My Life As A Gamer: You're Framing It Wrong, Bro

"But Walker," Anon asked, "what about campaigns built around clear Hero Figures like most Super Robot shows and Hero Ship stories like Space Battleship Yamato?

You're framing it wrong.

The villains in that source material routinely has backstabbing as a passtime, or they're fighting multiple enemies at once and the protagonist (and allies) are just one of them, or both.

The reframe is to make those faction leaders--including those backing the protagonist--into Patrons and what in a proper D&D campaign is Patron and Domain Play turns into letting players pursue their faction's objectives, which will influence what goes down at the table.

Now it's not capricious GM fuckery. Now you know that it's Bob over there, playing his Ace Pilot tonight, who's the real reason that Hero Ship Protagador faces off against The Barbary State Human Resources Acquisitions Squadron and not the Rainbow Empire's Inquisitorial Correction Fleet.

The campaign is structured so that the wargame aspect of Patrons and Domain Play are the primary drivers of what those table sessions deal with, and therefore influences who plays what characters and in what capacities.

With JeffroGygaxian Timekeeping and Always On play, the scheming and stabbing that goes on the in source material moves up to the fore where attention is plentiful and that Diplomacy influence makes itself felt. Logistics now becomes obvious; you can't make your move against that damned stubborn planet of Men because you just had your biggest shipyard crippled by sabotage and you realized that your intelligence was compromised so you have more pressing matters to deal with. Meanwhile Bob's clear to take his shot and if he succeeds then you're screwed so you have to weigh options against capacities.

This, I say, is a far more interesting, entertaining, and therefore fun RPG campaign structure than to blindly ape the structure of a wholly different form of entertainment from an entirely different medium.

Yes, even if you're playing the Super Robot or Hero Ship faction; those mid-season upgrades aren't just narrative conventions in real RPG play- they're necessary and vital downtime actions, just as vulnerable to disruption as anything else. Crew need to recover from injury, need their morale kept up, and resouces need to be sourced and acquired; this also means that, even for a Super Robot campaign, there will be--by entirely organic and emergent means--reasons to get out of the robot or play non-pilot characters.

Now we can square a lot of circles, so to speak, and yet I expect that there will be objections.

I don't care.

This is your solution. Implement it.

My Life In Fandom: Welcome to the AMVs Promoting "Space Battleship Yamato 2205"

Space Battleship Yamato 2205 is now screening in Japan, but it will be a while before it's legally available in the West. Came across this AMV for it today, which uses a lot of footage from 2205. This is the Bolar Wars arc remade, and it's good to see a lot of fan favorite supporting characters returning.

Now's a good time to catch up if you've been slacking. 2199 is legally available to stream at Amazon, as is 2202. Blu-Ray sets are also available, which is probably the better way to go, and for the love of God watch it in Japanese with English subtitles. You will miss a lot of subtle characterization if you stick to the English dub.

Yes, there's more. Here's another for your viewing pleasure. Alas, no English subtitles for the AMVs.

My Life As A Writer: No, Eckhart, It's Because The Writers Suck

I'm taking this Pop Cult video as a jumping off point for a very common Space Opera problem: Bad Scaling.

That's a lot of cope. It's this simple: most writers have no clue what they're talking about. Uncle George has real limits that his chosen medium imposes, reinforced further by deadlines and financial constraints, but novelists and comic authors do not.

The sort of "major fleet action" that constitutes climatic battles marking the apex of a narrative arc in Uncle George's Space Opera (and the Mouse Wars knock-offs) are skirmishes in E.E. Smith's Lensman series and Yoshiki Tanaka's Legend of the Galactic Heroes. By the time those series reach narrative peaks, we're looking at hundreds of thousands or millions of capital ships per side with tens or hundreds of millions of combatants.

That is the sort of scale that truly epic Space Opera requires, and very few authors even comprehend what that is- nevermind how it would work or what two competing forces of that size and scale would do to defeat the other. Uncle George, and others in his sphere like Battlestar Galactica (both versions), didn't even try- and George, at most, implied it was possible.

