in how Karma worksin Marvel Multiverse as well as how teamwork and team maneuvers are handled. This is where the Marvel Multiverse game shows its Cortex Plus/Storygame connection and it gives just a glimpse of the kinds of innovations that Smallville had in store for players. I would venture to say that Smallville is the single most underrated superhero role playing game ever produced.

Let me tell you the best thing about Smallville. The players and the game master hold an entire session dedicated to both character and campaign creation that perfectly integrates the two concepts. As players build their characters, they create “Contacts” and “Assets” and “Opponents” which are not only NPCs, but are rated statistics that will be used in die rolls that the character attempts. The fact that you have a relationship with Lex Luthor matters to a lot of different situations, for good or ill, and if you are in a situation where that relationship matters then you get to roll that die as either a bonus or penalty. This is what the beginning a character creation relationship tree in Smallville looks like.

All of those lines show the relationships between characters. Whether something is a circle, diamond, or square matters and each of those relationships is given a rating in dice value. After a few sessions you get branches that look like this.

These charts will expand and contract as play continues and as player characters change. Yes, there are super powers in Smallville, but there is no “strength” statistic. There is the Super Strength asset that can be used by the player via the expenditure of plot points.

The step away from traditional statistics (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, etc.) for more narrative statistics that effect how you describe why a character is doing something is one of the great innovations of Smallville. These are the main statistics:

You can imagine how each of these descriptors might be used in a conflict and it works amazingly well. Yes, it even manages to create engaging combat situations. In this case entirely theatre of the mind. I wish more people had picked up on the game at the time because it was awesome. I also wish more people had picked up the Marvel Heroic game which was an extension of the Smallville mechanics. I do think a large contingent of gamers would be more likely to buy into this kind of game today, but I don’t know if it would be enough to satisfy the market goals of Marvel, whereas I do think that Matt Forbeck’s combination of a strong tactical game with the storygame style of Smallville is, but that will have to wait for next week’s formal review.

Classic Music Recommendation

Pretty simple recommendation today, but one that pairs well with this week’s film recommendation. I’ve always been a bit nostalgic, even for the now and very few artists pull on the nostalgia strings like Toad the Wet Sprocket. There’s just something adventurous about the alternative music of the early 90s. It wasn’t so much a genre as a holding place for music that didn’t fit in other market segments. One thing was certain, it wasn’t as corporate and “perfect” as a lot of today’s music. In an era of autotuned and protools manufactured sounds, it’s nice to hear talented musicians play with all the minor flaws included.

Classic Film Recommendation

I had an idea for a film this week, but I realized that I hadn’t yet included an underrated film I’m constantly quoting yet and so that choice will have to wait for next week. This is fine with me because by then I’ll be able to get my daughters’ reactions to a film I’ve been wanting to share with them for years. This week, fitting with the nostalgia theme discussed above, I am recommending Kicking and Screaming. No, not the 2005 kid’s soccer movie with Robert Duvall, rather the 1995 film with Parker Posey. Like Mark Altman’s Free Enterprise and Doug Liman’s Swingers, this film fits in with a kind of forgotten genre, though Lena Dunham’s Girls definitely fits in, that of the lost 20 something trying to find their place in the world. It’s the kind of lower budget, inexpensive, film we need more of. Not because it is the greatest example of the genre, it isn’t, but because we need more stories about just being and fewer about world threatening crises. Let’s leave those for the evening news and let’s just connect on a human level.

This scene has my favorite line from the film. It’s the line about being nostalgic and it perfectly captures my personality as an undergrad and right now.