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Saturday, 28 March 2020

DE: Don't Lose Focus When Building Your Army

Stop making bad army lists!

First, I'd like to welcome a lot of the newer players joining the Dark Eldar. We got a fantastic new book and there's a lot of things to learn. However, one of the things I want to warn you about is that Dark Eldar is NOT a beginner's army. There is a lot of tricks and nuances to the army that when managed poorly, will cause you lose many games. Take it from me, I started with DE back in 3rd Ed. 40K and I actually received most of the army from a friend that was quitting it. He warned me that the army was tough as shit and that he was tired of losing. Thankfully for me, I've always wanted to start playing them and I absolutely love a challenge. Coming from a competitive RTS background, 40K was basically a Power Point presentation of StarCraft.

OK, fast forward almost two decades and here I am. Still playing the Dark Kin but with much more experience. The next couple of paragraphs will be me trying to explain how to be a more successful Dark Eldar player in 8th Ed. This is something you just have to trust me when I tell you: The army is very simliar to previous editions, but the edition itself is very different. Things die a lot quicker now and the alpha damage potential from other armies out there can be just as mind-blowing as ours. In some cases, it might even be more potent, so you just gotta listen up, check the ego, and brace yourself for something that might sound harsh, but it will win you a lot of games.

STOP losing focus when building your army

This starts at list creation and this is a byproduct of having really cool units and being spoiled by choice. I'm not saying that Dark Eldar have unit choices up the ass, no, that's not what I mean. I mean that one of the biggest mistakes that newer players make is building their army in multiple different directions that branch away from their army goals. Before you build a list, you must have goals in mind. The goals should not be something as broad as "go kill your enemy", it should be something more specific with the exact tooling that you will need to get the job done. Maybe it's just my min-maxy ways as a competitive RTS player, or maybe it's my Program Manager genes being tossed into a game, but I'm telling you right now that whatever list you bring, it must have purpose.

What do I mean by this? I mean if you intend your army to shoot the enemy dead, it must do that and do it very well. If you want to assault the enemy dead, it must do that and do it very well. When you start building your list to do a little bit of everything, that's when things go to shit. The new 40K articles and Realspace Raid requirements for all these little fucking patrols all over the place doesn't make things any better. I'm absolutely serious about this: Go read some of my earlier articles where I'm constantly complaining about HQ tax. HQs, in our army is not very cheap, especially when you look at the Archon and the Harmonculi who are ~70 points. I wish I can link you guys to some army lists I've seen on the internet so far with naked Archons all over the place without transports. What's the fucking point? You're literally spending 70 points for the dude to sit there and look stupid or the rest of the battle. Succubus are the only HQs I would recommend for a cheaper HQ unit that can do some work, but that's not the point here. The point here is that your list must be focused to do something well, and do it exceptionally well. This is why I think that my pure Kabal all shooting army is still my strongest variant of the Dark Eldar and that my Kabal/Cult Succubus whip-my-hair-back-and-forth list is just for fun. I know that it is weaker because it doesn't do anything exceptionally well. Remember again, if you pay for something, make sure it does something.

Let's break it down some more. You can start by looking at the damage potential that the list provides from a firepower perspective and then you can examine it from a melee perspective. Can your melee components outfight other armies melee components? I don't think so. It does a pretty decent job at it, but Wyches aren't exactly a unit I would write home to mom about. What about shooting? Well, because you subbed in Wyches, you are taking away from your shooting component so it's definitely not as strong as a pure shooty force. This makes you extra succeptible vs. the likes of Tau, AdMech or other pure shooty armies with a higher Alpha than you. This puts you at an immediate disadvantage and forces you into a shooting attrition war which you will almost certaintly lose. Playing defensive is not Dark Eldar's speciality, and even if they have some units that can do that, they are considered the outlier for what the army IS truly good at, and that's shooting.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all doom and gloom yet. I will talk about some awesome and cheap melee units that we can bring forth shortly.

Yup, this can be you!

STOP using CPs as list-building requirements

Stay the hell away from those multiple Patrol armies with overinflated HQs. Do NOT fall into the trap of building up Patrols with a bunch of useless HQs because you want the CP. That's almost as bad as building a Brigade just to realize that you bought a crap ton of units but don't have the points to equip or use them properly so they end up being fuckall useless once they hit the battlefield. Remember: For every unit you buy, make sure it counts for something. I'm not saying to be allergic to melee or not branch out into Coven units to hold objectives. I'm saying don't go overboard and be mindful that more you pull your army into different directions, the weaker it will be at doing any one thing. If you do want to make your army multi-faceted, make sure that it does both of these things as well as it can. Just don't try to go in all 3 directions that the DE book is painfully telling newer players to do with all this Patrol garbage.

Don't believe me? Do this: Try and CP whore and build a Brigade army list for DE, as competitive as you can. Then show me the firepower that the list can put out with respect to range vs. what the total number of wounds look like with respect to toughness and saves. I am willing to bet that that army cannot fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. When I try and ask people why the hell they need CPs as a requirement to build an design armies, they always give me the same piss-poor answer: CPs win games (thinking multiple uses of Agents of Vect). Yes, you're correct, well-timed and properly used CPs can win games, but I don't see Agents of Vect shooting or actively killing your opponent's units from the start of the game. The only thing that can do that effectively are your units and you should not be handicapping yourself by locking into some rigid army structure just for CPs. Agents of Vect is not going to save your ass from a Admech gunline, so you might as well drop all the shitty MSU Scourges and Reavers that are just going to explode and do nothing for you. Not to mention you can get close to Bridgade level CPs with some good list tweaking.

Likewise, I'd like to see a triple Patrol list with Kabal, Wyches and Coven in there and it try to be competitive. It will be decent at best, but never as good as a list with just Kabal/Cult simply because you're trying to do too many things at the same time. Real talk though, let's take some of my own shit and dissect it on a Haemoculi table.

Check it out. It starts with an idea, and then I'm going to braindump onto this page:

I've been throwing out the idea of taking Flayed Skull recently just so I can play with a killy Archon AND a killy Succubus.
I'm going to accept the risk that I will be losing some firepower in this list, but hopefully two killy HQs will allow me to make up that killing power. I just need to make sure I can keep this HQs cheap and killy.
Let's take an existing Skeleton list that I have and then turn it into something that has a strong melee component that has good synergy with the rest of the list.
The entire army has to move fast and apply good pressure so it can overwhelm the enemy's fire priorities. It's a go big or go home list.

