Feng Shui: Did It for Johnny

Last night we finished a story arc in Feng Shui. It was pretty intense. 

We begin as the characters enter the main building, what used to be Genomic Solutions in the Contemporary Juncture. The building is, of course, huge, and the big enclosures are still along the sides (though the glass has been broken out), but now there are big rocks all over the place, and a dais with a broken statue of Furious George next to it. At the other end of this huge structure is the dreaded Thrill Kill Mandrill, and an orangutan in a lab coat, standing near a big steel device, kinda like the thing they used to make Captain America. 

The Dragons enter, and Thrill Kill screams to kill them! And then came the monkeys. A bunch of soldier-apes, sure, but also foes that the Dragons had fought already: Ba-boom, holding his grenade launcher! Smilin' Bill, aiming a rifle! Silverback, roaring in rage! Albrecht, carefully choosing his strike! Sneaky Monkey, drawing her serrated sword! Drunky Monkey, swilling from his flask and screeching at Bai! And, worst of all, Ape Mask Replicant, staring down Wu Tang. 

(Cue this song for full effect.)

The battle is joined! Bai leaps into the fray (well, into a cluster of mooks) to get closer to Drunky, his nemesis. Celeste cracks her whip and yanks Ape Mask Replicant's submachine gun away, and Replicant shrugs and pulled her rifle, shooting Tang. Ba-boom fires a grenade, but Tang ducks and it flies out the door harmlessly. Tang teleports over to Ba-boom and yanks the grenade launcher away, and then teleports further into the room to confront Thrill Kill Mandrill.

This would prove to be a mistake. 

Johnny finds a silver push-cart and skateboards into the fray, knocking over monkeys (and waving to Bill). Bai sets Drunky on fire with his Fire Palm, and continues blocking the shots of the monkeys all around (they're mooks, so they miss a lot). Sneaky creeps around and attacks Celeste, but Celeste unloads on him and then kicks him across the room. 

Wildfire (who tends to suffer from low initiative) jumps up and bites into Ape Mask Replicant; she jumps away and shoots him. Ba-boom runs away for another grenade launcher, and scampers back in time to see Bai finish off Drunky with a kick to the head. Silverback punches the crap out of Johnny and Bai, and Albrecht creeps up and strikes Dragons in the head as necessary. 

Meanwhile, Tang, as mentioned, faces off against Thrill Kill. He snaps the grenade launcher two and flings it at Thrill Kill, but misses. Thrill Kill, for his part, hits a button and two machine guns pop up. They fire on Tang, wounding him, and then Thrill Kill beckons him down to fight. Tang does his best, but Thrill Kill jumps up and pile-drives him, dropping him. He holds Tang's motionless body up and howls in triumph.

Wildfire follows Ape Mask, lands on her and rends her to shreds (Tang clings to consciousness just long enough to see his friend kill his mortal enemy, and then passes the heck out). Ba-boom, horrified, fires a grenade and damages Silverback and Albrecht...but blows Johnny underneath the dais, unconscious. The three remaining Dragons know they have no chance against Bill, Ba-boom, Silverback, Albrecht, and Thrill Kill (who hasn't been touched!) and so they Cheese It. 

But they are not leaving their friends to die. Oh, no.

Celeste and Bai heal each other up a bit (neither have the Medicine skill, but they can fake it; we did joke that in a game of Monsterhearts that healing scene would have been very different). Wildfire, of course, heals on his own. They decide to climb the building and drop down near the weird regeneration-chamber thing; maybe they can get the others back.

The others, meanwhile, are alive - they've been healed a little (I had them roll for a Death Check, but instead of dying it was to see if they keep their Mark of Death from the fight; Johnny did, Tang didn't). 

They lower themselves in on Celeste's rope, and see Johnny and Tang strapped to turned-upright beds with IVs draining their blood into the regeneration chamber. Thrill Kill screams to the assembled monkeys that their Master will awaken soon!

And Bai swings on the rope and lands next to him, striking the ape in the lab coat. Celeste and Wildfire land behind the beds and untie Tang and Johnny, respectively, and Tang picks up the bed, jumps off the pedestal, and breaks the bed over Thrill Kill's head. 

(Cue this song for full effect.) 

