4EMOD: Introduction

I played 4th edition D&D before it was released. I loved the At-Will, Encounter, Daily, and Utility power set up from the beginning, and tried making it work in 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons, with varying levels of success. I pre-ordered all the core 4th edition books, and played a campaign jumping between all the different spread of levels. So when I tell you that I love 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons I want you to get my full meaning. I truly love 4th edition. So when I say that I've designed a series of house rules for 4th edition, I want you to understand three few things:

1. I do not think standard 4th edition is a bad game. As a matter of fact, I played 4th edition "by the books" for three years before I even started to imagine house-ruling it. 4th edition is a very well designed game, and playing it "straight" is extremely enjoyable.
2. Most of my house-rules are inspired by the errata published by Wizards of the Coast, as well as Essentials and later design stuff that they did. Anyone looking at this stuff should know that this isn't me going "WTF WY DIS GAME NO WORK???? WERE'S MAI GOD-WIZARD??" I played the game for awhile, read what Wizards said about their own game in the errata, the interviews... I did my homework first. For a long time. And when the designers of a game themselves say the game isn't perfect it certainly makes me feel less arrogant for thinking I can make a set of good house-rules. 
3. That being said, some of my house rules are not mentioned in errata, and even go against the notion of the game itself. 
4. These are not entirely tested house-rules. The fact that they're based on the official errata doesn't mean they're perfect.

I'd like to dedicate this series of house-rules to the folks of the former At-Will, the people who gave me the courage to work on what I'm going to start posting. We'll miss your presence in the 4th edition field, guys. You were amazing.

I'll start posting my house-rules this Thursday, starting at one of the basic assumptions of the game: ascending math. Tune in on Thursday!

Aw Damnit!

At-Will's done. This is beyond sad. You will be missed, sir. Good luck on all your endeavors.

The School's Trees: On Pessimism and Clannad

As most people who read this blog know, I used to write and lead a blog called The School's Trees, which is about the TV shows Clannad and Clannad: Afterstory (one of the writers was Carpe Guitarrem, whose blog I suggest checking out, if you love RPGs). I've said repeatedly this is my favorite show of all time. I've now watched the show 9(!) times, and consider it part of the reawakening of my Christianity; a vital part of who I am was formed watching this show. I'm one of those nuts who thinks that people should watch good TV shows, and I heartily recommend what I think is the best of the best. So of course I recommend Clannad to people, and most of the time I get a "the scruffy hobbit with a foul mouth just recommended something to me and said it was really good, I'll pass" look.

But sometimes someone decides to take me up on my offer, albeit with the same look on their face. Two of my friends finished watching the show this Sunday while I was completing an icon of the Resurrection (which is amazing, I'll get a pic uploaded for ya'll later!). One of the friends (we'll call her Mary) loved the show, as well as the ending. I don't know if she "got" it, but I don't think anyone fully gets the ending of this show the first, second, or even third time around. But my other friend (we'll call him Raphael), didn't like the end. When I asked Raphael why he didn't he said that the show had been set up for tragedy since the beginning. I told him that wasn't so, and he looked at me like I was a bit nutty. Which is understandable, I suppose. There are warning signs. But I told him that there had been indications that the ending was going to be happy, that things would end well for Tomoya.

Then he looked at me like I was a real nutcase; that took me aback. I told him to watch it again, and that he could borrow my DVDs if he wished. But that look's stuck with me, and here I am trying to write about it. Because I know I would have given that same look to anyone who had told me that after watching the show for the first time. I went and watched it again, not because I liked the ending, but the exact opposite: I hated the ending, but loved the show so much that I figured I had to have missed something. A show that's this amazing doesn't screw up like this at the end.

I found out that I was right.

I had completely glossed over every single time the writers had foreshadowed that goodness was at the end of this show. It wasn't even that I ignored it, it had completely gone over my head. I had found all the workings of a tragedy, so that's what I focused on, I let situation blindness get to me, and only looked for what I wanted to find. It was then that I realized something really awful.

I wanted Tomoya to fail. And why shouldn't I? Why should Tomoya get a loved one back when I can't? I don't have an orb of light, children really aren't made of light orbs, wishes usually aren't granted like that, and damnit to hell that's just unreal! I wanted Tomoya to move on, marry Kyou, and be in the same sobering and depressing reality that I live in: that we can't get what we want, but must settle for something else. That'll shut him up, having to labor in a life that's the second choice that's... wait...

I love my life. I'm in a good place, and have everything that I could possibly want and more. I'm doing art and enjoying it for the first time in years. My iconography is finally becoming what I'd always wanted it to be: a personal source of inspiration, giving, healing, and love. I have an amazing girlfriend, someone who came up and out my childhood in a story of hope and love that would put this show to shame. I have friends who I could whistle for and they'd help me. I have an amazing family. All against odds that really are a snowball's chance in hell.

