RPG Articles

So, the other day, a client wanted to know more about gmail. I was excited, since gmail is pretty awesome. So I’m showing her how to use labels and the general flow of things, all in my personal account mind you, then I start showing the affiliated bits, like the calendar. Then I click on google docs, wherein I have a document titled “Don’t stare at her tits”. You never know how someone is going to react, so I “accidentally” closed that tab, and we signed her up for her own account so that she can write embarrassing titles to her own docs.

That, dear friends, is why I don’t normally access my deliberately personal accounts in front of clients.

I read a lot. Most of it is, to be kind, unimportant. A while back I was reading/listening to the Deathlands series. It’s set roughly 100 years after a nuclear war, primarily between the US and the USSR. It’s pulpy, but really fun. Towards the end of book two it starts to play the rough patriotism card, but reigns it in before starting to make me discard it. I had just finished the Graphic Audio version of number 18. While waiting for 19, I decided to try Doomsday Warrior, which is from the same publisher.

After only a few minutes I sensed this may have been a mistake. Let’s review what you need in an atomic apocalypse story.

1)Very few survivors, at least per place. Small population centers.

2)Poor communications. Telcos gone, radios very few and far between. Add a lack of trust and you’re off to the races.

3)Mutants of some kind, preferably somewhat believable. Rather, believable enough for what, really, is cheap entertainment.

4)General breakdown in knowledge.

That’s kind of it, I think. Aside from that you just need good writing, like any story. Let’s examine this one.

The main hero is Tom Rockson. I shit you not, his name is Rockson. He is described as being “The ultimate American”. So, that’s a red flag. Next is that while it’s indicated that 2/3rds of the world’s population, and that most of that was the flattening of the US. 100 million during the attack, 75 million within the year. Looking at census data, it seems that the population in 84, when this was written, was about 235 million. So, fine, so far so few. Could probably be less initial survivors, you know, but whatever. Now we get to hear how the Soviets “won” because they had advanced missile killers. I know, I know, the Cold War had everyone worried, but seriously. Ok, we’ll let that slide. Oh, the other thing is that the intro here describes all the main players and lays out their motivations, which is a bad sign of explainitis. Anyway. The Russians build 40 fortresses, for some reason, and take over. One minute we’re told that 90% of plants and animals are extinct, but then we’re told about mutant animals, and forests. Turns out that there’s “free cities” left, built on the edge of radioactive hot zones, which house the last AMERICANSFUCKYEAH people. 75 of the fuckers, with 1000 to 40000 people each. Living next to hell pits. Riiiiight. Described as “fiercely democratic”, and natural selection has made them 10 times more resistant to radiation, plus they use Spartan style child selection. More on that in a minute. So already we’ve broken some guidelines, in that we have a lot, like a lot a lot, of people working together with a fair amount of communication somehow.

About this rad resistance business. Ok, fine, it’s not too ludicrous to be in a story, though if you were to amplify my radiation resistance ten fold there’s still no way I could live in fallout, but we’ll let that slide for now. Having that and roughly a million people is pushing it pretty far though. Now, apparently these super democrats also put their children out into the night, where they have to survive 20 below temperatures. Yeah. This would totally allow you a population of roughly a million.

Then you get some other crap explained to you. Like the white markings on the radiation resistant generation. If I recall accurately, I’m picking this post up from an old draft, Tom there had…. STARS!! That’s right, he’s so patriotic he’s covered in stars. Jesus wept.

Finally we get to his hometown, which was built into a mountain by the survivors of some people stuck in a roadway tunnel that had the entrances collapsed during the nuclear strike. That’s right, people stuck in gridlock then trapped in a radioactive tomb survived long enough to build a city in a mountain. He wanders into this place, naturally the most advanced of the free cities, and eventually wanders into the gym, where his “She’s totally not my girlfriend, but hot sex friend” is sparring with a martial arts instructor. Not only did they survive to build a city, but they apparently had a strong kung-fu tradition to hand down. The lady eventually gets her ass handed to her, then Tom and the teacher throw down, ending in a draw, because the woman can’t be better than him, and neither can some random Chinese guy.

