A Tarnished Age; 1

Histandes’ foot caught on a loose stone, and he had just enough time to curse before he pitched forward. Long grass reached up to whip at him as he rolled downhill. His totem flew from his grasp and tumbled onward ahead of him. Through the chaos of his fall he heard the thumping footsteps of the pursuing fiend.

He came to a rest on his back at the base of the hill. With his vision reversed, the fiend’s long, curled horns twisted downwards like tree roots in clouded soil. From where he lay the stone atop the beast’s club seemed large as his head.

The weapon rose, and Histandes rolled away before it slammed into the ground in his place. He scrambled to his feet and ran to where his totem rested in the grass nearby. When he gripped the leather-wrapped handle his mind felt the three spirits kept within the stone. Phanael and Lassakim lay dormant within their seals, and Histandes knew awakening them would only invite their ire.

Balassu, however, was eager.

As the fiend approached, Histandes invited the spirit into his body and a new strength flowed up his limbs from the seal slotted into the totem. A grin split his face as Balassu flared to life in the space between his eyes, a fiery sigil which seemed to shiver with laughter.

The fiend swung its club in a low arc, but Histandes was already on his feet. The stone-topped weapon tugged at his clothing as it passed him by, and the shaman charged into the opening. He caught a glimpse of the fiend’s shocked face, nearly humanlike in its expression, before his totem cracked into the thing’s neck.

Histandes could feel Balassu’s satisfaction at landing such a blow, and the spirit’s eagerness to continue. The fiend reached around to crush the life from Histandes’ chest, but the shaman slid under the thing’s grip and struck again. His totem hit the fiend in the side, and the skin there split and cracked.

Balassu was elated at the bloodshed and the sound of the fiend’s pain and rage, and the spirit’s emotions crashed against Histandes’ mind like high tide. The shaman grit his teeth, ready to surrender himself to those urges should the fiend charge again, but the horned beast seemed unwilling to tempt more violence.

It was with a moment’s will that Histandes quelled Balassu, and the spirit’s fury at the interruption echoed as its presence left the shaman aching and tired. Though the spirit’s seal was faultless Balassu was of such a strength that its absence echoed through his limbs.

The fiend knelt nearby, club grasped defensively against another attack, and Histandes could see its inhuman eyes follow his totem. Then it spoke, “The thing gripped in your hand, a slur against nature’s order and the way of things.” Its voice was melodic and deep, like the far-off sound of thunder in the mountains, but an undercurrent of something altogether different laced the words.

Histandes inhaled and leaned on his totem. Its leather-wrapped grip was warm from recent use, and he could see wisps of steam curl from the fiend’s neck and between its fingers. The shaman knew the wound would take some time to heal, far longer than any injury his other weapons could cause.

“Naught but vermin ‘twixt the feet of giants,” the fiend said as it rose to its feet and began its way back up the hill. Histandes stayed still as it retreated, and the fiend kept his gaze all the way over the crest until its horns vanished from sight.

It wasn’t until the beast had left that Histandes let his breath rush from his chest. He was far more tired than he’d first suspected, and pulling Balassu from its seal had nearly proven a mistake. Even then the shaman could feel the spirit contend with the boundaries of its prison, though he knew they were secure.

With that thought in mind he turned again and moved down the hill towards the climbing smoke on the distant shoreline marking Port of Sharks. The harbor was the only city worth mentioning on Antuk, and the seat of the local High Speaker. The foothills soon gave way to a scrub forest, and Histandes gladly entered the trees. Fiends avoided the woods, where the low canopies and tangled branches snagged their horns and impeded their bulk.

He’d spent much of the past three moonturns in forests like these up in the Peaks on his mission to recall those living in those remote villages. Fiendish incursions into Man’s Reach had grown more and more violent over the past years, and the High Speaker had finally dispatched Histandes, the only shaman present on Antuk, to withdraw the most distant men under his watch.

Maybe a third of the villages he’d visited still showed signs of habitation, and even less recent. Of those few, even less were willing to take the risky trip down the mountainside to Port of Sharks, where they claimed the High Speaker would put them to work in the fields. Histandes hadn’t bothered to dispel that notion, partially because it was true, and partially because it wasn’t his place. A shaman carried the High Speaker’s word, without judgement and without change.