Silverback leaps up on the pedestal to mix it up with Wildfire. Smilin' Bill jumps up on a rock and shoots Bai, and Celeste levels the gun she stole from Ape Mask and fires back. "Smile at this." 

BOXCARS. Bill goes flying off the rock, his lifeless gorilla body crashing against the dais. 

Bai strikes the ape in the lab coat and sets him on fire, but he quickly pats himself out. He then grabs the ape by the throat and demands to know how to stop the process; Dr. Zabbity says that there is no way! So Bai slams his head against the machine. 

Ba-boom fires a grenade and does some damage, but damages the chamber as well. Thrill Kill snarls at him, but Tang (having teleported clear) picks up a rock brains the Mandrill with it, and then...picks it up and hits him again. 

Meanwhile, Wildfire and Silverback are trading blows. Wildfire goes for the bite. BOXCARS. They fall off the pedestal and roll behind a rock, and Wildfire emerges, victorious, covering in gorilla blood. 

Ba-boom, seeing the writing on the wall, Cheese It. 

Thrill Kill yells to Albrecht to open the chamber, and he starts fiddling with knobs and dials, but Celeste shoots the panel and he Cheeses It, unable to complete his task and seeing Thrill Kill bleeding. 

Johnny picks up a piece of rebar and wangs Thrill Kill on the head, and Thrill Kill takes the blow and punches him back. He then jumps back to the chamber and rips off the door, just as Celeste yells "Fire in the hole!" and shoots something volatile. She sees a slim Chinese man step out, and Thrill Kill kneel before him, just before the whole thing explodes.

The dust settles, and Johnny staggers up to Tang and hands him a notebook...before collapsing dead. Tang kneels down and closes his eyes. "Shimmy ya, Johnny."

The notebook (which Johnny found in the rubble) contains a detailed account of the Chi War by Si Borg. The last page is a letter addressed to Tang, telling him that if he's reading this, Si is dead, but that he'd dedicated himself to protecting a site of power (near here, across the bridge, in fact). He also asks Tang to look in on his boy, if he ever manages to get to the Contemporary Juncture. It's signed Si "Borg" Archer. 

Johnny's mother, it seems, was from the Contemporary Juncture but wound up here, and Si Borg was his father. No wonder Thrill Kill wanted his blood for his foul science-sorcery. 

The characters bury Johnny, and strike out toward the bridge. What new adventures away in the world of...Feng Shui?

Movie #379: Magic Mike XXL

Magic Mike XXL is, of course, the sequel to Magic Mike. It stars Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Adam Rodriguez, Gabriel Iglesias, Jada Pinkett Smith, Amber Heard, Donald Glover, and Kevin Nash. It's directed by Gregory Jacobs, but Sodebergh stayed on to do cinematography.

Three years after the first movie, Mike Lane (Tatum) is making furniture, but doesn't have a storefront and is barely making ends meet. He gets a called from Tarzan (Nash), one of his old stripping buddies, and learns that his former boss Dallas took "the Kid" and fucked off to Macau to start an act there, ditching the others. Said others have all moved on to various degrees; Ken (Bomer) is trying to have a go at an acting career, Tito (Rodriguez) and Tobias (Iglesias) have a fro-yo truck. Richie (Manganiello) and Tarzan are at a bit of a loss, but the guys decide to drive up to Myrtle Beach for a stripper's convention, as a send-off to their stint as the Kings of Tampa.

The movie from there is a road trip movie; the guys bond, fight, take drugs, and revamp their act. They wind up needing a new emcee and Mike visits Rome (Pinkett Smith), living like an empress in a Savannah mansion that caters to women who want to watch beautiful men strip and perform, eventually convincing her to help them. They ditch their old routines and perform new ones, reflecting who they really are and what they love.

This movie wasn't terribly well-reviewed, but I dunno, I like it. It's a good sequel, and those are rare - mostly sequels just rehash the original (or, nowadays, movies are built to be franchises so the story is designed as one long piece, which is a different thing), but in this one, the characters and world are the same, but the narrative refocuses. Nothing gets retconned, and it makes perfect sense that Dallas and Adam aren't there (IRL, they couldn't afford McConaughey and apparently Pettyfer didn't get along with Tatum, but whatever serendipity). The end of the movie isn't a joyful "let's get back to Tampa, guys!" but the acknowledgement that yeah, this was great, this was fun, we went out on a high note. It's a happy ending without being a Shakespearean happy ending (bad become good, good become saintly, everyone gets married), and it has a pretty contemplative feel for a movie about strippers.