The problem is that these writers fail to see that combat--at any scale, from man-to-man all the way up to universal scale--is nothing more (in narrative terms) than a stage to develop character and advance plot. The difference is that you do so by action--what someone does and how they do it--instead of by dialog. In film or comic terms, this leads to the ideal of a scene where the entire narrative unfolds without a single word or grunt uttered; all character development, and plot advancement, occur silently.

This, by the way, is hardly impossible. Ryan vs. Dorkman did this on a lark 16 years ago, and you'll see others with experience in stunt work or fight choreography do short films like that on the regular- both to stay in practice and to add to their film reels for big boy work.

And no, Hellmouth and OldPub writers as a class don't do Git Gud so they won't put in the work required to make their Space Opera better. They rely on nepotism and corruption to get paid, just like their fellow travelers elsewhere in the Death Cult, so you're going to have to go old-school, go Indie, or go East to get your eyeballs on stuff that doesn't suck.

Narrative Warfare: All Mecha Games Conform To The True Campaign Model

No one seriously disputes that BattleTech is a wargame, and therefore conforms to the True Campaign model when played as a tabletop RPG.

This means that you can directly implement 1:1 Time and Patron Level Play, as well as already be used to Rules As Written and see immediate effects and benefits for you and your players, and your campaign immediate can expand to the whole of the playable space of the setting.

You'll get a little more pushback with Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles, but it's not hard to show naysayers that the game's manuals--rules and setting--play hard into this model and work best when employed in this manner because you can demonstrate the wargame roots and their implicit assumptions and presumptions to the doubting player.

You start running into harder pushback with Robotech and Mekton. Both games, in all their editions, play up the connection to the source material and imply to the reader that the narrative tropes that dominate the source material applies to these adaptations, but the rules manuals have nothing to enforce this. (See below for more on this point.) What you get, instead, is actually Yet Another D&D-Derivative that gives false promises to the prospective user as to what the gameplay experience actually is; it is sold as A but it is really B, where B is done best as the True Campaign model.

When played as such, players will find that they can get something like what they read or watch, but it is not centered around a core cast of pilots and idols. It is a wargame, where players play wargame scenarios at the table and Patrons play the strategic level game of politics and logistics from which those scenarios spawn. You're far more likely to be thinking like the Zentran High Command, Garmlian Empire's Dessler, than you do Sheryl Nome or Walküre. Your table sesions are going to involve a lot more action, personal and mecha, than interpersonal drama. The reason is obvious: no one wants to sit at a table and be bored watching shit improv acting or worse when they could ACTUALLY PLAYING A REAL GAME. Yes, that's exactly what dramatic interpersonal conflict is in gaming terms: really shit improv acting, like you see in Vampire LARPs, and it's boring as fuck.

The game is about objectives--identifying them, pursuing them, resolving obstacles that arise therefrom, and making best use of limited resources at hand--and that's wargaming. How Idol feels about her boyfriend the pilot is irrelevant outside that context, and--believe it or not--most people acknowledge this. That's why RPGs, to date, have downplayed those elements of the source material in favor of action and giant robots.

The problem here is that those prospective players seeking a gameplay experience that recreates a reasonable facsimile of the source material want the experience of the Romantic roots of that source material, which involves characters driven by virtues, vices and passions that at times overwhelm reason and good sense. These people don't want something that is clearly, even at some remove, derived from D&D or ones of its peers (e.g. Traveller); they want Pendragon with giant robots and powered armor, not D&D.

Yeah, you can take that a challenge: design a Pendragon derivative that handles Your Prefered Mecha Property in all its core elements properly. For example: Macross's core elements, by its own admission, is Valkyries, Idol Music, and Love Triangles (Action, Beauty, Romance). You want a truly faithful and playable game? Nail all three or go home. You want to figure out how to do that? Guess what that means?

You're going to have to resort to the True Campaign model to make this work as a proper RPG, albeit using Pendragon as its basis. It's either that or resign yourself to never achieving the promise of recreating the experience of the source material that so many mecha games push on to their prospects and fail deliver upon. Not even Super Robot Wars does; it splices the Visual Novel genre into its wargame to make that work, something you as a tabletop gamer cannot do.

