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.

Cleared: Orcs Must Die!

W00t! I knocked something that wasn't Mass Effect off the list! I realized tonight that I only had two more levels left in Orcs Must Die, and while I was having some difficulty with them on the normal difficulty level, I had no trouble once I knocked them down to easy.

SPOILER WARNING: As is normal with these posts, I'm going to "spoil" the game a bit. However, I will say this: there's not a huge amount of plot in Orcs Must Die!; this is one of those games you play for the actual gameplay rather than the storyline.

Orcs Must Die! (and yes, the exclamation mark is part of the title) is an interesting hybrid of tower defense and straight-up action game. You take on the role of a lone Warmage defending magical rifts from an onslaught of orcs, ogres, kobolds, gnolls, and other assorted fantasy cannon fodder.  You accomplish this with a combination of traps, spells, and weapons, and once you start building up to higher levels, the game gets complicated quickly. Initial maps just have one entry point to cover, but later ones have several, and the last map has four arranged around a central rift. In the early parts of the game, it's mostly strategic. You set up a network of traps and pick off anything that gets through with your crossbow. However, that only gets yo so far, especially in the later levels. By the final level, you learn to set enough traps to slow the enemy down long enough to make running around and engaging groups individually feasible.

It's a fairly simple formula, but it's executed really well. The game's graphics, sound, and level design are all top notch, especially for a small indie title, and even the frat boy character you play grew on me after a while. The traps are devilishly fun, too. My favorite, I think, was a huge, ceiling-mounted swinging mace that could cover three adjacent tiles and tore through lines of advancing orcs with great efficiency, but I was also a fan of the barriers and tar traps that held my foes in place for more efficient extermination.

The story is fairly simple and certainly won't win any awards, but there are a few great moments in there, especially when you realize just what humble beginnings your PC rose from. The ending also seems very solid and conclusive, so much so that I'm interested to see what they do with the upcoming sequel.

All of this adds up to a game that's very much worth playing. It's challenging, but not maddening, fast, but not out-of-control, and the levels all seem to be just long enough to really get a strategy going, but not so long they start to drag. In addition, you can take newly-unlocked traps back to prior levels and experiment with them there, so there's a lot of potential replay value. This is one of those shining examples of just how great an indie game can be. I'll be very interested to see both what the sequel and anything else Robot Studios (the developer) dreams up looks like. Definitely one I'd recommend.

Cleared: Mass Effect 3

Well, it's time to put the defibrillator paddles on this blog, I think. Criminey, it's been a long time with no new content. Sorry about that.

Anyway, I finished playing through Mass Effect 3 earlier this week, and I've been ruminating over it a bit, along with a lot of the other folks who have played it, I imagine. One spoiler-free bit before I get to the spoilery part of the post: the multiplayer, while something I was initially skeptics of/uninterested in, has turned out to be a ton of fun and well worth playing if you have the game. I've found it very enjoyable, and that's playing with strangers. I can't wait to try it with friends. Anyway, onto the real "meat" of this post.

SPOILER WARNING: It's pretty much impossible for me to discuss Mass Effect 3 in the way I'd like to without going into substantial spoilers, so if you'd rather not have the game spoiled, you're going to have to skip this post entirely, I'm afraid.

Here's the thing (and this is a common theme around the web) most of the game is brilliant. In fact, I teared up a couple of times and not from frustration of disappointment. It bears mention that the game included every single thing I wanted the mid-game to contain and more. Jack, who I'd written off in the first game, is back as a biotics instructor at Grissom Academy and is fiercely protective of "her kids." The changes in her make her actually sympathetic, and that's very cool to see. Thane Krios single-handedly saves the Salarian councilor from Kai Leng, and then passes away peacefully in a hospital bed, praying for Shepard.

Those, by the way, are the more minor parts. The Geth and the Qaurians can finally make peace in one of the most tense and touching bits of game story I've ever seen. The depth to which the Geth are willing to forgive the Quarians is staggering. I don't think I've found any line in all my gaming history as touching as: "You are welcome to return to Rannoch, Admiral Raan. With us." It's both amusing and a little poignant to watch the almost paternal body language of the Geth Prime towering over Admiral Raan as that conversation happens, especially since the Geth are actually the Quarians' "children." This is made even more touching still when you talk to Tali on the ship afterward and find out that the Geth are helping the Quarians adapt to life without enviro-suits.

