Off the List: Introverts in the Church

Content notes: this post reviews a work of non-fiction. There's nothing to "spoil" here, so read on. I would normally put a warning here about how if you find discussions of faith to be uncomfortable, you may want to give the post a pass, and I suppose if you find the very concept of faith disturbing, that may still apply, but I'd encourage pressing forward for all but the most hostile unbeliever. This was a very important read for me, and if you're here because you're interested in what I have to say, well, this is something I'd really like to share. I will warn you, however, that this post is long.

I grew up in a variety of churches (my family moved through several as I was growing up) but they were always fairly similar doctrinally. My family attended a lot of Evangelical Free and non-denominational churches, one Assembly of God church, a Free Methodist church, and a couple of Bible churches. These churches had some common themes to them - they shared an informal and gregarious type of worship, they tended to reject mainstream scientific and intellectual thought, they believed in Christian Exclusivism (the belief that humans are inherently "lost" or damned and therefore consigned to Hell until they consciously and possibly even formally accept Christ into their life) and that Christians were inherently "nice" people - saccharine, grinning, always-cheerful, and outgoing.

Like many people raised in the church, I experienced a crisis of faith in my twenties. I ultimately concluded that yes, I do believe in God, that Jesus was the Messiah, and that through his sacrifice sins are forgiven, but I had some real difficulties with church culture and the way modern churches operate. I (and my wife, who had similar concerns) eventually withdrew almost completely from the church until about three years ago when she started feeling a gnawing need to get back into the church and started researching different denominations "from scratch." Her searching eventually led us to a small United Methodist church in our town, and about the same time, I reached the depth of friendship necessary to start discussing matters of faith with my good friend James, a Catholic turned Unitarian.

It was with considerable relief that I found that my concerns were far from being unique to me and my wife. In fact, there were huge swaths of Christianity practicing what I found to be a far more authentic faith than that of my youth out there, just waiting for me to stumble into them, much like a person looking at his feet can stumble into the wall of a huge building without noticing it. In particular, a sermon series from Rev. Adam Hamilton called When Christians Get it Wrong really galvanized me and propelled me into far more reading and thinking on my faith than I have done in over a decade.

This, in turn led me to start reading to "catch up" on what I'd been missing, as it were. Suddenly being a Christian was exciting and, dare I say it, intellectually satisfying again. I read and worked through with our small group the book version of When Christians Get it Wrong, and I realized that being a Christian didn't translate into anti-intellectualism and that (to my shock) Genesis is far more consistent with modern scientific understanding of the origin of both the universe and life on Earth than I'd ever have thought. I read Wild at Heart and No More Christian Nice Guy and breathed a sigh of relief that I could be a bit more rough and gruff as a Christian man and probably wind up as a more authentic and effective (if controversial) Christian for it. I read Love Wins and while I don't agree with everything Rob Bell has to say, I at least have come to believe that the Bible is far less eager to condemn people to eternal torment than most modern American churches are. I read, I thought, I compared to scripture. Things rang truer than what I'd experienced as a child and a young man. Suddenly I understood why Paul could say he was "not ashamed" of the gospel.

All of this has been wonderful for me, but I still had the gnawing feeling that as an introvert, I somehow didn't measure up, that my being drained by social situations and deeply valuing solitude and time to myself like I do, feeling occasionally "not up to" going to church and so forth were at the best, disappointing to God and at worst, outright sinful. And it was at this point that I had a conversation over a meal with my Evangelical, but deeply introverted, parents and I became aware of Adam S. McHugh's book Introverts in the Church. I sat on the recommendation for quite a while until I remembered it one evening while wasting time on the internet. I popped open a browser tab, pulled the book up, called my work (I work for a bookstore) and had them special-order me a copy. The book came in on Tuesday, and despite having to work, take care of various other business and share the book with my voracious reader of a wife, I have finished it.

The contents of that book were, to put it bluntly, profound, at least to me. (It bears noting, by the way, that the author is only about two years my senior, so his language and experience are not that far removed from my own in some ways). McHugh described in great detail not only the behavior of introverts in the church (spiraling into involvement, then retreating for a while) but the tremendous value that they can have to the church. Introverts are, as a whole, a more contemplative and slow-thinking group of people, more inclined to the internal and cerebral than the external and exciting. McHugh calls out examples of deeply introverted individuals including Mother Teresa, Jonathan Edwards, and none other than Moses(!) who were incredibly valuable to God not in spite of their introvertedness, but arguably because of it.

McHugh also outlines why the more traditional "heritage"service that my wife and I pry ourselves out of bed (entirely too) early on Sunday mornings for is so much more meaningful to us, and outlines a number of other things that can be done to make worship more comfortable for introverts.

