This is minimally related to the geek culture subject matter that I normally write about, but I figure I owe the audience the wisdom I have acquired over the years.
I have figured this out after many years of going to fast food as a customer and a few years working there.
Great Truth of food service #1:
Unless you are talking an actual gourmet chef, like Bobby Flay or Wolfgang Puck or whoever off Food Network, food service is composed of people not talented, bright, and ambitious enough to be in retail. Consider that next time it takes ten minutes for your pack of gum to get rung, up by the soul-less, brain-dead cashier at Target. The guy who made your burger at McDonald's is probably lazier, stupider, and more apathetic about the quality of his work than her.
Great truth of food service #2:
Fast food is staffed by the dregs of the food service industry.
Great truth of food service #3:
If you have graduated high school and work in fast food, your life is going nowhere.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Final Crisis- Really?
Okay, so recently DC has let out the "big reveal" that what the series Countdown is counting down to is something that's going to be called Final Crisis.
I liked Crisis on Infinite Earths. I like the old JLA/ JSA crisis crossovers from years gone by. I liked Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. The cynic in me, though, says that this Final Crisis will not live up to the hype.
For starters, in what way will it be a final crisis? Is it really going to be the last time DC uses the word crisis in a miniseries title? Is it going to kill the DC Universe as we know it? Is it going to mean more Man of Steel and Year One- type retcons?
I guess I should just suspend the cynicism and see what happens. We will be in the able hands of Grant Morrison after all.
I liked Crisis on Infinite Earths. I like the old JLA/ JSA crisis crossovers from years gone by. I liked Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. The cynic in me, though, says that this Final Crisis will not live up to the hype.
For starters, in what way will it be a final crisis? Is it really going to be the last time DC uses the word crisis in a miniseries title? Is it going to kill the DC Universe as we know it? Is it going to mean more Man of Steel and Year One- type retcons?
I guess I should just suspend the cynicism and see what happens. We will be in the able hands of Grant Morrison after all.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Greybeards & Grognards Part 1: Nomenclature and Manifesto
Greybeards & Grognards Installment One: Nomenclature & Manifesto
ByJustiN Orion Neal Taylor
This is my blog on geek culture, particularly RPGs. I decided on the title Greybeards & Grognards because many of the more well-known RPGs and their rule books have alliterative titles, like Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, Castles & Crusades, or the Fiend Folio tome.
I think that perhaps I might start by defining my terms.
Geek: 1) Traditionally a sideshow attraction of a person biting the heads off live chickens.
2) Now it has come to mean someone who is in some way outside the norms of society, often by virtue of an unusual hobby or interest. Examples include comic book fans, Star Trek fans, those who watch a science fiction television program very regularly, and those who play RPGs.
Grognard: 1) A dedicated wargamer as in the hexmaps and cardboard chits wargames.
2) A wargamer with a tendency to grumble about the upstart RPG hobby.
3) An RPG player who got into a particular game at an earlier generation and is dissatisfied with the current generation, especially one who feels the need to discuss his dissatisfaction regularly. This can happen very fast in RPGs. The rather major D&D 3.5 rules revision came out only about three years after the launch D&D 3rd edition. There are now anti-3.5 grognards who got in at the launch of 3rd edition.
Greybeard: 1) Pretty close to definition 3 of Grognard.
2) Also, the player who has been around forever. This leads to much of the attitude described above.
When I posted this essay earlier on ENWorld, ther was a certain amount of controversy regarding definition number 3 of Grognard, especially in regards to the fact that it was the only definition given at the time.
Now that I've defined my terms, I can now get on with my geek manifesto.
We are here. We are geeks. We are tired of being an underclass.
I believe that now more than any other time in history, geeks have power. The biggest hit that NBC has is Heroes, which is a very geek-oriented show. There's a whole network theoretically dedicated to Sci-Fi. Somebody must have realized that geeks have money.
The troubles we as geeks face are twofold:
1) We're a fractious lot. The comic book guys hate the rennies. The RPGers hate the CCGers. The Heinlein fans hate the Harry Potter fans.
2) Not everybody will admit that they are a geek. Too many say, yeah I'm an adult, and I've read the Harry Potter series, but other than that, I'm normal.
