n00b GM: My First Player Kill

Okay, so, as some of you may know, I’ve recently gotten pulled into the whole Dungeons & Dragons thing.  I didn’t mean to, but I had a few friends who liked it, I got hooked on MMOs as a gateway drug, I’ve read the Poetic Edda so I already knew lots of awesome names for Dwarves anyway…and somehow I wound up with a Level 13 rogue, a Level 7 Ranger, a Level 1 Wizard and a Level 2 News Anchor.

Uh, that last one wasn’t D&D, it was D20 modern.  It’s for a Horror campaign set in modern times that’s being played this month for Halloween.  My character’s only real skill (against all the highly trained military agents and mercenaries and such) is as a font of pop culture knowledge to say things like “No, don’t open that door.  Aim a gun at it first.”

Anyway, I’ve also been pulled into being a Game Master (or Dungeon Master for the purists), and the first session that I planned on lasting for a night took three, possibly four, sessions to get through.  I didn’t want to ruin the entire adventure with my love of mad science, so I got it out of my system with this first building, something of an alchemist’s lab gone awry.

Anyway, while I’m happy that they finished the dungeon after killing the Glod Dragon (that isn’t a typo.  They also found lots of Glod Coins, a potion that turns lead into Glod, and a spinning wheel that spins Glod out of straw), I’m more happy about getting my first character death out of the way.  I knew one would happen eventually, and I hoped it would happen sooner than later so that I could get used to it.

And how did this character assasination occur?  Well, there was a fight between the party, and a gang of two hobgoblins and five kobolds.  They were able to defeat all but one of the kobolds who was swallowed up by a strange, moving hole that glided across the floor.  Two of the party members jumped down after it, just before the hole could vanish.

Eventually, the party reunited with one of the party members, and shortly after encountered the kobold again.  They attacked it quickly, depleting its four hitpoints.  While the players were aware that the kobold was now being played by one of the players, they had the decency to not break character.  So the kobold, and hence the party member, died after the horrible brain swapping.

Ten Days Until They Cancel Australia

People familiar with Penny Arcade might be familiar with the brilliant way that it’s written, especially if they go beyond the comic and check on the news posts.  Tycho made a statement once in one of his posts referring to what, at the time, seemed like the pending cancellation of E3.  He claimed that saying this to a gamer was a bit like what a normal person might hear if they were told that “they’ve cancelled Australia.”

How can one cancel Australia?  Like E3, Australia has just always been there.  It’s a part of life’s basic infrastructure.

We’re currently ten days away from another Australia cancellation, and unlike E3 I don’t think we’ll eventually be getting this one back.  Friends, we are ten days away from Yahoo’s plug-pulling of Geocities, one of the Internet’s earliest and most well known free, DIY website hubs.

For those who have only been on the Internet for five years or so, Geocities might not feel like so much of a staple of the Internet as it does to old guys like me in the early/mid twenties.  Geocities provided a simple framework that people could use, and use it they did.  All it took was some basic HTML knowledge, or even just knowledge of how to hit buttons on a keyboard.  Fan sites for cartoons, personal sites to show pictures of people’s pet kittens, a few optimistic (and, on a truly rare occasion, even succesful) businesses here and there…Geocities acted as a host to them all, providing the space as long as you were willing to provide the decorations.  And provide they did.  Many, many people did.

We’re less than a fortnight away, and I want to invite you to do something with me.  Take a quick look through Geocities.  If you’re new to Geocities, search around for information on old cartoons you might remember.  If you’re already familiar with it, take a quick glance through some of your old favorites lists that you’ve not checked in ages.  You’ll find some interesting things there.  You’ll find packets of data that are worth a few clicks, data that is (or at least was) worth something to you, as well as to the website’s creator.  You’ll also find a lot of ghost towns, websites that haven’t seen visitors in weeks, months or years.  Apart from the tumbleweed, you’ll be the first there in ages.  And you may also be the last.