Most importantly, however, McHugh points out that a lot of what introverts have to offer is incredibly meaningful and important, rather than just "look, I'm helping!" tasks you'd give to a toddler and that (to my great and surpassing relief) that the "sales pitch" form of evangelism that's always made me deeply uncomfortable and embarrassed is far from the only form of witness, and indeed may be (as I've often suspected) more harmful than helpful in many contexts. Direct from the book:

After a hasty introduction, the Christian student asked a question to the other student about his religious background, and before he had time to give much of a response, the Christian had launched into a rambling presentation of the gospel. He preached and testified his way through the two-and-a-half-hour flight, much to the chagrin of his fellow student who only managed a few sentence fragments during our soporific trip-not to mention everyone in the surrounding rows. As I disembarked from the plane, I remember drowsily praying "God, please don't let this interaction forever close this guy off from the gospel."

McHugh's sentiments there could have been extracted directly from my own memory, and in fact, I've actually been confronted with the behavior of rude Christians by unbelieving friends and had to stammer my way around a denouncement of what I like to call "Sledgehammer Christianity" that attempts to (thankfully usually verbally) pound people into the kingdom. Never mind that other reading I've done seems to make this "turn or burn" mentality erroneous on its own. That kind of approach shouldn't be used to sell children's toys or cars, much less belief systems. People need to accept what they believe, not capitulate to it if it's going to have any lasting value. McHugh instead argues (and I agree with him) that introverted evangelism more closely follows St. Francis of Assisi's "Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." That is something that is both easier and far more difficult at the same time.

 It should come as no shock that I'd recommend this book to pretty much anyone. If you're an introvert and a believer, this is a valuable, healing, validating read. If you're a believer and an extrovert, this book will solve a lot of mysteries about the introverts in your church and your life. Finally, if you're an unbeliever, you may take some comfort in knowing that there are a lot of Christians out there, some of whom you may not even realize are Christians in the first place, who would much rather be kind to you and help you through difficult times than try to bash your ideological head in.

Off the List: Haywire

I got a chance to see this today with a buddy of mine that also likes action films. For years, the two of us have been catching movies together that our significant others would be less likely to be interested in, and this action-espionage movie was definitely something that appealed to us more than our significant others. The movie is surprisingly good. And not in the "I was expecting it to be bad, but it wasn't" sort of way. No, it was a bona-fide piece of real craftsmanship. The movie is very spare and minimalist and not terribly original. It's a standard "betrayed fugitive spy" plot that film viewers have seen dozens of times before. However, it really shines in its hand-to-hand combat scenes, which are some of the best I have ever seen. Let me elaborate on this a bit. First, the fights are not close-in quick-cutting things. The camera pulls back and shows all of what's going on, including the background, which is occasionally important and sometimes not. Things get broken, people push off of walls and furniture with limbs to get extra leverage, and the characters generally exchange a few blows and then move to grappling, just like a real fight. Absolutely everybody is a combat pragmatist. It's all incredibly visceral and very satisfying, and it's all very weighty feeling. The movie conveys a real feeling that getting hit sucks. I think one of the reasons this all works so well is that the lead actress, Gina Carano, is an MMA fighter of considerable skill. I'd never seen her in anything before and in fact didn't even know her name. While she's certainly as pretty as any other actress I've seen, she did a much better job of making me believe that she's actually as dangerous as she's supposed to be based on the script than any female action star I've ever seen. Curious, when I got home I looked her up on imdb.com and all of a sudden everything clicked. The authenticity of the fights, however, would be useless if the other actors, script, and/or directing weren't good, and I'm happy to report that they were all at least serviceable. Ewan MacGregor is never, ever bad, and Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton, and Antonio Banderas have pretty solid records themselves. Also deserving of special mention: despite its somewhat violent subject material, the movie shows considerable restraint. There's very little gore, very little foul language, and while the lead is stunning, there's nary a gratuitous T&A shot to be seen, which is refreshing. The movie was a lot slower-paced than I'd expected, but it was smart and even genuinely funny in a couple of places. Highly recommended and will probably wind up in my library. I'd like to watch this a couple more times, as it seems like the sort of film that would benefit from repeated viewings.