If you have a geeky interest, you are a geek. You may hide it, but you are a geek. Come out of the closet. Admit to your friends and relatives that you are a geek. Look to other geeks for support. Only then can the healing begin.
Stand up and be counted.
The geek shall inherit the Earth.
I am a geek and a greybeard and darn proud of it.
ByJustiN Orion Neal Taylor
This is my blog on geek culture, particularly RPGs. I decided on the title Greybeards & Grognards because many of the more well-known RPGs and their rule books have alliterative titles, like Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, Castles & Crusades, or the Fiend Folio tome.
I think that perhaps I might start by defining my terms.
Geek: 1) Traditionally a sideshow attraction of a person biting the heads off live chickens.
2) Now it has come to mean someone who is in some way outside the norms of society, often by virtue of an unusual hobby or interest. Examples include comic book fans, Star Trek fans, those who watch a science fiction television program very regularly, and those who play RPGs.
Grognard: 1) A dedicated wargamer as in the hexmaps and cardboard chits wargames.
2) A wargamer with a tendency to grumble about the upstart RPG hobby.
3) An RPG player who got into a particular game at an earlier generation and is dissatisfied with the current generation, especially one who feels the need to discuss his dissatisfaction regularly. This can happen very fast in RPGs. The rather major D&D 3.5 rules revision came out only about three years after the launch D&D 3rd edition. There are now anti-3.5 grognards who got in at the launch of 3rd edition.
Greybeard: 1) Pretty close to definition 3 of Grognard.
2) Also, the player who has been around forever. This leads to much of the attitude described above.
When I posted this essay earlier on ENWorld, ther was a certain amount of controversy regarding definition number 3 of Grognard, especially in regards to the fact that it was the only definition given at the time.
Now that I've defined my terms, I can now get on with my geek manifesto.
We are here. We are geeks. We are tired of being an underclass.
I believe that now more than any other time in history, geeks have power. The biggest hit that NBC has is Heroes, which is a very geek-oriented show. There's a whole network theoretically dedicated to Sci-Fi. Somebody must have realized that geeks have money.
The troubles we as geeks face are twofold:
1) We're a fractious lot. The comic book guys hate the rennies. The RPGers hate the CCGers. The Heinlein fans hate the Harry Potter fans.
2) Not everybody will admit that they are a geek. Too many say, yeah I'm an adult, and I've read the Harry Potter series, but other than that, I'm normal.
If you have a geeky interest, you are a geek. You may hide it, but you are a geek. Come out of the closet. Admit to your friends and relatives that you are a geek. Look to other geeks for support. Only then can the healing begin.
Stand up and be counted.
The geek shall inherit the Earth.
I am a geek and a greybeard and darn proud of it.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
This is not a Review of The Bourne Supremacy
I saw The Bourne Supremacy on Friday and was considering doing a review. I don't think I've got anything new to say one the subject, though. I would say as everyone else has that the action was intense. The suspense was high, and the political intrigue was well-crafted.
I also don't think I'm going to be the first one to say, that Julia Stiles is an excellent actress and here she is, back for the third time as CIA agent NickyParsons, and they still don't give her enough dialogue.
I also don't think I'm going to be the first one to say, that Julia Stiles is an excellent actress and here she is, back for the third time as CIA agent NickyParsons, and they still don't give her enough dialogue.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Review of Puccini For Beginners.
Occasionally, the greybeard leaves his cave and ventures forth to take in a flick. Once in a while, he feels compelled to write a review, either because the film moved him or because it seems likely to be otherwise overlooked. One warning: the movie is not typical geek fare.
Here goes:
A Review of Puccini For Beginners
Reviewer: JustiN Orion Neal Taylor
As far as I'm concerned this was the perfect post-90s romantic comedy movie. It deals with the tangle of issues related to sexuality and commitment that love theoretically entails for the post-90s crowd, but it makes them funny.
Plot Summary: Allegra, is a writer who loves opera; her best guess is that ten people read her book, but somehow it was nominated for a prestigious award; oh, and she's a lesbian. Samantha is Alllegra's girlfriend who breaks up with her at the start of the movie. Samantha keeps saying she's not a lesbian even though she is in love with and having sex with Allegra; she still has a boyfriend and goes back to him because she wants someone to grow old with and Allegra has commitment issues.
