Zombie Time!
Eep. Sorry I'm late with this here rant. No Farscape+No Q&A+No Catching Simpsons=I lose all perspective on the boundaries of the weekend. In any case, on with the zombie themed ramblings.
First point. I recently had a chance to finally see Dead Alive, the film proported to be the goriest horror movie ever made. It lives up to the claim, and it's also funny as all heck. My respect for Peter Jackson is greatly increased.
I also had all my friends spontaneously pop in and hang out for a week, which would be the other reason it got all the way to Wednesday before I noticed I'd missed updating Sunday night. In any case, having zombies on the brain a little more than usual, I had the following moral dilemma for them to puzzle over:
There's a big huge zombie outbreak going on. You and your friends have barricaded yourself in a big house, as per standard procedure, but as you are boarding up a window, a zombie bites your hand. At this point, you are irrevocably doomed to become a zombie yourself. Do you A- Accept your fate, and head outside, recklessly doing all you can to protect your friends from becoming zombies in your last few moments? Or B- Hide your bite and stay in the house, leaving all your friends in pretty much the same boat as you?
Interestingly enough, everyone present admitted their answer was B. The logic applied here to be fair is that on the off-chance that your consciousness/mind/soul/whatever is still intact after becoming a zombie, you should really make an attempt to keep yourself from being blown away by your friends. I still thing there's something to be said for human nature here though. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily translate these responses to situations like an outbreak of a fatal disease or anything, but if I ever actually DO end up fighting off hordes of zombies with my friends, I'm going to make DARN sure everyone's clean between skirmishes. Of course, such an incident would likely be my own fault, as evidenced in this next anecdote:
EARLIER in the week you see, I'd been talking to a friend of mine about how I'd really appreciate me one of them thar books on how to raise the dead. He asked me if I'd still want one if it wasn't the sort of deal where I get an army of zombie slaves, but rather the sort that wound up being mindless killing machines that turn on their own creator first. The rest of the conversation pretty much resembled a little kid trying to convince a parent to let them have a puppy. "Well I could handle one!" "SURE you could. Right up until it bit a couple people and next thing you know half the town is zombies." "No! I'd keep it in a nice secure shack, and wouldn't let it bite anyone! Honest!" You get the idea here. Incidently though, this is pretty much what goes on in Dead Alive, so I've come full circle on this whole spiel.
In other news, a sudden inspiration struck me, and I made some major headway on that card game concept I mentioned a while back. It now involves boards and little plastic figures, making it that much harder to actually publish one day, but a lot of logistical problems and balance issues are solved. So theoretically, next time NonCon rolls around, I'll have a demo set or two to show off along with the next Tyranny book and my RPG RPG.
Of course, I realize that my adventures in game design don't necessarily thrill all of you, so here's some stuff for the rest.
Right around the time I was first hired at RPGamer, so was a guy by the handle of Stom. The two of us disagree on pretty much everything out there, except when it comes to Transformers. It isn't too often you find someone who you disagree with so completely, and yet can still get along with. So, seeing how we both have a fair share of free time these days, I proposed that I make a monthly affair out of debating with him and posting the results on this page. If the concept piques your interest, suggest a topic or two and we'll give it a whirl. Skies the limit on subjects too. Videogames, movies, politics, old cartoons, whatever. Just try to steer clear of console wars, because, well, that ground is entirely too well covered.
Finally, I think we can all agree that it's been ENTIRELY too long since I've posted anything like this here, no?
