Raptus Regaliter

Wow, been awhile since I’ve updated the ol’ blog. Fear not, though; I have no intention of abandoning this site, nor the podcast, despite my lack of posts to either of them. Things have just remained unbelievably busy.

So, the news.

First off, Kristin decided to forgo her commencement ceremony from Chico State University in favor of going to Kubla Con. We have been convinced that we wouldn’t be able to make it this year, but it looks like we’re actually going. Had I been more on the ball, I would have registered earlier, but c’est la vie. Unfortunately, since I just registered the two of us today, I was too late to submit a Shadowrun event like I’d planned to. Perhaps next year. Or, I could always wind up running a game on the fly again. Perhaps I’ll come prepared, just in case.

Kristin also talked to our favorite folks over at Good Omens Games about doing some recording with us. This has prompted me to start looking at the Flip Video Ultra. I’ve been thinking that there is a glut of audio convention coverage in the world of gaming podcasts, so I figured that some con video footage would be appropriate. I have a feeling that I’ll be conning my fiancée into asking the questions, since nobody wants to see the fat guy on camera.

For those who are interested, I’ve been using Google Reader for my news feeds lately, and I’ve been actively sharing a great deal of articles, not a few of them from Pharyngula, the blog of biologist PZ Myers. I don’t think that I’ve ever really made much of an attempt to hide my opinions regarding the teaching of Intelligent Design Creationism in the classroom, but it hasn’t been an issue that’s come up a lot in discussions of RPG design. Suffice to say, if you read Dr. Myers blog, or see the articles I’ve been sharing, you’ll probably have a good idea of how I feel about the subject. I’d also like to encourage everyone to check out Expelled Exposed, a site that addresses the claims of Ben Stein’s anti-evolution film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

This brings up another thing of note - as of next semester, I’m going back to school. A lot of things have changed in my life lately, nearly all of them good, and that’s prompted me to start taking a look at where I’m going in life. With my fiancée graduating from college, I just can’t stomach the thought of living off her residuals after we’re married, so I figured that I should do something to pull my own weight. So, it looks like I have to start trying for a degree in earnest.

To be honest, the thought of going to school as a 30 year-old is a little frightening to me, but I think I’ll manage to survive. Given the comments I’ve posted above, it should be no wonder that I’m seriously considering making an attempt to enter a scientific field. My problem is that I’m far too interested in far too many subjects to make the choice easy. So, I’ll be waffling around with general education courses while I work full time until I manage to come to a decision on what I want to do with the rest of my life.

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I’ve subscribed to a couple of AP gaming podcasts over the last couple of years, such as the World of Skell, The Game Master Show, The Rolemonkeys, and, most recently, This Is Shadowrun. Most of the time, I’ll admit, they tend to go unlistened to.

I think that the problem is that, with a few exceptions, RPG sessions tend to be boring for those of us who aren’t directly involved. The Game Master Show has a slight advantage in this area - after their games, they actually go through and critique the sessions. This is extremely valuable to me as a gamer. But most other AP podcasts simply go through their sessions, without taking the time for post-game editorial.

Coupled with this is the length of the average game session. I’d say most range between 4 and 8 hours. To conserve bandwidth and storage, most AP casts get broken down into bite sized chunks - 2 hours or so. That, however, seems to be the end of the editing process. We still get the long pauses while someone looks up a rule, the side conversations that get inadvertently picked up by the microphones, and all of the bumps, pops, and clicks from impacts on the table. That makes things very hard to listen to.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to edit those shows, either. 8 hours of audio to listen to? It’s not like an advice or talk podcast that you can slim down to carefully planned points of discussion. I really don’t blame anyone for not wanting to sit through a gaming session twice just to cut out the sound of someone’s dice-tower falling over when another gamer bumps the table en route to the fridge.

I suppose my real problem with AP casts is that, for the most part, I don’t get anything from them. The production is to distracting to really catch the great techniques that the GM’s are employing. The mic is too far away when a player cracks a joke, but plenty close enough for the subsequent peal of laughter to blow out my eardrums. I can’t hear what roll was called for, but I can damn sure hear the handful of dice clatter to the table.

I don’t bring these things up to discourage AP podcasters. And, as I said before, there are exceptions. But it would be both awesome and valuable to see if there are ways around these problems.

Hell, if there are, I’ll probably start recording my own sessions.

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I listened to the latest episode of Sam Chupp’s The Bear’s Grove Podcast today, and I felt I had to comment on the topic. Bear in mind, of course, that I’m not all that used to blogging, so this may or may not be coherent. Also, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Sam, and this isn’t intended to be any kind of rant.

I think the thing that really bugged me is the idea that, somehow, portrayals of races and cultures in fantasy RPGs constitute actual racism. The most common example - taken from the Gamers of Color LiveJournal community - is LARPers or con-goers dressing like drow (dark elves from the Dungeons & Dragons RPG) being compared to performers wearing blackface. This is really an example of seeing racism where there is none.

I understand that people from certain groups are discriminated against. That doesn’t, however, give any given minority (of which I am one) the right to assume that the creators of shallow fantasy cultures are necessarily being racially insensitive. Sometimes, there just needs to be some bad guys. I mean, nobody accuses George Lucas of being anti-British just because every Imperial officer in Star Wars had a high-class British accent; everyone just realizes that it sounds cool.

To be honest, I think that an orc is just an orc. They get slaughtered in droves because that’s what they’re there for. Yeah, sometimes it may make it more interesting in a given story to humanize them in some way, but more often than not, it’s unnecessary. I’m pretty sure that it’s usually us who project our own flaws onto these nonexistent fantasy cultures and races. On the other hand, I don’t go around complaining that atheists aren’t well represented in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It’s better to accept the fact that people write things like evil, subterranean, black-skinned elves into RPGs because they’re cool. Not because they’re supposed to represent any real-life culture or human phenotype.

Then again, what the fuck do I know? I am, after all, only some poor, privileged honky.

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