Weekly Geekly Rundown for May 3, 2024
Glimpses of Geek Culture and Ruminations on Game Mechanics
Cancer Sucks. Let’s Help Owen Stephens!
Owen K.C. Stephens is one of the most prolific game designers in tabletop gaming. His career has included stints as an RPG writer, developer, consultant, and publisher and he’s worked on hundreds of products. Heck, he might have worked on thousands of products. I can’t remember the first product I purchased that had his name on it, my guess would be one of the Star Wars roleplaying game books he wrote in the early 2000s, but I do know he’s worked on a number of my favorite roleplaying games over the years.
That list includes work on four editions of Dungeons & Dragons, two editions of Pathfinder, The Black Company, Call of Cthulhu, d20Modern, Dragon Age, EverQuest, Fantasy AGE, Gamma World, Everyday Heroes, The Song of Ice and Fire, Thieves World, and Wheel of Time. He was the co-creator of the Starfinder and Star Wars Saga Edition rpgs, and is the founder of Rogue Genius Games which makes a wide array of game products.
He was also a part of the design team for one of my most desired “Lost RPGs.” Towards the end of the d20 boom, in 2005, Wizards of the Coast advertised that they were going to release a game product called d20 Spectaculars. It was going to be a d20 Modern superhero game and I was all in with anticipation.
I’m a huge fan of superhero games and having one written for the d20 system was right up my alley at the time. Here’s the description from the Alliance catalog advertising it.
d20 Spectaculars: New rules for running a d20 Modern campaign in a super-heroic setting.
This new supplement for d20 Modern provides a campaign setting where player characters become the first super heroes. Characters begin with only a few tricks, but as they increase in level they gain fantastic powers. d20 Spectaculars provides everything players and Gamemasters need to participate in super-heroic adventures, including rules for super powers, power trees, new classes, and equipment. A full campaign setting with material and adventure seeds suitable for all levels of play is included.
by Mike Mearls, Bill Slavicsek, Owen K.C. Stephens; 160 pages, $29.95
Sadly, that game never came out. I had hopes, for a time, that the crew in charge of Everyday Heroes would release their own version of the lost title, they had hired Owen after all, but it looks like that won’t be the case as they are focused more on licensed games than broad genre offerings.
All of this is to say that Owen has been working in the industry for decades and has created products that are near and dear to my heart, and at least one product that I wish had come into being. It’s time for me to give a little back in return.
You see, Owen is struggling with colorectal cancer and cancer treatments are taxing and expensive. He seems to be getting very good care, but the life of a work for hire freelancer doesn’t typically come with Dick Wolf sized fortunes, so I purchased the Owen is Rad bundle over at DriveThruRPG to give just a small donation towards his treatment costs. I’d like to ask you to do the same. If you do, you’ll get over $1,000 worth of RPG pdfs for about $30, but more importantly you’ll be helping out someone who has contributed a lot to the gaming hobby.
Looking at Alignment from a Narrative Perspective Rather than a Moral One
“No. The badges are for the benefit of the house.” He gestured. Everyone visible wore a badge declaring an alignment with one or another of the Taken. I recognized a few. The Howler. Nightcrawler. Stormbringer. The Limper.”
— Cook, Glen. Chronicles of the Black Company
(Chronicles of the Black Company Series Book 1) (p. 40). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.
I’ll be writing more on this next week (the week of the 13th of May), but there has been a lot of conversation on the internet lately about whether or not alignment belongs in D&D or other roleplaying games.
Yes, some other roleplaying games have alignment, but we’ll set that aside for a moment.
The discussion of alignment in roleplaying games is one of the ever growing list of evergreen arguments in the rpg community. Some of the key entries in this list include: “hit points good or bad?”, level vs. skill based, point based vs. rolled stats, 3d6 down the line, “are safety tools necessary?”, “is D&D a miniatures based game?”, “are rules for how to role play necessary?”, and “why are people so wrong about how awesome 4th edition is as a game?”. There are more entries on this list, as I said it’s an ever growing list, but these are some of the longer lived arguments. Mention any one of these topics on Twitter (X) and you will likely see an increase in engagement. You will probably also lose a couple followers and be spammed with hate tweets, regardless of the position you take.
