Author Archives: CJ Ovalle

Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm

Q and I went to see the February 5th show of Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm on February 5th at Antone’s in Austin. The marquis read “Jonathan Coultron with Paul” at first, but was soon corrected to “Jonathan Coultron with Paul and Strm,”(1) which itself raised a few jokes about the Coultron 2000 during the show. Other running gags included mentioning words or phrases (such as “posthensile”) and then another of the performers adding “…that’s my [insert musical group] cover band.” The three also had some good yet problematic experiences with some cookies that a friend of ours made for them. Also, because it began as a Paul & Storm show, there were a lot of piratey “ARRRRRRS” at inappropriate (2) times (3). My favorite part was probably their rendition of “Soft Rocking,” the subtly creepy-yet-sad song about “soft rocking you,” which led to a medley that included, of all groups, Air Supply, as well as others 80s hits. And was awesome. I’ll link to this version if I ever find it online.

Now I confess that on occasion Q and I can probably be a bit… curmudgeon-y when it comes to today’s youts. ^^; And we’re possible even the slightest bit judgmental regarding our fellow geeks/nerds/insert favorite appellation here (sort of akin to Derek’s lament in an earlier post). It’s true; some of us are more socially inept than others. But I haven’t given up! (4) Work on it, folks! Yes, geek heroes such as these performers are great, and yes, they’re really nice and will make conversation with you and perhaps even be interested in what you say- but you don’t have to try so hard! ^_^ Gambare! You can do it! A tiny bit of advice:

-Sometimes your jokes will work and be incorporated into the performance! That’s awesome! You totally succeeded in being clever! Go you! (Seriously.) You don’t need to keep on calling for the same joke as the show progresses! As Q aptly reminds me, brevity is the soul of wit. ^_^
-Kids, some of you have lovely voices. Your harmony kind of detracts from the show on occasion. You may be able to do that at a more appropriate time and place, like playing Rock Band, or perhaps the shower. (5) Go you! Just not at the concert we’re paying for unless it’s appropriate (like when playing pirates or zombies)! (6)
-Not a problem this time, but when they were here during SXSW last time around- there’s a good chance that Felicia Day would, in fact, mind if you tried to wander off with her (7).

DESPITE this, you are our people. Yes, even you socially-awkward-guy-wearing-a-Munchkin-shirt. We love you too. (8)

Just don’t stand too close to us. :P (9)

(1) I must add, that because of a similar typo I spent the better part of a year thinking that the duo was “Paul & Strom.” No kidding.
(2) …if such a thing could ever be said to be inappropriate.
(3) That’s my Paul and Storm cover band.
(4) I can’t speak for Q. She’s given up on you. Don’t let that discourage you. :P
(5) These are Not Optional. Work on it.
(6) I never expected to be writing that line either. But it’s true. Pirates for Paul & Storm, zombies for Coulton. Them’s the rules.
(7) I’m willing to be proven wrong, but I’d consult your local laws before proceeding.
(8) But not like, that way.
(9) I mean, you can stand next to us and talk to us and everything, but recognize the value of personal space. ^_-

Star Wars Saga Edition ending

Well, it’s official:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75862/22320345/Wizards_of_the_Coast_announcement?pg=1

There have been several questions lately regarding the future of the Star Wars Miniatures and Roleplaying Game and until now I haven’t had definitive answers to give you. After a lengthy evaluation, Wizards of the Coast has decided not to renew the Star Wars license with Lucasfilm. We’ve had a long and fantastic run, but with the economic downturn, we have made the tough decision to discontinue our Star Wars lines.

WotC is no longer going to have the Star Wars RPG license and is discontinuing its miniature line. I am a bit saddened by the news; I’ve got every WotC Star Wars book and I enjoy the system. I had fun with some of the people on this blog. ^_^ Plus, my regular group just started a game. I really, really hope that this news doesn’t mean that we won’t play it to completion- we’re going through the freely available Dawn of Defiance campaign, and having fun. ^_^

My group has been a bit burnt out on 4th Edition D&D. Star Wars is close enough in rules to 3.5 and 4e that it was familiar enough to get rolling, and in truth, in a lot of ways I personally prefer the SW mechanics to the 4th edition implementation of encounter/daily/utility powers. ^^; We’ll see what happens!