Once again, the performances make the movie, but what's interesting to me is how much Manganiello carries it, considering he has like three lines in the first movie. Tatum is there to be the framing device and he gets the lion's share of the story (though I kinda feel like his budding romance with Amber Heard's character is much less interesting than Manganiello's with Andie MacDowell's), but the other guys and their stories are brought into focus and woven into the movie pretty deftly.

My grade: A-
Rewatch value: Medium-low

Next up: The Magnificent Seven

Character Creation: Storytime Chimera

Got to about 3PM today before all my energy just...went away. Whee! Anyway, this is easy and I can keep my streak going.

The Game: Storytime Chimera
The Publisher: OJO Games
Degree of Familiarity: Some. I ran a session the other night in preparation to write a review.
Books Required: Just the one.

 

Storytime Chimera is a game designed to tell fable-like bedtime story adventures for kids. I, as you can imagine, am a fan of this concept. Let's make a character!

First up, I create a name and a story. My story is basically my character's concept and role; in player, it lowers my difficulty on rolls if I act within it. Hmm.

I kinda think it'd be fun to play a mute character, mostly because when I ran this one of the characters summoned a water spirit and I played it mute, doing charades to pass along information. But I want to play a person. My character is a monk, a member of the Order of the First Raindrop. They believe in communing with nature and stilling the outer voice to find the inner one. My character's name is Brother Amber (he wears an amber stone around his neck, so he can point to it to introduce himself). His story is "Monk trying to achieve communion with all life, and teach others the value of listening."

Now I choose a flaw. I think Amber is easily entranced. He'll sit for hours staring at marching ants or counting the strands in a spider-web.

Now I get a hobby. This is just something Amber likes to do. I think he collects rocks. Maybe he's building a stone Tarot.

Stats! There are only 3, and I get 6 points to split up (the book actually lists out all the different possible combinations, which seems unnecessary to me). It's just Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence (which I think could have been titled better, because they're much broader than those terms would indicate). I think I'll put Strength at 1, Dexterity at 2, and Intelligence at 3.

Skills! Again, I get three points, though the book talks about Generalist/Expert/Specialist, but the math is the same. The relevant question is, do I wish to put a point in Magicking, which would allow me to cast spells? I think not. I'll take Making, Knowing, and Sneaking as my Skills.

Gear and Wealth. Ugh, my least favorite part of chargen: shopping. I get 12 supplies (which are things that get consumed in play) and 6 gear (helpful equipment). I'll take 3 food, 3 water, 2 match bundles, 2 units of oil, and 2 healing potions for supplies. For gear, I'll take a pocket knife, a staff, a lantern, a spyglass, some rope, and a rock hammer (for shaping and polishing rocks, also handy for escaping Shawshank prison).

And that's it, really!

Misspent Youth: The Celestial Bureaucracy

Yesterday the group that was playing Nobilis met to figure out a new game. We decided to do our Spark-inspired method of choosing a game.

• Megan chose Star Wars: The Force Awakens (but really the franchise in general) because she wanted something in SPAAAAAACE.
• Gus chose the Lucifer TV show because of the discussions on Divinity. 
• Melissa chose Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit; she liked the clear ethical argument and position it takes.
• Michelle chose Kubo & The Two Strings for its elements of storytelling and how storytelling is power and resolution.
• I picked the music of Devil Makes Three; I like the dark themes but the light expression. 
• Travis chose the Dark Matter TV show; he likes how it's got elements of hard sci-fi but is ultimately about the characters.

With all of that in mind, we discuss a few options. We came close to playing In Flames, but it seemed a little darker than we wanted to go, so we opted instead for Misspent Youth. 

Now, I ran a game of Misspent Youth some time ago, as you might have heard. I really like this game and I'm happy to be playing it again with a different group of people (mostly; Michelle played in the last one). 

