Lise – Page 20 – Lise Fracalossi

On Pokemon Go, and yucking someone’s yum

There are two phrases that have stuck in my mind recently in regards to people’s excitement about Pokémon Go — and the backlash I’ve seen against that excitement:

Don’t yuck someone’s yum.

Don’t harsh someone’s mellow.

First of all, I don’t play Pokémon Go. I’ve just never been that into Pokémon, and honestly I’ve got too many vidyagame hobbies already.

If you do play, though, I absolutely encourage you to love it with all your nerdy heart. (Although seriously guys, maybe don’t do it at the Holocaust Museum, or while driving). I don’t mind how much you post about it, and I’ll even look through your pictures and admire that Bulbasaur, and wonder why they always seem to be so perfectly perched on household objects.

And I certainly can’t judge someone for walking miles in order to hatch Pokémon, considering I spent the better part of last week — probably more than 50 hours — building the Perfect Modded Skyrim ™.

It makes me happy to see people’s enthusiasm. It reminds me of my own enthusiasm for, say, the Elder Scrolls games and lore, or the works of P.G. Wodehouse, or historical fashion.

If people being enthusiastic and excited makes you bitter and angry… maybe consider what a stone you’ve made of your heart.

… I mean, that sounded really judgmental. But this is something I’ve reflected on a lot, having recently written a post which was basically, “seriously, folks, can we talk about fantasy that isn’t Game of Thrones?” I put a lot of effort, with that post, into making sure that my inner fandom hipster wasn’t channeled, because I didn’t want to trample on something people loved. I had Adina, who’s a huge fan, proofread it. I hope I succeeded in being more educational than judgmental.

Personally, my crabbiness about “popular stuff” is reflective of wishing more people were into my (semi-niche) hobbies. I mean, yeah, SFF is bigger than its ever been, and we live in a world where well-groomed, popular teenage girls now ask each other who their favorite Doctor is — but I still wish more people would geek out about, say, Dragaera with me.

But I think there’s a difference between that crabbiness, and the mean-spiritedness I’ve seen at the expense of Pokémon Go players. There’s a lot of talk about “immaturity.” Some people believe adults shouldn’t play games.

You know what games are? Stories.

If you don’t believe me, listen to your coworkers describe what happened in Tuesday’s All-Star game. It has a beginning, middle, and end. There is conflict. There is a protagonist, and an antagonist. (Unlike many stories, opinions vary on which side is which!)

You know what stories are? The fundamental building blocks of what make us human. There’s a reason it’s so important that people see themselves reflected in fiction — it’s part of how we know we’re real. It’s the mirror recognition test.

So mocking someone for loving a certain game, implying they’re not mature? It’s punishing people for loving a narrative too much. It’s in the same spirit as posting spoilers. You are saying you don’t respect how they construct their personal narrative.

You are saying you don’t respect them.

This is what you are doing when you yuck someone’s yum.

Enjoy this guy’s enthusiasm. I hope he never loses that passion.

Of Unicorns and Straight White Men: Outleveling Game of Thrones

Recently, Adina of Fair Escape was telling me something about the latest episode of Game of Thrones — I don’t recall what — and she prefaced it with, “I know you don’t really like the series…”

Before I knew it, my complex feelings on GoT/A Song of Ice and Fire resolved into this post…

(For reference, I’ve read the first book and seen the first couple of episodes of the TV show. I also have a front-row audience for all my friends and coworkers discussing the show. There’s a lot I’ve picked up from geek osmosis, and I pretty much can’t be spoiled at this point).

As a general rule, Adina is right: I don’t much care for the series. It’s a bit too grimdark for my tastes, and not in particularly interesting ways. It is consistently awful shit happening just because awful shit can happen — and disproportionately to women and the disadvantaged. The TV series in particular relishes this sort of misery porn; in the books, it’s more glossed over.

On the other hand, I also recognize the strengths of the series. I love fantasy politics, for example, and those are superb. I also generally liked the female characters, and felt they had agency — although sometimes they are punished for that same agency.

Furthermore, I respect that the books are in conversation with their contemporaries. Let us not forget that the first book of the series, A Game of Thrones, came out in 1996. It truly was ground-breaking at the time to have viewpoint characters in fantasy who weren’t “safe” from being killed.

I also have a great deal of respect for George R.R. Martin, as someone who has been a fixture in SFF for many many years, and has cogent things to say about the fandom. (His commentaries on last year’s Hugo debacle are particularly enlightening).

But those points don’t add up to the popular obsession with this show, do they? I don’t think the series would have gained such a following without the sex and gore — which the HBO series only enhances. And I’ve definitely heard more than one person say they love the show because “it’s so gritty and realistic.”

That phrase — “gritty and realistic” — tends to frustrate me, as someone who’s been a fantasy fan since I learned how to read.

Why?

One: gritty is not necessarily realistic. Let’s take the role of women in lots of genre fantasy, for example. Lots of terrible misogyny is depicted in fantasy, in the name of “realism” to a medieval era that never actually existed. GoT is no different.

And yes, terrible shit did sometimes happen to women in, say, the Middle Ages. But to tell that story, and only that story, erases the huge contribution of women to history.

Furthermore… dude, this is fantasy, not history. When an author decides that terrible stuff will happen disproportionately to female characters, that is a choice. It is not a neutral choice. It is a choice that says stuff about the author — ranging from the relatively mild “they haven’t thought through their assumptions” to the more dangerous “they are a raging misogynist.”

