Noblesse Oblige

Ok folks, here comes an angry political/economic post.
(for the purpose of legalities: All statements produced here are opinion and not a statement of fact. I believe that these statements are likely to be true, but that's just my opinion.)

By now most of you must have seen one of the dozens of memes or videos making their way around the internet that show how big the gap between the haves and the have-nots has become.

Shit is getting real.
If you look at the Forbes top 400 list, the top 10 are all names you would expect: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, the Koch brothers, and the Waltons.

For those of you living under a rock, the Waltons are the owners of Walmart. They are listed individually on the Forbes top 400 list, but if you counted them as a family, they would easily be #1, by a very large margin.

How did they become so wealthy? Walmart first opened in the 60's, so 50 years of business to become the richest people in the world?

Easy, Deal with the Devil.

I don't mean that literally (of course it's always possible), but the Waltons got rich by performing and encouraging the least American behavior possible: Outsourcing.

They buy almost all of their products overseas from sweat shops. Then they bring the products here and keep their prices low enough that all competitors have to do the same thing just to keep up.

This isn't just happening in the US, 15 countries have Walmarts. All selling goods that were effectively produced by slave labor.

They may not keep their slaves on U.S. soil, but lets not kid ourselves, the Waltons are modern American slave owners.

For the last fifty years they have made their vast fortunes by taking the jobs away from honest, hard-working Americans and giving them to slaves working in foreign countries.

We, as Americans, hell, as humanists, cannot allow this to continue. The world outlawed slavery decades ago, indentured servitude or forcing people to work below a living wage is no different. If a person has no choice but to work, then they are slaves. Call an egg an egg.

This is the problem of all the new billionaires. They don't understand the responsibility of being rich.
To be rich and to STAY rich, one must learn the lessons of the past. If you fuck over everyone to get rich, eventually everyone is going to line up your whole family for the guillotine.

To stay wealthy, you needed to keep the peasants happy, most people are ok with other people being richer than they are, they are not ok with people being insanely wealthy and pissing on them from an Ivory tower.

Numerous times in the history of the world the people have rebelled against the wealthy for trying to pull too much shit on us. The French revolution, the American revolution, we just don't like the rich pissing on our heads and telling us it's rain.

What is most surprising about our current situation is that historically Americans have revolted for significantly less. Remember, this whole "America" deal started because the British were taxing us more than we thought was fair and without letting us equally represent ourselves in Parliament.

Now onto congress, this is officially the least effective congress we have ever had.
We just had to implement "Automatic budget cuts" because they couldn't agree on a budget.

Seriously?

Congress, this is really your only job. Yes, you are also in charge of creating newer, stupider laws for us to break, but working out the budget is THE ONLY THING YOU ARE REQUIRED TO DO!!!!!
Seriously? If you worked at McDonalds and someone walked up to you, gave you five dollars, ordered a hamburger, fries, and a coke, and you sat on your hands and cried about how you hate coke and McDonalds should really switch to Pepsi YOU WOULD BE FIRED!!!

Seriously, they failed at their job, Fire ALL of THEM.

Every time they take office, they must repeat the following oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

 And for the specifics of what they are required to do for their job title:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_duties_of_the_US_Congress

See that list of things they are supposed to provide for? Yes, that means that the federal budget is their job. If they collect the taxes, they must spend the money they collected on federal budgets like the military, social services, etc.
If they can't budget correctly then Firstly, they shouldn't be getting paid for their work. If they can't balance the budget, their salaries should be the Very First things cut.


Now back to Walmart.
There are alot of complicated legal battles we could go through to fight them, but none of it will be anywhere near as effective as this:

Stop buying from Walmart.

I have never bought anything from Walmart, and I never will. It is worth it to me to pay 10% more on goods to know that I am not endorsing slavery and to know that I am supporting American jobs.

Fight Walmart, buy American.

Even considering how broke we all are, we can afford to buy American goods. Or atleast Mexican goods.
And buying American goods takes away money from evil corporations and puts it back into the American working class.

Outsourcing is the most un-American thing a company can do. Do not endorse companies that support it.
We can't get them all at once, because of outsourcing pioneers like the Waltons everyone else had to start outsourcing to keep up.
But as we push away from sweatshop labor, it will bring money back into this country. We need those jobs back, and we as the consumers decide where we shop. Stop Walmart, and then we'll take on the next evil empire.

Assuming the US government doesn't collapse in on its own stupidity by then.

A Movie Review!

So, I realize that I'm late to the party on this one, but here is my review of "The Hunger Games".

So, I'll preface this with stating that I never read the books, nor did I look up anything on Wikipedia before watching this movie. All I knew was what I saw on TV trailers and interviews. Like I was aware that the main character was an archery chick named Katniss, and the main Fanfiction pairing was Katniss/Peta or "Peniss".
yup.

