Da Dominion: Home of DOMINIONCAST!

While not a true web comic the Zero Punctuation review series is on the web - features crude animation and makes fun of a specific niche: it’s own audience - More specifically those that may enjoy the game critic Yahtzee Croshaw is grilling that particular week - As an aside anyone with a name combination that unfortunate - if it is not a pseudonym - may deserve to express the deep bitterness he does towards game designers whom have the minimal human trait of being named like people - though one could show this to an indicator of their much chastized lack of creativity - His publishers also seem to make a point of mentioning his Brit-living-in-Australia nationality as though this makes him some awesome hybrid of Shakespeare and Yahoo Serious as opposed to validating his angst with games given the big price mark up Aussies must pay - which he mentions every 3 minutes - or to invoke a form of international street cred for living in a country that’s mostly desert - full of venomous species - and is tough enough to eat onion/squash paste as a condiment.  

Publically-educated urban-stigmatized African-American blogger Digga continues.

Some of you may be wondering “Digg, you charismatic Caribbean adonis of alliterative comical keystrokes, is it right for you to critique a competitor” - One, his reviews entertain gamers which puts him in our jurisdiction and Two we’re competitors the way GameSpot competes with Tyrone - the guy that lives in the apartment down the hall and sells bootlegged games - you can drop by whenever an shoot the shit or fire up some Soul Calibur III but don’t expect us to have a big selection - until we too sell out to a dot com that’ll buy us games (smiling while typing, no jealousy at all)- Plus Yahoo - err - Yahtzee has done something similar:

Despite any intrinsic hateration - or conflict of interest for the suburban -  I enjoy this series a good deal - The choppy simplistic animation matches the stream of consciousness writing style well and invokes a conversational feel - though without the periodic “Huh? What does that mean?” interjections we English speakers must inquire from those speaking the Britstralian tongue - the animation helps with this: so “twat over the head” paired with a figure slapping another upside the head communicates the slang’s meaning - pussying comprehension in the viewer’s mind - The humor is of a moderately cynical bent instead of the bold all caps rage-athon of other online critics that do little but shit on an entire subject and whom restrain any compliments to how hard or easy it is to deride - or pseudo-authoritative fanboys that follow the masses in lock step or those that give an honest opinion based on their tastes but dont acknowledge those preferences - therefore providing no insight unless you’ve read every single review they published.

Most of his insights are spot on - “on the money” in English - and I agree that most games are either clones of the most profitable if not fun or creative paragons or suck ass in their attempts to innovate - which is the highest compliment you can give anyone on a subjective opinion of something - unless you’re in da Dominion where a consensus of such opinion magically creates objective Truth (wank wank) But on Wednesdays, at theescapistmagazine.com, you can treat yourself to 4 minutes of comedic critique not of our making - though you are supporting the outsourcing of laffs. 

A discussion of the old boob tube composes this episode. What we look forward to returning and other favorites. Of course, there are some that should have had their series finale a while ago; they are named as well. Our personality panel this week includes Hunin, Rib, and Angie (though she shares half my grandparents, doesn’t inherit the same tastes). Still trying to sculpt our sound, we’ve experimented with some new music and hope you groove while you enjoy.

Speak Citizens! What would you have us discuss next time? dominus@dadominion dot com

Dominion Cast 6 download (50.3 MB, 55mins.)

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-e823a0e05e56c06e2a69bdf3954f05f6}

Intro - Music by Tha Silent Partner
Returning Favorites and Rib’s Ead-fatuation. :51
On the Queue 5:06
Reality’s Dynasties 7:47
Mrs. Hunin’s Love Lust and Life … besides Hunin
House O’ Hookers 10:44
Clan of the Kitchen 14:45
Digg’s Top Shelf Chef
Home Box Office Brings It 17:37
Omari homage - Theatre of the Mind Interlude 20:54
Anatomically Desperate 22:28
Rocky or Oh
The Meme 31:21
Not Overton, but Scooter (Cress Williams)
The Abrams Device: Lost looses Digg (then he looses IT!) 35:43
Bow to the Power of Bauer 42:48
Animated Tangent 48:26
Code Monkeys
Outro 53:55

Our first book review is on When will Jesus bring the Pork Chops? This article’s title supplies the answer to this esoteric question; one of the many thoughts George Carlin had and recorded for posterity in this volume using himself as narrator. As he’s made a living doing live perfomances, his voice is perfectly matched with the writing, but would be a magnitutde funnier if read by Abigail Breslin.