My Life In Fandom: "Space Battleship Yamato 2205: Part Two" Comes Early Next Year

I mentioned that Space Battleship Yamato 2205 will release Part Two of the 2205 arc early next year. If you haven't seen 2199 and 2202, get on that as soon as you can; they're great and so is Ark of the Stars (the movie connecting the two). Then, when you're caught up, this free preview of Part One for 2205 will not be so confusiing; alas, I know not of any uploads with English (or any) subtitles or I'd post them.

While there's a dearth of new Space Opera coming out in film and television, both East and West, at least the Japanese franchises are trying to do right by their audiences by giving them quality new productions, and while 2205 will likely mark the end of these (incredibly good) remakes of the '70s originals. I seriously hope that this production group turns their eyes to another Space Opera icon of the era after this because if there was ever a time for him to return in (more or less) traditional animation then that time is now.

My Life In Fandom: Space Battleship Yamato 2205 Coming Soon!

It's coming.

Translated (via Google): "Space Battleship Yamato 2205 New Departure Later Chapter -STASHA- February 4, 2022 (Friday) Theater screening starts! Blu-ray special limited edition released at the same time!"

This is the Bolar Wars arc. Expect some serious melodrama and maybe a few changes from the original version (as we saw with 2199 and 2202) as Earth's Hero Ship goes on another voyage.

And if you haven't watched 2199 or 2202, now's the time. Amazon has them on Blu-Ray and DVD, and streaming should be an option (legally or otherwise). There is a manga option if you prefer.

Space Battleship Yamato is one of the classics of Japanese space opera, right there with Captain Harlock and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, so put it up there with George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry's space operas in terms of genre literacy outside of the literary form.

Yes, there's a preview. Alas, it's entirely in Japanese.

Expect a great series. Yamato delivers.

My Life In Fandom: New Yamato 2205 Teaser

Bandai Namco finally cut a new teaser for Space Battleship Yamato 2205, this time with a release date.

Yeah, not with English subtitles, and it's unclear which post-Comet Empire arc this is, but nonetheless we're getting new Yamato later this year and I look forward to its release on October 8th in Japan (and thus, maybe, available with subtitles online by December).

My Life In Fandom: That Third Yamato Remake Series Is Coming

If you've been sleeping on the remake of Space Battleship Yamato, it's time to catch up. The third series--2205--is coming.

Yes, that's the series director. No, there's no English subs for this yet, and Google Translate's translation of the transcript is less than helpful.

If you're in the West, look for this under the "Star Blazers" brand; the "complete season" sets retail at Amazon for $50 apiece, but you are getting 26 half-hour episodes on four discs with both the American dub to be shunned and the Japanese original track with English subtitles that is the proper way to watch this pillar of Japanese science fiction. If you're into streaming, you can go through Amazon but you have to pay for access even if you have Prime; go talk to Harlock instead.

If the first series remade the original Iskandar arc, and the second remade the Comet Empire arc, then this may be the remake of the Bolar War arc. We'll see soon enough, but that original version wasn't as good as the two arcs before it so there's definitely room for improvement to be had here.

Yes, there's a manga version. Amazon has it here. If you also get the original version, you can compare and contrast- and with far less hassle than doing so for the anime might be for you.

Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to it.

My Life In Fandom: What Could Have Been

Today I'm revisiting Axanar the pro-quality Star Trek fan film that Paramount stupidly decided to screw over years ago. Hollywood veteran Robert Burnett was involved, and he put out a series of videos talking about the very thing that got Paramount's attention: the SFX shots. He put them into a short playlist and I want you folks to see it and listen to his commentary:

My creative work, for now, is prose and prose is not any visual medium. That's intended to change down the road, and there are some of you who do work--or want to work-in a visual medium like film. Just as professional wrestling has a form of visual storytelling they call "match psychology", so does film and television (live or animated) and Rob here shows that he understands this very well- as one expects of a competent industry veteran.

You won't hear him say it, but you see that he also knows where the line between any semblance of fidelity to known science and the demands of good drama are in science fiction. That's not hyperbole; you can, literally, see it in these videos. Sure, it's absurd to think that capital ships will dodge and weave like fighters in a dogfight, but that approach makes it easier to put forth a dramatic presentation in the small-scale engagements this film focuses upon.

