Memes

“Why is there a Mashup there?” “I’ll tell you later.” This entry, by the by, will probably not become a googlewhack (original), but only cause all of you are gonna use “Buckaroo” and “mashup” on your pages. C’est la vie. Where was I… ah, yes. Mashup #21 is Buckaroo Banzai, goofy flagbearer of 80s sci-fi pulp. All the men want to be Buckaroo Banzai, and all the women want to look at him misty-eyed across the floor of Artie’s Artery. The movie is really a revamp of Doc Savage; you’ve got the mysterious ultra-competent leader and his henchmen, each of whom has a different specialty. If you dial down and focus on the movie’s plot, you’ve got a fairly standard alien invasion plot mixed with a kind of a pod people riff and some multiple dimension stuff which doesn’t entirely matter. More important, though, is the deranged hipness which permeates the entire thing. You could say that Buckaroo Banzai is a mashup itself: Doc Savage plus 80s style. You wouldn’t be far wrong.

WISH 78 (original) asks: Do you think allowing one player to play more than one character in a game is a good or bad idea? Does the style of the game make any difference? What about the format (FTF, PBeM, etc.)? Well, you wouldn’t want multiple characters in a LARP, I imagine. (I joke!) I think that playing two equal characters face to face is generally a bad idea. I was in a game recently in which everyone had two players, and while I enjoyed the game, I gotta say I would have enjoyed it more if I’d been able to focus on one PC. If you’re playing in a purely tactical game, it perhaps makes more sense, but I like exploring personalities. ...

Our mashup for the first of December (did you remember to say “rabbit” three times?) is Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. It’s all about man versus nature, with themes of ecological awareness and man competing with man as side dishes. Great book, even if there’s controversy (original) about what exactly happened up there.

In honor of that New Zealand flick I’ve been reading about in all the popular newsmagazines, we’ll mashup The Hobbit today. It’ll be kind of a relief to do a story that has something that more or less resembles the typical adventuring party for once. It’s one of those big adventuring parties I remember from massive sprawling college AD&D games, but it’s still an adventuring party.

WISH 76 (original) asks: A lot is made of the role of the GM in a game, but what is the role of the player? I’m not really sure if I can answer that one, since so much depends on the game. The single most important trick to master can be summarized as “support interaction,” which covers a lot — sharing spotlight time, making your character sticky, and so on. Most other stuff depends on the game, I think. ...

WISH 74 (original) is all about dreams and hopes: Name three or more supplements (or core books, for that matter) for existing game systems that you’d like to see. Why? What inspires your interest in these supplement? What existing supplements or materials are you using instead? I’m not an Amber player anymore, but I’d still kind of like to see Rebma… no? OK, I’ll come up with three others. First off is a two in one, since the reasons I want them are similar. I would like to see the promised HeresyRPG. The background was cool and the card art was superb and I like games that use the Christian mythos quite a bit. Heretical cyberpunk hit all my buttons. I want Anoch’s MystickRPG for similar reasons; the cards hinted at a dense intricate background which played to my love for conspiracy. ...

The Monday Mashup returns with Hitchcock’s Psycho. This is another one that almost has to be a one-shot, unless you wanted to make Norman Bates an ongoing master villain — which is an interesting idea, now that I think about it. But I’m going to be thinking one-shot. There’s an insane villain, obsessed by someone who doesn’t exist anymore, and there’s a lonely location. Now, do you cast the PCs as Marion Crane and helpless prey, or do you cast ‘em as the post-death investigators? I’m inclined to think the latter, although that turns it into a police procedural… which is in and of itself interesting. My approach follows.

It’s an early morning Monday Mashup today, since I’m going to be non-bloggy most of the day. This week’s source material is the Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs. Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, what’s not to love? Other than the rumors about a prequel focusing on Lecter, of course.

I’m feeling musical again today, but this time we’ll go for a specific song rather than an entire musical oeuvre. Our mashup of the week is “Stairway to Heaven” (original) by Led Zeppelin. Now, I’m no Led Zeppelin expert, but I read that song as describing some significantly transformative events. I’m pretty sure the lady in question is making bad, materialistic choices. And I think we have a few Tolkien references. Seems like that ought to be enough to work with. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.

Happily, Game WISH (original) is back. Today’s question: Talk about a few characters you had to stop playing before their stories felt finished. Where do you think they would have gone? It’s kind of a hard question, because I don’t tend to think of characters in those terms — so when I say I’d like to play Paul or Clarice more, it’s not because I think their stories were unfinished per se. It’s because I want to find out what happens next. In Paul’s case, I’d like to see him leading an adult superhero team. I’d like to find out if he can continue to be the force for good he thinks he could be. And I like playing him. In Clarice’s case, well, she’s just fun to play. I guess her story is about done; I like thinking of her hanging out in 1850 training a bunch of little genetically engineered Ascended ninjas. ...