So started the movie...

FUCKING SPOILERS.

Katniss and Peta live in District 12, which apparently the US had a massive civil war of some kind and afterwards all of the country was divided into districts. Districts 1 & 2 were super rich, districts 11 & 12 were like 1930's poor.

Turns out that every year 24 children ages 12-17 are drafted into a reality TV show. But the point of the show is to kill the other players rather than vote them off the island or whatever.

Katniss volunteers to save her younger sister and Peta is drafted like normal. They go to District 1 and are groomed for the game. They train, and they try to entice sponsors.

Now as far as I can tell, sponsors are totally bullshit. Katniss's sponsor helps her twice. Once they gave her some burn cream when she was hit by a fireball, and the second time they sent some soup for Peta when he got sick during the games.

Now there are a few major problems I have with the entire concept.

#1 Who the fuck cares about sponsors?
Seriously, They don't help you much, but apparently they are a major factor to the game, I honestly don't see it.
Better Idea, if you were a kid living in this setting, you should train like a motherfucker FROM BIRTH to compete in the game. Even if you are never selected, you are still learning good skills and discipline. The kids from Area 1 supposedly always win, because they spend their childhoods training, and then volunteer at the maximum age. Why the hell doesn't every district do that? Every year, pick like four kids to be the volunteers in 17 years, everyone pulls together and makes sure those kids are training non-stop, and then at age 17 the volunteer for the games. Even if they lose, it's still better for everyone in their district. Because the children decide how many rations everyone gets for the year by how many raffle tickets they take. So what they should do is elect the tribute amongst themselves before the "Reaping day" and the day of, EVERYONE takes as many tickets as possible. The person who lost the raffle before volunteers, and everyone else, including the Tribute's family, get a shitload of resources for the following year. It's a no-brainer.
So with 17 years of training, the tribute should be a fairly even match for the tributes from District 1, because their wealth doesn't mean anything in the game, they don't get to take any supplies with them.

#2 How does no-one notice that the people running the game clearly cheat?
Seriously, Katniss gets hit by a shitload of fireballs and then chased by dogs. They also change the rules of the game, mid-game, Twice! I suppose it's being true to reality TV in that everything is staged, but if everyone knows that, then the premise shouldn't be making the sponsors like you, it should be making the people running the game like you. If you gotta give a blowjob to Mr. Evil-Mc-Evil-Beard to make sure he doesn't shoot fireballs at you, then shut up and suck that dick. Your life LITERALLY depends on it.

#3 If things are so bad in the outer districts, why hasn't there been more civil wars or Riots?
Supposedly everyone behaves because all of the Army/ Police force are from Districts 1 & 2. But honestly, how many of them could possibly be in the military compared to everyone else who works & lives in those districts?
Furthermore, who does all of the "shit jobs" in Districts 1 & 2? Clearly they don't do it themselves, everyone in those districts are super decadent, but decadent people are less capable of taking care of themselves, not more.
Theoretically Districts 1 & 2 should also have a working/slave class pampering all the rich bitches, and in that case, their entire military would be devoted to keeping those people from revolting, not worrying about the outer districts.
And apparently they even have divisions whose entire job is to make sure nobody leaves their district or goes off to live in the woods.

So where the fuck are all of these military people coming from? They are clearly describing a Spartan-esque military state on one hand, and then a super decadent Roman state on the other.

The only way for these numbers to add up is if they have a 90-10 population split. If all of the people live in the central districts and the outer districts were almost ghost towns then it would make sense. But it also makes it so that it would be LITERALLY impossible for anyone from the outer districts to win the hunger games.
Example:
The United States have a population of 300 million.
Peru has a population of 30 million.
If we had a global tournament of games to judge each nation by sports... Oh wait, we do! Let's do the math here.
In the 2012 Summer Olympics the US won 46 gold medals.
Peru won zero medals in the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The US has won 990 gold medals in Olympic history.
Peru has won ONE gold medal.. Ever. In 1948.

It's simple logic, the more people in your population, the wider the variables in that population. So you are much more likely to find a singular excellent athlete in a highly populated country than a small country.

So no matter which way you go, the logic of the movie doesn't work.
Either Katniss should have gotten her ass handed to her by vastly superior athletes or the government should have been overthrown a long time ago.

Finally, Fuck The World of Warcraft.

So, As a long time WoW player, I feel it is my right to bitch about the steady decline of the World of Warcraft.

This gets pretty damn technical in places, so if you aren't a gamer, you might want to skip this one.
Back when I started playing, sometime around 2006-ish, The game was pretty bad, constant glitching, insane lag, getting an instance group took forever, it was basically a game of waiting for the stars to align so you could do the stuff you wanted to do.