The situation on Tuchanka isn't quite as touching, but it's still really satisfying. Mordin sacrifices himself to put the old injustice of the Genophage right, and despite the fact that at the time it looks like you lost the support of the Salarians, it feels pretty fantastic to watch what looks like snow fall from The Shroud. Eve and Wrex make a great "first couple" for the new Krogan society, too.

There are some other bits as well, and by the time I made it to the final confrontation, I felt like I'd laid the groundwork for a golden age in the galaxy. A common threat did a lot to unite the disparate, bickering factions, and the one true wild card, the Batarians, had been mulched by the Reapers on their way to Earth, so they wouldn't be a problem in the future.

It was at this point that the game proceeded to pull the rug out from under its own story. There's not much that I can add to the discussion that hasn't already been said, but it was kind of a let-down to see so much of the preceding storyline disregarded in the final cutscene. I had also hoped for a more strategic show-down with the Reapers, with old crewmates leading special ops strike teams you could direct to accomplish various tasks in a manner somewhat similar to ME2's suicide mission. I can picture vividly Samara and some Asari Commandos or even the rest of the Justicar order, Miranda and some former Cerberus ops, Grunt and his Krogan unit, Liara and a squad of Shadow Broker mercs, Tali with a mixed Quarian/Geth strike team, etc.

Alas, however, my military/strategic ending was not to be.I still think I got my money's worth, though.

RPG notes: The Mass Effect universe just begs for a licensed series of tabletop RPG products. The setting could not be more perfect for adventuring in, and playing out "alternate histories" in which the Reaper War ended in whatever way a specific group would have preferred (possibly using something like Microscope to set up the post-war setting) would be amazing.

In addition, the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness present throughout the trilogy make for a very meaty and though-provoking bit of inspiration for any campaign, as does the concept of the Reapers themselves. Because they aren't annihilating all organic life, but rather "pruning" it, they make for a more nuanced villain than your typical omnicidal maniac elder evil thingy.

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.

Cleared: The Alloy of Law

It's been entirely too long since I finished a book, but at least that changed last night. The book in question was, as I'm sure the reader has discerned, The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. I've previously read his original Mistborn trilogy, so when I heard that he had a new book in the setting, I was pretty excited. The book takes place about 300 years after the events of The Hero of Ages, and the world has transformed from a quasi-medieval setting to a quasi-Victorian one. All of the stuff that makes Sanderson's work so good is very much there. His characters are likable and interesting, his story has some great twists and turns in it, and his action scenes are phenomenal. The one thing that was a bit less present this time around was the whole sense of epic struggle - the story here was tighter and more personal, which was fine, just different. Sanderson has also left himself very much open for a follow-up novel. It's hard to go much more into the book's contents without going into spoiler territory, but I will say this: the setting has definitely grown and changed, but it's obviously the same world, which was a nice little bit of authorial craftsmanship. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who has read the original series, and I'd recommend that someone who has read neither start with the original series, for two reasons: first, the original series is utterly brilliant. It's one of the best works of fantasy I have ever read, and second: there are a lot of little nods back to those three books in this one, which make the experience richer and more fun. I do find myself wishing that Vin and Kelsier had been using Bendalloy back in the original trilogy after having read this. In any case, highly recommended. Sanderson's work is very solid, as always, and as always he does a great job of handling things with intelligence and good taste without getting pretentious or pulling his punches.