We set to work defining our Authority. The players decided that the gods are real - most or all of the gods of human pantheons were real, but actually alien intelligences, and they've been using humanity as skin-suits for eons. Turns out human bodies are actually pretty resilient, and while gods are powerful, they need those skin-suits to really thrive. Gods need a substance they call Quintessence (but the YOs just call Mojo) to survive and empower themselves - if a human ingests Mojo, they become similarly empowered and cannot be possessed. 

The overarching body of gods is the Celestial Bureaucracy. When humanity got off of Earth and ascended to the stars, the gods scoured the Earth of all life. Now, humanity is a scattered race, and the ones that offend the gods get imprisoned on a world called Bardo. Which is where this is all gonna start. 

The gods have some Systems of Control at their disposal:

• They limit access to Quintessence. Humanity can't really fight back without it. 
• They tailor humanity's genetics; they want their skinsuits pretty, fit, and healthy.
• They divide themselves into Houses. A god of a given House needs a particular kind of human to possess. This also gives humans (who are naturally tribal) something to fight over, which keeps them busy. 
• They have planet-destroying nano-tech, which is how they razed the Earth. 
• And, of course, they maintain a prison-world called Bardo, where they keep dissidents and let them burn off Mojo. 

The Youthful Offenders are all stranded on Bardo. They have one Exploit they can use: They've all used Mojo and can therefore communicate with each other in real time regardless of distance (this is called Interstellar Mojo Empathy). Human beings generally can display empathy, which is alien to the gods. 

And now, the YOs.

• Gus is playing Eli, the non-binary felonious monk. Eli provides Mojo to the others (no word yet where they get it). Their Disorder is "We Are All Created Equal." They're a member of the House of Stone.
• Michelle is playing Jaquard (or Jaqui), the sigil graffiti artist. She sees herself as a spiritual alarm clock, waking people up to the shit they're in. Her Disorder is "Listen to Me." She's from the House of Wings and Wind.
• Megan is playing Yasha, the reluctant god-slayer. She's kind of Buffy-like, tapped for greatness and violence. Her Disorder is "Liberation Theology." She belongs to the House of the Hollow Crown.
• Travis is playing Ksanti Unvicious, the punk rock bodhisattva. Ksanti was born on Bardo, and she's the youngest of the YOs at 12. Her Disorder is "We have everything we need in us already." She's a member of the House of Hungry Ghosts. 
• Melissa is playing Alaska, the underestimated slut. Alaska is a light-bringer, showing the world uncomfortable truth and beauty. Her Disorder is that she "wants to be loved." She belongs to the House of Gaga. 

That's what we've got so far. Very much looking forward to seeing this world evolve. 

Movie #378: Magic Mike

Magic Mike is a dramedy directed by Steven Sodebergh, and starring Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Olivia Munn, Adam Rodriguez, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Kevin Nash, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, and Gabriel Iglesias.

Mike (Tatum) is a very busy stripper living in Tampa. In addition to stripping, he own four or five side businesses, but what he really wants to do is make custom furniture. One day on a construction job, he meets Adam (Pettyfer), and winds up getting him a job stripping with the "Kings of Tampa," the stripping troupe managed by the somewhat narcissistic Dallas (McConaughey).

Adam (nicknamed "the Kid") gets immediately sucked into the life and winds up selling drugs for Tobias (Iglesias), the group's DJ. When he loses a bunch of drugs, Mike, who's falling for Adam's sister Brooke (Horn), steps up and bails him out, at the cost of most of his savings. The movie ends with Mike stepping away from the troupe and trying to figure out a more reasonable plan of action. Also snogging Brooke.

So, I saw this movie in theaters, and apart from the woman sitting near me who brought a four-year-old who was clearly not thrilled, what I remember was that I was expecting it to be light and funny about with beefcake. One for three ain't bad. Most of the stripper dudes perform some pretty impressive feats of male entertainment, but holy shit Channing Tatum. Whatever you think of his acting, the boy can dance.

