Der PigDog's PigBlog

Here is what happens to Odysseus: Right before the Trojan War, O and Penelope have a son, Telemachus. Penelope doesn't want O to go to war, and instead asks him to sail with her into the west. We learn that Zeus's Law is the golden rule, and binds a host's conduct to a guest, and vice versa. The penalty for breaking Zeus's Law is death or exile.  O makes a cunning plan to give the Trojans a gift, you know the one, which will violate Zeus's Law and defeat the Trojans. He tricks Eliot Page, who is on his side, because Eliot "needed to believe it", that the gift really is a gift. Eliot Page dies. Once O is inside the city, he lets Agamemnon and the Greeks into the city, and follows behind Agamemnon. The Greeks massacre the Trojans, including, especially, noncombatants and priests. O realizes he has broken Zeus's Law for everyone forever. He no longer wants to return home. He sees himself as a follower of Agamemnon, which makes him sick, and also as a sui ...

This post has some bad language in it, including gendered and homophobic slurs. It Was a Mutual Decision 's pitch is strong, incredibly strong, maybe the single best pitch for a game I have ever heard: you are in a breakup, as civil or toxic as you like, and one or both of you may be a horrible rat-human monster. Oh, and the game ends either when you've both gracefully exited the relationship, or one or both of you are dead. Also, it's a team-based game: all the boys play the girl, and all the girls play the boy. -- Every single time I have delivered this pitch, I see eyes light up. It's so obviously fun, funny, and resonant. Cover of It Was a Mutual Decision with a thumbs-up representing my positive opinion of the game Unfortunately for the reader, there are no digital copies, it is not currently in print, and the writer has no immediate plans to make it available again. I ordered a copy off ebay but it got snatched by porch pirates. Luckily when I was complainin...

"You've ruined everything. I will hate you forever." A game for three players, A, B, and C, shifting roles. Brief definition of a human being for play purposes "Human being" is a keyword I've found useful in playing several narrativist games. When I say so-and-so is a human being, I mean that they are not a structural literary type (pro- or antagonist), a cardboard cutout, a stereotype, a pawn, a monster, a simple player stand-in, or a political or moral idea given fictional flesh. Most human beings have all of the following  Name Age Ethnicity Social class Income (or none!) Hometown Current city A job, and previous work experience (or none!) Sexual and romantic relationships (or none!) Friends (or none!) Family (or none!) Hobbies and interests Material resources  It isn't necessary to fill out every detail, just enough for our current play. You can always add more later. Scenario creation I Player A creates the main girl, a human being between the ages ...

I say "Part 1" because this movie is the first of a planned trilogy. The movie doesn't announce that anywhere explicitly -- I had to read about it on Wikipedia -- and if you don't know this, you'll be confused and annoyed by its final minutes. I give this movie a strong 3 or weak 4 out of 5. If you like this sort of movie, you'll enjoy this one, and you may enjoy it even if you don't normally like this sort of movie. Thematic summary This guy is desperately trying to find healthy masculinity I don't remember anybody's names, so I'm going to call them the kid, the mom, the dad, the grandad, the alpha, the Swedish soldier, the doctor, and Jimmy. The kid is presented with several conflicting archetypes of masculinity, all of which prove unsatisfactory. He rejects them and leaves society to establish his own values. In more detail: the kid goes on a rite of passage hunting trip with the (his) dad. He thinks he has failed to act properly and feels...

It Was a Mutual Decision (2002) Photo of It Was a Mutual Decision, stolen from the internet Played with Misha, Divya, and Ken. Misha and I are a real-life couple, and Ken and Divya are a real-life couple. Misha and Divya are women, Ken is a man, and I am nonbinary, though I played on Ken's team in the game. All three, and everyone else I have talked to, were absolutely charmed by the premise of the game. It is an extremely easy sell. The rulebook promises that the rat content will serve to soften the blow of the breakup content, and this is certainly what I observed in play. We would go from shouting and breathing hard as we hurled in-character invectives across the room, to giggling uncontrollably while figuring out how to add rats to the scene. Authorities in play were natural and easy. Ken and I, and Misha and Divya, handed of narration without a word and without conflict. Everyone was creatively focused. We did not put much work into establishing the social landscape around our...

