Posts made by Arkandel

Arise, thread, from the dead!

So recently I discovered there's a name for one of my favorite tropes in literature; progressive fantasy. That's the kind of book where a protagonist starts from humble beginnings, they go to some kind of school or undergo training, and then by the end of the story they become badass.

Examples of this include the Feist's Magician circle, Raven's Shadow by Anthony Ryan, Red Rising by Pierce Brown, The Magicians by Lev Grossman, etc.

I was also made aware there's a LitRPG 'free' genre out there that often follows those same tropes but the quality is very touch-and-go (as they are often written by unpublished, amateur authors so you get what you get) and they are actually a bit more mechanical than I'd like. Like... some of them actually have character sheets attached to their novels, which is too much.

Does anyone have book recommendations to make?

What might mitigate the loss is making sure that, along with the IC parts, you don't have to also suffer OOC loss.

For example in some games the character name itself is our identity. Our closest friends might now my PC, Bob died and now I'm playing Rick, but others who're not paying as close attention at a time might not. So chats, hanging out, all that other peripheral stuff might make the game feel lonelier for a while since when you're on it's not the same as before.

Then perhaps get busy creating associations again with your favorite people. You don't need to recreate the same affiliations, but coming up with good reasons to be regularly in scenes with the folks you're having the most fun with should be done right away as you design a new PC. That makes the transition much smoother and more fun than needing to carve not just a niche all over again but while missing people you like -- and who like you.

Just some ideas!

This is totally not me, fuck y'all.

This is hilarious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Darkness

TL;DR: Dude 'translates' Dracula into Swedish in 1899. It takes people just about a century to realize he didn't translate it as much as... basically write a whole new fan-fiction version of it with more eroticism, less vampiric stuff, and some kinda social Darwinism commentary.

@faraday To add to that, I'm completely fine (and in fact wouldn't have it any other way) with an adaptation making changes - both in the story and the narrative structure - to make sure the end result is watchable.

Those are probably inevitable anyway since an author can spend pages essentially providing exposition about world-building blocks for their setting like magic, politics, history, etc, but if one tried to do that in a movie or TV series it'd be just freaking boring.

But capturing and honoring the spirit... that's essential. I am concerned the new Tolkien adaptation will be too... generic fantasy for me to enjoy.

My golden example of this going terribly wrong was Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. Of course that's really tough to adapt, I get that. But the very essence of the work is that robots are fundamentally not harmful; in fact the author wrote about what he called the Frankeinstein Complex to specifically deride it. Then what was the movie about? Killer robots. Sigh.

As @faraday said, if people feel their work can stand on its own feet then tell that story. Don't slap the label of someone else's well-loved one then do your own thing.

I haven't played on a MUSH in years.

And yet, each time I read a book I like my mind goes "hey you know what this would be great for? A MUSH setting!".

@raemira That's neat!

I think at this point what I expect (demand?) from book adaptations is very simple: Love the original work. Try to put that on the screen.

I feel a lot of the time showrunners try to make the series 'theirs', or they act under a direction from producers to 'renew' the material so a new generation of actors can take over, which essentially cheapens what draws funs like me to a franchise in the first place.

So for instance the new Star Wars series drew the original cast back but... they didn't do jack. In fact they were portrayed, largely, as failures. I didn't appreciate that. Game of Thrones tried to 'subvert expectations' and decimated the story it was building for years. The Wheel of Time... ugh don't get me started.

Just love the damn material enough for that to show. Then put it on the screen. The gold standard here is the Lord of the Rings movies; they made significant changes (no Tom Bombadil, Arwen replaced Glorfindel, etc) but who the fuck cares; the whole trilogy was a tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien's works and it showed.

The trailer for The Sandman is very good.

This is such a difficult piece of work though. Even though I'm happy to complain about other adaptations of my favorite works into TV series, but I'm not going to blame the producers in this case even if it doesn't translate well.

The original series uses amazing prose, inspired lettering, great - often moody - art... subtleties and wordplay that I have no idea how they can pull off on a TV screen. My hat's off to these folks if they do succeed, but I wouldn't hold it against them if it falls short.

I don't know if this counts. Probably not. But it's probably one of the 'worst' things I've done in this hobby, and that's the story you degenerates will get from me.

During my University freshman year I got into RP online. I had played on MUDs before mind you but at that point they were basically text-based MMORPGs; kill mobs, get gear, level up. So I started playing more and more. Plus there were other video games (Daggerfall!) I was into, and those were big time timesinks as well.

Around the same time since I had already been coding for a few years (and while this was a computer science program not everyone had necessarily done any development before) it wasn't rare to hang out at my dorm room with other students, going over our assignments and whatnot. Some of them stayed later than others.

You can probably see where this is going. So a specific girl stayed around much longer after everyone else left. And we weren't even chatting about studies at that point, just about... you know, stuff in general. Life. But I wanted to play Daggerfall. Or log on and see if there were any public quests I could get to. What was going on in the White Tower since the last time I was online three hours earlier?

