Month: March 2018

There’s all sorts of things that can affect how well you do at a convention, and location is one of them.

I mean, some of that’s just obvious. No one wants to be the booth stuck behind the pillar. And so-called “endcap” or “corner” booths often cost more to reserve just by virtue of their presumed increased visibility and access to traffic.

But then you get that stuff that really seems out of your control, and although you can’t be 100% sure there was an impact, your gut tells you there was.

I believe WonderCon this year was an example, where some unfortunate factors conspired to basically cause the entire Small Press section to be “stuck behind the pillar.” The layout of the Anaheim Convention Center being as it is, there are large solid walls between the halls that WonderCon extended through. WonderCon can’t help that, of course, but decided to move the entry point after people picked up their badges to a far side rather than a more front-central position as in previous years. Now this made some sense from a logistical standpoint since before people would have to pick up their badges, exit back to the lobby and then re-enter further down, rather than this year where they just proceeded directly from Hall D to Hall C and poured on in right at Artist’s Alley, beyond which were all the big draws like the DC Comics booth. Finally past all that and past two of the aforementioned walls was Small Press in Hall A.

It’s not easy to get a feel for traffic when you’re chained to a booth, but by the time Sunday rolled around it was pretty clear that there was an imbalance going on with half the convention being a lot more crowded than the other half, and in the after reports a good portion of the Artist’s Alley exhibitors happily reporting constant attention and sales while a good portion of Small Press had the opposite experience. Not a great outcome, particularly when you factor in that a Small Press table also costs twice as much.

WonderCon keeps changing its floor plan every year so far and I expect next year will be no different, so I’m not going so far as the guy who has announced he’s jumping ship to Artist’s Alley, because for all we know Artist’s Alley could draw the short stick next time around. Or ideally the convention finally finds a balance that makes everyone happy, or at least no one really unhappy. In the meantime it’s something to keep in mind… as soon as that floorplan gets published, check where people enter, check where the dividers are and what sections are where. You probably won’t be able to do anything about it, but you can at least steel yourself for a slow outing if the placement seems awry.

Well, continuing my tradition of Johnny-come-lately game experiences, I have finally started my delve into one of the more hyped AAA video game titles of the past three years: The Witcher 3. I picked up the Game of the Year edition through Steam during one of their big periodic sales… Black Friday, I want to say?… regardless of which I recall making my way through the tutorial level and then going back to one of my other games while it’s sat in my library for months. It didn’t quite hook me in at the time, plus I was also a bit worried I’d reached the limits of my modest computer system in terms of getting a decent framerate on the ultra-pretty settings I prefer.

Anyhow, with another arc of Zombie Ranch finally completed I had some extra free time and felt like it was a good opportunity to (figuratively) blow the dust off and give TW3 another chance to impress.

Short answer: so far, it does. Especially for a story/character junkie like me. From the marketing you might not expect a game like this to have any sort of depth to it, but thankfully I’m having the same pleasant surprise I did way back when I picked up Witcher 2 for free on my Xbox and discovered it to be more mature than expected. Truly mature, not just a rating based on the present of blood, boobs and salty language.

Mind you Witcher 2 most certainly had its share of blood, boobs and salty language, and you could hire prostitutes and sleep around with multiple ladies… but then on the other hand you had a choice not to do that, or even to commit to one above all others. Meanwhile there was an interesting tale of power politics being spun, dark fantasy style. Maybe not as complicated as Game of Thrones, but there are arguably positives to saying that. I ended up playing it all the way through, and the only regret I have now is that I couldn’t transfer my console save over to TW3 on the PC, because the designers did include that cool Mass Effect style feature of choices in a previous game carrying over if you want them to. As it was I had to rely on very fallible memory trying to piece together what I’d done. It’s not as complicated as GoT but there are still a shiteload of settings and characters to keep track of and I had to have my inklings jogged more than once trying to remember things like who the main villain of the previous game was.

I think the biggest barrier of entry to the series is probably its protagonist, who at first glance seems like the kind of fantasy character a lot of adolescent boys come up with at some point: the world-weary, stoic moody badass loner with the scars and gravelly voice and the special powers who gets all the chicks. I won’t argue that that’s Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher, in a nutshell. Witcher 2 was more fascinating for everything going on around him than Geralt himself.

The Witcher 3 pulls a hat trick though and has managed to actually make Geralt interesting. He’s older now, for one thing, and there’s actually a sense of humor that occasionally breaks through the Batman/Kratos aesthetic. But most of all, TW3 made him a father.

Not a literal father, mind you, at least not that I’m aware of — Witchers are canonically sterile — but the main questline of TW3 has you on the trail of his surrogate daughter who he raised and trained, now a young woman named Ciri who is quite capable in her own right but nevertheless in deep, deep trouble courtesy of some very bad people having taken an interest in her. Well, “people” may not be the right word. You even get to play Ciri at some points courtesy of a clever flashback mechanic as Geralt in the course of his investigations gets folk he meets to recount their experiences with her.

Ciri, by the way, seems at first glance like the kind of fantasy character a lot of adolescent girls come up with at some point, what with her independence and badass-but-gorgeous looks and special powers and bloodline and destiny (she is of course a princess) but oh she is also kind to small children and animals even though she’ll murderously chop through half a dozen men without batting an eye. It is another testament to the writers (and her voice actor) that when I finally “met” her I still ended up finding her charming and genuinely wanted to help her succeed.