RPG notes: As usual, this will contain spoilers. Spoilery, spoileriffic spoilers. So stop reading if you haven't seen the film. First, anyone planning on playing any sort of unarmed warrior character should watch this film twice and take notes. The coffee ambush from the film's opening scene in particular stands out as the sort of combat ruthlessness that would make a Krav Maga instructor proud. The plot is fairly standard, so there's not much to pull from there, but I did like the idea that not all black ops types are ruthless, amoral, and disinterested in the safety of innocents around them. Mallory did a pretty good job of splitting combatants into groups of those who were genuine bad guys (like the ex-MI6 guy sent to kill her) and people who didn't deserve to be killed or maimed (like the SWAT team sent after her) and fighting appropriately. There's also an excellent case for characters trained in hand-to-hand combat even in these days of automatic weapons in this film.

Off the List: Dungeon Defenders

I was fortunate to receive a gifted license of this game from Aaron Stack a while ago, and have been playing it with him and another of his friends on a fairly regular basis. The central premise of this game is that while the big heroes are off Elsewhere, some ancient evil awakens and their younger heroes-in-training have to protect, well, basically everything. Dungeon Defenders is a kind of modified action tower defense game.While there aren't tiled out areas like in Sanctum, or Defense Grid, or even Sol Survivor, you do have to construct traps and barriers to keep some large, glowing crystals safe. There are four little apprentice heroes, each with their own set of abilities and structures they can build, so if you do co-op like we did, you can get a much more effective marshaled in a much shorter period of time. Aaron Stack and I, for example, found that the Squire and the Apprentice make for a particularly devastating one-two punch. The Squire has a number of structures that do a good job of keeping enemies from passing by them (or at least, passing by unscathed) and the Apprentice has about a thousand lethal variants on "magic blasting tower" so the Squire builds barricades and the Apprentice constructs magic towers that fry anything that approaches said barricades. However, much like Sanctum or Orcs Must Die, once the wave starts, you don't just sit there and build stuff, you are down in the thick of it, fighting monsters and sometimes repairing your defenses. Also, unlike any of the other games I've mentioned in this review, it also folds in some lightweight Diablo-style leveling and loot. Your character persists and can pick up loot from fallen enemies and treasure chests around the games' levels. It's a fun game that can get a little tense, but it doesn't take itself too seriously. Or seriously at all, really - the art style is very cartoony and while enemies do bleed, it's in no way gruesome, as their blood is about a zillion bright colors and there's never any visible wound - slain foes go down in a splash of garishly-colored liquid and vanish. That lightheartedness, plus the headset banter one inevitably gets when playing with friends, makes this a great co-op experience. I'd recommend it for sure, especially to play with friends.

RPG notes: There's really not much to spoil here, so feel free to read on, even if you haven't played the game. For my money, the best RPG material to be gleaned from this game is the idea of young heroes that nobody expects to be able to do much of anything actually stepping up and doing the job, and doing it admirably. Now, this idea isn't exactly new in video games (how many times have teenagers saved the world in the Final Fantasy series alone?) but I haven't seen too much of it in my tabletop gaming, and I can't help but wonder why. I also can't help but wonder, for that matter, if my experiences are typical. If you're reading this and feel inclined to reply, weigh in on this for me: how often do you see young heroes, seemingly out of their depth, in your tabletop RPGs, especially as player characters? And is that a cliche, underutilized, or indifferent?

Off the List: Ticking

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I know the author of the tale I'm about to review, but as you'll soon see, that doesn't really matter. Laura Anderson, writer, editor, blogger, Booter and all-around renaissance woman recently published a piece of flash fiction called Ticking. It's a work of short horror/suspense fiction that's available in ebook format from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. The story makes excellent use of both economy of words and suspense - though it's only a few pages long, the tale gets genuinely tense, and also manages to describe a lot with just a few words. Furthermore, the implied setting that reveals itself throughout the story definitely bears further examination. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys tasteful, tense horror or urban fantasy.

RPG notes: The usual warnings about spoilers apply and for goodness' sake, it's a short story. Go read it and come back. I promise it's worth the dollar. All right - done? See? That only took a couple of minutes. The thing that really stuck out to me in Ticking that would make good game setting material is that the vampires* in the setting are both scary predators AND take a mentor/companion relationship with their (former?) victims. It's also pretty strongly implied that they run in a pack. ("They" ripped up the floorboards.) The "why" of that could be used as grist for the story mill quite easily in any setting where vampiric predators are appropriate.

*At least it's implied that's what they are - you'll notice that the word "vampire" is never used and also that HE talks to her and IT is hungry, which could imply either some sort of a third party spread to her by the attack such as a possessing spirit or a parasite of some kind or her loosening grip on her humanity. Not sure which of those options is scarier to me, really...

Off the List: Borderlands

I've played through Borderlands once before, but I just recently finished it for the second time, and I'm going to be adding the DLC to the backlog, so I thought I'd post some quick thoughts about the core game itself first.