Game Jumpers

Some of my friends are game jumpers.

I’ve followed them from game to game; I’ve played Everquest, World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Tabula Rasa, City of Heroes/City of Villains, Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, Aion, Champions Online, Eve Online and others I probably just can’t recall off the top of my head.

I resisted Warhammer Online and their disastrous foray into tabletop Warhammer, which they enjoyed but dropped after a few weeks (and some of them spent hundreds on the game). Ouch.

This time around, I’m playing with my wife, and that’s been solid. We’ve gone back to the only game she enjoyed in the past: World of Warcraft. It’s a strange thing- there are definitely times when I don’t like Blizzard (the gay gamer issue, the bnet lawsuit, the strategy guide lawsuit), but they also do a few good things with their fans and have generally made a fun game. Several of my friends have joined again as well, but I’m not sweating their leaving this time around, if (and when) they do. (I’m certain that Star Trek and Star Wars will be too tempting…) We’ve got a solid guild (for librarians and library-interested people!) and we’re having a good time. ^_^

This week in video games for CJ: Super Heroes

I’ve been a bit too busy to hang out much on the video game front, but I’ve recently picked up a couple of games with a common theme: super heroes.
First, I’ve played the new MMO Champions Online more than any other game recently. I’ve had a great deal of fun with the game so far- interesting stories, characters, and power sets. (Love the haunted Old West town.) I greatly appreciate the customization of character (as does my wife, since character creation is her favorite part) and the quick access to travel powers, as well as going after the baddies in strange and interesting ways. For instance, with one character I can trap enemies in ice cages, or with my main character I can summon zombies, a golem, and an angel to help me take them out. Plus, a game with Bob and Doug McKenzie as mission contacts cant be all that bad, right?

Well, it depends whom you ask. The group of friends I game with regularly have a tendency to be game jumpers, and unfortunately most of them are ready to move on already. Their one complaint that I have to agree with is that there aren’t enough missions. You pretty much must do every mission to get to the highest levels. The dearth of missions makes the replayability of the game an issue for them- it hasn’t bothered me yet, but I completely understand where they are coming from. There’s new content coming out next month with the Blood Moon update, but by then it will be too late. They’ll be gone. I plan to stick around, however, so drop me a line if you decide to give it a shot.

I also picked up Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 for the Xbox 360. Now, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the Civil War storyline, where the heroes went to war over the registration act. For one, I’m probably one of the few that *liked* Speedball from his early days, and his character changed in ways that I don’t find compelling at all. More importantly, though, I had absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the pro-registration side (led by Iron Man). The pro-registration side seemed motivated by fear and did what they felt necessary to achieve security, and of course there are obvious intentional analogies to real-world events that make the reaction in what is usually an escapist story a bit less than compelling. The game makes you pick a side, and I’m curious to see what happens when the other side wins… so as soon as I have a chance, MUA 2 will be up.

The next MMO my group is trying is Aion. As a former Tabula Rasa player, I have a free first month, so I’ll give it a shot.

Dark Sun

So, due to real-life issues (our DM getting a new job, grats) I’m now running the every-other-Sunday 4E D&D game. And I decided to make it a Dark Sun game. I’ve always liked the Dark Sun world; and better yet, the day after I decided to make it that type of campaign, Wizards of the Coast announced that Dark Sun would be their 2010 world.

Now, here’s the question: first game. Player’s water broke. Rushed to hospital, baby born 14 hours or so later. Auspicious first game or not? ^_^

Shojo Beat Canceled

Apparently I’m not keeping up with my anime and manga news as much as I should be, because Shonen Jump arrived in the mail today with a letter stating that Shojo Beat has been canceled by Viz Media!

For those non-manga fans, in Japan people tend to purchase magazine collections of serialized comics that are often categorized based on their target audience, the most common being shojo (girls) and shonen (boys). Here’s a breakdown of the most common types of manga– note that readership is not necessarily constrained by target demographic. Here’s Shojo Beat’s definition of shojo:

Shojo (show-joe) means “girl” in Japanese. Shojo manga are often characterized by a moody, abstract art style, with close-ups of characters’ faces intermingling with dreamy backdrops. In contrast to action-oriented shonen (boys’) manga, shojo manga ruminate on themes of emotion, love, identity, and responsibility that often play out internally. That said, shojo manga are by no means just for girls. Shojo stories are about aspects of life that concern everyone—boys and girls, old and young. Note: The word shojo normally appears with a circumflex or macron over the first o, as in shôjo; we removed it for the sake of simplicity and readability in the magazine.

American companies and distributors have attempted to release similar magazines in the US; earlier examples are Viz’s Animerica Extra and Pulp, and TokyoPop’s (then Mixx) Mixx-zine and Smile magazines. Smile even had the same “girls” demographic as Shojo Beat and was a home of Sailor Moon for awhile. (As a side note, back in those days I had the opportunity to interact with some of the people at Mixx, which had it’s own bizarre internal politics and public controversy that might be worth examining.) None of those magazines are around anymore, but Viz’s serialized publications eventually became Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat. Holly and I were big fans, and are pretty disappointed with the news. It sounds like others might be disappointed as well. We were automatically subscribed to Shonen Jump for the remainder of our subscription, but we canceled that; Shonen Jump has never had stories that really interested us quite as much.

This departure leaves the American serialized comics market pretty bare- the only thing we’re subscribing to now is Yen Plus, which is nothing if not diverse with Japanese, Korean and American stories for different audiences. Yen Plus has an unfortunate tendency to use their magazine for what is basically advertising- that is, they’ll show a graphic novel’s worth of stories from a particular title to try to get you to buy the graphic novel series and then drop the title. Despite that, it’s got some interesting stuff, particularly if you’ve got diverse tastes.

I secretly enjoy Pride & Prejudice.

There. I’ve been outed.

I was never exposed to Austen as a child. My first real introduction to Pride & Prejudice was through a girl I had something of a crush on; her sister informed me it was her favorite movie, and I purchased the BBC mini-series DVD set for her as a present. This act is probably directly related to our now being married, so I suppose I owe something akin to gratitude to the work. My wife, like countless others I’ve since met, loves Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy. Bridget Jones’s Diary would not have made sense at all had I not known about this particular fascination that many people seem to have.

I suppose she enjoys Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennett as well, but I must say that I’ve heard about her less. ^_-

At any rate, the work has grown on me. I’ve seen the BBC version many times (albeit never at my own behest), as well as the newer movie and the original 1940 version, which has its own charms. I even went so far as to read the book. ^_^ Recently, though, the magic of the public domain has caused another book to be written. Credited to Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, it proclaims itself: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! Pride and Prejudice and Zombies arrived at my door yesterday, so I’ll let everyone know how it holds up soon.

Speaking of Zombies…

(See the comments on Mike’s post.)

The group Metric released a new song, Help I’m Alive, just prior to the release of their new album. I liked the song enough to check out and then buy the album once it was released.

My view of the song was slightly changed- perhaps for the better, even- when someone on 101x’s Chillville made an offhand comment along the lines that she must be being chased by zombies. It makes one appreciate the song in a whole new way. ^^;

Maybe I’ve played too much Left 4 Dead.

Or maybe I haven’t played enough. Hmm.

Wizards of the Coast and the Digital Dilemma

Wizards of the Coast, and its preceding incarnation, TSR, is infamously bad at delivering digital tools. There had been some recent signs of improvement- although released late, the subscription Character Builder is quite good, and they had made a great deal of their catalog available for sale through pdf vendors such as RPGNow and Paizo. Now, though, in my opinion they’ve taken large strides backwards.

