Media Consumption 9/19/2015

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Another Thing

One of the things I have found myself doing a lot lately is hanging out downstairs on my laptop and watching a fairly steady feed of television and movies.  Now some of this I am consuming from the On Demand service from cable and others from Netflix or Hulu.   Over the last few years there is a ton of television content that I have wished I had seen, but never actually got around to seeing.  With fall coming on, I tend to spend a lot more time snuggled on the couch, and as such I think I am going to start another weekly feature similar to my Sunday “what I have been playing” column to watch about the media content I have been consuming.  One of the big things that has changed over the years is I tend to watch an entire television series over the course of a couple days, instead of letting it drag out over the course of a season.  In fact I prefer this method of consumption so much that I will let an entire season of a show record on my DVR before starting in on watching it.  I blame Netflix squarely for this tendency and right now quite literally the only shows I watch as they are airing are the Walking Dead series simply because most of my development group is hooked on the show and we discuss it Monday mornings.  Hopefully folks will dig me going back and talking about what I have been up to.

iZombie

Media Consumption 9/19/2015

I started this show on my own a few days ago, but quickly realized that this would actually be something that my wife would enjoy.  As a result last night we started in and managed to get about three episodes into the series.  Essentially you take the smart and quirky writing of Veronica Mars, mix in a dash or True Calling and Crossing Jordan, and add a dash of Being Human and maybe a sprinkle of a show like Drop Dead Diva… and you end up with the weird mix that is iZombie.  The premise is simple… she was a promising surgical resident until she went to a party on a boat…  where a designer drug turned people into zombies.  She got scratched and wound up as a member of the unliving… completely uprooting her promising career, her engagement and most of the relationships in her life.  Instead she now works in the Morgue where she has a ready supply of brains, and a series of misadventures that spring around her ability to see flashes of memory from the brains she consumed.  Flat out if you loved Veronia Mars as much as I did… you will love this show.  It is more of the same sort of intelligent writing and snarky commentary mixed with crime solving…  just of a different sort.  I look forward to picking up and continuing watching this show over the weekend.

Black Mirror

Media Consumption 9/19/2015

This one is available on Netflix, and is a British show which means…  short seasons.  There are two seasons available currently, which only actually mean six total shows to watch.  I tweeted that this show was weird, but there is something infectious about it.  I like to think of it as Tales from the Crypt for Futurism and Technology.  Essentially they take ideas that folks have always thought might be cool…  and take them to really dark extremes.  One of the episodes featured a device that you stuck behind your ear, that recorded every single moment in your life allowing you to review them later.  But what happens when no one ever forgets anything… and can scrutinize every moment and everything you have ever said in full high definition color?  The show makes up a series of disturbing what if’s that bring cautionary tales about our own lust for technology and innovation.  I managed to make it through four episodes of the series before finally falling asleep the other night, so at some point I will pick up and finish it.  The six episodes make it a quick watch and if you are into dark futurism….  it might be down your alley.

Chappie

Media Consumption 9/19/2015

This movie combines a bunch of weak spots for me…  Artificial Intelligence, Die Antwoord, and Neill Blomkamp.  I loved the movie District 9, so when I saw the trailer for Chappie I thought I would probably like it as well.  The problem is it just took me a really long time to get around to watching it.  The movie is really odd at times…  because for most of it, it really just feels like a really long Die Antwoord video.  Pretty much every piece of music found in the video is theirs, and it features all of the same odd visuals that you find in their videos.  This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, it just makes the movie feel less “movie-like”.  I am imagining there will be a Chappie 2, because they left a lot of things unresolved at the end of the movie.  As far as Chappie itself…  the robot was kinda adorable…  and he is voiced by the same actor that played Wikus from District 9.  The robot is vulnerable and childlike and extremely impressionable… but at the same time very loyal to its humans.  The movie as a whole asks a bunch of trans-humanist questions about what exactly consciousness and sentience is.  It will be interesting to see where this goes if there is a sequel.

Star Wars Prequels

Media Consumption 9/19/2015

Something that I did last weekend and over the course of this week was watch the Star Wars movies.  I’ve talked a bit about how Phantom Menace was a massive let down for me… and how I have been afraid to get excited about Force Awakens because of it.  In spite of all of my better judgement however…  I am infected with full on hype mode when it comes to Force Awakens and Star Wars in general.  I grew up loving this series… and in spite of the prequels I am once again in love with anything and everything Star Wars.  As a result I thought to myself…  maybe I was too hard on the Prequels, so in my rewatch of the movies attempted to go into them with an open mind.  The end result is that I don’t necessarily “hate” them, but objectively they are really bad movies.  The pacing feels off, and the characters feel forced to act out awkward dialog at every single turn.  There is something however that bugs me even more about them.  There are times in movies and television shows when the viewers know more about the movie than the characters on screen… and this can be interesting.

