Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
Author: Frylock
Robert E. Bodine, Esq. is an attorney in Virginia focusing his practice on real estate and intellectual property law. He is one of the founding members of the Gamers’ Syndicate, a Washington, DC-based gaming club. He was the author of the Loremaster.org article series, Protection from Chaos, dealing with intellectual property law matters as they relate to the gaming industry, and has represented several game designers on intellectual property matters. You can follow him on Twitter @RobertEBodine for politics, @PropertyAtty for legal matters, @GSLLC for gaming matters, and if you’re a sports fan, @MMADork.
Another day, another celebrity death. Today, it’s Teri Garr.
I never understood the concern for celebrity deaths. If you don’t know someone, their only value to you is the work they’ve done, whether in film, TV, music, or whatever. Everything they’ve done is still available to you. Sure, if they die young, then you know your’re missing out on what could have been, but that’s a selfish interest, not a concern for the celebrity in question. I have more to worry about than people who, because I don’t know them, can easily be replaced to the extent they affect my life. What do I have to worry about?
Towers 3 and 4 on the left were my home for 4-1/2 of 5-1/2 years in Chicago.
This weekend in Chicago was great. It really was. It was filled with nostalgia from my law school days, and allowed me to catch up with great friends. I saw the Commanders beat the Bears in improbable fashion while within enemy territory. However, there were almost as many discussions about bad news as there were discussions about good news. We discussed friends who’ve cut off contact presumably because of depression; friends who have had recent or current, serious health issues; and friends that have died. Not people I’ve heard of, but friends. Quite a few of them. People with whom I’ve dined, drank, and paintballed. One I should have married.
At my age (56), someone in my life dies every four months or so. The last one was July 16, which means November 16 is about when I should expect the next one to go. This weekend reminded me of that. That’s why celebrity deaths don’t bother me very much.
FYI, I’ve updated my (modest) 4e resources page. It includes support for the Masterplan campaign manager. For those that don’t know, some guy (a pro software engineer) built a campaign manager for 4e and left it on GitHub for all to use. It’s a great tool. The glaring problem it has is that some of the monster files cause the application to crash if you try to open them. (A good example are several of the hobgoblin files from the Monster Manual.) Well, I’ve fixed a lot of those. I can’t say whether I’ve fixed even half of the issues, but I’ve made a ton of progress. I’ve also updated a lot of the stat blocks to Monster Manual 3 format. My edited libraries are available on that page.
In addition, I ran convention in 2010 and 2011 (synDCon), and one of the events I created was a dungeon delve we called synDClash. These were common in cons. All combat. Just try to finish three combat encounters in 45 minutes. Rather than have only one adventure that people would have to play over and over again, I created six, each based on a classic 1e adventure. (In hindsight, I wish I had added “Revisiting the Mountain” or whatever as a homage to S2: White Plume Mountain.) Those files are up there too as separate Masterplan projects.
In other words, there are project files and libraries available for download. Moreover, the character sheets — both the ones used for synDClash and the offline Character Builder versions I created over the past couple days — are linked to there. (Please let me know if the link to my dropbox file works.)
All of this is a work in progress. I’ll continue to create whatever fixes are necessary and update sourcebook stat blocks to Monster Manual 3 format, but if you’re running an in-person 4e game and weren’t aware of Masterplan, you should consider it for tracking initiative, etc. We use it with a big screen TV as our battle map. This was my goofy way of letting everyone know that the set up was ready for what was the upcoming session: Reveal.
If you enjoy this post, there’s something wrong with you.
And now for something really stupid.
New, overpriced Star WarsOreos! Will they be Jedi Oreos or Sith Oreos? Only those dumb enough to pay for the same exact cookie with an intellectual property markup will ever know.
Sorry Not sorry for the naughty word.
Somehow, this video received no copyright strike. Go figure.
I accidentally stumbled across a movie I saw as a kid: C.C. & Company. It came out when I was two, but I saw it a few years later and loved it. It’s memorable to me because 1) Joe Namath plays the main character, and 2) it starts out with a scene where Namath is making lunch in a supermarket. That is, he opens a bag of bread and steals a couple of slices, opens a package of cheese and puts it on the bread, etc. After eating the sandwich he just made, he politely asks an employee where the cupcakes are, and then calmly goes over there and eats one.
What I didn’t know then, and didn’t find out until I re-watched it is that Sid Haig is in it.
A Horror Icon
Wait, that’s not right.
There you go.
Sid Haig threw me a little bit. Some of my friends won’t stop talking about the guy’s impact on horror, but because I don’t like slasher-type horror, I never saw House of 1,000 Corpses. (I assume that movie is of that genre.) As far as I knew, this is the only movie in which I’ve seen him, but looking at his credits, I saw him in THX 1138, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2. Not knowing who he was, I never noticed. I wouldn’t have noticed here if Amazon Prime didn’t display the scene’s cast during the movie.