RPG notes: Well, it bears mentioning at the outset that there is an official, licensed Mistborn RPG out there, though I have yet to see an actual copy of it, so I can't comment other than to say I'm glad someone got the Mistborn license and made a game out of it. Anyhow, as usual, there's an excellent chance that I'll spoil something you'd rather not have spoiled in here, so if you haven't read the book yourself, be aware that this is a potential likely virtually guaranteed source of spoiler content. The Alloy of Law does a couple of things useful to GMs: it makes an excellent case for how much you can change a setting and still have it be recognizable, and it also shows the value of having your players know their setting history. Having Marsh show up in the epilogue, especially since he is now the setting's equivalent of The Grim Reaper, was a very powerful and cool moment - IF you've read the first three books. Otherwise, half the impact of that scene will sail right over the reader's head. Likewise, the naming of the city after the characters from the first series, some of the house names carrying through, etc. add extra weight and continuity to the story. Interestingly, though, the world itself is a radically different place. The original series took place in a bleak, scorched world with red skies and black ash falling from the sky. The world in The Alloy of Law is the one Sazed created at the end when he set things right again, and yet, with Allomancy and Feruchemy (and I assume Hemalurgy - my money's on that being the real purpose of the kidnap victims) still around, albeit in a diminished form. But the magic system and a few proper nouns, albeit both used judiciously, are enough to make the setting recognizable. That's huge. And that's also something useful to remember when doing multiple campaigns in a common setting: a world can change, and change a lot, and still be the same world. Look at how much the map of Europe has changed in 300 years, and also how much technology has advanced. And yet Earth is still Earth. The same can be true of your homebrew setting. Don't be afraid to change it between campaigns.

Cleared: Bastion

Well, that was amazing. And I have a feeling it's not done showing me cool stuff yet. Bastion, according to many, was one of the two best indie games of 2011. The other was Orcs Must Die (spoiler: guess what's going to be one of the short games for February?) anyway, it's an action RPG with fairly basic, simple (though not easy!) gameplay, but with one truly amazing twist: a reactive narrator that narrates your actions in the context of the larger story. Just hearing that description makes it sound like it could be obnoxious if it were poorly implemented. It's not. The narrator never repeats himself, doesn't babble incessantly, and speaks with a great economy of words. It also helps that the voice actor portraying the narrator is great at what he does, the story he's telling is fascinating, and the narrator never, ever repeats the same lines as you're working through an area. If you get stuck in an area, or take too long to do something, instead of jabbering away with the same old dialog, the narrator actually shuts up and lets you focus. It's wonderful, it's polished, and it adds more to the experience than I could ever have imagined it would before I played the game. The music is almost as important to the total experience as the narration is, and I'm very glad I have the version of the game with the soundtrack bundled in. I'm listening to the soundtrack as I type this out. Some great acoustic guitar music - it sort of reminds me of Firefly at times. And anything that reminds me of Firefly is great. The art direction is similarly excellent, and also unique - I don't think I've ever seen anything that feels quite like Bastion. It's got a little bit of a JRPG style to the art, but the story and characters, and world, really, are all very Western feeling. And it bears mentioning that while it's a post-apocalyptic story, the color palette is not just gray and brown. It's colorful, vividly and beautifully so. The game itself is interesting, too - it keeps unlocking new stuff all the way up to the end, which I thought was really cool. While it's doesn't have the smoothest control or the most in-depth combat system I've ever seen, both are well within the range of playably good. And once you finish the game, it opens up a "new game+" mode where you can start again with all of your XP and weapons. And while I won't get into spoilers, the game really makes you want to do that. This is an excellent argument for the case of video games as art, and not in a pretentious way. Highly recommended, and I'd even recommend paying full price. It really is quite amazing.

RPG notes: If you play video games, are reading this, and haven't played the game - GET OUT OF HERE. Why? Because the RPG notes are also the spoiler section, that's why! This is one story you don't want spoiled at all. So just to be clear: if you haven't finished Bastion, go play the game and come back. These posts are stored in the cloud by Google forever.  My "brilliant" thoughts on the game's spoil-able elements will still be here when you get back. TL;DR: SPOILER WARNING. Anyway, the game's world is unique and interesting. It's a fantasy setting, certainly, but there's no direct mention of magic. Technology is high enough for some fairly advanced firearms, but bows and melee weapons are still in use. I'd really like to see a prequel set in pre-Calamity Caelondia. Then there's the monsters: windbags, gasfellas, squirts, lunkheads, ankle gators, the list goes on. Nowhere is there a plain ol' dragon, or even something as easy to take for granted as a horse.  There's also the Calamity itself, the Bastion, and all the space-time warping inferred therein. But all that aside, there's still some great inspiration to be had. Rucks, The Kid, and Zulf are all deep, nuanced characters that would make fantastic NPCs. The post-Calamity world with its floating sky-islands is almost a character unto itself, and the plot of the endgame, with Rucks trying to fix the Calamity and Zulf trying to hold him to account over it could easily be used as the basis for an entire campaign.

