Hmm... I should probably take a break from posting on messageboards at paizo.com for a bit. My posts are starting to feel snarky to me, partially because I'm getting tired of answering the same questions and confronting the same confusions from folks who mistake the Bestiary for a player's book of race options. Cutting back on messageboard posts will also give me more time to get Pathfinder #29 over to layout ASAP, so that's good too.

I sleep with a fan on as a source of white noice. Keep that in mind.

I just had a dream that I was the host of a special about rare nocturnal animals that use humans as a symbiotic "launching pad" to prepare for their nightly hunt. In the dream, the film crew loaded me up with sleeping animals and then filmed it as the night fell and the animals slowly woke and stirred as they crawled up over my body to the top of my head to crawl or fly away into the night. The animals were:

1) The razortoothed Shrieking Bat.
2) The long-legged Brazilian climbing scorpion.
3) Several other bugs whose name I can't remember.

The dream ended with the climbing scorpion climbing up over my face and through my hair. I finally woke with a start to realize the fan was blowing across my head and face, tickling me.

Going back to sleep now with the fan aimed somewhere else. Don't want no long-legged Brazillian climbing scorpion in my hair again.

Just now hit 1,000,000 demands! It's opening nationwide! EVERYONE CAN SEE IT!!!!

More importantly, I can see it AGAIN!!!!

So in about a month, I'm gonna be starting up another campaign based on my "Unspeakable Futures" rules—updated to work with the Pathfinder RPG core rules. "Unspeakable Futures" is basically an RPG set in the post-apocalyptic world after Lovecraft's mythos have come in and run amok. If you combine Lovecraft's writing with Fallout, Road Warrior, and Stephen King's Dark Tower stories, you'll have a good idea of what this game's like.

I've got the rules pretty much nailed down, and I ran a campaign before back when I was working at Wizards of the Coast so I've got a fair amount of Apocalyptic World material to draw upon (several Gamma World things, the d20 Apocalypse book, a few Darwin's World supplements)... but I'm looking for more. PARTICULARLY for good maps of apocalyptic locations.

SO! Anyone out there have any suggestions?

Even if you haven't seen "Paranormal Activity," go to this website now. Demand it! Because once that counter hits 1,000,000, Paramount Pictures has promised to open the movie on a wide release rather than leaving it at isolated midnight showings here and there across the USA at a dozen or so theaters. We can make this happen! Paranormal Activity in theaters across the nation by Halloween!

And then I spilled an entire glass of water on the carpet.

(heavy sigh)

It's a super fun movie! Zombie mayhem and comedy galore! Not as funny or as fun as Shaun of the Dead, but close! But I'm kinda too cranky to do an in-depth review... not because of the movie but because work has been stressful in many more ways than normal and now I need to go relax somewhere and do something that doesn't involve writing or the internet or Pathfinder or worrying about paying bills.

Bleh... this was supposed to be a Zombieland reveiw. Go see it! It's good even if you're cranky!!

Zombieland: B+

If Surrogates was disappointing for its wasted potential, then Pandorum is CRIMINAL in its wasted potential. Here's a movie with some really impressive special effects and set work, good acting, and a really original and intriguing plot line that proceeds to systematically mute its strengths by constantly placing scenes in poorly lit and super gloomy areas where you can't really see the cool stuff, or filming fight scenes with such choppy and rapid-fire editing mixed with bewildering close-ups that you can't really keep track of what's happening. And just when you think they're doing something neat with an idea, something kind of silly pops up to make you wonder if the good ideas were accidents.

Event Horizon disappointed me in the same way; so much potential wasted by timidity or a fear of sticking to the convictions of the ideas or simply not having the creativity to back up the ideas with equally brilliant support.

Pandorum: C

Bruce Willis knows his way around the robots! Alas, while Surrogates has some really neat set-pieces and touches on some cool ideas about what a world where everyone lives life through robot surrogates would be like... it just doesn't take the idea far enough. There's some good stuff in the movie, but it left me with a feeling of wasted potential; if you can be anyone... why not anything? Can you be a crocodile? What would happen if the goth scene got ahold of surrogates? Can you download EVERYTHING into a surrogate?

The movie has some cool ideas but keeps remembering that it's also trying to be an action movie, and the action scenes, while fun, aren't as interesting as seeing a huge warehouse filled with thousands of soldiers waging war from comfy chairs, or the intrigue of what happens when someone borrows someone else's surrogate. Coulda been so much more, this movie.

