Avengers Age of Ultron Thoughts

For the first time in I can't remember how long I went out and saw a movie in theaters more than once. Avengers Age of Ultron is something that will become a classic. I loved pretty much every second of this movie. The acting, action, effects, and pretty much everything else were spot on.

As always Joss and crew pay attention to the minor details that make each of the characters human and full of life. Everyone has believable motivations and killer one liners. It is pure bliss as a fan of the comics who is willing to accept the translation required to move these stories with literal decades of history into the very different medium of film.

I will likely talk freely here and not be worried about spoilers so if you don't want spoilers don't read further... jerk.

One of my favorite parts of the movie is when the Hulkbuster armor comes out. It's dropped from orbit and is named Veronica (because this is the Hulk's girlfriend, since Bruce's is named Betty. Yes, they put an Archie joke in a Marvel movie). The Hulkbuster armor was everything we needed it to be, and it was such a wonderful action scene that kept the intensity up while developing the conflicts even more.

Spader was awesome as Ultron. He is the perfect Anti-Stark. His delivery of each and every line in the movie was perfect. I have zero complaints. Seriously. Perfect portrayal for this setting.

The tidbits setting up the upcoming storylines were wonderful. Each step towards the Infinity War and the Civil War made me a bit giddier with anticipation. Marvel has a good thing here and I don't think I ever expected to be excited by random characters I never cared about before having their own movies (my god, I am actually looking forward to an Ant-man movie. What. The. Hell?)

My only gripes with Age of Ultron are relatively minor, but they are things that bothered me. (Major spoilers coming, seriously.)

First off, the appearance of the Vision I wasn't really expecting. I guess I missed the trailers that had him added in and the appearance of the toys. That isn't the disappointing part. I was excited to see him show up. It was awesome. My only issue is that his appearance and existence just felt a little tacked on and flat. Paul Bettany did a great job and I am extremely happy with the portrayal in the setting, but he didn't feel well developed or explained. There was just something lacking from his appearance in the movie. It could be because of how crowded the movie had become at that point though.

I really like the portrayal of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. I love that they have been added to the series and were being done by two excellent actors who clearly had a ton of respect for the characters. I just found the death of Quicksilver at the end to be cheapened by him only having 7 lines in the movie. I wanted to be saddened by him getting Jossed, but I couldn't. There just wasn't enough time to get invested in his chracter. Someone needed to die in the movie, I get it. It totally needed to happen, but I just wasn't moved by it the way I probably should have been.

Captain America and Iron Man start arguing about their opposing views for the Civil War build-up in this. It's wonderful to see. I love it. I know that the Civil War movie is going to be great and I will be seeing that movie as soon as I can while being a mega fanboy during the build-up (I've already chosen a side, everyone who knows me should know that already). My only problem with this though comes from my personal politics starting to bleed into the entertainment I'm watching.

I really felt like the lines, acting, and directing going into the lines that Cap was supposed to be saying were a little too idealistic without much belief/oomph behind them. Captain America over and over again shows himself to be heavily libertarian leaning with his beliefs (we can argue about this later, just go with it). He is a believer in the founding principles of America and he believes in them wholeheartedly and without hesitation. In this movie though, the lines being written and read sound like what a politically Left-leaning Hollywood Progressive would think a libertarian or believer in the founding principles would say rather than what someone who truly believes in those principles would say and how they would say it.

I'm not saying it's awful drivel, it just feels off from what I would personally expect from those lines and characters.

My last gripe though is the big one. I'm pretty sure that in the last battle scene I saw Hawkeye smacking Ultron Sentries with his bow Legolas style. Who thought that was a good idea!?!

Other than those few things, it was seriously an awesome movie. I loved it and I can't wait to own it on every special edition blue-ray/dvd combo pack that they put out for it.

BAM-Con Panel Ideas

So some of you have heard about BAM-Con (Berkshire Anime and Manga Convention) that the wife and I have been a part of for the past two years. Some of the talks we've had about it are about expanding it beyond just the themes of Anime, Manga and Japanese culture. Mostly adding in more mainstream Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Geekculture themes.

Our convention is going to continue to be in early May. It's just a good time period to run one. It puts us between a couple of the big ones in the area and is early in the season so people aren't already burned out by other conventions. I can't talk about some of the things the organizers have been talking about yet, but the early May timing means that the convention happens around some important dates in Star Wars fandom. Which is of course one of my favorite subjects.

So I'm being told that I should be designing some type of Star Wars panel/panels for next year's convention. I'm not sure if I am going to do it, but before I figure out if I want to do it or not I need to figure out what types of panels I could do well at and what type of unique talk I could bring to the convention.

