Batman: Gotham Knight

If you enjoyed the depth of Dark Knight Returns, you’ll probably also dig Gotham Knight.

An animated movie of 6 chapters, with different directors and writers, but connected, Gotham Knight manages to hit the best kinds of Batman stories and surprisingly gets deeper than what I expected. All of the chapters manage to avoid the #1 pitfall to a Batman story- making it all about the villains. These stories manage to swing the focus back to the real relationships: Batman to Gotham and Batman to himself.

The first two chapters focus on the people of Gotham living and what Batman means to them- skater kids bragging to each other about seeing him, detectives arguing about the morality of a vigilante on the streets. After that, we swing into questions about Batman’s morals, and even throw some grey areas on him (Bruce keeps a gun collection – “Know your enemy. Though I never fired one, I can see the appeal…”).

The best of the chapters is written by Brian Azzarello (of 100 Bullets fame). “Working through the Pain” where we get a flashback to Bruce traveling to India, seeking the training to overcome pain.

Whereas this could have been a simple cultural appropriation montage, instead, we see him get rejected by the Fakirs (“He said you were not being honest with him. You’re not here for enlightenment.”) and instead, learning from Cassandra, an Indian woman (British raised? Hmm. Maybe.) who had to steal the knowledge because she was forbidden to learn the techniques herself. She’s hard, and real, and neither subservient nor a romantic interest- she’s her own character and pretty badass. And she doesn’t spend the chapter spouting mysticisms either. By the end of the story, you even see how broken Bruce is- that which makes him strong cripples him at the same time.

The other thing- all 6 chapters are surprisingly well done in terms of representation- tons of POC (which makes sense if you go with the Gotham = Chicago idea) and they’re not criminals, nor victims. (ETA: also, they called out the corruption of gentrification through “redevelopment”. Nice.)

Overall, this gets 4/5 from me, for being an awesome DVD, and well worth picking up if you’re a Batman fan.

Baldr Force EXE: Don’t bother

So… this short series started off with incredible promise, then completely fell apart.

It’s a cyberpunk Japan, where virtual hacking all takes the form of virtual mecha fights. The mech designs aren’t that great, but the fight scenes are pretty awesome- lots of fast, hyperkinetic fighting, without cheating the animation or doing the “slow motion for saving frams- I mean, dramatic effect”. This part, at least, remains consistent over the 4 episodes.

Episode one, we get introduced to Steppen Wolf- a hacking group that has decided to give up hacking as the whole virtual Wired experience is now full of crooks and anti-terrorist government squads brainkilling each other instead of old school fun hacking for the hell of it. After making this pretty reasonable choice, they decide to do “one more job” for the sake of memory… which of course goes horribly wrong – their leader, Yuuya, gets killed, and the rest are captured by government agents (“FLAK”)

The lead protagonist, Toru Soma, is offered amnesty provided he works for FLAK. He accepts, not to protect his own life, but rather, to try to find out which of FLAK’s agents is responsible for Yuuya’s death- so he can take revenge. We get introduced to a bunch of kickass female characters- Ayane- the maverick badass, Liang – cyber terrorist of the chinese hacker group- Fei Tao, Reika Tachibana- head of VSS, a cyber security corporation, Bachelor, a 13 year old uberhacker, all of whom could basically get their own story.

So at this point, I’m expecting pretty good things from this series… We’ve got an active non-emo protagonist, lots of competent female characters, and awesome mecha fighting.

Then we hit episode two. Toru ends up meeting this mysterious girl (“Ren”)in virtual space, going on a virtual date, she asks, “Can I call you big brother?” (STRIKE ONE: INCEST VIBES. NOT COOL.) Later, FLAK ends up running a mission to stop Fei Tao from a hack job- but Toru has already spent too much time online- the human body doesn’t do too well spending too much time in a 24 hour period- so he’s left out of this mission.

So the mission involves Ayane fighting some uber baddie, Genha, who then proceeds to virtually/mind rape her. (STRIKE TWO, THREE, and well, just keep counting, the most badass/promising character is now declawed and raped, in the second episode. REALLY?). So Toru risks his life, jumps back in, manages to fight off Genha, but then discovers that Ayane is also the one who killed Yuuya. And also his other old Steppenwolf buddy, Akira, now works for Fei Tao.

You end up with a pretty awesome moral choice- he’s supposed to stop Fei Tao as part of his cover, plus Akira is apparently ok with rapists, but on the other hand it’s his buddy from the old days, and well, the murderer he’s after is right here, but then again, she’s just been raped. Toru freaks out, and starts attacking Ayane (they’re both in mecha) and then the rest of FLAK shows up and arrests everyone.