OK, now let's break this down into actual game terms:

Killy Archon for me is the Famed Savagery + Djin Blade that can get 8 attacks at S5 AP-3 D3 wounds that hit on 2s with re-rolls to hit.
Killy Succubus for me is the Blood Dancer + Triptych Whip, Strife and Adrenalight that gives me 9 attacks at WS2+ re-rolling 1s and every hit of a 6 turns into 3 hits with an Agonizer.
I'm going to trim down as much as I can from my firepower to make room for these badasses and give them a full retinue of Wyches to accompany them in Raiders.
I need extra weapons and Warlord traits, so I'm going to need more CP to activate Alliance of Agony for the Blood Dancer and possibly more Prizes from the Dark City.
Now, let's make the entire army move FAST. Really fast, so we're going full YOLO over here. Keep in mind that through playtesting, I can move these boats under the Black Heart Spearhead to get those additional FNPs.

1999 // 10 CP

Flayed Skull Battalion +3 CP

HQ:

Archon, Djin Blade, Blaster = 93

Trait: Famed Savagery

Archon, Huskblade, Blaster, PGL = 96

TROOP:

10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, SCannon = 104

PARTY BOATS:

Raider, Dark Lance = 85

+++

Strife Battalion +3 CP

HQ:

Succubus, Adrenalight, Whip = 54

Trait: Blood Dancer

Succubus, Painbringer, Agonizer = 54

TROOP:

8x Wyches, Grave Lotus, Agonzer, BP, Shardnet = 83

8x Wyches, Serpentin, Agonzer, BP, Shardnet = 83

5x Wyches, Hypex = 40

+++

Black Heart Spearhead +1 CP

HQ:

Archon, Living Muse, Agonizer, Blaster, PGL = 94

FLYER:

Razorwing, 2x Dark Lance = 145

HEAVY:

Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125

>>>

Firepower:

9 Dark Lances at BS3+

9 Disintegrators at BS3+

6 Blasters at BS3+

3 Blasters at BS2+

2 Razorwing Missiles at BS3+

3 Splinter Cannons at BS3+

25 Splinter Rifles at BS3+

The TLDR is this:

Don't branch out too much, you will lose focus and detract from your army goals.
Trying to be too many things will make your army suck and do nothing well.
Stop building shitty army lists focused on CPs. Units win games, not CPs.
If you must branch, do 2 things decently well instead of 1 thing really well.

I realized this was part-guide and part-rant, but it needed to be done. Have a good night all.

ASOIAF: Deployment And Activations

Get ready for some hard lessons.

One of the best things about this game how in-depth alternate deployment and activations work. All of this is outlined really well in the main rulebook, but I want to take a moment to stress the importance of how greatly this affects overall gameplay. A lot of this harks all the way back to my WHFB days where "drops" and chaff really meant something when it comes to deployment. Having more drops than the opponent allows you to see where their most crucial units get placed so you can better deploy against them. Keep in mind that when it comes to "drops", this is strictly limited to combat units. It doesn't matter how many NCUs you have when it comes to deployment, but this will matter when it comes to overall activations. Activation order and the number of total activations matter because the more you have, the more you can "force" your opponents to activate their units so you can better counter them.

Alright, so let's dive into deployment first. Going forward, I'm just going to call these drops because I'm an old-school WHFB player and you're just going to have to deal with it. I'll start by using my Robb Stark list vs. the previously posted Ramsay list.

Faction: House Stark
Commander: Robb Stark – The Wolf Lord
Points: 40 (4 Neutral)

Combat Units:
• House Umber Greataxes (7)
with Robb Stark – The Wolf Lord (0)
• Grey Wind (0)
• Stark Sworn Swords (5)
with Bran and Hodor – Protector and Ward (3)
• Summer (0)
• House Umber Berserkers (7)
with Sworn Sword Captain (1)
• Stark Outriders (7)
with Brynden Tully – Vanguard Infiltrator (3)

Non-Combat Units:
• Sansa Stark – Little Bird (3)
• Lord Varys – The Spider (4)

Made with ASOIAFBuilder.com

vs.

Faction: House Lannister
Commander: Ramsay Snow – The Bastard of Bolton
Points: 40 (20 Neutral)

Combat Units:
• House Clegane Mountain Men (6)
with Ramsay Snow – The Bastard of Bolton (0)
and Theon Greyjoy – Reek (0)
• House Clegane Mountain Men (6)
with Dreadfort Captain (1)
• Bolton Cutthroats (5)
with Assault Veteran (1)
• The Flayed Men (10)
with Gregor Clegane – Mounted Behemoth (3)

Non-Combat Units:
• Tywin Lannister – The Great Lion (4)
• Lord Varys – The Spider (4)

Made with ASOIAFBuilder.com

Before we talk about anything else, keep in mind that after the battlefield is set up, you roll a die with your opponent and you see who gets to pick their deployment zone (winner chooses or passes). The player who does not choose their Deployment Zone will the First Player. The player who chooses the deployment zone puts down their first combat unit.

As you can see in the example lists above, Robb's army has a total of 6 drops compared to Ramsay's 4 drops. This is one of the best things about the Stark Dire Wolves and that's because it comes with good 0-point chaff that are combat units.

If you choose Deployment and therefore starts deploying first, it would look like:

You put a wolf down
They put down a combat unit
You put another wolf down
They have to put another combat unit
You put down some Stark Swords
They put down another combat unit
You put down some Berserkers
They have to put down their Flayed Men with Ser G
Now you counter-deploy your Greataxes to meet his knights
...and you can put your Outriders somewhere that best suits your needs

Hell, if you count his drops ahead of time, you can even choose to Outflank with your Outriders because you know the drop advantage is yours. Always count the number of drops your opponent has and take note of any units of significance.

Do you see the power of having more drops than the opponent? This is actually one of Stark's most powerful tools and that's the free Dire Wolves with Robb and Brann. Once Shaggydog gets up in here, it's going to be a hoot. Even having one drop over the opponent can mean a big difference because it allows you to better set up your slower moving speed-4 Greataxes somewhere that's going to scare those Flayed Men. If you end up tieing with your opponent when it comes to drops, consider letting them choose deployment so they drop first.

Activating in the most optimal order is key.

Next, let's talk a little bit about activations. For the most part, I'll try and keep things as generic as possible. Knowing the when and why you activate your units will mean the difference between victory and defeat. This is where most of the complexity of the game comes from. By understanding that your NCUs count towards total activations and directly interact with the game through the tactics board, this greatly enhances how you play the game. While most units interact directly with tactics cards, there's also a ton of ways to cheat out free actions. To explain all of this is going to be really complex because it's simply impossible to predict any and all events that are going to happen in a game. No worries though, I'll try and give out some hints based on the games I've had so far. Keep in mind that who is First Player also matters greatly.