I'm not sure what I can do based upon my own interests and knowledge that can be turned into a half hour to an hour long panel though. I'm open to suggestions if anyone wants to post some ideas. I'll be trying to figure out some ideas myself. Hopefully I will find something that will stick.

Tony Stark, Master Articifer

So some buddies of mine have been doing a series of blog posts about translating the Avengers into Pathfinder characters. Nothing super specific, just the high concept and general path they’d take with the build. It’s a fun little exercise and pretty entertaining to read their counter points. (You can read those here.)

This week they did Ironman. I read both of their descriptions and disagreed heavily with both of them. That tends to happen when I see someone playing around with the high concepts of one of my favorite characters though. The first one made him into a power/steam armor Fighter, while the second made him into an Alchemist. The Alchemist build is closer to what I would consider to be a more accurate build, but it is still very far off from what I would consider to be Tony Stark. The Steam Armor Fighter build I’d think would be more accurate for Warmachine or one of Tony’s enemies, but not Stark himself.

That is what both of these are missing. The Alchemist build gets some of it right, but falls short of what you’d expect from Tony Stark. His strengths are not in his combat abilities, they are in his ingenuity, creativity, and intelligence. Take away his suit and he’ll just build a better one. He learned science while following in his father’s footsteps creating some of the most advanced technology in the Marvel Universe, and I mean he personally helped design and create this stuff. There is a very clear path to take here and that is a crafting Wizard.

Now as I go through this build you need to understand how I’m going about this. I am not trying to build an actual playable version of him, just trying to design him as he should be in keeping with his character themes, concepts and abilities. I am going to assume that he his funding is unlimited and I might downplay some aspects that are common characteristics of Superheroes because they don’t follow character creation rules.

So first we are going to start with his race and class. Obviously he’s Human, with Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma as his highest stats. His physical stats aren’t all that important because his crafted items will make up for them later. Very clearly he will be a Wizard, that’s the closest thing to an actual scientists that this setting has in it. He deals with insane theories, formulae and then crafts powerful items with that knowledge. Alchemist would work if they could craft to the extent that a Wizard could. I don’t see alchemist as his kind of thing because the bombs just don’t fit as well as the idea of him crafting wands of Scorching Ray.

Source

He would have an Amulet as his bonded object because that’s close enough to an Arc Reactor implanted in your chest. (The life saving aspects of all of this Arc Reactor stuff will need some tweaking since D20 style games don’t handle terminal illness in PCs very well. Lots of DM permissions here.) His feats would primarily consist of Craft related feats and the ability to use armor with lowered spell failure rates.

So for a full 20 levels of progression, the Wizard has 15 Feats, plus 2 more for Flaws, which he definitely should have. His list of feats must include Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Wand, Craft Construct, Forge Ring, Craft Rod, Arcane Armor Training, and Arcane Armor Mastery. The last two need to have the character to have some type of armor proficiency and so rather than having him waste two feats allowing him to get access to those feats he will take one level of Magus with the War Warder Archetype or one level of Fighter.
I put Create Construct in there for a very good reason. In the Ultimate Magic book there is a modification for any crafted Golem called Construct Armor. It basically turns your construct into a suit of power armor that only counts as a Breastplate for purposes of wearing it, which means that a guy who constructs Golem armor who also has feats reducing his penalties for casting while wearing armor is going to be able to fully utilize it in combat.

These items are the core of the character build. Without these you can’t have the Iron Man armor. Now the creation of the Construct Armor is a problem because of the way D20 systems run their construct creation systems, basically he either needs to be a high level Bard, Cleric, or be able to cast Wish in order to complete these constructs himself. With unlimited funding, as Tony Stark should have, obtaining the requisite ability to cast a 6th level Cleric/Bard spell (Animate Objects) shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s just annoying.
Anyways. After you work out how he’s building the armor you can move on to the easier stuff, creating magic items that mimic the abilities of the Iron Man Armor. Everything is just a handful of Spellcraft rolls away from this point on. Lasers/Repulsor blasts, flight, “sensors”? Easy to create magic items that do all of that. The only thing that will limit him at this point is funding.

Once you get the armor, the rest of this happens naturally

All of his remaining feats can be used to fill out your particular flavor of Iron Man as long as those key points are filled. Any failings that the Stark has can be overcome with his magic items (aka technology). Little bits and pieces can be altered as needed, maybe give him a specialty school, add some discoveries, different types of armor, etc. Hell you could even forgo the Construct crafting all together and just craft up different suits of armor.

