The Death of Genre and the Stagnation of Geek Culture.

This goes on for a lot longer than I intended and may not make a lot of sense, but the thoughts have been rolling around in my head for a few weeks now and I wanted to get them down on paper.

Two books I’ve read over the past couple of weeks have had a major impact on how I’m looking at genre and geek culture. The first tried to stuff dragons; and as many semi-colons; as physically possible; into the Napoleonic wars. The second was a sci-fi love-letter to 80’s pop culture that involved everything from Atari video-games, Dungeons and Dragons, Matthew Broderick movies, Super Giant Japanese battle robots, and a whole lot more into one big glorious ode to geeking the hell out.

The books made me realize three things: 1) genre is officially dead. 2) geek culture has become creatively bankrupt and. 3) authors who abuse semi-colons should be consigned to a special hell where all they do is come up with plots for reality TV-shows.

Have we run out of ideas? The last real development in genre was cyberpunk in the 80’s and since then all it seems we’ve been doing is mashing existing stories together to see if we can come up with anything cool.

Steampunk is arguably the most popular mashed genre going at the moment. Plus you have things like Weird West, Chuthulu is popping up everywhere, zombies are invading everything, gods/clones/monsters in high school and a thousand more examples. These are not bad things and I’m certainly not having a go at mash-ups; Ghostbusters is one of my all time favourite movies of all times and its sci-fi/horror. Mash ups can be awesome and I always like having the possibility of a ray-gun in my D&D campaign.

But even two and three tier mash-ups are getting tired and there are now anything goes, whole-damn-kitchen-sink approach in movies like Spy-Kids; TV shows like Community, Adventure Time and the Mighty Boosh; and in RPGs like RIFTS and GURPS.

In the meantime, nothing truly NEW is being created. When was the last time you’ve been to a movie, read a book or watched a show and truly said, “I’ve never seen that before!”? ‘The Matrix’ maybe? but even then I can say it was beaten by Red Dwarf’s ‘Back to Reality’ episode by seven years.

And whose fault is it? Ours: thirtyish, primarily males (more on that in a moment) who have been submerged in pop-culture since Star Wars and have never come up for air. While we are incredibly good at coming up with variations on a theme, the truly original seems to have eluded us.

Much of what we now hold dear was not created by geeks, but by television execs, movie producers, toy marketers, artists and overworked writers, all of whom were working for a paycheque, not for love.

Getting back to gender for a moment, let me ask you this; not counting Game of Thrones, what were the last three major book (series) to make a real impact in the spec-fic category? Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and (like it nor not) Twilight, and three were all written by women. Maybe because women are exposed to Geek Culture but rarely suffer from the over-exposure suffered by guys like me allows the room for some original, or at least outside ideas to filter into their imagination.

Yes, I am aware than all of the series are just their own variations-on a-theme, but they are variations on a theme that caught the attention of the muggles, which is rare enough to be astonishing.

Which brings me back around to the second book I talked about, ‘Ready Player One’. First, I’d like to state that the book is a LOT of fun and I heartily recommend it to fans of eighties minutia.

However there are two major problems with ‘Ready Player One’. My wife picked up on them almost right away, but took me longer to puzzle out. It may be because she’s just smarter than me, but it may be gender differences coming into play again.

Firstly, in the book, the hero literally shuts himself off from the world to immerse himself completely in the virtual reality of the game. The story does contain a mild warning against that kind of behaviour, but like ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Scarface’ my wife and I believe that the book will be imitated more than heeded.

Nor does the book go too far to in condemning the behaviour. In the end, the hero is richly rewarded for his efforts, but suffers none of the negative side effects that befall Don Michael Corleone or Tony Montana.

Secondly, and to drag this rambling essay back to my main point, RP1 is set thirty years from now, but the characters are essentially all running around inside the head of an eighties obsessed, autistic shut-in (insert St.Elsewhere joke here). The characters spend all their time interacting with Atari Video Games, debating old Matthew Broderick movies (Ladyhawke is AWESOME), playing classic rpg modules, flying Xwings and listening to music that is already thirty years old.

Seriously, has nothing NEW has been created in the coming thirty years to occupy these kids’ inertest? The book revels in its obsession for geek culture from Star Wars to Firefly (1977-2002), and that is absolutely fine in a bubblegum adventure book, but I couldn’t help but close the book and think, ‘Jeez, geek-culture of the future is really sad’.

Then I remembered that this year we're seeing the release of yet even more Alien, Spiderman and Batman movies. Maybe it isn't just the future that looks sad.

One of my martial arts instructors told me once not to worry if it felt like I’d plateaued in my training. That was when I was truly internalizing the techniques and when that happened, I would naturally progress to the next level.