Borderlands is an interesting fusion of the Action RPG (Diablo and its imitators) and First-Person Shooter genres, and it actually manages to do justice to both parts of its heritage admirably. Both the shooting and the loot feel solid and like they actually matter to the gameplay, and the story, while not exactly fine literature, gets the job done with no small amount of tongue-in-cheek humor and while the ending is lackluster, isn't so much so that you want your time back. The art style is also unique and fun - the dev team actually made textures out of their own concept art, so the entire world looks drawn instead of realistic, which is a really awesome touch. The game's not perfect (it's buggy to some people, unplayably so in certain cases), but it is a huge amount of fun, and it's been getting a lot of short-term sales of late, probably because there's a sequel planned. I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who likes FPSes and Action RPGs.

RPG notes: Spoiler warning, yadda yadda.

Pandora, the planet where the game takes place, is an interesting place. It feels post-apocalyptic at times, but it's really not - it's just a frontier world and all the violence, corruption, and shenanigans that implies. Oh, and rednecks. It's a fantastic reminder that even in high-tech science fiction settings, not everything is going to be shiny and full of holographic interfaces. The whole of Pandora is corrugated metal shacks, grime, dirt, and bandits. There's no central authority, and no law to speak of. That makes for a violent, dangerous place, but also one where you are pretty much free to act as you will. Something good to keep in mind when designing frontier worlds.

Additions:

I also picked up the latest Indie Royale bundle.

PC games:

Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned
Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx
Borderlands: Claptrap's Robot Revolution
Fate of the World
Night Sky

Nonfiction Book:

The Art of Manliness: Manvotionals

Off the List: Flashpoint, Season 2

So, uh, I seem to have a little bit of a Flashpoint problem. I whipped through Season 2 faster than I've gotten through pretty much any other TV series I've ever watched except the one season of The Shield I watched  nonstop with my buddy back when we were rooming together. I maintain that this is one of the finest shows I have ever encountered, and as good as Season 1 was, Season 2 is even better. I can't wait to see what they do with Season 3. I recommend this in the most enthusiastic and forceful way. The show is incredible. You should watch it.

RPG notes: A few spoilers, so watch the season and come back. Some nasty tricks for bombers show up in One Wrong Move (gluing the safety pin on a landmine) and Custody is an awesome study in plot twists. Mostly, though, it's just more of the same stuff I liked in Season 1. There is, however, one very important thing to take away from this season: the integration of Donna and Leah into the team. Gaming groups looking to add a new PC and wanting to avoid some of the usual pitfalls would do well to watch this season and observe how the team deliberately integrates the newcomers and intentionally draws them into the fold. You see a little of it with Sam at the beginning of Season 1, but episodes 11-18 with Leah being integrated work really well for showing a team bringing someone into the ranking in an intentional and welcoming way.

Addition: Flashpoint, Season 3. Like I'm gonna be able to help myself.

Off The List: Fable III

Steam had a fantastic sale on a game I'd been eyeing for a while, namely Fable III, this past weekend, so I picked it up. I played through it pretty quickly - the game had me hooked from fairly early on, and it helped that my wife enjoyed being a spectator to my in-game exploits. The game is probably described as an "accessible action RPG". The RPG elements aren't very crunchy, but there is substantial advancement opportunity. However, the only gear that matters is the character's weapon. This does, however, allow you to have a lot of fun mixing and matching various outfit components to achieve a unique look all your own, and given the vast number of outfits in the game, you certainly have the opportunity to do this! The gameplay itself is fun, if simple, and the storyline is a nice twist on the typical "save the world" plot. I've already played Fable: The Lost Chapters (the PC version of the original Fable) and this game makes me really want to play Fable II to see what bridged the gap between the two, but unless I get an Xbox 360, I'm out of luck - it was never released for the PC. The game deserves some points for mixing the Industrial Revolution with fantasy elements and pulling it off brilliantly. There's a lot fewer fantastical elements here than in the original Fable, but that seems appropriate. I'd recommend it; there's no denying the game's fun value.

RPG notes: Possible spoilers yadda yadda. Anyway, the plot of the game - depose a tyrant and take his throne, only to find out that he was being tyrannical to try and make his kingdom strong enough to fend off what's essentially a D&D-style Elder Evil made for an interesting twist. Confronting Logan produced a moment much like what new Presidents experience. They get sworn in, head up to the Oval Office for the first time, a CIA guy drops their first threat matrix on their desk, they take one look and instantly age two years. That theme, that only the very powerful know just how dangerous the world truly is, is something that would be great to play with in what Postcards from the Dungeon call an "Empire Building" game. In addition the fashion in the game world (which is a wide amalgamation of 18th and 19th century fashion) would also make a great source of inspiration for a steam fantasy setting. I know I'm going to poach ideas like a madman for my homebrew game world. Finally, if you're an "advance planning" sort of GM, I imagine most players would absolutely love something like the Road to Rule in this game, especially if it came with special rewards like it did in this game.