Everything I've asked for I've received, and then some.

So what am I so bitter about?

And that's just it. That's the joke. There's nothing right now that I'm in want for.

Nothing.

Absolutely. Frickin. Nothing.

Well, a car would be nice... a teleporter machine, if I could get my hands on it.

Anyway.

I don't think I've ever asked for a miracle that bends the laws of physics, time and space, so why should I get one? I don't need something like that, and I don't know of anyone who does. And the only people I know of who have gotten such a wish got it because they needed it. A widow had her son returned to her, people die for over an hour, see Heaven, and come back home. The largest religion in the history of the world teaches that we get our bodies back at the end of time because they're so fundamental  to our existence that even God won't let us go without them long.

Come to think of it, reality's a pretty nice place to be! The people who need stuff have it given to them in the time it's needed, in the right amount. As a Christian that's my avowed creed, something that I profess every single day in the Nicene Creed, every Sunday with a whole bunch of people I don't know but am brother to. We get what we need, God sees to that. He is good.

So why be so jaded about Tomoya? He asked, he got. So have I. So did the widow. So did the centurion. So did Francis of Assisi, Peter the Apostle, Saint Padre Pio, Saint Seraphim Rose, Saint Photini, my father, my mother, my girlfriend, my friends at Franciscan, Benedictine, wherever, and whoever's reading this post, even if they don't realize it. We've all got what we need.

So why does it bother us that Tomoya got his wish?

Five More Awesome Anime Openings

Yeah, this is totally against whatever schedule I wrote up, but I like anime openings, so there. These are five openings that I think are pretty dang good.

Baka To Test's First Opening

This opening has the same unfortunate side effect as Durarara's: it makes me want to dance. Granted, it's more like a dance of happiness and stupidity, but it's still a dance...

Ergo Proxy

After posting my five favorite anime openings, someone told me I needed to see Ergo Proxy. I made a mental note, since I had a lot to do. At Benedictine I was finally in the mood for something new, and one of my friends owned the dub, so I watched it. To make a long story short (too late!) I found the show to be pretty good, but the opening?

Bloody fantastic. So good that I downloaded the full version! Thanks for the recommend!

Angel Beats

Piano? Yes please. This song is beautiful, and I find myself whistling it all the time. It's also cool that the girl who's playing the piano's name means "to play a song". Nothing less than what I'd expect from something written by Jun Maeda.

Eden of the East (Broadcast)

Notice how I said broadcast version? Yeah, the DVDs have a different opening, due to copyright arguments with Oasis. And it's a damn shame, too, because this opening is amazing. It has a similar feeling to Ergo Proxy's, and that can only be a good thing.

AAAAAAAANDDD... SURPRISE!

The Second Deathnote Opening

Ok, so that totally wasn't what anyone would expect for me to put up as an "awesome opening", but hear me out. A large part what makes an opening good is the tone that it sets for the show. The opening is supposed to help set up the audience for the show. That's almost exclusively why Clannad: Afterstory's opening is my favorite: because it summarizes, informs, and sets you up for the show so well that when you watch the show you realize what the writers are trying to get at, based off the opening alone. Very few shows get openings at that level of quality, and I'd say that, in its own dark and twisted way, the second Deathnote opening does that very well. Is it a weird death-metal-ish song, that has almost no aesthetic appeal? Yup. Does it sound insane? Yup.

But consider this: the first Deathnote opening was about Light's dreams of being a god in a world that he had made, and the hope that he had. With the death of L Kira starts to genuinely lose his sanity. Do you need to know that in the anime? You almost don't, because this opening is so nutty and repulsive that people turn it off, because they don't want to see what Kira has turned into.

This is the true essence of Light Yagami, people, this is your supposed anti-hero. Take a good look, because it's not pretty.

Mortal Kombat Review, Part 2: The Ugly

Welcome to the second (and last) part of my review of Mortal Kombat. This is my second time writing an "Ugly" part of any review. Basically what The Ugly is is my attempt at transparency. Sometimes I feel that I have a very unique reaction to certain pieces of media, and that an explanation is necessary for the reaction that I have. I don't really write this for anyone else's sake but my own, since it allows me to explore my own twisted little psyche and come to grips with myself. Not all of The Ugly reviews will be unpleasant, but most of them are related to unpleasant things in my own life, so most of them will be rather intense.

Without further ado...

Most of my reasons for playing Mortal Kombat stem from my short time as an amateur Thai boxer, which are recorded in the previous The Ugly. Muay Thai is a very brutal sport, as I put up in the other review. But at the same time it's a very intimate sport. You learn a lot about someone by hitting them as hard you can and having the favor reciprocated. You learn how much someone wants to win something in the face of adversity, you learn how much they want to defend themselves, whether they're go-getters or not, things that you wouldn't know in quite the same way.

Anyway, the events that I had discussed from the last post had put me in a situation, where I didn't get to see people very often. I took the opportunity to hide from the world and brood. Since I was homeschooled it wasn't very difficult to do that. Without Muay Thai I started to feel lonely and wanted to hit people. When I was around people I became a bit...overzealous in my rough housing. As I approached 16, however, I noticed a funny thing: when I rough-housed with people I hurt them! I wasn't out to actually hurt these new people, so I stopped touching people as much as I could, unsure of what to do. At about this point my dad enrolled me in a college. He did this for a few reasons: he worked there (free tuition), he couldn't teach me writing (I didn't like his teaching methods), and he couldn't teach me art. Well, to college I went! And, deep in the student's lounge, I found this:

I'd played Mortal Kombat when I was a kid, so I was intrigued. I remember being scared of Raiden and finding that the only character I was truly good with was Sub-Zero, because it could stop other people in their tracks and hurt them. So I started playing. I'm not going to say that it was a good game (Mortal Kombat 4 is most definitely not), or that it was actually enlightening to play, but I couldn't stop. It was bloody, the sound effects were just ridiculous to remind me of reality, and  the hits looked like they hurt.

In essence, it reminded me of Muay Thai, in all its messy glory.

Basically all I did those days was go to school, draw, and play Mortal Kombat. I didn't really see that many people during that time, which allowed for the brooding to worsen. I started screaming and fighting in my sleep, pounding the walls and waking my parents up several times a week. I withdrew further from people, forgetting the good times I had as a child and remembering all the awful things that had been done to and by me.  My drawings grew darker, and my parents grew more and more worried. But I kept playing. And one day I couldn't stand not moving anymore.

I left the Student Lounge one day, and stood behind the college, staring at the trees behind the dorms. Despite doing everything that I could remember as good I felt more alone than ever, and I'd had enough. I started practicing my katas in the back alley. I'm not sure why I did, but it felt good. But I found it felt better when I screamed at each hit. I moved and whirled about, screaming my confusion and loneliness out through my fists, feet, knees, and elbow. Tears started to stream from my eyes, and as I was about to start over on my katas, someone tapped me on the shoulder. Startled, I turned around. There was a security guard.

"Hey man, what are you doing out here this time of night? I've got some noise complaints, people thinking a fight's going on out here. Everything OK?"

I realized I was still behind the dorms. I blushed and quickly explained that I just needed to blow off some steam, and that no one was fighting me. The security guard asked me to show me some moves, and I performed a few katas for him (with significantly less volume). He critiqued me, told me I had serious potential, and we talked  for awhile about the type of training he'd undergone to become a security guard. Apparently this guy was quite the accomplished martial artist, but hadn't gone to a dojo in a while. After about ten minutes of talking the guard told me he had to keep going on patrol. We walked inside the student lounge and parted ways again. But before he left the security guard clapped me on the shoulder.

"Good meeting you, Nate. You're a good guy. Hope to see you again, OK?" I nodded, reciprocated, and hoped I would. I walked back to the machine that drove my days and nights, smiled, and hit the start button again. So what if Mortal Kombat wasn't the intimacy I was looking for? It was a hell of a lot of fun to play.

Shortly thereafter my parents removed me from college and put me into highschool in an attempt to get me to acclimate to "normal" kids, who weren't necessarily going to attack me on sight. After a bit of balking, I entered. I didn't play Mortal Kombat for several years after that, and I never saw the security guard again. But I still think about that guy. I wonder who he was, where he'd come from, and where he went after talking to me. And I still play Mortal Kombat, if only to partially remember who I was and still am, and to remember someone giving me five minutes of kindness when I really needed it.

Eden of the East Review

Eden of the East was an anime released in 2009, and was created, written, and directed by Kenji Kamiyama, the writer of Ghost in the Shell. The show follows Akira Takizawa, who wakes up naked, holding a gun and a cellphone outside the White House. He quickly saves a Japanese student named Saki, who threw a rock into the White House yard for fun. What follows is an eleven episode show about the woes of society and the people in them. I'm not going to spoil too much of the plot, but here's my review:

Plot
While the basic amnesia plot is almost a direct rip of a Bourne Identity, the plot is a lot more than that. While it is slow (especially for an 11 episode series), the plot spends most of its time addressing the problems that the last few episodes endeavor to solve. Personally I've always been willing to put the plot on hold if the character work is good enough, but that's until the next part of the review. The point of the show is not the plot itself but the ideas that are explored by it, which the plot does adequately. While I'm not saying that the plot is bad it certainly doesn't take center stage, as it does in shows like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. No, what this show does is reminiscent of Clannad and Evangelion: if you thought those were about plot you were obviously going to be disappointed. That being said, the plot sets up the ideas and character situations quite well, and is the only show I've seen that makes people sit down and have an intelligent discussion. So the plot succeeds, in its own quiet way. 


Characters
Now this is where the show shines. Akira and Saki are easily some of the best characters I've seen in a long time. They're complete, well-rounded people who are feel like ordinary people. Most of this is done by just watching conversations between the two. I for one liked the conversations so much I was a bit disappointed when the plot had to take over towards the end. I would have dearly like more, but the plot's good enough to enjoy. Honestly, the romance between these two characters is my favorite in all the anime I've watched, and that's pretty impressive considering that it's an 11 episode long show!


Conclusion
The series is charming, deep, and intelligent. The characters are well done, and the romance is deep and convincing. The plot is definitely thought-provoking. In short, it's one of my favorite series yet. Now I realize that there's two movies to finish up the series, but I've gotta say that I'm stoked to watch them. If they continue focusing on the characters I know I'll be happy with the results, no matter what they are.

Mortal Kombat Review

God, that looks painful.

Alright, let's get this out of the way, out of our system:

Now we can proceed.

Mortal Kombat is the reason we have a video game ratings system, since it was the first popular game to break the bounds of decency. For whatever reason parents decided to give up a little more responsibility and demanded the the government decide what was decent. While the rant on the stupidity of some parents is something that may come down the road I should probably stay on topic. We're here to talk about Mortal Kombat, not socialism. Anyway, Mortal Kombat is known for (and is thus rated by) three things: Violence, Gameplay, and Story.

Violence
Let's be honest with ourselves, this is the reason why Mortal Kombat is so well-loved: the ridiculous, over-the-top violence. If anyone says that they're playing the game strictly for the gameplay I'd reply that people look at porn for the articles and stories.

The violence in this game is extremely satisfying and not only fun to watch but hear. Honestly, this is some of the best sound production for a game I've heard in a long time. All the sounds are so well-designed that I could probably play the game on sound alone. Which is not to say that the visuals are bad. The figures are well-animated and the amount of blood is absurdly awesome. And the fatalities... well....

Gruesome enough for you?

Gameplay

While the Mortal Kombat franchise is known for it's blood, its gameplay is something commonly derided by the fighting community for being, well... not very good. And to a certain extent that's understandable. With the emphasis on presentation, not gameplay, you would think a game like this wouldn't have a good fighting mechanic. I can honestly say that most of Mortal Kombat's 3D excursions were too slow and bulky to really be fun. 

That's not the case here. The fighting engine is extremely good, with combos that can be cannibalized and put into your own ideas and imaginings. The game rewards creative thought in a way that reminds me very much of Smash Bros (the best fighting game ever made, in my humble opinion). However, if you're a beginner and don't want to spend a lot of time putting together your own custom combos the game has presets that work very well. That being said, Mortal Kombat is at its best when you're doing creative thinking about how the regular and special moves work together. When a game rewards ingenuity I think it's more than worth the time to play. 

That being said, the boss fights in this game are truly absurd, filled with bosses that truly break game physics and common sense, as well as many TV sets. Seriously, how are you supposed to fight these guys beyond medium difficulty? I still haven't found a way, and while I acknowledge I'm not the best player in the world I'm pretty decent in my own right, and I STILL play the game's story mode on beginner. The ending boss fight in the story mode is ridiculous even for the game, and after 30 tries I gave up in sheer frustration and downgraded the difficulty to beginner. It took an additional five tries before I got it. That's a total of 35 times, people, with cheating. That's wrong.  Most of this can be circumvented by playing as much multiplayer as possible, which is the point of the game anyway.

Story

This might come as a shock to most people, but almost all Mortal Kombat players I've met are in love with the plot of the games. The game's known for an intricate and dark storyline where the good guys barely win, and that's assuming nothing goes wrong. The story of this game is essentially a reboot back to the original Mortal Kombats 1-3. To be honest, I don't like the story all that much. It feels unnecessarily dark and dismal, to the point where I ask "why even bother?" Also, the matching up of the fights make little to no sense, particularly if you know the game's history. While it's true that people don't play fighting games for the plot the ruining of this element of Mortal Kombat is a travesty.

Conclusion

Amazing presentation and overall great gameplay trump a crappy story and ridiculous boss fights. If you're into fighting games I definitely recommend picking this game up!