Allegra's friend Molly, drags her to a party to try and meet somebody new. In the midst of binging on the party's buffet to soothe her emotions, Allegra meets Phillip. Phillip is smart and charming and handsome and he read her book.
After a series of accidental meetings and the beginning of a sort of flirty friendship between Allegra and Phillip, Phillip enitces Allegra to go out with him by offering her tickets to Don Giovanni. After the opera date, they have sex.
Afterwards Phillip wants to keep going out with Allegra, but she resists both because she still sees herself as a lesbian and because of her fear of commitment. While dealing with the confusion engenderd by this situation, Allegra meets Grace. Grace is a beautiful straight woman (played by Gretchen Moll, the only actor whose name I can remember from this movie) who just had a bad break up with a boyfriend who was afraid to commit. After a flirty sort of freindship develops between the two of them, they end up sleeping together. Oh, and Phillip is Grace's ex-boyfriend.
And then in the final act: Molly talks Allegra into catering a party with her. The party is the engagement party of Jeff and Samantha, Allegra's ex from the beginning of the movie. And Jeff and Samantha are friends of Phillip and Grace who both end up at the party too...
A bit of an actual review that amounts to more than "It rocked": It was funny. It dealt with gay and straight characters evenly without resorting to stereotype. It ended happily. It dealt with sex in a manner that most people would find reasonably tasteful (i.e. no real nudity and an aboslute minumum of vulgarity). All of those factors combined to make it a movie that I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone that would not be offended by a movie that dares to portray homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle.
I think that's one more area where it succeeds. It manages to be a movie that deals with gay issues without doing it in a way that is confrontational and without unsubtly pushing a social agenda.
I do have to say that as a straight male, certain jokes that got a giant laugh from the rest of the theatre, did go right over my head, but I'm okay with that that. Every group has its own vocabulary and running gags.
Here goes:
A Review of Puccini For Beginners
Reviewer: JustiN Orion Neal Taylor
As far as I'm concerned this was the perfect post-90s romantic comedy movie. It deals with the tangle of issues related to sexuality and commitment that love theoretically entails for the post-90s crowd, but it makes them funny.
Plot Summary: Allegra, is a writer who loves opera; her best guess is that ten people read her book, but somehow it was nominated for a prestigious award; oh, and she's a lesbian. Samantha is Alllegra's girlfriend who breaks up with her at the start of the movie. Samantha keeps saying she's not a lesbian even though she is in love with and having sex with Allegra; she still has a boyfriend and goes back to him because she wants someone to grow old with and Allegra has commitment issues.
Allegra's friend Molly, drags her to a party to try and meet somebody new. In the midst of binging on the party's buffet to soothe her emotions, Allegra meets Phillip. Phillip is smart and charming and handsome and he read her book.
After a series of accidental meetings and the beginning of a sort of flirty friendship between Allegra and Phillip, Phillip enitces Allegra to go out with him by offering her tickets to Don Giovanni. After the opera date, they have sex.
Afterwards Phillip wants to keep going out with Allegra, but she resists both because she still sees herself as a lesbian and because of her fear of commitment. While dealing with the confusion engenderd by this situation, Allegra meets Grace. Grace is a beautiful straight woman (played by Gretchen Moll, the only actor whose name I can remember from this movie) who just had a bad break up with a boyfriend who was afraid to commit. After a flirty sort of freindship develops between the two of them, they end up sleeping together. Oh, and Phillip is Grace's ex-boyfriend.
And then in the final act: Molly talks Allegra into catering a party with her. The party is the engagement party of Jeff and Samantha, Allegra's ex from the beginning of the movie. And Jeff and Samantha are friends of Phillip and Grace who both end up at the party too...
A bit of an actual review that amounts to more than "It rocked": It was funny. It dealt with gay and straight characters evenly without resorting to stereotype. It ended happily. It dealt with sex in a manner that most people would find reasonably tasteful (i.e. no real nudity and an aboslute minumum of vulgarity). All of those factors combined to make it a movie that I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone that would not be offended by a movie that dares to portray homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle.
I think that's one more area where it succeeds. It manages to be a movie that deals with gay issues without doing it in a way that is confrontational and without unsubtly pushing a social agenda.
I do have to say that as a straight male, certain jokes that got a giant laugh from the rest of the theatre, did go right over my head, but I'm okay with that that. Every group has its own vocabulary and running gags.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Part 2 Who Dies?
This one is going to seem strange. This is something that I started doing on various gamer messageboards, including my own, ENWorld, The Campaign Builders's Guild, and WotC's. The first in the series, needs a lot of revision before it's ready for sharing. So, I'm starting with the second one.
Grey Beards & Grognards 2 Who Dies (And My Life In Gaming Editions)?
By
JustiN Orion Neal Taylor
I am about 25 years old. I have been involved with the D&D game in some way since about the time I was nine. One of the earliest things that I got into the game with was the Ravenloft Realm of Terror boxed set. I thought at the time that games came in boxes, only being familiar with board games. I eventually also picked up the D&D Basic red box (at a Good Will, no less) and the board game-like version of basic D&D that had a paper dungeon map and heavier paper stock stand ups. I still had no idea what to do with Ravenloft at this time, but had read it backwards and forwards about three times that year alone. Eventually I used the rules in the book with the board game-like D&D set to create a dungeon on a piece of graph paper and had my dad try to play in it. I had no idea how to run an RPG or design an adventure at the time.
Flash forward to middle school and I've picked up the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. I also met my friend Jarod, who is my only friend from that era I've stayed in contact with. I'm now a better DM, but I still don't understand what makes and RPG different from Hero Quest or Monopoly other than the possibility of playing it with only a graph paper map (no board).
In high school, I discover Vampire: The Masquerade and learn more about the RP aspects of RPGs. I believe there may be some cause and effect there. I run entire sessions of both Vampire and D&D with zero dice rolled and zero rulebooks consulted mid-adventure. I also run both games very tactically on occasion. On a road trip during these years, I pick up copies of the AD&D 1st edition Player's Handbook and Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia (sadly a later printing without the Elric and Cthulhu material).
I'm in my freshman year of college when the third edition of D&D comes out. I eventually acquire all three of the core rulebooks as well as The Creature Collection. It feels like a very different game system than I'm used to, but I still have a blast playing it.
Last year, I picked up an old issue of Dragon from the tail end of the 1e era. It contains the second installment of the Game Wizards column to be entitled "Who Dies?" The two "Who Dies?" articles are about the new 2nd edition of the game that's coming out. There are a number of points raised in the "Who Dies?" articles that got me thinking about how the 1e to 2e changeover may have differed from the 2e to 3e changeover.
Believe it or not, I do not want to start an edition war (for readers on my forum or the CBG and Jerod, this comment is mostly directed at people on the WotC boards). I have my preferences. You have yours. Different salves for different wounds.
One comment made in the second "Who Dies?" article is particularly telling, in my opinion. The author states that 100% backwards compatibility was a major design goal. He then goes on to state that any change from the previous edition will lower backwards compatibility from that 100% standard, so it is not an attainable goal. The highest possible standard of compatibility would be strived for, though. I honestly don't think that this degree of backwards compatibility was a design goal in 3e. This is just my gut feeling, but inverting the AC system and adding a new class that had never been in any version of D&D before (Sorcerer) are moves that don't seem like they fit with as much backwards compatibility as we can get as a chief design goal.
Another point he raises is that certain character classes had to be cut from the current edition, either because of balance issues (Barbarian and Cavalier) or for party harmony reasons (Assassin). He goes on to say such a thing is not that big of a problem for players loyal to those classes because they can be carried over from 1st edition rules, if the group really wants to. This indicates a fairly high degree of backwards compatibility. I believe this to be true. One could play a 1st edition Assassin in a 2nd edition game, if you had a willing DM and a 1st edition Player's Handbook.
It doesn't really work the same way for a 2nd edition to 3rd edition character. There may be a class called Fighter in both games. They might both use d10s for hit dice. They might both have wide access to weapons and armor, but they are not as mechanically identical as they should be to ensure a high degree of backwards compatibility.
If I have a point, and don't assume that because I took the time to type this up in Word and subject it to spelling and grammar checks and email a copy to my best friend and post it on my forum and x-post it here that I have a point, it is this: 3e is a cool game, but it does not maintain enough backwards compatibility to be thought of as essentially the same game as the previous versions of D&D.
Grey Beards & Grognards 2 Who Dies (And My Life In Gaming Editions)?
By
JustiN Orion Neal Taylor
I am about 25 years old. I have been involved with the D&D game in some way since about the time I was nine. One of the earliest things that I got into the game with was the Ravenloft Realm of Terror boxed set. I thought at the time that games came in boxes, only being familiar with board games. I eventually also picked up the D&D Basic red box (at a Good Will, no less) and the board game-like version of basic D&D that had a paper dungeon map and heavier paper stock stand ups. I still had no idea what to do with Ravenloft at this time, but had read it backwards and forwards about three times that year alone. Eventually I used the rules in the book with the board game-like D&D set to create a dungeon on a piece of graph paper and had my dad try to play in it. I had no idea how to run an RPG or design an adventure at the time.
Flash forward to middle school and I've picked up the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. I also met my friend Jarod, who is my only friend from that era I've stayed in contact with. I'm now a better DM, but I still don't understand what makes and RPG different from Hero Quest or Monopoly other than the possibility of playing it with only a graph paper map (no board).
In high school, I discover Vampire: The Masquerade and learn more about the RP aspects of RPGs. I believe there may be some cause and effect there. I run entire sessions of both Vampire and D&D with zero dice rolled and zero rulebooks consulted mid-adventure. I also run both games very tactically on occasion. On a road trip during these years, I pick up copies of the AD&D 1st edition Player's Handbook and Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia (sadly a later printing without the Elric and Cthulhu material).
I'm in my freshman year of college when the third edition of D&D comes out. I eventually acquire all three of the core rulebooks as well as The Creature Collection. It feels like a very different game system than I'm used to, but I still have a blast playing it.
Last year, I picked up an old issue of Dragon from the tail end of the 1e era. It contains the second installment of the Game Wizards column to be entitled "Who Dies?" The two "Who Dies?" articles are about the new 2nd edition of the game that's coming out. There are a number of points raised in the "Who Dies?" articles that got me thinking about how the 1e to 2e changeover may have differed from the 2e to 3e changeover.
Believe it or not, I do not want to start an edition war (for readers on my forum or the CBG and Jerod, this comment is mostly directed at people on the WotC boards). I have my preferences. You have yours. Different salves for different wounds.
One comment made in the second "Who Dies?" article is particularly telling, in my opinion. The author states that 100% backwards compatibility was a major design goal. He then goes on to state that any change from the previous edition will lower backwards compatibility from that 100% standard, so it is not an attainable goal. The highest possible standard of compatibility would be strived for, though. I honestly don't think that this degree of backwards compatibility was a design goal in 3e. This is just my gut feeling, but inverting the AC system and adding a new class that had never been in any version of D&D before (Sorcerer) are moves that don't seem like they fit with as much backwards compatibility as we can get as a chief design goal.
Another point he raises is that certain character classes had to be cut from the current edition, either because of balance issues (Barbarian and Cavalier) or for party harmony reasons (Assassin). He goes on to say such a thing is not that big of a problem for players loyal to those classes because they can be carried over from 1st edition rules, if the group really wants to. This indicates a fairly high degree of backwards compatibility. I believe this to be true. One could play a 1st edition Assassin in a 2nd edition game, if you had a willing DM and a 1st edition Player's Handbook.
It doesn't really work the same way for a 2nd edition to 3rd edition character. There may be a class called Fighter in both games. They might both use d10s for hit dice. They might both have wide access to weapons and armor, but they are not as mechanically identical as they should be to ensure a high degree of backwards compatibility.
If I have a point, and don't assume that because I took the time to type this up in Word and subject it to spelling and grammar checks and email a copy to my best friend and post it on my forum and x-post it here that I have a point, it is this: 3e is a cool game, but it does not maintain enough backwards compatibility to be thought of as essentially the same game as the previous versions of D&D.
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