The problem with Phantom Menace is that it somehow pretends that we don’t know that Senator/Chancellor Palpatine is Darth Sidious.  Like when we finally find out that he is the Dark Lord of the Sith… the movies act like we should be shocked.  Additionally making these movies about Anakin Skywalker just feels wrong.  We know from the moment this series starts that he is ultimately going to end up in a fight with Obi Wan and be damaged to the point of needing to go into the suit to survive and become the Darth Vadar we all know.  The prequels should have focused on Obi Wan, and told his story… with his failure to steer Anakin away from the Dark Side as being a part of that story.  Obi Wan is the interesting character here, not the whiny bullshit of Darth Teen Angst.  There are awesome moments scattered among the three films, but I feel like you could make one really awesome movie if you just edited out the bad bits.  In fact there is a fan edit that does just this and trims the movie into a 2 hour long epic.  The only part of the first film that is shown is the “Duel of the Fates” sequence.  I think this would be a much better way to jump start the awesome movies that follow… and really the original movies are awesome.  I found myself thinking just how great they were as I watched “A New Hope” and “Empire Strikes Back”.  I can still however take or leave “Return of the Jedi”, because I feel like it starts some of the bullshit that George Lucas tried to continue throughout the Prequels.

Fear the Walking Dead

Media Consumption 9/19/2015

Finally I wanted to talk a bit about Fear the Walking Dead, which this Sunday will show its fourth episode.  Last week the shit finally started hitting the fan, as the Zombie infection began to finally get noticed.  My wife happened to catch the first two episodes before watching the new episode last week because she happened to be downstairs grading.  She made the same sort of comments that I had been making internally about how stupid the characters were acting.  At one point she made the comment “Have none of these people ever seen Scream?” as another character put themselves in a really dumb position.  Over the first two episodes the series played on the fact that we know how the Walking Dead unvierse works, and placed the characters in compromising positions….  only to have the Zombie NOT jump out of the shadows to get them.  That however I think is changing, and this week I expect things to start to get really crazy.  I love the way the series is playing on the modern riots as the way the public at large is dealing with the zombie epidemic.  When the police put down a zombie, it is seen as police brutality and a huge riot breaks out downtown.  The show keeps giving us little clues that things are heating up… like the first few zombies took awhile to turn, but now the virus is mutating and speeding up.  In one sequence there is a cop being munched on by a zombie… and then a few scenes later that same police officer is munching on a protester.  The only thing that really frustrates me is the fact that at no point do people seem to recognize what is happening.  I mean are zombie films not a thing in this universe?

On Custom Content

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Not too long ago, Tam wrote about not being entirely beholden to the rules as written, in the context of progression speed. He was speaking mostly from a GM perspective, but as a player, it’s not unreasonable to come to the same sort of conclusions. One of the time-honored ways of doing this is via conversion. As systems come and go, things are printed that for some reason or another, don’t make the new version. Sometimes there’s a good reason for this (See: D&D 4e’s Warlord), but other times they’re just left behind (5e doesn’t have an Eberron book yet, so it doesn’t have rules for Shifters, Changelings, or Warforged, even though Warforged were in one of the playtests). If these things really interest you, it’s reasonable to make changes that make sense for whatever system you’re playing in, and run it by your GM to see if the result is reasonable. (Note: this is not a standing excuse to min-max a thing you don’t like. Expect your GM to recognize it if you make it such, and react appropriately.)

On Custom Content
Related: Since Cathar are supposed to be rarer in the Old Republic era than other times, why is it that that’s the only era that has them in the games?

…which brings me to the actual topic of this post. A while back, we were in a Star Wars campaign based on the Saga Edition ruleset. We’re looking into playing in a new campaign based on the new Fantasy Flight rules, and I want to play a character similar to (but not identical to) the one I played previously. The first problem there is that I played a Cathar, and Cathar have not yet been printed for the new edition. (If I were a betting man, I’d bet that they’ll be in the Force and Destiny sourcebook focusing on the Seeker class, when that gets printed.) But given a base to work from (the Saga Edition Cathar), and given how races are structured, I think I can come up with a reasonable approximation.

