Losing Fifty Games

Posted on July 6, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

When I got into Infinity someone quoted me a go proverb. “Lose your first fifty games as swiftly as possible.”

If nothing else, I have excelled at following that advice. I have been absolutely destroyed by players vastly more experienced than me. I’ve been crushed by a veteran of the Interplanetario, the World Cup of Infinity. My weekly game is against a friend comprehensively more skilled than me. I have dozens of defeats, many of them crushing, some of them close. My victories have only recently become anything close to regular.

And I’ve been having a blast the entire time.

So let’s talk Infinity

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American Hippo

Posted on June 27, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

In 1910, America suffered a meat shortage. The price of beef skyrocketed, while beef stocks were plummeting, and people across the country searched for a solution to the impending crisis. One man, one absolute legend, by the name of Broussard suggested the Hippo Bill of 1910. Though it never passed, if successful the Hippo Bill would have funded 250,000$ of hippo imports into Louisiana for meat consumption and to eat water hyacinth.

Fortunately, the bill never passed and Louisiana was never plagued by herds of angry hippopotami.

Even more Fortunately, American Hippo by Sarah Gailey imagines a world where it had.

Image result for american hippo

And it is glorious

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An Offering of Scares

Posted on June 17, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

Netflix has been attempting to become a studio as well as a streaming service and have been pushing ever-more netflix-produced content to the fore as well. The quality’s varied wildly, with a few gems of filmmaking and television mixed into an enormous amount of false starts.

Personally, I’ve been on a horror binge lately. I am an absolute coward and used to be terrified of the genre, but a few friends have eased me into it and now I can’t get enough of the stuff. Netflix’s regular trickle of new horror pieces is a great source of new scares, and I find myself revisiting it regularly.

So with that in mind let’s talk about some of Netflix’s horror entries. Korean television drama Kingdom, creature feature The Monster, and Final Destination-esque black comedy Velvet Buzzsaw.

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The Next Steps

Posted on June 13, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

In November of 2018 I wrote a post called Into the Breach around the circumstances of my return to wordpress, and my initial goals for the site. Those initial goals have been met, the Ko-Fi has met minor success, I’ve managed a decent array of articles, and both of my RPGs are in playtest-ready form. I had some off periods and long stretches where work on the RPGs meant that I wasn’t writing Eliph or Fear the Swarth articles, but by and large I’ve proven to myself that I can maintain consistent writing output.

So the next step is monetizing that output. The Ko-Fi works for one-off donations, but in terms of a revenue stream I need something more consistent. As such, I’ve started a patreon.

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A War of Personalities

Posted on June 8, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

I am rivals with Yuan Shao, but we tolerate each other, play at alliance, for there is long personal history between us. To betray that history would risk the wrath of mutual allies and old friends, and do terrible things to our reputation. So we glare, and tensions rise, and we race to take valuable territory from mutual foes, but we remain peaceful and our alliance strong enough.

But Yuan Shao dies, fighting bandits in the north, and his sons have no such compunctions. The Yuans vassalize their old foes and, as I march upon Dong Zhou, declare war. Now I’m at war on three fronts, against the Yuan in the east, Dong Zhou in the west, and a variety of vassal states to my north. I strike deals and manipulate some smaller states into fighting the Yuans, distracting his armies and giving me time and space to plan my next move. It would not have worked against Yuan Shao, too well loved by many of the men and women who now besiege his border territories, but his son has no such reputation.

This is the diplomatic world of Three Kingdoms: Total War, and it has helped turn Three Kingdoms into the best game in the series.

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Benioff, Weiss, and the Illusion of Writing

Posted on June 2, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

Nothing in a work of fiction happens because “that’s the character’s personality” or “that’s the way the world works” or “it’s just logical”, it happens because the writer chose for it to happen. The writer’s trick is disguising this. In presenting a story that is seamless enough that the truth is not realized or does not matter. This illusion is verisimilitude and it requires significant investment to maintain.

George RR Martin was a master of it. Ned’s death, the Red Wedding, the ever more racist narrative of Essos all clearly fit in the world. Plot developments might surprise but are clear results of the actions and motivations of the characters. Regardless of what you thought of the content, the events seem to be the clear consequences of actions taken rather than Martin just deciding what was going to happen next.

Benioff and Weiss (Occasionally called D&D) are not. And that gap in their skillset torpedoed the final season of Game of Thrones. It disappointed millions and ruined the reputation of a series previously considered the height of prestige TV.

But for us, that failure is a great learning opportunity. One that’ll involve spoilers, but if that bothers you, consider this your warning. Read the rest of this entry →

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Alien Day Short Films

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

Alien’s 40th Anniversary is coming up. Alien Day itself is today (April 26), and 20th Century Fox has been drip-feeding short films on youtube to set the stage for their big announcement. I’m a fan of the first two movies and so have been following the Alien Day preparations closely since I heard about the kickoff.

Unfortunately the announcements so far have been extremely disappointing. Alien will be in theaters for a few days in October, which I guess is kind of neat, but so far there hasn’t been a big announcement. It is, however, not a total wash because the shorts themselves are worth talking about.

They’re all available on IGN’s youtube account and have been released on a weekly basis since March 29th. I’ve largely avoided spoilers in the reviews below, but if you really want to go in with your eyes wide open you should check out that link before you proceed. Just make sure to watch Specimen, Alone, and Ore before you come back.

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Power Level Is Maximum

Posted on March 20, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

Before the movie came out a legion of haters, trolls, and assorted alt-right scum accused Captain Marvel of being some vanguard of political correctness. That it was going to be a feminist SJW movie putting politics in our comics, emasculate men, feature an overpowered hero, and be the vehicle for Disney to drain our precious bodily fluids for their own gain. They bombed the reviews, started on the smear pieces and personal attacks on Brie Larson well before the movie came out, and began crowing about the inevitable doom of Captain Marvel.

A summary of the pre-release captain marvel controversy

But now it’s out and smashing records. People can see the actual movie and put the truth to the lies. The best thing is, the reactionaries weren’t even wrong about it being a feminist SJW movie about politics. It’s just that that’s what makes the movie great.

Discussing that is going to involve some spoilers. If that isn’t your thing, I recommend you go watch the movie before you read on.

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Stop Giving Them a Voice

Posted on March 15, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

To every supporter of Pirro, of Carlson, of Maher, of Hirsi Ali, and Trump: what did you think was going to happen? Did you think there weren’t consequences to their words? When you talk about invasions and brown tides did you think people weren’t going to take you seriously? When you called us subhuman, every day, on every channel, since I was eight did you think it wouldn’t sink in?

You are responsible for this shit.

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I’m Writing an RPG

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Basheer Ghouse

You haven’t seen a lot of me this month. Few Incident Eliph updates, one, rather short post here, no public movement on short stories and the like. This isn’t because I’ve forgotten to, or because I’m suffering writer’s block, or because I’ve given up on Ko-Fi. Rather, it’s because I’ve been working on another project for most of the month.

I’m writing a tabletop RPG.

More accurately, I am co-writing Hope is a Nuclear War Crime with visionary RPG designer Erika Chappell.

Hope is a Nuclear War Crime is a roleplaying game about parenthood, the problems each generation passes on to the next, and the apocalypse. It takes aesthetic inspiration from Evangelion, Godzilla, and the super robot genre, while thematic content draws heavily from current events and Abrahamic eschatology.

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