Years back, my father explained to me that old people were venomous sacks of bitchy because it was a natural psychological disconnect from life in preparation for eminent death. The preceding sentence encapsulates the theme of this book. If you … FUCKING … ADORE … Carlin’s “comedy” get this book, which can be found at your local Borders under scathing social commentary interspersed with obscenely bizarre ideas - but will likely be misplaced in the comedy section. However, this is dark - like a well diggers taint - observational comedy and commentary.

Reading a chapter at a time, once per day, will make you chuckle in fascination at what you just read. Four chapters a day will depress you into laconic distance from your loved ones. Reading the whole thing through will make you withdraw your life savings, fly to Vegas, commission three prostitutes for an indeterminate time, and four-way them on a McDonald’s play-scape while taking a shot of heroine for every fake moan of delight or terrified scream of a child until you die.

I’m listening to it right now and struggling not to choke myself with the mouse cord, as you can tell from the article thus far. Carlin is making a point on how dumb Americans are based on that fact that one is killed by a train every 90 mins. Trains, being on tracks, can’t come get you. They’re huge. They’re heralded by literal bells and whistles. Tracks are often on hard to scale raised embankments. Wooden planks lower to block your passage in front of them. This is one of the funny parts that aren’t focused on preachy cynicism - like the chapter Sex Facts from Thailand, which are admittedly dated because everyone there is occupied getting undressed.

The work’s title should be part of a series named for his older work Brain Droppings because that’s what fills these pages. Only some chapters are tied to an underlying theme and many are collections of anecdotes, sketches and comically weird questions: like why do they have people sign the Star Spangled Banner for the deaf? Don’t they know the words already? Wouldn’t you break an arm trying to capture the vocal gymnastics black singers put into it.

It has helped me though. Carlin focuses a great deal on the use of language in our culture, specifically euphemisms and how they dull meaning to the point of antiseptic incoherency. For example, PTSD is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which has evolved from the World War I term Shell Shock, a descriptor that actually triggers empathy as opposed to the clinical jargon but discourages youth from going to war sadly. If we are to worship Truth in da Dominion, this lesson is to be observed. Nonsense is prevalent in our contemporary speech: “caregiver” and “caretaker” are synonyms, where they should be opposites, right?

In this book, a favorite in my catalog, in one chapter, was where old George, clever as a fox, gave the skinny on how we shoot the shit with prepositional phrases around the clock, and wouldn’t you know it, he did so using these phrases, the old son of a bitch. I’m still a relatively new writer … I need to lie down after that. I think I’ll be turning to more … less honest comedy for the next book, but this one is ironically refreshingly straight.

I don’t read comic books, because they’re books - and include patronizing pictures. I can imagine an emotionally hollow billionaire that crusades at night; I know what a cowl is! Plus, a month in between 40 page episodes left me wanting as a preteen - whether Rick and Minmei would get saved while marooned in the SDF-1 left the comic I awaited quickly forgotten. Did the New Mutants ever escape Genosha?

I do read several web comics though, and this is the first of a new category of review. We start with my all time favorite The Order of the Stick, by veteran player/GM Rich Burlew. An atypical mid-level adventuring party living in a world run by 3.5 D&D rules and suffering through the harsh fate of an uncaring DM/author yet full of humor and even drama. Without the interference of pesky players, this is the campaign you wish you gamed in.

The most striking signature is the art: stick figures. Spherical heads atop box torso’s colored for clothing and two-dimensional arms with W-shaped three fingered hands. Sign of a piss poor artist, no. Is it a talented but lazy artist, yes. I’ve seen better art by far but this always pits the creator’s time versus real life demands. Burlew was doing a strip a day for a good stretch, and not those cheap ass three panel crumbs. Nine to twelve panels with double-sized strips for important plot points, those are Old Country Buffet servings. Also, if you don’t like the art, he’s up to strip 587 as of this typing - read from 1 to 20 and you’ll be sold, or you‘re hollow inside.

The story is that good. Starting off with a reference to the universal adjust many games underwent with the advent of Revised Third Edition rules, the dungeon around them took shape, there mission became clear, the main villain revealed, the righteous fall and a greater doom that threatens the world - you know adventuring stuff. A big source of humor is the way they dip out through the fourth wall. Jokes are made about rule mechanics and loopholes that any player would recognize, including common RPG tropes. Familiars tend to pop into existence once they are needed. A dinger goes off when they level. A bad guy uses spiked chain cheese, right off a cliff. All the table humor with none of the B.O.