How am I supposed to know which is which? How much thinly-veiled fantasy rape porn do I have to read to find out?

GoT isn’t this, at its best. Probably not even at its worst.

But I have read a LOT of fantasy, and shit like that is out there. And it’s popular.

Which brings me to point TWO — how deeply have you read in the fantasy genre? I would guess that most people who aren’t fannish have probably read Lord of the Rings, and maybe a few other popular titles.

It’s a stark contrast from Tolkien to GoT/aSoIaF, isn’t it?

If those are your guideposts, maybe you see the genre as offering only two options: asexual virtuous elves who are never in any real danger (until it’s dramatically appropriate), or sexposition and political maneuvering and violence that might just end in death at any moment.

Maybe you veer towards the latter, because hey, at least GoT has female characters with agency, LGBT characters (minor though they are), and shades of morality.

But let me tell you a secret: you don’t have to choose.

Fantasy is a wide and deep genre, and hundreds of new books are added to the mix each year — and that’s only through traditional publishing. Maybe no one has introduced you to the genre yet, so please: Dear Reader, meet some of my best friends in the genre.

… that is, here are my top five recommendations for “outleveling” GoT/aSoIaF. They are all awesome, intelligent political fantasy.

(If you’re already as fantasy fannish as me, you’ve probably read many of these — but I suspect you are also not my target audience).

Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series. (I’ve only read the first one — The Blade Itself — but I will eventually remedy that). Abercrombie is @LordGrimdark on Twitter, and he’s arguably the dude for whom the term was coined. And sure, there’s grit and gore here — one of the viewpoint characters is a torturer, with all that entails.

But I think the real genius in this series is in how Abercrombie takes fantasy tropes and twists them. “Good men” aren’t. Heroes cheat to win contests. Wizards don’t look like wizards. Berserker barbarians are actually pretty thoughtful guys who talk to spirits.

Right now I’m reading Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart, and again and again it strikes me that this is what GoT would be if were more sex-positive. The main character is a schemer in a fantasy France where sex work is seen as godly, and where BDSM is seen as just one aspect of being god-touched. There are several trilogies in this series which I am looking forward to exploring, and I can guarantee they all couple tremendous voice with deep political intrigue.

Speaking of fantasy France, have I mentioned my pal Django writes this awesome series called The Shadow Campaigns, which is basically “fantasy French Revolution with lesbians kicking ass?” Because he does. So if you like both girls kissing and lovingly-described late 18th-century field battles, The Thousand Names is the place to start.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Ellen Kushner’s Riverside stuff (both the trad-published stuff like Swordspoint, as well as the currently-being-serialized Tremontaine, which also employs the talents of Joel Derfner and Malinda Lo, among many many others). Since she went on Writing Excuses and described Swordspoint as “bisexuals stabbing each other,” I totally feel justified in calling it that! It’s city-state politics plus dueling plus boys kissing; what’s not to love?

Or if you’d rather read about court politics without all the shivving, I recommend Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette)’s The Goblin Emperor, which I reviewed more fully here. In which no problems are so intractable that they can’t be solved by being nice to other people.

(Of course, none of this stuff is on TV, and I suspect that makes a difference — for most people, it’s just a lot less time-consuming to watch a TV show than to read a book, and that goes for me, too. Unfortunately I don’t have any good suggestions to remedy that, except to say that I do a lot of reading via audiobooks on my long commute).

I’m not saying don’t read/watch GoT. By all means, if it is a thing you love, love it with all your nerdy heart.

But if the violence and misery is making you queasy, there are so, so many other fantasy works that aren’t all unicorns and straight white men.

Accomplishments, April and May 2016

Credit: Joanna Paterson

Grouped together because April by itself was pretty sad. I have no links to share, but have the pretty picture, above, of a wild rose — they are currently blooming all along the walking trail near my work.

Writing
– Attended April writing group
– Prepped chapters 13-15 of Lioness for May writing group
– Attended May writing group
– Wrote 2069 words on Lioness

Reading
– Read Mary Robinette Kowal’s Of Noble Family

Other Media
– Played Tiny Epic Galaxies
– Played Mars Needs Mechanics
– Listened to Elder Scrolls Off the Record #129 and #174-#176
– Listed to Classic Elder Scrolls #24 and #26, #32-#34, #53
– Listened to Writing Excuses, episode 11.11
– Listened to Happier with Gretchen Rubin, episode 54-56
– Watched the RiffTrax of Cybertracker
– Watched the RiffTrax of Cat-Women From the Moon
– Watched the RiffTrax of Hillbillies in a Haunted House
– Watched the RiffTrax of Arachnia
– Watched Columbo season 2 episodes 4-8, season 3 episodes 1-4

ESO
– Completed a no-death run of vet Crypt of Hearts
– Reached V16 with Br’ihnassi (Just in time for vet-level removal…)
– Completed vet Imperial City Prison, hard-mode (Falanu)
– Completed vet White Gold Tower, hard-mode (Falanu)

There’s going to be a lot less ESO in my life going forward, as Matt has stopped playing entirely, which makes the game a lot less fun for me. It will probably be replaced in part by Stellaris and Prison Architect…

Social
– Went to see the RiffTrax Live of Time Chasers with Brian
– Visited the New England Aquarium with ESO guildies
– Attended Jenn and John’s wedding
– Had dinner with Kevin at Bluefin
– Had dinner with EB at the Melting Pot
– Went shopping for bridesmaid’s dress for Mel’s wedding

LARP
– Attended Shadows of Amun game 12
– Attended Shadows of Amun game 13
– Attended Fifth Gate SF3

Health
– Started phase 1 of the South Beach diet
– Took a 30-40 min walk almost every day (lost track of exactly how many)
– Had two massages

Shadows’ End

This weekend was the last event of Shadows of Amun, the campaign larp I’ve been NPCing since August 2013. It was my first campaign boffer larp, in fact, and the one that has formed my ideal of what that sort of game should be.