You may also discover that a few websites are still up and running.  Fansites have a tendency to do one of two things, I’ve found: they either shrivel and die quickly, or they struggle onwards with an amazing tenacity that can last…well, I’d say decades, but the Internet as we all know it isn’t even two decades old yet.  Maybe two if you count the very early newsgroups and college mainframes and such that the current Internet was built upon.  Three if you’re willing to only count networks created for collegiate work and military studies.  But I digress: the point is, there’re a few websites on Geocities now that are still active, still getting visitors, and still making plans.  A few of them are willing to go down with the ship, and some are making plans to transfer.

I’m sorry for the maudlin tone of this post, I don’t mean it to be as sad as all that.  The time for a website like geocities might be gone.  AOL Hometown just vanished last month, and it’s not like a huge amount of clamor surrounded that.  Social Networking sites and Blog sites have eliminated the majority of uses for places like them, and while there’s a sort of undeniable nostalgia and historical interest, I can’t honestly claim that my geocities pages were going to be updated any time soon (that’s right, I had some.)

It’s going to be weird to wake up on the 27th to find myself in a world without Geocities.  But I’ll adjust.  The future for the Internet and net culture is brighter than ever, it’s practically mainstream.

So, take care, Geocities.  You’ll be missed.  If the future websites of the world let us see far, it will only be because they stand on the shoulders of giants like you.

City of Reality: Does A Perfect World Need A Superman?

I ordinarily don’t catch people’s names before they do things that I latch onto obsessively, but I was actually familiar with Ian Samson for a long while.  I read a webcomic called The Wotch, and Ian has done a handful of filler art, donation animations and other varied things for The Wotch.  I’ve always enjoyed his art style.  I’m not a graphics art critic, but I mean in all seriousness that I think he draws my favorite circle out of everyone in the world wide web.

Seriously, go take a look at the way he draws circles, arcs, loops and things.  He puts an energy into them that’s tough for me to explain.

Anyway, while checking The Wotch for an update, I saw a notice that Ian Samson had gone and started his own webcomic called “The City of Reality.”  The world of Ian’s new comic is surprisingly simple and easy to understand.  People are always generally good, a team of superheroes protects everyone from the rare criminal or giant monster (and the property damage is handled easily), the city government appears to be noncorrupt even though it’s clearly a puppet ruler (heh-heh), and people don’t let their different opinions about things get in the way of a solid friendship.  In short, it’s the kind of world that so many of us remember from Saturday Morning Cartoons.  Good people aren’t cynical, you can depend on the kindness of strangers, and the rare villain will most likely show mercy in any given fight.

The premise seems bland and predictable at first, I know.  But there’s a real substance to the optimism.  There’s an innocence at work in this comic that, in all honesty, I think rings true to those of us (which is probably all of us) who’ve lost a level of innocence but still believe that there’s a value to it.

In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Dave Willis’ “It’s Walky!” comic.  The characters of Walky and Joyce, with their optimism and innocence gradually tempered and tested with progressively more and more brutal bursts of reality, made me feel like this when I was first reading through Dave Willis’ comic.  “The City of Reality” is the first comic, or even story, since then where I’ve felt the same way about the characters.

Those familiar with Joyce and Walky will, therefore, understand me when I say: parental guidance is *strongly* advised.  Issues of politics, religion, language and sexuality are all hinted at, more overtly than you’re expecting at times.  I’d say more, but it’d cause a spoiler or two.  Don’t read it with your kids, read it before your kids read it.  It’ll seem dumb at first until woah, what’s that?!  He drew that?!

The stories so far are simple, but they’ve been largely introductions to date.  We’re being shown the City of Reality through the eyes of two people who are new to the city, and their different reactions to the general pleasantness of it all seems to be laying several important building blocks for what is to come.  I don’t know how long Ian Samson plans on running this story, or if he plans on it to be an ongoing thing.  Either method would work with the setup that he has.

