May the 4th Be With You!

Ahh, it's that one day of the year when us Star Wars geeks get really annoying and think we're cute!  Given the day, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the current state of Star Wars for myself.

Personally, I'm fascinated by the current era of Star Wars, but for all the wrong reasons.  I like digging into politics and management stories, especially when they fail, and the behind-the-scenes stuff on Lucasfilm lately has read like a disaster investigation, but for management.  It seems the power-struggle is, in fact, still on-going, with some weird (shady?) things going on in the background.

So it should come as no surprise that the Star Wars community is, shall we say, pretty divided over the current state of Star Wars.  One common refrain I hear is "Star Wars is dead to me."  I think that's a mistake.  It's certainly not dead for me. In a lot of ways, Star Wars is more alive for me than it has ever been before.  To my ear, that refrain sounds like when a new edition of an RPG comes out, and you dislike it, so you throw out all your old books.  The old works are still around. Just because you don't like the new stuff doesn't mean the old stuff got retroactively worse.

I will never be the guy who tells you to like something out of brand loyalty.  I think if you didn't like the Last Jedi or Rise of Skywalker or anything that's come from Kathleen Kennedy's Lucasfilm, that's your right, and you should acknowledge your experience.  There is an entire world of interesting space opera and pulp adventures that I can recommend to you instead.  But at the same time, I don't think you should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I've really enjoyed the Mandalorian.  I've really enjoyed Rebels.  I've really enjoyed Clone Wars, and its latest season (with the exception of one episode which, while fun, you could have missed and not realized you had done so; for the "last season ever," I don't think you have room to waste on a literal filler episode; the fact that you're spending time on money on a wasted episode makes the episodes or moment you didn't do but could have seem all the more galling).  Jedi: Fallen Order is actually really good!  I'm actually increasingly curious about the other Streaming Star Wars offerings.

But for me, what's really jumped out at me hasn't been the galaxy of the future, but the galaxy of long, long ago.  As a kid, I had skipped the EU as bad knock-off of the real thing. This was a mistake.  It's got some great stuff! I've been hunting for "space opera pulp that feels like Star Wars, but isn't the familiar Star Wars" and it turns out what I was looking for was... Star Wars!  A lot of the Old Republic stuff is especially good.  I've gone through the Dawn of the Jedi, the Old Republic Comics (including, especially, the Knight of the Old Republic comic, which is some of the best stuff I've read, even if the art has varied wildly in quality over that series).  I finally sat down and beat KOTOR (I'm still trying to get through KOTOR2, which I suspect I'll enjoy more, but I keep running into technical difficulties) and while Star Wars: the Old Republic is held back by its insistence on copying Warcraft mechanics, the stories in it, and the worlds it shows you, are magnificent.

I think what writing Psi-Wars has helped me do is liberate my mind from the confines of the original trilogy and get a better feel for what Lucas was trying to do in the first place.  When I was a kid, a lot of my friends liked West End Games Star Wars, but for me, back in the early 90s, it was too bound to the trilogy.  All you could be were knock-off characters of the trilogy, and all you could do were knock-off things of the trilogy. The trilogy dominated everything and it was hard to figure out how to be creative.

But now that I've explored what inspired Star Wars to begin with and seen other people dive into new and interesting directions in Star Wars (especially in the Old Republic, the Prequels, Clone Wars and Rebels), and now that I've done it myself with Psi-Wars, I think I could do it with Star Wars.  If I were pressed to run a Star Wars RPG, I could easily whip up an innovative set of star systems with unique cultures and underworlds and exciting new bounty hunters or criminal cartels, and create a totally new Star Wars adventure.  Or I could draw on the broader material of Star Wars.  The ideal would be a synthesis of both: the familiar (to remind you that it's Star Wars) interwoven with the novel (to keep you from being bored). Given a choice, I'd rather run Psi-Wars, but mostly for similar reasons that I prefer DF over D&D: I like how GURPS runs, and I feel like I have more explicit freedom from my players when I'm running "my own thing." But I could do Star Wars, which is something I couldn't really do before.

So I suppose, in the End, I'm pretty okay with the current world of Star Wars. Sure, a lot of stuff is burning down right now, but that's often what it looks like when an era is ending.  The Star Wars community is passionate, which means passions run high, but at the end of the day, you can go to marvel streaming comics and get every Star Wars comic ever released (or close to). You have an unbelievable amount of Star Wars available to you at your fingertips on Disney+.  You have a ton of Star Wars games that go on sale every May the 4th every year. And if you tire of official Star Wars, I can show you dozens of interesting settings and worlds that will scratch that space opera itch.  It's a bumpy ride, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a ton of stuff to enjoy. You just might need to leave the guided tour to find a lot of it.

