how my silent titans game crashed and burned

"I stopped paying attention because every time I looked up you were struggling with a series of adjectives"- my friend

The overland exploration part of the Silent Titan is pretty busted. You get to choose between two random paths; the paths themselves are described via complex pieces of prose:

Some examples.

Some of these are a little hard for me to visualize, let alone describe. "Escher-maze of cracked concrete steps."

And the courts kept showing up-- Court of Wapentake, Court of Wassail. 2 primary entries on the random encounter table. Good the first time but stopped being weird and started being repetitive. Not much was happening between iterations of mock trials, parades, and Ouzel visits.

It feels like a failure of with the system. Wir-Heal can be weird to navigate but it shouldn't be onerous and repetitive.

It would also be better if the paths you could take were more succinctly described as paths and not just landscapes. "Do you head over towards the gogmagogic buildings or the dense maquis?" Along with the vocabulary and diction it's a clear case of style over function.

The paths they took would often lead right back to where they started, which grew frustrating. It felt like a slot machine where most results were boring, creating boring gameplay.

Things I should have done to save the game:

• Not just read the prose describing the paths, but rather use the prose to inspire some simpler options. (In retrospect, I did this: "Tarmac paths or concrete steps"- but it was too late?)
• Fudge the results on the random encounter table to achieve more interesting results.
• Completely substitute the navigation system as soon as it stopped working. 
• The players were trying to ask locals for directions, which I resisted giving. 

 I also think the players could have been more inspired to find the titan's mouths. That might have ameliorated the aimless frustration. 

How it crashed and burned: the end of the 4th session I realized all the business with the tables and rolling options and being marble-mouthed at the prose wasn't working out, and we the gaming group decided to play something else... another Veins of the Earth campaign.

Ironically I'm having similar overworld journey struggles with the exploration rules in Veins, the setting thereof being a giant series of underground caverns.

My new overworld map for Veins.

Navigation in strange environments probably a continuing difficulty for roleplaying game's mechanics... blogosphere dead, unable to sort it out... Nonetheless I'm applying best principles and dropping a massive amount of preparation which has shown itself as unworkable.

I used to get heartbreak over this kind of thing, reading a big beautiful rpg book, preparing for weeks, and then not getting to use most of it... Difficulties in the rpgtext forbidding an ultimate experience. Well I've been through enough to not be too troubled. Maybe it will work out next time.

SILENT TITANS PRELIMINARY REVIEW

"Silent Titans" is kind of like if Joyce's "Ulyssess" was a rpg, same islander's speculative take, a lot of wandering through shitty beaches. Have not covered an actual Titan proper in my game, outside of the first one, Chronos, where the book has you start.

Properly speaking, it's worth your $50, because the book is a3, (a4?), and has good art in it, and has good writing. That's all it takes being worth as much.

The game itself: I haven't gotten to the dungeons/titans yet. I wrote Chris Kessler, the layout designer, a bunch of questions as I read it for the first time. The room labelled #1 is where the PC's start off in. The tubes in Hilb are hallways. Sometimes a bullet point is in the wrong place. I got all mad about the overmap but it's working great as a play-aid.

I printed out all the maps using my work printer, in color, the players loves them. Character creation is lovely. The gang is wandering around Wir-Heal and one got captured by the Court of Wapentake.

Big weird-o's are the combat, which is quick, area weapons are crazy good. Does the keyword "fast" mean they get to act twice? What about "slow"? This is not a book which, as a design choice, makes sure to define every little thing. The navigation system inside Wir-Heal is quite strange and provokes some dictionary lookups.

The navigation system essentially has you experience what I imagine, quaintly enough, Patrick experiences wandering around the post-industrial landscape of his homeworld, kicking trash and occasionally encountering bombastic threats. A lot of loneliness, and then you stumble into another animal-man village, while you're slowly turning into a Woodwose. It's surprisingly somber experience...

...As the rest of the book is, when you get into it, it tells a story which is quite fatalistic, the implicit tale of the Knight of the Pentangle. I originally wrote Dirk Detweiler Leichty that I hoped the game would be kinda board-game-like, considering his art looking like Jumanji/Chutes and Ladders. I definitely do have a board game experience when I print out the maps and slide around my friend's 3d-printed miniatures on them.

There is the added benefit that Dirk's escherian/arcane linework can be displayed to the players without giving away too much; and once explained it becomes clear.

AN EXAMPLE:

Guess what the below map-segment illustrates...

.... it's a library filling up up water... "Ink-black water sheets down the shelves and falls from the sky in an eternal pounding rain." Obviously the verbal description is needed to make this clear, but once done so the image becomes a shorthand. No visual spoilers by displaying the whole map.

The above is hypothetical as I haven't run most of the game yet, although a few illustrations like:

have already served me at the table basically as I've described.

-----

I am worried, or rather, more aware that within my group there will be a lot of character-chucking into the abyss, horribly random occurrences may prevent any dungeons from being explored, or maybe they'll visit just one. What is the larger narrative to be had here; PIGPIP, the players will fall and be consumed by the raging time-lords.

endgame's spoilers

• meal scenes
• jokes
• void
• dialogue
• 
  
• pretty good action sequences
• mark ruffalo slowly enunciates

Overall this is a comic book movie in a way I can't be mad about. How could I be mad. What is madness, the state of being mad. Is it that there is something we are watching and we feel bored and irritated? I felt that way a lot. The outer-space sequences especially. 

