Hey, play this and tell me if it works.

Really rough draft for a dice game. as follows:

Need at least 5 dice and 60 counters (beads, change, cookies, whatever). Suggested players 4 and up, might be able to get away with 3. Expected play time is I have no idea.

Players start with 5 counters. Take turns rolling 5 dice each and taking actions. The dice roll guides your actions as follows:

use this roll – to take this action

1 – all players lose 1 counter
2 – remove another player’s counter
3 – move a counter between 2 other players
4 – re-roll another die from this turn
5 – gain a counter
6 – All players gain a counter
2 of a kind – take 3 counters
3 of a kind – roll an extra die next turn
4 of a kind – all other players loose a counter
5 of a kind – take 10 counters

You can choose to hold dice for your turn: instead of using it you keep it from being re-rolled at the beginning of your next turn.

If a player has to discard a counter but doesn’t have any, they loose a die instead. If a player has to gain a counter, but has less then 5 die, they gain a die instead. If a player looses all their dice, they are out of the game. (If you took an extra die on your next turn and lost all your regular die, you still get to take your next turn and use that die. (it cannot be removed, as you do not have it until the start of your turn.)

First to 20 counters wins. (or be the last player in the game, of course.)

—–

So yeah, if anyone gets the chance to play this and give me feedback would be very cool. The next iteration I come out with will have something to do with using the dice to bid on actions to be taken during a turn. Other ideas were to bid on cards (kind of like Alhambra), or to have players have asymmetrical actions for their dice to try and hide information. The more I think about it the more that last idea is silly, though. This whole train of thought is about trying to use dice to replace a deck of cards in randomly deciding what actions are available to a player on a turn. I think there’s some kind of promise here, but the fact that probability of die is well set while decks can be altered by adding or removing cards is hard for me to wrap my mind around. One answer is to use something like a 20 sided die but then have a bunch of the sides the same. But that sounds boring, and I want to do something more interesting.

F*R*A*G: Crap! I dropped the Golden Egg and now there’s a time puddle spreading all over the floor! I told you not to trust me with any of this science stuff!!

NO IT’S OKAY I’M TOTALLY JUST A BIRD

Okay, first, let me make it clear that Tenchu Z is not a good game. In fact, it’s all but a fact that it’s a bad game. I do however enjoy it, and this is an exploration to try and find out why.

So I popped Tenchu Z into the 360 today. This is because I feel that I have a mastery over Burnout Paradise, and no one else I know has it. Everything else I have for it I’m decidedly “meh” on at the moment (except Bayonetta’s Butt, which I just need a break from before I work up the courage to take on Non-Stop Infinite Climax mode).

But, Tenchu Z. Here’s what happened: I loaded up my old game and went to the clothes shop. This is actually a key gameplay element – customizing your character to match your tastes for each play session. What it was set to as I loaded it up was a 3 sword, crescent blade, modern combat pants, and animal fur top. Sort of a well coordinated and relaxed affair. What my tastes for the night just so happen to entail turned out to be a much thicker outfit, mostly white with a head covering and extra hat and thick gloves and boots. As soon as I saw the final outcome, it struck me as odd. I had never used such an outfit before. There have only really been two outfits that I’ve used before. One being the outfit that was there as I loaded the game, the other being an even lighter style using the modern pants again, but a with a fishnet top, no shoes or gloves, and a single sword wth a dragon hilt.

(It may sound like I’m stroking myself here, but that is because there is a bit of context that you are missing. See, many people will get giddy about games where you get to play dress up with your character, but here the gameplay is so lacking that this customization just becomes that major. If you play for any amount of time, I bet you will find yourself eventually thinking the same way.)

Here’s why this new outfit was wrong: It was a winter outfit. Normally I change from a fall outfit (like was there) into the summer outfit, before changing back until my time with the game ends. But, it’s not summer. The connection in my brain between that other outfit and summer is so strong that looking at the pieces for it made me feel the heat and humidity of summer for just long enough to make me shiver with cold when my attention came back to the present. For just a second in my own mind, I was back in summer. I was sitting on the floor of mar darkened room with only the glow of the screen and the night lights from the walkway outside streaming through the bushes across my floor. The constant whirring of a window fan. Wearing shorts and a tank top cross-legged on the floor of my room. That picture then also leads to thoughts of the wafting smell of nearby barbecues, Linkin Park’s Reanimation playing off a dvd in the ps2, naps after a long (but in retrospect short) day in high school, before laptops and iphones and constant communication put an end to dolldrum days. All in all, a time that I look back on and long for (even though I know that I remember them with more grandeur then they ever conatined, but it doesn’t make Time Crisis or DDR any less fun). But alas, so elusive a state…

Snap back to today. It’s cold. It’s winter in freaking upstate New York. It’s “past my bedtime” because I have classes in the morning I can’t afford to sleep through. Right.