In that time, I’ve been…

Hahanzi of the Dom, daughter of an Elder and a crime lord, and almost-victim of his continued immortality,
Queen Maria Komnene of Jerusalem, trying to forge peace in the wake of the second Crusade, via tea and flirtation,
Penny, a.k.a. Penelope Q. Dreadful, the scarab proto-queen gifted to Mrs. Loring, later progenitor of MI-13’s scarab army,
Nephthys, Egyptian goddess of darkness, lamentation, the night sky, and many other things; the night-bark to Duat.

… and many other smaller roles — Well Dark-Eyes, the Fida’in fangirl; Amisi the aggrieved widow; vengeful slave Cassia; Julia, Senator Picens’ art expert; Artemisia Gentileschi; the angel Minevah; to name just a few.

Maria Komnene, Queen of Jerusalem, in 1168

All in all, it was a good run, and I am sad to see it go. It was a part of my life four times a year for nearly three years, and while I was sometimes reluctant to get out there and hit things, I always ended up enjoying myself. Along the way, I made new friends, caused lots of trouble, and helped to create something beautiful.

If you’re feeling nostalgic, too, you can look back at some of my old LJ posts about the game.

Links and Accomplishments, March 2016

This has been a rough month for me, and I’ve been escaping into video games a lot. So apologies if all my accomplishments are kind of lame.

Links

Tabletop Gaming Has a White Male Terrorism Problem. I shared this without comment on Facebook. Let me comment here. This resonated deeply with me. While I’ve never suffered anything so bad as described in the article, I have been harassed in gaming spaces. It happened in high school, in the way I was marginalized within my group of D&D-playing “friends.” It happened in 2009, when I chose to speak up about racist and sexist language in a WoW guild I was part of. It continues to happen when I talk about being a woman who likes video games.

I love games. I have always loved games. I will not leave the hobby. But it does mean that a lot of the time I just pretend to be a dude on the internet.

Accomplishments

Writing
– Wrote 730 words on Lioness
– Wrote two blog posts:

Reading
– Read “The Fixer,” by Paul McAuley (Clarkesworld, February 2016)
– Read “The Shadow Collector,” by Shveta Thakrar (Uncanny, issue 9)
– Read Tremontaine 5

Other Media
– Watched The Lady Eve (1941) (I think I actually watched this in February, but forgot to log it there)
– Watched The Martian
– Watched Mad Max Fury Road
– Watched Jupiter Ascending
– Watched The Last Witchhunter
– Watched the RiffTrax of Samurai Cop
– Played Lagoon: Land of Druids
– Listed to Welcome to Night Vale, episodes 74-83
– Listened to Happier with Gretchen Rubin, episodes 49-53
– Listened to Writing Excuses, episodes 11.09 and 11.10
– Listened to Elder Scrolls Off the Record 172 and 173
– Listened to Classic Elder Scrolls 50-52; also went back and listened to a 19-23
– Started a new heavily-modded Skyrim playthrough with Hibernia Leonis, an Imperial focused on 1H/Heavy Armor/Block.

ESO gets its own section this time, because it’s primarily what I’ve been doing!
– Healed veteran Dragonstar Arena in ESO, and got the coveted Boethiah’s Scythe title for my daedra-worshipping Dunmer Falanu. I would just like to toot my own horn and note that I did this with TWO VAMPIRES (i.e. in a trial where the final round is FIRE FIRE ALL THE FIRE OMG). It’d be more impressive if it weren’t V14 content, I suppose!
– Completed normal mode Aetherian Archive with the UESP guild (with Falanu)
– Completed normal mode Hel Ra Citadel with the UESP guild (with Falanu)
– FINALLY managed to complete vet White Gold Tower (with Falanu; normal mode on Molag Kena, though, because fuck those bi-directional lightning walls)

Social
– Attended grandmother’s birthday party/visited with family in Walkill, NY
– Hosted a visit from my dad
– Had dinner/writing time with Phoebe
– Had dinner/book club with Jess

Crafts
– Started a new knitting project, teaching myself the figure-8 cast-on

Health
– Had a massage
– Took lunchtime walks a few days (don’t recall how many)

Rejection Log

12-day rejection for “Remember to Die”, Fantastic Stories
16-day rejection for “Powder of Sympathy”, Apex

One day in Skyrim Requiem

On a whim I decided to play around with Requiem, a Skyrim “roleplaying overhaul” mod. It’s one of those big mods which is pretty much guaranteed to be incompatible with anything else, so I thought it would be easiest to install on top of my clean Skyrim install on my new computer.

A word about my mod philosophy, and how it led me to Requiem: the three factors I value the most in game mods are immersion, roleplaying, and surprise. To this end, in earlier Skyrim games I’ve used a lot of immersion mods (Frostfall, IMCN, etc). Roleplaying-wise, I generally have a story and guiding direction for every character I play.