The funny thing is that I’m not opposed to these conversations, and even some of the more recent and more controversial ones, because they show an engagement with the hobby and can lead to the creation of new games. That is, of course, the best answer. Don’t like an aspect of D&D? Either don’t use it or better yet, create your own game. DIY baby!
Now that I’ve defended these conversations in general, let me point out what I think is a root problem with conversations about alignment. They completely misinterpret what alignment is about and worse yet, as D&D has developed it’s adopted the bad interpretation. The misinterpretation probably happened before Steven Marsh added the Evil/Good axis to alignment, but I’ll be reductive and lay all the blame on his shoulders. Why? Because I like him and he’s one of my favorite designers and I think he can handle the blame.
You see, by shifting alignment by adding a good and evil axis to the existing Law versus Chaos one, the game changed alignment from an allegiance to a moral code. Alignment was inspired by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore’s The Dark World, Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions, Sprague de Camp’s Solomon’s Stone, and Michael Moorcock’s Elric and Corum stories. In all of these cases, and especially in Moorcock’s work, aligning with Law or Chaos is merely siding with that elemental force in a great cosmic battle.
In the abstract, whether you choose to align with the forces of Law or Chaos depends on how you might answer the following questions.
Should the universe be everchanging with no things of permanence?
Should the universe be static and predictable and free from any kind of change?
I phrased the questions that way on purpose because as Moorcock’s stories argue, neither is a truly “good” side and which side the Eternal Champion fights for depends upon which force is dominant. Elric, born of an empire devoted to Chaos, sees that even Chaos can lead to stagnation and sides with Law as a force for positive change in the world. Hawkmoon, born of an empire devoted to Law, similarly sides with Chaos. Both are embodiments of the Eternal Champion.
More than that though, alignment need not be limited to those forces to be useful. The Glen Cook quote above shows one possible use, a use that is advanced by Runequest for all that it says it is “above” alignment use, Rune Cults and becoming a Runemaster are definitely alignment choices just not moral codes.
I’ll leave the conversation, for the moment, in the hands of Joseph Bloch (The Greyhawk Grognard) who talks about “balance” and the role of balance in Gary Gygax’s World of Greyhawk. As you can see, it’s not exactly about morality.
Back the Ion Guard Comic Book Project
I’ve recommended Tiny Supers in the past, and one of the reasons I like the game so much is the artwork of Nicolás Giacondino. Nicolás’s artwork is reminiscent of that of Chris Sprouse and Mike Parobeck. In fact, it looks like a fusion of those two styles to me and that makes for the perfect four color comic presentation.
I plan on doing a series of adventures/character write ups for the game soon, but while we are waiting you might want to head over and buy a copy of Nicolás’s latest project Ion Guard that presents the Gallantverse’s equivalent of the Green Lantern Corps/Lensmen.
Weekly Film Article Cavalcade
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
Since yesterday was May the Fourth be with you, which in addition to being my late mom’s birthday is the anniversary of the release of Star Wars into theaters, I thought I’d share Luke’s recent Star Wars related reviews.
His first review is of the new Disney+ series Tales of the Empire, which gets a mixed review from Luke. As an informative source to fill in details behind other storylines, Luke finds it valuable. As an entertaining franchise on its own? Not so much.
His next review isn’t a review of a movie or television show. Instead it’s a review for an HOA President’s version of an Action Figure. Luke examines the upcoming 7 foot tall animatronic Darth Vader from Home Depot.
Just when I thought I was going to get to start saving money, they keep pulling me back in.
Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat
Courtney Howard’s latest review is of the new Hulu streaming raunch com Prom Dates. The raunch com genre is hard to pull off, but when it’s done well like in Bridesmaids it makes for an all-time comedy classic. Sadly, based on Courtney’s review of this recent entry Prom Dates misses that mark. Maybe it’s because raunch com’s work best when they come out during a boom of good rom coms and we are only just now starting to see the bare hint of a renaissance of the genre, but I can’t help but think that at the moment the raunch com as a genre is a bit played out.