I enjoy hearing Rob talk about how he would time the cut-aways to the characters reacting and issuing orders in turn for maximum dramatic effect. That's him displaying that he gets what visual media are good at doing: showing, viscerally, the consequences of actions. The actors would then use body language and tone of voice as short-hand to convey what a prose rendition of the scene would spend time going into a character's head to expose and display; seconds on screen versus pages read in prose.

You can hear in Rob's voice the lament for what could have--should have--been. While the project is being salvaged so the time spent and the money raised actually produces some tangible results, it's clear that this is akin to Blizzard's salvaging of the ill-fated "Titan" MMORPG to produce Overwatch. Hopefully this instance will not produce that same disappointment, as film and TV is not videogames (something else people forget), but episodic psuedo-TV is not a proper feature-length film and everyone knows it.

At least what was finished won't go to waste. What comes out of the final result will still blow people away with what can be done by small-scale parties now. Soon, and sooner than you think, this power will be accessible to common people working out of their homes at working-man prices. When that hits, you can kiss Hollywood's chokehold on the media in the West goodbye.

You can keep up for yourself via the Axanar channel on YouTube or their website.

My Life In Fandom: Jump Away From Coruscant

The official fan con, Star Wars Celebration, has begun and will on this weekend. The real info is now coming out.

Multi-billion dollar property.

The greatest minds of Hollywood.

This... is the title they came up with.

Our culture is dead. #EpisodeIX pic.twitter.com/GFWwSMe4vz

— JDA, Social Warlock (@jondelarroz) April 12, 2019

Jon del Arroz is correct. Star Wars is dead. It took less than a decade for Disney to kill a formerly world-famous Space Opera franchise, a franchise that facilitated the founding of two major effects houses--Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic--who've got resumes going on for decades and includes far more major hits than Uncle George's own films. The novels are now expensive toilet paper, as are the comics (unless it's Darth Vader), and the games to date have been mediocre at best and often trash. Yes, including the tabletop games. (D6 or GTFO)

If you're thinking of handing over a single cent to the Mouse, despite complaining or whining about Mouse Wars, you're a paypig and beneath contempt, something Mouse Wars and The Mouse will not hide. Buy the pre-Mouse stuff used if you must have it and you either can't or won't see if your local Straw Hats can hook you up. You have alternatives to Mouse Wars for scratching that itch, starting with the Galaxy's Edge and the Galaxy Ascendant series; stop being a bitch and buy that instead, putting your money where your mouths are. If those aren't enough, keep looking; you'll find something in print.

And that's just Western science fiction. Go east and you've got Japan's massive mound of material to pour through, staring with Space Battleship Yamato and including Legend of the Galactic Heroes as well as Space Pirate Harlock. Want to include giant robots? Yamato's 2202 follow-up introduces them into the mix, and the classics include Super-Dimensional Fortress Macross and its sequels.

You don't need to let Mouse Wars shit all over the corpse of something you loved, but is now dead. Jump away. There's nothing left to save. Let it go and come find something alive to enjoy instead, which will include my own Star Knight Saga soon. To make this clear, I'll let Frank here put it plainly about giving the Mouse your money.

My Life In Fandom: The Mouse Murdered Star Wars

If you still think Mouse Wars can be saved, allow me to demotivate you.

Here's your horror story, folks. Mouse Wars has successfully murdered something you loved, skinned and gutted it, and now goes about pretending to be it while wearing its skin as a grotesque costume.

Ever since Uncle George sold out to the Mouse, we've had some trepidation. Despite its flaws, The Force Awakens wasn't that bad; it was as safe a film as it got, being a remake of the original, but it was on the margins that the real nature of what went down first appeared and that corruptions exploded when The Last Jedi shat up the screen. It's only gotten worse since with all the media bullshit and SJW virtue-signalling.

The prequels were flawed, but earnestly so; the originals remain fantastic (but not perfect). We can just disavow Mouse Wars and be fine, so that's what I do; in the meantime, there's plenty of #StarWarsNotStarWars out there that focuses on something you love about Uncle George's love-letter to the pulps. Loved the grunt-focused episodes in Clone Wars? Galaxy's Edge is there for you. Fleet action and court intrigues? Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Tyrania await. The last best hope to save the galaxy? Yamato, Babylon 5, et. al.