But quite apart from that, the storyline is more Boogie Nights if it focused on Reed Rothchild instead of Dirk Diggler (and, like, involved way less people getting shot). It's not so much "light and funny" as "young person getting seduced by the glamour of a new life with drugs and so forth," and seeing that through the eyes of someone who's already done it and is trying to make his own way. The plot is thin - not bad, just thin - but the performances from Tatum, Horn, and Pettyfer (nicely underpinned by McConaughey) are what make it. Tatum absolutely sells the fast-talking and ultimately earnest Magic Mike, and Pettyfer and Horn have a perfect sibling relationship; Horn is more responsible, but you can see her rough edges and they get rougher around Mike.

It's a Sodebergh movie, which is what I always forget about it, but that means the ensemble cast works and you get at least a sense of some of the other performers. It's worth a watch, especially if you'd find any of these folks attractive.

My grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Magic Mike XXL

What Not to Do

Man, this fucking week. Month. Year.

OK, I'm not going to get into all of the ways that 2016 has sucked, because I have shit to do today. What I do want to talk about, a little, is this little shitshow.

That image is taken from the press release wherein Modiphius announced the writers for their new Star Trek game. I know a bunch of the guys up there, and that's a pretty impressive group of talent. You know what's not there? Any women. At all.

(Now, I'm pointing out that specific fact because I don't know all of the guys in that list, and I'm sure that some of them are LGBTQA+ and some of them might be POC; I literally don't know. So I'm sticking the what I do know, for now.)

That is, frankly, unacceptable. But I understand how it happened.

Why White Dudes Hire White Dudes

It happened because whoever was in charge of making that decision was a guy, and he went with the people he knew. He went with names he recognized, and while I'm sure he talked to some women, he didn't talk to enough. He didn't make hiring diversely a priority, and I'm here to tell ya, if it's not a priority you won't do it.

I've been in the position of hiring writers for RPG products, a bunch - dozens of projects going back to 2001 (when I had my first development gig after getting hired at White Wolf). It's hard when you have only X slots to fill, and you know X people who would be good for the gig, and all of them happen to be white dudes. That means that you know you're hiring qualified, talented people - people with whom you have a history - and that'll make the product solid, right? So hiring someone different means bumping someone you know will be good, on, what, some kind of quota?

There's a very big tendency in this hobby to knee-jerk rebel against authority, to say "You're Not the Boss of Me" to anyone trying to moderate the conversation (evidence: spend any amount of time on a heavily moderated message board or forum, especially if bannings and suspensions are public. Yes, like RPG.Net. No, I'm not interested in fighting about this). Any suggestion that hiring practices are in any way suspect gets met a lot of resistance, often using words like "quota," "merit," and "SJW." And all of that is bullshit.

No, you don't hire on a quota. You hire with an eye toward diversity. No, you don't hire someone whose writing is weak just because they're not a cishetwhitedude, but you might hire someone less experienced because of their diverse background. Ultimately it's a good choice.

Why I Hire Diversely 

Here are my reasons for hiring people not like me:

1) They're not like me. I'm a middle-class cis white man from Ohio. I was raised not rich, but certainly comfortable. I've made a lot of attempts to broaden my horizons as I've gotten older, but I'm limited by time, money, and health (social media helps!). I need diverse voices on my books because they say things I can't say because I don't know to say them.

2) The books benefit. Games written entirely by dudes like me wind up derivative and safe. Games with a diverse group of writers wind up interesting and unexpected. I can avoid being derivative and safe, but it's a conscious effort - much less work, really, to hire people who can bring change and variety easily.

3) It's fair. You can talk about "hiring on merit" all you want, but that's not how our brains work. We look for people like us and trust them more, and moreover, we avoid people we perceive as a threat (this is just an article I found on a quick Google search, but there's a lot more). Hiring diversely is a way to break down our own internal biases, and that's good for us as people, and it's good for the hobby.

How Did Modiphius Handle This

Badly. For one thing, they've kinda hung their freelancers out to dry. The guys on that list didn't make hiring decisions, and they're not accountable for the decisions Modiphius made. Instead of issuing a statement saying "we're aware of the problem, please direct questions and comments here" (where "here" is an email address or comment form so as to give people a place to direct feedback, rather than slather it over Facebook), one of their head dudes is hopping around on people's FB feeds, posting the same bunch of excuses. Basically, it cooks down to "we did talk to women, but they didn't get back to us, so we had to hire all dudes." 

Politely put, I don't believe that for a hot second. 

