The Saga of Warrior Reborn

I am a beast.

I am a force of nature.

I am the dry crack of thunder before the coming storm.

I am what others fear in the back of their minds; a hold over from a time when violence was a way of life and death a constant reminder of what we are all really thinking of.

I am angry, and not the safe, washed down version you see spoiling about on TV. I feel the fire in my gut and the red in my eyes. It isn't just emotion; for me it's a way of life.

I am ready, and more importantly, I am worthy of the challenges I face, because I know that they will not       break me, only grow my legend, my saga. I yearn for a time when a man claims immortality not from his iniquities being broadcast all of humanity, but when his deeds were whispered in hushed and reverent tones from those who had witnessed those moments of legend.


     In the past two weeks, I have embarked upon a journey to improve my physical being. My thirtieth birthday happens to coincide with Florida's running of Tough Mudder. This twelve mile obstacle course is designed to test your resolve and your physical stamina, and my wonderful friends thought it would be a good way to celebrate the passing of my twenties. I reluctantly agreed, and began a regimen of both dieting and exercise that has left me in a place that I have never been before.

    Satisfied.

    It isn't a word I throw around very often. I am a firm believer that satisfaction leads to complacency, but this time it wasn't the case. This contentment, this satisfaction, stemmed from accomplishment. I have lost twelve pounds in two weeks. For the first time in ages, I feel light, quick, agile even. Waking up isn't a chore, it's another chance to prove to myself that I am the master of my life. I see so many people I know struggling to be happy, to find a better job or make more money, and for the first time, I get that this kind of joy doesn't come from succeeding in the rat race of life. It comes from getting up, making a decision to do the right thing, eat the right thing, and do it because it makes you a better person.

    I'm not doing this for anyone but myself. There isn't a anyone going to care if I take care of myself in the end. Not really. How many time have we heard ourselves saying to someone we know, "Man, I wish so-in-so would just take of themselves. They really let go of themselves." I don't want anyone to ever say that about me. There is no excuse for it. In the end, I'm answerable to only two things; myself and God. And considering He made me in His image, I don't think he would appreciate me defacing the wondrous form He created for me.

    It feels good to get that off of my chest.

    Tangent warning, looks like I'll finally get to play some D&D soon. My girlfriend has been clambering to play, and her friends want to join in, so I feel obliged to to teach them how to play.

    And Warmachine has been going fantastically. I'll be running my first league in the coming month.

SCC

A Return to Form

     I really suck at maintaining a blog.

     I keep blaming outside influences; convergences of celestial and terrestrial events that conspire to prevent me from writing. Like Cthulhu or The King in Yellow is actively attempting to stop me from putting words into the vastness of the internet. If only that were true. I'll be honest, I mostly just suffer from malcontentment. I'm never quite happy with how this ever turns out; in fact, I rarely post on Facebook anymore for much the same reason. It just comes across, to me, as idiotic rambling.

     Yet here I am again, letting loose the thoughts in my head in a public manner. Anything you read past this point is now your fault entirely, and you have been warned.

     Tabletop RPG's have fallen to the wayside for me currently. This isn't due to a lack of interest, but more of a growing interest in another game. For a long time, I've been eyeing Warmachine and Hordes; mainly to supplant my waning interest in Warhammer 40,000. I love the social aspects of tabletop wargaming. It is one the first activities I have found that I don't need to win to have fun. Learning Hordes has been a blast, and the group of people that I have found here in Gainesville have been wonderful so far.

     What started out as a Christmas present from a friend has blossomed into a full 35 point Legion of Everblight army. I was kinda tired of always playing the "good guys" in games, and taking a cue from both my girlfriends love of all things creepy, and my good friend's Travis' love of all things monstrous, I settled on Hordes. For once there are no giant robots in my army, no power armored super soldiers, no crazy missile launchers of machine guns. Just good old fashioned dragon muscle and elven magic.

    I'm loving it. Privateer Press has built an amazing world for their games. Between this game and my hopeful adoption of the tabletop RPG "Iron Kingdoms," I can't get enough of this stuff. Anyway, back to the good stuff.

Ravagore WIP

The whole collection

    These are my current projects, And I'm happy to say that I'm well on the way to completing them. This is the first time I've ever had a whole collection of something, and I'm particularly proud of it. 

Other Points of View

    In recent weeks, I have been doing a lot of looking into tropes and the misuse of them by the larger creative community. One of the things I have always felt I have been good at in writing is finding logical explanations for things beyond the reason of "just because."  I love characters with realistic motivations and reactions to situations. Hell, anyone that has ever discussed storytelling with me at any length know that my favorite stories are those in which the protagonist is a normal person thrust into extraordinary circumstances. It's fascinating for me to imagine myself in the character's place, debating what they did versus what I would do.

