Halbarad the Just

(Yet another miniature-inspired tale as I lack the wherewithal to comment meaningfully on current events! And no, this isn't one of my characters either.)

The tall, lean man awoke with a start but without a sound. Sitting in the pre-dawn twilight, Halbarad steadied his breathing and listened intently for a moment, then chided himself and clambered up from his sleeping mat. 

The air this close to the jungle was humid and lacked the offshore breeze of his homeland that made the air a bit more agreeable and far less sticky. He thought briefly about a trip to the well so he could buy a bucket of water and rinse himself off, but since he would need to dress in order to visit the agora anyways, he decided against it. 

Not agora, he reminded himself again, the market. Sighing, he grabbed his scarlet tunic from the foot of his mat, used the back of it to wipe some of the night's sweat from his face and neck, then pulled it on over his head.

Looking around in the slowly brightening gloom Halbarad found his cuirass, turned the breastplate to face him and kissed the image of Pallas Athena embossed on the left side. Reversing it again, he thrust his head into the gap between the front and back pieces, adjusted the shoulder pauldrons and cinched up the two leather straps on the side. 

I am leaner now, he thought to himself. I may need to punch a new hole in these straps. It simply would not do to have his breastplate shift or pinch in the middle of combat, or even rattle on the march. He resolvcd to go to the docks if there was time and see if he could beg use of an awl.

He turned and caught a gleam or bronze in the corner, revealing where he had left his greaves the night before, and after fastening his well-worn sandals, buckled them onto his calves and flexed his knees to check the fit. All the marching has at least maintained the muscle on my legs.

Gathering up his gauntlets, he paused again to admire the owls that graced the protective plates on the back, with their immense and impassive eyes and intimidating talons. Wisdom and strength, he thought. Goddess grant me both this day, and every day.

Before gathering up his shield, he hefted his warspear, shifting his grip, thrusting it with a grunt into the air at an imaginary foe's abdomen, their unguarded shins, now overhand at the neck exposed by a tired arm hoisting a now-leaden shield. The replacement haft he had made with locally procured hardwood was holding up well, thanks in part to the metal shank he had added to the remainder of the original.

By all rights he should have replaced all the wood and kept only the broad-bladed spearhead itself, but he had not seen a single oak tree since coming to this blighted peninsula a month ago, and knowing that sentimentality was a weakness had not overcome his desire to hang on to that small piece of his homeland.

Again he caught himself listening for a sound that would not come. Your uncle's olive orchard is a long way from here, Halbarad Agonistes, and you will not hear their narrow leaves rustling in the breeze for a long while yet.

With another sigh, he dropped his crested helmet onto his head, turned his neck all the way to the left and then all the way to the right, rolled his shoulders, twisted his hips, and at last picked up his enormous hoplon with Athena's avatar owl painted on it, and made his way out the door.

But not before reminding himself that here it was a shield, not a hoplon.

The Last of Us - A Return to Appointment Television

Full disclosure - The Last of Us is my all-time favourite video game at this point, eclipsing Metal Gear Solid, Red Dead Redemption and a host of others I have whiled so many hours away on. It is far grimmer that my usual, more heroic fair, but the brilliant way it depicts two damaged survivors building a relationship in an incredibly hostile word made the survival horror aspects of the gameplay that much more poignant.

So compelling was the story, in fact, that not only did both girls ask me for updates at the supper table about my recent exploits and travails, but Glory asked me to replay the original game in its entirety while she was present. Playing the game had no appeal to her, but her need to experience the story was simply that compelling.

Needless to say, we were both excited to hear the announcement that HBO was adapting TLOU for television (I guess we still call it that!), and our anticipation grew as they announced the involvement of the game's co-director Neil Druckmann, then a stellar cast including Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey and Anna Torv, and then that much of it was to be filmed in Alberta, including a bunch of tonight's second episode right here in Edmonton.

Glory and I watched the first episode the same night it aired, despite getting to it later in the evening than usual. Two days later we convinced Fenya and Audrey to watch it with us. Tonight, after a Chinese take-out feast for Lunar New Year, the four of us and Bobby watched the second episode about 20 minutes after it was available (7 pm MST); this was after Fenya and I watched the first episode with Bobby - him for the first time, Fenya for the second, and me for the third.

The Last of Us is not just a really solid adaptation of a good story from another medium; two episodes in, it it legitimately great television. Unbelievable worldbuilding, great characters with solid motivations, and superb dialogue. Every divergence from the source material makes sense, and I greatly appreciate the opportunities they are taking to fill in the gaps that even playing the game multiple times has left me with.

