Late Thursday Humor

It's still before midnight, so it counts.

Anyway, Dorkly occasionally strikes comedy gold with RPG/gamer memes.

And without further ado, 20 Out-of-Context D&D Quotes That Accurately Represent The Game

Like this:

Is Someone up for a Story?

I've been thinking a bit about the rise of livestreaming video games, from the Let's Play videos to the "Teens Play" series to the rise of Twitch.TV. Not that great a surprise, given that people will watch others play video games in much the same way we used to crowd around someone playing Gauntlet or Galaga at the video arcade back in the 80s and marvel at their (lack of) skill.

That said, geek icon Wil Wheaton has been producing his own version of Let's Play for boardgames and RPGs for a few years now. The series, called Tabletop, presents Wil playing games he finds enjoyable with several friends/acquaintances. It gives people a chance to check a game out and see if they're interested in playing it in a lighthearted manner.*

Wil's most recent episode of Tabletop explores a pencil and paper RPG that I've recommended in the past for people who want to stick their toe into the RPG hobby but without being overwhelmed by numbers and tables: FATE Core.

FATE Core uses what is known as the Fudge system to handle random events in the game: four regular six sided dice with two minuses (-), two plusses (+), and two blanks. Minuses and plusses cancel each other out, so you could potentially end up with -4 to +4 as your range. No fuss, no muss. FATE also emphasizes story over mechanics, so the GM works with the players to tell a great story.

Well, enough ado about FATE Core, here's the episode:

Oh, and did I mention that Felicia Day plays with Wil?




*Plus that table he uses, from Geek Chic, is simply amazing. If I had the money AND the room.....

Happy Anniversary, LOTRO!

It feels kind of weird wishing LOTRO a happy 10th anniversary, since it feels only yesterday that I was wishing the same for WoW.*

The mini-Reds love the Anniversary events and are always pestering me to get more involved, so this time I took a break from grinding deeds and ran across the length and breadth of Middle-earth in the gigantic scavenger hunt that the devs put together for this special occasion.

And crack some skulls.

Being L81 but only up to the Rise of Isengard and the Great River expacs and quest packs, I was kind of shut out of completing most of the scavenger hunt events, but I still crept along as best I could without aggroing too many enemies. Unfortunately for me, I discovered that even neutral animals out in the wild would come from miles around to chase after me if the level difference was high enough, and when I poked my nose out of the Rangers of Ithilien's hideout, I was looking at the scenery only about 10 feet from the opening to discover a deer zipping at me from points unknown.

At least my toon can outrun a deer down a twisting passage if given enough of a head start.

After that little surprise, I decided that asking for a port to some of these locations was not a good idea, because I'd be a smudge on the ground quicker than you can say "WTF??!!!"**

Nice view. Of course, Frodo was a bit distracted
when he was at Amon Hen.

But that didn't stop me from making it to Amon Hen and then attempting to skirt across the length and breadth of Rohan. (And collecting all of the stable locations.)

Not exactly the length and breadth of Rohan,
as it's the Great River, but I found this really cool.

Still, for long time players this was a trip down memory lane that they'll not soon forget. And even though I started up an account shortly after LOTRO went F2P, I didn't really start playing seriously until long after, about 3 years ago.

If there's one thing that I wish about the 10th Anniversary event, it's that it would last an extra week. I'm not that into collecting stuff from the event as far as gear and fashion is concerned, but for some reason the firework event has been very soothing to me, much more so than in years past.

No, this is not an archive screen capture.
I just like fireworks.

Maybe I'm getting old, but... /shrug

I can live with that.





*I blame kids for my amnesia.

**I have had that dubious experience with roving threats. Once when I was shuttling back and forth from Annuminas as part of the endgame for Shadows of Angmar, I parked my toon in what seemed to be a pretty secluded area, free from enemies, while I went to go grab a beer. I came back a minute later to find that I'd been killed, with a roving threat gloating nearby.