Sometime around then they talk about the weapons of these free cities. Instead of knocking off a million AKs or M16s, they created their own gun design, which is better than the Russian’s arms, and manage to churn out by the thousands.

So, effectively, within like 20 pages, the story as set means the Russians have lost. There is no feasible way for them to hold the region, and in fact it won’t even be a struggle, relatively speaking.

Then there’s the icing. The evil Soviets have a machine that erase your personality and imprint you with good commie thoughts. They bring one of the test subjects in to parade in front of some higher up and he starts asking if she would do this or that or the other thing. All in the affirmative. Then he asks if she would kill Tom Rockson, I believe even calling him The Ultimate American, and she starts screaming. Then she dies. Not just says “I dunno, he’s hunky” or passes out, but flat out dies.

I stopped reading about three pages beyond that, when the horror caught up to my brain.

Why is it that, after this long to imitate your competitors, indeed your betters, updates are still so awful?

So yeah. It seems there’s an old type of scammer/beggar being reintroduced into the wild. The “desperately need gas money to get home” girl.

First I was at Wal-Mart, and a lady materializes behind me to give me some sob story about how she’s out of gas, has a screw in her tire, and her sister won’t get off work for like six hours. Caught flat footed I just sort of stared at her for a minute, then the ruthless machine of the mind took over, processing how likely it is someone would drive to a store, apparently to buy nothing judging from the total lack of bags, when the gauge is on vapor. I felt kind of bad for her, but the overall evidence lead me to the ol’ negatory response and I went my way. As I got in my car I saw that somebody apparently bought her act because they were going inside, presumably for cash, and she was following them with this look on her face that’s tough to convey.

She was looking down, and had this grin, this entire face expression really, that just screamed “Hah, got you chumps”. It was unsettling. The next day I was thinking I may have been wrong, people are often pretty stupid, maybe driving to the store is a religious ritual or whatever. I stopped by Fred Meyer’s to deposit a check, and there she was. Same clothes, with what I can only call a meth-hulk in tow, spinning me some story about how her car broke down and they need a ride to the MAX station.

So yeah, good times.

That was a few days ago. Today I stopped at the same place to deposit some more checks, and lo’, an all different girl is begging people for “gas” money.

Sigh.

I picked this up at the library because it was regular paperback sized. I truly expected nothing, but was rewarded for my moment of whimsy.

The story borders on the incoherent at times, but it’s fun. My only real complaints are that the flow of time feels incredibly halfassed in parts, causing the relationships between characters to have a very accelerated feeling, and there’s a couple moments where she tries to batter you with sentiments that have only formed in the crudest manner. An example. One of the crew she ends up with is an alien, who looks very human, and it turns out that his race was rendered incapable of aggression, by humans during a conflict, which, for some reason, caused us to build up this system of master and slave wherein each of them is basically adopted by a human. It’s a pretty weak concept already, but whatever, I’ve let Star Trek get away with worse. The thing that got me was this sequence where she saves his life, becoming his de-facto (is that supposed to be hyphenated??) master, then basically orders him to do whatever he wants, then he dies, choosing to save the pilot’s life. Yes, very touching. Except we never get to know anything about him beyond this stupid story point, which is there SOLELY to add a sap layer. There’s about 5 lines of interaction between him and anyone, all of them sort of vapid or bitchy. That one was the worst. What made it extra bad is that it came on the heels of another one, which I’ll go ahead and tell you about. They picked up this alien baby, from an amphibian race, and it nursed on this synthesized feed goo pasted onto people’s chests. It was cute, added the possibility for some warmth, even toed into that warmth a smidge, but wasn’t overbearing, wasn’t a look at me monkey. Then an evil scientist, which has the baby at that point, shoots the pilot with a disruptor beam, aka the turn that into meatloaf ray, hitting him in the arm. The heroine tussles with him, getting the gun, then… blasts him in the chest, doing lord knows what to the baby alien. At this point she left my mind as a hero in the rough, launching herself in that much lauded territory of being The Retarded Bitch What Shot A Baby. Seriously now, there was no reason to not shoot the bad guy in the head, pelvis, stomach, legs even, or whatever. It was an obviously calculated move to allow her to whinge about how she’s a terrible bigot and whatever. She isn’t, she’s just stupid, which is kind of worse, and sort of shadowed the character, for me, the entire rest of the story.