Here are some helpful tips:

NCUs tend to activate first to either stifle the opponent's zones or take advantages for themselves. For example, as First Player, taking the Tactics zone can be super useful, or robbing the Stark player of free maneuvers can also be strong, especially when there are plentiful objectives on the board.
Whenever you interact with the tactics board, you should first consider if you're planning to give a direct benefit to yourself or to disrupt the opponents' plans. Every decision you make should be deliberate and has a significant impact on the game.
When units are already engaged, claiming the Combat zone is very strong and should be claimed if you have First Player. This is essentially a free combat action, which is just incredible. Anything that gives free anything is highly-sought after.
Activating your Dire Wolves first before your main combat units allow you to better move units in response to what the opponent is going to do. They have to activate their units and cannot choose to just pass. They can, however, put an activation token on the unit and just not do anything.
Always look for low-risk activations first if you want to bait your opponent into doing something so you can counterplay it. However, you need to prioritize high-value activations if you absolutely need something to go in your favor. This is how tempo is set by the player: If everything you're doing gives you an advantage some way or another, you will always be ahead. An example of this could be deciding to put an NCU down first to disrupt the opponent or to activate a unit. You want to choose the one that will put you ahead while leaving the opponent unable to respond. The best type of activation is getting to do something that gives you advantage while the opponent gains nothing.
As the game progresses, this is where the true chess element of the game comes in: Choosing the wrong activation order can literally mean victory or defeat. Everything is a risk because both you and your opponent has a hidden hand of tactics cards, and with NCUs being different every game, there's always going to be calculated risk. This is why Varys is one of the strongest NCUs in the game currently: He has 4 tries to foil your opponents' plans with the tactics board or their NCUs.
Once combat is joined, the focus of the game shifts a bit from NCUs to actually fighting the battle. Otherwise, you risk skipping pivotal combat and your opponent might just tactics your unit into the ground before you get a chance to swing. If you see the opportunity to inflict damage, it's almost always worth it to take it unless you have the appropriate counter. Look for unit activations that will give you the battlefield advantage. NCUs are not the ones fighting over objectives.
Typically when you're a couple of turns in and the battle is joined, you should look for opportunities for free actions first, then combat, then NCUs in that order. There are many factors that will change this order around, but that's completely up to you to analyze the opportunity cost. Since there are a lot of things to keep track of once battle is joined so it's important for you to get comfortable with your units, your commander, your NCUs, and your tactics cards. Else, you risk missing vital opportunities or triggers that can win the game for you.

Alright, that's pretty much all I have to say about activations. There are just a billion examples and each one of them is unique. However, I think mastering your activations is the most difficult, most complex, and most rewarding part of the game. It's probably the biggest factor in identifying player skill and experience, so it's definitely worth practicing. Good luck!

The Popularity Of Vivi

I was looking over a subreddit within the JRPG community thank showed the results of a poll of the most popular JRPG characters of all time.

In the results of that poll Vivi ranks as number 2. second to a character from a game I haven't played yet (Breath of Fire iv). Vivi is the highest rated FF character.

I found this really interesting. Vivi is definitely one of my favourite characters also, and I think it is for exactly the same reason. He is one of the only JRPG characters who shares us genuine anxieties and worries about death. He allows himself to actually sit with and dwell upon the mysteries reality of life coming to an end, he has an interiority that the gamer can relate to, but perhaps would never vocalise, would never admit to being able to relate to,

As Catholics, members of the one true Church, with the entire truth about reality, we want to help poor Vivi realise what awaits him after death, what awaits all those who have failed to be regenerated by grace, and all those who have been regenerated, those few who have persevered to the end as friends of God.

There was a beautiful comment on the review of FF9 by a reader-

"Vivis ending is also very sad. I wanted to go into the game and tell him all about Jesus."

That is certainly true, because the best the game can offer the reader is continuing existence through your offspring, having meaningful friendships while you are alive, living on in other people's memories..... basically the kind of stuff you get in humanist funerals.

What Our Lord and saviour offer is the full truth, heaven or hell and for eternity.

I am glad Vivi is the most popular character because it shows that there are so many individuals who, deep down, are worried about the eternal truths, they are worried about death, they are worried about who they really are and what purpose they are made for.

This is fantastic, it shows there are people who are preparing themselves to hear the Good News. Because Jesus Christ's message can only reach those who have got this degree of interiority, who aren't just chasing after pleasures but are genuinely seeking meaning, answers to the biggest questions. Vivi embodies that. Vivi doesn't get the answers, but we have them.

Monday, 23 March 2020

People Of Frictional: Max Lidbeck

WHO AM I

I'm Max, and I do gameplay programming and design. I joined Frictional about a year and a half ago, and I've been working on one of our super secret projects since.

Yours truly.

For the first nine months or so I, like everyone else, worked from home. Last summer we got an office set up in the heart of Malmö. Since then the amount of days I spend working from home has reduced greatly, though I still do it from time to time.

Setup at home and at work.

These are my two workspaces, the first one in the office and the other one at home (which is rather bare bones right now, moved in just a couple of days ago!). They're quite similar; both the computers and the chairs are the same kind. I wanted to be even more consistent and get the same type of desk as the office one at home, a decision that was ultimately overruled by my better half (apparently it doesn't go with the rest of the decor).

BACKGROUND

Games have always been a big part of my life. Most of my time growing up was spent either playing games or talking about games. But, for quite a while, my family didn't have a PC. Which meant I was stuck playing all sorts of old, weird games on rapidly aging Apple computers. One of my earliest gaming memories consist of repeatedly failing at air-hockey, losing to a hideous pig-man in Shufflepuck Cafe on my dad's old Macintosh.

Eventually I scraped together enough money to put together my first PC, in front of which I would stay rooted for the following years. In addition to playing, I spent a lot of time creating custom content for games with my friends. It was always quite basic though, as I hadn't learned any programming yet.

For a year or so I studied film and media studies at the university, with a diffuse goal of wanting to work in games down the line. One night my girlfriend gave me a push, and I applied for a three-year game development program at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH).

My years at BTH were a mixed bag. On one hand, we had a lot of freedom and got to work on tons of small projects, which was very fun and super rewarding. On the other hand, some courses felt like they were only marginally related to game development. Working on side-projects during your spare time was crucial. I got through it all by finding a good group of like-minded students that I stuck to for the entirety of the education. Our final project was a side-scrolling adventure game called Far Away - you can watch the trailer for it on Youtube.

Perfectly in sync with graduating, I stumbled across a job opening at Frictional and sent in an application. Over the following weeks I answered some additional questions, did a work test and finally had an interview. A couple of days before I would hear from Frictional, I got a job offer from another company in software development. I clumsily explained to them I was waiting on another offer and asked for a few more days. Finally, I got an email from Fredrik and Thomas offering me the job. It was a no-brainer, and I happily accepted.

WHAT I DO

My first few weeks at the company consisted of completing a list of introductory tasks, to learn more about the tools and the engine. This was a lot of fun, and culminated in the creation of a silly mini-game where I got to put everything I had learned to the test.