The Easy Stuff

  • Races in FF Star Wars have 6 stats, which do not correspond cleanly to the familiar d20 stats: Brawn is a sort of mix between CON and STR, and CHA is split out into Cunning and Presence. Humans have 2 in each stat, but most other races have a stat at 3 and a stat at 1, with the rest staying at 2. Saga Edition Cathar had racial bonuses of +2 DEX, -2 INT, which corresponds neatly to starting Agility and Intelligence values of 3 and 1, respectively
  • Cathar in Saga Edition also get climb and stealth as automatic career skills, but skills are (usually) handled a bit differently now. Skill bonuses are granted as a free rank, and usually only in one skill. Some races get a choice of skills, and I think that approach fits here. This would mean Cathar get a free rank in Athletics or Stealth, but still cannot train either above rank 2 during character creation.
  • It’s possible to represent the Natural Weapon: Claws as a +1 damage on Brawl attacks, with a critical rating of 3. This is taken directly from Trandoshans.

The Hard Stuff

From there things get a bit complicated. Most races in SWRPG stop at 2 bonuses, and get 100 starting XP, a Strain Threshold of 10 + Willpower, and a Wound threshold of 10 + Brawn. These numbers appear to be used mostly as a balancing mechanism for other things that the race got. Humans didn’t get much else, so they get 110 starting XP. Hutts have extra stats and threshold values, so they get 70 starting XP. A Cathar with the above abilities, and the baseline XP, strain, and wound values is fine, but it does leave out the more interesting aspects of Cathar in Saga Edition.

Saga Edition had action economy that strongly resembles D&D 4e, with Move, Swift, and Standard actions. Cathar had the ability to make a claw attack as a swift action when targeting an enemy with a melee attack once per encounter. SWRPG doesn’t really represent the concept of 1/encounter well, and also doesn’t really treat its actions the same way. Instead, it breaks things up into “Actions” and “Maneuvers”, where Maneuvers are mostly “things that don’t require rolls”. There are two ways I could see representing this. The one that most resembles the old rule would be to allow Cathar to make a claw attack as a maneuver once per session, during a turn in which they target an enemy with a melee attack. That’s a bit clunky, so it might be better to let them treat their claws as having the “Linked 2” property once/session. This is potentially stronger, but also forces you to make the initial attack with the claws, when you may be carrying something better. (If you’re a force user, possibly something significantly better.)
On Custom Content
Cathar also had a base movement rate of 8 squares, which was nearly unique to them. Humans and most other humanoid races had a base speed of 6 squares, and this difference was a large part of my race choice back then. My character’s ability to be almost anywhere on the battlefield in a single turn eventually became character-defining. Thanks to FF Star Wars using a more abstract movement system, there are limited ways to represent that. One option is allowing Cathar to move between medium/long or long/extreme ranges in a single maneuver, but that actually seems quite strong for a racial ability. A more reasonable alternative might be to grant them the Swift talent for free, which also has some precedent in other racial abilities.

Generally speaking, these are interesting ideas, but they’re beyond the scope of what most races have to offer in FF Star Wars. The only salvagable part from this session is getting Swift for free, and that should probably have a cost. With the Swift talent for free, more appropriate starting stats are probably 90 XP, Wound Threshold 9 + Brawn, Strain Threshold 11 + Willpower. Most races with a starting XP penalty pay for it somehow, and the talent and an extra point of strain seems like a fair tradeoff.

To Recap

Brawn Agility Intellect Cunning Willpower Presence
2 3 1 2 2 2
  • Wound Threshold: 9 + Brawn
  • Strain Threshold: 11 + Willpower
  • Starting Experience: 90 XP
  • Special Abilities: Cathar begin the game with one rank in either Athletics or Stealth. They still may not train Athletics or Stealth above fank 2 during Character Creation. They also begin with the Swift talent.
  • Claws: When a Cathar makes Brawl checks to deal damage to an opponent, he or she deals +1 Damage and has a Critical Rating of 3.

This hasn’t actually been approved yet, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll play a human and it won’t matter anyway.

On Custom Content

by

Not too long ago, Tam wrote about not being entirely beholden to the rules as written, in the context of progression speed. He was speaking mostly from a GM perspective, but as a player, it’s not unreasonable to come to the same sort of conclusions. One of the time-honored ways of doing this is via conversion. As systems come and go, things are printed that for some reason or another, don’t make the new version. Sometimes there’s a good reason for this (See: D&D 4e’s Warlord), but other times they’re just left behind (5e doesn’t have an Eberron book yet, so it doesn’t have rules for Shifters, Changelings, or Warforged, even though Warforged were in one of the playtests). If these things really interest you, it’s reasonable to make changes that make sense for whatever system you’re playing in, and run it by your GM to see if the result is reasonable. (Note: this is not a standing excuse to min-max a thing you don’t like. Expect your GM to recognize it if you make it such, and react appropriately.)