Surprise is the hardest one to get, because installing mods that actually work tends to involve knowing what you are getting into. Ever since reading this famous article, I’ve been dying to capture the feeling embodied by this quote:

Where would the adventure and discovery be in simply picking something off a menu? I didnâ€™t want to install, say, â€œReally Pretty Flying Boat House Modâ€ only to walk over, see it, go â€œOooh,â€ and be done. I wanted to turn corners and actually be surprised by what I found.

So, Requiem bills itself as a roleplaying mod. I am down with that. It claims to reward tactical gameplay, which I feel syncs well with immersion. I’ve heard its difficulty compared to “if Dark Souls and Dwarf Fortress had a baby.” I knew it de-leveled the world, so you got the danger of Morrowind, where if you wandered where you weren’t supposed, you’d likely get killed by cliff racers — but you also could get quite badass gear randomly. Also, it’s one big mod, so I can install it relatively blindly, not knowing quite what I’m getting.

So I jumped in head-first. Didn’t even read the Player’s Handbook, as I wanted to be surprised. (That might have been a mistake).

Executive summary, after playing for 3-4 hours (and barely surviving Helgen): impressive, but not sure if it’s for me?

The setup is extensive — you need a mod manager, SKSE (Skyrim script extender), SkyUI, and the unofficial patches. After you do all that, you have to run Requiem’s own SkyProc patcher, the Reqtificator, to generate a compatibility patch with other mods (even though I had none installed other than the ones it recommended, I did this anyway). It probably took me about an hour to get it set up, but I was a) shooting the shit with my ESO guildies on TeamSpeak all the while, b) dealing with Windows UAC issues because Skyrim was installed in my C:\Program Files directory.

That was the easy part.

I started up a new game, went through the usual cart ride to Helgen. At first, not much is different. Strangely, my first reaction, after a year away from Skyrim, was “my god, hair is uglier than I remember.” I might have to look into some mods to fix that.

Requiem didn’t run its startup scripts until you get to the tower and Hadvar unties you (or, one assumes, Ralof, if you go the other way). It immediately gives you three perk points to spend. “Huh, that’s interesting,” I thought.

Little did I know I wouldn’t be getting out of there without them.

This character was based on the protagonist of my novel-in-progress, a spy, diplomat, and poisoner (herself loosely based off Milady de Winter from The Three Musketeers). I made her an Imperial with blue eyes and blond hair and cheekbones that could cut diamonds. I named her Hibernia Leonis, because of course I did.

Skillwise, I wanted her to specialize in Alchemy, Illusion, Lockpicking, and Speechcraft. I put two of my three points to Alchemy and Illusion; as my third skill, I ended up picking One-Handed, as I figured I’d probably need some sort of weapon to get out of there. (And I figured Speechcraft was already buffed due to being an Imperial).

Illusion was the most interesting of these; with one point in it, I got to choose two spells. I chose Charming Touch and Frightening Orb, figuring I could use these to repel or calm enemies.

I picked up everything useful in the first room, followed Hadvar around the corner…

And promptly got one-shot by a Stormcloak.

So. Um. Clearly I had not chosen optimal skills. Let’s try again.

(repeat x 20)

I did finally leave Helgen and reach Riverwood. In order to actually get out, though, I had to assign those first three skill points to Heavy Armor/Block/One-Handed.

Here’s what I learned about Requiem along the way:
– Health doesn’t regenerate on its own. Stamina and magicka do, but very slowly (especially while doing anything else). I had about one spell in me before my magicka was completely drained. I’m okay with this; Morowind was this way.

– My spells often didn’t work. I don’t mean they failed in the way spells could fail in Morrowind — I cast the spell fine, it hit the enemy, but the enemies didn’t stop attacking me, or run away in fear. From what I am reading now, this is typical of the Illusion spells I choose, as my starting Illusion skill of 5 or whatever is pitted against a calculated “mental resistance” score for the target. That’s cool, buuuuut… it made Illusion useless as a way to get out of Helgen.

– Alchemy is also useless for getting out of Helgen, as the first perk just makes you able to use Alchemy tables, of which there are none.

– One-Handed weapon seems minimally useful without a shield to block with. And that’s useless without the Block skill.

– Walk speed is slow, and encumbrance makes it slower. And my max encumbrance seems really low. It took a long time to walk to Riverwood. I had time to contemplate why Hadvar walks so strangely, and why I’d never noticed before.

– Food regens stamina and magicka (and sometimes health), but only out of combat. Which honestly I have no problem with; I always thought the “scarf down as many apples as you can while fighting a dragon” was kind of ridiculous.

– Raw meat drops your stamina and magicka unless you’re a race with poison resistance, i.e. Bosmer or Argonian.

– Merchants are likely to rip you off. Hey, it’s wartime. This wouldn’t have been so bad with my racial power (modified from vanilla to help with haggling instead), except I couldn’t remember how to use shouts/powers, thanks to it being so long since I last played.

– Pretty sure this is a bug (or just due to my choice of font) but a lot of the tooltips are missing the glyphs for their keybindings, so you’ll see “Press __ to Ready a Weapon.”

Apparently you can turn these tooltips off in the .ini files, which was part of the recommended setup I missed.

– You pretty much can’t do anything if you don’t have a skill in it. I tried to lockpick those cells in the torturer’s room, and Requiem gave me a “seriously, don’t even try” message. It doesn’t help that I’d completely forgotten how the lockpicking mechanic in vanilla Skyrim worked (it’s very different than ESO’s). I tried it anyway on one of my many go-throughs, and found the novice locks even harder than master locks in the vanilla game.