The one possible problem with the comic may be its greatest strength.  The comic only updates on the 1st and 15th of every month.  That’s right: a bimonthly webcomic.  An update schedule like that is normally a death knell in my mind.  But in this particular case, I don’t think that it’s a problem.

See, most comics update in terms of strips like a standard newspaper does.  Other webcomics update with a page at a time.  This one, though?  Ian Samson is giving us large sections of chapters at a time.  He’s making a true graphic novel here, and showing us a *lot* at a time.  Compared to most other webcomics, I’m honestly surprised by the sheer volume of work that he’s producing.

I recommend this comic wholeheartedly.  Start at the beginning of the archives, and see if you’re not hooked by the end.  The update schedule might make more sense (while you’re reading, remind yourself: he’s only been updating for a few months now, twice a month.  That’s a massive amount of work for a short time.)

http://cityofreality.com

The Legend of Bill: Blank Label’s Newest Member

So, I was following Twitter, as I am known to do, and I noticed an interesting tweet: Blank Label Comics was going to be getting a new comic called The Legend of Bill. I’d heard of Legend of Bill once or twice before, and I had just finished my latest archive, so Legend of Bill became my new project.

I was familiar with David Reddick’s work already, as it turned out. I had read a good number of his “The Trek Life” strips years ago during one of my Star Trek kicks (I become a low-level Trekkie once every three years, it’s probably due to happen again sometime between November and January), so I had a few expectations about what I was going to see humor-wise.

The strip itself isn’t badly done. The drawing is professionally cartoonish in a manner that many modern newspaper comics probably dream about equating to, and while the plots and jokes are relatively simple, they’re still good. Like Sheldon and Shortpacked!, this is a comic strip that knows how to use flat characters well.

I do have two mild complaints though that I hope will be addressed in the eventual future. My first complaint regards the lack of story progression. It’s been more than a year now, and as the comic characters themselves noted, very little has happened (I can, off the top of my head, think of maybe four “stories” that have happened.) I want to like these characters, and I’m eager to see what happens in the current story, but at the rate of progression we’re not going to get to Princess Gina’s homeland for another year or two.

My second complaint regards the amount of guest comics. I’m not ordinarily one to speak poorly of guest strips, but The Legend of Bill has a LOT of them. I need to check to make sure, but I’d be willing to bet money that over a quarter of the strips in the archive so far are guest comics. A lot of this is because Reddick has embraced them to a certain extent and made them a regular feature called “Side Quests.” For a good portion of the archive, these Side Quests show up once for every three strips as part of the regular programming.

Ultimately, my verdict on Legend of Bill is that I’m going to stick around and keep watching it…but I sincerely hope that Reddick can come up with some spare time to draw more frequently. You have a good start that could go far, sir, and thus far and I hope you make good use of it.

Final Pushing Daisies Episode

Okay, so, for over two months now I’ve had three Saturdays marked on my calendar to remind me about the Pushing Daisies episodes, the last three episodes of season 2 and, for all forseeable realities, the last three episodes of the series (not counting the comic books that DC is going to put out which will be AWESOME! If those comics aren’t awesome HEADS WILL ROLL! Given what I’ve heard of the subject matter, that may happen anyway, but I digress…)

For the past fortnight, ABC hated me. It didn’t come in at all. It would be perfect through the end of whatever show was on before it, and then someone somewhere would push the “make the signal grainy, scrambled and impossible to watch” button. How I hate that button, and the predictability of when it gets used (the button gets turned off for commercials, at least three-fourths of the time.)

Tonight, though? I was lucky. Sure, I had a two-episode gap in my knowledge of season 2 now, but the signal was clear.

In news that may discourage some people, I thought the actual plot and banter of the show was a bit lackluster. I know! This is me we’re talkin’ about, and it’s the last episode of a show I love and would move Heaven and Earth to bring back. The episode was still much better than almost anything else on television…but still, it didn’t seem quite as snappy. Even the vague snippets I caught the previous two weeks before I gave up on the impossible signal made me cackle a bit. This episode had me grin at a few points, but none of the expected cackling.