Surrogates: B –

Wow.

Just went to see a special free midnight showing of Paranormal Activity up in the U-district with mysticalforest . The movie is, no joke, the scariest movie I've seen since Blair Witch Project. I never jump in movies when the scares come... I've seen so many I'm used to it I guess. I jumped at every scare in this movie. It's similar in a lot of ways, in that it's a "found footage" movie like Blair Witch or Cloverfield. And as I sit here in my apartment, I've got chills running up and down my spine every time I look over at my open bedroom door.

The movie also happened to have perhaps the most annoying heckler/idiot I've seen in a movie theater for a long time; a guy who kept shouting out inane comments and stupid jokes and all sorts of grade-A annoying behavior. The movie still scared the hell out of me even with this chowderhead doing his best to show off his poor selection of genes.

WARNING: The trailer for Paranormal Activity, while effective, has some pretty big spoilers. They won't ruin the movie, I don't think; they didn't for me, but still.

It's 2:14 AM and there's no way I'm going to sleep yet. Gonna go watch some Primeval (mmmm... dinosaurs and Hannah Spearritt) to calm my jangled nerves.

Paranormal Activity: A+

Jennifer's Body surprised me. Not by being a well made and creepy horror movie (which it is). Not by being a really witty and quirky movie with some really fun dialogue (which it has). And not for being one of those rare breaths of fresh air of an R-Rated horror movie when PG-13 horror seems so in vogue (this movie's pretty gory and delightfully foul-mouthed).

No... what surprised me was how the screen writer, Diablo Cody, who wrote last year's "Juno" (which I have not yet seen, but which got great reviews, and based on Diablo's writing for Jennifer's Body I will now be seeing Very Soon), is not pretending to know what she's doing when it comes to writing horror movies. "Juno" is the only other movie she's written so far apart from Jennifer's Body, and in Jennifer's body we have things happening that only a horror movie fan will get a kick out of.

Things like projectile vomiting and floating possessed girls above beds, a la "The Exorcist." Think that's an easy one? How about an uncredited Lance Henriksen cameo? Or an Evil Dead poster on the wall of the main character's bedroom? Or hell, Megan Fox wearing said main character's Evil Dead shirt?

The movie could have gone a little further with its mayhem, and while the credit sequence was pretty cool it woulda been nice to have that coda actually be part of the movie. And for a movie that's essentially about a succubus... there was a weird lack of actual nudity in it.

Anyway, the movie's delightfully creepy and scary and evil and unique. "Are you wearing my Evil Dead shirt?"

Jennifer's Body: B+

 So... I'm working on some WOEFULLY BEHIND freelance for Paizo, and I've come to a part where it makes a lot of sense to include an element from the Shadow Under Sandpoint game I'm running at the office every other Thursday.

Here's the problem.

The guys who are in my Thursday game include the guys who are going to develop and edit this freelance turnover, and therefore when they edit the chapter, they'll get hit with a campaign spoiler.

Which is weird. But know what? Those guys are professionals. They'll be able to roll with a spoiler or two.

And if they can't... if they use their editor and developer knowledge to better the powers of their characters, I can always bring out the Tarrasque.

I'm not gonna make it to 52 books this year. Turns out, when a big part of your job is writing and reading, it's hard to put aside time to read for pleasure.

Some books I DID read for pleasure that were good, so far, include:

A Storm of Swords: George RR Martin is awesome.

Wastelands: Some good apocalyptic earth sci-fi short stories, a few dull ones.

Black Wind: F. Paul Wilson's version of World War II. Too many explanation points, too long but tries to do too much and should have been longer, and should have focused on a tighter span of time rather than follow three characters from childhood to adulthood. Great ending though, makes it mostly worth the read. And quite interesting to see the backstory for one of his more recent books, By the Sword, which is MUCH better. His new book, Ground Zero, comes out tomorrow. I will be going to get it.

The Strain: Guillarmo Del Toro and some other guy tell a cool story about a vampire plague hitting New York. Part one of a Trilogy. I am looking forward to the next two books.

In the Heart of the Sea: True story account of the trials and terrors of the crew of the Essex, an early 19th century whaling ship from Nantucket that gets sunk by a pissed-off sperm whale and puts the entire crew adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for several months. Cannibalism is involved. GREAT book.