I loved running instances, getting into a group with four other people and kicking the shit out of monsters? Hell yes.
But back then the mechanics were kinda retarded.
First the quests:
Example: Scholomance
In the early, early days, Strat and Scholo were actually 10-man raids, but by the time I got to that level they had been nerfed down to 5-man instances, but they still had the quests from back when they were raids.
You had to start a quest chain in the Bulwark, then fight a bunch of undead in Western plaguelands, then go the Tanaris (on the other side of the world), then back to the bulwark, then more killing in WPL (this time with a full 5-man group), then eastern plaguelands, then you got your key to the front door. About 300 gold (which was alot back then) and a month of your time later, you could finally enter the instance, of course if you had a Rogue in your party (who had spent that same month pick-pocketing trash mobs for lock-boxes) you could just go in, no quest chain required.
So you would run the instance, and eventually your reputation with the appropriate faction would become friendly, so now you could do the first set of quests. which involved running the instance two more times (back before we had the ability to reset the instance, we just had to wait 24 hours. We would often schedule the runs at 10pm and again after the reset (which was either midnight or 3am depending on how the server was feeling that week.)
That would go on for awhile, and every time we would gain another level of reputation, more quests would open up.

Shit was ridiculous. I'm baffled at myself for wasting that much time, especially since in later expansions they got rid of attunements, keys, prerequisite quests, etc.
So all of that shit was for nothing.

But despite all of that, it was still the best MMO at the time, so we all played it.

Then The Burning crusade came out, and Shit got real, Blizzard decided to step up their game in raid content difficulty  to the point where UI modifications were not just useful, but mandatory. You simply could not beat the boss without the UI mods. Clearly somebody managed to figure it out to make the mods, but all of the mods were developed in the public test realms by the top tier raiding guilds.

To make matters more complicated, they added two new races that had access to the faction-only classes (paladin & Shaman) of the opposite faction. So now both side were equal, before this change, all of the world's top raid teams were alliance only, because Alliance had Paladins, and paladins were entirely too useful back then.

For those of us who weren't hardcore raiders (i.e. like 80% of the players) we got to explore new content in the world, new races, and new classes, but the game didn't really change that much.
Except for Karazhan.
Karazhan was a new 10-man raid (like Stratholme and Scholomance used to be) that was accessible for everyone, you had some basic gear requirements, but they were entirely reachable for non-hardcore players. And the Raid was like a loot pinata. 10 people went in, and more often than not, 10 people got gear.
I spent the entirety of burning crusade in Karazhan, I still remember it fondly.

Then Wrath of the Lich King came out.
I had the perk of being on the closed-Alpha test And the Beta test for that game.
It was glorious.

Blizzard introduced the new "Hero class" Death Knights, with their own bad-ass storyline and the amazing perk of starting off at level 55 instead of 1. Once that hit the shelves, EVERYONE had a deathknight, the game was filled with them, because it was entirely too convenient.
Why would you start off a character at lvl 1 when you could start at level 55? It was a no-brainer.

They also add the "Looking for group" system. Instead of standing in town all day constantly bugging everyone to run a instance with you, you could simply press a button, and the game would find a group for you. Meanwhile you were free to continue questing or doing whatever you wanted, but the point was, you didn't need to beg people in Trade Chat anymore.
Back before LFG there was alot of servers where unless you belonged to a large guild, there was no possibility of finding a group, all the guilds ran instances specifically with people in their guild, no-one else.
Now, it didn't matter if you were in a guild. The computer didn't care, it got rid of alot of the elitism.

The elitists of course refused to be stopped, the the Gearscore UI modification was invented. It was a program that scanned your character and did the math on the total value of the stats on your gear, and compared it to what instances and raids you would find easy or hard just based on gear.
This of course ignored player skill, quality of computer, and quality of internet connection, but they didn't seem to care, the Score was everything to these people.

But us casual players didn't care, because we had LFG, which meant that anyone could find an instance group and get better gear.
And then they made a drastic change to raiding in this expansion aswell. All raids would have a 10-man and a 25-man version.
They decided that the old 40-man raids were just too much of a pain in the ass, so they reduced it down to 25, and they gave the 10-man version to us casual players. They also added "Heroic mode" for the hardcore raiders.

So finally they had raiding where almost everyone was involved to some degree, everyone was getting to do all of the content.
Finally after like 4-5 years, all of their development was getting used by almost all of their players. For the first few years all of the raid content was only enjoyed by like 2%-20% of the players.

They had their timing figured out finally too. They would release the patch, then slowly decrease it's difficulty (or let the gear creep decrease it's difficulty automatically) until everyone had beaten it atleast on 10-man normal mode. Then they would release the next patch. It was awesome.
By far my happiest memories from the game.

Then tragedy struck, Activision bought Blizzard Entertainment, and the game turned to shit.