Don’t let those negatives throw you, however, not everything can be gold, especially on a first novel, and the book definitely has merit. The characters aren’t groundbreaking, but they’re fairly well done, and the central character is caustic, flawed, and self aware enough to be interesting. Plus the overall universe is good. I’d have to say it feels like a warm-up to what should be a great sequel.

Huh. Apparently there’s already a sequel. Let’s hope she doesn’t feel so rushed this time.

I damned near forgot to talk about this, but I happened to be downtown during the end of the marathon, so I killed some time by watching people finish it. Two memories stand out starkly; a guy who had large trails of blood on his shirt, originating from the nipples, and an assclown yelling at people to suck it up and how they’d never be NAVY SEALS by God. He was charming.

So, let’s just put this out there, I don’t enjoy reading Dick’s stories. After a lifetime of Twilight Zone and good stories his stories typically just anger me. I know, he was an important voice and did important things for sci-fi, but everything of his that I read was just… well… crap. He often insists on using a ton of dialogue, but never bothers to develop separate voices, so it’s like listening to carbon copies talk. Then there’s the BIG TWIST, which, for me, has almost no intellectual or emotional impact at all, so it leaves me wondering why bother.

The flipside is that I think it’s good to read things for their critical value, even if you don’t like them, even if they’re demonstrably bad. Like Lord of the Flies. As a story it’s terrible, as a depiction of the British world view, and the view of at least some of its citizens, it’s priceless.

So I picked this up at the library. It’s really rather enjoyable, I’m happy to say, both as a story and as a captured collection of viewpoints. Don’t read the back cover though, whomever wrote that must have just skimmed the book. The essential crux of the story is that of the Soviet/USA cold war dragging on so long that it’s become a culture unto itself, with weapon designers being the new fashion moguls. It’s a tough story to write, and at times that certainly shows, but worth reading.

Comparing this to the handful of short stories and other books of his that I’ve read, I think that what causes me to so strongly dislike his stories, typically, is because he was incredibly lazy. He makes wild leaps with no foundation, and instead of demonstrating what he wants to show you, he has a pair of clones describe it to each other. This book manages to largely avoid that, though sometimes just barely.

Go, read it, or tell me why I’m wrong.

and sick, and I don’t want to deal with Outlook anymore.

These all have something insane in common, they can only open pst files that are 2GB or less, but they’ll write those files until well over that limit. So the next time Outlook opens it just sort of spazzes out.

Fun yes?

There’s a tool to truncate the file, from MicroSoft, but it doesn’t seem to follow any sane pattern or allow you any kind of selectivity.

Definitely fun. The only options from here are to change mail clients (I suggest Thunderbird) or upgrade to a later version of Outlook. I don’t suggest that because then you’ll still be using Outlook.

Loose and lose are totally different words.

Learn contractions, and I don’t mean the cervical spasms your truckerspawn generates.

I’m not saying everyone should be a master of the language, but the basics are so… basic.

Take this terror for example. For the benefit of those who look after that craigslist ad is gone, here are the highlights-

IT professional (South Subarbs)

Desktop support, maintaing and servicing several servers…

There is no way this didn’t light up the ol’ spellchecker buddy, and if you’re the go to guy for placing ads I don’t want to imagine the rest of the people that work there.

Sheesh.