During his walk he came across a cluster of stonepit bushes and picked a handful to supplement his waning supplies. As he continued downhill he chewed at the fruit until the pits separated from the meat, and left the cores in a trail along his path. His totem rested on his shoulder, the spirits within quiet as twilight lowered above him.

A Tarnished Age; 0

The Dayim’s fingers gripped the rocky ledge as he hauled his bulk onto the shelf. The mid-morning sun already beat upon his back like a lash, and he had succumbed to the temptation of Comfort and donned a head-wrap to protect the back of his neck from the heat. He would rather fast in penance for a day and a night than develop sunsickness. On his previous pilgrimage up to the High Peaks he’d gone uncovered, as was tradition, and his skin had cracked and oozed for days after.

The mountainside was much unchanged since the Dayim’s last ascension, but he kept a close eye for scree or weathering. Gwal’s last Dayim had never returned from his final pilgrimage, and his body was later discovered broken and picked at by scavengers at the mountain’s base. The man’s lack of faith and subsequent death meant his position remained unfilled for nearly a full moonturn, until the current Dayim forfeited his old name to lead the tribe.

He continued his climb, thankful to Gwal for his past life as a shepherd. The time had prepared his body for this hardship, and the muscles along his arms stood out underneath the coarse hair as he again pulled himself onto another rocky outcropping. The Turach stretched out behind him like a tan canvas, though he did not turn to look at it. Each moonturn he made the climb and each moonturn the Turach remained the same.

The Dayim allowed himself a small note of relief as he ascended the final stretch. For the most part the High Peaks were nearly sheer, with only the most subtle outcroppings serving as handholds. This last part of the mountain was a slope, however, and one shallow enough that he could march his way up, if he leaned his weight forward during. The wind grasped at his clothing, and carried with it the cold, bare scent of the mountains. Somewhere further north thunder echoed, though there was no way to know how near the storm was. The Dayim prayed Gwal would hold the clouds back long enough for him to conclude his business and find shelter in the crags for the night.

The gentle slope led to an outcropping which broke from the mountainside like the prow of a ship. Underneath his bare feet the Dayim could feel the smooth stone surface, worn of any imperfections by the weather. This time the Dayim did turn to look behind him. The steppe ran to the eastern horizon, and at the base of the foothills he could just make out the rest of the Gwalim’s encampment in small, dark brown patches against the tan.

After three days of climbing, he’d finally reached the point where his successor had fallen. With a prayer to Gwal he turned again and approached the altar. It rested atop the far end of the outcropping, a pile of loose stones cemented by weather and age into a roughly circular platform which reached his knees. A stunted tree, bereft of leaves, grew from the cracks between the stones, and the Dayim had to admire the plant’s tenacity.

As he approached he cocked his head in curiosity. The tree was a gnarled thing, bark craggy and wrinkled in a way that reminded the Dayim of the Sothna bed during the dry seasons. But it was the depression in the trunk that caught his eye, a disturbance in the otherwise consistent mottled browns. When he drew closer he saw it was a hollow, just large enough for his fist to plug. In the failing light he saw a round shape nestled inside.

He paused, his pilgrimage interrupted by the vision. There was no other one permitted to approach the altar, or even ascend the peak, other than Gwal’s Dayim, and he very much doubted the previous priest had left anything behind. The altar was Gwal’s to affect, and Gwal’s alone.

The Dayim knelt in front of the altar and reached a hand into the hollow to remove the object. Its surface was round, and slightly rough. Once taken from the hollow the Dayim saw it was a small earthenware pot, of the sort his tribe used to store foodstuffs. It was just large enough to rest comfortably in the palm of his hand, and he turned it over to inspect it.

The mouth was slightly raised with a lip, and around that lip was fastened a waxen seal. The Dayim thought he recognized it as beeswax, but couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen anyone in the Gwalim trade for the substance. The only peoples who kept the animals were the Nasirama, and they were far to the south in their stone towers.

He shook the jar, and something within rattled against the clay sides. He looked to the sky, eternally clouded and bruised this high into the Peaks, and when no sign came from Gwal, he used a fingernail to gently pry the wax from the mouth.