Activision decided that the game wasn't user friendly enough, so they dumbed it down... alot.
Some of the changes were good, they made things that used to be impossible significantly easier. But most of the changes were insulting.
Like the classes were decided to be too volatile. too much room for exploitation.
So they changed the talent system so that users couldn't exploit or even personalize their characters.
Back in WotLK I loved playing my Death Knight. I had figured out a totally bizarre setup of talents, that was  by no means the most efficient, but too me it was the most fun. They got rid of all hybrid specializations in the first new expansions "Cataclysm" and then destroyed even partial hybrids in the second expansion "Mists of Pandaria".

This really pissed me off. I liked the way the game functioned before, I loved how complicated the math was and when I was Tanking, me and my fellow tanks would spend hours awake late at night theory-crafting better ways to do our jobs.
It was fun.

So on top of making the game mechanically boring, they also ran out of good plot.
Wrath of the Lich King was the end of the story. The characters had been building towards this since Warcraft 2 when we first discovered about the Lich King and then Heightened in Warcraft 3 when our beloved hero Arthas fell into darkness and came back as the evil Lich King.
We needed to put our fallen hero to rest, we had been working towards this for over a decade over three different games and additional expansions.

At the end of WotLK we finally defeated Arthas, our quest was over, we were looking forward to what new story Blizzard might have in store for us.

And this is what we got:
"Yeah, you remember all of those Dragon Aspects? The quest givers in WotLK?"
"...Yeah?"
"Well, there is actually another one, and he decided to destroy the world because a goblin kicked a football into a volcano."
"........WAT?!?!"

Yeah, no joke there. that's the actual plot.
Oh, and the "Maelstrom" which is supposed to be this massive hole in the planet caused by when the elves and the guardian of Tirisfal kicked the shit out of a god? Yeah, that's actually just the entrance to that evil dragon's prison, and that football weakened things enough for him to escape.

Yeah, we were not impressed.
Some of us quit, but most of us decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. Cause we already had 5+ years invested in this story.

So turns out this evil dragon has a cult, that existed previously in the story, but previously had no connection with the dragon at all.
So yeah, random. Most of the expansion was based on fighting the cult, then eventually we fight the evil dragon himself.
But between WotLK and the Fall of Deathwing, most of the casual raiders had quit raiding.
So they introduced "Looking for Raid" which is just like "Looking for group" but with five times as many assholes.
Before you would run an instance and if one player was a dick, you'd kick him out.
If most of the players were dicks, you'd leave the group.
But in LFR EVERY group has atleast 5 assholes in it making your life miserable.
Without fail.

So that was stupid, really made alot of us dislike raiding even more, but whatever, we got our gear.

Then Mists of Pandaria came out.
The Plot:
Gilligan's Island.
(No joke.)
The Horde and the Alliance are off fighting eachother and whatnot, and they randomly crash into this massive continent, that they some how never noticed before (because it was covered by "Mist").
And then we randomly get involved in the bullshit drama of the native Pandas (you heard me right, fucking pandas), but really, no-one even gives a shit.
The entire premise is that both the Horde and the Alliance want to claim this already fully occupied continent for their own faction. And the Pandas seem happy to let them fight over it, aslong as they solve all of their hidden problems in the meantime.

I could literally give two shits about the drama of the Pandas.

I will give credit where credit is due, Monk is a pretty awesome new class. But it should have been a Fucking Hero Class!! I already had EIGHT max level characters at the beginning of this new expansion, I really don't want to level another one from 1-90. Fuck that. That is entirely too much time to waste.
Fuck, Blizzard, here is a free idea to save yourself a shitload of problems. Every time a player reaches maximum level, they get to add 10 levels to another character. So if you have two max characters, you can create a new character that is lvl 21 rather than 1. I'd happily take that deal.
I'm just fucking sick of level grinding the same boring shit over and over again.

But really, at this point, they need a much bigger fix.
They need plot that doesn't suck.
Because really? Pandas? And their shitty Panda drama?
There is literally an entire instance devoted to monkeys stealing beer.
I shit you not.

I'm fucking over it, I spent years invested in this game, and they are literally boring me to tears.
And it shows. They keep losing subscriptions hand-over-fist. Players are leaving because the game sucks now. It's sad, but it's true.
And until they can get good writers again, the players are going to stay gone.

World of Warcraft vs. Guild Wars 2

As a long time player of WoW I've been very hesitant to explore any other MMO's. But reduced income and encouragement from my lovely girlfriend has led me to purchase Guild Wars 2. I'm only up to about lvl 5 of 80, so this is by no means fully comprehensive, but it's very telling as to the overall playstyle.