After I had completed the introductory tasks I got to work on Safe Mode for SOMA, which was something I was really excited about -- contributing to a game I truly thought was great. From the get-go, we felt it was important to maintain the monsters' threatening presence in order for their new behaviours to gel with the overall tone of the game. We couldn't just disable their ability to harm you; doing this would end up breaking immersion (imagine repeatedly throwing a toolbox in Akers' face and him just standing there, taking it). Instead, we tried to focus on how to best tweak each monster's behaviour in a manner that suited that particular encounter. For instance, some might eerily walk up to you and size you up, and can even bluff charge you if you've strayed too close. To further enforce the behaviours fitting with the world, we decided that if you were to actively mess with monsters (like invading their personal space for too long, hurling trash at them and so on), they should still be able to hurt you, just not kill you. Overall it was a very worthwhile experience, and I'm quite happy with how it all turned out.

Now I'm working on one of our secret projects. As the gameplay programmer/designer workflow has already been described in previous posts I won't go into detail, but my days in general are spent designing and scripting events and scenes, as well as programming gameplay systems.

THE OFFICE

Additionally, I thought I'd talk a bit about the differences in working from home compared to working in the office. We're also gonna do a proper office tour later on, so stay tuned!

This is where the magic happens.

This is our office! Currently, we're around seven people occupying this space, probably with more to come. It's quite seldom all of us are here at once though, but there are usually a few people around. And on the off chance that you're here by yourself one day, fear not; there's always the noisy, seemingly stiletto heel-wearing, tap-dancing travel agency crew upstairs to keep you company (seriously).

So, it really isn't all that crowded here. But, seeing as most of us don't work from the office, we often have meetings over Slack. It can easily get annoying for your desk-mates if you keep babbling on and on in various meetings throughout the day, which is why we've set up a separate meeting room. It also moonlights as a test room, complete with a TV, some dev kits and a monster webcam.

The fact that the company is split into people working from home and people working in the office could potentially lead to complications, such as communication issues. In order to prevent this we've made sure that all important decisions and discussions still happen over Slack, to keep everyone in the loop. So far this policy has worked well, and the transition has been quite smooth.

In the end, a typical day of work in the office is very similar to one at home. There is of course the added social aspect of working in the same physical space as you colleagues, which is great, but if you one morning feel like you'd rather stay at home and work, you can. Having this option every day really is quite luxurious.

Other than this, and the requirement to wear pants, the routines of working in the office and and working from home differ very little.

Wanna see who else works at Frictional? Check out the rest of the People of Frictional posts!

Friday, 20 March 2020

Game 362: OrbQuest (1981)

I'm playing the second edition of the game. The first is not available anywhere.

OrbQuest

United States
Alternate World Simulations

Released in 1981 for CP/M

Date Started: 10 March 2020

Date Finished: 15 March 2020

Total Hours: 25

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Digital Research's CP/M operating system only boasted two original RPGs, and it turns out that both of them were adapted directly from games on the PLATO mainframe. A year ago, I covered how Nemesis (1981) was just a microcomputer version of Oubliette (1977), and now it's clear that OrbQuest is nothing more than a microcomputer version of The Game of Dungeons (1975), more popularly known by its file name, "DND." Specifically, it is a direct adaption of the game's fifth edition.

Finding a treasure chest in the OrbQuest dungeon offers the same options as The Game of Dungeons.

We've discussed at length how Daniel Lawrence based his own DND (c. 1976) on The Game of Dungeons, but OrbQuest is a far more literal porting of the code than Lawrence's. Indeed, if I'd known about it when I won The Game of Dungeons, I might have been content to discuss OrbQuest in an addendum rather than playing it as a separate game. Among the things it shares in common:

A goal to recover an Orb, held by a powerful guardian (a dragon in Game, a "dragon wizard" here)
Twenty 9 x 9 levels with the same system of movement (e.g., SHIFT to go through a door), secret doors, and one-way doors
No staircases, just "teleporters" that take you to the next and previous levels, and the teleporters are oddly spaced between squares rather than in them
The same attributes, with "piety" substituted for "wisdom"
Experience based on monsters killed and gold retrieved
Most of the same spells, divided into cleric and mage, with slots given to the character upon leveling
The same combat options, including minimized importance of "fighting" and each enemy having a particular weakness to a particular spell
The same commands and results for opening chests, drinking potions, and reading books
Most of the same items of magical equipment to find
Most of the same monsters
On dungeon Level 1, monsters are never higher than Level 1
Options to toggle on or off automatic collection of gold and automatic fighting of enemies below a certain level

I'm assuming that Dirk Pellet and the other Game authors didn't know about this attempt to monetize their work, or certainly they would have objected as strongly as they did to Lawrence's. Relative obscurity must have helped: OrbQuest appeared only for a dying platform, and the creator notes on a message board that he only ever sold about 100 copies.

The Game of Dungeons' cleric spells were, in contrast, "Light Candle," "Holy Water, "Exorcise," "Pray," "Hold," "Dispell," and "Datspell."

As to that creator, his name was Walter E. Donovan, and his company--existing only for this game, it seems--has an address in Milpitas, California. So far, I have not been able to tie Donovan directly to a PLATO campus (unlike Lawrence and the author of Nemesis), so I'm not sure how he was exposed to it, but it's clear that somehow he got the source code or otherwise thorough documentation of its elements and mechanics.

A nice cover leads the game manual, which is otherwise typewritten and photocopied.

As usual, this is not to say that Donovan added nothing to the game. In fact, he smoothed away some of Game's most egregious imbalances and made the game less random. Gold is less plentiful, particularly on earlier levels, chests (and thus magic items) rarer, and traps less deadly. A player can no longer spend half the game just wandering the same corridors of Level 1 and picking up nearly every magic item along the way. Chests have only about 10 times the gold as random loot on their levels, not 1000 times. Chests aren't trapped as often, and when they are, they rarely kill you unless you've delved too far too fast. Magic items are never trapped. Books and potions help more than they hurt, so it's worth taking the chance on them.

Potions and books are less deadly here than in the source game.

The result is a game that is, even with permadeath, far more survivable than The Game of Dungeons but also less "gameable." There aren't any tricks to help you get rich quick (unlike in Game, you can't cache gold, either) or otherwise bypass the long and tedious process of grinding yourself senseless for several dozen hours. I've been doing it while clearing out my Netflix queue, but I can't imagine that even back in the day, when it was the only game for my platform, I would have had a lot of fun with it.

Collecting gold to raise my level. I have a pretty good set of equipment here.

The game begins with random rolls of 3-18 for strength, dexterity, intelligence, and piety. After that, you begin on Level 1 of the dungeon. The 9 x 9 levels have a fixed layout but a random distribution of gold, chests, and other items, re-randomized every time you change levels or exit the dungeon. Encounters are completely random and also extremely variable. Sometimes, I walked 20 steps or more with no encounters; other times, I had three or four in the same square.

The limited character creation process.