A sudden wind rose up around him, whipping at his robes and head-wrap, and the Dayim nearly lost his balance atop the outcropping. He upended the jar into his other hand, but nothing fell from the opening. The Dayim huddled lower by the altar as the wind increased in intensity, and he wondered briefly whether he’d been caught in a mountainstorm. Would the other Gwalim discover his body broken on the rocks below, another priest tested and found unworthy?

Gwal demands my faith, the Dayim thought as he straightened against the gale. He peeled the rest of the wax from the jar and looked inside to its empty exterior. Had the sudden wind snatched the pot’s contents from his notice? It was a possibility, though if that were the case his curiosity would remain unsated.

At that moment the Dayim’s back seized straight, and a vision clouded his mind:

A brilliance on the horizon

a bitterness in the waters

a Fiend among the Peoples

The Dayim heard a thunderous cracking sound and then silence. When he reached up to his ears his fingers came away coated red. The jar fell, forgotten, as he collapsed to his knees. The stone beneath him slumped and crumbled and eventually buried his broken body along the mountainside.

Some Thoughts on "Curse of the Dragon Slayer"

"No guys, for real, this homebrew setting and
campaign is 100% original!"

Curse of the Dragon Slayer (2013)

Directed by: John Lyde
Produced by: Arrowstorm Studios
Written by: Jason Faller, Kynan Griffin
Budget: As expected for this sort of thing, I couldn't find any concrete budget information.

Starring: Richard McWilliams, Danielle Chuchran, Paul D. Hunt1

Lord of the Rings was a landmark movie in the realm of epic fantasy. Before Peter Jackson's shadow rose in the East the fantasy movie market really only existed in the 80s, with only a handful of entries in the genre achieving anything like widespread release. Some of those still endure, but the majority of those were easily dismissed as entries in a niche market that no one took seriously.

Nowadays you can't open a streaming service without mousing over a dozen low-budget fantasy titles featuring a party of adventurers of various demi-human races who have to save the world from an evil force by killing hordes of faceless bad guys and widowing who-knows-how-many faceless bad guy wives.

Curse of the Dragon Slayer is one of those movies, freely available to stream for anyone with an Amazon Prime subscription. I was browsing their selection when I saw the title and the poster, and you can bet that I judged this book by its cover. You've got a Fantasy Race Triangle, a 2-star dragon design, and obligatory orange-and-blue color scheme. I didn't have to scroll below this one before knowing what I was watching next.

When a mysterious Shadow cult rises and attempts to awaken an ancient evil, it's up to Female Elf Barbarian, Male Human Paladin, and Male Orc Fighter to defeat an army of CR 1 Shadow Cultists in order to prevent the rise of the god of death, Goth-Azul. Along the way we see one dragon, a few passable special effects, and plenty of B-grade fantasy schlock.

Now let's talk about this poster and analyze just how much it lies to us.

First off, the original title of this movie was not Curse of the Dragon Slayer...in fact, this movie has seven total titles...in English. If I included the foreign-language titles that number would climb to a full dozen. Here's a list of the English ones:

• SAGA - Curse of the Shadow (Original)
• Rise of the Shadow Warrior (UK English DVD box)
• SAGA: The Shadow Cabal (Netherlands)
• Curse of the Dragon Slayer (USA alternative)
• Dragon Lore: Curse of the Shadow (USA alternative)
• SAGA: Curse of the Shadow (USA English)
• SAGA: The Shadow Cabal (World-wide alternative)

Behold, the chief and greatest of calamities!
Also, literally the first shot after the opening narration.

Why am I counting the title on the poster above as a lie? Well, it ties in with the three dragons portrayed, which is three times more than we see in the actual movie. The only dragon we actually see appears literally 90 seconds into the movie, and is promptly killed with a crossbow thirty seconds later.

Bard's got nothing on Nemyt

What follows is a surprisingly fine fight scene between an elf in spiky blue contact lenses and an orc that seems to have gotten lost on his way over from Mordor. The elf, Nemyt, beheads the orc but gets marked by a black symbol on her wrist.