Presenting River Layne Dover

River was born on the 11th of April at 11:30 pm, showing up 30 minutes before her due date.

If you notice a slow down in posting, this is why.  I've been busy helping my tired wife with our rambunctious two-year-old and our tiny new daughter, as well as recovering.  I have the next two weeks off from work, but I'm really not sure how much time, if any, will be available for writing.

Thank you for your patience.

On the Demise of Star Wars

"You were the chosen one"? Or maybe "Strike me down
and I shall only become stronger."

Forgive the provocative title.  My part of the internet bubble churns with much rage at the current incarnation of Star Wars, and especially at Kathleen Kennedy, at whose feet the perceived "Ruined Forever!" has been laid.  There is much angst and schadenfreude over the failure of Solo, but Solo is the crux of what inspired me to write this, as it's the first Star Wars movie in a long time that wasn't an instant "yes," though not the first Star Wars product in a long time that I had looked forward to, and then changed my mind about.

Then I put this post on ice, because I hesitate to post anything that sounds remotely political in this day and age as discourse is getting extremely divisive and it's hard to please both sides (and there are sides here) when you say anything, and because I have better things I should be putting my attention towards (the next post is almost done, I promise!). But as news continues to evolve and the corporate narrative of "a few disgruntled trolls vs the Last Jedi" explodes to reveal that the Star Wars franchise is Not Okay, I wanted to get my two cents in, especially given how my blog seems to eat, drink and breath Star Wars.

I hope you forgive this opinion piece.

Heads up: A wedding

Let me interrupt my GURPS stuff for just a second to let you know that I'm getting married tomorrow.  Thus, I'll be quite slow in responding to comments.  For example, I know that some of the robot templates posted today are wrong (especially in light of my modifications posts from last week).  I'd even fix them, but I just don't have time right now.

Anyway, enjoy, and I'll get back to you guys when I can.

A New Years Resolution

A New Years Resolution

Blogging is powerful.  I began blogging in earnest professionally, because noting a software technique helped me remember it, and documenting it publicly meant others could use it.  By serving others, I served myself.  But I have also learned that being forced to produce material by a deadline is an excellent way to teach yourself something, and a way to get yourself to finish what you started.

And so, last year, I set a goal for myself to finish up all of my GURPS material that I had lying around, and to publish it in weekly blog posts, to gain the habit of regularly blogging, and today, I kick off the result of that year's worth of labor.  I simply enjoy GURPS, so diving deeply into that topic will be fun for me and will help me build this useful habit.  Next year, I might turn that habit around and put it back into programming, or perhaps I'll expand it into full publications.

So, here's the plan, my few and faithful followers: Every Wednesday of this year, I will make a GURPS blog-post. That's 52 GURPS blog-posts!  This isn't some off-the-cuff New Year's Resolution. I've already worked most of the material out, though it isn't completely finished, I'm afraid, but that's part of the nature of this resolution: Publicly making this promise means I'll revisit it enough to polish it and hand it to you, dear reader.

I also believe it's easier to blog when you've already written the content, so I have written some of my blog-posts in advance.  I already have the first 4 blog posts ready to go, and the first will be up on the 6th of this month.  My topics will include, but are not limited to:

Psi-Wars: An obvious knock-off of Star Wars, a ready-made setting that you can jump right into.  The intent of this series is to create, before your very eyes, a rapidly prototyped setting inspired by a popular franchise. When this series is finished, I hope that in addition to you having your own "It's totally not Star Wars" setting to play with, you'll have an idea of how to go about rapidly prototyping your own "It's totally not Warhammer 40k" or "It's totally not the Lord of the Rings" or whatever else it is that you particularly enjoy.

Cherry Blossom Rain: The famous chambara campaign that my players still won't shut up about.  It'll include a discussion on my design notes, a description of the setting and why I built it the way I did, fully-developed chi powers, templates, and a discussion on how to customize martial arts to get the experience that you want.

GURPS Cabal: Extensive notes on spirits and demons, words of power, template conversions from 3e, historical research and comments on how to run it, and discussions of useful books to help you get started on the path of consulting occultist.