I’m not saying Tenchu Z evokes all these feelings and visions and memories. They do for me, but it is only because I happened to have played this game in such a summer. But there in lies what I think is one of the game’s redeeming qualities. It is the kind of game that is great for playing through long summer nights.

It’s not a thematic issue, it’s a mechanical issue. Long summer nights don’t foster thinking. Tenchu Z needs no thinking. It’s repetitive. Yet, I hesitate to call it grinding. In a traditional sense you grind to watch a number go up – exp, lvl, stats, gold, whatever. There is some sort of carrot on the end of the the stick. I can’t find any real carrot in this game, tho. There’s no rpg elements. Buying clothes is entirely aesthetic, and the skills and items available to buy are entirely unnecessary. You get gold whether you succeed or fail a mission, and there’s nothing really interesting to buy. “Oh. I have enough gold to buy the wall running skill now. Neat?” Anything you buy you end up forgetting you have, and every level you go into with nothing but the grappling hook. And yet, Ninja 5 all the way.

Okay, that’s a little unfair. I’m jaded. I’ve beat the game. I’ve got outfits I like. I’ve played long enough to learn the limits of the guards AI. Many many times I’m finding myself being able to knock out 3 or 4 guards at a time, drag them all into a pile, and then consecutive stealth kill them all at once. Cool in a sense [1], but all within my control. For a while I actually did feel like a big man going into a level with just the grappling hook. But now, anything that happens is because I want it to happen. Because I want to do it. I mean, that could be it. Deriving enjoyment out of proving mastery of a skill. It’s like why people who have become good at sudoku or word searches continue to do them. Except, the end result of a Tenchu Z level is the eradication of an entire village by hand, not just putting numbers and letters into tiny boxes.

But whatever it is, it keeps pulling me back. And that’s what says to me that there is something worthwhile in this game. If there’s no goal then it’s not grinding, but it’s still repetitive. It wouldn’t be repetitive if I just stopped playing, but I just keep playing. Keep coming back to it. Keep sneaking around the same handful of map layouts. Keep running up to the front of guards and screaming “OH HI.” out of game as they get flipped over and shanked before they realize how freaking totally dead they are.

That’s another point to give it. Aside from the items, this is one thing I feel that has come across from the older games. There is still the sort of dynamic out of game narrative that occurs. You just have this running commentary to yourself as you play. “Look at this guy. I bet he embezzled from the local orphanage funds *shank* Ahhh that feels good.” “What the hell is a bear doing here!?” “WHAT? A GUARD? NO IT’S COOL I’M JUST LIKE A CAT OR SOMETHING MOVE ALONG *roll into a bush*”. “Crap, that one guy saw me. He’s going to die in the most gruesome way possible.” “Oh, hey bear. Sup?” This isn’t just something I do for this game, I even found myself doing it while playing Mass Effect. “Man, what a shitty colony you guys have here. Look at that. That fire’s been burning since we landed here. And that was FOUR DAYS AGO. You really need to go talk to the landlord about that. Or just leave. Anybody who hasn’t left this planet yet is just dumb. That’s why I’m leaving. Because you’re all dumb. Good luck with all the fire.” And you might point and say it’s just me because I’m weird, but there’s a lot of examples of this kind of thing, and they go under the title of “Let’s Play”. [2]

It can also happen in multiplayer. Some know the story, but I shall finally record it here for posterity. So, I was playing Tenchu Z with Paul (The only other person I know who has ever had the game). Cave level. He was being all sneaky like, and I was doing my thing. So Paul starts going down a hallway, and all of a sudden from around the corner he’s heading for comes me. I run past him screaming “WRONG WAY!” as I go by. I hear him say to himself “Wrong way? How is this the wrong w–” And then around the corner comes the 6 pissed off guards who were chasing me. He screams “OH! AHHHHH!” and runs off the down after me too. Hilarious. Mind you, we’re on two different Xboxes in different rooms of the house, so when we’re trying to coordinate or warn (in such situations as these), we’re screaming down the hall way to each other. And There is an added level of humor to a situation when you know what’s about to happen, and you don’t have the chance to see it, but from down that hallway you can hear the scream confirming that the hilarious event you were expecting has indeed just happened. It’s great. It’s the greatest. It’s a feeling that can be traced back to the first days of the Doom deathmatch, and it’s just another example of how co-op can save any game.

Well, help them at least.