1. Character Creation
WoW: Well, I initially wanted to be a Troll Rogue, but my roommate was already playing as a Troll Rogue, so I went with a Troll Hunter. Mowhawk? check. Big Tusks? Check. Completely pointless name? Check.

GW2: Ok, I did a fair amount of research before I created my first character. I knew I wanted to be a Human Engineer. So I figured that would save me alot of time in character creation. No, not really. The amount of character options you have at creation is staggering. 40 different eye colors, 30 different hair colors, 18 different hair styles, eye width, eye height, size of pupil, size of upper lip, size of lower lip, the options are endless. I had to ask my girlfriend if there was an option to change this stuff later so I could rush through it. Apparently there is, but you have to pay real money for it (Like WoW's race change options). Eventually I decided all the details of what my character would look like, then came personality questions, are you aggressive? Social? reserved? Were you poor? Middle class? Wealthy?
Turns out all of the background questions help decide which Hero story you are going to be in. I chose the poor kid who is social and was adopted and never searched for his real parents. So far I am digging the story.

2. Introduction.
WoW: When I first started playing many years ago, I got very, very lost in the starting zone. I died somewhere, couldn't find my body and ended up wandering around as a ghost for an hour, getting lost in higher level zones. I eventually had to take the spirit healer, which broke my gear, so I had to find someone to repair my gear, which took all of my money. Plus I had Rez sickness for awhile to deal with too.
Back then WoW was a much different creature, very few addons existed, the game was nowhere near as user friendly as it is now.

GW2: Ok, arrows pointing where to go, pop up hints everywhere, re-occuring pop-up hints in case you don't seem to be getting it. Very user friendly right off the bat. You follow the green arrows to the green star, talk to the dudes with the green star over their heads to progress in the quests.

3. Questing
WoW: The starting quests have changed some since I first started, but they are still pretty painful for the older races. The newer races have brand-new starting zones with more interesting quests, but the originals still kinda suck. "Go kill twenty boars. Then come back and see me. Then go collect 8 fruits off the cactus. Then come back to see me. Etc."
Really boring grind, you would almost be more efficient just killing boars all day and not bothering with the quests.

GW2: Ok, so first my dude leaves the city to rescue farmers from a centaur raid. Pretty awesome. Then he helps the farmers deal with all of their various problems, usually by clicking on things or killing trash. Same basic concept as the WoW version, but more story built into it. Then I go back to the city to visit my childhood friend who apparently has gotten involved in a gang, so I have to rescue him from the gang.. twice. then go undercover to find out what the gang is up to and report it to the head guard in the city, who happens to think I'm awesome due to all the centaur killing earlier.

4. Interface
WoW: back then, really confusing, you had to read the guide that came with the game just to learn how to perform basic actions NPC's were totally useless, the map was totally useless (the map in WoW is much better now, it totally helps you with your questing, but before it literally just told you where you were.).

GW2: no guide needed, but much of the controls are the same as WoW so I came in with that advantage. The map is extremely useful, and can be used to teleport yourself to any waypoint you have already been to, from wherever. Most NPC's are useless and just say "whats up?" to you, but the quest NPC's and information NPC's are very useful.

5. Combat
WoW: Stand in one place and mash your attack buttons as often as possible.

GW2: "Stand in one place? Are you crazy? That fucker is trying to hit you! Dodge Motherfucker! Don't bother hitting the attack button! That shit is automatic, Just hit your special attacks when they come off cooldown and Jump Gypsy!"

Cost (over time)
WoW: Vanilla (bought new) $40, Burning Crusade $40, WotLK $40, Cataclysm $40, Mists of Pandaria $40.
Subscription for 5 years $900.
Total cost for 5 years of play $1,100

GW2: Full game purchased at $20 discount for a grand total of $40. No subscription fees.

Now to be fair, there is a little bit of apples to oranges here. WoW is a game focused on Max level content, especially raiding. GW2 is a game focused on leveling and questing. You follow the plot of your character, rather than the meta plot in WoW. There is no organized instance runs like in WoW, there are just random world events. People go in and out of the same questing area as you and you share difficulty with them. Kinda like in Diablo 2 when adding another player to the room increased the strength of the monsters. The game really is much more like Diablo than it is like WoW. It's Diablo as a MMO. With way more customization options and a much better interface. As someone who was addicted to Diablo 2 in the worst way, this game is actually much more up my alley than WoW.
WoW is a game of waiting. waiting for an instance, waiting for a battleground, waiting for a flight path, waiting for a raid.
In GW2 everything is ready for you now. You want to work on your story arc? Ok, do it now, it's ready for you. No need to sit around in a city and wait for the instance to pop. That's gotta be the most frustrating thing about WoW as a subscription-based game. You pay monthly for your game time, but you spend most of your game time waiting for the game to be ready for you to play.