After this, pretty much the series bites it. Turns out Ren actually was Toru’s sister (INCEST VIBE? YEP, I CALLED IT), she also now only exists virtually, her body having died years ago, most of the kickass characters were experimented on as kids, Ren is harboring an ubervirus that’s flatlining people in virtual space, Toru emos and can’t kill his sister and, apparently also not do much else while moping about it (If you didn’t count strike three back up there, the emo hero finishes any hope at this point), and Ren goes the fuck off and starts consuming all virtual space and blowing stuff up in realspace.

The only reason I was watching? Ayane gets revenge, but not before getting more violation (this time, at least, it’s not graphic, but…), and the revenge is so short and unsatisfying that if the animators only spent one fourth the effort and love on the revenge that they clearly spent on the mind rape I could have said, “At least, some minor bit of justice”, but alas, no.

Doing some research online, turns out the entire anime was based on a Japanese shooter/porn game, which at least explains the fucked up focus on the rape scene in episode two, and the brother/sister incest vibe, as well as the general harem anime feel.

GAARGH. What pisses me off the most about this stuff is that if they didn’t give me any empowered female characters to begin with I would have not gotten my hopes up. Of course, maybe that’s the lesson in that- if you’re empowered, you have to be “put back in your place” until the hero can rescue you. Even if he’s weaker, wimpier, and falls apart under stress.

Bleh.

Spaces pt. 3

The Con Anti-Harassment Project

Cons are where folks go to have fun. But also, people pay to go to conventions- they’re expecting a minimal amount of effort on the part of the con organizers to help facilitate the space for that fun. Like, safety, for instance- you know, knowing that you’re not going to be randomly groped, as if you were at a frat party.

The sad thing is that when people have to organize like this, it proves the deeper underlying problem, and smashes the myth that it’s “a few bad apples”. No, it’s more than a few, and they keep doing shit because the rest of everyone lets it slide and be ok.

In Thy Name- a D&D hack

This is a hack to put Flags into an older D&D game and shift the focus from raiding for loot into political and social struggles. It’s more focused than what you get with Riddle of Steel’s Spiritual Attributes or Shadow of Yesterday’s Keys. (You could probably easily tweak this for the traditional rpg of your choice, as well).

Struggles

Each player character can have up to 5 Struggles at one time (you can swap them for other ones, the limit is just so you don’t end up with a page of 200 of them). A Struggle is a personal motivation that the character believes in, is willing to take risk, to struggle for.

Struggles are broken down into three types:

Reign

Reign is about recognized authority you possess or authority you want to have over a person, people, place or thing. It’s about having control and doing what you need to protect your authority and control or expand it. This could be recognized authority- such as being Captain, you might have Reign over the troops in your unit. This could be unspoken but assumed authority- if you think as father you have the right to dictate who your daughter can marry… It could be more abstract- if you are a slave, maybe your ambition is to have Reign over your own self.

Vassalship

Vassalship is about willingly serving a person, group of people, place or thing. It’s about protecting and furthering it’s interests, if any. This could be recognized- being a knight serving a king, or it could be something you’ve taken upon yourself but told no one else – “I’ll protect my nephew, since my brother isn’t much of a father”. Vassalship could be to an ideal- Justice, Love, the Honor of the Ksari Clan.

Honors

Honors is about honoring another person, not because of power, position, or duty. It’s about honoring your friends who you would call sister, or brother. It’s about honoring a wise teacher, whom you respect. It’s about honoring a Lady whom you are in love with. Honor is the most willing of the Struggles, because it has no power, and no position involved whatsoever. It’s not about control or furthering interests- its about respecting the person for who they are.

What they do

When you take action to pursue/protect a Struggle, you gain 100 XP and an Action Point (to spend to get 1D6 bonus to any of your D20 rolls). Each Struggle can provide this once per scene.

Struggles are voluntary- your character has them because she or he believes in them (rightly or wrongly). Struggles can also be conflicting (which can be a good way to get multiple bonuses in a single scene, especially if you like drama).

Players should decide from the outset if they want to have a lot of conflicting Struggles, a few, or none at all amongst the characters- as this can determine whether you have a band of heroes united in ideals or several characters against each other.

As a GM, these give you a good idea of what to offer, what to threaten, and where to focus the flow of play for interesting things for your players. It also shifts the focus of XP gain from gold and monsters to acting on beliefs and interests (as has been done in other games – Riddle of Steel, Burning Wheel, Shadow of Yesterday, etc.)

Mike Mearls 4E Interview

Theory from the Closet Interviews Mike Mearls.

Mike hits a ton of good points, from design, setting, what happened in 4E design, what goes on in the table, and more. One of the things I love about Mike, is that he’s straight up – like the difficulty on Keep on the Shadowfell being better suited for advanced players, or that GMs really don’t like being told what to do, etc.

It’s a good interview, even if you’re not a D&D head, if you’re interested in design on any level.