COMING UP NEXT: A Feast For Crows (more George RR Martin!!) and Lucifer's Hammer (take THAT, Earth!) and Ground Zero (Repairman Jack is cool!).

Although I'm a fan of Antarctica movies  (The Thing and Encounters at the End of the World being the two best ones) and am also a fan of Kate Beckinsale, as it turns out I am not a fan of Whiteout. The movie is completely and utterly... blah. I went in with relatively low expectations, so that may have kept me from really hating the movie, but it probably wins this year's award for wasted potential. I mean... the setup is really cool. At first it looks like there might be some sort of supernatural or sci-fi element, but as the movie wears on it becomes apparent its some sort of espionage thriller... but then you realize it's actually just a slasher movie... but THEN your realize it's not any of those and is nothing more than a pretty mundane smuggle the riches out of danger movie or something like that. And oh yeah, the movie's climactic fight during a whiteout in Antarctica happens about 20 minutes before the climax, leaving us with a 20 minute or so sequence of "Yeah, we get it movie, roll credits."

Some thoughts this movie raised in my mind:

1) I'm no science guy, but don't hurricane-shaped storms tend to not fly right up into the middle of Antarctica?
2) Any movie that starts out with a mid-air gunfight among russians in a cargo plane over Antarctica and then cuts to Kate Beckinsale getting undressed to take a shower that ends up, in the end, being a boring and lackluster movie is doing something wrong.
3) It's interesting that a character's exposed flesh sticks to and freezes from contact with metal only once, when it serves the plot.
4) If you're carrying a gun, and some guy attacks you with an ice axe, don't forget your gun can be used to fire bullets. You don't HAVE to run away.
5) If you set your movie in Antarctia, have a mysterious metal box on a Russian plane crash in the 50s, and then have a bunch of scientists out looking for meteorites... you should probably consider doing SOMETHING science fictiony with your movie. You don't want to turn the movie into a "not exciting enough for a crime drama TV show episode" because that means you're doing it wrong.

Bleh. Spent too long talking about this movie. There were some good previews, though, and the seats were comfortable.

Whiteout: C –

...and have joined the legions on Facebook.

So, I'm at work and my giant new office window gives me a huge view of the DRIVING RAIN that's wonderfully graced the northwest. There's been spots of rain on and off over the past few months, but this is the first time it's really really rained. Delightful soggy gray weather! Horray! 

 In a game where you have multiple choices on character archetypes to play, be it D&D or Pathfinder or Warcraft or any RPG, the concept of "balance between the class options" is a dangerous and seductive fun-killer.

Put simply, if one were to successfully balance all possible options between a number of classes so they're all equally balanced with regards to everything... what would be the difference, mechanically, between those classes? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have only ONE choice with ONE set of rules?

The fact that there are so many different choices is good for gaming. Even if it does lead to frustration. In Warcraft, for example, there's a constant shifting of class abilities between the classes in an attempt to balance things for ease of play for all class choices. The problem is that since you have essentially 3 different roles in Warcraft (healer, tank, and DPS), and nearly three times that number in class choices, the quest for balance is a self-defeating quest because there's always going to be classes that are left behind if you try to maintain their specific niche in how they approach one of those three roles.

For a computer game, that basically means that the developers need to constantly be adjusting and tweaking things. One would hope that they'd go in cycles that don't always cause one or two classes to be garbage or useless, but I'm not sure they're doing that all that well. (Yes, I do play a hunter in Warcraft.)

For a tabletop RPG, the problem of balance is less dire, though. This is a place where the fact that you have a flesh-and-blood human running the game rather than a computer program is still a HUGE advantage in the war between tabletop and computer gaming. No matter what kind of balance problems exist in the rules, the GM can adjust things as needed when he sees that a player is being left behind or when his role in the game is being overshadowed by others.

I'm also posting this because I'm tired of building stat blocks for Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #28. But those stats aren't building themselves! OK! Back to work! NEXT UP: a vampire rogue!

I've pretty much completed the move into the new office. There are still a few Godzilla-related and other bits of decoration that need to find homes, and lots of stuff for wall space and the like that can still be worked on, but I'm essentially all unpacked. YAY! 

Warning; this one's got some R-rated language in it, so don't go playing it at full volume at work, I guess!

Check it out!