Frame of Reference

This blog post was prompted by a prospective reviewer of Alpha Blue.  He declined to review it because of his millennial-based reasons - he didn't feel like it or wasn't feeling it or that it might upset the feelings of his precious tumblr readers.

Side-rant: I know I'm generation x and all, but come on, youngsters!  If you agree to do something, like reviewing a book someone has freely given you for the express purpose of reviewing, you do it.  Maybe you have to grit your teeth a little or sack up, but you do what you said you were going to do.  Treating your colleagues and peers with respect is just as important as standing up (or the online equivalent of such) for transgender restroom rights.

Anyways, one of his criticisms of Alpha Blue was that it came off as "just references," rather than original stuff inspired by 70's and 80's sci-fi, exploitation cinema, etc.  That got me thinking...

First, I wondered if he was right.  Well, in a way, yes, he was.  Alpha Blue doesn't use references like, "It's like Star Wars."  Instead, it may include something like a green-skinned, insectoid bounty hunter is sitting at the bar, snorting crushed up red crystals in between delirious diatribes about the difficulty of hijacking transport ships carrying ice in the Plutonic Nebula.

Again, yes, it definitely borrows to the extreme.  It references - and then cross-references with newness sprinkled on top so that it becomes something altogether different from whatever was stolen from a single source.  It builds upon the shared memory, experiences, and impressions of popular culture.  And to some degree, I think it has to in order to be 111% effective.

Roleplaying games, as a medium, lack what a variety of other mediums have in abundance - something to help substantiate our flailing imaginations.  Literature, film, TV, illustration, music, walking around a museum - heck, even interpretive dance have something that naked RPGs (RPG sessions without any of those) don't have... additional sensory input.

Players are told what their characters smell, the players aren't directly smelling anything for themselves.  Usually, the same goes for sight, hearing, touch, and taste.  If you're watching a movie or TV show, you get to see what's going on.  That's a level of immersion RPGs don't have.

RPGs can and do create compelling characters.  However, the RPG medium rarely allows players to get to know NPC outside of their momentary confrontation with the PCs.  So, players get a few sentences of information verbally described to them and that's it.

Without any kind of audio/visual input, it can be a rather dry experience.  The imagination has to do all the heavy lifting.  However, when RPGs tap into our memory of pop culture or things we've watched, read about, heard, etc. a new dimension of reality is added.  Immediately, we go from two-dimensions to three, and everything becomes more relate-able and easier to experience.

"Easy" isn't a word that we see advertised in RPGs much.  That's too bad because the easier something is, the more it can be played with, hacked, refined, fine-tuned, inverted, subverted, brought to the fore, etc.  Easy brings new gamers into the hobby.  Easy keeps gamers coming back week after week.  Easy allows the GM to keep running those games, instead of succumbing to burnout.

Story is another thing.  In my view (and in the view of old school and traditional gaming), RPGs aren't narrative vehicles - narratives, if they come together at all, are the byproduct of playing the game (i.e. adventuring / investigating / surviving).  Events happen and it's up to the players and their characters to make sense out of the things that occur, to create a story from the experience.

Because RPGs don't do pre-fabricated stories well, those stories must be taken from other places - movies, TV shows, books, etc.  When we can refer back to prior, shared stories, archetypes, tropes, genre conventions, and everything outside of RPGs, the depth of our collective imagination increases, providing a better sense of immersion, and generally speaking, more fun.

In conclusion, don't be afraid to refer back to all the stuff you know and love.  When the sleeper awakes, don't forget your jelly babies and may the pon farr be with you... always!

VS

Total Recall: The End of an Era

I just watched the original Total Recall a couple days ago and wanted to write about it.

Back in 1990, I was sitting at home, a Freshman in High School.  My best friend called me up.  His mom was taking him to see Total Recall and he invited me along.  I had never heard of the movie and so wasn't expecting much.  This was 1990 and for the last 12 months or so, most of the movies I had seen in the theater were crappy.  The 80's were over and even though I didn't know it, my mind was preparing itself for a long, cold winter of awesome films.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised, and saw it in the theater at least once more before it left and then watched it again on VHS before buying the DVD years later.