And this game was clearly made with multiplayer in mind. There is not only copious amounts of costume pieces that you can put together to make unique outfits, but there’s also a lot of combat style that can be customized. There are attacks that can be put into combos to make them unique, there are multiple standby skills that you can equip (and you can’t have them all at once, so there are decisions to be made based on your play style / that will form your play style, and then there are the items you can bring into battle which offer even more ways to approach a situation.

All of this is, however, wasted.

The point structure in the game rewards not using any items, getting only stealth kills (which are not customizable, and for the most part are all executed the same way), and killing everyone in the level except the women. Even then, if you kill innocents odds are you can kill enough other people perfectly so that you still achieve the max play ranking. This is why even with the ability to customize your combat styles and ninja abilities, the game becomes repetitive “wait for no one to look at them, pull them into a bush, press X, repeat” or “Roll off of a roof, land on somebody sword first, jump on the roof and wait for the next guy to come by”. Not to mention that the multiplayer aspect is nulled by the removal of simultaneous kills. Without that, playing with multiple people is a way to cut down time by splitting the town and killing everyone twice as quickly. Okay, it also helps when you can simultaneously kill the two guards who keep looking at each other, and it helps to clear out tight building interiors when you can come in from multiple points, but still, the experience is mainly shorter because of the lack of player interaction (as long as nobody gets chased into anyone else, that is).

I’m waiting for a new cool Tenchu game to come out. But, I feel this game has merits. It’s a train wreck in some essential regards, but…

Okay, it’s really inexcusable. But there’s something in there I like, and that has led me to buy a second copy (real cheap, not like anyone else kept this game) to bring to people to force them to play with me.

[1] “The Ultimate Stealth Kill”
[2] MMMMMMMM Mappy Land IT IS THE NINETYS, AND THERE IS TIME FOR… Let Me Play Mirror’s Edge Pt. 4

F*R*A*G: “I’m going to put a star by 10% penis. For two reasons.”

And if you have to, Iajutsu still seems best.

So, I feel I must have talked about this before, but I still think it’s cool, so I’ll talk about it again. Ask me if I care I don’t.

So, I’m not clear if it’s in the code of Bushido (it probably is, but if it isn’t then it’s in some other warrior code), but there are a few principles which I think work really well together, and can apply to lives outside the battle.

First is the idea of the sheath being a place of peace. The sword is away, there is no fight. A place of peace, a time of peace. It works both ways too. If there is no fight, do not draw your sword. If your sword is not drawn, then there is no fight. And it does not return to the sheath until the fight is over and finished. A large part of what this means is that you must have the ability to recognize a fight. A sword does not draw itself. It is up to the warrior to recognize when it is time to unsheath it and release the war held within. The sword is still a tool, the skill is in the person wielding it.

Okay, second part is the part about having to taste blood. When the sword is unsheathed, it has to taste blood before it can go back. It’s not a rule, it’s not a law, it’s a truth. By unsheathing it, you unleash a torrent of battle. You can’t just pull it out and wave it around to scare people. This is Newton’s laws: actions have equal reactions. Invoking a great power is gonna cause a great change. And if you don’t have anything to apply the force to, it’s just going to come back to hit you. It’ll be your blood.

I like to note that this is a reflection of the value of efficency in Japanese culture. The idea of midevil europeans is of them with swords, and they’ll draw them to make a point or to scare people or to cut apples, whatever. But the thought of samurai are guys who show up with their swords still in the sheath, and then they don’t pull them out until the very last second before clash. And then every movement and step is towards making a killing blow, so that the sword can finish it’s job and be put back as soon as possible. Kind of like swordfight min-maxing.

But these two points lead to a saying that I think elaborates these ideas to another useful place. “The fight is best won with the sword still in it’s sheath.” The sentiment here is that even tho when necessary you can unleash hell, this isn’t the best thing. In reality, the best way to solve a problem is to not have to deal with it. A saying that more people may have heard is that, “An ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.” Either way you look at it, the meaning is that in most cases the best way to handle problems is to take care of them before they’re problems, or to just avoid having them become problems at all.

So the point to take away from this, is that ability doesn’t only lie in having great power or ability, but also in recognizing the right time to use it. Doing things at an inappropriate time are more then likely to come back and bite you in the ass. And the point that I want everyone to take home is that these are old sayings, but they are anything but outdated, and the culturial devide means nothing. Here and now, these ideas can help you lead an easier healthier and happier life.

I suppose this isn’t where I meant to post this then. I’ll put a copy of it over on guide2life.wordpress.com . Later. When I’m not asleep.