Off the List: Medal of Honor

I picked up Medal of Honor on sale for $5 from Direct2Drive a while back and just finished it recently. It's a good, solid military shooter. The plot jumps from a SEAL team to some Rangers to some Tier 1 operators and back several times and even to some Apache pilots. The story is solid and appropriately both grim and believable. There's no invasion of mainland America, no superweapons, nothing like that at all, just a bunch of vicious Taliban fighters and some Chechens backing them up. That leaves basically just the plot, which, as I mentioned, is fine, and the shooting, which is a fair bit better than fine. Without any fantastic elements, the game feels very grounded, and that made it very enjoyable. I don't think I'd have paid $50 for this, but it was certainly $5 well spent.

RPG notes: There's not too much here to point to for tabletop gaming, but there are a few things. First, the interwoven stories that affect each other in the same area were kind of cool. That's in no way unique to this game, but it was well-executed. Second, the game serves as a good reminder that one doesn't always need fantastic or speculative elements to make for a good story. Shooting it out on a mountain in Afghanistan was plenty fun. I didn't feel deprived for want of energy weapons, magic, or zombies. Finally, there were some great examples of just how much timing and stealth can change a situation in the game. Anybody playing a sneaky character should take particular note of the Tier 1 operator sections.

Off the List: Season of the Witch

Season of the with was my latest impulse pull from Redbox. This movie actually was what I was hoping The Black Death would be - it was a historical fantasy piece, painted in varying shades of gray. (Things like the inquisition and witch hunting get a whole lot less clear-cut when you have actual supernatural evil power being tossed around.) The story was adequate, the characters were fine, and the twist at the end managed to catch me by surprise because it leveraged a supernatural element that had been previously unreferenced. It was merely okay overall; I'd call it a 3-star film, but it was definitely fine for what it was. And of course anything with Ron Perlman in it is automatically that much cooler for his participation.

RPG notes: As usual, this section contains major spoilers and should be skipped by those that don't want them. The twist was interesting - the "witch" was in fact neither innocent nor guilty, because she was a host for a demon that was as guilty as all get-out. This core idea would be very useful in a game (albeit used sparingly) and wouldn't even necessarily have to be limited to demonic possession. Alien parasites, psionic mind control, and even cybernetic implants can all create a similar situation where someone isn't in full control of their actions, but otherwise seems relatively normal. The ruthless church that, while dark and brutal, still wasn't entirely wrong made for some interesting moral complexity - it reminded me a bit of the followers of Sigmar in the Warhammer Fantasy setting. This work is a useful reference for a powerful religion with generally benign goals and teachings, but corrupt and ruthless followers. The demon's "incinerating embrace" attack is going to find its way into one of my games - mark my words. And then there's the whole theme of putting a supernatural or fantasy twist on actual world events, which has been a staple of many a GM toolbox for decades.

Off the List: Shoot 'em Up

I watched shoot 'em up as a research project on a particular villain. (Another recommendation from Aaron Stack.) The movie was okay but not entirely to my taste. It was a little raw and the liberal politics seemed a bit out of place at the end. However, the shootouts (which is why you watch this kind of film) were absolutely top notch. My one gripe with those, which are ludicrously over-the-top by design and don't aspire or pretend to be anything different, is that they suffer from "handguns are better" syndrome. Mr. Smith routinely walks over dead enemies with loaded SMGs to pick up a pistol. Really? The plot basically exists to string shootouts together, and the only real stand-out characters are the ones you'd expect - the central ones. Nobody really comes out of nowhere and steals the show, and that's fine. Paul Giamatti plays an interesting villain - cocky and sneering, but chubby and not very formidable-looking, he is nonetheless smart, ruthless, and lucky to survive a huge number of gunfights that kill everybody around him. I'm not sure I'd recommend this movie, but if you want to see it, I wouldn't tell you not to, either.

RPG notes: If you're looking to create a game with cinematic, over-the-top gunplay all over the place, put this in your to-watch list along with everything John Woo has ever done and Equilibrium. Basing a villain off the Paul Giamatti character would make for an interesting change of pace from the usual "Dark Lord" type villains that show up in a lot of games. Other than that, though, there's not much to pull into gaming here. But really, those two elements are enough from a film like this.

Off the List: Thor

As I have been wont to do of late, I swung by a Redbox kiosk on my way home and picked up a couple of DVDs. One of them was Thor, which I just finished. To be honest, I went into this not expecting much. I've never been a huge Thor fan, and the trailers made it seem really corny to me. And, to an extent, it was sort of corny, but it was also absurdly well written and acted for something as potentially ludicrous as it was. The filmmakers did an exceptional job making the elements of Norse myth fit into a science fiction (rather than fantasy or straight comic book) take on a comic book setting. Of particular note was their treatment of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, which was actually (incredibly minor spoiler) a star map. The other thing I thought was remarkable was just how well a batch of little-known actors did with the film. Natalie Portman was really the only movie star in this film, and she was in a supporting role. I'm amazed I'm saying it, but it was a legitimately good movie, and worth seeing.

RPG notes: Surprisingly, there's not all that much to be cribbed from Thor, except the old trope of "Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C. Clarke) This manifested itself in some subtle and interesting ways, such as the aforementioned example of Yggdrasil and the Rainbow Bridge. Asgard itself seemed to almost be a space station of sorts. The rest of the film was fairly standard fish-out-of water tropes as Thor had to cope with being "merely human," though that part of the film does do a lot to make the case for a god stripped of his powers and cast down to live amongst mortals until he atones for some misdeed as a fun story element. Also: Loki is a fantastic example of a sympathetic manipulator villain. Those wanting to create such adversaries should watch with a notepad handy.

Off the List: The Princess and the Frog

On the recommendation of a friend (the inimitable Aaron Stack of Stacked Deck Entertainment) I fired up Disney's The Princess and the Frog on Netflix streaming tonight. Mr. Stack's recommendation did not go awry - the movie was quite entertaining. It was also one of the two darkest Disney movies I've seen (the other being The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I also really love) which kind of surprised me. Disney set the tale in New Orleans, which added all sorts of fun elements (Cajuns, voodoo, etc.) into it and made the story very enjoyable. The animal sidekicks were very enjoyable, and the Bokor villain was dealing with actual demons (with no punches pulled on the consequences for either him or the people who dealt with him), though the word wasn't used. The characters were also refreshingly three-dimensional and flawed, too, particularly Charlotte, who grew up into a character that didn't HAVE to do the right thing at the end and, once she knew what was going on truly had no reason to, but tried anyway. I'd heartily recommend this one, and I promise the next thing I do will be less kid-oriented!

RPG notes: As usual, this is the spoiler section, and should be reserved for consumption by readers who have either consumed the media or don't mind spoilers.

The Shadow Man, while a fairly straightforward Bokor villain, was a very slick and well-executed one. In particular, his shadow was a nice touch. It was a separate entity from him and able to affect the physical world by interacting with the shadows of other things was both effective and creepy. I'm almost certainly going to poach that for a fantasy villain. The film also had a very solid multi-threaded story AND a solid internal mythology, both of which are useful for any RPG campaign or setting - the mythology in particular took very solid advantage of a the setting and demonstrated how sometimes where a story takes place can deeply impact the story in important ways. That particular story wouldn't have worked anywhere else but New Orleans. The one last element that this movie provided me with wasn't actually in the movie itself, at least not entirely. In the process of "selling" me on the film, Aaron Stack mentioned that they "straight up murder a good guy" in the film. This took my viewing experience from "standard Disney movie" to "standard Disney move + Anyone Can Die." That "impending doom" feeling I had actually made the movie all the cooler and got me thinking that a good prophecy of doom from a reliable source can be a great story wrinkle in a game. All through the movie, I was trying to guess - was it going to be Ray? Louis? Mama Odie? Big Daddy? Naveen? That, coupled with how truly pull-no-punches supernatural evil The Shadow Man was, really made the film for me.

Off the list: Tangled

Why, oh WHY didn't I see this in the theater? Anyway, yeah, I noticed that Disney's latest film, Tangled, was up on Netflix and decided to watch it this morning and it was incredible. Zachary Levi was great as Flynn (not that surprising - he's great in Chuck) and the tale actually turned into a really good action-adventure movie very quickly. Disney flipped their formula a bit and made it a redemption story instead of just a hero tale, which was a great touch. I really don't want to spoil anything in this part of the review, so I think I'll leave it at this: If you like adventure, fantasy, and/or comedy, open up your Netflix account (or go get a free trial code from a TWiT show or Swagbucks or something) and watch this NOW. Beautiful animation, fantastic voice acting, fun story - awesome.

RPG notes: Spoilers aplenty. Go watch it and come back. And don't you dare NOT watch this!