Cleared: Midnight Chronicles

Netflix added Midnight Chronicles at some point, which saved me from buying it on RPGnow.com. I might still, though - it's part of a good bundle pack. Anyway, Midnight Chronicles is set in Fantasy Flight Games' Midnight universe, which is probably about the bleakest fantasy setting ever made. Imagine, if you will, what Middle Earth would have looked like if Sauron had won and then had a century to consolidate his power and you have some idea of what the Midnight setting looks like. Anyway, it's in this cheery place that Midnight Chronicles is set. Interestingly, this is obviously supposed to be the first in a series, and it only released in 2010, so there may be sequels coming - I hope so, for the sake of the very unfinished plot. The movie ends on a complete cliffhanger. All in all, the movie did surprisingly well for a) being very low-budget and b) consequently having no known talent whatsoever. The acting was serviceable, the plot was appropriate to the setting, and it was light years ahead of the terrible D&D movie. It still wasn't great, however. Directing and plotting could both have been tighter, and the film wasted a number of opportunities to show the nature of the setting to its fullest, but it still had a certain hard-to-pin-down charm. Unlike other movies based off of fantasy RPGs, this one wasn't campy, mocking, and/or exploitative, it was just a little slow-moving. That by itself makes it something special. It treated its subject material like something worth spending effort on, and that was great to see. I realize that this is sort of damning with faint praise, but this isn't the sort of thing I can recommend to everybody. However, if you're a die-hard gamer and want to see a movie based on an RPG setting that gives you some hope for the future of RPG movies, this is definitely one to see.

RPG notes: Well, considering that entire movie is based on an RPG setting, I suppose it's its own RPG notes on some level. But that's a cop-out. The one bit that I really did like was that the legate that much of the story revolves around seems to be some sort of destined hero. This is kind of an interesting problem, considering that he's on the bad guy's side. And that concept, all by itself, should be enough to get any GM worth their salt thinking. When the person you need to defeat the Big Bad is a loyal servant of said Big Bad, then what?

Cleared: Homefront

Well, that's another one down. It only took me five hours to play through Homefront, and that's with a couple of incredibly frustrating spots where I kept dying or failing mission objectives for some other reason. I'm a bit conflicted about Homefront, because on the one hand, the IP is solid. You could set some really fantastic games in the setting, and indeed, I have some faith that may indeed happen, but this was not that game. The scripting was so dominant and so rigid that I felt like I was playing an arcade rail shooter like Time Crisis, but more frustrating. Things like opening doors and the like always fell to my squadmates, but yet I attracted bullets like a huge magnet every time I popped my head up. This is actually even (unintentionally?) lampshaded late in the game when an attack helicopter ignores an entire armored column up on top of a bridge to come after the player down in the underscaffolding after getting blown off the bridge and landing on a catwalk. So the game is short and gives the player basically no agency, but I'm still kind of looking forward to the next sequel. Why? Two reasons. Reason one: Crytek. THQ has contracted Crytek, arguably one of the top 3 FPS developers out there today (the other two being Valve and Id) to make the sequel. Since Crytek also likes emergent gameplay and open world, one hopes the new game will actually be good. For the second reason, you'll have to read the spoiler-filled RPG notes section.

RPG notes: Spoiler warning, as usual. Okay, so here's the thing: I'd really like to see a Fallout (or even S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) style open RPG in the Homefront setting. The world is fairly consistent and plausible enough, the Korean army are vicious, murderous monsters (mass graves, killing parents in front of toddler-aged children, etc.) that are easy to hate. The various crazy survivalists, resistance cells, and others in the game would make a great patchwork world of shifting allegiances and battle lines that it would be great to travel through through as a lone wanderer of some kind. I could easily envision setting a really fantastic tabletop RPG campaign in the setting as well. My only real setting gripe is that weapons technology hasn't advanced at all in 2027? Really? Everybody's using the same exact rifles and accessories they do today? Some fun near-future stuff like caseless assault rifles, an OICW-style weapon of some sort, and so forth would be a welcome addition, but could be easily hacked in by an enterprising GM.

Cleared: Dungeons of Dredmor

I'm not sure I have ever felt such a sense of triumph after beating a game on easy. It took me 64 hours and I don't know how many times I died, but I finally made it to the bottom of the dungeon and took down Lord Dremor. (Then I deliberately died to him a few minutes later to get the achievement.) Anyway, I think this game probably gets the cost-to-enjoyment ratio award for the last 12 years. (I can't go back to '99, however, because that's when Jagged Alliance 2 was released.) I got this game as part of a humble bundle, and fired it up on a completely random whim. And then it hooked me. It hooked me bad. Getting to the bottom of the dungeon, even without permadeath, was quite the achievement, but it was fun, for several reasons. First and most importantly, the game has a sense of humor, and every bit as important - that sense of humor is clean. (Well, mostly. There's a few double entendres about wands and staves in there, and one monster, but the overwhelming majority of the game's humor comes from wit and ridiculousness. This would be worthless if the game itself wasn't any fun to play, however, and this game was a very satisfying experience. The skill trees always had something cool to offer, the loot was peppered with all sorts of cool things, including literary and media references. And the combat was surprisingly satisfying, given how simple it is. The game rewards cleverness and punishes carelessness, and especially towards the end, I felt like I'd gotten a lot better at playing it. Oh, and did I mention it's turn-based? Interestingly, I'm not sure this is going to get me into the roguelike genre, per se, but I'll happily snatch up any additional content the creators put out for this. It's well worth the full price of the game and its expansion, which, by the way, is only $7.49 on Steam. This is one of those "just go get it already" recommendations. I don't think I've seen a better value in gaming in ten years.

RPG notes: The anachronisms of the setting (vending machines in the dungeon, etc.) would be fun to play with, and the bolt council and its implied machinations are some fun lightweight inspiration for how a morally-ambiguous fantasy guild might operate. Not sure how many of the monsters I'd want to swipe, although a few of the ones on the lowest levels might be cool.

Cleared: Rage

Well, I must admit, I wasn't expecting to knock something off the list quite that quickly! As it turns out, I'd played up until pretty close to the end of Rage before I got around to adding it to the list. The game took me about 14 hours to complete, according to Steam. With a duration that short, I'm glad I got it on sale. That's not to say I didn't like it, though - far from it. In fact, I'd say it's one of the best shooters I've played in a long time. The controls are nice and tight, the weapons are very satisfying (particularly the wingsticks - oh how I love those things) and there's just enough RPG stirred in to enhance the game without bogging it down too much. Even the driving portions are fun. One of the things I also find myself liking was how optimistic the setting was for a post-apocalyptic world. Unlike the Fallout games, it really feels like people are not only trying to rebuild, but enjoying some measure of real success - there are a number of small settlements that seem to be doing fairly well in a small area, and three of them seem like decent places to live. The story itself is also fairly optimistic, which I enjoyed. My biggest gripe was that Id did some technical stuff to lock the frame rate at 60FPS, and my PC didn't always like that. I experienced weird freezes and some tearing (and turning v-synch on fixed the problem, but it wasn't sticky between play sessions - I had to re-enable it every time I fired up the game) but it's worth noting that the game never crashed, and most of the time, it was buttery-smooth.

RPG notes: Rage's setting is a good place to start if you want to make a post-apocalyptic game that isn't too bleak. There are also some fun ideas for weapons and gadgets in the game. Lock grinders, RC bomb cars, and of course, wingsticks could all be dropped into  multitude of modern and/or near-future settings.

Monthly list replacement: since I polished the game off on day 2, I'm going to drop Homefront into the other short game slot.

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...