It is cool that there is so much scale in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The space stuff is important like the Los Angeles stuff (there is no L.A. stuff -ed). There are a lot of meal scenes.

This is the basis for fun that comic book superfans extoll. The interconnectedness of all places, and people. Will this freeform fun extend to the machinations of larger studios? Well, the movie is three hours long, and it features Fat Thor.

As the Red Letter Media guys said, the powers-that-be realized that Chris Hemsworth is an excellent comedian. Wisely, they continue to countenance immortality with humour. The project, large scale, could be said to be thus.

Of course, they fail, for the most part. "I get the sense that comic book movie's main struggle is over sentimentality". I said this in a blog review of into the spiderverse and I repeated it for my friends when we rewatched "Spiderverse" last week. There are 3-4 father figures in that movie.

At the end of the day, wringing emotion out of supercharacters becomes a crapshoot based on who the audience actually knows about, the confluence of writing, the "needs of  plot", the acting, and ultimately the editing which has to assemble it all. No wonder the movie is three hours.

jordan peele's us

“Us” is at its core an experiment in acting, wherein the principals are asked to play alternate horror-versions of their characters. I assume that each actor was worked with individually to come up with this character; I might be wrong who knows. 

Anyway that experiement in acting can be judged either to the good or to the not-so-good, that’s probably why this movie is divisive. The other reason it is divisive is due to the gaping blatant holes in the plot and logic. You can really chalk this up to the shitty writing. I tried to find  a sort of neo-camp disregard for plot or logic but nah.

Also J.P. is still not that great of a filmmaker, things were really boring and slow a lot of the time, and the momentum of the film stutters a lot. There are some pretty cool images and scenarios, though.

delivarance 1972: reviewed

a fruity pebbles rice krispies treat… left in a small green plastic bag. It sat on my living room end table for a week. I had run out of money for groceries... no dessert.

I ate the rice krispies treat. Yeah, it was an edible. I was watching “Deliverance” and getting really happy. I eventually understood that I had been poisoned. The best part of the movie is the end, where the author of the book interrogates his own characters. James Dickey played the sheriff who has final call over our protagonist’s fates.

The movie does an admirable job of interrogating american/southern masculinity. “Deliverance”, the title, refers to the process by which the four southern middleclass men scramble their way out of deep deep trouble. Most stories would end with the death of the villain and handwave the police; this one instead sees the entire process through.

And as such this movie has: a dinnertime breakdown in tears, hurried grave-digging, that scene with the sherriff/author, and a very good shot looking at the man who was a victim of assault, back lit by gold walking away saying he’d “rather keep this under wraps”. 

“Deliverance” implying a burden, the relieving of a burden. That scene with the sheriff is very good. James Dickey has thin little teeth. 

Lester burnham in "American Beauty": an instadeath:nights

Lester Burnham, as played by Mr. Kevin Spacey, lately accused of sexual assault

american beauty joins crash grand canyon donnie darko has a very donnie darko style character you know you all know the brightness on my tv cant be adjusted but but! there is that scene that attraction that lester burnham played by kevin spacey has, sure in retrospect even creepier than otherwise, to his daughter's teenage friend, which resolves itself apace to Magnolia, by paul thomas anderson, a pretty sad stupid movie, all of these movies with their positive-tone endings are pretty bad, even the ones that end with the death of the main character, i.e. this one and donnie darko

they are all bad because they take as a given a certain love is inherent, proceeds apace of death and confusion, when in reality the love that kevin spacey would find came out of something problematic and to its problematic grave it should follow: essentially the body of that teenage friend, not to the family photo which is where his brains end up splattering.

To be honest, if we are being honest, and letting ourselves conclude that the things we find are essentially problematic, not cancelled, but problematic, I guess to that end I find that our virtue comes and goes in problematic places. Sure, in that body of a teenage daughter's friend, and it ends up leaving through the same path it came in. Or it doesn't; it spreads like a bullet a gooey mass of blood all over the wall. Sure, that's destiny.

There's something about this movie innit tempts a certain amiable viewership with me, a critic. Yeah they take the time to circle around a moral point. But is it ruined bc it's all white people? Would the inclusion of a few people-of-color help? Probably probably, yes.

I have this intense fear of being exposed as someone, just like the other white shitlords out there, being traced on the internet and my crimes revealed. Like being a troll. Anything can be spun up and whipped; and there's this gunning in the air...

That is to say though, Georges Baulldiare quote, "art which avoids evil rapidly becomes boring" (paraphrased). Shittalking, happening behind closed doors... No chance to respond. You know, social anomie. It's all linked, and Lester Burnham had his chance to, but at the moment, he realized that he was something boring. The same pathway towards the soul leads out rather than in, the things that touch us have a habit of spinning us and bringing us to a vile end.

Georges Bataille. With my apologies.

marvel studios movies ranked

marvel studios movies ranked

1. sama raimi spider man trilogy
2. daredevil good villain
3. the avengers 2012
4. black panther 2018
5. iron man 2008
6. ant man
7. doctor strange 2016
8. captain america winter soldier
9. camptain america civil war
10. incredible hulk 2008 ruffalo honerary inclusion
11. g of the galxy 2017 #2