Final review of starting WoW vs. Starting GW2
Go with GW2. Cheaper, and much more instant gratification. I will miss instances in WoW, but I will not miss 45 minute wait queues.

Gaming and getting older.

So, for a little background about myself. I am thirty years old. I started playing table-top roleplaying games around the age of nineteen. I started off with D&D 3.0. Then I progressed on to Old World of Darkness, GURPS, Mutants and Masterminds 1st edition, D&D 3.5, New World of Darkness, Mutants and Masterminds second edition, D&D 4.0, etc. I've played alot of game systems, I was one of the playtesters for the Eclipse Phase game system, basically I've spent the last ten years gaming.

And as I've gotten older I've found myself less and less interested in tabletop gaming for one simple reason.
The more skilled you become at the game, the less fun it is.

All of these games have mechanical problems, certain things just don't make sense, certain things are horribly over powered or under powered. That's pretty much the status quo. But as you become more knowledgeable in the game system, the difficulty fades away. You reach the point where all of your characters are optimized to be as effective as humanly possible, and you develop a laundry list of things you just can't play anymore because the game becomes entirely too easy.

And because of how well you know the rules, you can steamroller over any game master who doesn't know them as well as you.

This leads to the game no longer being fun.

Then there is the massive split between Character driven players and Strategy driven players.

Fully optimized characters tend to be unbeatable in the rules, but they are insanely boring to play because to optimize means to be really good at one thing. Usually combat.
Character-driven means to be focused on developing the character at the expense of it's functionality.

The problem is that both kinds of players are common and if you have both kinds of players in one gaming group then the party will never be happy. The strategy players will want the game to be focused entirely on combat (D&D 4.0 was built specifically for these kinds of players), and the Character-driven players will want to mostly or entirely ignore combat and focus on the story.

When I first started off, I really wanted to be a strategy gamer, but I wasn't very good yet. Then eventually I became a Strategy gamer, and found it entirely boring. Yes it's fun to create a ridiculous character who can do insane amounts of damage or can destroy the moon with one magic spell, but it sucks to actually play those characters. They have one gimmick. And as the old saying goes "If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail."
The Duke mocked you?
Fireball to the head.

Children are fleeing a burning orphanage?
Fireball to the orphanage.

Interrogating a prisoner to find the location of the kidnapped princess?
Fireball to the head.

It's silly at first, but in a character-driven campaign it becomes insanely frustrating to only have one response to any situation. Even if it's a really good response.

No, the most fun I've had gaming have been with characters who weren't particularly good at anything. I played a Blind Barbarian once, who I specifically designed to be kinda shitty, but somehow the dice loved him and he was successful at things that he had no business being successful at. And it was fun playing a character who was naturally that weak. Hell, there wasn't even any rules in D&D for how to deal with a permanently blind character. Usually blindness is temporary in that game. But wacky adventures were had, even though I on paper I was playing a character who should have died at the first sign of combat.

I find myself gaming less and less these days, part of being an adult is we don't have as much free time as we did when we were younger.
But just a few things I've learned over the course of my gaming experience:
1. Find a group of players who want to play in the same style that you do, if you want strategy, don't join a character driven group. It'll just make everyone upset.

2. Always carry as much random stuff as the game master will let you get away with. It always comes in handy, and even if it's not specifically useful to your situation, it might be hilarious in your situation. Especially items that could be used for slapstick comedy. No game master is immune to slapstick comedy.

3. Always be willing to try something new. Some people play one type of character for years before they try something new and realize that they like it better.

4. Beware of girlfriend armor. If a game master has their significant other in the game, odds are, that character will never die. Exceptions: That player is me, or if the couple has been gaming together for years and don't hold deaths against eachother. But especially when introducing a girlfriend to gaming, her character is damn near immune to damage.

5.Never trust a Royal/Grand/Whatever Vizer. Vizer's are always evil, without exception. Even if they seem like a really cool and trustworthy guy, they are playing you.

6.Hilarious off-the-cuff remarks are worth more damage than 100 critical hits. If you can say something hilarious as you are swinging at a guy, the game master is going to die laughing and declare that dude horrifically dead.

7. Try to avoid playing any character that can kill the rest of the party in a single action. If it is unavoidable, Don't TELL them that you can kill them in a single action. This will always lead to party civil-war and campaign death.

8. Always keep a spare character within a couple levels of your current character in case of sudden character death. My character deaths used to be so frequent that I would write new characters on notecards and just pull out a new notecard when the old character died.

9. Remember to take breaks during gaming sessions. It may feel epic being in combat for six hours straight, but your legs and back will be killing you.

10.Don't sacrifice real life happiness for make-believe happiness. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for D&D. Seriously... Don't do it... Do not ditch a girlfriend for gaming, it is incredibly sad and really pisses them off. It's ok if you already talked to your SO about your gaming habits and they are fully aware and supportive, just don't cancel plans with your SO for gaming.