The last ten, maybe five, minutes of the show, though, were designed to pull the heartstrings of the fans. My theory is that some hasty rewrites were called in when it was revealed that it was the last episode of the series. I could be wrong about that, they may have known all along about that (or I may be wrong in that they didn’t know but didn’t decide to change the script anyway.) Either way, however, the ending was a nice capper for the series, including (spoiler alert) a quick multi-vista cross-pan of many of the more memorable locales from earlier in the show (among them, the windmill reserve, the church, the lighthouse and others).

Back to the plot difficulties…I think my primary problem with the plot was the ease of development. This may have had something to do with the ineptness of the villain of the week, which by the villain’s own admission was the sole reason for why he wasn’t suspected initially. I don’t have any difficulty believing that the plot progressed as it did considering that character’s, er, character, but I wish that the Emerson Codd and the Pie Makers (that would be an awesome band name) had been challenged a bit more thoroughly. (Also, as a final nitpicky thing, I do kinda wish that there had been fewer fade-outs punctuated by the image of the shark bite, but that’s more of an aesthetic thing than an actual problem.)

Having said that, it was wonderful seeing you on the air again Pushing Daisies, even if this will be your farewell performance. I was always happy to see the episodes, even this one. You are, for me, one of the greatest shows ever.

And if we need a silver lining to this? I maintain that your show never jumped the shark.

Thanks again for everything Pushing Daisies, and I sincerely hope that I’ll get to see you again on TV someday. ‘Till then, see you in the funny papers.

Sonic the Hedgehog Issue #200

SPOILERS AHEAD!  Just figured I’d get that out of the way.  Don’t come cryin’ to me if you want to read this without bein’ surprised.  It’s been out a week now, anyway, the grace period is over.

I’ve been a long time fan of Sonic’s comic. I can’t realistically say that I’ve been reading it from the beginning, my first issue was #6. Still, for a run of 16 years and 8 months, only missing the first half year seems like getting in pretty much on the gruond floor.  And while I’ve missed an issue here or there (largely during that period between the death of Dr. Robotnik and the rise of Dr. Eggman), I’ve been one of the most loyal readers.  After all, can you honestly say that Batman never had a bad storyline here and there?

Anyway, sticking with the comic through its good times and bad, I was all set for issue 200 to be a “bad.”  Why?  No real reason, just jaded comic reader cynicism.  Marvel and DC have been dropping the ball for me lately, and while they’ve had some outstanding stories, the general climate just seems like one of confusion, angst and overblown plots.

But my friends, I must tell you: Sonic the Hedgehog’s 200th issue did not disappoint me.  There were so many ways that this comic could have gone wrong, and it overcame each of them.

1) Confusing Plot: There are a lot of confusing plots out there in comics these days.  Take Final Crisis for instance: I personally enjoyed the “big picture” of Final Crisis and left it more or less satisfied, but you can’t deny that the main story felt incomplete and bizarre, like you were missing something (you were probably missing the many various tie-in issues that “weren’t necessary” but nonetheless helped to tie everything together.  Basically: either buy everything, or be willing to reread the central story a few times just to be sure that you’re clear on what’s going on.)  Sonic’s story the past half year or so has been remarkably clear and free of obstruction.  And there’s been a few things that could’ve brought abuot confusion: the invasion of Mobius by Moebius, Snively’s mysterious IM buddy (more on that later), Sally’s effective court martial at the hands of a former snubbed reserve Freedom Fighter, etc.  But the plot progression has been very lucid.  A new reader could have picked up just about any issue and understood roughly what was happening, and not because the plots were too simple, but because the plots were well presented.