The characters, the meat of any good story, are stereotypes given depth with time. Evilly arrogant Lich, Kobold oracle, Lawful uptight paladins are all present with unique touches added to the familiar, and given enough development to really engage the reader over time. You don’t have that much down time available? Your life sucks. Do a couple of strips per day and you’ll start to re-invest in your priorities; with the internet kids mostly raise themselves nowadays.

I’d write more but you really have to read it to believe how good it is. Here’s a sample, click to see full sample:

Since the beginning of role playing games experience points (XP) have been gathered as a reward for killing all manner of ridiculously imagined (and poorly rendered) monstrosity in order to advance the player character (PC) into a new level of awesome, or out of the state of suckitude little by little. They get more powerful in skills, abilities, spells, wealth and even their foes become proportionally more badass as a matter of course. These new horrors are worthy challengers whose freshly spilt blood/ichor earn you larger chunks of XP, since your next level requires even more points to advance to.

To the non-gamer this appears a masturbatory circle of slaying, like a symbiant circle but messier - although Force powers may be involved. We hardcore gamers merely call it “tradition”, and return to the non-judgmental depths of the basement to indulge in our shameful hobby.

Many games, especially those of the heroic fantasy genre that are over thirty-years old and the flagship of the industry, involve players stampeding through levels of advancement until eventually Zeus has to come down from Mount Olympus to defend his title - like a WWE plot line. In divine consolation, when your wife is an omnipotent bitch, being slain by mortals becomes attractive.

For the tactical battle game Dungeons & Dragons was at it’s origins, and by many still is, this is fine. Although, I myself dont see much point to playing in these endless Pokemonesque battles where the monsters just keeping bigger and more evil until you’r fighting a half-demon Tarrasque with 30th level dark priest spells that doesn’t pay child support, fornicates during hellfire herpes outbreaks and offers subprime loans to zero level commoners, then forecloses on their veeeery SOOOOOOOULS! When you start fighting them by the squad, the impression fades.

For the thematically and narratively sophisticated storyteller, this presents a bit of a problem. As we discussed in Cast 4, higher level games are harder to run, requiring lots more prep time and balancing to deliver the challenge desired. Another issue is versimulatude. In the fiction that inspires the stories we tell, you rarely see characters becoming a whole grade better at their skills in a short time. Jack Bauer isn’t a whole lot more powerful than he was in season one - we just have more evidence of his awesome levels (definately above … 18,000!). After 6 seasons you won’t see Jack riding atop a missle’s nuclear warhead in mid-flight to disarm it, and if we ever do he might as well wave below to the shark he’s jumping - or torture it to death for affiliations with terrorist chum dealers, “They’re gonna need a bigger fish.”

The solution: toss out the advancement rules. Your new school indie games like Spirit of the Century and The Burning Wheel introduce this concept or champion more dramatically appropriate leveling. If you’ve spent the last plot arch casting spells your magic skill increases, not your dagger wielding prowess, which is mostly used to cut lunch or the throats of your “prisoners” or female NPCs whom want to be “just friends”. But these games are point-buy systems, allowing customized advancement, where as class/level systems are blanket improvement affairs. You don’t want to run/play those point buy systems. You will NOT, damn it! FUCK those hippy games owned by their own creators and innovating what ain’t … stagnant!

Slow down the pacing then. The more dangerous a challenge, the more the XP, so fill the game with intersting non-combat scenes. 4th Ed’s skill challenges, once you adjust the math to your liking, provide an excellant way lower XP hauls and with generous and creative narration can be as entertaining as combat. Hardcore tactical gamers scoff at this. They enjoy their ruler prescribed measured movement and leave the storytelling to the dice, the type to count each shot in action flicks to make sure realistic clip sizes are obeyed. My local group was apparently steeped in this style, but last session they mostly planned and role played for over 4 hours and had one combat that lasted a mere 15 minutes (and didnt even directly involve their PCs), yet had so much fun they didn’t even press about the XP award: 400 XP each for the session.

Should I even tell them this is their award, if the game was reward enough? Shouldn’t they be reading this blog? Am I that kind of dick DM …?