After this we meet the Prophetess's Paladin, Keltus who, after visiting a dwarf friend of his and realizing he's also been infected by the Shadow, kills him with an explosive in a strange, misplaced attempt at slapstick humor. The dwarf design is actually pretty good, if a little jittery-looking. The movement is a little twitchy, but the prosthetic work is actually shockingly convincing.

It was during this scene that I realized just how derivative the movie might get. While up until this point everything shouted Lord of the Rings, the dwarf character is much closer to Warhammer or Warcraft in design, with goggles, a little tinkering workshop, musket, and love of blasting powder.

Finally, we meet Kullimon the Orc, who leads a band of warriors and raiders. He' delivering the Vessel (needed for Goth-Azul's resurrection) to...someone, and then it turns out his second-in-command is a shadow-guy and he runs off, leaving his horde under the Shadow's command.

After Keltus and Nemyt meet in the Dungeon of Plot Convenience they stumble across Kullimon in the Forest of Contrivances, and we have our adventurer's party. They travel along with their various subplots raising their ugly heads (Nemyt's mad, Keltus is faithful kinda, and Kullimon is proud) and eventually they vanquish the shadow cultists and return the world of SAGA to its semi-peaceful state.

The Nat 20s
If you turn your brain off and watch it as a D&D movie it's surprisingly passable. The fight choreography isn't terrible, even past the point where other movies stop putting in any effort. The amount of shaky camera and jump cuts is minimal, and it looks like they actually practiced hitting each other with their prop swords, as opposed to pulling their slashes. The first fight in the movie is still probably the best, but not by much.

Considering it's microbudget epic fantasy I was surprised at the overall quality. It's absolutely nothing special, but it had just enough high points to keep my interest over its running time. Part of this is the rarity of original epic fantasy content making it to the screen, and even though it's derivative I think there's enough room for more. Curse of the Dragon Slayer gave me an acceptable hit of epic fantasy that should keep me sated for a little while longer.

Acting is...mostly alright. Keltus puts on a fine show when the writing allows the character to emote, but in a lot of his scenes I was picking up some pretty strong Hayden Christensen-as-Anakin vibes. Nemyt is acceptable whenever she isn't growling like an animal, but those scenes aren't terribly common. The orc actors are having a great time, and Kullimon is obviously having a great time with the lines they gave him. This last one is a highlight, and any scene where Kullimon gets to actually do things elevates that part of the movie.

There are certain scenes that are actually pretty well done. In particular, there is a scene where Kullimon gets on a boat and stabs some mermaids. This scene is brilliant, and the best orc versus mermaid scene we'll likely ever receive. We also get some of the better "Communing with his deity" scenes I've watched in recent memory, where shooting location is utilized very well (salt flats, south-west badlands, etc).

Finally there's some small stuff that's kind of fun to see. One of the fight scenes features a troll of some sort that is portrayed by a man in a stilted costume that, although it's kind of goofy, actually has a physical presence in the world. Each of the orcs in Kullimon's horde is an extra in an orc costume, and the CGI is only ever used when necessary.

The Critical Fumbles
The CGI in several places is really...straight-to-DVD quality. Not only is it the quality of the textures/renders themselves, but it's the inconsistency in the designs. The dwarf characters, as said, are done with some surprising prosthetic work, which makes the decision to CGI their gunshots a strange one. Any time a dwarf fired a gun it looked like an early 2000s video game graphic. Finally, the design for Goth-Azul is just lazy, and doesn't help ward off any criticisms about derivative content; this god of death definitely took some cues from Blizzard's Diablo in appearance.

The derivative design doesn't stop at the dwarves or demons. The first appearance (and pretty much every one after) of an orc looked like the production designer raided WETA's workshop after Jackson finished the Hobbit trilogy. I kept expecting the orc players (using this word was an accident, but I'm keeping it because this movie is so obviously inspired by a D&D campaign) to shout "Man-flesh!" every time they were on screen. This doesn't apply to Kullimon, however, as his makeup instead looked like it was created by someone who read a description of Jim Carrey's Grinch makeup.

Do you have time to hear about Tarsa, our newest lord and savior?
Also, that's some pretty good looking chain, for real.