2) Lousy Reveal: For a while now, Snively has been plotting behind Robotnik’s back regarding the arrival of a “new power” that he’s been expecting.  Now, I want to go on record here and say that I was all but positive that it was going to be the Iron Queen.  She wasn’t a huge villain during her relatively short earlier appearances, but I was sure it would be her because she’s the only notable villain from the comic who wasn’t an easily dealt with robot (Croctobot comes to mind), an easily dealt with flunky (any of Mammoth Mogul’s henchpeople or a certain Weasel come to mind), or an alien who wouldn’t be on Mobius.  Now, the cynic in me was half expecting her arrival to be the focal point of the issue, which would have robbed us of the Sonic/Robotnik fight they’ve been building to (and the majority of the action in this issue was a Final Boss Fight translated from game-format to comic format, and translated well if I may say so.)  The cynic in me was also expecting that instead of the Iron Queen it would’ve been either a completely new villain (which would’ve been stupid for a dramatic reveal like we’ve been building to) or an old villain who didn’t make sense (admit it, did anyone else have a fear that E.V.E. might have returned?  She would make an awesome villain, but there’d be no way to justify her return to Mobius, her return to evil, or her return to a state where Sonic would have a chance against her.)  Again, this dramatic reveal was well played and worth the wait.

3) Replay Mode: it didn’t occur to me until I was reading the issue, but one easy way that this could’ve gone wrong would have been if they’d just rehashed the basics of the fight from Sonic #50.  It is a good thing that they didn’t: this was an all new fight with all new stakes.  This wasn’t a fight for the freedom of Mobius (as Sonic put it, Dr. Robotnik barely had any control over the planet as he had to constantly struggle for it, a huge change from his near-total grasp over everything in the pre issue 50 days).  Plus in the end, Robotnik’s life wasn’t on the line.  Rather, his sanity was.  Seeing Robotnik’s mental break when he lost his big fight against Sonic was almost tragic, and it was clear that Sonic didn’t feel good about it.  He wanted Robotnik to be the stereotypical bad guy and say, “Grrr, you’ll rue the day you were born, hedgehog!  I’ll get you next time!  Next Tiiiiime!”  Instead, he witnessed the complete shattering of Robotnik’s mental faculties, self-respect and pride.  Sonic’s never really had a bad guy mentally fall apart on him like that, and I appreciated the genuine concern that Sonic had for someone who would have just as soon seen him dead.

Those are the big three ways that the issue could have gone wrong.  And it didn’t go wrong in any of those three ways.  Now, there were a few things that I thought could have been handled better, I should mention those to be fair…

First of all, why did Sonic and Sally leave Snively to “tend to” his uncle?  I could see Sonic doing that, but Sally?  She’s a tactical genius, and especially when armed with Nicole she doesn’t often make such huge military gaffes.  I mean, yes, it was clear that their primary enemy was vanquished.  Yes, the emotions of that time must have been overwhelming.  But why didn’t they cart Robotnik and Snively off in that fancy car of Rotor’s to face trial in Knothole?  Even if Robotnik wasn’t a threat, Snively has demonstrated many times (three, at the very least, and five if you count SatAM) that when Robotnik’s gone he’s more than willing to step up and fight the Freedom Fighters himself.  I suppose you could argue that his brief time spent with the Freedom Fighters might have earned him some trustable cred with them, but come on!  And not one of the Freedom Fighters questioned this?

My other problem with this episode was that Sonic and Robotnik both phrased things a bit awkwardly.  This is admittedly a problem for continuity buffs like me, but it needs pointing out.  Robotnik and Sonic were both acting like they were lifelong rivals during that fight, but that’s not the case.  This is the “new” Dr. Robotnik who came from an alternate dimension after conquering his own zone.  And Sonic and Robotnik both know this.  Why treat each other like the same hero and villain that they used to know when it’s been shown over and over that there are significant differences?  This might have been acceptible if that issue hadn’t come up once during the last hundred issues or so, but Sonic brought it up during the very last storyline when he begged Zonic the Zone Cop to come and arrest Eggman for a zone hopping violation.  It’s in the recent memory of the readers, so why not change the dialogue to reflect it?

