Month: April 2018

Setting the Scene

Chris Leave a comment

This scene is not mine.

Don’t ask me whose it is, I just wandered through.
My life is elsewhere, but don’t ask me that either.

If you find it, let me know.
I’ve been looking awhile.

 

My aesthetic is rainy days and dark roads.
Fresh, rain-churned mud and speckles of water on glasses.
Music whose notes and words are engraved on your soul.
The patter of rain on glass; window and windshield.

A heart made of tangled knots and too many nots.
A soul pierced by a spike of its own design.

Weary eyes, tired bones, and joints that predict the weather.
Soft smiles, gentle kindness, and world-weary wisdom.

 

Don’t ask me who I am, there’s no answer to that.
If answers are all you seek, maybe your path lies elsewhere.
                                                   All I have are questions.
                                                   I will share those, if you want.

                         Please don’t go, though.
I don’t know where I’m going but I’d like to not be alone.

 

Maybe, if we stick together you’ll find your answers.
                                                   Me?
I’d like to know when I’ve got enough questions.

Overwatch Strategy: A Primer

Chris Leave a comment

While the individual maps and various play modes make it difficult to have a general discussion about strategy in Overwatch, there is a common element to most of the normal and competitive game types. Throughout the match, each team is going to attempt to kill everyone on the opposite team. While each team has their own objectives (defend this location, conquer that location, guide a payload, stall a payload, hold on to this location for a certain amount of time), the opposing team stands in the way of achieving those objectives. The best way to get your opponents out of your way in this game, at least in the most basic terms, is to kill them or hurt them so much that they run away.

Beyond the basic terms, strategy splits into two useful levels: professional and amateur. If you really want to nitpick, there are a few more, such as “amateurs who imitate the pros,” “people who have no idea what they’re doing,” and “people who get super salty and play like there’s a berserker mode that makes them harder to kill.” I’m going to stick to pro and amateur for now because there really isn’t a lot of actual strategy that goes into playing those three levels.

Amateur strategy is probably the simplest to discuss because it relies on the same basic principles that professional strategy does, but leans on them almost entirely instead of using them as a trunk from which they can then branch out. In an amateur team fight, your tanks are going to be at the front of the line, the DPS will either be with them or trying to out-maneuver your opponents, your supports should be near the tanks to help keep them alive, and your defense characters should be either pushing the enemy tanks around or preventing your tanks from being pushed around. While it is entirely possibly to play out a team fight without much strategy, relying on the skill of the players as they clash in a giant muddle, it will quickly turn into a horrible grind where either everyone dies or one team just gets completely wiped out.

Because of the variety off characters that people use in the amateur scene, there isn’t really a strict guideline of how to play each level. There are particular strategies that work more often than not, but the deciding factor is often the skill of the individual players. As a result, a good strategy for an amateur match tends to be focused around playing to the strengths of your particular character. DPS should focus on their specialized type of damage (ranged accuracy, flanking, or pure numbers). Tanks should focus on taking or preventing damage using shields, picking out solo targets in mid-range, or living for a really long time despite taking tons of damage. Supports should heal, peal enemies off of tanks, and control the area around where their own team is located. Defense characters often wind up playing to the one of the strengths I’ve already listed, since most of their job consists of either teaming up with the tanks or taking down enemy tanks.

If everyone plays to their strengths and works as a team, then there’s no reason they shouldn’t win unless the other team is just better than they are. If they can communicate well, it is possible for them to play into some of the basic strategies successfully. Without the consistent skill of the pro or high-tier scenes, they aren’t as reliable as just playing well. Dive-composition is relatively easy to do, since it is just a very mobile way of playing and consists of playing characters to their strengths. The “standard” composition of two tanks, two DPS, and two healers is hard to go wrong with. The old “triple-tank” composition doesn’t work as well as it used to, but it has its niches. It requires consistent skill and good communication to pull off, though, so it rarely gets used in the amateur scene.

In the professional scene, at least right now, the overwhelming majority of matches use the dive composition with some slight variation in the second DPS and second healer depending on how the team plans to play after the moment of first contact. Usually a DPS and a tank from Team A will dive in, trying to take out the supports of Team B, and the tanks of Team B will fall back to counter the dive. At that point, if the diving components of Team A are still alive, which they usually are, the other DPS, tank, and one of the supports from Team A will start attacking the back of the tanks of Team B. If Team A’s dive works, then at least one of the supports for team B is dead, the tanks of Team B have taken heavy damage, and Team A is an advantageous position for achieving their objective.

There is some variety that happens in matches, given that a daring shift to a different strategy can upset the balance of a match and start the ball rolling for the team that changed things up. Since the level of skill is relatively level, the deciding factor is often what maneuvers each team tries and when they try them. Good timing and shot-calling is often what decides a match. Individual players can still tip the balance, but generally not in as decisive a manner as they can for amateur matches.