Story-wise this movie doesn't offer anything new, and at times it feels like they were rushing through a checklist of fantasy cliches in order to "complete" the plot. This extends to the subplots as well, though it applies especially to Keltus in particular. Throughout the movie we hear that his goddess, the Prophetess, doesn't care that Nemyt might die, as long as it leads to the Shadow's defeat. Keltus doesn't ever really have a scene where he worries about this until near the end, when he's beaten by the Shadow's right-hand-man in a sword fight and prays for deliverance...which is promptly rejected. We're led to think that Keltus might die, but then he appears a few scenes later with his paladin-tattoo replaced by the symbol of a different god (an "elder god," though there's no explanation of the difference between an Elder and a not-Elder god). There are a lot of moments like this in the movie, but this is the one that stuck out at me, because it makes the SAGA gods feel like they're little more than accessories. Most of these scenes could have been improved by including a single line of dialogue which explains it away, but all we have is a single appearance of a (secretly a goddess) beggar woman early on.

Amazon obviously used the wrong poster for this movie, based on the title and the fact that Curse of the Dragon Slayer is a different movie. The three characters are correct, but as said before the movie only has one dragon, which dies soon in. There are images of this movie's DVD case floating around the internet, and the blurb on the back is an outright lie. On the production company's website the name given is "The Shadow Cabal."

And finally, this might just be me, but there were certain establishing shots that used real-world geographic locations (the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley) which pulled me out of the movie. I know my thought process would have been something along the lines of, "Guys, people will obviously recognize this."

The GM Section
The production company responsible for this movie, Arrowstorm Entertainment, has a list of other movies they've produced here. Some of them, including Orc Wars and Survivor (starring...Kevin Sorbo? What?)  look like campy, awful, B-movie fun. Others look like fantasy schlock. Most of them look like they've been Kickstarted, which...hey, that's something.

I was curious why there were so many SAGA titles, and it turns out this is a movie set in a fantasy world used for a massively-multiplayer online real-time strategy game called...SAGA, where you play a fantasy nation and raise armies to conquer your neighbors. As a world-building enthusiast there wasn't anything new enough about the world to draw my attention to the game itself.

Should You Watch It?
Much like my opinion on Livin' by the Gun, this is one for mega genre fans, or people looking to watch a laughable movie with some friends. If you've ever played a D&D campaign or have any passing familiarity with the medium you might get something out of this.

Unlike Livin' by the Gun, this movie feels like it had some professional and financial weight behind it. While I almost admired Livin' by the Gun's team for its attempt, Curse of the Dragon Slayer comes far closer to fulfilling not only its genre obligations, but its obligations to the audience to provide entertainment of some sort.

Rating:
3/5 if you've already bought your Mordor*Con ticket
1/5 if the term "d20" means nothing to you

Writing Exercise: Forced March

Words: 415

Just done to get some words down:

Two hundred or so others walked with Eloski in a ragged column, manned at strategic points by Hatchetmen atop their lumbering crashers. The previous day had seen three attempted breaks run down by the huge beasts, and a number of them still had red stains on their horns from when they'd caught up with their prey.

For nearly a month the Vederesti had forced them south at a rushed pace. After the disaster at Bazimon's Crossing it was all they could do to keep from angering their captors. Much like the rest of them Eloski had started out with his chin up in defiance, but  the harsh treatment at the hands of the Hatchetmen combined with the late-summer heat had worn him into submission. For the past few days all he'd cared about was making sure he didn't lose meal privileges.

Thunderous thuds announced a crasher approaching, and Eloski stepped aside to let the animal and its rider past. The large grey beast fixed him with one baleful eye as it rode past, and the man atop looked down at him in much the same way Eloski would regard a disobedient dog. The bright plumage attached to the Hatchet's helm marked him as some sort of commander.

"Do not make me repeat myself." It took Eloski a moment to realize the Hatchet officer had spoken to him. He looked up and shook his head at the man in a sudden sign of rebellion which earned him a *whack* across the shoulders from the man's short crop. "Your commander's name for an extra ration," the Hatchet said, and the crasher tossed its oblong head in shared irritation.

Eloski shrugged. He'd torn off his Officer patches at the end of the battle all those days ago, and now they were probably somewhere a hundred miles north, trampled into the dirt by the others. As far as anyone was concerned he was just a footman.