Anyway, first some quick D&D notes: Maximus is now the official inspiration for every paladin's mount forevermore. That horse is full of epic win. Flynn also provides a nice example of the rogue with a heart of gold archetype, but what I'd really like to get into is Rapunzel's hair. The filmmakers actually constructed a surprisingly complex and interesting mythology around her hair, the flower it was derived from, the properties it had and so forth. There's some real parallels between Rapunzel's hair in this movie and Samson's in the Bible, and while Disney tends to avoid explicit religious themes in most of its works, you can definitely infer a "gift from God" property here. There's also some nice, subtle cues in the movie about how to craft a kingdom rules by wise, benevolent monarchs if you pay attention. The look and feel of the capital city and even the royal couple in particular convey a lot without any explicit exposition. I think one of the coolest and most important things you can pull out of this movie, though, is that you can get a fairly solid story (and even portray some real evil) without going all horrific and gruesome. The "mother" in this movie is also an excellent example of restraint and subtlety in villain design.

Off the list: Left 4 Dead 2

Today I'm going to write for the first time about a multiplayer game. For those of you who know me, this is rather unusual, to say the least. It's also a little unusual for me in that I "cleared" it (played through all of the campaigns) months ago. But tonight I played it with some friends and realized I had some stuff to say about it, so here we go. Left 4 Dead 2 is, for those who are unfamiliar, a four-player cooperative first-person shooter. The setting is a zombie apocalypse one and depending on the mode, the game falls somewhere between straight-up action and survival horror. Because it's a Valve game, it's more polished than a Marine's boots and it will run on anything more powerful than a Commodore 64. And it is also really, really fun. The trick is to get a good group of friends together to play with, but once you have that, it's a fantastic experience. I play pretty regularly (at least weekly) with a rotating group of 4 other people and I enjoy the game immensely. It is so much fun as to be borderline therapeutic when played with good friends. And you'd better play with friends, because even the most basic success in the game is predicated on working as a team and watching each others' backs. When you do that, though, the game is magic. You get the benefits of the jokes and chatter through the integrated VOIP and then to that add the catharsis of blasting scores of zombies with various assault weapons. Even though this game has been out for a while (it was released in November of '09) I'd say it's still competitive with newer games. I'd also say this would make a list of essential PC games that every PC gamer should own and play. The rave reviews and awards it's garnered were all very much deserved.

RPG notes: The setting of the game is certainly fertile ground for a great RPG setting to be grown in, and the various "special infected" (particularly the Spitter, Charger, Smoker, and Boomer) would all make very serviceable monsters in a tabletop RPG setting. (The Hunter, Witch, and Tank are too generic and the Jockey is too dependent on the video game aspect, I think.) However, I think the "watch your buddy's back" element that's in there might be the real gem in the game. The cooperative dynamic is pretty awesome in play, and while most adventuring parties generally work together, the kind of loyalty and mutual back-watching that Left 4 Dead characters do would make for a very formidable party with some really nice pathos.

Off the List: Brink

Review: I never added Brink to the list (whoops!), but I just finished playing through it, so here's my thoughts. Brink is an objective based competitive team shooter game in the vein of Team Fortress 2. The game is similar to TF2 in its style of play and in that it possesses and exaggerated art style. Unlike TF2, however, there are a lot of weapons, none are limited by character class, and all but a few of them can be modified by players to fit their combat style. The precise look of a player's avatar is also highly customizable, though I imagine certain costume pieces will bet far more use than others. Also very unlike TF2, Brink has an actual story, lightweight though it may be, and surprising amount of lore available for players to unlock and discover. Also of note is the ability to seamlessly jump and slide around obstacles, which adds an interesting vertical aspect to some of the maps. The game is a lot of fun, and even once everything is unlocked, is enjoyable to play. I prefer Brink to TF2 myself, but I'm admittedly biased, and the specific bias is this: I enjoy video games, but am not all that skilled at them. I play most of them on the lowest difficulty setting, and enjoy that experience. That means that when I go online to play vs. other human, many of whom are extraordinarily skilled at video games, I get blown to shark chum. This is less-than-enjoyable, and so I confine most of my online gaming to co-op games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Magicka. This is where Brink comes in: it feeds my urge to tinker with its customizable everything and it also allows you to play through all of its missions in single player mode. Huzzah! So, I'd recommend it, especially if you're a clod of an FPS player like me.

RPG notes: For those that missed the post where I announced I'd be doing this, this marks the first review of mine that will include a discussion of the game as idea material for tabletop RPGs. If this holds no interest for you 1) I wonder how you found this blog (welcome just the same, though!) and 2) feel free to skip this part. Right then, let's get to it.