All that being said, there is one style of play that can completely shift everything. Though the basic strategy is the same, putting one of the DPS players on the Widowmaker character can shift the entire game. While having a single-shot, high-damage character means a big grind fight can turn against you, being able to quickly take characters from the opposing team out of the battle means that your team can commit more strongly without as much fear of being countered. Taking out an enemy support instantly means your team can focus on the one other support when you dive and quickly wrap up a fight that would have otherwise been drawn out and slow. Taking out their DPS means you have some room to breathe and take a few risks that would otherwise be way too dangerous to consider.

One of the biggest differences between amateur and pro matches is the way partial teams commit to fights. In a pro match, if they have time and are missing a character due to a snipe kill from a Widowmaker or because someone got trapped and killed quickly, they will simply wait until the full team is there before trying again. If a defending team is getting routed, they will often retreat, give the attacking team their objective, and gather to try to take out the attacking team in a quick counter attack. In amateur matches, generally players stick around until they are killed. This can work out, sometimes, because not all players are skilled enough to quickly kill their opponents in an uneven team fight, but it generally does not because the skill disparity required for this to work out is very high.

Pro players are much more cautious. They tend to back out more readily, take fewer unnecessary risks, and wait for their team before acting unless they’re specifically playing a character who is supposed to act alone. In amateur play, you often see tanks trying to go it alone when they very much should not be. A tank without any DPS or support will die super quickly unless they somehow manage to catch the entire enemy team unaware. Which can, of course, happen. Amateur matches are super inconsistent and anything cam happen in them. A lot of players, myself included, take stupid risks because we know that no one will expect it and the surprise itself is something that can be exploited. One of my best plays as a tank was when I snuck around the side, flanked the enemy team with a charging attack, and got the entire team focused on killing me (which they did), so the rest of my team could close the gap and murder them. I got one kill to make sure it was an even fight and my team would up winning because they knew what I was doing and I managed to shake up the enemy team. I wouldn’t recommend trying it yourself because it was more luck than good shot-calling that made it work out.

One of the most exciting parts of playing and watching Overwatch is that changing the composition of your team and using the element of surprise can tip a match decidedly in your favor. While there is a basic strategy used in almost all competitive matches, one change to the balance of a key hero or the introduction of a new hero can cause the old strategy to no longer work. I am excited to see how professional play evolves once they start incorporating the newest hero, a support character whose skills seem designed to counter the standard dive composition that all professional teams use.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Hilarity

Chris Leave a comment

Over the weekend, I went to see Jumanji at the cheap seats theater with my girlfriend. Despite the fact that the movie was out, I managed to avoid spoilers or any of the hype so my only real expectation going into the movie was that I was probably going to enjoy seeing Jack Black do the most realistic impression of a teenage Instagram-addicted girl any older man has ever done.

I want to officially go on record as saying this is not only true, it was so entirely believable that I forgot that he wasn’t actually a vain teenaged girl whose only pursuit in life up to that point had been more Instagram followers and how to take the perfect selfie. It was uncanny, amazing, and I recommend checking the movie out for this alone. You will not regret it unless you are some kind of awful person who dislikes laughter, hilarity, and anything fun. I think you will like it so much that if you watch it and dislike it (and prove you are not an awful, fun-hating, potentially-a-robot-who-wasn’t-programmed-to-understand-humor person) then I will send you my address so we can duel with sabers at sunset.

There are a lot of other really enjoyable aspects of the movie as well. The update to “modern” times was a lot of fun. Instead of being a board game, the nightmarish magic of Jumanji transforms itself into a video game for some obscure console none of the actually modern protagonists can identify. All of the new players get sucked into the video game and have to beat it in order to escape. The game world is filled with a bunch of wonderful nods to the way video games work, including NPCs with limited dialogue options, weird bits of food that are only ever called “rations,” and a really clever way to show the players how many lives they have left.

Each off the four protagonists falls into the four main high school kid stereotypes off “vapid popular girl,” “popular jock guy,” “Smart unpopular girl,” and “nerdy awkward boy.” Eventually, you learn enough about the characters to realize that they’re not just their stereotypes. The jock isn’t dumb, he just needed help with one of his homework assignments. The nerd isn’t just awkward and scared of everything, he acts confident in the things he does to cover up his insecurities. The popular girl isn’t just vain, she actually puts a lot of work into living the life she wants and has some startling insights into how people think and behave. The unpopular girl isn’t just smart, she is so worried about people not liking her that she pushes them away before they get a chance to make up their own mind. The entire movie is filled with these little moments where the characters break their molds. (Spoilers, sorta) The popular girl gives up one of her lives to save an ally without a moment’s hesitation or consideration. The jock winds up talking the nerd through his confidence issues and shows his wisdom. The nerd faces his general fear off the world and protects the rest of the group. (Spoilers, definitely, though not in the way this sentence makes it seem) The smart girl sacrifices herself to help the group win the game.