F*R*A*G: This isn’t a good silence. I guess I’ll fill with ad-libs. Woah, woah-oh-OH-oh! Sho~tay!

Holiday spirit.

So here’s what I’m thinking: A christmas variant for Wesnoth or based off of pokemon or something like that: basically some kind of game where you have a party made up of elves with RPG elements.

Every time one of your units level up, it’s elf-aggrandizement. This of course makes their stats go up: elf-improvement. After a battle, you can give them rewards for their performance: elf-approval. They can have personalities, and if you match the right reward to the right elf, they will really like it and perform even better next time: elf-satisfaction. Get them to a high enough level, and you can choose advanced clases for them to take, but to pick the right one for them you have to go through a process of elf-assessment. If a particular unit is losing a fight, you can spend some resources to give them a temporary stat boost: elf-pity. But most units will be at least compitent: elf-reliance. There can be a special unit that takes control of enemy units using elf-hypnosis.

If I actually make something based on this idea, then that means this post was an elf-fulfilling prophesy.

F*R*A*G: They were playing Christmas music in the games room. I couldn’t help myself.

Not 24, just straight forward at the begining.

My name is Peter Duncan. It’s 2:58 am, and my wife and daughter have been kidnapped.

Then there is a scene where with a car driving a high speeds down city streets at night. Slow close in on driver’s face (Peter)

Right. After that I guess…you go after to mob cause they have your family. Turns out the mob is actually a faction of the government, this leads to a military installation. You rescue your wife. Your daughter was taken away and experimented on. Secret laboratory. Your daughter is being used as a catalyst to…raise some demigod (to later harvest it’s power) or something. You fight the robot guardian in the lab as a distraction so your wife can go rescue your daughter. It’s slighly too late. The wife and daughter are safe, but then the demigod wakes up and kills the boss who wanted it’s power, all the scientists, and your family. Then flies away. you go insane. Another driving scene, following the glowing demon as it flies over the city. It takes roost in a skyscraper, transforming it with it’s twisted will. You fight up the tower until you get there and… I guess kill it after a long and intense battle. Very likely taking both of you off the roof. A feeling of relief washes over you as you see the demon disintigrate as you fall, and with nothing left to live for you are at peace with the fall. Slam into the ground. Then you open your new demon eyes.

Leaves room for a sequel.

Issues: 1) why is peter and or his family a part of all this? the pureness of his daughter? his underworld tie ins? the mother is also of divine lineage? 2) how to we make the player care for the mother and daughter so killing them is a really dark twist?

Voluntary Exile (Not a new plan)

Man, I have to fold up my blanket and put it on my seat so my ass is up to a comfortable typing level. It sucks having the hydrolics blow out. But it is such a nice chair otherwise…

So, I’ve come back with another theory. It’s one of those after-the-fact self-rationalised theories, which means it’s probably not worth half a spit, but I feel like writing it anyway. That’s what the majority of what I’ve ever written for a blog is anyway. It goes like this:

I am genuinely interested in just about everything people say to me. An obscure math theorem, trivia about some show that only aired for a week in Hokaido, the story of how your great aunt’s dog died. It doesn’t really matter. I’ll sit and listen, and when you’re done talking there will be a silence for a spell because I will be playing with ideas in my head. Either ones you just introduced, or ones that I was reminded of by what you just said, and now I’m trying to adapt to what you said. This is just what I do. this is why I’m not a real people person. I couldn’t hold a conversation in a bucket. But I’m very good at taking things in.

Breaking it into two parts, I think I have some sort of rationale or at least made up excuses for this behavior. Those two parts being 1) I’m genuniely interested, and 2) playing with ideas in my head.

I’m genuinely interested in what people say. Pretty much in any idea that comes in, be it through people, books, music, a subway sign, whatever. But to be relevant to having conversations, people. I figured out long ago (and still use as a mantra to this day) that if I ever think I know everything, then that is a sure sign that there is something I still do not know. I know that there are things I don’t know, and I know that that will never change.  This leads to my general sense of being interested in everything. When I say “tell me everything you know,” I’m not really joking.

And in general, I think people are dumb. I know I’m pretty dumb, and the majority of people are no better off. Everybody has their own moments of dumb. But I know everyone has one thing I don’t have: A unique collection of experiences. Who you are and what you know is a result of the experiences you’ve gone through over the entire course of your life. That’s one of the base elements in my understanding of the universe. Now, I’ve spent a lot of my life alone. This is not a bad thing. In 99% of these times, I chose to be so. Solitude is something I prefer. And I never really caught onto this until earlier today, but I think that this is why I’ll always believe that people will be able to teach me something, no matter who they are. If I spend a lot of time alone, then I know that at those times everyone else was somewhere else, having an experience that wasn’t the one I was having. A different experience, a different thing to learn. Most things you do, you’re not the only one doing them. There’s just so many people today that that’s essentially impossible. But even if we’re doing the same thing, we’re doing it in different places, and with different experiences behind us that affect our perception. So if nothing else, we can come together and compare notes. Something from anyone.

