Weekly Geekly Rundown for April 12, 2024
Better late than never.
Thinking Fast and Focused
If you haven’t seen this video before, take a moment to watch it. It’s a well known video that was used to test selective attention of participants.
Essentially, selective attention is a process where due to cognitive load our brain will not process all the information available to us. It’s one of the reasons that eye witness testimony isn’t as reliable as people often think it is and it’s the reason that you notice subtleties within films after multiple viewings. If we think of Jon Boorstin’s “Visceral Eye” as a manipulation of an audiences ability to pay attention, then manipulation of an audiences ability to pay attention is a key goal of good film making. How do you get the viewer to focus on the virtues of a film, rather than on the flaws?
Game Masters and Game Designers should also take into account participant’s tendency to engage in selective attention. If you players are spending too much time having to look up a given rule and its effects, then they aren’t spending as much time actually playing and this could affect how they viewed their gaming experience. Similarly, if you fail to succeed at the tasks the players deem important (i.e. the things they are focused heavily on) then they might have a less than ideal play experience.
I mention these things because there has been a lot of talk lately regarding whether Critical Role has “set a standard” for gaming that has “ruined” the game because that standard of play is unattainable by the vast majority of Game Masters and Players. I’ll say right away that I’m not in that camp, but that’s because I view “players” as a population that features a number of personalities that often have different expectations. Matt Mercer and his crew are pretty much all of a single type of player. If we were to use Robin Laws’ taxonomy of gamer types Matt and crew would likely be classified as “Method Actors” or “Storytellers.”
This player type is ideal for an Actual Play viewing experience because they can produce entertaining moments for others to watch. In a sense, Matt Mercer and the Critical Role crew have set the standard for one kind of Actual Play experience. It’s an experience that is somewhat different from the one depicted in David Nett’s visionary series GOLD, but you can see how Nett’s vision influenced later online gaming productions. This is especially true if you want the Night of the Zombie King series which demonstrates perfectly how to make a role playing session an engaging viewing experience.
Actual Play series are series and require certain kinds of game play. No one wants to watch thirty minutes of fiddling with dice and trying to determine the best tactical move for a squad of Halfling Slingers or watch Susan and Dave debate the meaning of a riddle for an hour. Those are fun play experiences for certain types of gamers, but they don’t make for good viewing experiences and Actual Play streams are viewing experiences.
What is true for Game Masters in a post Critical Role world is that they have to do work letting players who aren’t Method Actors and Storytellers know that they are welcome at their table and to create an experience that rewards a mixed group. Unless your gaming group is based in and around Hollywood, the likelihood that your group consists of video game and animation voice actors, documentary producers, and screenwriters is relatively low. Matt Mercer, especially when he was funded by Legendary Entertainment, was able to CAST his Actual Play for a streaming show. If you know the Los Angeles Actual Play ecosystem at all, you’ll notice that some people worked their way up from “independent theatre” to “screen.” They did so because they were talented and good at their job, but a lot of talented people still haven’t made it big.
The goal of an Actual Play is different from the goal of your table. The goals of Actual Play are to create an entertaining experience for the group and for an audience. The goal of a local game is only to provide an entertaining experience for the local group. You have some say in the kinds of players you are going to let in and those should match your own preferences as a game master. Tactician GMs make pretty awful storytellers. You don’t have unlimited say though. You are limited by where you are. The pool of players, both active and potential, in Boise is different than the one in Burbank. That’s great. The hobby is not just for Method Actors and Storytellers. In fact, all the ways of playing are valid. All of them can be fun to PLAY.
They are, however, not all fun to watch. So keep in mind how you use your players selective attention, by appealing to their preferences and giving them focused cognitive load in those areas, to create a fun experience at your table.
Self Promotion
Quick bit of self promotion. I linked my podcast episodes onto Spotify. I still have over 100 to re-edit and upload but there are a decent number up over there. You can also listen to them on the podcast tab above. I mean, I didn’t interview people like Tim Minear just for the fun of interviewing him…okay I did…but I’d still like you to listen to the old episodes.
I do have to say though that as much as I’d rather you listen here, for the traffic, I think that the Spotify embed looks better.
Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse
over at is finally selling some of his 50th Anniversary of D&D homages as art prints. I know I’ll be picking a couple up over the next few months to hang up on my wall. Check them out and consider supporting Stan!
Long time readers know that I frequently reference the list of “Movies You’re Supposed to Like” when critiquing a particular kind of movie critic or cineaste. I am, as I sometimes say, pretentiously anti-pretense. I love advocating for the unadulteratedly common or pandering. For that reason, I’ve always been baffled when fans of a certain ilk speak ill of the “cute sidekick” trope in animation and film. I love the cute sidekick and always have. I’ve always loved Return of the Jedi and think that in the original cut the Ewok deaths are truly heartbreaking in ways that the deaths of Rebels and Stormtroopers failed to be. The moments of grief by stuffed animals had more pathos to show me the horrors of war than any viewing of The Dirty Dozen; though not than Band of Brothers as the episode with the nurse and medic always makes me cry. My point is that these cuddly things marketed at kids are great. Yes, they were created to sell merch, but they also added depth that would otherwise be impossible with a PG rating.
Similarly, I have always loved Speed Buggy, Twiki, Ookla the Mok (and especially his horse), Dinomutt, Wilykat and Wilykit, Snarf, and Orko. They don’t always add the emotional depth that the Ewoks did, but they do expand a show for a larger and younger audience. I love shows that have things for old and young. My absolute favorite is probably Uni from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. While in many ways Uni is a “just for the kids” insert, in other ways Uni is a narrative device that keeps Presto bound to the Realm. It seems I’m not completely alone in Uni-preciation as
has an Ode to Uni over at his .’s latest newsletter has the first part of an interview where he chats about many things Conan the Barbarian. Jim’s the writer on the new Conan comic and he’s been knocking it out of the park so far. Zub meshes together stories from Robert E Howard, Andrew Offutt, and others in his so far epic storyline. He keeps trying to tell readers that there have been three arcs so far, but they are so well integrated that it’s more like Hour of the Dragon than a series of short stories. Regardless, if you aren’t reading Zub’s new Conan stories you are really missing out on some great pulp fun.
I found
’s recent post at about This Quar’s War to be an interesting glimpse into how siloed table top hobbies can be from time to time. Patrick' stumbled across this relatively new wargame when he walked into his local game store. He was instantly intrigued and was equally surprised that this product existed at all for reasons he articulates in his post. In his discussion, he reveals just how little crossover there is in our hobby for many who participate in it. I consider Patrick to be a knowledgeable gamer, so his surprise is not indicative of a lack of familiarity with table top gaming in general rather how even within the hobby there are niches within niches. I discovered This Quar’s War a while back because it was advertised in Miniature Wargames magazine as a part the Wargames Atlantic line of miniature products. Wargames Atlantic manufactures the Death Fields line of Science Fiction miniatures and their Les Grognards were a major inspiration for the Kingdom of Dorn in my own Black Powder fantasy setting Axis Mundi.
I think of Wargames Atlantic as a rising miniatures company who are now squarely in the “stable manufacturer” category. Than they had a new miniatures game was not a surprise to me. That it was This Quar’s War was as that was an intellectual property that, like Patrick, I knew nothing about. Patrick’s piece goes on to cover the property in great detail as well as including some coverage of the property in the miniature gaming commentariat including a video from On TableTop. On TableTop is a pretty big site, so their coverage means that a decent number of wargamers, though only of the generalist varieyt, will be familiar with This Quar’s War even as RPG tabletop gamers won’t. The link to their coverage of This Quar’s War is in his post the link above is for their channel in general; that’s my way of saying read Patrick’s piece for more coverage.
Role Playing Game Recommendation
With the release of Fallout on Amazon Prime this month, I thought I’d make a recommendation that was related to the show and that exhibited my wish that table top game designers got the respect (financial remuneration) that they deserved. In the early 1980s, Flying Buffalo Games published a role playing game called Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes. The game was one of a couple of pulp inspired games that came out around the same time. Two of the others were Justice Inc. from Hero Games and Daredevils from Fantasy Games Unlimited. The sales figures for the games demonstrated that while many game designers have a love for the pulps that inspired D&D, not many gamers do. It’s too bad because all three are excellent role playing games.
Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes stands out a little from the other two because it was based on the Tunnels & Trolls engine, but expanded in ways that developed a skill system and refined the combat system to reflect gun blazing action. If you are familiar with Tunnels & Trolls, you can see how this might be a challenge but Michael Stackpole succeeds brilliantly.
The game was published at one of the business peaks for Flying Buffalo Games and was released at the time their local printer expanded their credit line and around the time Dave Arneson began investing in smaller rpg companies. I know that Arneson eventually owned shares in Flying Buffalo, but I’m not sure when the exact time of that influx of financing came so I cannot say if that helped with MSPE and its high production quality. Regardless, the game was a moderate success that caught the eyes of a couple of computer game designers at Interplay.
These designers hired Ken St. Andre and Michael Stackpole to develop the game that eventually became Wasteland, a game that used Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes as the foundation of its game mechanics. Ken and Michael designed rules and setting material for Wasteland, material that in turn inspired the Fallout series of games. Wasteland’s Guardian Citadel became the inspiration for the Brotherhood of Steel.
I’m not saying that anyone stole from anyone. Ken and Michael got paid for their time and effort. I only wish that they had received residuals and that more people, outside the hardcore fans, knew of their contributions. It isn’t up to corporations to make sure that we know who created what, that’s on us. I do find it ironic, however, that a corporate show with an anti-corporate greed message doesn’t include acknowledgements of the people who created the foundation for what followed.
I wish buying copies of Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes brought residuals to Ken and Michael, but not even that does. Rebellion, the publishers of Judge Dredd, purchased the rights to all Flying Buffalo games a while back. They purchased them from the company that bought all the rights after Rick Loomis died. I believe that Rebellion is a good place for those rights to be, but the nature of the modern gaming business means that any royalties for work for hire authors of the past are out of the question. Still, I recommend buying this classic game. It’s fast and fun.
If you ALSO want to directly support Ken, you can back his latest project on Kickstarter. It includes an expansion of his Monsters! Monsters! role playing game called Humans! Humans! which will allow you to play Tunnels & Trolls style adventures while directly supporting the creator of the game.
Film Recommendation
Based on Tom Wolfe’s classic Esquire article “The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson. YES!”, and easily Lamont Johnson’s best film, The Last American Hero is a quintessential examination of the American spirit. Jeff Bridges stars as Junior Jackson, a fictional version of Junior Johnson, a moonshine runner from a poor family in the Rural South who wants to become a professional race car driver.
It’s the perfect plot for a by the numbers boring film. It is anything but that for a variety of reasons. The first is that Wolfe’s article sets up a number of interesting ideas for artistic exploration that range from the crowds to the families to the commercialization of the sport. There’s even an exploration of the fickleness of fandom and the fleeting nature of fame. Most centrally though, this is a film about obsession.
Because of the focus on obsession, and because it takes its subjects seriously and not ironically, it is one of the few truly excellent films about motorsport. Seriously. Sit back for a moment. Think about the truly great films about motorsport. There’s Bonnie Bedelia’s Heart Like a Wheel (also starring a Bridges brother btw), James Garner’s Grand Prix, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Rush. Only one of those is a comedy. Like all good parodies though it is also a good version of what it parodies. Spinal Tap only works if the bad is fun to listen to and they are. Talladega Nights only works because it takes real conflicts and dials them to 11. If we expand the definition of motorsport film, then The Love Bug makes the cut as a good movie with “motorsport” in it. I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple of excellent racing films, but for every good one there seem to be a dozen films like Torque or or Sylvester Stallone’s (2001) Driven.
What most bad films about motorsport lack is heart. The Last American Hero has an abundance of heart because, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a film about obsession. In many ways, it’s a racing version of the recent film Whiplash. Junior Jackson’s father is obsessed with running his still. Junior is obsessed with racing and will stop at nothing to be the best. Nothing captures a certain element of the American spirit than that, a striving to succeed at the thing you love no matter what. It’s a spirit that Tom Wolfe thought was dying. In the years since, we’ve seen that he was wrong. That spirit is still there and it was never common, nor do we really want it to be.