The world of the game is fun, the villain is super creepy, and the missing child is so mid-90s it almost hurts. The character stereotypes (the video game characters that the protagonists become) are hilarious. The rock acts like a small frightened boy and the only reason he doesn’t steal the show is because it has been hidden in Jack Black’s back pocket from the instant he opened his mouth to talk like a vapid teenage girl. The NPCs are hilariously only concerned with their little programs, which means that a character can explode five feet from them and they will continue to, once the dust has started to settle, hawk their “rations.”

Every character gets a moment to shine and there’s never a slow moment. Everything is incredibly well-paced and the only time I was pulled out of the story enough to anticipate what would happen next was when they had beaten the game and were going through the end of the game. Though it is a fairly simple movie that is exactly what it seems like it would be, I can’t recommend it enough. It is definitely worth two hours of your time, plus the drive to wherever its showing. Or at least a digital rental once it has been released.

 

Coldheart and Iron: Part 13

Chris Leave a comment

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

I spent most of the first full day of the blizzard napping after one last shift making my signature fruit-and-secret-sugar oatmeal. I had originally planned to sit with a group of the newer Wayfinders and trainees, but I fell asleep as they were telling stories. I woke up in time for lunch and managed to stay awake for another hour but, just like my father would do at every family party we’d ever attended, I fell asleep shortly after sitting down.

Camille woke me in time to help prepare dinner and we had another excellent meal, filled with laughter, good food, and warmth as we all sat in a large circle. After dinner and clean up, Natalie and I managed to find the time to perform a quick review of the storerooms, to double-check that all of our lists were accurate. It wound up taking a little longer than planned, but we wanted to be thorough. Once we’d wrapped up and Natalie had gone away to file the stock reports, I checked on the Laborers and Nomads. They seemed to be getting along well and were hunkered down for the night by the time I walked by.

The second day was a little more quiet and somber. The wind had picked up overnight, which meant the worse of the storm was approaching. There were no restrictions on noise, thankfully, but it was hard to be anything other than quiet. Knowing that the only thing keeping you alive was preparations you had finished a few days ago was frustrating because there was nothing you could do today to fix or improve things. I tried to keep spirits up, but only the Laborers seemed unaffected by the general mood, though I quickly figured it out that their cheer was because they had finished off the last of their smuggled alcohol when the tension started getting to them. Thankfully, no one got too belligerent.

Day three was almost silent as the screaming winds and the occasional thump of debris bouncing off the building cut through any attempts at conversation. Most of the Wayfinders tried to sleep through the day. The others played cards, cleaned their gear, or talked in groups of two or three. The nomads stayed in their rooms and the laborers stayed huddled on their cookfire for the entire day, slowly eating all of the extra food they had saved up from the rations we doled out every day. I got a couple naps in, but mostly I played solitaire while Camille, Natalie, and Lucas played poker for guard shifts.

By the end of the fourth day, restlessness had started to settle in, pushing some of the fear and silence out. People moved around more. Most of the Wayfinders were doing various workout routines to burn some energy and stay in shape while one of the more knowledgeable martial artists gave lessons to anyone who wanted to learn. A surprising number of Laborers showed up, as did all of the Nomads. I watched as the two groups mixed with the Wayfinders in the large, empty storage room Terry had set up as her classroom and was relieved to see that the Laborers practiced with everyone, not just each other. The Nomads stayed a little more insular, but a few of them had started to pick different partners by dinner time.

On the fifth day, the wind and noise started to die down. Everyone’s mood picked up, thought they still spent the day exercising or learning martial arts. A few people, the less athletically inclined, spent a lot of time between their practice sessions complaining about how sore they were, but they refused every offer to sit by the sidelines and play cards. A few of the older Wayfinders, including Natalie and myself, weren’t as stir-crazy, so we spent our day taking care of guard shifts and playing card games while watching the Laborers and Nomads knock each other on their asses. It was a good way to spend the day and, since we were crowded in a corner, it made sense for Natalie and I to sit close to each other.

The sixth day was punctuated by gusts of wind that carried a bit of debris around, slapping it into the building with a surprisingly loud noise. The tension was back, and most people stayed quiet in their own spaces. A few of the nomads and most of the Laborers were sore from the past two days of rigorous exercise, but it was mostly anxiety that kept the Wayfinders quiet. It is one thing to ignore constant wind and the almost ceaseless sound of bits of whatever peppering the sides of the building we were in, but the random gusts lulled people into a false sense of peace unless they kept their guard up the entire time. By the time we were going to bed, though, the wind had stopped and silenced reigned around us.