The press release includes this little coda at the end:

That's nice, guys, that you're looking for "diverse writers" but that's not enough. You need to approach people. You need to track down the people you want to work with. You need to make your team diverse, not whisper into the Internet "we want diverse people!" and then expect them to come to you. You're talking about populations that sci-fi, fantasy, RPGs, and gaming in general have marginalized, abused, and run out of the hobby for years. You want 'em, you need to find them. 

And hey, I get it. I've seen developers track down diverse voices and hire them, just to have them flake out on projects, and it would very easy to say "Hey, I hired a WOC on this project, she bailed or disappeared, if they don't want the jobs why should I bust my back hiring them?" 

My response to that is, I've had so many white dudes flake on projects. Just so many. And I've had women do it. It happens on every book. It's not a problem with any particular demo; if it's common in RPGs, it's because writers aren't paid enough to make the writing a priority and therefore when health, real life, or other things conflict, the little writing gig that you're being paid 4 cents a word for but asked to do playtesting, game design, writing, and world-building on is the thing that has to go. Sorry, little bonus rant for you. 

Anyway, the point is that yes, you need to make the effort. You need to build your team. You need to think about the voices you want to amplify.

There's more to this, but it's already getting long, so I think I'll post this and see what happens. 

Movie #377: Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters is a remake of the 1984 film, and stars Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth, Neil Casey, Andy Garcia, Cecily Strong, and cameos from a lot of the original cast.

Erin Gilman (Wiig) is a physicist who reconnects with her estranged friend Abby (McCarthy) after discovering the book they wrote about ghosts is still extant (and costing Gilman her chance at tenure). Roped into an investigation along with Abby's new partner Holtzmann (McKinnon), they discover a real ghost, and dedicate themselves to studying and proving the existence of said creatures. Along the way they pick up a pretty but not especially bright receptionist (Hemsworth) and an uneducated but well-read and knowledgeable MTA worker (Jones).

Turns out, however, that the increased supernatural activity is due to an embittered MRA scientist named Rowan (Casey) who wants to unleash the unquiet dead and then rule the world post-cataclysm. And into all of this, the mayor of New York (Garcia) and his obsequious assistant (Strong) are telling the Ghostbusters to keep up the good work, but y'know, don't actually expect any support or acknowledgement.

This movie had a somewhat problematic reception, he said understatedly. It's a remake of a classic comedy movie starring women, which means that all of the shitheads ever crawled out of reddit and chan sites to shit on it every chance they got. They drove Leslie Jones off Twitter with harassment, and basically made it impossible to judge the movie on its own merits - if you're a misogynist shitbag, of course you're gonna hate it. It's "stealing your childhood" or some such nonsense. If you're into movies that star women, then you kind of feel obligated to like it.

I've now seen it three times (twice in theaters, once at home), and here's what I think: It follows a similar plotline to the original, but there are important differences, and not just the gender swap. First off, the characters are scientists. In the original, only Egon was really interested in science for its own sake (well, kinda Ray, too), but the driving force behind the work was to make money. Here, the women aren't charging for their services; their motive is entirely scientific (and then, like, save the world).

The humor is more front-and-center; the original is a comedy, but it includes horror and sci-fi aspects just as strongly. This one is much more a comedy; almost everything is a joke. Much of it is letting the four leads do their particular act, which might be why McKinnon comes off so well; she's acting and playing a character more than doing a schtick. That said, I think the chemistry between the cast is pretty awesome.

There are some questions about the how the metaphysics of the world work (the fight scene at the end - what are those balloons? Can you whip a ghost to death? What happens to ghosts hit with grenades?) that don't really get resolved, but the movie is pretty clearly meant to set up a franchise...which it's not gonna do, because it disappointed at the box office. I'm bummed about that. I thought, frankly, it was more accessible and, in a lot of ways, funnier than the original. I like that the leads interact with the secondary characters (imagine Venkman giving half a shit about Janine the way that the ladies do about Kevin - not just Erin's creepy crush on him, but how the others protect him and obviously care about thim?) and, of course, I like that the fact that the leads are women is important to the movie but not the entire plot.

Overall, I think this movie came out really well, and I'm sad that it didn't get the support it deserved.

My grade: A-
Rewatch value: High

Next up: Magic Mike