I think we’ve seriously plateaued. The question is, do we have what it takes to make it to the next level?

Question, Comments, Complaints?

WEG D6

I was poking around Drivethru RPG and came across a bunch of West End Games items available for free.

D6 was probably the system my group played the most. Our classic Star Wars campaing carried us through many, many years. Through it we discovered Ghostbusters and later we even converted a bulk of the RIFTS books into D6 once we grew too fustrated with the Palladium rules (which boil down to most MDC, wins). It actually worked quite well.

I've got a real sweet spot for the simplicity of the system and am happy to see that there are still dedicated fans out there keeping it alive.

What would Jabba Do?

Over the past several months I've been selling off most of my Star Wars toys. Mostly Power of the Force stuff mixed in with a fair amount of Episode 1 and 2 stuff (I had completely had it by 3). Now, I don't like what happened to Star Wars any more than most guys my age, but I do have my laserdisc copies of the Original and Untouched trilogy and a lot of great memories. In honor of those, I've held on to a few original figs, plus a POTF collection of Original Trilogy characters plus a Millenium Falcon and my AT-AT, who's name is Rusty.

Everything else went through a series of yard sales, kijiji adds and a few weeks renting a table at a local flea-market which actually turned out to be a lot of fun. Its a good way to get rid of stuff quickly, but you are able to sell stuff at a higher price than people want to pay at yard sales and you sell to a much a broader group of people.

I liked selling to the kids the best. They have some genuine affection for the Prequals and we always gave them a break in the price. The best moments were with a young autistic girl about the age of twelve, who liked to come by our table and tell me all about the adventures she had with her toys. She also had a weird and awesome thing for Jabba the Hutt (unfortunately we'd sold the couple of Jabbas we'd had, but we did get her an Oola and a few other Jabba's palace figs) which lead to her suddenly spouting off these words of wisdom that Ipersonally will never forget, "What would Jabba do in this situation?"

Several months later, we were down to Anakin and Sebulba's podracers, which went as a set to a buyer off Kijiji and a probe droid which I was thinking about keeping until I got a fair price, until all that was left was a set of three Vulture Droids on a stand (very swooshable), and a battle droid on STAP still in box. We also had some Farscape figs still mint-on-card and a few other things ready to go, so last night we decieded to hauled it down to Ye Olde Comic Book Shoppe to see what we could get for the lot.

Store credit being worth more, we traded it all in for a 25th Anniversary Optimus Prime and oh fantabulous day, a Ray Stanz and Winston Zeddemore to complete our Ghostbusters set! While the wife carefully freed Optimus from his box (she's the Transformers nut), I pulled the Ecto-1 out of its box, dusted everybody off and posed them for a reunion photo. These guys are going in the display case, baby!

The Fez of the Pharoh, Part 1

After the usual technical difficulties and scheduling mix ups, we got everyone skyped in and ready to begin our very first Ghostbusters International Game, tentatively called,

"We are on the threshold of establishing the indispensable defense science of the next decade: professional paranormal investigations and eliminations. The franchise rights alone will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams." Dr. Peter Venkman
The year is 1985. Crippled and cash-strapped by lawsuits and insurance claims, the Ghostbusters have placed an ad in the back of Rolling Stone magazine looking for potential investors interested in opening Ghostbusters International (GBI) franchises. One particularly depressing New Year's party in Ottawa Canada, in a small apartment with a haunted carpet, a group of friends decide to respond.

It was suppose to be a joke…

The night began with character creation and signing the mountain of paperwork supplied on behalf of the GBI by Louis Tully CPA. On hand were:

-Dr. Dirk Mantooth Paranormal investigator
-Dr. Elias Spectre / Astrophysicist and ladies man
-Amanda Jones / Archeology student and owner of the possessed carpet
-Hammer Jones / Her well meaning, if somewhat dim witted brother
-Melly Winston /Paramedic and resident skeptic

After the drive to New York city in their white, GMC van (soon to be named Ecto-A), they receive some preliminary training, sign a lot of releases and insurance forms and are about to head back to Ottawa when one night when the other Ghostbusters are out, there is a phonecall from a reporter by the name of Elaine Jackson, asking for the Ghostbusters' help. If they are the only ones around, they will have to do.

The next evening, the team heads out in plainclothes to the reporter's hotel room only to find it locked and no one answering. After first ascertaining that the hallway carpet is not haunted, the team breaks into an adjacent room. In the alley below, they see a K-Car with two black men and one white, speeding away. The window to the reporter's room is wide open and easily accessible by the fire escape. Mantooth climbs across to the open window while Spectre and Hammer go down to the alley and Amanda and Melly keep watch.