Review
Anyway, a couple of early scenes of C.C. & Company hold up, but the movie in general? Not so much. It’s one of those movies about a particular subculture (bikers in this case) written by people who I assume don’t know anything about the subculture. It’s also quite dated. If you’ve seen it before and have even vague memories of it, it might be worth a watch. Everyone else my age should be watching Cobra Kai. I finished part one of the new season of Cobra Kai the night it dropped.
On second thought, no one should watch it; it sucked.
It seems like once every two or three months, someone I know dies. This is to be expected; I’m 56. However, some hit harder than others, and this is one of them.
In College Park, MD after the UMD-UVA lacrosse game.
Yesterday my friend, Robert Eugene Merlini, tragically lost his life (other coverage here, here, and here). We were fellow students at Good Counsel High School, which then was in Wheaton, MD. (It’s now located in my home town of Olney, MD.) We both went to the University of Maryland, but we never hung out there. Over 35 years later, Bobby and I reconnected via Facebook.
As an old guy, nostalgia is a big deal to me (see, e.g., my many posts on my return to 1st Edition D&D), and Bobby was very much a part of that. Because of him, I’ve recently been to a Maryland lacrosse game (both of us are/were fans, and I’m a former season ticket holder), hung out at bars, and I went to my first high school football game since I was actually in high school. He also is responsible for reconnecting me to our fellow Good Counsel High School alumni, both on social media and in real life. This was as important to him as it is to me.
After his mother died last year, which hit him pretty hard, he found a bit of joy starting his return to piloting commercial aircraft. He had a gig with American and was recently in Ohio for training. He was well on his way. He once posted to Facebook tagging me and several others as his inner circle who had his back during his tough times and his return to commercial piloting. I’m glad to know that I was able to do my part to help him along his way. I wish he could have regained those wings. He earned them.
Yesterday’s post sucked, so here’s something light-hearted.
I’m stupid.
If you know me, you probably disagree.
“How can you get a physics degree if you’re stupid?” “You’re such an intellectual.” “How stupid can you be if you have a law degree?”
Very. The answer is, “very.” Seriously, have you people never met a lawyer?
But those that really know me would say, “Yeah, he’s stupid . . . in his own way.”
The issue here is one of colloquial semantics that most people reading this blog (i.e., gamers) understand. I’m smart but, in many ways, unwise. But don’t worry. This isn’t a philosophical post. Nope. I’m going to tell you a funny story of how stupid I am.
The 1990s
In 1994, I was working as a contractor at Bolling AFB. Things were different back then. Widespread ownership of a Discman or something like it was relatively new. I finally bought one, and when the headphones wore out, I bought a nice, new pair. The problem with the new pair is that the audio was always too soft for my liking. So, I replaced them, then when the replacements ran out, I just stuck with the “quiet” pair. About a year later, I was on a business trip in Miami, and I finally realized that the headphones had a dial for controlling volume independent of the device I was using.
Now, this isn’t so bad. That sort of dial was a new thing for headphones. Besides, I was in my mid-twenties. Every one is stu . . . errrr, unwise in their twenties, right?
Fast Forward to Today
I bought my house in January, 2022. That’s about 2-1/2 years ago, and by “about,” I mean almost exactly to the day. One thing about the house that’s been super annoying but not worth spending money to fix is that the light fixture in my master bedroom, despite lightbulb changes, has always produced far too little light.
You know where this is going, don’t you?
Last night, I accidentally discovered something.
That small slider to the right of the switch acts as a dimmer, and all it took was 30 months of using the fixture multiple times almost every day for me to discover it.
On May 15, 2024, I adopted two kittens. The boy is Tezcaatlipoca, and the girl is Ishtaar. (The double a’s in their names are intentional misspellings of their mythological namesakes.) I have tons of Caturday posts, including discussing my preparations leading up to the adoption, yet since adopting them, I haven’t posted about them even once to this blog. In fact, I didn’t even post about them to social media until I was (amusingly) scolded for it. I’ve been a bit busy and at times distracted. More on that in a moment. For now, here they are:
Tezcaatlipoca (“Tez”), born 8/1/2023
Ishtaar, born 6/22/2023
Ishtaar, when feeling good, is remarkably social. She always wants to be near me, and usually wants to be on my lap. She’s also remarkably easygoing, accepting whatever circumstances she’s given. Tez is somewhat antisocial. That doesn’t stop him from crying for attention, especially when he feels Ishtaar gets too much of my attention, but if I acquiesce, he usually runs away. Occasionally, he’ll allow me to pet him, but that quickly devolves into a clawing and biting attack. It’s playful, and he can control the intensity of the bites, but he has no such control over his claws, so I often have cuts on my hands. That’s okay, though, because I like playing with cats, and he’s far more active in that regard. Overall, though, they’re both good kitties, just in very different ways.