– I experimented with taking a different selection of character-appropriate skills, like Evasion (what Light Armor has become), Sneak, Marksmanship, etc. And… they were equally rubbish for helping me escape. Pretty much Heavy Armor/Block/One-Handed was the only combo that worked, and even that took a reasonable amount of effort/care.

I ended my session in Riverwood, and I suspect I may have to spend some time here, doing the Skyrim equivalent of killing level 1 goblins. Even Bleak Falls Barrow, the game documentation tells me, is no starter dungeon.

Overall? I’m not sure how to feel about Requiem. This is a very exciting world to explore, and I appreciate the element of danger and the importance of tactics. It might even be more “realistic” that a fighter character can bull their way through Stormcloaks.

But that was not the sort of character I wanted to play, and there doesn’t seem to be a way through Helgen as the diplomat/spy I intended.

I’ll probably give it a little longer, as the whole point of a de-leveled world is that it gets much easier as you go along. I’m not playing the character I originally intended, but it’s possible that character was too hard-mode for a new player — like trying to ascend a tourist in Nethack on your first playthrough.

Have you played around with this mod at all? Any impressions?

ESO Thieves Guild DLC — week one

The Thieves Guild expansion for the Elder Scrolls Online came out last Monday for PC. As an ESO Plus subscriber, I immediately had access to it.

So here are some impressions, a week in! There will be minor spoilers throughout, though I don’t think I’m far enough in to reveal any big spoilers.

So far? I really like the new Thieves Guild questline. It helps that the first quest is super-fun and that the first questgiver (Quen, an Altmer novice thief) is likeable. Most importantly, it introduces the gameplay elements that characterize this DLC.

They really disadvantaged the “kill everything that stands in your way” playstyle, and I appreciate it. There’s lots of sneaking, as well as guards with lanterns who can sniff you out of stealth (which has been used elsewhere in the game, but sparingly). To this they’ve added hiding spots where you can stay safe for a few minutes. I also like the use of choke points — and water full of slaughterfish to keep you from swimming across said choke points. There are also distraction mechanics, puzzles, and even a few — ugh — jumping puzzles.

And yes, even parts where you can just kill stuff, too.

The basic plot behind the new content is that a fanatic group, the Iron Wheel, is cracking down on the Thieves Guild after a failed heist pissed off certain Taneth nobles. You meet Quen, the aforementioned novice thief, in your local Outlaw’s Den, where she’s looking for a partner for a heist. From there, she brings you into the Thieves Guild and you learn about their struggles to bounce back from recent misfortunes.

I already mentioned my love for Quen. I like how her naive idealism is paired with her stone-cold badassery. She’s definitely not cut from the same cloth as many Altmer; I didn’t enough know she was one until she started talking about her family.

I like everyone else in the Thieves Guild so far, too! I like Walks-Softly, the Argonian who shows up to save you from a failed heist (“oh, look, a crypt. Nothing bad ever happened in a crypt”). I like Zeira, the Redguard guildmaster, unsure of her new role. I like Nord banker/bookie Kari (“I. Never. Miscount”), and her twin sister and disguise artist Hola (“have you ever seen us in the same place at the same?” “Uh, she’s sitting right over there”). I like grumpy Velsa.

In addition to the main quest, Kari offers quests from a tip board, usually of the type “go to this zone and pickpocket certain types of stuff” (that’s another new thing: oodles of new items to steal, and items are categorized into classes — Personal Effects, Cosmetics, Dry Goods, etc). I was a little worried they would turn out to be as tedious and annoying as the repeating “go to a city and steal X” quests you have to do in the Skyrim Thieves Guild, but blessedly, they are not. There’s a mechanic whereby you can turn the quest in after the first step for a small reward, or go on to further steps for a greater reward, which is kind of neat.

If you’re more into the shivving things and getting out with the treasure, Spencer Rye’s “acquisition” missions will send you to delves and world bosses around Hew’s Bane to collect various items. (Warning: the world bosses are in the style of the Orsinium DLC, i.e. you’ll need a group to defeat them).

One thing worth noting: much of this content will be really challenging for non-thief characters. Br’ihnassi, my thief, has invested a fair number of points in Legerdemain, and is a nightblade, to boot, with all the extra sneaky-sneaky abilities that confers. She still gets caught a fair bit. In Abah’s Landing, it seems like every pickpocketing mark is a Hard mark, and even with two points in the Light Fingers skill, that’s still only a 60% chance of success at best.

Thankfully, the DLC adds a lot of stuff to mitigate the dangers of getting caught stealing. There’s the Clemency skill in the new Thieves Guild skill line, which allows you to weasel out of being cornered by a guard once per day. Even before you unlock that, there’s a skill to make Bounty and Heat decay faster. Plus, doing quests from Kari’s tip board will get you one-use items that erase Bounty and Heat.

I haven’t said anything about the new zone of Hew’s Bane, have I? For one thing, it’s small — maybe half or a third the size of Wrothgar. Like the Orsinium DLC, the content scales to your level — which is why I’m doing it with my V8 nightblade instead of my main. Most of the zone is taken up by the sprawling coastal city of Abah’s Landing, home of the titular Thieves Guild. In general, the architecture and landscape of Hew’s Bane hearkens back to zones like Alik’r and Craglorn — which makes sense, it being in Hammerfell and all.