Total Recall was great on all of the following: story, dialog, acting... Arnold may seem cheesy, but I'll always be a fan of his - plus Sharon Stone as a femme fatal.  And I love perpetual B-movie villain Michael Ironside.  As for special effects, how about Kuato?  Wow!  It's no wonder that Rob Bottin of John Carpenter's The Thing fame was in charge of that department.  And violence.  Yes, violence.  Total Recall was directed by Paul Verhoeven, who had knocked it out of the park just a couple years ago before that with RoboCop.  Lots of blood squibs, visible gunshot holes, and action sequences that you could really feel.

After Total Recall, films started going CGI.  Being filmed in 1989, it still had that 80's awesomeness that would be virtually lost throughout the 90's.  Obviously, there are notable exceptions, such as the films of Quentin Tarantino.

A couple years ago, I wrote a blog post about guilty pleasure films.  Not sure why Total Recall didn't make the cut, because I don't think the vast majority of movie goers or reviewers take it seriously.  I mean, put Total Recall up against Blade Runner and the latter will most likely beat out the former 9 times out of 10.

And yet, mind-fuck-wise, Total Recall beats Blade Runner hands down.  Plenty of people want to believe that Deckard is probably a replicant, but there's no real evidence to support such a theory.  And even if there were, him being one doesn't truly mess with the audience's sense of reality.

On the other hand, we still have no way of knowing if Quaid's experiences were part of a man-made virtual reality or authentic.  Furthermore, if it wasn't real - we also don't know if his matrix-reality went according to plan or if he suffered a schizoid embolism, as was mentioned a couple times throughout the film.  Plenty of evidence suggests any of the three possibilities could be true.

Lastly, let me mention Venusville, the movie's Martian red-light district.  It shouldn't be any wonder that Total Recall was an influence on Alpha Blue.  From the three-breasted hooker to sleazy sci-fi partners in crime.  In fact, the next adventure I come up with for Alpha Blue, will undoubtedly have memory implants, schizoid embolisms, alien artifacts, a shadowy government agency, even more three-boobed prostitutes, and a little ugly-baby mutant hiding out in someone's abdomen.

I still haven't seen the remake, by the way.  I've heard it's not good.  Eventually, I'll have to see for myself.

Thanks for reading.  Here is some FREE bonus stuff for Alpha Blue to give you a taste of what's to come.  Enjoy!

VS

p.s.  Just a word on the phrase "guilty pleasure movies."  There's nothing wrong with them, and it's not like they're actually bad.  In fact, these movies are usually super fun - way more fun than Academy Award winning films.  It's just that they're not going to make anyone's top ten list and no one's going to put them in the Presidential Cultural Preservation Vault (I just made that up) so that centuries from now post-apocalyptic scavengers can go through all the work of reverse engineering DVD players just so their mo-hawk and leather ass-less chaps wearing tribe can watch Total Recall, Big Trouble in Little China, or Fight Club.  Although, now that I think about it... they probably should.

Girls Gone Rogue reviewed and on sale

Alpha Blue was an experiment in bad taste.  I wanted to create something for a sub-genre of sci-fi that gets very little attention... the kind of sleazy, raunchy, ridiculous, gonzo, porn parody kind of sci-fi that only existed on late night pay-cable back in the 80's.

Girls Gone Rogue was the follow-up supplement.  It's one part what I wanted in an Alpha Blue sourcebook, one part what I thought Alpha Blue GMs, players, and fans wanted, and one part middle finger to all the uptight, repressed, censorship-happy motherfuckers out in RPG land who would cast me into the pit of darkness and fire for daring to create such sordid filth.

While I could have gone even farther with GGR, I'm happy with the level of juvenile naughtiness and mad-cap space panty raid type shenanigans I achieved.

Without further ado, +Kasimir Urbanski (The RPGpundit) himself recently reviewed GGR.  And he even got some flack for it.