All that being said, I see myself slowly fading into the distance as far as my gaming career is concerned. It was fun, but I'm just not getting the same enjoyment out of it that I used to. That might change, but if it goes away completely I won't be too sad. Gaming characters I've played have been the influence for much of the fiction I've written, It was a good launching point for the character to come from, but now I don't need that anymore to create a character.

Brief update

Sorry for the lack of content lately my readers, been dealing with health issues and working on writing a book. So my attention has been elsewhere. But due to the downtime from being ill I have had a respectable amount of free time for movie watching, so here are a couple movies I've reviewed.

The Island (new version)
Actually kinda enjoyed this one. Ewan McGregor star in this post-modern dystopian thriller where they are basically playing 5/15 year olds in 30 year old's bodies. The progression of the reveal was very solid, you start realizing things at about the same time that the main characters do, with the exception of course of the Title mystery about the Island. Twists like that haven't surprised us since Soylent Green. Not a great film, but if it's on cable, I'd recommend it.

Daybreakers
Really interesting take on a usually very overcrowded genre. Everyone is getting really sick of Vampire movies. They are everywhere. Movies, TV shows, comics, novels, the damn things are everywhere. The market is literally saturated in vampires. And they always follow the same basic rules.
Vampires are rare and hiding among us.
They randomly fall in love with humans.
Their weaknesses only come into play at the climax of the story.

This film says "Fuck that" to all of those rules.
In this world the ENTIRE population got turned into vampires, because they follow the rule that absolutely everyone who is bitten by a vampire gets turned into one. Then there is the matter of adjusting society to a nocturnal lifestyle. Sun protection walkways and cars, the entire civilization is based around hiding from the sun. The love story isn't between a vampire and a human, it's between two surviving humans who are trying not to be eaten by the vampires.
Really well done, if you haven't seen it, go see it.


And as a bonus, Movies I am most looking forward to for the next four months:
(Feb 1)
Warm  Bodies: A love story between a zombie and a human? Even if it's terrible, it's such an amusing idea that I am totally in.

(March 8)
OZ the great and powerful: Love wizard of OZ, and this is one where they don't bother with Dorothy or Toto. Kinda like Wicked, which I also enjoy.

(May 3)
Iron Man 3: Do I really need to even describe this one? If you saw the first two, you're going to see this one.

(May 17)
Star Trek Into Darkness: Sequel to the Trek reboot. Yet again, if you are a Trek fan, you're going to see this film.

What's wrong with Comic Books (and how to fix them)

Ok, I'm sure that title will incite some nerd-rage, but hear me out.

Alot of things in comic books just don't make any sense.

Some of them we suspend our disbelief for like inconsistencies in a character's powers or backstory.
Example: Superman was supposed to be the last survivor of Krypton , but then there is Kara Kent i.e. Super Girl. But then she got ret-conned. But then we still have the Kryptonian city of Kandor. Which has remained canon  throughout most of the franchise.
But the audience looks the other way because his title as "The last son of Krypton" is classic.

No, the complaints I have are about logical fallacies.

#1 Batman
Batman hides his face to protect his identity and the identities of those around him. He initially refuses to take on Robin as a partner because of the risk involved. His parents were killed by a random criminal, so super criminals are much more likely to cause loss of life. Batman himself has been "killed" or tragically injured many times. Bat-girl got crippled, Jason Todd was killed, Tim Drake got possessed by the Joker and driven insane. It really does not pay to be associated with Batman. And he knew this. He initially said "Hell Fuck No, I'm not fighting crime with a random 10-year old minor who I just adopted."
Then Dick Grayson put on a pair a pair of green underwear and Batman's latent pedophilia swayed him into bringing the kid along.

Are they fucking serious?

No, Fuck that. Batman is Bat-Man because he's suppose to be scary and solitary.
He can have loved ones, but they need to be in the dark about his second life. Right now in the comics he has an entire batman franchise system where he has "Batman cells" throughout the world who all fight crime in his name.

How to fix it:
Kill off Dick Grayson and Alfred Pennyworth. And keep them dead.
Both characters have been effectively immortal since the very beginning, and he's been mourning the loss of his parents since the 1930's. He replaced his parents, he has a new family now. Kill them off so that he still has a reason to hate criminals. Feel free to keep Bat-Girl around, but make him pissed off that she won't retire. Too many people know Bruce Wayne's secret. It makes literally no sense that his secret identity isn't common knowledge at this point.