    That said, I found that on occasion I have used negative stereotypes to portray women and minorities in an unflattering light. I think this this stems from a few things, some of which were beyond my control until very recently.

    The first of these is, unfortunately for me in this regard, I am a male, white American. Just by nature, I gravitate towards characters that resemble me, and Lord knows the mass media caters to this. It isn't that I care less for characters outside this demographic, it's just when I write, I fall back on what I know. How many other people out the have heard the axiom, "Write what you know"? Even if you aren't an author, I'm sure this kind of advice makes quite of bit of sense, and starting out it is a very helpful tool. But part of getting better is learning when you don't need the training wheels anymore.

    As a fan of fantasy and science fiction, the overwhelming majority of material I encounter is both male and Caucasian centric. Take a moment to think of the main characters of all of the shows in this genre. I did. I was surprised when I couldn't think of a single person of color and only a handful of women. All this had been doing had been reinforcing my natural proclivities of using white men as heroes.

    The last one was something I had some awareness, but didn't realize that I knew so little about. I'm talking about the misogynist treatment of women in tropes. Don't get me wrong, as a man, I love a damsel in distress. Of course it's empowering to save the girl. And it has its place in fiction. Just not always in mine,

    So I'm just going to keep being me, keep trying to think outside the box, and keep an open mind. This was more of a random musing post, and less of a topic thing.

Classic Horror

     As I slowly pull together a new gaming group (or resurrect an old one, in a way), the ideas for the new campaign have started to drift in. I like to try new things when it comes to storytelling, and this seemed like another good opportunity to do so.
    
    I've been playing a lot of The Secret World lately, and I've really been enjoying the locales and setting as a whole. I love the feeling of pervasive dread it inspires. It's as if, even though you are clearly the hero, it doesn't care that you might lose. The forces arrayed against you leave little doubt that you are a small fish in a very large and disturbing ocean. As I entered the Transylvania zone, I was reminded of the old Ravenloft campaign setting from AD&D. In a time when vampires sparkle and werewolves are just tens with anger problems, it was nice to be reminded just how terrifying these beasts were in their original incarnations.

     This got me thinking for other sources of inspiration along these fronts. I knew I was hooked on the concept of Gothic horror; but where did I go from there? First thing first, I dug up my copy of Heroes of Horror, a 3.5 sourcebook for exactly these things. It's a wonderful tool for setting a tone and coming up with ways to challenge your players while maintaining suspense. I've actually used it in my regular campaigns it's so chock full of player killin' goodness.

    I'm not sure how I'm going to run it mechanically speaking. Pathfinder/3.5 has an absolute wealth of options and material specifically designed for this, but it is an pain to run. I'm toying around with the idea of 4E, but that doesn't sit right either. It's too combat oriented for a good suspense, intrigue-driven story. My prior gaming group tried several times in this regard, and it never really seemed to stick. So where does that leave me?

    Dunno. I think I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and run it in 3.5.

    Sigh. I hate the encounter system so much. Adjusting monsters for different encounters can be tricky, particularly with the rules for combat being moderately complicated. That said though, the level of customization is staggering for characters, and I think that's the reason players keep coming back to it as a system. Even more so than any other edition of Dungeons & Dragons, 3.5 is just where so many hearts reside.

    I just hate making those encounters. Maybe Pathfinder has a more streamlined way of doing things. We'll see.

Asian Fusion

     Okay, so I had a little bit of a tornado of hectic scrambling last week, and wasn't able to post because of it. Now I'm back on the wagon and here to talk about a couple of different games I've been looking to play.

    The first is Big Eyes Small Mouth, a game I was cajoled/conscripted to play as a part of the podcast that I record with. The Wicked Anime crew consists of most of my former gaming group, and during one of our post recording talks, the idea of running a BESM campaign came up. Everyone thought this was a wonderful idea, as we could each pick a genre we really loved for our respective characters. Or have a genre foisted upon you like plague. In an effort to avoid having to play the magical girl (because for some reason, as the tokusatsu and sentai fan, they wouldn't let me be a Power Ranger or Kamen Rider. Which was just cruel.), I volunteered to DM the shenanigans.