This of course, doesn’t even attempt to explain WHY I feel compelled to know as much as I can. Something with parents and childhood I expect, but I don’t feel like thinking about that right now.

As far as playing with ideas in my head, that’s just something I do. I suppose I bring it up more so that I can prove that’s what I’m doing in those silent beats between dialogue. Sometimes I worry I put people off by not saying things. But it’s what I do. It’s something I’ve always done. Ever since I was very young. This (and all past) blogspaces of mine have been an example. I have 6 milk crates in my room filled with papers and notebooks and sketch pads that are all just a externalization of me playing with ideas. To me, ideas are very fun. Art is like visual ideas (or auditory, or just about anything one claims to be art, to be fair), and I’ve just always had a penchant to express myself though pictures instead of words. Well, except for all this I suppose… Again, something I’m sure is traced back to my upbringing. It’s how psychology works. Cause and effect. It’s all good.

Well yeah, there was my idea for the day. Well, the one that didn’t have any other outlet. Some ideas get used for homework, some get turned into art/comics. Some is held of until some time that I can turn it into what it needs to be (a game, an animation, a 3d model), but I don’t have the ability to make it that yet. And I think ideas are the next bit of cognition I want to figure out. Dreams, learned techniques, and maybe even memories I think I have a handle on. They all kind of work together. But abstract ideas… I dunno, but I have an idea~

F*R*A*G: I’m 6′ 5″ 230 lb. Is bacon really what you want to pick a  fight with me over?

BLOG

Oh mans. I forgot.

Analysis of Bob and Bub as characters.

(The following is what I submitted as a paper for my Designing Interactive Characters class. I made some point which I wish to share and get feedback on.)

Many a well wisher has suggested to me that I change my characters before starting this assignment. “How are you going to actually analyze Bob and Bub?” they ask me. “With gusto!” I scream, as I put on my space commander helmet and jump out the window with cape trailing behind me. I think it’s important to point out that a game doesn’t have to have deep and well fleshed out characters to be fun. Fun being the overarching goal for any game, in my opinion. Yet at the same time, even simple characters need to make sense. Need to fit to their role in the world they’re inhabiting. And based on their appearance, world, actions (both on their own and under player control), we can still gleam a lot about their nature and mindset. Sometimes, being a vague character can even help the immersion of the game. The player is allowed to inflect their own story onto the character, and most times the story will be one the player can closer empathize with to be better connected with this character, or one which makes the character so outlandish that it deciding their actions and seeing what choices they’ll have to make in the future is so interesting the player is inclined to follow the character. I played Fallout 3 in both these ways, and the effect worked. When a character who is designed to be a blank slate is also the most interesting character, something about the role of characters in games as compared to other mediums needs to be examined.

But this is trailing away from Bob and Bub. A couple of dragons on a quest to defeat some monsters. We can start here by looking at the physical aspect of these two. They’re dragons. Classically dragons are huge creatures of myth with immense power and some control over the elements. If you allow bubbles to be an element, then this holds fairly true. If we hold all of these true, it even goes to say something about the monsters inhabiting the world. They are also huge, and so powerful that the only creatures more powerful then them are the legendary dragons. Being dragons lends to the fantasy setting of the game, and also manages to lend a element to the game play: without the spines on their backs, they wouldn’t be able to pop the bubbles containing enemies, thereby defeating them. I’m sure that there are other creatures they could have been, and the game wouldn’t have been all that different, but at the same time I can’t imagine any creature better then they could be. They’re imaginary, they’re powerful, and when something as majestic as a dragon is rendered in such a cartoon style, it’s impossible not to understand the lighthearted and fantasy setting that they were setting out to achieve (and did achieve, by my account at least).

Of course, that’s just the physical. While they accomplish their roles there very well, when it comes to the other aspects of their character they seem to fail. Bob and Bub don’t have a past other then “we’re dragons, we’re going on an adventure to defeat monsters.” No explanation as to why. Why do they need to defeat monsters? Why are there monsters? Why can they shoot bubbles? Was fire too good for them or something? Is it possible that they know they’re just PC’s in a game? And my question: Is that so bad?

