I am fully aware of all the current controversy going on between tabletop roleplayers and the new 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Most of the folks complaining simply look like old men complaining about “the good old days”. They are told if they don’t like it, then they should just stick to 3rd or even 2nd Edition. Meanwhile, on the other side of the argument, all the people that do enjoy 4th Edition are looked upon as the World of Warcraft players that are ruining gaming.

Ultimately, there are three groups of tabletop roleplayers. The Gamists, the Simulationists and the Narrativists (those familiar with the GNS Theory will already be familiar with the idea). These three sectors often enough cross over, similarly to a Venn Diagram, but most often the goals of the Narrativist and Simulationist collide with that of the Gamist. The Narrativist and Simulationist goals are to experience a world and story that cannot be provided through other mediums, such as video games or novels. The Gamist, on the other hand, has the ultimate goal of simply winning, especially if they can maximize their character for any situation (see Pete from Darths and Droids).

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I have left my blog malnourished long enough, but I hope to keep it well fed in the coming weeks as plenty of games are releasing, meaning there is plenty to discuss.

For now, though, I want to talk about Heroes. The first season caught me by surprise and instantly turned me into a fan. It was a well written show, had plenty of interesting characters (though some less interesting ones as well), and I found the story and plot twists to be well done and thought out (even if you could tell halfway through that they needed to run some plot-hole damage control).

The second season started up, and everyone expected big things. Instead, they got a similar plot to save the future, as well as thirteen episodes of not much happening. Overall, it was supposed to be similar to the first half of season one, where not much happens until all Hell breaks loose, and then once more building up into one climax. People weren’t happy with this, and it has created quite a negative effect on season three.

This is why I hate people. I blame them for all the problems with Halo 2 and 3, as well as the existence of Alien vs. Predator 2 (not the game, but the movie. The game was awesome).

To summarize for those not keeping up, or yet caught up, season three moves pretty fast. Too fast, in fact. Each episode seems to have at least one plot twist, just about each one unnecessary. The characters do not develop in a natural manner, but instead shift in ways that makes them seem contradictory. In fact, if you were to put the second and third seasons back to back, many of the actions of the characters would make no sense. This is nothing to say of the characters that have suddenly vanished off the map from previous seasons.

The very plot twists themselves are absolutely ridiculous, almost taking on a Lost quality. While plenty of them are predictable, they are only so because of how absurd or soap opera they are.

The biggest disappointment of this all is that the season’s premise is actually a good one. While the first two seasons had a major focus on how there is a hero inside everyone, even the most unlikely, the third season tackles with the idea that there is a villain within everyone as well. Turning some characters into villains would create a lot of interesting conflict, development and make you eager to see what might happen.

Yet it is executed poorly. The writers handled the issue irresponsibly, by randomly choosing characters to flip-flop instead of gradually building them into their new role as a villain, and with good reason.

Beneath the cut, I will go into further detail, but to those that haven’t caught up, be warned of plot spoilers.

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Just a notification to all those interested, the English fan translation of Mother 3 has been completed.

It came as a surprise to me how many of my friends at school haven’t seen the original Alien film. To me, it is simply a classic. It is a perfect representation of what a horror film should be, focusing more on the psychological than on gruesome shots of blood and cheap thrills to get girls to jump out of their seats shrieking like banshees. Clearly plenty of folks out there agree, as every other year there is a new film claiming to be “the scariest since Alien”.

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