"Useless," the Hatchet said as he dug his spurs into the crasher's side. The grey thing snorted and tossed its head as it moved forward towards the next rank of huddled Dalldren marching south.

Eloski wasn't worried. These were his men, hand-picked for their loyalty and fierceness. Even as the distant city towers grew closer and he realized they had passed into the Front, he held onto some measure of certainty that none of the others would talk. Dalldren loyalty ran deeper than the world's roots, and were twice as hard to unearth.

Some Thoughts on "Living by the Gun"

"Living by the Gun is no life."

Living by the Gun (2011? 2014?)

Directed by: James Miller
Produced by: James Miller, Darren Knapp, Cheryl McIntire
Written by: James Miller
Budget: I couldn't find any concrete information concerning this movie's budget, but sources lead me to believe that it was less than one of my paychecks.

Starring: Tommy Admire, Jeffery Babineau, Amber Beasley

It's a good time to be a fan of westerns. In the past few years we've gotten a handful or two of really good westerns, some of which sit comfortably in the standard tropes and some of which step outside the norm and deliver something different. If you haven't seen 3:10 to Yuma, Revenant, or Bone Tomahawk, do yourself a favor and check them out.

We start with the Uncle and Niece, the sole members of a homestead, and who apparently have major beef with each other. Niece wants to be a shooter so that no one can tell (paraphrased directly from the movie). We get some major exposition which feels like it's been cut-and-pasted from other, better movies, and Uncle rides off to murder people for money. Soon after, the Niece follows.

The rest of the movie follows the adventures of Uncle and Niece as they carve an underacted, poorly-executed murderpath across the southwest.

Before I get too into it, here is a picture of the title screen, which I think represents exactly what the next 1.75 hours will be like.

Don't adjust your TV, this is how it appears on-screen.

Some Backstory
It was the equivalent of my Friday night and I was enjoying a beer and browsing the titles on Netflix and Amazon. With the recent expansion of streaming services by the actual telecoms, the OG streamers have been buying up these low-budget, sometimes-independent movies, presumably because they're dirt cheap.

I had just watched Bone Tomahawk (again, do yourself a favor) and was looking to continue with the Westerns. This one caught my eye. I'm always looking for movies I wouldn't recommend to anyone (spoiler alert), and the 2/5 Amazon rating and 4/10 IMDB rating made the decision for me.

Within the first ten minutes I wasn't sure whether I was watching a parody or inept homage. By the twenty minute mark I knew it was the latter.

The Good
I'm still fairly certain that this movie, and everyone involved in its production, was actually trying really hard to be a legitimate entry into the R-rated western genre. The costumes and setting come across as fairly authentic and it doesn't try to romanticize the time period. People are dirty, the buildings aren't impressive, and the production managed to actually get a number of horses, which tend to be expensive and difficult to work with. I mean, it has it's own theme song, that I'm pretty sure was written exclusively for this movie.

There are one or two individual shots in the film that I really liked. There's a moment where the Uncle is hiding in a barn from his pursuit, and the lamp outside casts a moving shutter-like shadow through the slats in the wall which actually looks really good and works.

If you imagine it's an alien life-form the movie becomes
far better.

If you're a fan of facial hair, this movie has so many mustaches and beards that you could populate an entire Tumblr with pictures and not run out of content for a while. The Uncle's mustache overhangs his mouth like a cartoon, and as the story progresses you keep meeting one-off characters with such huge mustaches that if you made it into a drinking game you would probably wake up in the hospital.


The Bad
This movie was clearly made by people who are attempting something that lies outside of their potential. The acting throughout, almost universally, is so bad as to be distracting. The Uncle does a fair enough job, but the actress playing the Niece is worse than the kids in my high school who were forced to try out for the theater productions. At one point we meet a prospector character who spends his entire five-minute scene giggling and high-stepping around in his bright red long-johns, only to get shot by the Niece soon after. This is probably the best acting job in the movie.

Let me reinforce the previous paragraph. The Niece's acting is some of the worst I have ever seen in any movie. I'm not exaggerating. At certain points she's delivering dialogue in an Old West dialect without any attempt at an accent, and it comes across like...a high school production. I feel like I'll keep coming back to that point, because this almost felt like something my friends and I would have made way back when.