And if you really want it all done better, go to the source: the Lensman books by E.E. "Doc" Smith. Better Jedi than the Jedi. Better superweapons than anything George or the Mouse allowed. Better action, better romance, powered armor (the origin for it and mecha generally), and so much more. Skip the anime and manga adaptations; they're trash.

And then there's my own upcoming #StarKnight series as well as Brian Niemeier's Combat Frame Xseed. Despair not over the loss of Star Wars; what it came from endures, and what came of it already surpasses it. Go forth and enjoy the diaspora born from Uncle George's accidental masterpiece.

The Anime Informing #StarKnight: Space Operas & Starship Action

Anime informed #StarKnight. There's no disputing this. There's a lot to account for, and I've written about many of them previously. You have the Leijiverse, especially its most famous part (Space Battleship Yamato), and of course the best Space Opera out of Japan: Legend of the Galactic Heroes. There's many more, and I've also talked about them previously.

Collectively, these are the shows where the fleet actions and hero ships of #StarKnight come from. Other influences include Dairugger XV (Vehicle Voltron for some of you.), with the bonus of the Super Robot angle, and Tytania. Each of the groups and players in these works have aesthetically and practical distinction that makes audience engagement easy to achieve; the Cosmo Force looks this way, the Free Planets Alliance looks that way, and so on.

It informed Reavers by having the Red Eyes pirates use either stolen ships or very simple original designs, reflecting their outsider status, and then the contrast comes easy by having House Ireton and the Solar Guard have aesthetically pleasing designs as well as superior discipline and coordination in their actions.

While we're not talking in terms of tens of thousands of warships (LoGH), we are talking about small fleet engagements; if you've seen Yamato's 2202 arc, you'll see some of the fleet actions between the Comet Empire and the Earth/Gamillas allied fleets. For hero ships, clearly that's Harlock and Yamato itself. Not that the Gundam guys have been slacking; it just takes time to make quality work, but it pays off when you get stuff like this. (From Origin 6.)

And that? That's a rough approximation of how the relationship between mecha and warships goes, in general; specifics will vary from book to book because each book covers different situations in different locations with different circumstances. (e.g. Macross Frontier's first fleet battle for comparison) Why? Among other things, it's because Super Robots and Real Robots relate differently to the same environment; Kotetsu Shin Jeeg gets into this.

Now combine these influences with the best of the West: Lensman, Star Wars, and others. That's how these influences mix together to create what you're going to see in #StarKnight.

Since some of these are available commercially in the United States, links:

• Gundam
• Macross
• Yamato (as Star Blazers)
• Harlock
• Galaxy Express 999
• Queen Esmeraldas
• Tytania
• Legend of the Galactic Heroes

My Life in Fandom: Space Battleship Yamato 2202

I've posted previously on the Space Opera goodiness that is the remake of Space Battleship Yamato. The 2199 series is one of my recommendations for anyone who has no problem with the grey streaming sites that a lot of anime fans resort to (because the Blu-Rays are expensive as fuck).

As the pick on the right shows, the follow-up I knew was coming finally arrived in Japan a few months ago. 2202 is the remake's remake of the second series, the Comet Empire arc, and so far it looks like the faithful approach is still in effect; I've only see two episodes as of this post (because they're being parceled out piecemeal as with 2199).

(Note, if you want to enhance the experience, watch Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark first. That movie's events foreshadow the Gatlantis ascension to Antagonist and Gamillas's Heel-Face Turn that occurs as a consequence of 2199's conclusion.)

Because this is an ongoing release, and only two episodes are currently available (these are often wrongly labeled as OVAs; they're not, as this is a TV series), I can't go on about the brilliance of the series as a whole. What I can say is that, in just two episodes, I am back aboard the hype ship and I can't wait to see (a) how this series plays out and (b) to see it adapted into a future Super Robot Wars title.

One of the giants of Japanese Space Opera is off once more into outer space to save Mother Earth. Get on board now and enjoy the voyage!

Space Opera Week is Here!

Hey y'all, it's #SpaceOperaWeek. Get with it!!! pic.twitter.com/ejMNoe45Gt

— Castalia House (@CastaliaHouse) May 16, 2017

I can get behind this. Hell, I'm already behind this, and have been for a while now. Last month alone I had these posts:

• Lensman
• Space Battleship Yamato
• Super-Dimensional Fortress Macross
• Captain Harlock and the rest of the Leijiverse

There's a lot more to bring to your attention than that, and many of my fellows in the Pulp Revolution and in the Superversive Movement will have plenty to say about it over this week. That includes the fantastic folks at Castalia House and the wonderful writers at SuperversiveSF (where I will post about this in regards to gaming and the Superversive later this week). The folks in my Blog Roll will have their own contributions to make this week, so don't neglect them.

As for myself, I'm going to pull some gems off my shelf and share them with you over the week. Books, comics, television, film, old, new, Eastern, Western. I'll throw a few more in as circumstances allow.

My Life as a Gamer: A Super Robot Wars V Playthrough

I'd been talking up this game enough, so here's a playthrough playlist from one of the YouTube channels I previously recommended. I'm starting the list at the actual playthrough start; the previous ones were trailers. Enjoy, and if you want your own copy then you know where to look: Amazon, PSN, Play-Asia.

My Life in Fandom: Alternatives to Star Wars - Space Battleship Yamato

While we who are willing and able work on forking Star Wars, do note that Japan did that decades ago. One of the most well-known examples of Japan making their own Space Operas is Space Battleship Yamato, a series that first ran in the 1970s riding a wave of science fiction TV animation that still has major worldwide influence to this day. (Including a recent remake, Space Battleship Yamato 2199, shown here.)

Again, the Infogalactic links will give you all that you require in terms of factual information, so let me tell you why you should watch this (either the original or the remake) as an alternative to Star Wars, and how this series exerts its influence decades later in its own right.

The stakes are big. Mankind is on the bring of extinction, losing badly in a war against an interstellar empire, and if not for the intervention of a friendly alien civilization there would be no hope at all. This is an existential threat that demands heroes rise to the occasion, and our protagonist does just that- along with everyone else. If you're not seeing the parallel to Japan's position post-Midway in World War II, you're not paying attention.

The villains are evil, hands down. The remake narrows down the true villains to the ruling caste of the alien empire, but they remain villains; the tragedy comes from the increased presence of the villains exploiting their own heroes for evil ends. (If you read Anonymous Conservative, you'll recognize that for what it is: r-type elites getting their own K-types killed to eliminate the competition.) As such, they are routinely undone by their own flaws before the heroes finish the job.

The heroes are not driven by nihilistic pragmatism; especially in the remake, those who go that route always end badly. The heroes (on both sides) are Romantic at heart, driving by passions for hearth, home, and family. When they encounter their alien counterparts, and can actually talk to them, this common sensibility is what allows Earth to make allies in the alien empire. Good knows its own.

While proper fleet actions are few (due to the Yamato being a Hero Ship on its own much of the time), we do see (especially in the remake) some respect for space as a 3D environment, but the wet navy metaphor remains apparent. (Clearly so when the sub-space submarine shows up.) The space combat easily is better than all but a few scenes in any Star Wars media to date, and the dogfights are awesome.

Our hero, as is typical, is a young man out to prove himself. He's earnest, honest, brave, and honorable- and his love is dignified, graceful, attentive, loyal, and compassionate. The master villain is a conceited, arrogant prick who's also a genius at manipulation and charismatic to dangerous degrees; his subordinates vary in their vices, but some are more effective than others- and they stab each other in the back readily. Heroes you can love and care about. Villains you can hate and despise.

As, as is typical with Japanese Space Opera, we get a bittersweet ending- but a hopeful one. Everyone gets what they deserve. This is well worth the viewing; many Japanese series after the original's first airing clearly show its influence, especially in the Hero Ship being a trope to itself, but even in the West we've got reactions of sorts. (The titular ship in Battlestar Galactica is a Hero Ship, and many of its characters in the original version map to the original Yamato; we can already see an influence across the ocean within a decade.)

The catch is that official releases are not cheap or easy to find, and livestreams take you into the grey zone online, but they are out there and often of as good a quality as you can get. However, the soundtrack and some clips are easily available so let me show you one from early in the series- this is from the remake, when the Yamato attacks alien-held Pluto:

You won't go wrong with this ones, folks. Sure, you're lacking the lightsabers, but you won't miss them.