Here’s to what I hope this means.

Okay, you have my attention…

Me and Tyler jest about how sometimes the PCs make our best laid encounters looks like picnics. It goes a little beyond jesting and into lamentation sometimes, but in the long term that passes and makes way for pride. When the players are happy to have embarrassed their enemies with a cunning plan, it’s a good game, even if it didn’t go as planned. Following a script is for movies. GMs that wipe their player groups with one of their carefully planned encounters failed somewhere, barring truly abhorrent luck. It’s that simple. There is no battle between you and the players, you will always win because you are the omnipotent GM.

Read more

A while back I was running a Dungeons and Dragons game set in the newly developed Eberron campaign setting. The idea was to be a little more rich than a typical D&D game, which are usually just crawling through dungeons for experience points and treaure. It was supposed to be a little more like a Cyberpunk atmosphere, but in a fantasy setting. An issue came up with Will’s Paladin, Aramis, trying to rise above the grey morality of the city they were in. Will (or possibly just his character) was upset that everyone looked down on him for being such an altruistic, even naive, do-gooder. After a couple spats (in and out of character) it was on it’s way to sorting out when I decided I should have just played Shadowrun if I wanted moral flexibility. However, another discussion came up during that time that brought to light a deeper problem that had crept in.

Read more

Okay, this shooting is really getting on my nerves.

First, and most importantly, there’s the lack of satisfaction of knowing the cowardly little failure who did this is suffering enough, if being punished at all. I guess that’s one place to find solace in religion, as you’d know he was rotting in Hell for eternity. Part of me says that’s the case, but I’m agnostic and the pragmatist in me says he was too much of a weakling to actually defend his actions and took the easy way out to avoid learning how much of a psycho he was.

Second, the Canadian Government, backed by the media, is going to have to do something about this. The citizens of this country can’t be told, “It happens.” They also couldn’t accept the measures that would have to be insitituted to make sure this doesn’t happen again (see my list of what would have to be banned to save lives). So, pbalum-laws are on the horizon in which case guns will have to be run through even more paperwork before they’re legally purchased and used by another cognitive sociopath who knows how to beat the system.

Now I’ve spent two days listening to utter horseshit that buried the real issues behind this tragedy in exchange for bombast and drama. As usual, the parents didn’t know their son was a nutbar. They never checked on their child enough to see he was talking about killing people and owned a gun. They never talked to him long enough or connected with him enough to see how troubled he was. They failed as parents and it cost a life, and because of social correctness, no one in any official capacity is allowed to say that. As if that’s not bad enough, they’re interviewing all the “friends” of the victim and a hot dog vendor to make sure it’s clear the world has lost the next Jesus Christ.

My heart goes out to the victim’s family and I offer condolences to them and the people affected by this invertebrate. I condemn the press and band-wagon jumpers who insist on running the interviews with these traumatised bystanders to try and polarise the two “stars” of their demented show. The facts of this story have been presented, but so thoroughly embellished with ratings-grabbing interviews about how victim was so wonderful and that craven was a hideous monster. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time and he was a fucking psycho.

I’m sorry my writing does not com across as horrified by these events as I really am, but I feel no justice is being served by making scapegoats of VampireFreaks.com and video games; To do otherwise would be admitting we really are helpless when one of these tragedies come, and that’s bad publicity.

Erik asked us why we love Canada and it was nice to see a turn-out that answered. Thanks to our latest psycho there’s a major over-reaction on the horizon. I’m currently, and for the first time, optimistic that Prime Minister Harper won’t over-react on the gun control side, as it just isn’t within his MO of trying to be more like the USA. I’m probably wrong, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

Erik’s simple, under-stated question was a nice change from the doom and gloom of work. I had to cut my comment short so I could bring the vitriol it brought up here, where it can be ignored with less effort.

Look, this psycho’s cowardly, pathetic breakdown is not the signal that Canada has become a cess-pit that isn’t worth raising cockroaches in. Look across the border or over either ocean; We’ve have a long way to go. When I watch the news here in Canada’s crime capital, they have time to report every act of gang violence. Even if it’s one guy with a cut forearm from a stabbing. If we hit 75 gang shootings this year, we still don’t even reach one quarter of Chicago, New York, Washington DC, LA, you get the fucking picture…

I’m not naive, either, I can clearly see we’re taking all the right steps to reach that point, but we’re not there yet. Getting the self-pitying mooks that can’t pass up an excuse to piss and moan about how bad they’ve got it to understand that is a wicked pain in the rectum. One it is in my best interests to try and fix since the alternative is trying to ignore three people sitting right behind me wallowing in their own crapulence.

Because there’s still time to do something about it all.

BattleTech is one of the worst for it, although in March Warhammer 40,000 will have a PnP game and probably take the crown away. The rest of the settings use some form of articificial limitation on society in order to highlight the hook of the game. I’m talking about why a village full of 0-level peasants hasn’t been subjugated by the 15th level Vampire they can’t even dream of challenging in the dungeon over the next hill, or why it’s the year 40,000 and tanks aren’t any better than they were 38,000 years earlier. These tricks are usually easy to spot, as the rulebooks will says something along the lines of “That’s just the way it is. Accept it.” and never get around to explaining it further.

Read more

HBO miniseries (Or television series that’s probably not getting a second season). Good fun, good actors and a nice dramatisation of Julius’ little act of crushing the Republic.

Starting sometime in the future, I will be on a new job. It’s a lot like my current job, but works primarily Monday to Friday. That’s the good news, the bad news is that the main objective of the work is to cover other peoples’ vacations and book-offs, which means being almost constantly on-call (free cell phone).

It looks like most importantly it will involve work I can’t shirk, pass off or otherwise deflect the attention away from me. An excellent trade-off for monotony if you ask me, as I was getting pretty stir-crazy in the other position.