Redwolf's Journal (continued)

So I talked about my history with Robotech . Well, not all that long after, all things considered, I was also introduced to Battletech. While Robotech was a shared love with my friends of the day, Battletech just worked out as a more private experience. Of course, when I initially saw the tactical game with little stand-up cut-outs of mechs, I thought "How cool, veritechs and stuff!" Heh. Using those same designs borrowed from Japan-based series would later lead to a whole mess of legal issues between FASA and Harmony Gold due to confusion over who had the rights to sell as much as who bought them. Lawsuits later, that would mean a number of iconic Battletech mech designs would disappear and/or change. LAMs, Land-Air Mechs, seem to have suffered a similar fate. While battlemechs that could transform into aerospace fighters were a notable part of the game to begin with, they were sort of phased out as time went on. Part of that is surely because the originals were based

Another aspect I've considered when it comes to thinking about D&D/RPG preferences is the matter of individual vs. group play. Again, it probably boils down to YMMV experience, but... In some games, characters are absolutely, positively not balanced with one another. 3E made some effort toward class balance, but you still had more or less linear improvement for mundanes and exponential (starting low) improvement for spellcasters. 2E "balanced" all that with different experience charts, slowing the growth of the more "powerful" classes, though it usually boiled down to a difference of one level. Rifts had some amazingly blatant differences where one character could be an MDC monster with all sorts of super powers and another could be a guy with a medkit. Meanwhile, a big part of what made 4E so jarring was its rather radical push toward the other end, deliberately trying to balance character classes in terms of combat prowess and options. A lot of peop

Multiple thoughts bouncing around lately, though I haven't been able to put any real point behind them... The D&D "Edition Wars" continue as the new edition material starts to come out. So far, I have been refraining from diving into any of it personally. Why? I see a combination of inapplicability, as I'm not currently playing or looking to start a D&D game, and the fact that I'm very weary of early buy-in (financially or emotionally) these days. This hasn't stopped me from being aware of second-hand commentary and analysis. Tobold's posts have been largely critical (he's a fan of 4E), whereas tashiro seems quite taken with the new rules. A lot of the verdicts seem to come back to perspective on whether something is a feature or bug. Damage seems very spiky, especially at low levels, which can lead to one-shot deaths. That's good if you like that sort of thing, and bad if you don't. Mages have been given more combat-effectivenes

Saturday, I happened to check mail and noticed a message from our upper management saying the downstairs remodel is starting a week ahead of schedule, and we would need to move everything out of our "IT lab" area Monday morning. Not much notice, considering I don't always check mail on weekends. So that's why I started my night shift week by coming in first thing in the morning to help move stuff and make sure necessary network connections were maintained. That took about an hour and a half. Then I got stuck sitting around for almost another hour because my car was blocked in by our company truck, loading things up to go over to Cortez for storage. I was told it'd be about ten minutes, but it was right around 55. Who needs a morning, right? And now I'm sitting and delaying getting my dinner because I'm supposed to help an employee collect all her computer gear to take over to Cortez where she'll be working starting tomorrow. But she went out for

I'm still making my way through Baldur's Gate 2 at a fairly leisurely pace. Some things I remember, some I definitely don't. I'm sure I've gotten further along in the game back in the day, but I find myself asking if I finished it. It's a little bit awesome to be able to replay a game without giving up in boredom because I've seen it before (though de'Arnise keep and a few other details have been a bit on the familiar side). Ah, those classic Bioware NPCs with their banter and romances. And all those side quests. And loot (well, okay, there's a ton of useless loot at this point). When I finally finish with it, I feel like I might want to go nab a modern-compatible Planescape: Torment to play, or perhaps pick up a copy of Divinity: Original Sin which seems to be a recent game in the same vein. Guild Wars 2 is continuing with its Living Story Season 2. More terrain opened up, including some nice-looking canyons, and just a tiny bit more story reve

I've had three-day weekends be too short or too long, this one worked out just right. Admittedly, I pretty much blew Friday being lazy, but I actually got some cleaning done after that. Yay. I find the timing spooky, but just after I get to watching Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles , there's information released about the potential Robotech Academy . A week ago, I would have been excited. Now, I seriously doubt Harmony Gold's ability to produce anything worthwhile. The pitch alone is wedging events into a continuity in a place that seems questionable. There's a time lapse between the first and second wars, sure, but most of the children of the Macross-era heroes are accounted for. Nevermind that they're running a Kickstarter for half a million dollars to produce a pilot episode. That doesn't really guarantee a series. Plus it seems like a lot of money. Data might be a few years old, but references I can find seem to indicate a half-hour anime episode runs less

Most of Robotech is near and dear to my heart. The series aired when I was young and impressionable, but old enough to appreciate it. It made a pretty big splash among my peers at the time. We didn't initially know its origins, but even when that knowledge came out (thanks to word-of-mouth and things like the Robotech Art books rather than the now-simple internet search) nothing really changed. Someone had stitched together three unrelated anime series into a multi-generational science fiction story with some halfway-cohesive story and themes. Some people take offense at that. Me, I'm impressed by it. It wasn't perfect, but it was amazing for the time and offered up a surprisingly mature tale in animated form. Romance in cartoons was all but unheard of, outside your picture-perfect Disney movies, at least so far as I remember. While a lot of it is owed to the Macross source material, Robotech had a lot to say about love. Interracial human love? There. Human-alien love

Finally cracked open the Robotech boxed set upon getting home today and put in The Shadow Chronicles . I'd read up on this new canon (as it contradicts much that was in the novels way back), so I knew the general gist of things. I just didn't expect it to be quite so... cringe-inducing. The CG-based animation isn't terrible, but it's pretty lifeless. The dialogue feels somewhat stilted. I can only imagine that without having seen the series and knowing the story prior, the plot would be utterly incomprehensible considering even with that knowledge, it felt messily rushed. I find myself wishing I could say it overused exposition to explain things because the actual result is a lot of lacking explanation of what's going on. And this on top of how I personally feel a number of things should have simply been done differently. Just... wow. I wanted that to be good, but that's one of the worst things I've seen in a while.

I've long felt a little bit let down upon finishing a book or game or whatever. Bidding farewell to a good story in whatever form is always a little sad. But more than that, I've come to realize some of that emotional response is due to my divergent entertainment from those I interact with. It leaves me thinking about something, but unable to talk to anyone about those thoughts. Unless a friend happens to have experienced the same story, I'd have to spoil it to share it, and that loses any real impact anyway. I could probably find some forum online to comment on, but I don't really expect or respect feedback from random strangers on such things. So I make LJ posts that might be read, but don't generate any real exchange of thoughts. That goes both ways, too. With some frequency, I hear about things (usually roleplay sessions) from a friend that I can't really relate or get into because I didn't experience it myself. I can make a few general comments, mayb

I've only seen Bay's first Transformers movie in the theaters. I have no intention of going to see the latest. And yet, this review/recap of it provides a few moments of critical humor in an otherwise very quiet day...