On Custom Content
Related: Since Cathar are supposed to be rarer in the Old Republic era than other times, why is it that that’s the only era that has them in the games?

…which brings me to the actual topic of this post. A while back, we were in a Star Wars campaign based on the Saga Edition ruleset. We’re looking into playing in a new campaign based on the new Fantasy Flight rules, and I want to play a character similar to (but not identical to) the one I played previously. The first problem there is that I played a Cathar, and Cathar have not yet been printed for the new edition. (If I were a betting man, I’d bet that they’ll be in the Force and Destiny sourcebook focusing on the Seeker class, when that gets printed.) But given a base to work from (the Saga Edition Cathar), and given how races are structured, I think I can come up with a reasonable approximation.

The Easy Stuff

  • Races in FF Star Wars have 6 stats, which do not correspond cleanly to the familiar d20 stats: Brawn is a sort of mix between CON and STR, and CHA is split out into Cunning and Presence. Humans have 2 in each stat, but most other races have a stat at 3 and a stat at 1, with the rest staying at 2. Saga Edition Cathar had racial bonuses of +2 DEX, -2 INT, which corresponds neatly to starting Agility and Intelligence values of 3 and 1, respectively
  • Cathar in Saga Edition also get climb and stealth as automatic career skills, but skills are (usually) handled a bit differently now. Skill bonuses are granted as a free rank, and usually only in one skill. Some races get a choice of skills, and I think that approach fits here. This would mean Cathar get a free rank in Athletics or Stealth, but still cannot train either above rank 2 during character creation.
  • It’s possible to represent the Natural Weapon: Claws as a +1 damage on Brawl attacks, with a critical rating of 3. This is taken directly from Trandoshans.

The Hard Stuff

From there things get a bit complicated. Most races in SWRPG stop at 2 bonuses, and get 100 starting XP, a Strain Threshold of 10 + Willpower, and a Wound threshold of 10 + Brawn. These numbers appear to be used mostly as a balancing mechanism for other things that the race got. Humans didn’t get much else, so they get 110 starting XP. Hutts have extra stats and threshold values, so they get 70 starting XP. A Cathar with the above abilities, and the baseline XP, strain, and wound values is fine, but it does leave out the more interesting aspects of Cathar in Saga Edition.

Saga Edition had action economy that strongly resembles D&D 4e, with Move, Swift, and Standard actions. Cathar had the ability to make a claw attack as a swift action when targeting an enemy with a melee attack once per encounter. SWRPG doesn’t really represent the concept of 1/encounter well, and also doesn’t really treat its actions the same way. Instead, it breaks things up into “Actions” and “Maneuvers”, where Maneuvers are mostly “things that don’t require rolls”. There are two ways I could see representing this. The one that most resembles the old rule would be to allow Cathar to make a claw attack as a maneuver once per session, during a turn in which they target an enemy with a melee attack. That’s a bit clunky, so it might be better to let them treat their claws as having the “Linked 2” property once/session. This is potentially stronger, but also forces you to make the initial attack with the claws, when you may be carrying something better. (If you’re a force user, possibly something significantly better.)
On Custom Content
Cathar also had a base movement rate of 8 squares, which was nearly unique to them. Humans and most other humanoid races had a base speed of 6 squares, and this difference was a large part of my race choice back then. My character’s ability to be almost anywhere on the battlefield in a single turn eventually became character-defining. Thanks to FF Star Wars using a more abstract movement system, there are limited ways to represent that. One option is allowing Cathar to move between medium/long or long/extreme ranges in a single maneuver, but that actually seems quite strong for a racial ability. A more reasonable alternative might be to grant them the Swift talent for free, which also has some precedent in other racial abilities.

Generally speaking, these are interesting ideas, but they’re beyond the scope of what most races have to offer in FF Star Wars. The only salvagable part from this session is getting Swift for free, and that should probably have a cost. With the Swift talent for free, more appropriate starting stats are probably 90 XP, Wound Threshold 9 + Brawn, Strain Threshold 11 + Willpower. Most races with a starting XP penalty pay for it somehow, and the talent and an extra point of strain seems like a fair tradeoff.