When I first arrived in Abah’s Landing, I found myself in a picturesque seaport, bigger and more atmospheric than others I’ve seen in the game. This initial impression really formed my opinion of the city as a beautiful and complex place. With more exploration, I discovered lots of winding passages with cubbies to hide in, perfect for thievery. Abah’s Landing also takes advantage of all three dimensions, with a lot of stuff happening above street level, where the buildings are connected by boards and platforms. A large chunk of the city, the Warehouse District, is off limits, and you can only get in by secret passages, jumping puzzles, or by just plain sneaking.

I also favor the BRIGHT BLUE DOME of the building that shelters the Thieves’ Guild, which is easily spotted when you are desperately trying to get there with your ill-gotten gains.

Another thing this DLC adds — more relevant to non-thieves among you –is thieves’ troves. These are caches found throughout the world, full of stolen goods, lockpicks, set items, etc. Anyone can open them, although the contents may require laundering at your local Outlaw’s Den in order to use. It was in fact one of these troves that led me to the Mournhold Outlaw’s Den where I met Quen.

That pretty much covers the new stuff… but lots of changes were made to existing content and gameplay, some big, and some small.

Some… really small.

Ones of particular notice to me:

Cross-faction grouping for dungeons and trials. No more playing everyone’s least favorite mini-game, Abusing the LFG Tool. It was kind of uncanny to be able to just… invite guildies from AD and DC to do pledges with us.

The UESP guild took advantage of this on the first weekend it was available to run two of the Craglorn trials, Hel Ra Citadel and Aetherian Archive. We actually managed to get through fast enough to get the timed trial achievement on both — admittedly, not that big a deal when all the enemies are V12 and you’ve got twelve V16s. (Sadly, the gear that drops is all still V12, too).

Templar changes. The big one is that Breath of Life now hits two targets instead of three. This caused quite the kerfuffle when it was announced, with many templar players believing they’d been nerfed out of healer competition. But I’ve run several dungeons since the DLC came out, and I haven’t noticed it making a big difference. If three out of four members of your party need a big, fast heal at once, something’s very wrong — possibly so wrong that hitting a second BoL a second later won’t help.

Supposedly they also fixed the bug whereby using Toppling Charge would lock you out of your abilities. I’m not holding my breath. (It’s also not a core part of my build).

Champion point changes. They changed how several Champion point trees worked. Notably for me, the Magic damage increase was taken out of Thaumaturge in the Ritual tree, and put under Elemental Expert in the Apprentice tree. Thaumaturge now only affects DoTs (which I use relatively few of).

I don’t know if it’s due to this change — I ended up moving a bunch of points from Thaumaturge into Elemental Expert as a result — or due to Templar changes in general, my gear improving (I’m now rocking two gold Torug’s Pact swords on my DPS bar), or FTC just being crazy, but I am pulling some serious DPS as a result. I used to struggle just to hit 10k; now I’m regularly hitting 20-22k. This while healing, mind.

New pets. You get the echalette pet for having the Orsinium DLC installed, and a jackal pet after completing the first Thieves Guild quest. The echalette is cute in the way only a baby spider-bison could be, but OMG THE SOUNDS IT MAKES ARE AWFUL. Especially when you have ten of them chilling in the bank.

There is still no chub loon pet, though, which is clearly an oversight on ZOS’ part.

64-bit client. There’s a 64-bit client available as of this last update. It’s not hooked up to the launcher, so you have to go digging for it, but it exists. It’s still very beta, and seems to have memory leaks like whoa.

And then there are the places where they just forgot the textures.

This has led to some really uncanny bugs, like shirtless vendors. Lest you think this is awesome, consider that underneath their clothing, most NPCs are featured like Barbie dolls.

This was pretty hilarious, though.

Either way, the 64-bit client is mostly a curiosity at this point.

Change to DirectX11. As of this patch, you can only play the game with video cards that support DirectX11. I’m not sure why it requires this, and Matt and I are unaffected, but it means there are some guildies we won’t be seeing until they get a new graphics card.

I’m not sure if this change is to blame, but I’ve seen a decent amount of glitchiness since TG came out — crashing to desktop, low FPS in certain places, etc. (Although a big FPS drop Matt was seeing turned out to be the result of the uespLog addon, which Reorx/Daveh quickly fixed).

Stealth changes to veteran Imperial City Prison. Vet ICP is notoriously hard, mostly due to its second boss, Ibomez the Flesh Sculptor. Previous to this week, I’d only been there on normal mode, but I know about the mechanic whereby you throw bombs at the zombies and atronachs to keep them from enraging. (My guild refers to the bombs as watermelons, because they’re green and why the hell not). I also knew that most groups had better luck ignoring that and just DPSing him down.

Well, I finally went to vet ICP this week. Our group make-up was suboptimal (three DKs!), and I expected to be stopped cold at the Flesh Sculptor.

I was surprised to get him on the second try.

Later, checking the official forums I learned they’ve apparently lowered Ibomez’s health, made him invulnerable when he’s standing by the pool waving his arms, and capped the number of waves of zombies. This basically means you can’t just ignore the mechanic and DPS him, but it also means it’s possible to get past him with less than excellent DPS.

I’m okay with that change — anything to make the game less about gear and more about skill.

(I’m less okay with the necrotic hoarvors and their poison spit, or how much pain Lord Warden Dusk inflicted on us before we finally gave up, but I blame that entirely on our sub-optimal party/DPS).

Those are the major points from me.