The Bad News
Ishtaar got (I guess you’d call it) a cold. Lots of sneezing and an eye that eventually swelled shut. It was time for their first vet visit anyway, so I took them to my local vet. Long story short, Ishtaar is very sick. She was running a fever for which she’s on antibiotics, but that’s not necessarily related to the underlying issue. After several less-invasive tests, she had a surgical biopsy last Monday. The results should have come in no later than yesterday (Friday), but I’m still waiting. So, we know she’s sick, but we haven’t even diagnosed her yet.
It’s images like this that convince me she’s not going to make it regardless of what she has. She’s disturbingly thin. If I ran my fingers down your back, I could feel you spine (right before I was arrested), but I couldn’t feel the sides of your spine. There’s “stuff” in the way. Her spine is almost complete exposed, and I can make out her entire skeletal structure by feel. I know she has two kidneys, two lungs, a heart, a small intestines, etc., but I have no idea where she fits them. They must all be so small that they can’t function properly. She has good days and bad days, but her bad days really suck. I’ve had to isolate her because Tez attacks her. This makes matters difficult considering she’s reluctant to eat unless he’s nearby. She actually likes him.
Though I can’t figure out why.
I’m getting her all the care she needs, but if the worst happens, my next question is whether to get a replacement cat. Not only would Tez be bored without a companion, but he needs to learn social skills. It might be helpful to get him a cat that could put him in his place but not be aggressive, simply defensive. That’s a tall order, I suspect.
So, this post became a downer, but this is my current mood.
Last night, I hosted the 7th session of a 4th EditionD&D (“4e“) campaign that’s being run by my friend, Luddite Vic, but is based on a campaign setting that he and I created (still a work in progress). We’ll be alternating DMing duties, so I’ll get to run and play the game. As always, this led to reminiscing about the 4e days. For example, one of the players is almost finished converting Teos’s Ashes of Athas adventures to 5th Edition D&D. The conversations got me thinking (as always). I know that 4e is probably the most maligned edition of the game. It’s accused of not being “real D&D” by those who constantly complain when others say “you’re playing D&D wrong.” The hypocrisy keeps me from caring about that, but the reality is that it wasn’t nearly as popular as the other editions during each edition’s heyday. Nevertheless, for the Washington, DC area, the era of 4e was, as far as I can tell, the golden era of organized play and was the best the TTRPG community was ever organized.
Vic and I were two of the founders of the Gamers’ Syndicate gaming club that boasted about 250 members. With a lot of help from too many people to list here, we organized gamedays every single Saturday at, if I recall correctly, six different sites. We additionally organized and ran Wizard of the Coast‘s Encounters program at some of those sites one weekday a week. We (and Stephen and Cassandra) put on a convention, synDCon for two years. Nevertheless, I realize my experience is ultimately anecdotal, and I haven’t taken any polls to back up these claims, so take this with a grain of salt.
So, during the 4e era, we had two events regularly occurring every week in Chantilly, VA; Woodbridge, VA; Rockville, MD; Ashburn, VA; and some other spots occasionally. Every event had two to six tables of games being run, but we occasionally ran special events (i.e., battle interactives) that doubled the number of tables. (Somewhere out there is an embarrassing video of me being forced to LARP the introductory scene to a battle interactive. LARPs have never been my thing.) I can’t explain how, but we never turned away a single player. If someone showed up without registering, either Vic or I immediately organized another table and ran it ourselves if no one else could. We always organized with that possibility in mind.
What Edition Warriors Don’t Get
Our success came not only through organizing the 4e living campaign, Living Forgotten Realms (“LFR“), but also by including Pathfinder Society, Greyhawk Reborn, Shadowrun Missions, and Heroes of Rokugan living campaigns in our organizing. I even ran my own 4th Edition Gamma World adventure at one weekend gameday. Community interaction exploded even beyond what we experienced for Living Greyhawk, and everyone was happier for it. I don’t think anyone in the DC area brought TTRPG gamers together more than we did, but even after they formed home games from their new connections, these players still showed up to our events. They were just too much fun.
There were a couple other gaming groups nearby with whom we didn’t coordinate at all. We shared members with these groups, so it’s hard to really know who organized more people, but I’d bet good money we organized more events. We were at it literally every weekend for years.