To Recap

Brawn Agility Intellect Cunning Willpower Presence
2 3 1 2 2 2
  • Wound Threshold: 9 + Brawn
  • Strain Threshold: 11 + Willpower
  • Starting Experience: 90 XP
  • Special Abilities: Cathar begin the game with one rank in either Athletics or Stealth. They still may not train Athletics or Stealth above fank 2 during Character Creation. They also begin with the Swift talent.
  • Claws: When a Cathar makes Brawl checks to deal damage to an opponent, he or she deals +1 Damage and has a Critical Rating of 3.

This hasn’t actually been approved yet, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll play a human and it won’t matter anyway.

Predictions for Heavensward 3.1 and Beyond

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So this weekend we will be getting some sort of update regarding the next content patch for Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward. Most people are expecting to get a release date, and we will presumably find out more about the new raid and so forth. In the spirit of my previous prediction, I'm going to spin some wild theories about where things are going to go from here.

So first let's take a look at my previous prediction. I theorized that we would be facing the Scions in tempered form and collecting dark crystals after defeating them. Well, we've rescued one of the missing Scions now and, while definitely changed by the process, Y'shtola was not tempered and we didn't have to fight her. Also, rather than collecting new crystals the initial story had us restoring our connection to the existing crystals over the course of our adventure.

Predictions for Heavensward 3.1 and Beyond
Getting lost in the Aether gives you a kicky new hairstyle. Who knew?

That said, we still haven't found out what Urianger and Elidibus were talking about and we still don't have any clue to the fate of the remaining four Scions. Also, the Warrior of Dark appears to be entering the fray at Elidibus' urging. So where might things go from here?

At first when faced with a new female Ascian (Igeyorhm) in the Heavensward story, I thought the body she had possessed might be Minfilia. Especially when our old friend Lahabrea showed back up at her side, consdering he was using Thancred as his body last time around. In the end though, we killed one of them and Thordan took out the other and neither body remained afterwards. I can't imagine we just unknowingly killed Minfilia and Thancred without realizing it afterwards, so I have to assume the Ascians were using some poor nameless saps who don't matter enough to leave corpses when killed.

At this point I'm expecting us to track down one more Scion per content patch. I would expect Minfilia to be the last of those given her leadership status. I'm guessing Thancred will be rescued in 3.1. First, Y'shtola's cast Flow in an attempt to rescue Thancred so now that we have Y'shtola back that gives us a link to follow to try and find Thancred. Second, Y'shtola and Thancred seemed to get less development in the Realm Reborn story, so bringing them back first and second gives us opportunity to work them more one on one without the others around to steal the limelight. Finally, an FFXIV event went live last night in Record Keeper featuring two of the Scions as recruitable characters. Those two Scions? Y'shtola and Thancred. Using Thancred there makes me believe they'll bringing him back into the game fairly soon.

Predictions for Heavensward 3.1 and Beyond
He's back baby.

I still expect Dark crystals to come into the story in some way. At this point I'm guessing the Warrior of Darkness has a similar connection to Dark crystals of Zodiark as we do to the Light crystals of Hydaelyn. It's worth noting that the concept of the Warriors of Darkness originates in Final Fantasy III and you didn't fight them, you sought their aid against the Cloud of Darkness. We still don't quite know what Elidibus' deal is; he hasn't been as belligerent as the other Ascians. It's entirely possible that there's some greater awful out there that will need our combined effort to defeat. If that's the case I would expect that to be the final big fight of the expansion.

Finally, we still don't know what sort of deal Urianger and Elidibus have made. I still suspect that Moenbryda's death is going to have repercussions. It has occurred to me that Elidibus may be trying to offer Urianger a similar deal to what was offered to Tiamat. I just don't see Urianger falling for it. Perhaps he'll do something ill-advised thinking he can outsmart the Ascians? While considering Primals we haven't yet seen in FFXIV I did think of Brynhildr from FFXIII. I suppose it's possible Urianger could end up creating her in an attempt to bring back Moenbryda. Primals usually retain the name of the being they mimic though, so I don't know. If they did use Brynhildr I'm sure they'd heavily redesign her to better fit the FFXIV aesthetic.

Predictions for Heavensward 3.1 and Beyond
I would expect less Transformer, more valkyrie.
Finally, I fully expect us to end up going to the moon. Possibly that will be a later 24-man raid after the one going in this patch that takes place on the Void Ark. The Void Ark seems like a reasonable method of transport to the moon. 24-man content is usually fairly divorced from the story content though, and with the moon seeming to be linked to the Ascian threat and the Warrior of Darkness I would expect it to be part of the main storyline. Maybe Cid's next fabulous invention will be the Lunar Whale. That would be pretty fantastic.