Mendelson’s Melodic Meanderings
Scott Mendelson and crew discuss the latest films and the state of the movie industry. The industry still hasn’t adapted to streaming in the post-Covid world and an industry that was once consistently profitable is in a period of mergers.
is one of the best analysts of the industry, so you should listen to what he and his panel have to say.
Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse
There is a lot going on in the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse this week. First, we have
of who’s got a low down on a recent solo RPG filled with piratic action! A part of me wishes the game wasn’t coming out until Talk Like a Pirate Day!, but I’m always down for adventures in the dangerous seas. have an interesting system for how to simulate lock picking in your roleplaying sessions. Their system uses Yahtzee! and seeks to turn lockpicking into a narratively exciting experience. While I have my opinions on how the Thief class began a trend in gaming towards a more mechanics based mindset, I have to say that their system was interesting…even if watching videos of the Lockpicking Lawyer makes me think that D. Daniel Wagner’s original Thief class (where abilities worked like spells) was a better representation of the practice in reality. That doesn’t mean I think that lockpicking shouldn’t be narratively interesting in rpgs, film, and tv shows, just that the reality is often less dramatic.
Music Recommendation
This week’s music recommendations start soft and acoustic and end heavy and electric.
I’ve always been a fan of Toad the Wet Sprocket’s song Nanci. It’s playful and has a really catchy melody. It is also the song I immediately think about when I hear the next song on this week’s list.
As much as I like Something Like Olivia, which plays as a less creepy Jessie’s Girl, every time I hear it I immediately want to listen to Nanci. They have similar charms rooted in fun melodies and humorous lyrical narratives.
And while we are wandering through acoustic ironic romance land, we might as well listen to a cut from Hozier’s latest album. Hozier is one of those artists, like John Mayer, that come immediately to mind when people say that “we don’t have great singer song writers like we used to.” We do still have them and they are pretty darn successful. Sure, there is a lot of autotuned stuff with automated drums and no real instrumentation, but there is still good music being made.
Speaking of good music, I’ve been a Metallica fan since I was a kid, but I tend towards listening more to their older/deeper cuts than there more recent stuff. That doesn’t man I don’t like songs like Enter Sandman and One that brought the band tremendous financial success. Those are great tunes, but there’s a part of me that likes my metal to be Sword & Sorcery and songs like Phantom Lord fit that bill perfectly.
Might as well finish things off with a big of progressive rock. I mean, would it really be a Weekly Geekly Rundown without at least one prog rock recommendation?
Classic Film Recommendation
The Criterion Channel is featuring one of Hollywood’s great actresses this month with a collection of films starring Shirley MacLaine. While she is undeniably one of the great comedic actresses, she is also one of the great dramatic actresses of any era. As I was looking over the twenty or so films that Criterion is featuring, I was struck by how much they were a statement as to what an “A List” actor really is. MacLaine’s work, the TV miniseries Out on a Limb aside, is a string of high caliber performance after high caliber performance.
One of my absolute favorite performances by her is in the film Guarding Tess starring her and Nicolas Cage. It’s a hilarious film about the relationship between a President’s wife and her Secret Service agent. It features a lot of the elements of a romantic comedy in the best Cary Grant tradition. It is about love and has hilarious screwball elements after all, but it lacks a romance. Cage’s character loves Tess, but he loves her like a son loves a mother and she reciprocates. It’s a point emphasized when her own son shows up early in the film. The agent is the son she wished she had and she’s going to make him stay as her agent for as long as she can. It’s a situation that annoys Cage’s character to no end, but when push comes to shove and the film shifts from comedy to a better (and earlier) version of the Russell Crowe/Meg Ryan film Proof of Life is when the film really shines.
There is real heart in this film. There is real love between the characters and that is always worth watching. Besides, Cage only dials the Cageometer to 6 in this one and stays at 3 most of the time. He only ratchets it up when shifting into Harry Callahan territory.
Minor point of order -- I don't consider a news story I do on a new product to be a review. It was really weird recently when NECA said "the reviews" were in on a life-sized M3GAN doll they're soliciting, because they know full well none of us had the thing in hand, and were using flowery prose to fulfill a word count for a news piece announcing the thing.