They are characters born in a different era. An era of skill and points and quarters. People playing a game in an arcade – or just at the machine in the local pizzeria – didn’t have time to follow the adventures of some blond mercenary with a giant sword and a sorted past of dopplegangerism. All they needed was, “President Harry has been kidnapped. Are you a bad enough dude to get him back?” and then you got right to the punching and finding out. And then 3 lives later you ate your pizza and went on with your day. It was a short engagement mentality which followed on to the early home consoles. The only strange part about this was the fact that the lives system followed. Lives were something to keep people plugging in quarters, but when you’re at home it’s free to play. (If anything, this makes me question why people are bugging about the “hand up” system in the latest Prince of Persia game. It seems to me that it’s actually finally accepting something that’s been needed for a long time.) But it’s not like the new home setting required more story telling. “Bowser stole the princess. Get her back,” is a story that got inumerous people through 8 worlds of simple running and jumping and in fact instilled exhilaration into them when they finally rescued the princess. And then they went on with their lives. If you want to fill a game with character development and plot, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just importaint to remember that  a game doesn’t need that. Books and movies do need that, but games don’t. As long as they’re fun to play, they can succeed regardless of story.

Bob and Bub are out to defeat the monsters, and the evil wizard who seems to be behind them all. Just the fact that they’re the characters and are the ones doing all the monster popping tells me that they’re characters of strong will with a sense of morality that leads them without failing them. To me, that’s more then engaging enough to make me want to help these guys defeat that wizard.

While I’ve just said that to fill their roles Bob and Bub don’t need to be deep characters, let’s continue this analysis by trying to figure out how they fall on the Big Five matrix. Because the given information about them is so limited (we’re not explicitly given anything except for “it’s adventure time to the cave of monsters.”), most of it is going to be either inferred or speculated or plain old made up through my views of them, as I am the one doing the analysis. Still, let’s see what happens.

Openness: If they are as steadfast to their morals that “the wizard is evil, we stand for good, we are the protectors of the land from evil.” then I can’t imagine these two to be to open. Not to say that they’re mean or unkind creatures, just that their world exists in terms of black and white, good and evil. For the simplicity of the game, I’m actually able to accept that as their world very well. Just means they’re not going to be open at all. But such openness just doesn’t exist in their world.

Conscientiousness: From the point of dependableness, I suppose that depends on how you play. The farther you manage to get through the game, the more dependable you are. But considering that through all the levels they leave food lying all over the floor and then will eat it without a second thought…it doesn’t say much for their organization, or cleanliness for that matter.

Extroversion: From the friendly noises they make throughout their games, I’d be willing to believe Bob and Bub are extroverted creatures. Kind and friendly, willing to do things for the good of everyone, they take this adventure together. In Bubble Bobble 2 there even bring two more dragons along for the adventure. This could be a fallacy, however, because we don’t see how the dragons interact with the rest of the non-monster populace. It’s possible dragons stick to themselves and they only went on this because the terrified populace had to seek them out. Once they found them they were nice and went on this quest, of course. But at least among dragons they seem to be extroverted, even if the dragon race is somewhat aloof.

Agreeableness: Bob and Bub are quite possibly the most agreeable creatures known to man. Always friendly, willing to help, doing their best to never be mean or critical, and possibly even being gullible to some extent.

Neuroticism: While it take a very large amount of stress to make these dragons crack, they have been shown in some of their games to be in situations with characters who make them cautious, even to the point of freaking out at times. We could actually take this back and have it be a argument for introversion, as the only thing shown to make Bob and Bub falter is when they meet new non-dragon characters who they are unfamiliar with. It even goes back to openness, as it’s only characters they’re not familiar with that makes them stress out. The only thing to make the hesitate is people who they aren’t familiar with. Other then that, these dragons seem to be in control and completely at ease in all situations that they find commonplace.

I honestly believe that a game doesn’t need characters to be a good game. Game and play are synonymous, not game and story. A good story won’t fix a bad game, but a good game can make a bad story good enough. Although a good game and good story combination is best. However, I think the story much balance the game. If the story starts to overshadow the game, it becomes a question of why even bother expressing your story through a game. Bob and Bub are a good example of story enough story behind a good and fun game.

F*R*A*G: If assholes could fly, this place would be busier then O’Hare.

Effects over time.

The purpose of the experiment was to find the effects on a subject over the proceeding time period. Professor Alan Devair used himslf as the subject, and his observations were recorded and are presented here:

0:01 – Feelin’ fine.

0:06 – Feel a fuzzy sensation on my lower leg. It was just the cat brushing up against me.

0:19 – Feel kind of hungry.

0:20 – Go make a sandwich and eat it. Delicious.

0:25 – Hunger disapates.