Wizards of the Coast works are infringed. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone- just about every creative work is infringed to varying degrees. What has been a surprise is the company’s response. WotC has decided to pull all of their pdfs from the market in a seemingly knee-jerk reaction, giving their distributors and their customers very little notice and their customers no legal way to get the pdf. These products include all 4th Edition and earlier Dungeons and Dragons pdfs as well as some older systems for which they own the copyright (for example, Alternity). This action, taken in consideration with other recent actions seems to indicate that some at WotC are seriously out of touch with the effective use of digital technologies. In addition to the pdf situation, WotC has released a new Internet Sales Policy and has begun lawsuits against copyright infringers.

There have been earlier indications of questionable behavior and/or attitudes. The switching over from the OGL to the GSL showed a remarkable lack of belief that the improvement of the overall RPG market can act to improve their own sales. (This is a polarizing discussion and will immediately discredit me in some quarters, so I’ll address it separately some day.)  The lack of  a promised fan site policy has made a number of online fan endeavors problematic. The recent cease and desist notices towards certain sites started pointing towards the possibility of the lawsuits that we’ve now seen.

Take a look at my background if you want to get a sense of my gaming preferences and my biases. To make a long story short, I’ve played D&D for awhile, and I’ve been playing 4th edition almost every week since it was released.

Infringement is wrong. I do not in any way condone the use of peer-to-peer technologies to unlawfully distribute copyrighted materials to the public. WotC is within their rights to take the actions that they have, but they could have taken different actions. Let’s look at their recent actions: the Internet Sales Policy, the lawsuits, and the removal of the pdfs.

The Internet Sales Policy. The Internet Sales Policy doesn’t quite allow sales on the Internet. To be more specific, it only allows authorized retailers to make such sales if the Internet site is directly affiliated with a bricks and mortars gaming store, sometimes referred to as a FLGS (friendly local gaming store). Also note that the Internet Sales Policy at this point in time primarily affects sales of Magic: the Gathering. Now, I’m *all* for supporting your local gaming store, but this seems to be an odd method of doing so. There are online-only gaming stores that have good customer service and good relationships with their customers. FLGSes have other advantages, such as the ability to hold gaming events, and WotC can also support them by providing them with support for those events. Moving on, the license allows prohibits these FLGSes from participating in the secondary market, not allowing them the revenue associated with their and their customers’ lawful uses under the first sale doctrine. Ever see your local gaming store sell individual Magic cards? Not anymore, if they want to be an authorized retailer. Is cutting of a source of revenue and a reason for some customers to go to the store really helping your FLGS? Finally, at least one vendor I know has expressed the idea that the term in the license prohibiting “lowering the value” of WotC goods could be interpreted as disallowing negative consumer reviews.

The lawsuits. The initial reported reason for the pull of the pdfs was “piracy.” (Terminology note- I try to use the word infringement for this type of action, just to be specific.) WotC has sued 8 individuals- 5 named, 3 John Does- for copyright infringement. WotC put out a press release about their action (probably to show how serious they are about the problem). Like the *AA’s, WotC is suing its fanbase. One of the individuals has self-identified himself as a 16-year-old D&D player in the Philippines. Another, if his story is true, is a D&D player from Poland and is actually innocent of infringement (his friend uploaded the pdf to scribd without his knowledge). Being innocent of infringement is not particularly far-fetched, either, even if this person is lying- there are number of ways that this can occur. Lose your computer? Have your computer or a storage machine hacked? Edited the watermark? We’ve seen these types of things occur with other content industries already.