For example, many of the decayed cityscapes show shattered skyscrapers leaning against each other - sure, 20-years of a fungal zombie apocalypse is going to leave your infrastructure a little worse for wear, but I feel like metal fatigue would take much longer before enormous office towers started coming down like dominoes. Sure enough, tonight Ellie (Bella Ramsey) the 14 year-old being escorted through a city of infected by desperate smugglers Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Tess (Anna Torv), runs up to the lip of a large hole in a city street and says, "Whoa, this must be from one of the bombs, huh?"

And that's how we learned that nations turned powerful weapons on their won cities in order to slow down - not stop - an enemy crippling them from within.

Don't let the zombie analogy put you off - TLOU has crafted a tremendously and terrifyingly credible endgame scenario which, while fanciful, is just the backdrop for a story which starts out as dystopian as it gets, but eventually has no choice but to mutate into something akin to hope. And while there are humans in this world every bit as horrifying as the awfully deformed 'clickers,' I don't believe it even approaches the level of cynicism displayed in shows like The Walking Dead.

If you have no appetite for tension though, let this one pass by - all five of us had our stomachs tied in knots tonight watching the protagonists trying to quietly sneak around a blind clicker, and that includes two of us already intimately familiar with the story from the game!

Best of all though was watching as part of a group, hearing the collective gasps and "oh noooo"s coming from the other parts of the room. an experience shared is an experience remembered, so I hope we are able to do this for most if not all of the remaining eight episodes.

When I was 14 or 15, I remember Mum and I did not have the easiest time communicating - probably not a tale too unfamiliar to many of us on either or even both sides of adolescent interactions. But I was always grateful for Thursday nights, when she and I would sit down and watch Simon & Simon, Magnum P.I. and Hill Street Blues in succession. We might watch other shows together on an ad hoc basis, but there was a standing date almost every Thursday night, often with popcorn, to watch those three shows in particular. 

We would talk about what we saw, and things it reminded us of in our own lives or other shows we had seen, and speculate about why people, fictional and actual, do the things they do and the ways they do them. It was good (and in the case of Hill Street Blues, great) television, but an even better chance to connect over common ground.

A coworker talked about bingeing The Last of Us when it completed (and he could be assured of the quality not dropping off mid-way!) but I counselled against it. Why would you expose yourself to spoilers or deny yourself the agonizing joy of anticipation? Half the fun of shows like this is speculating what comes next - something even game players cannot be certain of - and rehashing favourite or striking bits from the last installment.

We are only 20% through The Last of Us, but the show is easily as well-executed and the video game it is drawn from, and I look forward to another couple months of Sunday nights of having my nerves jangled, heart broken and being grateful for the relative safety of the world I live in...

...as well as not having to watch by myself.

Music & Menace at the Red Roc Inn

(A big batch of miniatures for D&D that I Kickstarted back in 2020 finally showed up this week, making me very happy. It is a great assortment of common monsters and a nice variety of player character models too. One of them I had only known by a piece of artwork prior to opening the box, but I remember looking at it and thinking, man, I hope the sculpt carries some of the attitude from that drawing - that is a pose that kind of tells a story to me...)

Beliza swung the heavy wooden mallet with a grunt. A short, sharp spray made her flinch a little, and a quick twist of the tap assured her that it was properly seated. She reached her hand back behind and felt the handle of a sturdy wooden mug pressed into her hand. 

Twisting the tap again, she watched the golden stream of rich, brown ale flow into the mug, but scowled as she saw the foam was rising too quickly. 

"Who's this one for now?" she asked over her shoulder as she flung the mug's contents into the slop barrel beneath the bar.

"The tall musician," her server Amna replied. "Says he needs to recover his voice."

The innkeeper snorted. "I've 'eard him sing - 'e'll need more than ale." Beliza finished filling the mug and handed it to the younger woman, then reached up to scratch an itch under her eyepatch. "If 'e 'ad any sense, he'd give it to that lass 'e's chattin' up so she doesn't notice how homely he is."

Amna laughed as she turned to look at the tall stranger who had asked if he could sing for his supper. "Oh, I dunno," she mused, "He's got an odd sort of charm, don't you think?"

Beliza wiped her hands on her greasy apron and looked across the crowded tavern floor. "One of 'is parents is definitely an orc so 'is complexion's nothing to write home about, but 'e keeps 'is 'air tidy and 'as no scars-" and she turned and gave Amna a wink with her one good eye- "none I can see, anyways."

The server mockingly covered her mouth in a scandalized fashion, but Beliza noticed she blushed a little at the same time. "And 'e's tall, I'll grant you that, and the sooner you get 'im that beer the sooner 'e can get back to singin'..."

Amna nodded and took the beer over to the tall stranger in the long coat, his instrument now slung over his shoulder so he could use both hands to talk expansively with a woman wearing a dress and jewelry that really had no business in a place like the Red Roc.