Heroes of the Galactic Frontier: An extensive campaign framework, including templates, rules for running, aliens, starships, civilizations and technology, all for your TL 12^ heroic captain-and-crew gameplay, inspired by works like Star Trek, Farscape, FTL, Masters of Orion, Star Control, Quintet, Artemis Bridge Simulator, EVE, and Endless Space, and many more.

This is the stuff I have prepared.  We'll have to see how far I get, what I can finish off and what I cannot, as I suspect that I have more material than I can unveil in a year.  I hope my results delight you, dear reader, and reward your faithfulness, and I look forward to hearing from you in the comments.

In the meantime, if you just can't get enough Mailanka, feel free to peruse my blog.  There's lots of GURPS material under the GURPS tag.  Have fun!

2010

Happy New Year!

Sorry it took me so long to wish you that. I had a rough night last night ^_^

As usual for this time of the year, I went to a friends house, enjoyed a good meal and good company, and watched Eindhoven light up. They shoot off fireworks here, and we had a chance to look over the town from a high rise. Colors burst over the whole city, and a surreal mist blurred the lines of all the streets. They had this particularly cool firework which fired off submunitions which fired off more submunitions until they all burst in this entire cloud of light. It was amazing.

I don't believe in resolutions, mainly because I'm always coming up with things I want to do all throughout the year, so there's no particular reason to make plans on this exact day. Still, it makes me think. I remember ten years ago, standing outside of Ron's house while friends played with fireworks, wondering where I would be ten years from there. Where am I? A published author returning to school with a wife and my own house in Europe, with a second language officially under my belt. I guess I have a reason to be proud.

But where will we be ten years from now? I fully expect we'll hit TL 9 by 2020. I kinda wonder what the big technological change will be. I already knew about the internet and the advance of computers in 2000, but I never expected the swift and amazing rise of mobile phones. What's the next big black swan? Aerospace? Biotech? Quantum computers? And I can only expect and hope that the economy will improve greatly by then (though we'll still be complaining about it by then). I want to have my degree by then, and I can only hope I'll be blessed with a child.

So, a great ten years to look forward to, I think

Wuxia Weekend

So, I finally got everyone together and had them watch a bunch of Kung Fu movies. We managed to get through Forbidden Kingdom and Red Cliff before exhaustion swept over everyone (Red Cliff is a great movie, but heavy), and we had to quit. Also, I was too sick to cook, so we had to order out. Even so, I managed to pull it off, and I'm very pleased. It's fun to organize a party and have it go without a hitch.

And next came the WotG invitations. I actually have someone who rightfully doesn't have time to join us seriously considering it. I'll know soon enough, I'm sure. Mission accomplished.

On a related note, I had struggled for awhile to know what my story was "about." In general, I know I need a "trick," something that makes the story fun. In this case, it would be three different courts and lots of social interaction, with a solid dollop of the Great Game. But I also generally need a "twist," a cool thing that happens at the climax that shifts the tone of the game and immediately points to where the game is going, and explains why everything just turned up a notch. I had nothing for a very long time, until after Wuxia Weekend, the thought finally hit me: If some of the kewl new Wuxia can steal from Shakespeare, why can't I? Ironically, this thought had nothing to do with Wuxia Weekend itself, but with movies I didn't even actually show.

^_^

Thanksgiving 2009

When I first came to the Netherlands, I quickly began to miss many of the wonderful things of home, and few more than Thanksgiving. There's something wonderful about sitting at a table with friends and family, and getting completely stuffed on wonderful home cooking. I mean, there are other, better holidays out there, but the Netherlands celebrates them too. But Thanksgiving is uniquely American, and I missed it.

Well, Bee couldn't let her pooh be said in November, so she made it her mission to bring me Thanksgiving, and we've celebrated it every year, and our friends always pester us to know when they'll be receiving their invitation.

Bee always does the turkey, and she's managed to roast it every year with stuffing, and never undercook it or dry it out. She wraps it in bacon, and after it's done cooking, we take all the bacon/turkey grease, and make a great gravy out of it (with chicken broth, garlic and lots of black pepper). I've added candied yams to the list, which went over very well this year, and macaroni and cheese at the request of a friend. Bee finally mastered jello salad, and I quit enjoyed it myself. We also had mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, coleslaw, stuffing, and cranberry sauce.

For desert, home made pumpkin pie (again, all Bee), homemade chocolate cake (Bee) and apple pie (store bought, alas).

So here's some shots of pretty food, friends and family: