Mirror, mirror

Last night, for the first time in a long time, I found myself just randomly surfing the net through the wonders of Stumbleupon. I landed on one website that specialized in nothing but random funny pictures. You know the stuff, Lolcats, rage comics and other assorted meme pictures.

However, a few pages in, I noticed that along with the funny pictures, there were a lot like this folded in as well:

If you've spent any time on the internet at all (especially Facebook), you'll be used to pictures like these. Sluts taking pictures of themselves in mirrors.

These pictures iritate the hell out of me. Oh, I can't deny these girls at least superficially hot (and I choose my words carefully there), but these girls think that guys look at these pictures and think "Hey, she looks gorgeous, hot and fun! I wish she were my girlfriend."... and an awful lot of teenage virgins probably do think that...but let me tell you what pics like these really tell me about you.

1) You're too fucking stupid to work the self-timer on your camera.

Self-timers are not a new or rare thing. My cellphone has one, both my digital cameras have one. Even my camcorder and my 20 year old film camera has one. You set the timer, put the camera on something and then you can take a picture of yourself without a mirror!

Speaking of stupidity, look at the girl on the far left. Everything about that picture is set up to show extreme nonchalance. Like she was just having an average day of being perfectly made up, showing just the right amount of cleavage and dancing around, being fun and breezy when someone snapped a picture.

We can see the camera in your hand, bitch! 

2) You have no friends.

Oh, I'm sure you have thousands of Facebook friends, but in terms of actual, real people who like you?

Let's assume for a second that I accidentally gave myself a lobotomy and I can't work out the two button presses it takes to set my camera's self timer. You know what I'd do? I'd ask a friend to take a picture of me. Why don't you have any friends? Because...

3) You're a vapid, extremely shallow attention whore.

Look at the girl on the right. Low production values aside, she's put some real time into this picture. (If you've never lived with a woman before, let me just point out that the vast majority of women don't style their hair and put on full makeup just to sit around the house.)

You see, if a girl's getting ready for a night out and has just snapped a quick pic of herself before leaving, that's fine... but Blondie isn't dressed to go out. She spent all that time on her hair and makeup just for this picture. Then, she's picked an outfit, spent an awful lot of time deciding on the perfect coquettish pose, not to mention arranging her pants so just the right amount of butt-crack is showing.

Now think about that. She's spent all that time to take a picture of herself to put on the internet. Even though I never saw where this pic was originally posted, I gurantee that the caption she put on it was something like "OMG, I look so fat in this pic!"

Long story short, you think your picture makes you look hot, sexy and fun...in reality your picture makes you look like a dumb whore who's in love with herself.

Finally, this:

Someone please explain to me just how retarded you have to be to have another person there with a camera...and have them take the picture in the mirror anyway!

Steve Jobs

A reporter on TV talking about Steve Jobs recent death:

"He asked the whole world a question: Are you a PC or a Mac? I'm definitely a Mac. Which are you?"

Well, personally, I choose not to define myself based on the consumer products I buy.

Steve Jobs was a genius businessman. He was not the Messiah.

Call of Cthulhu

Now that I'm back in the UK (where I actually have a few friends and some semblance of a social life) I thought it would be fun to run a Call of Cthulhu (pen and paper RPG) game for Halloween.

The one fly in the ointment, however, is that I'd never run, or even played in a Call of Cthulhu game. I'd read the rulebook and flicked a couple of pre-made modules, but as for actually running or playing a game, it was all completely new to me...so this past weekend, I conscripted Sunny to play through a shortish module purely as a play test, so Sunny could be introduced to the system and I could try my hand at getting used to running it.

The first thing I discovered is that the Call of Cthulhu system is a bit of a double edged sword. Once you've actually rolled up a character, the actual game is very 'rules light' with more or less everything working on percentile rolls. For example, if I put 80 points into my character's handgun skill, that means my character has an 80% chance of hitting whatever he's shooting at... and this is simulated in game by rolling 80 or less with percentile dice. This means that it's incredibly easy for a brand new player to get into the game without having to learn a bajillion different rules.

The reason I say this is a bit of a double edged sword is because the simple rules system means there's far more of a focus on the roleplaying element of the game... and while a focus on roleplay can be a good or bad thing depending on the group, a lot of roleplay is almost universally a bad thing for newbies.

Why? Because, not to put too fine a point on it, roleplaying can be embarrasing as hell.

When you're used to it, roleplaying is fun and can be the absolute best part of the game... but when it's your first time around the table and your character gets introduced to the party... and you suddenly realize that, in front of people who may be complete strangers, you actually have to talk and act like your Arnie-inspired Barbarian Warrior...it's perfectly normal to feel uncomfortable.

For example, even though we've been married for seven years and know each other about as intimately as it's possible for two people to know each other...when our game started and I began talking to Sunny as Barney Drum, proprietor of the Lobster Pot Inn...and Sunny realized getting information out of Barney meant actually questioning him and not just rolling a diplomacy check...she immediately got embarrassed. Luckily, she got over it pretty quickly, and by the end I think she was really enjoying getting into her role as a Private Investigator.


Anyway, now I come to think of it, maybe the CoC system is a triple-edged sword, because while the game is mechanically easy for the players, things are pretty hard on the DM.

If you're usually the DM, think about how many characters you actually have to roleplay in a single session of a DnD game. Usually the number stays in single digits, and a lot of the time a lot of the NPC's don't have to be 'properly' roleplayed at all.

Basically, in a DnD game, it doesn't really matter if the barkeep has no real personality because unless he's critical to the plot, he's just background color. For example, when the players ask him if there's any rooms available, you can say "What's that, young feller? Yer need a room? (cough, cough, snort) Well, yer lucky because we got jus' one left. Did yer know that the Duke himsel' once stayed in that very room? That was in the days when I ran this place with my Angie, gods rest 'er...oo's Angie ya say? Well I'm glad yer arsked..." Or, you can say "The barkeep tells you there's two rooms available for 10 silver a night each."

On the other hand, in the CoC module I ran for Sunny, there were no less than 20 NPCs and around 15 of them where absolutely crucial to the plot. Like most CoC modules, the plot was a supernatural mystery and, for the first half of the game, everyone is a potential suspect...and midway through out game I realized that this means each NPC needs to have a distinctly recognizable personality... which means 20 different voices, along with verbal tics and mannerisms... because if your players can't even tell who's who, they're probably not going to solve the mystery either. Oh, and you need to put in as much effort on the totally unimportant shopkeeper who has two lines of bio in the module as you do for the actual murderer....because if you don't you're immediately tipping your hand to the players about who is important to the plot and who can be ignored.

Also, unless your characters are interesting, your players aren't going to be motivated to talk to them...which was a minor problem in our game. As I said, Sunny's a bit naive when it comes to gaming and doesn't realize that if I put a character right in front of her and hint heavily that she should talk to this character that there's a reason for it. After a lot of subtle hints, I straight up suggested that she should go and talk to an NPC who seemed overly upset at a funeral (so she could discover that the NPC had been having an affair with the deceased)... and Sunny looked straight at me and said "Why would I care?" She didn't speak to the character and missed a major clue.

That, without a doubt was a failure on my part. I can't blame Sunny for not meta-gaming to deduce this NPC was important...I just hadn't introduced this character in an interesting enough way to get Sunny invested in any way shape or form. To Sunny, this NPC was just a boring old lady crying at a funeral.

The only other thing that gave me a bit of a problem was the combat...which, quite frankly, is very 'realistic', unforgiving and brutal. In CoC, if someone shoots you in the face with a shotgun, you don't knock off a few hit points and shoot them back on your next turn...you die...and even if by some miracle you survive, you may be alive, but you've just been shot in the face with a shotgun. You're not going to do much but lay down and scream.

Basically, when you play a CoC game, you don't necessarily have to solve the mystery or vanquish the bad guys. It's technically a win if you escape with your life or with your sanity intact

I won't bore you with the plot but, during the game, we got to a point where Sunny was supposed to get a glimpse of the reanimated corpse of her friend that the Big Bad was using as a puppet to murder people. Now, before the game, I'd warned her how combat was treated 'realistically', and told her that the basic rule of thumb is that she should react in game in the same way she would in real life.

So, Sunny's knocks on the suspect's door and hears a blood curdling scream from behind the house. She draws her gun, circles around the house and arrives in the back yard just in time to see the zombie literally rip a woman limb from limb.

Now, in my head, I thought the encounter would go like this: Sunny sees the zombie, opens fire, sees that her bullets have little or no effect, so she turns and runs...if she doesn't just run away immediately. If things got hairy, I had a redshirt NPC with her to ensure she could get away.

Instead, I describe the scene, ask Sunny what she wants to do and the conversation goes something like this:

Sunny: "Well, there's no point shooting at him, he's already dead."
Me : (hinting like crazy)  "Well, you have your gun in your hand, you've just seen this figure in the gloom tear this woman's arms off...wouldn't you fire a few times anyway?"
Sunny: "Not if he's already dead."
Me: (hinting even more) "Remember what I said before the game? If this happened in real life, do you think you'd have the presence of mind to think that logically? Also, the whole supernatural thing is new to you...would you immediately think 'zombie' or would you think that maybe the guy wasn't really dead or maybe that this is someone pretending to be him?"
Sunny: "No, I saw his body before the funeral and I know it's him...and a bullet's not going to do anything to a dead guy."
Me: (getting a little desperate) "Not even out of panic? maybe you'd try and knee-cap him?"
Sunny: "What's the point if he's dead?"

At that point, I came to a realization. One, that Sunny picked up meta-gaming really quickly. Two, she can be as dense as radiation shielding when she wants to be and, three, I was breaking the golden rule of DMing by trying to railroad her. Just because the encounter wasn't going the way I expected didn't mean I should force her into an action to get the game back on the rails.

What I could do, however, was let the zombie attack first to teach her not to hesitate during combat.

I don't mean that in an evil DM way... Sunny is almost totally inexperienced and therefore a little naive when it comes to gaming, so I figured I'd do one combat round, which would result in a near miss or a minor hit...then the redshirt would get the zombie's attention and scream at her to run.

Basically, I wanted her to learn a lesson: When you're face to face with a superhuman zombie, you either shoot or run...you don't stand around agonizing over what to do.

Turns out I should have read the stats for the zombie a little closer before  the game.

You see, I knew that the zombie only had a 40% of hitting so I figured it was going to miss anyway.

I made my attack roll. I needed less than 40 to hit and I rolled a freaking 2...a critical hit.

I immediately regretted not bothering with a DM screen. As competitive as Sunny is, if she got the slightest hint I was fudging things, even in her favor (especially in her favor) she'd probably quit playing right then and there.

Well, I thought, the Zombie's only clawing at her, how much damage can claws do?

I looked at the stats. It turns out that claws can do two d6 damage plus a bonus d4 for the critical hit.

Did I mention that Sunny's character only had 14 hit points?

So I rolled. The dice came up 6, 5 and 2.

In case you're math impaired or all that 'd6' talk was greek to you...I wanted the zombie to miss, or just inflict a minor hit. Instead it had essentially ripped Sunny's character open from shoulder to hip and immediately rendered her unconcious.

In CoC, there's no 'instant fix' healing spells. You don't spend healing surges until you're all better. When you're injured, you regain something like 3 hitpoints per 'd4 game weeks'... plus, there was the small fact she was unconcious, rapidly bleeding out on the floor and there was a murderous zombie literally on top of her. It was game over.

Of course, as she was the only player and I really wanted to finish my play test, she awoke a few days later in the small town's Doctor's office... which resulted in some really interesting situations as the town doctor was a major suspect.

Anyway, if this was a review, I'd say I really enjoyed Call of Cthulhu and I'd highly recommend it as a nice change of pace from the more rules-heavy systems out there. It also strikes me that the game is highly adaptable....you can add or remove skills from the character sheet easily and the percentile system means you're never really stuck flipping through sourcebooks for rules. If a character wants to try something unexpected that isn't covered by the rules, all you have to do is estimate the chances of him succeeding and tell him to roll. Basically, you can remove all traces of Lovecraft's monsters and just have a great system for running a straight up mystery or adventure game. In fact, the only thing the system's really not good for is DnD style dungeon crawls.

Having said that, this system is really for players who like to roleplay, so it's only worth bringing out if you're playing with a group who are completely comfortable with each other. If you're not willing to get around a table and spend most of the evening in character, CoC probably isn't for you.

What REALLY Just Happened

Ok, so I was sitting on the couch when my highly tuned senses picked up movement on the floor. I immediately recognized the movement as a huge spidaris gigantis, the world's rarest and most dangerous spider.

This spider is so rare that there's literally only one of it...and it's more dangerous than all the other spiders on the planet...and I don't mean it's the most dangerous spider...I mean it's more dangerous that all the other spiders on the planet, like, all at once.

My ninja skills immediately kicked in and, invoking my Shaolin Battle Cry of 'Hoh-lay-fack!" (Which, admittedly, can sound like a shrill, girlish "Holy Fuck!" to the untrained ear) I leapt up onto the couch. This, obviously, was because I knew I'd need the advantage of height in order to defeat such a dangerous opponent.

Then, spinning like an incredibly sexy whirlwind, I snatched up a cushion from the couch and used the secret Oncoming Storm of Righteous Fury technique...a technique so devastating that a trained practitioner, such as myself, can kill anything, up to and including a fully grown bull elephant, with nothing but an item of soft furnishing.

After a fierce battle, I prevailed and my foe lay vanquished before me.
     
A few moments later, after disposing of the carcass, I returned to the couch and folded my legs beneath me into a classic mediation pose. Obviously, I did this in order to dissipate my killing energies, for the safety of those around me.

I was a goddamned hero.

Now...

What absolutely didn't happen was that I saw a spider, screamed like a little girl, jumped onto the couch and then hit it with a cushion out of sheer panic...and I absolutely did not sit with my legs crossed because I was afraid to put my feet back on the floor.

...fuck you, it was a huge spider.