Cleared: Borderlands: The Zombie Isle of Dr. Ned

This piece of DLC for Borderlands added, shock of all shocks, ZOMBIES to the list of enemies to fight off. Surprising, I know. In all seriousness, though, the zombies actually made a worthwhile and fun addition to the game. Borderlands is full of a lot of enemies that fight you with quality rather than quantity. Bandits and Crimson Lance members use cover and will try to flush you out with grenades and the like. Skags are nasty, jumping things that attack in small groups and strike quickly. Zombies, by comparison, are slow-moving, stupid enemies that just overwhelm you with sheer numbers, which require a bit of a shift in tactics to fight effectively. The game also includes some variety in their zombies, including torsos that pull themselves along the ground and attack from below your field of vision, Defilers which spit L4D-reminiscent vision obscuring vomit at you, suicide zombies which explode up close, psycho and midget zombies that move faster and more erratically, and Tankensteins which look like a 1950s film version of Frankenstein's Monster and lumber around with explosive barrels to pitch at you in addition to bog-standard normal zombies. They spawn fast enough that surviving until, for example, a hand-cranked elevator gets to you can get genuinely desperate and frantic. The game's sense of humor is very much on display here too, as the villain asks if you want brownies, then remembers he's trying to kill you and other hilarious moments of ridiculousness. The ending also deserves special mention for breaking the forth wall and making you jump out of your skin and laugh at the same time.

RPG notes: As usual, spoilers all over the place. If you don't want it spoiled, stop reading. While this seems like a fairly standard "...and zombies!" kind of story, and on some level it is, there's some useful stuff in here that can be cribbed for other games. First of all, the corporation in charge of the area doesn't evacuate and instead sends in troubleshooters to resolve the problem. While we've certainly seen this before, it bears mentioning as a useful plot device for some kind of monster infestation. While the right thing to do is pull out survivors, the problem is that, well, monsters are scary. Whether it's zombies, aliens, killer robots, or something else, anything that can overwhelm a well-armed settlement is definitely going to be treated with a certain level of fear my those on the outside, especially if said menace has the ability to hide inside the "unaffected" population and/or reinforce itself my transforming them somehow. And speaking of transformations, the final boss battle is a great piece of inspiration every GM should use at least once. Follow up an anticlimax boss battle with a more powerful form of the defeated boss after they players are sure the boss is down and are in post-fight mop-up for an extra shot of tension and chaos.

Cleared: Fate of the World

Well, this is a new one. This is the first thing to come off of this list because the introduction turned me off. Fate of the World is a left-wing enviro-socialist game where you go about fixing climate change through the Magical Power of The State. (In this case, a worldwide version of the EPA with absolute power over the actions of (apparently formerly) sovereign nations.) I just can't stomach its central premise enough to even really play the game. Trying to get someone like me to play this and enjoy it is like trying to get an atheist to play and enjoy one of the Left Behind games. (Or trying to get me to play those and enjoy them, come to think of it, but I digress.) The ideology behind it is so opposed to my own that I can't stop grinding my teeth long enough to actually dig into it, and that precludes any fun I could have. That said, if you lean to the left politically, you probably should not be without this game. It'll probably fire all your switches, and you'll likely enjoy it a great deal. Me, I'm glad it didn't really cost me anything - I got this as part of an Idie Royale bundle.

RPG notes: I've got nothing. I can't even make myself play this. Sorry, folks. I can have friends that oppose me politically without trouble, but entertainment that requires me to accept the basic premises that this game does in order to play it just doesn't work for me.

Cleared: Batman: Arkham City

I had the good fortune to have pre-purchased this game with some gift cards I had from a survey site before the events of my last post transpired, so I had no conflicted feelings about just downloading it from Impulse and playing it when it finally came out this past Tuesday. I will say right up front that while I have finished the game, I am far from finished with it. My first playthrough finished with a completion score of 37% - I did virtually nothing with side quests and I still enjoyed the game. Animations are considerably better than the previous installment - enemies crumple to the ground in more appropriate poses and moving around Arkham City feels very natural between the bat-line and Batman's cape functioning as a hang glider. It also amazes me just how much of Batman's mythology they managed to fit into the game, especially after Arkham Asylum. Playing as Catwoman for some of the sections was also fun - she has a much more limited toolkit, but also some other options Batman just doesn't have. Sneaking around clinging to the ceiling with her was fantastic. The game is a wonderful experience and very much worth the price of admission, but one quick warning: it is incredibly dark in places. The monstrousness of Batman's enemies is on full display here, with thugs talking about all sorts of horrible deeds and even a few times where someone you can't get to screams desperately for help as you try to get to them in time. I really wish the ESRB had seen fit to tage this with an M rating, because I think the content merits it. Still: very much recommended.