So she kept coming over and I kept just... thinking this was about C++ assignments even though we never really discussed code. This went on for a few weeks (probably less than that, it's just how I remember it ) until she gave up and stopped inviting herself over.

No, I had no idea.

No, I did not get a clue until years later. Literally not until a common friend asked me how that had gone - she thought we had just kept it private. I do recall answering with "uh, until what went what now?".

It's what it is.

@ganymede

Goddamn, this is from a sewing machine manual. It's not even some misguided magazine article or anything.

Apparently it's real, too!

One of the issues here is that 'magic' means different things to different people.

For example some folks expect a very well defined magic system. You cast a level 3 fireball and it does exactly this very specific effect. Each spell has a description and quite possibly even a mechanical effect ("3d6 damage").

For others it's more freeform. Rank 1, small effects. Rank 2, slightly larger effects. Etc. It's much more flexible but then again someone will try to break the system ("I'll use my Rank 1 Minor Telekinesis to cause a brain aneurism!").

As long as you communicate your expectations as well as you can and then stay consistent you should be good either way. In my experience most players tend to prefer the more well-defined approach simply because it's clear what they can and can't do. However when your 'fuzzy magic' system works in the hands of an exceptional player, they can really do some cool, imaginative things with it.

Also... as others said, be aware the more powerful magic is, the least fun it will be to play a non-magic user.

I just hope no one pastes a dictionary definition for 'opinion' or 'hide' to make their point at this stage.

I hope you are okay, @mietze. If there's anything I can do to help with anything - please let me know.

Thanks for all the fish!

@runescryer Right. And we do need to be wary of judging authors in general based on today's morality; presentism is counter productive, since we can end up condemning even enlightened people for simply not being up to our standards.

An infamous example may be Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. There are legitimate arguments to be made about whether it hit racism hard enough, but to ban the book now because it uses certain words in the text - essentially to accuse the work itself of being racist or promoting racism - is, in my opinion, disingenuous.

But let me ask a gaming question. In terms of RPG materials, would you revise or even not play older versions of manuals that cast certain social or intellectual traits to specific races (or genders)? Or do you handwave the issue? Do you care enough?

Tolkien's work wasn't intentionally racist and it certainly had a lot of themes pointing in the opposite direction; hobbits for example were treated with extreme kindness, and showed remarkable heroism despite not being Numenorian, notably never even having been in stories at all (which for Middle Earth was a big deal).

But were there 'superhuman' races around? Fuck yeah. Just about anyone in the First Age stomped. Glorfindel and his kind were as close to demigods as it gets. Those from storied bloodlines were simply better than the rest, zero question about that.

But was some gardener from the Shire just as or even more important than the Noldor who had seen the light of the Trees? Hell yeah he was.

@ganymede said in Good TV:

@arkandel said in Good TV:

Make Galadriel any race you want, dammit. Just find a great actress and write her to act like Galadriel, not Xena: Warrior Princess.

You take that back about Lucy Lawless, sir.

I loved Xena! But not every fantasy heroine has to be Xena!

@greenflashlight said in Good TV:

@arkandel but it has people who arent white and everyone knows thats not how middle earth was

See, I'm very much a purist when it comes to the properties I'm really into. But to me that means I want it to be true to its core themes and plotlines.

For example do I think Tolkien didn't envision his characters being pretty much all white? I'm sure he did, being a product of his age. But it changes nothing at all in either 'themes' or 'plotlines' to have black Elves or whatever else.

Likewise the Wheel of Time (... <much nerdrage ensues>) was butchered, in my opinion. Was it because Nynaeve was black, Borderlanders were Asian, etc? Hell no. It's because they took the plot as well as the way channeling worked and shat on it.

I think sometimes the racial aspect expressed by a tiny minority serves as an excuse for these productions to get themselves off the hook a bit. Sure, "they made changes and that's bad" is the gist of it, but just because some of those were in adding diversity that doesn't mean everyone who objects fixates on that.

Make Galadriel any race you want, dammit. Just find a great actress and write her to act like Galadriel, not Xena: Warrior Princess.

Apparently the first very, very early review of The Rings Of Power (the new Tolkien TV series coming up, based on the Silmarillion) are good... as provided by The Tolkien Society. And these folks are pretty hardcore.

Frankly if they are satisfied then most likely so will I. Here's to hoping!

@saosmash You know what I really liked about Strange New Worlds? It wasn't dystopian at all. In fact it was downright hopeful.

I want Star Trek that speaks to the best of humanity. Showing us in a place and at a time we're not raging assholes or living in a grimdark reality where everything is terrible, but - for once - part of the solution than the problem. Giving us a vision of a future in which humans believe in something which isn't just that the one with the biggest guns wins - in fact, where violence itself is a failure, not a solution.

And FFS, a Captain of a Starship worth looking up to.

Especially in the new movies I never felt that way. Kirk was an action hero - all of them were. Which is fine, I guess, but it ain't the Star Trek I'm into.