0:28 – Consider that I might be recording findings to often. Decided that’s true, and kick off to finish reading a book I’m in the middle of, Dapper Dan’s Dangerous Delivery.

1:34 – Wasn’t that bad of a book. It would be great if it wasn’t fiction, as Dapper Dan seems like an upstanding kinda man.

2:20 – Feel a chill. Upon inspection, find that kitchen window is open. Don’t remember opening it. Close it, and reconsider close scrutiny of events. Decided to Record even more events.

4:37 – Promptly forget. Not just to record things more often, but the entire events of the past two hours and seventeen minutes.

4: 45 – What was that noise?

4:59 – Believe I’m becoming paranoid. Watch TV to try and relax.

5:20 – Vince convinces me to purchase ShamWow’s.

7:12 – I think Wilfred Brimley can see into my soul.

7:30 – Who Wants to be a Millionaire comes on, and fearing that that test on top of my own experiment would put me in double jeopardy, I turn off the TV.

7:33 – Get dizzy. Thinking about Jeopardy made me think of Wheel of Fortune. Decide I’m thinking too much for now and go to sleep.

9:41 – Awoken by breeze from kitchen window. Did I not actually close it before? And how did the breeze reach me across the house? Leave it open this time, but turn up heat.

10:00 – Hours reach double digits point. I eat a cupcake with two candles in it in celebration of this momentous occasion.

10:25 – It occurs to me that I do not own a cat. After a search, no cat is found on the premises.

14:10 – Fold some laundry. It seems stiffer then usual, must be cold in here. Turn up heat.

15:20 – My ShamWow’s arrive. That was fast.

16:00 – Wonder what the world will be like when everything becomes dystopian.

16:05 – Wow, so this is what dystopia is like…

17:10 – I never noticed before how longs my arms are.

17:14 – Begin contemplating moving to Europe so I can use the metric system to record length of arms and have it seem longer then using American measurements.

17:50 – Have allready filled two notebooks with scribbles and note on the best ways to exploit various conversions, measurements, mathematical formulas, and Catholics.

19:12 – I think I just debunked some fundamental principles of economics, quantum physics, and Judaism.

22:04 – Beleive that higher temperatures will make my brain function better. Turn heat up.

22:21 – Notice that the water in the toilet is boiling. Turn heat down.

24:30 – Under the findings of Jim Croce that you cannot hold time in a bottle, begin experiments in holding bullet time in a bottle.

24:56 – I don’t get it! Bullets are held in magazines, and Time IS a magazine! Why doesn’t this work?!

24:59 – Oh, this bottle is already full. Of whiskey.

25:00 – Now that that’s solved *hic* back to experiment.

27:00 – I swear I’m no longer breathing due to use of my diaphragm, but because the walls are expanding and contracting and changing the air pressure of the room forcing air in and out of my lungs.

27:74 – Now I’m pretty sure the entire time space continuum is starting to fuck with me.

30:03 – Dapper Dan shows up. We play some Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

30:31 – Dan throws down his controller in disgust, complaining that my use of sonic is cheap. I kick him in the balls and he leaves whimpering in pain. I am clearly the victor.

37:20 – I, Victor, champion and ruler of the realm, put out this decree over my lands: I demand cookies! BWAHAHAHA!!

45: 44 – My throne buzzes loudly and I realize I’ve been sitting on the washing machine. I come back from my imaginary realm, but promise the populace I will return to lead them one day.
50:01 – That goddamn cat is back. He’s in the kitchen. But I’ve got his number. I’m not going to look into or listen to the kitchen, to be sure I never have proof of his presence or absence. He will dissolve into a pool of quantum indecision.

50:15 – I’m not sure if my theory to get rid of the cat is entirely correct, so I refer to my notes from [17:50]. The books are filled with all of the lyrics to the Red Hot Chili Peppers discography. They do not backup or dissuade my fears.

64:12 – Hunger returns.

0:20 – With the line between reality and memory blurring, instead of making a new sandwich I relive eating the sandwich I had earlier. Still delicious.

64:15 – Hunger dissipates.

October 2nd, 1872 – ‘Very well, then. What time do you make it?’ ‘Eleven twenty-two,’ replied Passepartout, pulling an enormous silver watch from the depths of his waistcoat pocket. ‘Your watch is slow.’ ‘Pardon me, sir, but that’s impossible.’ ‘You’re four minutes slow. It is of no consequence. What matters is to note the difference. So, starting from this moment, 11.29 a.m. on Wednesday, 2 October 1872, you are in my employ.’ Whereupon Phileas Fogg got up, took his hat in his left hand, placed it on his head with the action of an automaton, and vanished without uttering another word.