In the alley, Spectre discovered a crushed, black fez next to a garbage can. In the room above, Mantooth is sickened by the scene of horror that greets him. A woman, presumed to be Ms. Jackson, has been brutally mutilated. Her entrails have been pulled out and blood covered the walls. The look of horror on her face suggests she was alive and awake when it occurred. Calling for Melly, the seasoned paramedic discovers a rune carved into her forehead. PKE readings are faint, but definitely present.

After a cursory investigation the police seem uninterested, stating that they had a dozen or so of these murders over the past few years and that, suspecting cult activity, they had turned the matter over to a professor at NYU. They also let the team take a folder of newspaper clipping written containing articles by Ms. Jackson since they are from a tabloid called 'Lurid Tales' and could not possibly contain anything important.

Returning to the firehall, the team pours over their clues. Ms.Jackson had extensively covered, 'The Carter Expedition', a mysterious trip organized by rich, gadabout Richard Carter to deepest, darkest Africa. No one really knows why they went, or what they were looking for, but the story got interesting with the entire expedition, containing six wealthy British and American explorers and scholars, disappeared. Bodies were soon discovered in the jungles of Kenya and shortly thereafter, some local bandits were hanged. To most that seemed the end of it, but Ms. Kennedy's hand scrawled notes in the margins seemed to indicate that it was not the whole story.

Further research discovered a link between the black fez and the symbol carved onto Ms. Kennedy's forehead. Both linked to something called, 'The Bloody Tongue', a gruesome death cult that originated in Africa.

The next day, they went to the university where they spoke to Professor Mel Lemmings, a specialist on tribal cults. She confirmed the Team's findings and said that she suspected the cult has been operating in the city for a number of years now. She also said that she believed that the cult was much more widespread than most, existing in different forms in China, Africa and Australia, though as yet she had no concrete proof. Then she pointed them to a store in Harlem called, 'The JuJu Boutique', which she tough was the headquarters of the Bloody Tongue in NYC.

Returning to the firehouse to suit up and grab their proton packs, the team headed out to Harlem where they found a narrow alleyway that opened up into a filth covered courtyard. The only doorway leads into the JuJu Boutique.

Hammer notices what he first assumes to be a homeless person pulls himself out of a pile of refuse. The hobo shuffles towards Melly and grabs her by the shirt. At this point, more hobos emerge and the team quickly realizes that they weren't homeless, but the walking dead.

The battle was my first experience running the rules-lite d6 version and I had to improve pretty quickly, but it turned out to be a fun and gruesome affair with lots of missed shots hitting piles of rotting garbage, and the zombies exploding in a rain of guts and goo when had taken enough proton hits. Hammer actually engaged one in fisticuffs and knocked its head clear off, which continued to bite at his ankles until he booted it into a nearby dumpster.

Their first official battle as Ghostbusters ending in gorey victory, they girdled their loins and walked towards the door to the JuJu Boutique… but not before scooping up the zombie head from the dumpster

They are gonna call him Harry the Head.
Careful readers may have noticed what adventure I'm running here. If you slightly lower the seriousness of a Chuthulu Adventure and slightly raise the seriousness of a Ghostbusters adventure, (which isn't hard in either case) they meet pretty easily. I find the GBI game as written plays more like the cartoons anyway and it was always my intention to aim for the slightly grittier feel of the first movie.

Getting the Band Back Together

So after weeks of back and forth emails, we are finally planning on doing a skype'd RPG session at the end of the month. Once we decided to play, it was up to me to decide whatWHAT we wanted to play.

Playing one of our old campaigns from the glory days seemed, sacrilegious somehow. The only one that holds much interest anyway is our old d6 Star Wars campaign and we've long since taken the characters from New Hope through Return of the Jedi and are now venturing into the murky realms of the expanded universe. Personally, I prefer to stick to the old Marvel Comics timeline, but that is another topic for another time.

I've been collecting and collecting a lot of games lately (older games, old school revivals and new systems). There are a few that stood out, so I gave few suggestions to my players and the hands down winner for what they wanted to play was the game I picked up at a garage sale a few years ago and became THE reason for my renewed interest in roleplaying.

I am honestly surprised that this did not become a bigger hit. Reading through it, then watching the movies and as many of the old cartoons as I could find, plus playing through the recent video game, it would seem to me that this is a perfect set up for a game; a group of misfits teamed up to combat a supernatural threat. Not to mention all the gadgets and monsters!

Which sparked an idea off another game I have taken to collecting, but never really expected to be able to play. What other game has a group of misfits investigating paranormal activites...?

This is going to be awesome…