Speaking of theater productions, the movie swaps to flashbacks every so often, which are in black and white. While the props and costumes look perfectly acceptable in color, shifting them to black and white makes the entire movie feel like a Drunk History sketch. All it needs is a plinking piano track and you've got something similar to a silent movie.

This is the standard for gunplay in the movie.

It doesn't help that no one here wields their guns with any intent. In a movie named Living by the Gun some emotion put behind the fingers on the triggers and no one here seems to care; everyone is obviously holding prop guns.
you would expect the actors to treat their weapons and the firefights with some sort of weight or respect. Whether it's reverent of the gun or repulsed by it, there needs to be

Finally, this movie is nearly two hours long. Epic westerns are fine, because it lets you take in the sweeping vistas, the tense gunfights, and the moral ambiguity. That's nice, but I'm pretty sure this movie has discovered how to capture time dilation and deliver it through an audio-video format. I say this because I checked the clock at what felt like the two-hour mark and discovered that only thirty minutes had elapsed. I felt physically tired by the end of this movie, and I was watching it from the comfort of my leather armchair.

The Ugly
I want to edit this into a comedy. There are certain scenes throughout that look like they're shot to be comical. One early example is when the Uncle goes to collect his payment from a man who hired him to commit a murder. As the man counts out his money, the Uncle takes his wallet...then reaches into the man's jacket and takes his pocket watch...then reaches into the man's jacket and takes a pair of cigars. If it's supposed to be a sign that he's a criminal, it comes across more as him simply being a dick.

I'm right there with you, buddy

Should You Watch It?
Sober: No.
Not Sober: Still probably no.
Living by the Gun is obviously an independent endeavor, and there is very, very little information concerning its production. I dug fairly deep and found out that it was filmed on essentially a $0 budget with almost entirely volunteer cast and crew, and equipment borrowed from a Californian non-profit TV station.

It's for that reason that, ultimately, I can't come down too hard on it. While it's definitely not a good film by any stretch, the cast and crew at least tried, and produced a full-length film with some actual props, real animals, and a (mostly) authentic appearance.

Rating:
2/5, Discount Matinee at the Purgatory Multiplex

Writing Exercise: Mountain Ritual

5 Minutes
216 Words
39 Words Per Minute

The altar was unremarkable, considering its purpose. It was plain stone, joined to and rising from the ground in front of the deep, dark hole in the vertical mountainside.

Five figures huddled against the cold winter wind. The gusts howled through the mountain hollow, across the scattered scree and rocks, and cut through their  fur. The material's weight did little to actually keep the chill out, but that was the norm for early winter up in Ranvald's Range.

The hole ahead of the altar seemed to moan in the wind.

Shuffling footsteps heralded the approach of the final member of their group, a wizened old woman standing straight against the scything wind. If any of the other members present felt any less before her, they didn't show it.

With a nod she entered the circle and approached the altar. Atop it she laid a needle-coated bundle of branches, tied loosely with a goat-gut cord.

"Lord of the Mountains," the woman intoned. Her voice rang out clear, despite her apparent age. The branches rested in the slight depression in the surface of the square-cornered altar.

"Lord of the Mountains," the others echoed. In sequence, each presented their own offering and placed it on the stone next to the branches.

In the empty darkness before the hole, something stirred.

Table-Top RPG Design 02: Basic Mechanics

In this post I'm going to develop a rough-shod mechanic for Mercs (working title).

At the heart of the RPG, and really any game, is the Engine. It's the equivalent of the programming language or chord progression for the game, in that it not only determines what is allowed, but how the players can accomplish it. It's the thematic backbone for how the game feels when you play it, and the mechanic easily makes or breaks the game.

Generally an RPG system consists of some sort of quantified character ability, represented by attributes, stats, skills, or something similar. The classic stat array is the D&D Six: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, where every 2 points above a 10 gives you +1 on your d20 roll. I'm not making a D&D clone, so I'm not going to use those.

In recent years with the boom in self-published/indie RPGs there's been a huge variety of systems created, which run from a classic Skill+Stat combination, to drawing cards from a deck, to betting dice like you're playing poker.