RPG notes: This section contains probably the single biggest spoiler of anything I've ever written, so please bear that in mind if you haven't finished the game, but first some other thoughts: this game does an excellent example of showing how you can have an unabashedly comic-book setting, with all of its weird conflicting sources of power and weirdness, and still have it work. Batman goes up against foes that are not superhuman in any way, save their utter evilness, such as The Joker, Two-Face, and Penguin, a few that are augmented via super-science or science-fiction technology of some kind like Mr. Freeze and Bane, and even a couple with mystical undertones like Solomon Grundy and Ra's al Ghul and it all works. The setting still feels like a dark, gritty, crime-ridden modern city instead of a cartoony mess. The game also has a very interesting example of how to finish a major recurring villain in a satisfying and character-appropriate way. Okay - remember the spoiler I was talking about? This is it. You have been warned. The Joker's death, while richly-deserved, came at his own hand and he found it funny at the end. Mark Hamill has also said that he's retiring from voicing the character now, and so there is a real sense of finality to this - between this and the sad events around Heath Ledger's death, I almost think it may be time for DC to kill The Joker off for real in the comics and see where Batman can go from there. There is a great deal of reference to how the two characters of Batman and The Joker are kind of dependent on each other and two sides of one coin in almost all the mythology around both of them, so leaving one to go on without the other is storytelling gold. The opportunities to transfer that into an RPG campaign are extensive, particularly if one or more of the PCs has a recurring nemesis of some kind. It should be mentioned, however, that if this is attempted, the surviving adversary is going to feel somewhat lost and "off" and they should. Play with that, and see where you can go.

Cleared: Sanctum

I recently got a chance to play a bunch of Sanctum with my buddy Aaron Stack, and we are in agreement that we need to do this more often. Sanctum, for readers that aren't aware, is a unique FPS/Tower defense hybrid game, where you build a standard tower defense network and then run around said network with a bunch of weapons when the wave of enemies arrives. First-person shooters and tower defense games are really different kinds of gameplay - tower defense is generally pretty cerebral, as you're planning pathways and trying to maximize the effects of overlapping fields of fire and spend your resources wisely on careful tower placement, whereas a first-person shooter is all action and running around. Coffee Stain Studios, then, deserves special recognition for not only making both of these elements so satisfying, but by blending them so well. A substantial portion of the VOIP chatter in the last game was just constant raving about how good the game was and how much we loved it. This one is bound to become part of my standard multiplayer gaming rotation. If you're reading this and are part of my multiplayer gaming circle of friends (you know who you are) get yourself a license so we can do co-op! Definitely a recommendation on this one!

RPG notes: Sadly, despite how good the game is, there's really not much to harvest for tabletop gaming. Hordes of aliens advancing and needing to be shot is pretty much science fiction 101 and none of the weapons are all that unique. And as far as plot is concerned, there really isn't one. That's okay, though - the game is good enough that you'll be happy you've got it anyway.