For the most part, you meet the same monsters on all levels, but the monsters themselves have levels. The monster's level is far more important in determining his danger than the monster type; that is, a Level 3 ghoul is deadlier than a Level 1 dragon. On dungeon Level 1, monsters are never higher than Level 1 themselves. On other dungeon levels, their levels are randomized to a maximum of roughly 5 times the dungeon level for levels 1-10--unless you're carrying gold, in which case their maximum level is something like 4 times the dungeon level plus 1 for every 5,000-10,000 gold pieces you carry.

My maps of the first nine levels.

OrbQuest lacks the "excelsior transport" from Game, but several of the levels have pits that take you directly to lower levels. The levels have varied layouts with secret doors, one-way doors, and such, but no special encounters until Level 10. Playing the game is a process of exploring downward, picking up gold until you start to encounter monsters you can't handle, then hauling it back up to Level 1 and then exit in order to level up. The next time, you can go a little further and collect a little more gold.

There are 13 monsters in the game: balrogs, deaths, demons, dragons, evil curates, ghouls, green slimes, hirebrands, huge spiders, mindworms, specters, wizards, and zombies. A few of them have special attacks. If mindworms do any damage to you at all in combat, they'll sap intelligence permanently. Same goes for specters and strength. Green slimes eat inventory items.

Despite my victory, the specter manages to eat a point of strength.

As with Game, fighting here is a last resort except for enemies significantly below your level (you can set the game to auto-fight such enemies so you don't even need to press "F"). Instead, you need to learn, through trial and error, each enemy's weaknesses to various spells. For instance, balrogs are susceptible to the "Fatal Charm" mage spell. The cleric spell "Holy Water" deals with demons, evil curates, and zombies. As in Game, the cleric's "Hold" and the mage's "Sleep" work reliably against enemies below Level 5 and hardly at all after that. As long as the enemy isn't more than three times your level, he should die immediately from the spell that works best against him. At higher levels, the spell might partly work (depending on the spell), leaving you to finish him off (or vice versa) in melee combat. Again, you can control the level of enemy you face by controlling the amount of gold you carry and the dungeon level you're visiting.

Combat options.

The occasional potion or tome offers a chance to increase your attributes, and unlike the ones in Game, they don't have an equal chance of decreasing attributes, although they do have an occasional negative effect like poison or a trap. "Clerical detection" reliably determines if the item is safe.

Chests occasionally deliver magic items. Swords, shields, helms ("haumes"), hauberks, Cloaks of Defense, and Belts of Healing are all initially found at +1, and as you find more, you gain additional pluses. Amulets of Revival will save the character from one death. Small Idols of Luck increase the amount of treasure that you find. Necklaces of Eyes allow you to see secret doors. I was never sure what Rings of Power or Glory did.

The Belt of Healing is a useful tool that regenerates hit points.

Level 9 has a bunch of one-way doors that funnel the player to one of the teleporters to Level 10. Immediately on arrival to Level 10, the character is attacked by Demogorgon. This is a test encounter to see if you're strong enough for the lower levels, and you need to be around Level 100 to beat him. Once he's dead, he never appears again.

Killing Level 10's Demogorgon is a key milestone.

Levels 10-20 are a lot harder. Not only are the monsters much higher level, but there are more navigation obstacles. There are invisible walls, wrapping levels, lots more one-way walls and doors, and other difficult terrain. Downward teleporters sometimes skip two levels. Level 15, with a bunch of concentric squares, is a copy of Game of Dungeons' Level 11. Level 16, featuring a spiral of corridors, is a copy of Game's Level 15. And Level 17, with a bunch of featureless north/south corridors connected by secret doors, is a copy of Game's Level 20.

The Dragon Wizard is found somewhere on Level 20. The level has a couple of squares that halve your available spells and another one that blinds you. If you defeat the Dragon Wizard, you get the Orb and millions of gold pieces--which it would be sensible to immediately drop, as the Orb itself is going to attract enough high-level monsters. You then have to make your way back up 20 levels, apparently somewhere encountering The Grim Reaper, who's even harder than the Dragon Wizard.

Here is where I run into problems. Although I've explored them both multiple times, I cannot find the up teleporters from Levels 19 or 13. A "Teleport" spell that's supposed to move you upward for one cleric and one mage spell slot absolutely never works. Thus, although I have managed to obtain the Orb, I can't find my way out of the dungeon.

I had the Orb at one point; I just couldn't get it out.

I haven't been adhering to permadeath, of course. The game makes it easy to cheat. It saves your character with every level transition and doesn't record his "death" until you acknowledge the death message. This is an opportunity for players to quickly remove the disk from the drive, or in my case kill the emulator. Reloading is a pain, though, so death still has consequences. Since I'm emulating the CP/M from within DOSBox, I have to restart two emulators with their associated commands and sit through a timer in the unregistered CP/M emulator. It was probably easier for a 1981 player to restart his game than it is for me.

Thus, having wasted an absurd number of hours on the game, I can't show you a winning screen. But if I know my readers, one of them will eventually grow curious enough to poke around in the game's code and let me know what I missed, and I'll be able to come back with an addendum. For now, the game ties with Game for an 18, although the individual stories aren't exactly the same. Game of Dungeons at least tried to make up a story about the dungeon, which OrbQuest doesn't, but OrbQuest has a slightly better variety of equipment.

OrbQuest gets some credit for slightly more gruesome combat language than its source.

We'll take our second look at Planet's Edge next while I gear up to plan fan (and Addict) favorite Ultima VII. Replacing it on the "upcoming" list is Catacombs (1982) for the ZX81, for which I haven't even found an emulator yet, so we'll see.

Thursday, 19 March 2020

Storium Theory: Optional Challenges

Most of the time, when we put down a challenge, it's definite - a note that the story will be focusing on a particular point. But is it possible to use challenges differently? To lay down a challenge for something the players might want to focus on, but are not required to focus on?

I believe it is a tool for the toolbox...but one I would show great caution in using. I've only pulled out an optional challenge once or twice in my own games, and I am wary of using them often, if at all, in my own narration generally. Storium's rules are set up more for completion of challenges and requiring of challenges, and I think there's a good reason for that.

In setup, an optional challenge wouldn't be so different from a regular challenge - you still want to establish the starting situation, the facts of the challenge, and the possible places the challenge can end up once it is complete. There's not much different in the overall technique of setting it up.

But should you decide to use this tool, I think there are some very important things you will need to be sure you address.

First: How will you know if players are or are not going to play on the challenge? You will need a good way of knowing if players have not played on a challenge yet because they haven't gotten to it yet, or because they do not intend to play on it at all. An optional challenge, being optional, could be ignored completely by players for reasons that have nothing to do with slow play or inactivity. It is important to have a way of determining that the players are not going to play on the challenge, and that it is time to move the scene on.

I suggest that you consider one of the following ideas:

Set a deadline based on the other challenges - if the optional challenge is not completed by the time the scene's other challenges are, you will consider it incomplete and move the scene on.
Set a deadline based on actual time - if the optional challenge is not completed within X days after the rest of the scene's challenges are (or just within X days if there are no other challenges) you will consider it incomplete and move the scene on.
Require an affirmative statement from a player that they intend to play on the optional challenge by a specific date. If you have no such statement by that date, you will remove the optional challenge.

These methods are probably not the only ones...or even likely the best...but they all allow you to know when you can regard the challenge as incomplete and move forward. Whatever choice you make, be sure you tell your players so they know what the requirements are.

Second: What happens when the optional challenge is incomplete?

This is a pretty important question, and one that, I think, gets at the reason I don't use optional challenges much. If something's critical enough to the story that you want to set up a challenge for it, it seems like it is something the group should have to interact with - even if their interaction is playing Weakness cards and having their characters utterly ignore it and let it go wrong. In other words, the characters might not care about something, but if it is important enough to the story to rate a challenge, the players should have to do something about it...even if that something is having their characters do nothing. The story of the challenge, once laid out, should probably progress.

If it goes well, then, it ends Strong. If it goes poorly, it ends Weak. If it is less clear, it ends Uncertain. But that's all determined by the cards.

So...what do you do with a challenge that seemed interesting enough to put out there as an option, but that seems like something the character's don't have to address?

My best bet is that you do nothing. An optional challenge is something that is interesting, but not critical. The players don't gain or lose anything by not going after it. It's only if they actually engage it that it matters to the story in any way.

Thus, if the players don't seem interested in it and leave it alone, it just drops off for the moment. Nothing bad happens, nothing good happens. It just fades away into the background again.

That's not to say you can't bring it back again later, or bring it back again later as a normal, required challenge. It's just that for the moment, it wasn't critical enough to be made required, so nothing's reaching any kind of story-altering point with it. It just fades away for now.

If on the other hand players play some of the cards on the challenge, but don't finish it, I'd probably go by my usual rule for ending a challenge early when it becomes absolutely necessary: Most likely, end it by whatever the current result would be (i.e. if it is going Strong, it ends Strong, if it is going Weak, it ends Weak, if it is going Uncertain, it ends Uncertain) - this method makes the players' card plays so far clearly matter, so that's my preference. If you use a different rule for those cases in your own games, be consistent.

But that brings me to another consideration...

Third: How many points do you put on the thing, anyway?

I'm going to just say outright that I think the answer is one, possibly two at maximum. An optional challenge is not the focus of the scene - it is by definition something that can be entirely ignored. Thus, it isn't anywhere near as important as other challenges, and shouldn't get a lot of focus in the scene at hand.

Furthermore, if you put more points on an optional challenge, it makes it harder to judge when players no longer care about it - once it has become active, how do you judge that it isn't going to be active any further? You can always rule that an optional challenge becomes required if at least one player plays a card on it, of course, but that could get messy in terms of game morale and community if players disagree about whether they want to play on it.

So...I suggest making your life as easy as possible by using only one or two points, tops, and making clear to your players that whatever "deadline" you set for the optional challenge is a completion deadline, not a play deadline - the challenge needs to be complete by then or you will move things on. That will prevent an optional challenge from causing delays.

Finally, though: Consider whether the challenge should even be optional in the first place.

Most of the things I've considered as, well, optionally "optional" challenges were ideas that I ended up deciding would either fit perfectly well as required challenges right then, or would fit perfectly well as required challenges later. I've rarely come across something that I considered important to note in challenge form, but not critical enough to be something the players had to address.

If you're considering an optional challenge, think about it a bit more for a while...is it really something that should be optional, or is it just something that hasn't come to a head yet? Maybe it's something you can get some actual drama out of later, and make it a normal challenge in a later scene. Or maybe it's something you can hint at with a minor required challenge now - perhaps to see if someone notices something - and bring in more fully down the line.

Or perhaps it is something that actually is pretty vitally important right now, in which case it should be a required challenge...right now.

So, when can an optional challenge be helpful?

I could see them being useful if you want to allow the group to choose a direction, but neither direction is necessarily better or worse for the story (if one direction is better and the other is worse, you'd instead do a regular challenge and set the first up as the Strong outcome and the second as the Weak). Then, you could set up two different one-point challenges, and tell the players they can only do one of them - that sets them off on that path and determines how it starts out for them.

It isn't my chosen way to find where the players want to go in the story, but I could see it working.

Another method might be something that is solidly an opportunity for the players - again, if they don't do anything, it doesn't go wrong or anything like that, but perhaps it is something they can use to "shortcut" the plot in some way. You'd have to be careful with this one - it's easy to run into the "why don't you just do this as a regular challenge" internal question - but there are ways I could see it working. If you do this, then, the Strong result is very good for the characters, and the Weak result is perhaps less so, but still generally quite good.

The problem I run into myself with that is that if you use that method, it becomes hard to argue that things aren't worse if the player decide not to play the challenge...in which case, again, I feel like it probably shouldn't be optional because it impacts the story in a notable way. And that's exactly where I've ended up when I've reflected on the few times I've used optional challenges...I end up feeling like what I did was render a part of the story optional when it was actually going to have a definite impact.

And that's the point I keep coming back to myself in considering this - I just generally can't justify putting a challenge down and treating it as "optional." When I put a challenge down, it means that a notable event has started in the story, and the players, through their card plays, need to see where it goes. It needs to get to some conclusion or another, so that we know where the story goes after it. When I find myself thinking of perhaps telling my players a challenge is optional, I start instead thinking of whether it should be there yet at all.

But: I know that this is a technique some other narrators have used in the past, and I'd very much be interested to hear others' thoughts on it. Have you used optional challenges? What did they represent in your game? And how did you ensure that you knew it was fine to move the game forward? Write in, and let me know!

Suzy Cube Update: March 30, 2018

#SuzyCube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity @NoodlecakeGames

Alright! First week back from GDC and I decided not to mess with things too much and, instead, add a little more life to the game.

HOTT 52 - Getting Ready

Kaptain Kobold over at the Stronghold blog has been holding forth on the game HOTT (Hordes of the Things) for years now. This year, they decided to play a weekly game of HOTT a year and record them as HOTT 52. This sounds like a great idea for me, and will allow me to get off my painting/modeling obsession (and Minecraft addiction -- you should see the "Empire" I'm creating in my world, all in Survival!) .. anyway, to actually play games.

(See [1] for what HOTT is, if you've never heard of it before.)

I'm going back in time, though, back to the last published version of HOTT, 1.2, which is now available again on Lulu! After playing a version of HOTT that was updated for the latest DBA 3 rules, I've decided to go back. Not because the update HOTT2DBA3 rules are bad, but because a lot of HOTT play at conventions/events is still based on 2.1. I wanted to re-familiarize myself with the actual version.

I was reading through my well worn copy of the rules and kept finding odd notations that implied I had done something earlier, so I went through my Google Drive and found this:

HOTT Reference Sheet (Google Drive Link)

The first page is written for my Etinerra campaign world, and I converted the measurements to inches because "'Murica", but the rules summary works very well as a one sheet/two page summary of the game.

Rather than try to do a huge big restart to my wargames campaign in Etinerra, I'm just going to play some games with miniatures and get to playing HOTT regularly, THEN I can see about tying things back to Etinerra. So this coming weekend, I will do two games to catch up with the weeks - last weekend was all about my playtest of Hommlet!

While I love Chaos Wars and still play it, HOTT is perfect for an hourlong game that gives me some fun, but doesn't require a lot of time.

Thanks, Kaptain Kobold, for the inspiration!

[1] HOTT/Hordes of the Things is a fantasy miniatures wargame that uses a small number of figures to play out just about any fantasy setting you can imagine. It also allows you to make just about any army you can imagine, with an army list that ranges from high Tolkein fantasy, to Asian Indian mythology, to Discworld and even Christmas Land! The rules can be interesting to interpret, with "Barkerese" on the same level as "High Gygaxian" in terms of writing. There's a ton of help on the web and my reference sheet to help you with the rules!

Monday, 16 March 2020

"Alien" Ninja Turtles Had Some Potential

DISCLAIMER:

Copyrighted material that may appear on this blog is for the usage of further commentary, criticism, or teaching within the standards of "fair use" in Section 107 of the Copyright Act. All video, music, text, or images shown, all belong to their respective creators or companies. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the property of Nickelodeon.

WARNING:
Possible spoilers!

Image by Museum Of Hartlepool. Source: https://www.flickr.com/

Michael Bay is getting a bit too much credit for this Ninja Turtles project.

Sure, he's producing it, and as a producer, he can affect the shape of these films, but that can only go so far. Especially when you consider that he's surrounded by a variety of other producers. This includes Bradley Fuller, who's elegant repertoire has given us the The Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th remakes (reboots?) (IMDb). The silver lining, though, is Ian Bryce, who produced Return of the Jedi and Field Of Dreams, but also Transformers 2 and Howard The Duck (IMDb). Yikes.

Bay isn't directing the film, either. That distinction goes to Jonathan Liebesman. His great directing credits scored terribly on Rotten Tomatoes, like Battle: Los Angeles (35%), Wrath Of The Titans (25%), and the unforgettable Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (12%). Damn. At least Michael Bay had The Rock (66%).

And Bay certainly isn't writing the screenplay. For this film, three musketeers were selected to delicately craft the script. The first is Josh Appelbaum, who wrote for the acclaimed show Alias, and the also acclaimed Mission Impossible 4 (IMDb). Nice. The second is Andre Nemec, who also wrote for Alias and Mission Impossible 4 (IMDb). Uh, double nice. Okay, so here is where the other shoe drops. The third is Evan Daugherty, who wrote for Snow White and the Huntsman and that Hunger Games look-a-like Divergent (IMDb). Both are adaptations like this film. Maybe he'll do a good job.

All of these factors will certainly make the film an interesting one to watch, but if it goes wrong, all of the blame should not fall on Bay. It would be like blaming Spielberg for the failures of Transformers 3 and The Legend Of Zorro (IMDb). Yes, he did actually invest time into producing those films.

But when hearsay of the very idea that these turtles might be aliens, the fans went into an uproar, and they blamed Bay. Crystal Bell of The Huffington Post writes,

"Needless to say, the fans are not too pleased with Bay for changing the origins of the beloved "Ninja Turtles."

"So will they be changing the title?," asked one Reddit user. "I mean, 'TMNT' doesn't really apply anymore ... Maybe they could be Teenage Alien Interstellar Ninja Turtles?"

However, another Reddit user pointed out that if the Turtles were in fact aliens -- and not nuchuck-wielding ninjas -- perhaps they would have developed more sophisticated weaponry:

"If they're aliens then why would they be ninjas!?!? They would have laser guns and lightsabers and junk! They wouldn't need to be ninjas! Michael Bay is the destroyer of worlds!"

Even Michaelangelo voice actor Robbie Rist had some, uh, constructive words for Bay on his open letter on Facebook,

"Dear Michael Bay.

You probably don't know me but I did some voice work on the first set of movies that you are starting to talk about sodomizing.

Look man, I think you have some pretty nifty action ideas (of course on the other side, the minute ANYONE in your movies starts using actual dialog I seem to catch myself nodding off), but seriously, Teenage ALIEN Ninja Turtles?

I know believing in mutated talking turtles is kinda silly to begin with but am I supposed to be led to believe there are ninjas from another planet?

You know that ninjas are a certain kind of cultural charact....

Oh what the hell am I talking to you for?

The rape of our childhood memories continues....."

His words seem a bit harsh to me (I liked what he had to say about Bay's dialog, though), but I can't help but think that his anger describes a lot of the sentiment that fans initially had at this film. To Robbie's credit, however, he later told TMZ that, "Everything I have said here could be off base and wrong ... He has made WAY more money at this than I have."

First of all, we now know that the whole "aliens" idea was a bunch of bunk, as Micheal Bay later confirmed to Moviefone, "There was that quote saying that we were making (the Ninja Turtles as) aliens. We're not! It's the ooze!" Second, even if they were aliens, we don't know if Bay had even developed the idea. It could have been from the writers, the director, or any of the other producers. He certainly approved it, which makes him culpable, but that doesn't make him the source. Third, I would hardly call Michael Bay the "destroyer of worlds" for doing such a move (he's destroyed a lot of buildings, though). Or even a raper of childhoods (if such a thing is even possible). Bay simply wanted to take the series in a different paradigm, and frankly, it could have done some neat things. Before all of that, though, let's get one thing out of the way. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are really kind of silly.

Really, though. Think about the whole premise of this franchise.

Ordinary turtles become mutated into anthropomorphic creatures by a radioactive ooze and are taught to become ninjas by anthropomorphic rat called Splinter in the sewers of New York City. The turtles, now teenagers, are named after Renaissance painters, eat pizza, fight a samurai named Shredder, and rescue reporters in yellow jumpsuits.

Original, yes, but very laughable. In fact, TMNT creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird joked about conceiving the idea in The Week, "We were just pissing our pants that night, to be honest. 'This is the dumbest thing ever.'" (Farago).

I haven't read the comics, so I can't speak for them, but they sounded pretty gritty. Nor have I seen the 1980's cartoon that helped propel the turtles into the mainstream. I tried watching two episodes a while ago, and I was a bit bored by it. The turtles also looked a bit too cutesy for me. Sorry Gen X. I've seen the1990 film, which, as a straight up Ninja Turtles movie, was actually very entertaining. You really can't fault the movie for giving audiences at the time exactly what they wanted: the four pizza loving turtles fighting crime. That said, the Jim Henson Creature Shop did a good job of designing the costumes, the action scenes are well paced and impressive considering the heavy suits, and the editing and cinematography have a stylized MTV look. This shouldn't be too surprising, since the film was directed by Steve Barron, who also directed the music video for Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and A-ha's "Take On Me" (IMDb). The second and third films, I hear, weren't much better, although the second film had Vanilla Ice, and who wouldn't love that?

The turtles I grew up on were from the late 90's series The Next Mutation. It was a live action show that featured the turtles in uglier costumes than were used in the movies, along with a female turtle named Venus and a crossover episode with Power Rangers In Space. That 80's cartoon looked a lot better by comparison. The turtles did, in my opinion, hit a high note with the 2003 cartoon which had some stylish animation and enjoyable writing. This led to the 2007 film which was kind of dull and confusing, but had a cool fight between Raphael and Leonardo. There's a new TMNT show on Nickelodeon, but I'd rather watch Legend of Korra instead.

The reason why I've reiterated so much turtles history is to show that this series have been reworked again, again, and again. Now in spite of whichever TMNT incarnation you happen to prefer, it is clear that all of these stories always return to square one. Four feature films, three cartoons, a crossover with the Power Rangers and the tale still starts in the sewers of New York City. It's almost like an infinite time loop. Aren't fans tired of this set-up? Would it be so radical to demand a slightly different background? Are we so hopelessly blinded by our nostalgia that the most infinitesimally small divergence from the established canon is an act of heresy?

Come on, guys.Would a little openness with the franchise be so hard? When it came to rebooting this franchise, the production team could have gone one of two ways. They could reboot it as an animated film aimed at a younger demographic, or go for the gritty Nolanesque reboot that would appeal to older teenagers. Making an animated film would be redundant, since we just had an animated film and we already have a new cartoon on TV. So, gritty reboot it is.

When one does a gritty reboot, a certain sense of realism is to be expected. As with the Nolan-Batman films. This doesn't work when you have too much absurdity to overplay the grittiness. Take the implausible tornado sequence from Man of Steel or the horrific "Deep Wang" moments from Transformers 3. Both films featured extraordinary scenarios with aliens. In one, aliens can disguise themselves as cars, and in the other, they can fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes. Both films asked us to take them seriously, Man of Steel much more so, but Transformers 3 also had the destruction of a city, which, I would hope, demands a degree of realism. (By the way, the Autobots were far more negligent about civilian casualties than Superman supposedly was). So while the new TMNT may not be as violent as Man of Steel or as idiotic as Transformers 3, it will have to balance its extraordinary premise with the realism of a live action movie.

Here's where the aliens come in.

Now if the turtles were simply aliens, it would do away with a lot of wasteful exposition dealing with the turtle's origins. Considering that we have yet to see any real aliens, though they may certainly exist, the concept of anthropomorphic turtles does not seem quite as absurd by comparison. We know, scientifically, that even the most extreme of mutations would not produce a love of pizza and surfer lingo in turtles, but we don't know anything about aliens. So anything's up for grabs. Again, an alien origin would better fit the demands of realism that many viewers are used to in a live action film. So why does this idea have potential? I'll tell you why, because it won't be set in NYC. No, it would be set on the turtle's alien planet.

You see, a terrible thing in writing a plot is limitations. This is why prequels are so hard to do without a retcon, the blatant rewriting of previously established canon. If you don't know what I'm talking about, think Zeist from Highlander 2. A prequel can only get so far before running into an established plot point. So freeing up the premise as much as possible to allow for more movement with characters and such is a must. This is the trouble that comes with adaptations. The filmmakers have to balance between honoring the source material and creating their own movie. The problem with the the latter Harry Potter films is that they became too much of a supplement to the books as opposed to being independent works. You see this problem even reverberate in reboots, where the new films didn't differ enough from the originals. Compare, for example, 2012's Spider-Man with 2002's.

Setting TMNT on an alien planet would offer so many possibilities. Bebop, Rocksteady, Krang, and Usagi Yojimbo could all pop in at any time without any real need for prior explanation. We would simply assume aliens on an alien planet. Anything goes. The planet doesn't have to be futuristic either. Why should it be? The turtles are ninjas aren't they? So why not create a world where those ninja skills and weaponry would hold the advantage? How about a planet based off of feudal Japan, or even a Pandora-like environment? It could bring the turtles to a level they've simply never been at before. Does this mean that Shredder, Karai, April, and Casey can still be humans in an alien planet? Of course. Its an alien planet remember? Anything goes.

Just think of all the conventions this film could avoid simply by being set on its own planet. No need to hide their identities in public, no need to appeal to the police or military of not being a danger, no need to worry about how humans should react upon seeing them, and if you do go futuristic, no need to explain how you acquired said technology in the modern age. Best of all, not having to set another summer blockbuster in New York City.

That's some potential with the turtles as aliens, but I doubt if it would ever have been exploited. In fact, I doubt the turtles were ever in any real danger of being radically changed. If there's one thing Hollywood loves, it's formulas. One such formula is to be familiar. People tend to lean towards what they already know. Alien Turtles would be far too alienating (no pun intended) for today's profitable demographics and no doubt divide, if not scare off the entire fanbase. The turtles have spent too much time in our cultural consciousness to be so utterly transformed. Yeah, they're bigger and a bit more slimy, but honestly, how much have they really changed. As far as I can infer from the trailers, they still live in the sewers of New York, but we'll have to wait for the film's release to really find out.

Well, however bad this new TMNT may be, at least the Turtles won't be interviewed by Oprah again.

Bibliography

"Andre Nemec." IMDb. Web. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0625858/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Bay, Michael. "Michael Bay, 'Pain & Gain' Director, on 'Transformers 4' and the New 'Ninja Turtles' Movie." Interview by Billy Donnely. Moviefone. April 26, 2013. Web. http://news.moviefone.com/2013/04/26/michael-bay-pain-and-gain-interview/

Bell, Crystal. "Michael Bay: Ninja Turtles Movie Will Make 'TMNT' Aliens, Fans Cry Foul." The Huffington Post. March 19, 2012. Web. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/19/michael-bay-ninja-turtles-movie-aliens_n_1364828.html

"Bradley Fuller." IMDb. Web. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0298181/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

"Evan Daugherty." IMDb. Web. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2489193/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Farago, Andrew. "The fascinating origin story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." The Week. June 10, 2014. Web. http://theweek.com/article/index/262738/the-fascinating-origin-story-of-the-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles

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"Jonathan Liebesman." Rotten Tomatoes. Web. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/162674974/?search=jonathan%20li

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Rist, Robbie. Facebook. March 19, 2012. Web. https://www.facebook.com/robbie.rist/posts/10150753394410645

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TMZ Staff. "Ex-Ninja Turtles Actor--Michael Bay is 'Sodomizing' the TMNT Legacy." TMZ. March 20, 2012. Web. http://www.tmz.com/2012/03/20/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-michael-bay-michaelangelo-sodomizing/#ixzz38cJnSWlu