77:07 – Does my face look pale to you?

78:49 – I’ve given up. All that which I had once found to be sure and truthful have turned against me.My paranoia is true, my works are meaningless. Life is a dream, and I am become death.

79:40 – I’m going to go lie down in the snow in my room. I guess my room is aspen now.

The records of the experiment end here. The Professor Devair was dissapeared from his apartment sometime after the last observation, and has not been seen since. The signs of his last actions are a number of opened but still full cans of cat food placed in animal traps, and the kitchen window is closed and has been shattered. Tatters of his shirt are discarded in front of the window.

These records are to be stored in the archive.

F*R*A*G: Die Hard 3 was a documentary filmed in real time. So was Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

Pots and kettles Re: Blackness

So I was thinking of starting with a musing over how seeing my friends be productive really motivates me to be productive, but that rolls into reasons for motivation, who and what I consider friends and that could get me in trouble because I’m at that point of being tired where I think and say things that get me in trouble.  So instead, here’s a character introductary monolouge that I’ve had in my head for the past few days.

My name is Dominic VonWurstmer. I am an esteemed werewolf hunter, as was my father, his father before him, and so on. For 12 generations my bloodline has protected this land from the scourge of the werewolf. Vile monsters, the spawn of  demon dogs from  many eons ago. Twisting men into their own dark form and hordes, these creatures must be stoped. Removed from this plane. Destroied. This is the duty that falls upon my own hands. However, unlike my forefathers, I have also established myself as a renowned vampire hunter. No specific reasons, I just fucking hate vampires.

Eh, it’s something. And then the step after this is to take clips from the Twilight movie and lay the Symphony of the Night dialogue over it. I would be filled with the utmost joy to see Bella scream at Edward “DIE MONSTER. YOU DON’T BELONG IN THIS WORLD!”

—

So I got home today (what with the fall semester of college over) and instead of setting up here and anticipating some grove to get into while I’m here on break, I broke out the old snes and just started playing games. It’s odd. I never really forget that these are the games from which I come. You go through them, and I think you begin to see where parts of me come from. Megaman X, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Tiny Toons Adventures: Buster Busts Loose, Nigel Mansen’s World Championship, Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow, Donkey Kong Country.

I fucking hate Donkey Kong Country. I don’t even know why. Something about the sounds, and the colors, and the way everything is rendered, and the animals chosen for the powerups, and the weird way that everything is slightly echo-y, and…I really can’t explain it. It’s not like it’s a bad game…it’s fun, but I just hate it. And the way in which I hate it is kinda the way in which I love Space Ghost. The color and sounds and bizzare “good for the time but seemingly hacked together now” kind of…meh. Or maybe like the Moxie Show. I don’t know, a lot of stuff from the 1995ish era has this kind of effect on me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain it. But if you put DKC next to SGC2C …you can draw no freaking conclusions. Look, I’ll do it now:

See!?! One I like, one I hate. And I bet it’s opposite of what the populace says. That’s why I’ve always considered myself the exception to the rules.

Phew.

Point was, is that these old games are haaaarrrrdddd. People who know me know what I’m like with games. I can beat them. I’m good at them. But I come back to these classics of mine, and I find myself getting stuck at the same points I would get stuck o those many years ago.I know it’s the same spots because I can remember them. Vividly. Now, this seems to say a few things. One, like I said, games back then were harder. Two, all my skills were developed at an early age. Three, which I think I can extend this into a whole point, but older games were givining you more for your money’s worth. I was Playing Ninja Gaiden II the other night (the 360 one) and I was smashing my head against the wall in a few places. But honestly, the amount of head smashing is a lot higher for these older games I’ve come home too. Just time and challenge wise, they demand more out of you, and so I think over all they’re going to increase your skills more when you finally get them beat. Simpler mechanics, but bigger challenges maybe? It’s like learning to juggle 6 balls or just 3 chainsaws. That’s kinda the choice. Or I’m just saying random words now. I think it has more to say about why I look for what I do in games. I’m a person who will look for challenges in games…as opposed to people who look for content, or social interation. There’s numerous reason to play games, and many things you could be looking for in games. But I come from a world of Mega Men and X’s, so I think it’s a good game if there’s a series of platforms with you on one side and the goal on the other. And if you hand me a large sprawling world with things to explore, I lose interest after a couple of hours. It’s just a matter of what I’ve come to expect from games.

*Yawn* ah well. I put my head back to the whetstone in the morning. For now, sleep is good. Always good.

F*R*A*G: Why am I like a large peice of furniture made out of a crocodile? Because I’m a snappy dresser.