Brink actually has several ideas worth appropriating for tabletop RPGs, the first and most obvious being The Ark itself, which is one of the better game settings I've seen in a while. (Jim Rossignol over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun mentions this too.) It bears mentioning that before I started playing the game, I didn't realize that the entire thing was on water, a giant floating archology. (In fact, I wonder if Ark started out as a phoenetic shortening of "archology," if it's a reference to Noah's Ark, both or neither.) The Ark is largely self-sufficient, though scarcity is enough of a problem to have touched off a revolution, and the technology that built it was obviously adaptable enough to allow for expansion, though it expanded into slums that call back to the cities in Fallout 3, cobbled together from whatever was around. The Ark itself seems to be built on floating foundations of some sort of artificial coral, which is a cool idea in and of itself. The Ark, or something inspired by it, would make for a very interesting and cool setting for an RPG. An interesting thing to note is that while other technologies have advanced from the present in Brink, weapons technology is exactly where it is today, to the point of most of the weapons being copies to modern guns.

The second major concept that struck me is that both sides of the Security/Guests conflict in the game are actually right. The population of the Ark has increased to the point where society (and the Ark itself) are starting to break down, but the outside world is not a nice place, either. Ironically, each side has information that would end the conflict if the other side were to get a hold of it, but neither side shares, and neither side knows about the other side's information. Furthermore, neither side's leadership nor foot soldiers is particularly fanatical or without doubts. This dynamic could definitely be used by a shrewd GM to cook up all manner of interesting adventures.

Off the List: True Grit

I pulled a copy of True Grit from Redbox on an impulse last night after work. It's been a while since I've watched a good western, but this was definitely a good one! It's interesting how you go into the movie with the assumption that it's the Jeff Bridges character who has "grit" but it's not just him. Hailee Steinfeld plays on of the strongest, toughest, canniest, smartest, strongest-willed, and youngest western heroes I've ever seen. The movie is excellent, but the grit isn't just reserved for the characters; the film has plenty as well, and it doesn't shy away from depicting some rather unpleasant injuries. Well worth seeing if you like westerns. I would definitely recommend it.

Off the List: Captain America: The First Avenger

I just got back from Captain America: The First Avenger. The film was a LOT of fun. They did an excellent job of staying true to the characters, and the story was great. The action felt solid, and Cap fought like a 1940s brawler rather than a super ninja, which I thought was cool. Ironically, I think this one would have benefited from making the setting a bit less "super," primarily by toning down Hydra's technology. Still, the movie was a lot of fun. One fairly common movie critic's complaint I'd like to address: Captain America is not supposed to be "dark" at all. If you're going to compare him to one of Arthur's knights, he's Sir Galahad. He is noble, righteous, and decent through and through because that's just the way he is. And actually? That's kind of refreshing now and again. I won't spoil it at all, but I will say that if you go see it, make absolutely sure you stick around for the short film after the credits!

Off the List: Atom Zombie Smasher

I got Atom Zombie Smasher as part of the same bundle deal that netted me A.R.E.S. and Capsized. It's an indie strategy game that's a sort of modified tower defense kind of thing. Like a lot of tower defense games and tower defense derivatives, the antagonist is a horde of zombies. This game is nice illustration of what's good with indie games: it has solid gameplay and a quirky sense of humor, but the game is tiny and it doesn't lean on other things like graphics or marketing hype to draw people in. It's not a huge, awe-inspiring thing, but there's a decent amount of depth and complexity. In fact, like Hinterland, which I reviewed a while back, it's almost a skirmish game. You can play through a campaign in just a few hours. This is why I try everything I get in bundle packs. Sometimes there's something that wasn't immediately apparent in there that turns out to be really good.

Off the List: Super 8

Last night I had the opportunity to hang out with a friend and former coworker that I haven't seen for a while, so we decided to go catch a movie. (He and I have a long-running tradition of catching "guy movies" together so we don't have to put up with an unhappy SO that doesn't like them.) The movie we wound up picking was Super 8.

The movie is excellent, a real four-star film if ever there was one. Highly reminiscent of early Spielberg, it assumes that the audience is both smart and paying attention and instead of caving your skull in with exposition, trusts that you'll figure out quite a bit from clues in the environment. It's hard to discuss the movie too much without spoiling it, but I will say this: despite some very well-executed creepy stuff going on, the real fun of the film is from the interaction of the kids with each other and their parents and the parents interactions with each other. It's a testament to the quality of the writing, acting, and direction that a story as multithreaded and complex as the one in this movie can be executed so well in such a short time. Oh, and the most spectacular train crash scene I've ever seen in anything. (The Fugitive has finally been dethroned for "best train crash ever.")