Day seven started out quietly, carrying over yesterday’s tension, amplified by everyone straining their ears for any sound that didn’t belong to the people around them. It was quiet enough for me to hear the creak of my joints as I went through my daily tasks. By dinner, everyone had started to relax again. The worst of the blizzard should have been over that morning and the lack of any major disturbance meant that the blizzard would end on schedule, in just three more days. All we had to do at this point was wait out the last of the snowfall and wind, and we would finally be able to start digging ourselves out.

The eighth day slowly, people now bored out of their minds and left feeling out of sorts as the tension they’d been holding onto for a week started to drain away. Camille and I broke into some of the stores that Natalie had set aside for turning this place into a base, expanding our meal supplies so we had enough to make dinner for the Laborers and Nomads as well. We had to recruit a few extra hands, the old Nomad woman, Mary, who turned out to be their matriarch and Trevor, to be able to make such a large meal, but bringing everyone together to celebrate making it through the worst of the blizzard did an excellent job of raising spirits.

The ninth day passed in a blur of activity as we started getting everyone ready to start the process of digging through the inevitable snow drifts piled against our door. Natalie handed out a few copies of her supply map that she had produced between cards and exercise routines and I walked Trevor and Mary through Natalie’s plans for gathering supplies and clearing a way out of town. We all went to bed early, everyone worn out from the busy day and the excitement they’d been feeling at the prospect of getting out into the fresh air again. It had gotten rather stuffy and a little smelly over the past couple days, and even cold, snow-filled air would be preferable to the scent of people who’d been working out.

The tenth day began quickly. Everyone was awake and ready to go by six, so we began the process of unblocking the front door, carefully peeling away the sealant so we could get a peek outside without letting out too much heat. When we finally glimpsed the outside world again, we were met with the usual light-grey cloud cover and gently falling snow that was adding to at least two feet of snow. The drifts we could see towered above us. Thankfully, the one near the door was off to the side, so we’d be able to dig our way out without needing to go through the deepest part of a drift.

I gave the order to finish unblocking the door and found Trevor and Mary watching nearby. I waved them over and took a few steps away from the door. “We’re going to focus on digging today. Supply gathering will start tomorrow, but I’d like to get paths dug before we get any sun that could turn the top layer of the snow to ice.”

“Could we really get sunlight that soon?” Trevor looked out at the grey sky doubtfully. “We just had a blizzard and you said it’s going to keep snowing for a few more days.”

“Yes, but there’s still a chance we’ll see a few breaks in the clouds.” I gestured toward the giant piles of snow. “Most of the moisture making the clouds is down here now and it will be a while before enough new moisture is gathered to return the clouds to their usual iron-grey color. We’ll get more sun in the next few days than we will in the three months between the return of the clouds and the start of the next blizzard.”

Mary nodded, her face grim. “We always like to do as many outside chores as we can during these days. The sunlight feels good after being trapped inside for over a week.”

Trevor shrugged. “Alright. I trust you. Paths it is. I’ll get my people ready.”

“Thanks.” I smiled and gestured to the map sticking out of Trevor’s breast pocket. “There’s a path going south toward a supply cache, an old Menards, and I’d like for your group to focus on that.”

“South?” Mary pulled out her own map. “Isn’t that going to take them toward the group of people you told us to avoid?”

“Yes, but they’ll be fine. The store is only a mile away and my scouts found no traces of any of them coming that far north.” I pointed at a point three miles further south, past the store. “This is as far north as we’ve found tracks of signs of their passage.” I looked up at Trevor. “As long as you guys stay fairly quietly, the snow will muffle you enough that your group can just shovel right up to the doors and walk away.”

“Excellent.” Trevor smiled and pulled out his map. “I’ll get us ready to go within the hour.”

“Just go straight south. This is the longest path we’ll be digging, so try to go as straight as you can. If you can go around a big drift, do it, but only if it doesn’t take you off the marked streets.”

Trevor bobbed his head in acknowledgment and turned away. He paused and turned back. “How big should the path be?”

I held my arms out to the sides, as far as I could. “About two and a half times the size of the widest person in your group. We want people to be able to pass each other without bumping into each other so we can quickly move supplies.” Trevor gave me a thumbs-up and turned away again.

As Trevor walked away, I gestured toward Mary’s map. “I’d like to get all of your people working on some of the local paths. Feel free to deviate as much as you need to, to get around the big drifts.”

Mary started tracing a few lines on her map with a finger. “Sounds good. I’ll make sure my people know what to do. We used to do similar things around our home, that I will say we relied more on snowshoes than completely clearing a path.” She folded up her map and looked over at me. “We’ll get it done.”