A slummer, Amna thought to herself dismissively. She gently slid her free hand down the minstrel's left arm to get his attention and as he turned, pressed the mug into his other hand and leaned into him as she purred, "your drink, sir."

The stranger's rough features softened significantly when he smiled, but there was no concealing the tusks that stuck out nearly an inch over his upper lip when he did so. "Thank you my dear," he said warmly, "But I am no knight - just one who appreciates their tales of bravery and shares their devotion to beauty."

Amna felt her cheeks reddening and her mind raced through a catalogue of practiced responses, as the half-orc raised the mug to his lips. But before she could formulate the perfect response and before the entertainer could even take a sip, she heard a rough voice from behind her bark in obnoxious laughter.

"You have got to be joking," the voice growled. Sensing trouble, the nearest patrons took a couple of steps back, revealing a grizzled dwarf in a studded leather jerkin, with axe handles protruding over his shoulders, standing with his hands on his hips. The stranger looked at the dwarf and took a sip of his beer while maintaining eye contact with the belligerent.

"I mean, I thought it was a great trick and all, a hork pretending he could sing and such," the dwarf crowed, prompting a nervous tittering from some of those who had paused their own conversations to see what came of this tense interaction. "And my guess is that's an enchanted mandolin since those green meathooks comin' out of your sleeves couldn't possibly pluck those wee strings."

The half-orc gestured with his mug at the dwarf and said, "I am going to have to insist that you stand up when addressing me." A series of gasps and a choked chuckle could be heard as the dwarf's face reddened. "And I would prefer it if you found a less offensive term to describe my heritage."

"Heritage? Heritage?" the dwarf sputtered. "That's rich! Did your parents even know each other? Or did you just wake up on a rock next to some afterbirth?"

The stranger's nostril's flared and his lip started to curl in an involuntary snarl, but Amna saw him somehow transform it into a derisive sneer. "I knew my parent's pretty well, honestly." A malisious grin, then, "I mean, not as intimately as I knew yours, but..."

This drew hoots and laughter from the crowd as the dwarf's eyes widened in shock and anger. "That tears it!" he shouted, ripping the twin axes from his back and dropping into a fighting stance. "When I saw you talkin' up my boss's wife, I was going to embarrass you a bit before giving you a beatin'. But now you've smart-mouthed yourself straight into the choppery, hork!"

The sneer disappeared from the stranger's face, replaced by a cold, fatalistic expression that the dwarf was surprised to see had no trace of fear in it. The half-orc's right hand reached across his waist and slowly drew a long, sharp falchion from its well-oiled scabbard, and with the tip of the blade dipping languidly before him, he took a purposeful stride toward the dwarf, the mug of beer still clutched in his other hand. 

Somehow Amna, found her voice, and asked, "Did - would you like me to hold your drink for you?"

With no change in his expression, the minstrel shook his head and took a swig of ale before stepping still closer towards the now uncertain dwarf. "No need," he said tersely, "This won't take long."

GreeD&D and the Bottomest Line

Roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons have been a part of my life, on and off, since I was about 12. Like most players, I have played with multiple versions of the rules as well as completely different rulesets for different games in different settings, like Top Secret, Spirit of 77 and most recently, Call of Cthulhu.

The financial status of the multiple owners of the fabled D&D trademark has likewise waxed and waned over the nearly five decades it has been around. It was an initial success and flagship for a tiny company called TSR, who eventually sold everything to Wizards of the Coast after nearly bankrupting themselves in the late '90s. Two years later, in 1999, WOTC itself was bought by major toy and game company Hasbro. 

In 2008, Hasbro-owned WOTC released its 4th edition of the D&D rules, which, although it was a real departure in many ways from previous editions and rankled many fans, did give the game quite a bit of exposure to new audiences. Wizards did extensive playtesting for its follow-up 5th edition, published in 2014.

5E is a robust ruleset to be sure, and quite a bit of fun to play, and as a result of this and the added exposure of popular live-play shows like Critical Role (and its animated spin-off Legend of Vox Machina) on YouTube and Twitch, D&D has never been more popular. Playtesting has only recently begun for the 6th edition anticipated in 2024 (to coincide with D&D's 50th anniversary).

Even prior to the pandemic, the business side was looking solid; D&D was showing growth for its seventh consecutive year, while sister-product Magic the Gathering grew almost 30%. During the pandemic, online play of D&D increased by an estimated 86% - surely the sign of a healthy brand.

And yet, this level of sustainability and growth is not enough for some people.

New Wizards & Digital CEO (the Hasbro division that controls D&D) Cynthia Williams recently described D&D as severely "under-monetized" and lacking in the kind of  "recurrent spending" seen in video games.