The End of a Kickstarter

The other day, Anita Sarkeesian dropped her last video in the Tropes vs. Women series. Entitled The Lady Sidekick, she explores how female sidekicks are primarily in place to reinforce traditional attitudes or provide an ego boost for the (male) protagonist, rather than as fully formed characters who don't necessarily need male protection.

It's hard to believe that there was a time before Anita's Kickstarter back in 2012, because it feels like we've aged so much since then. It was a relatively simple idea: a short series of five 10 minute videos exploring stereotypical tropes concerning women in video games. But thanks to the visibility garnered by haters, her Kickstarter blew up the gamer corner of the internet. The series then expanded well beyond its originally intended scope into two full seasons worth of videos, along with bonus content, and generated a lot of discussion on both video games and gamers themselves.*

The funny thing is, the more the Gamergate crowd tried to silence Anita and others, the more positive interest they received. Anita would have never landed on the Colbert Report were it not for the haters, and her videos received far more interest and views as well.

Do I agree with everything Anita presented? No. But really, agreement on all items presented is not the point. She made me think, and by doing so she forced me to confront things I'd simply accepted as "the way things are".

So here's a toast to Anita Sarkeesian. I wish her well.





*It may be only April, but I think that might be the understatement of the year.

Why I Love MMOs, Part Whatever

Last night, World Chat discussion on LOTRO drifted around from "are goblins orcs?" and "Was George RR Martin inspired by Turin's relentlessly grim tale?"* to "When is the Beren and Luthien standalone novel to be released?"

Inspired by the latter, one of the players recited a shorter version of the Tale of Beren and Luthien in World Chat. Took the player over an hour, but it was worth it.

At one point someone made a snarky comment about the endeavor, but I channeled Animal House and replied "Forget it, he's rolling."

The book is released June 1st, 2017.
From Wikipedia.

The part about Sauron turning into a werewolf inspired a short lived "So Sauron was a Furry?" discussion, however....





*I said that he was partly inspired, but he also took heavy inspiration from Shakespeare and Medieval history. "The Children of Hurin is what you get if you let GRRM write Tolkien," was my response.

Memories....

..like the corners of my mind.*

Everybody does anniversaries differently, and LOTRO is no exception.

Justin Olivetti --you know, Syp from Bio Break-- over at MassivelyOP has an article on the anniversary plans that Standing Stone Games is planning for LOTRO's 10th anniversary, pointing back to the Standing Stone Games announcement.

I hope you're ready for a scavenger hunt...




*There. That intro from The Way We Were should give you a great earworm for the rest of the day. ;-)

A Brave New World I Suppose

I've noticed a recent uptick in traffic to PC from anonymizeme.pro. Normally I'd not worry to much about it, but this uptick almost exactly matches the passing of the new US law to block online privacy regulation.

If you've not heard about it before now, the long and the short of it is that back in October the Federal Communications Commission presented rules prohibiting internet service providers (ISPs) from selling your online browsing data to third parties: companies wanting to sell you stuff, private investigators, anyone at all. Congress decided that was "executive overreach" and passed the bill above to elimination such privacy regulations, with the side effect of letting ISPs sell your data to whomever they feel like it.

Normally if this were a problem with one ISP, you could simply replace them with another ISP. The issue here is that in the US a huge number of people have only one real ISP to use --their cable company-- because local towns and cities often have non-compete agreements with one cable company in exchange for that company providing local access programming.* So, if your local ISP decides to sell your online browsing data, you don't have an alternative available to jump to.

To fix this issue, some people have set up their own virtual private networks (VPNs) and others are using anonymizing services such as anonymizeme.pro. So while some people look at browsing records from anonymizeme and think "okay, who's doing something shady?", I look at it as merely a sign of the times.

And naturally, late night television has been using this new law as cannon fodder:

And....

*That's something that has almost completely disappeared from local cable, but that hasn't kept the cable companies from using their local monopolies to keep competition out.