WotC is suing these individuals for actual damages (the amount they’ve lost, which they also claim is unmeasurable in those same documents), and statutory damages (up to $150,000 per infringement). Without getting into a specific legal discussion about copyright, trade law, international conventions, and jurisdiction, WotC absolutely has the right to take these actions. The legal process, however, is not kind. Although it’s hard for some to feel sorry for these individuals when they’re guilty, if you’ve never seen a scared kid who’s made a stupid mistake have the full force of the law come down on her, it is a gut and heart-wrenching experience. If they’re not guilty, the experience is even worse. Also, the idea that lawsuits discourage infringement hasn’t quite borne out… A lot of people won’t have sympathy for these infringers, and I can see why. It’s still a terrible situation.

The removal of PDFs. The removal of PDFs was not solely a response to infringement. (As a response to infringement, removing your product from the market is a pretty silly move.) It was also a business decision, as stated by the president of the company. They are planning to make works available again in some format, but not PDF, and they won’t disclose the methods they would like to use. This has led to rampant speculation, but in my opinion the signs are not positive. I use the PDFs I had on multiple computers that I own- my desktop and laptops. I take the laptops to places that don’t have Internet access. I’m not fond of DRM-encumbered technologies. I have issues with not being able to do what I like with the products that I’ve bought. Furthermore,  they become increasingly hard to preserve and use as technology changes.

The way the pdfs were removed was also problematic. I think that the third party pdf stores do have some responsibility for the unhappiness- they let themselves be in an arrangement where WotC did have the ability to pull items the way they did. Even with the “24 hour reprisal” that WotC has allowed, WotC still had to allow it. But from what they’ve stated publicly, it seems like a lot of their everyday business was based on mutual respect and communication, and this decision totally surprised those vendors. It’s kind of hard to be too hard on them; they obviously don’t have much power in that particular relationship, and furthermore, they’ve been good at communicating what has been happening from their perspective.

As it so happens, I don’t necessarily need to buy a pdf to have legal access to a copy. I have easy access to a nondestructive book scanner and OCR technology. I’d just rather buy the official pdf copy. It’s less of my time, and I can support the company that way.

Realistically, I’m not dropping 4E altogether. I like the system, and my friends and I are playing it. I like the designers. I’ve met a few of them at various cons, and they seem like genuinely nice people that love their game. The actions of the company, though? I probably won’t be such an advocate for the game, and when the current games are done or dissolved, I’m not sure what I’ll do. I have put a lot of money in it already with the books, pdfs, tiles, miniatures and so on… but for the first time in a long time I have started seriously looking at different systems closely. I’ve subscribed to dungeonaday.com. I downloaded the free copies of Exalted and the Pathfinder beta to check them out. I’ve started looking at Mutants and Masterminds (I enjoyed the Wild Cards novels) and I’ll probably take a look at Savage Worlds.

So, what could WotC do, in my opinion?

-Be better at communication. The interviews and PR responses thus far are uninformative.
-Seriously consider the ramification of the lawsuits and act accordingly. They won’t win many fans by offering cheap settlements- it hasn’t helped the RIAA much- but it’s better than what seems to be occurring. Frankly, I’d be happier if they stuck to publicizing their cease and desists rather than issuing press release about how they’re wielding the hammer of statutory damages. I haven’t seen that be much of a deterrent. At any rate, I don’t think crushing the infringing D&D players is going to help a whole lot.
-Ideally? Resume sales of pdfs. It’s not likely to happen. They’ve decided to move on. I’ll make my own absent a similar alternative.
-If they are coming up with a DDi subscription-related model, I hope they let me pick and choose what I want. If I want the Character Builder and Dungeon/Dragon, let me go with those. They shouldn’t increase the price dramatically because they’re providing features I’m not interested in- that will pretty much just guarantee that I don’t buy the product at all.
-If I have to download yet another application to view the materials, and that application affects how I can copy or view the item, I’m not likely to buy those materials.

There actually have been some good discussions about how companies can support FLGSes out of this over on enworld and some store owners blogs, with several representatives from publishers participating. Several publishers have come also provided discounts on their pdfs in light of these events. Those are all pretty positive outcomes… just not necessarily for WotC.

I hope WotC is seriously considering all of these viewpoints.