And I suppose she's right; even the person running the game (called a Dungeon Master or DM) only needs 2-3 books and a set of dice to play for hours and hours if they want to make up their own adventures, and a published campaign like Tyranny of Dragons costs $50-$70 and kept eight of us online playing pretty regularly for two years.

It is a bit surprising to see a games company like Hasbro bemoaning slow growth and monetization; after all, classic boardgames like Risk and Monopoly only require one person to buy a copy for less than $50 and 4-6 players can enjoy it forever!

And a lot of D&D's cultural cachet in recent years has come from their willingness to play nicely in the sandbox with the gaming community and smaller publishers making approved content for 5E using something called the Open Gaming License, or OGL. But now a leaked copy of a new "1.1 version" of the OGL gives far more rights (and for the first time, royalties) to WOTC, and many publishers have expressed reluctance to make D&D-compatible adventures and sourcebooks if it turns out to be accurate. Still others are threatening legal action, as the new arrangement could fundamentally threaten their very livelihoods and viability as businesses.

And while many players and DMs are suggesting they too might take their polyhedral dice and play elsewhere in order to support the smaller publishers, more of them are concerned about the possibility that D&D, a game that should only require paper, pencils and dice in order to play, could in the future require an account or subscription or some digital component in order to play. Hasbro recently purchased the website D&D Beyond, an online "toolset" which features character generators, game rules and information, as well as online play experiences similar to competitors like Roll20 and Fantasy Ground. Could those online games be put at risk or shut out of future releases as well?

It's entirely too early to say with any certainty where all these changes might lead, especially the OGL - it was a leak, so it is entirely possible that they can walk it back. But with more players than ever before, a level of awareness frankly unimaginable even a decade ago, the 50th anniversary of the game looming and a big-budget motion picture coming out this March, it is truly disheartening to hear a corporate executive complaining that their goose isn't laying bigger golden eggs more often.

In the end though, I take heart that, despite the fact that I sometimes play in three different D&D campaigns within a week, there is probably already more D&D content out there for 5e than I could reasonably complete in my lifetime, and that is before I even take into consideration the huge number of alternative systems and settings that might be fun to try. 

Still, though... you never forget your first, and I would be reluctant to explore underground labyrinths without the comforting lexicanery of things like"armor class" and "saving throw," so I hope that the people at Hasbro recognize how hard Dungeons & Dragons fought, creators and players alike, to get to this point, and how quickly it could all disappear if mishandled.

The Nerd's Niece's New Arrival

I used to love hosting my nieces and nephew when they would visit us from Rocky Mountain House years ago. Reconnecting with family is always good, and we enjoyed a lot of wintertime activities together - sledding, sleigh-riding, and a memorable Chines Lunar New Year in Chinatown on our way back from the Silver Skate festival one year. But my favourite thing was exposing them to bits of nerdy culture and other things they might encounter in their hometown.

A lot of boardgames got thrown their way when they were old enough, but a lot of geeky media too. Fenya and Glory were only too happy to screen the Lord of the Rings trilogy ad infinitum, but even before that I had made sure to screen as many episodes of the animated Justice League series as I could, eventually lending them the set so they could fill in all the gaps before visits. 

So I was tickled pink when I got to meet Jenna and her husband Dustin's new baby Charlotte on New Year's Eve. Well, not really that new, she will be 6 months old pretty quickly here, buit this was the first meeting for most of us.

I was even happier when they brought Charlotte over to sit on my lap the next day in a very special outfit that apparently triggered some memories in Jenna when she saw it:

Charlotte is a happy, healthy, beautiful girl, and I can't believe how well parenthood has settled on her parents. Jenna and her mother Betty had apparently been quite eager to see my reaction to her snuggly hooded (or perhaps better to say cowled) onesie, and I guess my delight was pretty palpable.

But even better was Jenna talking about her fond memories of watching Justice League with me and her cousins as a child. I was always happy to answer questions about the backgrounds of the characters or even the characters in the background and could of course do so at length ("Oh Blue Devil? Yeah, he's pretty cool..."). I remember taking her and Mark to see the first Avengers movie back in 2012 when they offhandedly mentioned not having seen it yet.

Superheros are not only fun, they are also a simple and colourful mythology that lets you explore morality and, well, justice in a safe and entertaining way. It's a big part of why I was so keen on watching those JL adventures with my own daughters.

I'm glad those times made an impression on Jenna, and I hope there are opportunities to do the same with Charlotte at some point too. 

And I am so grateful that my in-laws from the country not only tolerate my nerdity but celebrate it, like with these socks they gave me for Christmas:

Looking forward to being a nerdy great-uncle now too!