My only problems with this build fall under the “little details” section. As usual, D20 class based systems don’t account for things that comic book superheroes are just able to do. It’s hard to simulate Tony Stark’s Craft Skills, Knowledge, Professional Knowledge and Charisma with such a low skilled character class.

Not sure what else I could really delve into on this particular entry. Anyone else got some thoughts on it?

Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and gaming

I recently finished watching the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and its attempt to launch a sequel trilogy based off of the book On Stranger Tides. The movie series has always struck me as an odd one for Disney to do because it was truly so much grittier than most of the things you’d expect to be put out by them. 

I’m glad they did, because it really brought fantasy piracy back into mainstream thought. Which depending on who you ask may or may not be a good thing. (Oh, by the way, since these movies are so “old” and popular, I’m not going to worry about putting in spoilers warnings. If you haven’t seen them and don’t want them spoiled, don’t read this post)

The movie series at least showed that a well done movie about pirates could be done and actually do well at the box office. It might be the exception to the rule though because of the unique niche the first movie filled when it came out.

The first movie is without a doubt the best one. We all know, and quite possibly love it. The movie was original, well paced, well acted, well directed, well scored, easily quoted, and was full of fun, adventure and excitement. The special effects were very well done at the time and helped immerse you in the world they had created. 

It was quite possibly a perfect example of how well any potential fantasy series could be done if given a large budget and a good casting department (side note: after reading the nightmares that took place behind the scenes on this movie via IMDB, it could have been quite easily an awful movie and a massive box office disaster).

The second movie isn’t as good as the first one, but it’s still a very enjoyable movie with good casting with an enjoyable and unique story. There are some parts that are just too silly that break the pacing and mood but they don’t ruin it. Keira Knightley’s character Elizabeth Swan is insufferable and annoying to me, too much of the clichéd Warrior Princess with modern values thing going on there, it’s one of my pet peeves so maybe it didn’t bother too many other people. 

Some of the action scenes go out of their way to be over-the-top affairs (Water wheel I’m looking at you) and somewhat detract from the mood, but despite all of this it left you wanting more at the end when it leaves off with the cliffhanger ending. This wasn’t a masterpiece movie by any means, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fun to watch. It served the purpose of entertaining me and was worth my time and money.

Did it bother anyone else that in the second and third movies the nameless crew members should have been wearing Star Trek: TOS style red shirts with how guaranteed they were to die?

The third movie is a different story though. Clocking in at 2 hours and 49 minutes long, you expect this movie to be an epic and potentially satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Unfortunately it wasn’t. Between random bits of goofiness (which reek of Disney suits getting involved in the process) and an apparent literal interpretation of fan cries for “more Jack Sparrow!!!” you get a movie that has a good story with tons of potential getting bogged down by a colossal amount of stupidity and unnecessary scenes. There is at least 30 minutes you can just throw away from this movie and not feel bad about it. (Actually I would love to see someone I know who is good at editing remove that footage so we can see what it could have been.) 

Remove all of the scenes of Jack talking with himself and various scenes of stupid and yu have yourself a movie at just over 2 hours in length that is actually something worth watching. Seriously, take away the scenes with multiple Jack Sparrows and the various other scenes that are just all kinds of stupid and you have a movie that could have been great. The concept and scripting outside of that half hour were solid and enjoyable. 

Think about the early part of the movie where they go to Davy Jones’ Locker to find Jack. You end up with a 10+ minute scene where nothing important or even interesting happens. You just get to see a bunch of Johnny Depp playing a crews worth of Jack Sparrows and playing around with a rock crab (which I will admit was a pretty neat visual effect). 

Following this scene you cut to the crew fresh from crashing down into the Locker showing up on the beach getting ready to track down Jack, who they have no idea where he is or what he’s doing. Suddenly he comes crashing over the sand dunes sailing on the sand using the rock crabs. It’s a very interesting scene, but totally expected and unsatisfying because of the 10 minutes we sat there watching nothing but Jack on screen. It ruined a scene with potential mystery and visual impact with a worthless scene that bored you out of your mind so by the time the scene rolls around you don’t even care anymore. 

Pretty much any scene where Jack is alone and talking to himself needed to be removed and hidden in a deep dark pit. There are better ways to go about what they were going for, and I’m convinced the director took “suggestions” from Disney suits literally just to be a defiant ass.