#2 DC Universe as a whole.
Ok, two major gripes here. Firstly is the rampant difference in power levels. Realistically Batman could never, ever, ever beat Superman in a fight. Superman could shoot him with heat vision from space and Batman would have no way to defend against that. Yes Batman has some Kryptonite, but fat lot of good that would do against 16 miles of distance. Non-powered super heroes have no business being in the same universe as the god-like JLA folks.
Second gripe, Money. It's the Scrooge McDuck conundrum. All of the money in the DC universe is owned by Bruce Wayne or Lex Luthor. Wayne has his secret Bat-Army and the JLA Watchtower, and god knows what else. Luthor keeps blowing all of his money on trillion-dollar death lasers to use on Superman, which of course don't work and get destroyed.

How to fix it:
Firstly, separate the comics. But Batman, Green Arrow, The Question, Huntress, etc into one comic franchise. Then put all of the Meta-humans in another.
Secondly, Put finite limits on the economy. Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor would have destroyed the world's economy many times over based on how they spend money. Yes, they are rich, but they can't just throw money at every single problem and be completely unaffected. Another key reason to reduce the number of Bat-people is that it reduces his spending. And if you separate him from the JLA then no more spending crazy money on space stations.

#3 Superman
Superman's biggest problem is the ever-changing lack of definition in his power set. Supposedly he has enhanced senses, super strength, flight, super speed, heat vision, and frost breath. However, those powers and how strong they are change from issue to issue.

How to fix it:
Set specific definitions and limits to his powers. If he's truly invulnerable, then nothing should EVER be able to hurt him unless Kryptonite or Magic are involved. If he's just damage-resistant, ok, then all of the bruisers (Darkseid, Lobo, etc) should atleast have a CHANCE to take him down. Be specific. And stop adding powers whenever.

#4 Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a major logic jump. Peter Parker wears a mask because he wants to protect his family, yet because he stays with his family, they are constantly being kidnapped, killed, beaten, brainwashed, etc.

How to fix it:
During the Clone Saga Peter Parker became convinced that he was actually a clone of himself. So he went off and created a new identity for himself. He became Ben Reilly, a random bartender with blonde hair. Instead of Peter Parker, a scientist/ Photographer/ guy whom weird stuff always happens to. If Peter really wants to protect his family, he needs to leave them and become someone else. Those who know the risks and are willing to live with them can join him in his new life. Also, ditch Mary-Jane. Marrying a TV star is not a good way to keep a low profile to hide your secret identity.

#5 X-Titles (X-men, X-Factor, X-Calibur, X-Force, X-Nation, etc)
Ok, so here is some simple math. if there is only supposed to be less than 0.001% of the world's population being mutants, why are there so many goddamn mutants? Seriously, entire countries of mutants, mutants throughout the world. Even after "House of M" there was seriously too many frigging mutants. It's just ridiculous. I barely care about the X-Men, asking me to keep track of the 10 million other mutants is insane.

How to fix it:
Kill off or Ret-con most of the mutants. Seriously, most of them were retarded from day 1, who the fuck cares if they disappear? The protagonists that remain should be a small group with good/ interesting powers that make a complete group.
For example:
Wolverine- immortal melee wrecking machine
Colossus- Buff guy/ melee wrecking machine
Shadowcat- Hello best thief ever, yes, we do want you on our team.
Storm- She controls the weather and can fly, yes, we want you. Plus awesome ranged attacks.
Nightcrawler (or any other good teleporter)- yes, the group needs to be able to travel fast, and as mentioned earlier, I'm not a fan of the unlimited money for a new X-Jet every week.
Iceman- Immortal master of ICE. He's like Mr. Freeze, but cooler.
Cable- Leader who is not afraid to make the tough choices. Plus future technology and teleporting/time travel. Hell, with Cable you could get rid of Nightcrawler. Also, guns. Lots and lots of guns.

Things to avoid with this kind of reboot:
Omega-Level mutants: Phoenix, X-Man, etc. Mutants that can Ret-con the world @will.
Telepathy: It's too easy to sweep everything under the rug when the only thing stopping the title character from world domination is his morality. Plus it's really boring in the art. Hell, make a couple villains telepathic, but keep them out of the heroes.
Pacifism: It's a comic about superheroes fighting, stop kidding yourselves.

Really, the X-titles are just insanely bloated with powers and characters who have them. Why have seventeen insanely strong characters? Just have one. Make them unique. So it's Rock-Paper-Scissors rather than Rock-Rock-Rock.

And my last complaint:
Goddamn Alliteration.
Peter Parker, Lana Lang, Lois Lane, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Wally West, Bruce Banner, Wade Wilson.

Yes it makes the name easier to remember, if you're 7. But when you grow up it just sounds retarded. Bruce Wayne is just as memorable and he has a real name like a normal person (who was born in 1918).
So many great super heroes have normal names, that the ones with Alliteration just seem out of place. It makes the whole thing seem like a Golden Age comics flashback. Fuck that, give them real names.