All in all: Thieves Guild good! Get it if Elder Scrolls and fantasy larceny is your thang.

Links and Accomplishments, February 2016

Links

Our Gothic Future. In which Madeleine Ashby talks about Crimson Peak and why it’s so relevant today in ways that make me sad I don’t have an English degree.

(As a reminder, I wrote my own analysis of Crimson Peak — in particular the costume design, and how it conveys a sense of the Sharpes being stuck in the past).

Nerd Role Models: Captain America and Non-Toxic Masculinity. I’m actually not much of a fan of superheroes, in general, but this article was brilliantly written, and kind of made me regret not having seen any of these movies.

The first scene of Mary Robinette Kowal’s next novel, Ghost Talkers. Even loving SFF as I do, it’s rare that I read a first scene that makes me want to rush out and buy the book quite so much as this one did. Regrettably, I have to wait until July to read the whole book.

Accomplishments

Writing
– Wrote 3,801 words on Lioness
– Attended writing group
– Attended a Saturday afternoon write-in
– Submitted “Remember to Die” to Fantastic Stories
– Submitted “Powder of Sympathy” to Apex
– Wrote some blog posts:

Reading
– Read The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair
– Read Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
– Read Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
– Read/listened to Tremontaine episode 7 (aaaand I seem to have skipped #5 and #6 without realizing it. It’s kind of amazing how coherent it still was).

Other Media
– Played Creative Clash with coworkers
– Played Codenames with a whole bunch of cool people
– Listened to Writing Excuses 10.44 – 10.52, 11.01 – 11.08
– Listened to Happier with Gretchen Rubin, episode 46-48
– Finished Coursera course “Learning How to Learn”
– Finished the Assassin (timed) achievements for vet Crypt of Hearts and vet Banished Cells in ESO (with Falanu)
– Watched the Film Crew of The Giant of Marathon
– Watched the Film Crew of The Wild Women of Wongo
– Watched the Film Crew of Hollywood After Dark

(This was “Film Crew February” at RiffTrax, where they re-released a bunch of riffs they’d done as part of The Film Crew, a similar project circa 2006).

LARP
– Attended Intercon P
– Went to several panels/workshops at Intercon P — Costuming Tricks for Lazy People, Renaissance Dancing, Interactive Props, Social Contract of Larp
– Played in Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
– Played in 1493
– Played in Congress of Vienna

Social
– Had dinner with Django and Casey at Boskone
– Had dinner/book club with Jess at Minerva
– Had lunch with Alison at Minado
– Visited with my mom at the Dance Flurry in Saratoga Springs, NY
– Visited EB

Crafts
– Put together costume for Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
– Put together costume for 1493
– Put together costume for Congress of Vienna

Health
– Did 11am/3pm office exercises x 1
– Did three sets of contradance
– Did Hacker’s Diet Introductory Fitness Ladder rung 1 x 1
– Took three lunchtime (30-40m) walks
– Had two chiropractor appointments
– Had a massage

Return to the Sceptered Isles, part two: Consequences

Yes, I was in England in November. Yes, this has been a long time coming.

On the second part of my transatlantic trip, I flew to London and took the train to Christchurch, Dorset, in order to attend Imaginary Consequences, a larp convention.

This is my third year attending Consequences, but it’s never been exactly the same trip twice. This year, taking the train was the new part. I did not account for the fact that I would not have a place to stash my ginormous suitcase on Southwest Rail trains, nor the fact that I’d have to change at Clapham Junction, one of the busiest exchanges on the line, nor that I’d have to drag said suitcase up two flights of stairs at said station because there wasn’t an escalator or elevator.

Ah well. The best I can say is that we managed, and arrived at Naish Holiday Village, where most everything was more familiar to us. We shared a lodge with Tony and Elyssia, as well as two of their friends who I hadn’t met before — Steve and David.

I found the latter utterly fascinating to talk to about history, especially legal history, as he’s been a lawyer for many years. From him I learned why judges in the UK wear black (apparently they’re still in mourning. For Queen Anne), and what the difference between a barrister and a solicitor was (which made the relationship between Eugene and Mortimer in Our Mutual Friend make a lot more sense). David also runs a vaguely 17th-century, 7th Sea-inspired tabletop campaign where the characters just went through the Siege of La Rochelle, so we spent some time discussing that era in history, too.

My schedule was light at Consequences — I only played in three games, and one of them was an off-schedule private run of a game after the con ended. This is due to having more trouble than usual signing up this year; I think more people than ever were in attendance. (The 4pm Eastern signup time wasn’t great, either, but it’s probably the best option available).

As a result, I spent a lot of time in the board gaming room. (Where I played new-to-me games Kingdom Builders, Mysterium, and Among Nobles).

Anyway! To the larps!

My first game was Músþéof, a 2-hour game by Dave Collis. I signed up for this game largely for the “Mouseguard/ Anglosaxon/ Amber setting,” which intrigued me, because cutthroat politics with fuzzy animals sounds like fun. I’ve played in Dave (and his co-conspirator Ben’s) Amber games before and found them entertaining, so I figured this would be much the same.

The characters are the members of three mús (mouse) guard patrols returning from harrowing missions, reporting on and dealing with what they’ve found. The world around them is crumbling in various dramatic ways; on top of that, there’s a schism between believers of the Old and New Gods (the new being the princes of Amber), and some old family rivalries, which are tearing the mouse community apart from the inside.