The fourth movie is interesting. From what I can gather, they took at least part of the script for the book On Stranger Tides and shoehorned a few PotC characters into it. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think I can understand why it was done (money and brand recognition), but it doesn’t quite feel right. I never read the book (I really should from what I hear, it’s supposed to be brilliant) but it just seems like Sparrow, Barbosa, and Mr. Gibbs weren’t part of the same world as everyone else. 

Like the events were happening around them regardless of what they did or how they were involved. Just like the third movie there was some great potential in this story and setting but it got wasted by silly/stupid/out of place scenes and characters. The casting and acting were well picked. The characters were believable. The setting was entertaining and interesting. The plot was interesting and enjoyable. There were just some terrible decisions made based upon forcing the PotC characters into it. (Still irritated by that coconuts scene…)

I like the action and setting of the series. It really was the inspiration for what I’ve designed my campaign setting around. I’ve always wanted to play an RPG where it’s high seas adventuring and swashbuckling in a relatively low magic environment. How many things are more appealing than that type of setting? 

Everyone who’s a gamer has always wanted on some level to do a swashbuckling adventure, if for no reason other than to just have an excuse to talk like a pirate.

And because I watched the trilogy again partially as a point of research for my setting, I was taking note of various things that struck me as game mechanics. For example, in the first movie the characters are approximately 6^th or 7^th level DnD characters by the time they start recruiting a crew for the interceptor. 

I say that range because Jack clearly has the Leadership feat with Mr. Gibbs as his cohort and the usual named subjects. Jack is a Rogue/Swashbuckler, Barbosa is a Swashbuckler/Legendary Captain with maybe another prestige class, and Will is a Fighter with a level or two of Swashbuckler. I would try to speculate Elizabeth’s classes out but I don’t want to because after the first movie her character just bothers me too much to want to think about it.

The trilogy has probably the best example set I’ve ever seen for how the Leadership feat can/is supposed to work. Jack is always trying to find followers and hirelings to crew his ship, but only his trusted cohort and higher level crew members survive everything. It’s plenty hard for him trying to recruit new people and it takes time to do so. The 1^st level extras that he recruits are pretty much useful only for taking hits and crewing the ship. It’s probably the best cinematic example of the feat in existence.

I really like the way combat is done in these movies too. There’s just something wonderful when you’re seeing ship to ship combat during the age of sail. Something indescribably satisfying about it. It’s something that I have had such a massive desire to participate in no matter the style of it. I’ve played quite a few styles of this type of combat. 

Everything ranging from the various video games (which there hasn’t been a good one that is truly satisfying in ages, best I’ve got right now are the Total War series) to the Pirates collectible miniatures game (Which I loved, it’s modeled after CCGs though so it got expensive fast and next to no one played it). I want to play an RPG in that world, but no one really made a setting or supplement that I was satisfied with. They were always too high magic for my taste, it really distracted from the themes of the age of sail.

[An aside: This excites me now: Assassins' Creed 3 Shipboard Gameplay I want a game entirely built around this!!! Seriously, please. I have money and organs, what will it take?]

I want the feel of the age of sail without the stupid magic system killing off the things I love about the time period. That’s why I’ve never been able to play in a DnD style setting like that. Have any of you read through the Stormwrack book? Any ship that has a crew of a dozen or more is going to have a ship’s mage. The mages can absolutely wreck anything they come across. 

DnD also has very poor rules regarding black powder cannons and such because they didn’t design the rules around that type of technology level. On top of that the vehicle rules are rough and clumsy. The alternate Narrative Style of vehicle combat is interesting and may work better, but not everyone knows how those rules work.

I’m having to design almost everything from scratch on this. Anything not covered by a book I’m having to hunt down or build a stat for. I’m going through my historical references and creating ships and their stats based on that. I’m having to stat out weaponry and ship armor along with trying to get it to be compatible and enjoyable with the system. It’s a rough and slow process. It’s also frustrating sometimes.

There I go, getting distracted by a random tangent again. The point is, I want the game to feel like the good parts of those movies and the system isn’t setup for it so I’m looking for solutions. I’m positive that using the Narrative Naval Combat system for battle with custom ships and weapons for the setting will work and bring together the right feel for the combat that you’d see in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but it requires careful research and balancing so that I don’t accidentally make a 6-gun sloop capable of leveling a 44-gun frigate with little effort.

It's fun to stat out these ships though. It let's me put my knowledge of history, warfare, and gaming into the same effort and enjoy myself while doing so. There's something nice about being able to let my creativity fly freely like this. 

We’ll see how it goes. I'm enjoying the creation process for the most part but that doesn't mean everyone is going to like the results. Here’s to hoping I don’t screw it up too badly!