Those two minor annoyances aside, it was a fine, fine issue.  I want to thank everyone who worked on this issue (nice seeing your covers as always, Spaz), and everyone who’s worked on the previous 199.  And then I want to thank everyone who worked on the issues 0-3 of the Sonic miniseries before the regular title started.  And everyone who worked on the 48 page specials, the Knuckles series, the various Knuckles mini-series, Sonic Universe, the Tails mini-series and the Princess Sally mini-series.  You all rock (oh, and for the record: you new editors are great and all, but Scott and Paul will always be The Editors in my mind.  Yes, even though they weren’t the first to fill the position.)

Anyway, there’s a lot of arguing and complaining between the various factions of Sonic fans.  And I’m sure there were some people out there who read the issue and didn’t like it.  But for what it’s worth, I’ve been a very satisfied customer.  And I can’t wait for the day six years and four months from now when Sonic’s comic officially becomes the longest comic of the Modern comic era.

Thanks again, everyone.  Keep it way past cool, and peace out!

-John

PS-I need to get a letter into Sonic Grams one of these days.

Better Off Ted

Okay, I should say something about Better Off Ted. I’ve seen two episodes now. The first episode I watched it and said that I wanted to enjoy it, but for some reason…for some reason I just wasn’t liking what I was seeing.

It had all the elements that I like. It had all the snarky dialogue, it had well presented ideas, and it even had a huge, gigantic Mad Scientist theme that I’m always in favor of. So why wasn’t I liking it?

At this second episode I think I figured it out. This is a show that has everything I like. It’s like someone took Pushing Daisies, Scrubs and Portal and stuck ‘em in a blender.

Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Hard to say. The two episodes I’ve seen both followed a pretty basic plot of “Here’s something that management did that caused wackiness, and here’s how we solved the problem” formula. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s a show that’s more about dialogue than actual plot. The characters are all flatter than I like, but between the fact that this is the show’s first season and the fact that it’s set up in a cold, business environment designed to make flat personalities a joke might make this unavoidable.

I think the best thing I can say about the show is that I can’t find fault with it. It’s got okay acting, okay dialogue and okay ideas. Every once in a while it comes off as feeling like a lame Saturday Night Live sketch, but those times when it comes off as a good SNL sketch instead make it okay.

So I plan on watching this more when there’s nothing else on. It didn’t necessarily dissapoint. And hey, maybe in time it’ll become as good as Scrubs or Pushing Daisies. That’d be nice.

…but I still say that they need to bring back Pushing Daisies.

Legends of Zork: a New Take on Quendor

Ok, so, on April Fool’s day I was told that for the past few months now, Activision had been setting up a new online Zork game, and that it was launching that day. And I laughed and laughed and even though I knew it was the setup for an April Fool’s Day joke, I had to follow their link.

Wow, it wasn’t a joke.

Okay, set the mood here: for over ten years now I’ve been looking for Activision to acknowledge their best franchise. And while I wanted a new game, any new game, I was expecting something I could, you know, buy in stores and play without an internet connection (no offense, but the team play for ZGI never seemed to make much sense to me. Then again, I never tried it.)

However, for much of the past ten years, I’ve been a fan of something called Legend of the Green Dragon (I play at the Central server at http://www.lotgd.net if you’re interested.) When I first saw the splash page for this Legends of Zork game, I said to myself “Oh, wow, someone modded Legend of the Green Dragon to be a Zork game.” Then I saw the Activision reminder on the bottom and decided that someone must have made a very *official* version of Legend of the Green Dragon.

Now that I’ve played a bit, I can honestly say that it’s definitely not Legend of the Green Dragon. You go into areas and fight things, collecting experience and money (Zorkmids, naturally) but that’s about where the similarities end.

A few friends of mine have expressed disappointment in the game, and I can understand that. The fighting of monsters is automatic: if you find something, you fight to the end, regardless of who the winner is. I can certainly understand the frustration there. I, however, enjoy the change. One of my major qualms with Legend of the Green Dragon is that there isn’t often a way to streamline the “look for something to kill” process unless you go to other servers (and when I *do* go to other servers, I’m almost overwhelmed by how much there is. It starts to feel like homework rather than a game.)

So the fighting style is good, in my opinion, but not necessarily gonna be for everyone.

And another word on fighting: I made a mistake by not considering weapon/armor quality and skill points. I’m not a huge RPG player, so using these things always seems a bit foreign to how I approach scenarios. But I’ve just hit level 7, and I’m realizing that hey, the monsters are getting tougher as well. Save up for big guns when you play this folks (and sometimes those guns are literal), and be prepared to use them.

In terms of gameplay, do not expect a text adventure. It isn’t a text adventure, no matter what it looks like (or you could argue that it’s a text adventure in the same way that LotGD is a text adventure: read everything, but point and click.) If you have to compare it to a previous Zork game, Beyond Zork is the way to go: you encounter a lot of monsters (some of which are brand new, but most of which are from the previous games), and you find treasure which you can sell for Zorkmids.

Now, admittedly: I might’ve preferred an actual MMORPG. A Zork based MMORPG would’ve been a lot of fun, but honestly? It wouldn’t survive against WoW. I say this as someone who’s never played WoW and never plans on it: Zork’s unique style of adventure, horror, and comedy would either seem like a ripoff of WoW, or something unnecessary to your diehard MMORPG fan. While I’d love (and would certainly pay for) an MMORPG set in the Zork universe, I don’t quite think that the time is right.

Back to this game, though: stylistically, the game gets a lot of stuff right on the nose. The art style is good (though not necessarily Zorkish) but the writing style gets a lot of the Zorkian sounds right. Lots of bars, fobs, wits, and dos in the names.

Anyway, after my second day playing it (my home computer can’t handle it, I’m afraid), I have to say that I love it. I hope this game sticks around, and I’ll love to see it improve over time (maybe they’ll make the autofight be optional.)

Dollplay ARG Stumbles From The Start

Dollplay, the ARG (or “participation drama” as they’re calling it) for Joss Whedon’s new TV show Dollhouse, failed from the first step for me.

At first I was excited.  I really liked Dollhouse’s first episode.  I tend to really like Joss Whedon stuff.  And I really, really like ARGs.  So what went wrong?  The very first freakin’ introductory paragraph, that’s what.

I can’t get it to load for me now, perhaps it knows my IP address.  But when I first went to the ARG’s website, do you know what it said?  Roughly, it told me that I was about to enter an ARG and that I should pretend it was real, and that everything on the website after that point would be “in game.”

Well, that’s fine and dandy, thanks.  Except now it’s no longer an ARG.

An Alternate Reality Game (concatenated to ARG for brevity’s sake), is a game that can arguably be defined by two rules.  1) The game designers should not acknowledge that it is a game.  2) The game designers should not create a playing field.  Purists might insist on putting up rule 3) The game designers should not create a game.  I consider rule 3 to be something of a hair-splitting thing, though: even if you’re “just creating an experience”, I still classify that as a game.  But I can certainly see why someone might disagree with me depending on your definition of game.

Anyway, that first introductory paragraph broke the first two rules of what an ARG is.  Part of me wants to be bitter at the ARG.  Part of me wants to be bitter at executive meddling.  Part of me wants to be bitter at the laws of England.

Why England?  Because a few years ago, when Perplex City still had some life in it, a law regarding the treatment and definition of hoaxes was passed in England.  Due to the wording of the law, many ARG fans wondered if it would negatively impact the future of ARGs as the classical idea of what an ARG is would now be deemed a “hoax.”  Ever since then, whenever I see a promising ARG, I see it ruined by Microsoft logos or disclaimers in the screens.  It’s removed the mystery, the sense that maybe you made a wrong turn and are actually in over your head, and a definite flavor of fun.  Other fun can be had, of course, but the feeling that you were actually involved in a real-life drama was absent.  More to the point, even American based ARGs can be affected if the ARG’s puppetmasters want the game to be playable to much of an extent in other countries.