    We held a poll on the what time of campaign it should be, and the fans chose the ragtag crew team-up. What a wonderful windfall.This has let to some really neat avenues of thought because this isn't really a defined genre in terms of setting. I can run the whole of time and space with this, as long as the characters are using there disparate abilities and natures in overcoming the obstacles. So, look forward to ninjas, spaceships, giant robots, magical girls and just a touch of high school drama. Should be fun.

    Moving on to my personal gaming, The Secret World hasn't slowed down in its ability to keep me interested. My cabal consists of some pretty cool guys, and I've even run my first dungeon. DPS is a new experience, but I totally get why people chase those big critical hit numbers now. I'm slowly branching into a more support/dps playstyle, and I might even begin to pick up some tanking abilities, just to round things out.

   On the tabletop front, I've got the backbone of a Pathfinder campaign that seems like it might be fun. I think I might take cue from the old 3.5 setting Ravenloft and run some traditional gothic horror for my group. Vampires ruling cities hidden in the mist, werewolves terrorizing villagers, ghosts keening balefully in the night. It's different from my normal high adventure style and kind of refreshing.

Without a Doubt

    Once again, sleeplessness has left me here, writing this blog. It's not such a bad thing. I have a weird relationship with the haze that sets in after not sleeping for an unhealthy period of time. It loosens my mind, letting me set aside those internal prejudices that keep me from enjoying writing all the time. I don't feel so self conscious at one in the morning. I'm weird.

    I'm finding the more I step up in life, the more I'm terrified I might succeed. I know that sounds stupid. Hell, I just said it out loud to make sure it was I meant to say. The prospect of success means that you have accomplished something, which in turn means responsibility and respect. These are things I crave desperately, and have so for years. I just don't know if I'm the man to actually bear that burden. ;It doesn't feel like courage when the thing I'm trying to overcome is myself.

    I think this might be about doubt. Doubt has been, and I really believe always be, my greatest weakness. The moment I think that I can fail, I don't even quit.

    I never even try.

    I have wasted so many opportunities in my life because of the fear of failure. It's easier to be a screw-up. No expectations, no pressure. People are proud of you for just getting by. Don't get me wrong, the person was five, six years ago is not the man I am today. But I should have never have fallen to that point. I had potential, but no vision. Everyone around me, especially my family saw, this in me, and desperately tried to get me to realize it myself before it was too late.

   I pray that I prove them right.

   Part of that is excepting one's inherent greatness. And I'm not talking about the arrogant bravado that normally surrounds me. It's in that moment when you've made the right call and you know you have to stick with it. Because in the end other people are depending on you. Because you know that you ARE the right person for the job. Because, at the very end of the day, you can sleep knowing that it was done right, and done for the right reasons.

    I'm not just moving on. I'm moving forward. I've made mistakes and squandered time and chance, but they HAVE taught me a lessons. I am wiser, more capable than I have ever been. Tomorrow, and every tomorrow after after that, I'm going to be a better Sean.

Rage against the Immaterium

     So, earlier today I was catching up on m daily blogs and webcomics when I was greeted with this nonsense. Basically, it's an article that outlines how Games Workshop is bullying writers and other companies in an effort to secure the term "Space Marine" as a trademarked property. I'll let you read this, then we'll discuss this.

     Legalwatch - GW Makes the News...

     Read it? Good, because here comes the rant.

     I cannot believe this blatant... bullying. There is no other term for it. This is very much a case of a larger, more powerful entity forcing its own agenda on someone that stands no chance off being able to fight back. This is ridiculousness of the highest order.

    That aside, there are two things that are even worse than this predication. First, was Amazon giving in to Games Workshop. This does nothing but set a precedent for Games Workshop to continue its vendetta of legalese harassment. In no way was Amazon required to take down the book from its online store. It did so to save its own ass. Has the threat of litigation become so powerful that even the mighty corporation won't stand behind it's community of creators and producers?

     The second part of this fiasco is to me the sadder of the two. In no way can I affect Games Workshop's decision to harass these creators. My personal boycott of their products would do no good. Even if I were to convince my few friends that are fans and that purchase their products to stop it in support of this writer would not even register in Games Workshop's ledger. So here I am ranting about it.

    And then I realized there was something I can do. Actually, there was something my very community of peers could do.

    We can take it back.

    The only thing we can really do to stop the kind of ham-handedness is to make our own stories about Space Marines. And not Games Workshop's either, but the Space Marines that have existed in the genre for over eighty years now. They may own the trademark, but they do not own the trope. I know this idea may seem silly to some, but this concept that people have the right to own whole, broad concepts is irrational and ultimately stifles creativity. The only way to win is to fight.

     And fight I will. This abuse of power has gone on too long.