Nibelungs play report! I will be light on module details, since I plan to run this scenario again. 2 players, Adam and Never, a knight and a witch. Plenty of debating about equipment. I decided, "Tell me what your item is, and then we will figure out what it does. The effect comes second." The most important two pieces were rope (which we said could come untied any time the user wished, a la elvish rope in the lord of the rings) and an oak twig, which could grow instantly into a full oak if planted in the ground. Before the scenario started, one player noticed that they would need a disposable follower in case they rescued Gunther, otherwise they would violate the rule of 7. They took 2 war dogs, 1 hunting dog, and 2 men at arms. The journey to the Unkensee was pretty easy. Encounter with a revenant who level-drained the witch but killed no one. At the Unkensee, the knight tried to rule-of-three intimidate the hunting dogs into following him after driving them off twice, but...

Impromptu freeform game with Aalisha and Brentley, two coworkers. I had played one abortive session of Vigil, and one successful session of Basic D&D, with Brentley. Aalisha had never heard of roleplaying before, which is how the game started. We played over a series of three workdays, advancing the situation between pizza orders. I explained what we do -- we have a conversation about fictional events, with different people responsible for different things within the fictional situation. The fictional events could be anything. For instance, in a recent game  one character, a chad fuckboy, went to bed with a woman much less cool than him, intending a one night stand, but woke up the next morning to find that he was infatuated with her. I asked Aalisha, what do you do in this circumstance? What would the fuckboy do? She and Brentley both gave guesses and explanations about the fuckboy's feelings and actions. Brentley, it was clear, had a stronger vision for the fuckboy than Aali...

Sometimes it's ok to have a movie with no subtlety whatsoever, especially if the movie blows straight past "blatant" and into "ridiculous". Plus the concept is good (though derivative; I thought about Seconds (1966) and The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890) throughout) and inspired deep emotion in my partner and me. The acting and practical effects are mostly outstanding (with one bad scene by Moore, though I think it's the script's fault more than hers). On the other hand, every single important beat is repeated two or even three times, sometimes literally, and by the end I was waiting for the movie to conclude. The last half hour really dragged. A strong 3/5. Goofy robe, what's up with the dragon? Anyway, how I would rewrite/re-edit the movie. (This is something I think about for most artworks -- what would I do differently, to preserve its core and show it in a clearer light?) Lots of stuff is going to stay the same, and so I won't bother listi...

A new cut of Dracula (1931) by some internet guy from FanEdit.org . The pacing just better in this version; I prefer it to the original. Dracula is a very good movie, and if you haven't seen it, I recommend it! I've also seen Nosferatu (1922), Dracula (1958), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), and Shadow of the Vampire (2000). Of those, Nosferatu the Vampyre is head and shoulders above the rest, followed by Shadow of the Vampire. Maybe Nosferatu is good if you listen to it with a good score and the right color grading, I don't know. Renfield is on a carriage in the middle of Europe. Everybody around him is a superstitious peasant, and he just wants to get his business done. Renfield and the Romanian innkeeper Look at the differences in their clothes and manner. They're suffering from a little cross-cultural miscommunication. The innkeeper is jovial, laughing and smiling, because he is sure that Renfield is just misunderstanding him -- nobody...

An unexpected pleasure. The only movie I'd seen previous about a character named John Rambo was Rambo (2008), which was not very good. I hesitate to call this "the first in the Rambo franchise" because it so clearly is not the first movie in a franchise, and the spinoffs did it a lot of harm. This isn't an action movie (a movie about violence and acrobatics, which celebrates its material), it's a drama (a movie about human relationships and values) which features a lot of violence. This is a man's movie. There aren't any women in it. Seriously, I don't think there's a single speaking role for a woman. So it's a movie about masculinity. The masculinity here is pretty different than anything you'll see in a modern man's movie, I think. The men here cry. Sheriff Will Teasle, crying after his friend dies and he gets ambushed by Johnny Johnny crying, remembering a dead friend Johnny cries at the emotional climax of the movie. He lets out the...