And while I’d hoped that this ARG would be promising (after all, if I were to, say, see Dollhouse logos everywhere, it would make sense in this ARG), the opening disclaimer both told me that it was a game, and also established the playing field as existing only on the website.

So it makes me sad.

Now, I’ve not had a chance to look at more than a few of the file histories and things on this website.  It could be that there’s a good ARG here (this is one of those times where my difficulties watching videos on the web will really, really hinder me).  However, whether from executive meddling, a concern over the laws across the pond, or other reasons that aren’t yet clear, Dollplay has, it seems, not granted a positive first impression.  Here’s hoping, though.  Here’s hoping.

Dollhouse

Well, the wait is over, and Joss Whedon fans have had just over a full hour now to digest the first episode of Mutant Enemy’s latest production, Doll House.  I’m a pretty solid Whedon fan, and I thought at first that I wouldn’t be able to watch it, but fortune smiled upon me and I was able to make the mad dash into my living room to flip the TV on.

My first thoughts concern Eliza Dushku.  Buffy and Angel fans will remember her as Faith, the rogue slayer, and when the episode first started we saw Dushku (did they call her Carolina in that opening?  Caroline?  I’m sure it wasn’t Coraline, I would’ve made note of it) playing what felt a whole lot like Faith.  I considered what a sci-fi show starring Faith would entail, and I got a very “Dark Angel”ish vibe off of it.  (One last note about that intro: “Have you ever tried to clean a slate?  You can still read what was on it before” simultaneously struck me as a really cool line, but also like the kind of line that people would never say in real life.  Make of that what you will.)

However, the rest of the episode quickly convinced me that we weren’t going to be seeing a show starring Faith or Max.  Instead, we meet Echo and the Dollhouse organization.

I enjoyed the episode, but I want to say that it struck me as being very different from Joss Whedon’s standard presentations.  He said once that all of his shows are about “created family.”  And while I can certainly see that as being a potential direction that the show might eventually head in, this first episode never gave a sense of  “these characters are your protagonists.”  Buffy had the core four of the Scoobies discussing why Buffy didn’t want to fight vampires but why she would.  Angel had the soon-to-be charter of Angel Investigations being fast-talked into setting up a proper business.  Firefly gave us a pull through of the whole ship which gave us almost all the characters (one who wouldn’t be a character, and one major player yet to be revealed.)

In this show?  I never got that sense of togetherness, and I think it was intentional.  I could tell who the main characters were, but they were clearly not a family.  They were coworkers, and in an organization such as Dollhouse it would make sense that familial relationships might not be a priority.

I also appreciate the fact that several characters repeatedly stressed that what was going on was criminal, and a variation on the line “we aren’t interested in justice” appeared at least twice.  It’s not a wacky-fun-lovin’ group, it’s a morally ambiguous (at best) and potentially evil (at worst) enterprise.

What we have here might be likened as the upside of Wolfram & Hart (keep in mind that I’ve only seen the first two seasons of Angel, and as such don’t know how very wrong later seasons might prove that comparison to be.)

Now, it’s altogether possible that the reason why this episode didn’t feel like your normal Joss Whedon Pilot is that it wasn’t the first episode created.  I believe that we’ll be seeing the original first episode next week.  Will it feel like a more standard Joss Whedon show then?  Possibly.  Would that be a good thing?  Possibly, but I’d argue no.

Of course, we’ve only got the first episode for a lengthy series (did they say the phrase “five years” at the beginning there?  A five year mission, boldly going into new TV conventions?)  Anything goes, and probably will.  However, this episode didn’t suffer from the weaknesses that so many pilot episodes suffer from, so I’m wondering what the show will be like months from now when I can look back at the pilot from an established status quo.