To celebrate, I've drastically reduced the PDF price of Girls Gone Rogue.  Thanks for everyone's support!

VS

Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

Holden:  Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... your childhood movie watching habits.

I must have been about 10 when Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone reached premium cable.

I remember seeing it a lot - probably 20 or even 30 times once it hit HBO, even though before today, I couldn't give you any more than scant details.  Maybe not even that much.  It was borderline scary at times and even though it could never match the awesomeness that was Star Wars, I enjoyed it immensely.

I watched it over and over again just as I did with The Beastmaster, Ice Pirates, Flash Gordon, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner.  But not necessarily from beginning to end.  The majority of viewings must have come in just before or after the sail barge train battle scene.

Because seeing it again today after 33 years, I didn't recall anything of the first 10 minutes.  You know, the part that kind of sets up the rest of the movie.

This review does a good job of summing up the plot while noticing the sleazy aspects that make it a weird time-warp kind of anomaly that could only exist right around 1983.

There's a Mad Max kind of feel to it, as well.  Not so much cyberpunk as I envision it, unlike the linked review above, but definitely a high-tech / low-life aesthetic.  Not too long ago, Cyborg was screened at one of my monthly pizza/movie nights.  Spacehunter reminded me of Cyborg, too.  Especially, the brunette android.  But there was more to it than that - a world gone to seed.  A post-apocalypse of trash, a wasteland of dirty nomads looking for flesh.

The whole thing seems to have a bigger budget than I would have guessed.  The alien planet looks kind of like an alien planet.  Not sure whey they filmed those outdoor scenes, but it's realistic while also being unfamiliar.  Likewise, the "garbage chic" costumes and "rust tech" machines are equally impressive.

The pacing is also excellent.  It feels like a long journey even though the audience never grows bored.  Interesting things are happening all the time and in between, we get the emotional journey of the good guys.

Which brings me to my favorite aspect - because it's a rare commodity these days, like some kind of mineral used for making particle beam weapons that can only be found on planet SK-9 in Terra Quadrant.  Sleaze!

Like Starchaser: the Legend of Orin, there was a sexist kind of masculine vibe that I enjoy, that feels right to me, even though in today's culture of twitter wars and social issue outrage would surely be described as "toxic."

The protagonist, Wolff, obviously uses his pretty android engineer for sex.

When the three human women are captured by the antagonist's henchmen, they're obviously going to be used for sex or to satisfy some carnal appetite.

When Wolff meets the girl tracker, Nikki, who helps him find the captured women, there's definitely some adult expectation subtext going on.  Later, when Wolff gives her a bath and finds out she's about 16, he takes on a fatherly role, leaving behind a possible romantic relationship which Nikki assumed would happen.

Mid-way through the movie, Wolff and Nikki encounter a tribe of underwater amazons.  The amazons voice their interest in Wolff as breeding stock.  That doesn't sound like a bad idea to Wolff, however, when they put Nikki in danger, he decides to get out of there rather than have sex with many strange and beautiful (and probably dangerous) women.

You don't get stuff like that in a "kid's movie" these days.  1983 is long behind us, and so when a forgotten cult classic like this emerges from our distant cinematic past, I feel we should embrace it.

Obviously, there are a few problems or missed opportunities with the movie.  The antagonist goes by the name Overdog?  Yeah, it's no Star Wars.  But then neither is Ice Pirates, and that also deserves a 2nd or even 3rd viewing if it's been over a decade since you've seen it.

The standalone Spacehunter DVD seems to be out of print and therefore more expensive than it should be; however, after a little searching, I discovered that Walmart sells a Krull / Spacehunter combo DVD for around $5.  Doesn't get any better than that.  Well, neither film has any extras - not even the ability to select chapters.  But the movies are the main event, so yeah... buy it.

It should go without saying that Alpha Blue is the perfect vehicle for a kind of Starhunter RPG experience.  Pick up the bundle if you want both sourcebooks included in one low price.

Thanks,

VS