Music Recommendations
Like many people who played a lot of Vampire the Masquerade back in the day, I’ve listened to my fair share of Joy Division. I’ve always liked their music and have often wondered what they would have sounded like if they had better production values on their tracks (that’s answered in the next rec), but I’ve also been a very optimistic person. I might love Goth and minor key post-punk music, but my emotional valence is pretty positive in general. That’s why I really appreciate this song by The Wombats. While it might appear to be parody at first, it’s actually a kind of interesting bit of commentary about how as we get older we sometimes learn that everything is going to be okay.
Sure, when you are young and depressed due to the struggles of being a teenager you want to do nothing more than listen to Joy Division (or The Cure’s Disintegration) for days on end while never leaving bed. Being a teenager is genuinely hard. It’s a period of physical, mental, emotional, and cognitive change. Just as you are least in control of your emotions is right when you realize that you’re going to have to face the real world alone very soon. It’s daunting and Goth music hits the spot.
The thing is that being a teenager is also kind of awesome. I remember when I was in middle school and had my “first real girlfriend.” I rode my bike to her house every weekend day for two weeks. We hung out in her room, listened to music, kissed, and talked about our favorite romantic comedies. It was fantastic and I couldn’t wait to go to the fall dance with her in the third week of our “very serious” relationship. I showed up at the dance where we were supposed to meet and she’d already moved on. I was devastated. Then Steve Lee, middle and high school Steve Lee and not later friend Steven Lee, walked up to me and said, “don’t worry about it. Just dance and be yourself. Let out your sadness, but have a great time.”
Okay, those weren’t the exact words, but they were the sentiment. What made this moment so awesome for me was that Steve was one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. I was surprised he was even at the dance. It was constant pop music and he listened to punk. Obscure punk. You know, the kind you’ve never heard of. He was edgy as fuck. Yet here he was telling me to dance and have a good time. I did. It wasn’t quite dancing to Joy Division, but it was figuratively dancing to Joy Division.
Above I said I wondered what Joy Division would sound like with better production values, the answer is (of course) that they would sound pretty much like New Order does when they play old Joy Division songs. Sure, the vocals are less dark but my God does the music hum. While Bernard Sumner has always been a creative, and underrated, guitarist, his ability to make the licks from songs like Transmission hum are really impressive. While I like “dance club Joy Division,” I really like it when that band takes the years of skill development and applies it to post-punk songs.
Of course, it isn’t just the more recent versions of the songs that work. From the very beginning Bernard and the rest of the band demonstrated what could have been. Imagine this performance of Ceremony with the full Joy Division line up.
Speaking of post-punk and pop. I asked my daughters what song I should recommend this week and they both simultaneously shouted Good Kid. I couldn’t deny them their request/demand. One of the things that made me smile about their recommendation was how much it spoke to the influence my own taste in music has had on them. Sure, they like The Cure, Yes, Genesis, Snow Patrol, and a host of other bands I like, but that’s all stuff I introduced them to. Nothing shows influence like them enjoying bands that were influenced by bands you liked, and finding them on their own. Good Kid is a mix of Franz Ferdinand and Cake, with a lot of other bands thrown in for flavor, which might make some dismiss them as derivative, but I find them to be a complete blast.
“Okay, okay, enough praising of the accessible and pop. Give us a deeper cut!” you demand. Well, I don’t know if a drum based progressive metal piece by a drummer named II counts, but I think Hypnosis by Sleep Token is pretty awesome. Ever since I first heard KISS as a kid, I’ve loved bands that have some level of anonymity…especially when they have their own LORE. Sleep Token has both, oh and they are pretty talented musicians too.
Cool history about the threads between Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes, Dave Arneson, Tunnels & Trolls and Flying Buffalo Games!
More on topic -- I was explaining Joy Division to my wife, and my half-recollection of where the name of the band comes from. I think most just assume it's ironic because the music is so non-joyful, but I was correct about the actual source of the phrase. For those who don't know, I'd feel inappropriate even saying it here, but it's DARK.