Anyhow, I’m barely scratching the surface here by focusing on things that are most important to me. In the absence of character customization, a story-based game is going to potentially live or die based on whether the character(s) the player is asked to inhabit are compelling and whether their story is also compelling. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with them, after all. TW3 is infamously open in its world and the amount of side quests and activities available, which I worried would be daunting enough that I would end up being overwhelmed and feeling a need to just give up the way I did with Assassin’s Creed 3, but happily it feels more like Assassin’s Creed 4 where the balance is there and I like where things are going. The side quests are cool but the main quests are also pretty sweet, and whatever technology is being used for the facial expressions needs to be exported to every other game because it’s very impressive.

Now, the 10/10 rating TW3 enjoys on Steam to this day might still be overhyping it because I don’t find it perfect. The movement controls are wonky and there are longstanding features of games inexplicably missing, such as a 1:1 buyback option on merchant screens which you may find yourself wishing for the first time you accidentally sell your magic sword (and the second time, and third… way too easy to make this mistake and have to pay a thousand gold to get back what you just misclicked and sold for a hundred). Shops you’ve previously found will randomly disappear off your map, which is aggravating when you need to find a blacksmith or armorer to do upgrades. Gathering and looting can also be a serious pain in the ass. Fortunately, much like for Fallout 4 there is a thriving mod community and so (at least on the PC) these shortcomings can be accounted for. But it should certainly be noted that without those fixes I might very well have decided the game was too much trouble.

P.S. if you’re playing on PC you may very well want to turn off the “NVIDIA hairworks” graphical setting regardless of how beefy your NVIDIA card is (or if you don’t have one, though I would hope it’s automatically off if you don’t have one). I didn’t really notice any difference in appearance quality but it completely solved my framerate issues, particularly during dialogue scenes.

This week’s comic was our end of Episode 15, also marking our (eventual) intended endpoint for a Volume 2 trade paperback, assuming we can get that funded successfully next year. I kept promising some reveals and I hope they satisfied, even though the answers to some of the mysteries that have lingered for many years of this comic’s run might only raise more questions.

But that’s the rub, isn’t it? In an ongoing story you don’t want to lay down all the cards, right? How do you reward the loyalty of your audience while also keeping them looking forwards to more? I think the best stories are ones that find a balance of that, and also the ones that can manage to evoke a sense of time well spent both in the casual fan and the fan that does a deeper delve and has been pondering and discussing small details not everyone noticed, or perhaps noticed and forgot.

And sometimes the story itself becomes more satisfying in the course of its telling. Sometimes you as the creator(s) find a detail in your own work that informs upon that course in a way that you may not have laid out at the beginning but seems right and true. Sometimes, for example, Dawn draws a cover for Episode/Issue 4 where you’ve given her the basic layout but she ends up covering part of the photo you wanted with a gun, and then you start thinking about what might be under that gun… and that roils around and develops until you finally bring that photo truly “in universe” four issues later as you begin your second arc, and then you end that second arc with the same photo and it’s arguably now become one of the most important objects in the whole series because of what was hidden and now is revealed.

Chekhov’s Gun is supposed to go off in Act 3, of course… but in a work of fiction with an indefinite number of acts (i.e. this webcomic), why not Act 8 or Act 15? And even then a creator can play… we can figuratively load up multiple bullets and distribute them point by point, so that as the smoke clears the audience now sees further but yet can’t quite make out the final destination. And I should probably stop there before I start hopelessly muddling my metaphors.

I hope you enjoyed, and continue to enjoy.

There’s a lot to complain about in our modern age, but damn if there isn’t some frickin’ awesome features as well. Anyone recall when I was talking excitedly about the potentials of on-demand 3D printing in terms of custom models? No? Well it might have been awhile ago and I can’t really say the revolution has arrived yet.

Except it has.

Okay, okay, this is a niche market, but… that was the whole point of on-demand, right? Satisfy the niche market. In this case, tabletop RPGers who want custom miniature figures of their characters.

The above link leads to a site called Heroforge.com, and I caution you: if you even think you might fit the profile above, DO NOT go there unless you have a few hours free. Holy crap is it cool. Like, really good computer game chargen levels of cool, except you’re mixing and matching parts on a 3d figure that you can then order to be manufactured and shipped to you. Or if you’re lucky enough to have a 3d printer or a friend with access to one, they’ll put a file download together and you can print it yourself.

Now I’ll admit that neither Dawn nor I have actually ordered and received one of these yet, but man is it tempting. If you watch the Critical Role livestream at all, their current figures seem to all be Heroforge products, so at least some level of order fulfillment must be going on.

In the meantime, you create an account and then you can play with and save different designs and share the pictures and/or configurations. Are the options perfect? Nah. But I guarantee you they’re far better than you expect, and certainly a godsend to any gamer who has ever been frustrated rooting through a game store selection trying to find a figure for their half-orc bard. Heroforge lets you customize the height and build and even the expression on your character’s face in addition to all the props and hair and poses and etc. But whatever, I mean, half-orc bards are one thing but alternate-future Mexican mechanic ladies are going to be…

…huh. Entirely possible. Shit-eating grin and all.

Oh and then just a couple more clicks gives her a motorbike option.

I mean again, not 100% perfect (no jumpsuit/flight suit options… at least not yet), but hell I’m almost just blown away by the fact they had something close to Rosa’s haircut.

And you know, a few years from now maybe this will all just seem very primitive and quaint, but for the moment me and all my nerd friends are too busy bringing our imaginations to life to care.