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

Cleared: Silverfall

I finally got around to finishing Silverfall, though if I want to keep playing with my same character, I can eventually go through Earth Awakening. Silverfall, for those who aren't quite sure what I'm talking about, is an action RPG in the tradition of Diablo from a now-defunct game developer called Monte Cristo. Before we get much firther, though, let me just say this: don't let the awful T&A box art turn you off to the game. I had the advantage of not seeing it as I bought the game digitally, but criminey, that's awful and isn't reflective of the game's content. Anyway, it's really sad that Monte Cristo are, as I just mentioned, out of business, because the game is something of an undiscovered treasure, especially for those that like the genre. First of all, though, let me lead off by saying that Silverfall is not the kind of game you play for the plot, because there's very little of it and what is there is alternately ludicrous and nonsensical. That's okay, really. The real fun in this type of game is in the gameplay itself, and Silverfall does several things very right. First of all, unique (as far as I know) to games of this genre, Silverfall has no class system at all. You start off as one of several races and pick your abilities as your fancy strikes you, and there's plenty to choose from. There's also a refreshing lack of "wrong" options. Aaron Stack (whom I seem compelled to link at least once a month) and I both played this game around the same time and we took completely different approaches to character design and both of our characters worked. There's something of an "alignment" system, but instead of law vs. chaos or good vs. evil, it's nature vs. technology. Also of note is that the game gives you four skill points instead of just one like many similar games at every level, so characters diverge in their capabilities very quickly, which is a refreshing change. The expansion pack, Earth Awakening, adds more races, a crafting system, some UI tweaks, and a new, high-level campaign, and can be purchased with the base game from most digital game outlets (Steam, Direct2Drive, etc.) and goes on sale somewhat frequently. It really is tragic that the studio that made this gem folded. I would have loved to have seen what a full-blown sequel looked like. If you're a fan of the action RPG genre, this game belongs in your collection. If you're not yet a fan, this probably is a good second game (Torchlight would be the best introduction) if you find yourself a fan.

RPG notes: As usual, there are spoilers in here, but really, there's not much to spoil. I didn't find much in the way of plot elements or character archetypes to steal in this game because there's nothing there to steal. The plot barely strings the game together. This isn't a problem, however, because the visuals are amazing for a game this old. Whoever did the art direction did a fantastic job, so you'll get all sorts of neat ideas for descriptions of weapons, armor, and monsters from playing this game. The weapons of the corrupted elves, the tree dragons, and the necroraiders in all their forms in particular are going to find their way into my homebrew setting.

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.

Cleared: Flashpoint, Season 1

Netflix had been recommending Flashpoint to me for months, so I finally caved and gave an episode a try. It didn't take that long for me to watch the rest of the first season. Netflix's rating algorithms apparently know what they're doing, because this is quickly becoming one of my favorite shows ever. The show follows an elite police tactical team called the SRU (Strategic Response Unit) as they go about their business. And this is where what could easily be a straight-up action show gets really interesting. First of all, if this is what law enforcement in Canada is actually like, I envy the Canadians their police. The SRU members are, to a person, decent, honest, compassionate human beings. They take quite seriously their goal of using lethal force as a last resort and the show's realism comes not from depictions of corruption and brutality, but from the fact that often the "bad guys" in some of these high-stress situations aren't so bad at all (though sometimes they are) and that doing this sort of work is a really stressful job. Time and again, they demonstrate that their team has the resolve and skill to put people down permanently if they have to, but not the desire to do so. Team members routinely take risks with their own lives and safety to make sure everybody else gets out alive, but they're not reckless, either. The Strategic part of the team's name definitely applies. They work as a team, think things through, and try to make good judgment calls. The show is well-acted, well-directed, and well-written, and it's set up in Toronto, Ontario, which means that the locations are usually beautiful. In a way, this is kind of the antithesis of shows like The Shield. I really enjoy this one, and I plan to watch the other seasons. I know I recommend a lot of stuff on here, but I recommend this show especially strongly. If you have a Netflix subscription, just try a few episodes and see if you don't agree with me.

RPG notes: Unlike most of my RPG notes sections, this one is spoiler-free, so read away. First of all, if you have plans to put together a competent, effective and honest city watch or police force for some part of a homebrew setting, you could do a lot worse than to watch this for inspiration! The team also makes an interesting case for how not all people of the same "alignment" are cookie-cutter copies of each other. In D&D terms, the entire SRU is Lawful Good (with the possible exception of the sergeant who may be Neutral Good), but the way that manifests is different for each member. The show also provides a wonderful object lesson for demonstrating that winning doesn't always mean annihilating the opposition. It's been my experience that  lot of the time, PC parties view anything that raises a hand against them as an entity that has automatically forfeited its right to continued existence. Now, that works in some games, but not being able to just go scorched-earth and kill everything that opposes occasionally might be a good way to really stretch your players from time to time.