Here's some examples of some systems and how they help deliver their respective tone:

Savage Worlds: In Savage Worlds each Skill is rated as a die, from a d4 to the d12. A player succeeds when they roll a 4 or higher, with additional successes (called Raises) on every 4 above that (8, 12, etc). In addition, the player rolls a Wild Die, which is always a d6 and allows each player the same chance of succeeding on a skill, no matter their actual skill rating. Because Savage Worlds is all about playing big, flashy, pulp-adventure-style heroes, this lets even the less-capable characters get their shining moment and delivers fairly consistent action-moments.

Apocalypse World: Apocalypse World has an unusual system where every action is accomplished by performing a Move, each of which is tied to a certain stat. The player rolls 2d6 and adds the relevant Stat to their roll, and depending on the result there's a different effect (failure is 6 or under, partial success is 7-9, and 10+ is a full success). This accomplishes several things: it means the GM never has to roll dice, as the players make all the decisions, which helps emphasize the book's assertion that the PCs are unique in their agency. It also lets the story advance during failures, which is a problem with several other systems where a failure means that player/story momentum falters for a moment.

Eclipse Phase: Eclipse Phase uses a fairly standard d% system, where you roll a d100 or, more commonly, 2d10 and read the result as a percentage, and rolling underneath your Stat is a success. Whenever I describe it to someone I call it a Price-is-Right system, because the higher you roll, the better you do...as long as you don't go over your Stat. In a setting where PC competence is assumed, but lethality is still a major theme, it makes you feel like you're always pulling by by the skin of your teeth, even when you get a particularly good roll.

Dogs in the Vineyard: In a game where you play Mormon-Jedi in an Alternate-History Wild West, you have pools of Stats (Heart, Acuity, Will, and Body), Relationship dice, and Item dice. You build a dice pool depending on the conflict, roll them, and put them forward in an effort to out-perform your opponent. It rewards tactical dice use and turns conflict into a back-and-forth game where the chance for escalation can produce real consequences. Bringing a gun into the conflict, for example, can increase your chances of winning an argument, but the potential for grave injury also increases, whether you want it to or not.

I'm going to choose to use a d% system, for a number of reasons:

1. It's simple. You only really need 2 dice, it's easy to read the results, and changes to the actual numbers don't make calculating your odds of success/failure any more difficult than it was before. Did you have a 40% chance to succeed, but got a +13 bonus? Now you have a 53% chance to succeed. Easy.

2. Going off of the above, it gives you a consistent, definite spread of results with a fair amount of modification for difficulty. Unlike using a 3d6 bell curve where a +1 bonus is significant, using d% lets you have a little more fun with number fiddling.

3. It's fairly granular. One thing I like about d% systems is that you can pull three results from a single skill test: the overall score (43), the tens-die (4) and the ones-die (3). This lets you tie certain fun things to individual dice, like Initiative, Damage, or some other side-rule.

Infrastructure
Mercs is going to have two methods of quantifying character ability: Skills and Drives.

Skills are going to be pretty basic: a spread of Actions the characters can take, and how proficient they are in that action. When a character tries something where failure will have an effect on the story/action, she'll roll d% and try to roll underneath the skill. Arbitrarily, I'm going to aim for a spread of 20 (minimum) to 75 (maximum) to give a good range from novice to proficient.

Drives are going to be mechanical and role-play motivations for the characters. Because mercenaries in stories are usually motivated individuals who enter the field for money, revenge, or just desperation, I'm going to try and work that in. The best way I can think of doing that right now is to have a number of basic drives (money, self-defense, discovery, etc) which give a static bonus if it's the prime motivator behind the character's action. Again, arbitrarily, I think Drives should range between 1 and 15, giving a minimum character skill of 21 and a maximum of 90. I think preserving a 10% chance of failure no matter what lends the game a sense of danger, even for highly capable characters.

In Summary
To take an action, a character chooses the motivating Drive and relevant Skill. She adds them together and rolls d%. If she rolls underneath that combined total, awesome, she succeeds. If she rolls over, she fails.

Next Time
I get nitty-gritty with the Skills and Drives, and maybe work out some sort of Difficulty mechanic.