Fast Forward to Today
This isn’t happening nearly as much today as far as I can tell, and if I’m right, there are at least a few reasons I can think of for the waning of these events. First, to a non-negligible extent, gaming is moving online. Face-to-face gaming, while still a majority of gaming, is slowly being chipped away by modern technology. Second, despite all its PR disasters, Wizards of the Coast (“WotC“) still dictates the industry (and by extension, the community) because they have the most valuable TTRPG trademark, Dungeons and Dragons. Because there are more people playing in general, the need for supporting game day organizers, or even game stores, has diminished. It simply makes less fiscal sense to worry about whether people like Vic and I are putting butts into public play seats. To the extent that’s still useful, WotC is going to rely on conventions, not game days, for organized play, and those are neither cheap nor as personal (but see Winter Fantasy hosted by Baldman Games). The Encounters program and the true DM rewards program no longer even exist, so what’s the point of game store gamedays? Third, this has led to a reduction of the number of game stores, at least in the DC area, so there aren’t a lot of affordable places for large crowds to organize. Fourth, and most importantly, I don’t think anyone was willing to work as hard as Vic and I at putting these events together. As I said above, we had a lot of help, and sometimes those people did an admirable amount of work without compensation, but every single one of them would tell you that they weren’t willing to do nearly as much work that Vic and I did. Today, neither of us has time for that, nor do we have the motivation considering WotC‘s approach, but if someone else did, I think the first three causes I mentioned would be rendered moot. Hard work cures almost all that ails us.
Change is Inevitable
It’s really not like this.
This is largely just an old guy rant, but not in the stereotypical way. I’m not angry. In fact, I’m doing great. I’m hosting a 1st Edition D&D game I run, and I’m hosting the 4e game I mentioned above. I’m getting exactly what I want. As for the newer gamers, if they don’t realize what type of an awesome community we had in those days and and are happy because they don’t know what they’re missing, that’s fine too. I do feel bad for my contemporaries from those days that no longer play because what I’m describing is no longer largely available, but ultimately that’s their choice, and if they’re weren’t happy, they’d make another choice. As long as everyone is happy, regardless of what they’re playing or whether they’re playing, all is well, but if they ever ask me, I’ll make it clear to them that it could be better.
As today is the real Star Wars Day and the only one that should be celebrated, I’ll tell you my story. Like all my childhood stories, there’s an element of sadness to it, but only in a “first world problem” sense. It’s not really a downer.
Star Wars: A New Hope was released eight days after my ninth birthday. I didn’t get to see it quickly, as it wasn’t a priority for my parents, and they didn’t want to wait in those ridiculous lines. However, the release was extended due to its popularity, so because they were interested in it themselves, I technically did see it when it was released. Unlike some of you, I don’t remember the exact date, but it was definitely (and obviously) during 1977.
My cousin, Kessel Junkie, and his older brother loved it, but their parents fostered that. They had the bed sheets, toys, etc. So, when it was re-released in the theaters, their parents planned to see it again. The day before, they were over at the house. I had helped out their mother in some way I don’t remember, and she returned me home. She asked me what I wanted in return. I responded, “Take me to see Star Wars.” Knowing how my family would react, I said it with deep and sincere sarcasm in my voice because I never imagined being able to see it in the theater a second time. Well, she enthusiastically responded, “Sure!” She knew that would absolutely pay the debt (so to speak) to me. My mother wasn’t pleased but was in a position where it would be awkward to disallow it. I’d pay for it later, but I didn’t care. So, I actually got to see it twice on the big screen. This was the nicest thing my aunt ever did for me (I don’t mean that as a backhanded compliment), and I always appreciated that.
Foreshadowing!
On Christmas of the year the Empire Strikes Back was released, Kessel Junkie‘s parents got me the novelization for Christmas. It was given to me at the large, extended family Christmas party we had every year, so there was no way to hide it. I immediately started reading it, ignoring the party, but obviously I couldn’t finish the entire novel that night. I was ridiculed every time I picked it up because it was childish (I was fucking 11 years old!), but because that didn’t work, it was confiscated within the week. I never did finish it. I imagine, just like many books, it improved on the story from the movie. I hadn’t thought about this in decades, so maybe I should buy and read it.
This wasn’t really the product of an anti-Star Wars attitude as much as it was just another excuse to crush my spirit, but they did even meaner things with Star Trek, so this had nothing to do with . . .
The “Rivalry”
Star Wars sucks!
“Star Trek >> Star Wars” is a phrase I use more than “My name is Rob,” but as Kessel Junkie will tell you, we’re both fans of both. I just prefer Star Trek, and he prefers Star Wars. But the only Star Wars that doesn’t appeal to me is the animated stuff (for reasons I’ve discussed before) and the Last Jedi (it reminds me too much of the OJ Simpson slow speed chase). Maybe my love of Star Trek is why Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars movie; it has a more Star Trek feel. In any event, don’t take it as an insult to the franchise. Star Wars continues to consistently put out great material, and they even adjust on the fly to cater to what the fans suddenly want to see (e.g., Ahsoka). To be fair, Star Trek did that with Strange New Worlds.
I really do love Star Wars, and you should never doubt that simply because . . .
Play What You Want 