“As soon as the Wayfinders have dug our way out of town, we’ll swing back to help your people finish the local paths.”

Mary pursed her lips. “You think you’re going to be able to make it the mile and a half out of town and then back again before I’m finished?”

I gave Mary a giant grin, imitating Lucas’ signature smile. “Well, we’ve had a lot of practice.”

Mary chuckled and walked away. “Fair enough.”

I watched the Wayfinders finish their job of clearing the door and then, once it was finished, went back into our area to put on my insulated gear. One day of digging, four days of gathering supplies, one day of sorting, and then we’d finally be on our way again. As much as I enjoyed the security and warmth of our shelter, my feet had started to itch as soon as we started opening the door. Safety is always nice, of course, but I was ready to be moving again.

Tabletop Highlight: Setting the Mood for Your Tabletop RPG

Chris Leave a comment

An important part of every tabletop RPG session is creating the right mood and atmosphere. No matter the style of game, no matter what game, the atmosphere can make or break it. There are many ways of setting the mood, using everything from music, pictures, spoken word, play location, to tactile objects to represent characters (minis) or even three-dimensional environments for the miniatures.

The easiest way to set the mood and create atmosphere is to use miniatures for the players and enemies and to use what most people call “terrain.” Miniatures can be anything from little Lego people with customize outfits and items to carefully molded pewter statues with carefully molded armor and weaponry, all of which is painstakingly painted to match the player’s idea of the character. A lot of the time, the most common type of miniatures is any object that is small enough or a “close enough” plastic miniature of the kind that is readily available at any gaming shop. Terrain follows similar rules. It can be painstakingly created and highly detailed or super simple. The most common form, used for almost every grid-based RPG I’ve ever played, is a wet-erase or dry-erase mat marked out with a grid of squares, one inch long on each side. Both of things, terrain and miniatures, can create a great deal of atmosphere very easily. Even the least immersive players can get absorbed into the game with the right terrain and miniatures. The downside is that doing this stuff that well takes a huge amount of time or money. Stand-ins and a playmat is the most cost-effective way of doing it, but it doesn’t do much more than let the players see the shape of the world and where their character stands in relation to their allies and enemies.

If you had players who are willing to make more of an investment in each session, music can work amazingly. Music can directly appeal to people’s emotions, so you can help make your players feel the tension of harsh negotiations or the relief of finally reaching their destination by carefully selecting your playlist. Video game music makes an excellent background to battles and there are numerous YouTube videos full of nothing but the sounds of a city to make your players feel like they’re really in a bustling metropolis. Other sound effects, if you’re feeling really ambitious, can add an entire additional layer. The sound of horses, the blast of fireballs, the din of battle, even the moans of the dying or damned. It takes a lot of work to have everything up and in a form you can use without breaking the moment you’re trying to enhance, but it is still a lot easier than creating exact miniatures and terrain for your sessions.

Another great way to help set the right atmosphere for your players is to use pictures. There are a lot of resources available online, so you can find a picture of almost anything if you aren’t feeling up to creating custom images. Pictures of dark dungeons, great manors, the various enemies they’ll fight, and even weapons they find. If you’ve got artists amongst your players, you can encourage them to create pictures of their own characters (and maybe their allies as well) that they can keep up-to-date instead of a miniature. While not terribly immersive unless you’ve got a picture for everything that the players can always look at (which is a lot easier to do for online sessions or if you’ve got a big TV near where you play), it can really help the players fix the world in their minds more completely. Plus, you never know what good can come from encouraging the creation and usage of art. In one of my first big campaigns, a player was constantly drawing during each session and his humorous pictures and the renderings of some of the scenes he wanted to preserve added a lot of fun to the games for the other players.

My preferred method requires a great deal of participation from the players. Since I don’t always have the time to prepare pictures and playlists, I rely mostly on spoken words and descriptions in addition to simple miniatures and a playmat. Spoken words and descriptions take a lot more work and skill from the DM during the session, which can steal their focus from other things like tracking enemies, improvising numbers for their game, or even accidentally reveal something that was supposed to be a secret. To counter this, when I describe the atmosphere and give details on where the players are located, I also change my level of detail based on their level of observation and awareness. I also vary the level of detail at somewhat random, beyond the basics, so my players never know if I’m describing something more because its important or because I’ve picked this situation as my “slightly more description” moment. It requires very firm mental images on my part, which means I have to be pretty prepared for each session, but not in as detail-oriented a manner as I would need for music, pictures, or terrain. It can also be used to mess with my players by consistently giving greater-than-average detail on something insignificant.

There are definitely more ways to help set the mood for your session, but the above are the ones most commonly used. Not many people are willing or able to relocate their entire game and related materials to a remote location like a cave or the food court of a mall, so I’ve only ever heard of it happening once. To a friend of a friend of a friend. The furthest I’ve ever gone is to move the game into the basement or outside, but that’s mostly for non-game reasons like wanting to dampen our noise or wanting to enjoy the sunshine and cool breeze on a gorgeous day. While the amount of detail you want to put in will likely change from group to group and campaign to campaign, you’ll eventually find your comfort zone and generally stick to that level. Whatever you do, though, just make sure you don’t get lazy.

Doing Some Squats

Chris Leave a comment

Nelson stuck the last plate into the dishwasher. After drying his hands off, he put soap into the dishwasher and set it to start in two hours. He wiped down the counters, swept the floor, and then mopped it. Once the kitchen was sparkling, he turned toward the living room and called out. “Kitchen’s done.”
“Four more rooms and then we’re finished.”
Nelson picked up the cleaning supplies Allie had left on the table. “I swear, you should have finished the living room by now.”
“I would be if we hadn’t made such a mess out here.”
Nelson chuckled as he walked into the dining room. “I guess we were a little too enthusiastic.”
“You were the one who wanted to do this with me. The last step is always cleaning.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Nelson sighed and started cleaning the dining room. Dusting, vacuuming, furniture polishing, and tidying. After finishing, he went into the living room and found Allie just wrapping up.
“Finally got the stains out.” Allie grimaced and picked up her tray of cleaning supplies. “Let’s tackle the bedroom and then you can get the small bathroom while I get the big one.”
“Sure.” Nelson followed Allie up the stairs. “This is way more work than I expected.”
“Proper domestic care takes time.”
“Yeah, but I thought the whole point of breaking into vacant houses was to avoid doing this kind of work.”
Allie shrugged. “Better than getting caught.”
Nelson grumbled as he helped Allie clean the bedroom. Halfway through, Allie paused. “Did the dishwasher just start?”
“No.” Nelson checked the clock near the bed. “Not for another hour.”
“Then what was that rumbling?”
Nelson looked out the window. “That was the garage door.” A family was climbing out of the car parked in the driveway.
“Shit.”

Saturday Morning Musing

Chris Leave a comment

As I’ve often said on my blog, I prefer to keep busy as my main method of dealing with my depression and various mental health issues. The thing is, I like to stay a certain kind of busy. I like a fair amount of social activity, but I prefer most of my busy is working on things or playing video games. Too much social activity and I wind up feeling stressed and exhausted because I don’t have the time to do the things I want to do. It can stress me out, which starts the vicious cycle of losing sleep and getting further stressed.

This past week has been a week where I’ve had a hard time balancing my social time and personal time. After a stressful Monday and Tuesday that not only threw my routines out of whack but knotted up my emotions, I’ve been struggling to balance out since then. On Monday, I heard from someone who I had removed from my life for my personal well-being. She wanted to apologize and I was willing to listen. It was just difficult because the way it played out and how I felt about it fell into line with some other, thornier issues I’ve been dealing with and all of that emotion hit me every time I talked to her. The other thing was that my roommate had some health issues and it took almost 12 hours for my other roommate and I to figure out what was going on. It wasn’t too bad–he’ll be fine–but it was super stressful and anxiety-inducing to be able to do nothing but worry and wait for him to respond to one of our messages.

Throw in my new Monday night D&D group wanting to meet again, the extension my usual weekday date night to cover two nights, my foam-fighting practice on Thursdays, today being my 6-month anniversary with my girlfriend, and it has felt like I’ve got no time to write or rest or be quiet by myself. I’m writing this blog post after the extra D&D session Friday night as I try to avoid falling asleep on my keyboard because I used up my entire buffer during my week of vacation and haven’t been able to build it back up again. All I’ve got in the way of a buffer is tomorrow’s post so I can get enough rest between the anniversary date and tomorrow’s Pokemon Go community day.

The worst part, at least what often feels like the worst part, is that I chose to do all of these things. I could have canceled on D&D. My girlfriend would have understood if I had asked for Wednesday night to myself. I didn’t need to fight at Foam Fighting practice, I totally could have just sat and talked with the non-combatants. I wouldn’t cancel today’s date for anything but a major emergency, but I definitely don’t need to do the Pokemon Go event tomorrow.  I could have been writing and resting instead of doing stuff, but I keep choosing stuff despite telling myself that I was going to make my writing my first priority this year.

I don’t regret my decisions. I had a very nice time with my girlfriend, visiting my roommate in the hospital, playing D&D, and getting my butt kicked by fellow nerds, but I’m tired. Despite more than my usual amount of sleep, I am tired. I want to just spend a week or at least a weekend quietly by myself, doing quiet things. I already want another vacation and my last one isn’t even two weeks old yet.

I know this feeling will pass. By the time I wake up tomorrow, I will feel better. Not entirely better, but somewhat better. That’ll be enough to enjoy six months with my girlfriend and to make the most of the Pokemon Go event. I’ll be just as tired again come Sunday night, as I scramble to get my blog posts written for next week. All I need is a little time to rest and I’ll feel better. I just wish social situations and generally being me weren’t so damn exhausting.

Where I Am

Chris Leave a comment

I watch them grow
And I see them change
­                           Here where I am.
I see them move,
With great breadth and range,
                           Here where I am.

I saw them fall
And get up again
                           From where I am.
I watched them learn
What we might have been
                           From where I am.

They walk away
While I stay quiet
                           Right where I am.
I watch them go,
Filled with disquiet,
                           Right where I am.

I’m still standing,
After all these years,
                           Stuck where I was.
I’m stuck standing,
Rooted by my fears,
                           Still where I was.

­

Vermintide 2 is (Sometimes) a Delightful Mess

Chris Leave a comment

As often happens with my friends, one of us found a new multiplayer game and subsequently convinced the rest of us to buy it. My roommate watched some of the promotional videos for Vermintide 2 and decided that he was going to buy it. One evening of play later, he was telling my and our other roommate that we should get it, even going so far as to offer to loan our other roommate (who is slightly more broke than either of us) the money to buy it. Not convinced by his ringing endorsement (he has a tendency to get very excited about things at first, no matter what they are), I decided to sit down and watch him play through a few matches.

It seemed fun enough, while I watched him. Vermintide 2 is a sort of fantasy remake of Left 4 Dead with an extra character and advancement options for your characters as you leveled them up. The gameplay looked solid, the levels looked fun, and all of the people he got matched with online seemed to have a basic amount of decorum so that the voice chat wasn’t completely horrible. After a while, I decided to buy it. It was only $30 and I needed a multiplayer game other than Overwatch since I’ve been getting kind of burned out on it.

Once I bought it and started downloading, I ran into the first hurdle. Part of downloading the game on Steam is automatically downloading the Test Server version of the game. It is at least the same size as the full game but it doesn’t tell you while you’re picking your download location that you’re downloading two things. You just get notified that the download will take up approximately 65GB of space and that it will take X hours based on your internet. Once you make peace with giving up that much space for this game and pick a location, the download screen on steam lists two separate items. While it is relatively easy to stop the download of the test server client and prevent it from trying to install every time you open Steam (right-click it in your library and pick the uninstall option), it is still super annoying that it starts it by default. If you’re like my roommates, just starting the download and walking away, you won’t even know you’re wasting 30+ GB of space for a version of the game you’re never going to use.

After the download was done, I loaded up the game, started playing, and ran into the second hurdle, one which I continuously run into. At the end of a mission, my game has crashed all but two times. First it plays really terribly synth music as the mission-end stat screen displays itself and then it eventually just shuts down, notifying me that an error report has been sent to the developer. As of today, nothing I’ve tried to fix the problem (based on message board posts and comments from the developer on Steam) has worked. Almost every mission I play ends with the game crashing and me loading up the game again for the next mission.

Aside from that, the game really is a lot of fun. The characters are excellent, each with their own voice and general style of combat. Within the characters, the carious class options and abilities are different enough that each feels different and refreshing. All together, it allows you to create a party that can fit almost any mission type using the same four characters every time. The weapon varieties are fun and easy to understand, so you’re never left wondering what is the difference between two types of bow or two types of polearms. Probably the best part is that, even with the class variation and unlockable abilities, the individual skill of the player counts for a lot. Sure, being higher leveled is a huge advantage in terms of damage output and survivability, but no amount of gear of levels is going to save you on even the beginner missions if you’re terrible at the game.

The plot is rather forgettable (you gotta destroy some kind of hoard of vermin?) and the world is basically a giant crater you spend your time wandering through, but the strength of the game lies in your group’s ability to just murder hundreds of rat creatures as you make your way from point A to point B. All of the fun is in running through these relatively quick missions, killing tons of enemies, and seeing if you can get cool loot for picking up handicaps throughout the level (things that fill your health restoration slot or that lower your total HP significantly).

While that is tons of fun to do, I find myself struggling to enjoy spending time playing the game since I have to restart it every mission and wait for the horrible, screechy synth music to stop (I’m not joking when I call it music. It has a rhythm and a beat to it that I could really get into if it wasn’t make entirely of metallic screeches and feedback noise). If I can figure out what is wrong or the developers patch the game so it no longer crashes all the time, I could really get into it. Until then, I’m mostly going to save it for when I get frustrated with Overwatch or we want to play with my roommate who doesn’t really play Overwatch anymore.

Ultimately, I can’t really recommend buying it right now because of how often it crashes, but I’d put it on your wishlist and wait for the recent reviews to pick up before actually buying it.

I’m Not Religious, but this Show is Miraculous.

Chris Leave a comment

I really love cartoons. More often than not, I feel like I get more out of cartoons than I do out of most TV shows. TV shows focus on drama and situational comedy, while cartoons are a little bit more free to explore a little bit of everything. Steven Universe is probably my all-time favorite show, edging out Adventure Time for the number 1 slot. Most non-animated shows I’ve watched don’t even make it into the single digits. I may not enjoy all cartoons, but I definitely enjoy more cartoons than live-action TV shows.

Which is why it didn’t take much suggestion from my girlfriend to get me to sit down and watch an episode of this French cartoon, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. One episode was all it took and now I’m hooked. It may not have the wonderful music or thought-provoking themes of my two favorites, but it is one of the most charming and enjoyable cartoons I’ve ever watched. The lessons are simple, the plotting is straight forward, and the pacing is incredible for a show with very little continuity.

The place the cartoon shines is in the writing and the characters. Each person is their own kind of clever, everyone feels like a person you either know or would know if you didn’t spend all of your free time watching Netflix, and there are only a couple of characters you dislike. That being said, as you watch the show, even the villain seems to have something he wants that might redeem him if the show ever actually reveals it.

The protagonist, Ladybug, is a teenage girl who is granted super powers through a special item called a “miraculous” that she wears in the shape of earrings. When she uses the command phrase to empower them (there’s this little ladybug creature that follows her around and often acts as her conscience), she gets super strength, a neat outfit (with an amazing transformation sequence), a magical yoyo, and the ability to summon a lucky charm that, if used correctly, will also let her undo all the damage the villain has wrought throughout the episode.

Her opposite, Cat Noir, is a teenage boy who gets his super powers from a “miraculous” that takes the form of a ring he wears. He gains his powers using a different command phrase and his little familiar is a tiny cat-creature that is 75% snark and 25% desire for smelly cheese. This is just my opinion, and you can feel free to disagree, but I think his transformation sequence is better, though his powers aren’t as great. An extending staff replaces the yoyo, and the ability to destroy any one thing he touches replaces the lucky charm. His outfit is a little weirder, but his costume is cat themed and you can’t just slap polka dots on a body suit for a cat theme like you can with a ladybug theme.

Together, they have a wonderful dynamic. Cat Noir is confident, constantly spews terrible puns, has a huge crush on Ladybug, and seems at ease with his superhero powers from the start. Ladybug is less confident, but often the one to figure out the trick to the villain or who eventually perseveres. She is a lot less comfortable with her powers and most of her growth is her adjusting to being a hero and trying to overcome her rather innate clumsiness when she gets flustered. She has a crush on Cat Noir’s secret identity and has little patience for her fellow hero’s flirting at first, though it eventually develops into delightful banter between the two of them.

The support cast of best friends, classmates, parents, and associate people is diverse and wonderful. They’re all unique, avoid clichés, and you get the excellent juxtaposition of Ladybug’s ideal family life and Cat Noir’s less-than-ideal family. Cat Noir comes from a wealthy, broken family because his mother is missing and his father is worried something will happen to him and Ladybug comes from a warm, loving family of bakers and cooks who shower her with love and baked goods. Ladybug’s  father is super supportive, her mother teaches her well, and they both care for her greatly. Cat’s Noir’s family is essentially his bodyguard, his father’s assistant who sometimes plays the mother role, and his father who is often cold and very restrictive in what he allows his son to do. The show doesn’t pull its punches when it confronts complicated issues and it handles them well, given that its target audience is children.

Aside from the obvious superhero tropes (no one knows their secret identities and there’s the constant risk of one of the hero duo figuring out the other’s secret identity because they wind up trying to protect them before they transform), the only negative aspect of the show is that it is a French cartoon and, as a result, I cannot seem to remember anyone’s names. They’re not even all French names but I literally cannot remember any of them aside from their hero names. This is a personal failing of mine rather than of the show, but it is frustrating nevertheless because I just can’t seem to make them stick… I think Ladybug’s real name begins with an “m”? Don’t quote me on that. All rants aside, the lack of synchronization between the mouths and the words using in the dubbed version of the cartoon is barely noticeable. It is excellently done and even the kind of shiny computer animation doesn’t detract from the excellence of the cartoon aside from a few of the trickier perspective or movement shots that any form of animation without a budget larger than the GDP of any small European country would struggle to portray.

Since all of the “negatives” are personal preference things and just me being picky, I really feel I should recommend you watch this show. The themes are basic enough for most kids and the violence that’s there is rather tame, so feel free to show it to your kids, young siblings, or tiny cousins as well. It’s really just a lot of fun to watch and I suggest adding it to your Netflix queue.