As Asmindr Whitecloak, the de facto leader of a patrol gone horribly wrong, I spent the first half of this game locked in a room with the rest of the patrol, trying to decide what we were going to tell the others about what happened on our patrol. The rest of the game… was a lot of yelling. (This happened in the straight-up Amber game I played, too). We tried to agree on what threat we were going to deal with first and who was going to lead us, but came to no conclusions. Accusations were made of murder plotted in the past. More yelling, and fighting.

I think I ended the game by scurrying off with a group of other mús to a supposed promised land?

I’m not sure what to make of this game. It was too short to ever be boring, but I felt sort of adrift, uncertain how I felt about the terrible things I’d just seen, and uncertain what to do about it, or where my loyalties lay. I knew I was a follower of the old gods, but other than that I had no strong feelings about what happened to my character.

While the world-building is a real strength of this game, I feel it could use more structure in terms of what happens when you return from patrols and how decisions are made among the mús. There didn’t seem to be any mechanic to resolve any of our various conflicts, which is what contributed to the resolution-by-loudness, I think.

There was cheese served, and I got to wear fleece pajamas to game, though, so no complaints 🙂

My Saturday evening game was The Dying of the Light, a Peaky game by Nickey Barnard, Tym Norris, Ray Hodson, Richard Evans, Mike Snowden, and Alli Mawhinney. This game takes place on a near-future Earth on the edge of ecological disaster. You play a leader of a world government or organization at the Omega Conference, which everyone agrees is probably the last resort to keep the world from ending entirely.

My character was Rachel Stahley of the Neo-Luddites (a faction I continually referred to as Space Amish, even though space was not involved in any way). The Neo-Luddites were shepherding what remained of the world’s agriculture, and were eager to keep it that way. While being very traditional-minded, Rachel was up to some very non-traditional activities. (My costuming, incidentally, was my ever-versatile black layered dress and a white lace shawl). She was also, in many interesting ways, a character I probably wouldn’t normally play — but I’m glad I had the chance to, mostly due to a lot of casting issues.

I think I did pretty well in terms of my personal plot in this game (to say more would be spoilery), though the NeoLs definitely did not get what they wanted (which was a reduction in technology and a return to the “old ways”). We averted a few terrible disasters, but I think at the end of game we were all about to die of the avian death flu… so. Don’t know how successful the conference as a whole was, then!

I didn’t interact at all with the hacking mechanic (no surprise there), but from the outside it looked interesting, and fairly streamlined. (Apparently in the first run they had tried to use Netrunner as the hacking mechanic which… did not work so well).

What this game taught me, most importantly, was that a group of Bill Clinton clones is properly referred to as an “orgy.”

Finally, I played in a private run of Burning Orchid (Ben Allen, Nickey Barnard, Martin Jones, Heidi Kaye and Alison Rider Hill) on Sunday afternoon, after the con was officially over. This was probably my favorite game of the con.

The game is set in 1932 at the wrap party of a movie, Burning Orchid — “detailing the passionate heart of a claustrophobic forbidden love story set in the jungle villages of Guatemala against a background of a country riven by political turmoil. And that’s not just the movie!”

I played Judy Gardner, a supporting actress in the titular film, just getting her footing in the movie business.

… aaaand I pretty much spent my entire game sitting in a corner, blubbing at Graham A, who played my co-star.

This is not usually the sort of game you would think of me liking — it’s plot-light, character-heavy and emotionally intense — but I did, and in spades. I would love to see it run at Intercon some year, as I think there’s a lot for that crowd to love. Heck, I’d love to do a private run of it myself.

And that was my con! I didn’t even stick around through Monday, as I did last year, since I had an early-morning flight to catch.

Observations on The Three Musketeers (1948)

I had seen almost every film version of The Three Musketeers.

I have seen much of the oevre of Vincent Price.

But until recently I had not seen The Three Musketeers (1948), in which he plays Cardinal Richelieu.

In that regard, I was not disappointed. Every time Price was on screen was brilliant. He was born to play that role.

… sadly, not for more than maybe ten minutes of the whole film.

(Learning that Price was probably bi has colored my interpretations of his roles. I feel vaguely bad for wanting his seducing D’artagnan over to his side to be an actual seduction — but only a little).

I lurve these villains so much.

Other thoughts:
– Gene Kelly (as D’Artagnan) really wanted to dance in this movie, and it seems like NO ONE HAD THE POWER TO STOP HIM. The sword fights — of course there are a lot — feel like dance routines where people are just kind of waving around weapons.

– The story is fairly accurate, except when it’s not. Like, Constance is D’Artagnan’s landlord’s niece, not his wife. (This is a common change — if not always in this permutation). There’s also the fact that they decided to smoosh Milady’s imprisonment/Buckingham’s assassination/Constance’s poisoning into one subplot in one location. Sure, I guess so? It makes the plot go faster…

– WTF is Lana Turner (as Milady de Winter) wearing? There’s perfectly serviceable 17th-century garb all around her, and she’s wearing some strangely architectural 1940s evening gowns. And some truly ridiculous hats.

What the hell?

Sadly, there’s otherwise nothing notable about her performance as my favorite character 🙁

– This is a version with a Duke of Buckingham! The script writer even went to the trouble to learn the given name of the historical first Duke of Buckingham (George Villiers). But then no one bothered to pronounce it right.

– Surprising no one, I get all teary-eyed at Milady’s execution at the end of the story. She’s a terrible person! I know that! But still. It’s no wonder I decided to write an entire novel as her vindication.