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Author: Nick Ozment

Oz loves Godzilla, middle-school G.I. Joe (not old-school, not new-school; middle-school, spooky stories, trees, and really too many other things to list here.
Oz Reviews The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg

Oz Reviews The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg

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book of skullsThis novel came out in 1972 under the Signet Science Fiction imprint, which is quite misleading. There is nary a hint of sci-fi in its pages. Rather, The Book of Skulls is a deeply compelling psychological study, a book full of mystery and existential dread.

The story is told by four narrators: Eli, Ned, Oliver, and Timothy, Harvard college students who are the book’s protagonists. Each of the forty-two chapters is prefaced by the name of one of the four, the narrator of that chapter, so we are constantly shifting among the four minds. We get four strongly delineated perspectives as the story unfolds through their cross-country road trip to their ultimate goal: an ancient mystery cult in the Arizona desert that may possess the secret to physical immortality.

Eli, we learn, came across The Book of Skulls during one of his forays into the rare and uncatalogued manuscripts section of the university library. Translating it, he discovered the bizarre claim of the Brotherhood of Skulls, that they can forestall death. Further translation revealed that to become an initiate into their secrets of immortality, four candidates must come, a four-sided Receptacle. But part of the demand of the initiation is that two of the four must die: “The Ninth Mystery is this: that the price of a life must always be a life. Know, O Nobly-Born, that eternities must be balanced by extinctions. As by living we daily die, so then by dying we shall forever live.”

Eli has talked his three roommates into going with him in search of the cult over spring break, and each has his own motives for going along, which are gradually revealed as we get into their heads.

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Weird of Oz Delves into Dungeon Masters’ Minds

Weird of Oz Delves into Dungeon Masters’ Minds

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200px-DungeonMasterGuide4CoverThe way I see it, there are two types of Dungeon Masters — two archetypes, if you will: The Storyteller and the Rules Stickler. Of course, most game masters are some mix of both, but I’d like to try to describe these two different styles or approaches to RPG refereeing. And I’d love to hear from folks who are DMs as well as from players who have gamed with one sort of DM or the other.

In the comments section of this blog a few weeks back, an interesting conversation developed about these different styles of dungeon mastering (or game mastering, if you’re not talking exclusively about Dungeons & Dragons); specifically, the broad spectrum between the DM who is a rules stickler and the DM for whom the rules are, at best, optional suggestions. It was intriguing enough that I promised to revisit the topic in its own post.

Here we are. So get your gear (if you’re a rules stickler, be sure to add up encumbrance values and calculate any penalties), pack your Bag of Holding (don’t forget those rations — unless you have a sorcerer who can conjure up food as needed), and get ready to delve into the depths of the dungeon master’s id.

For mapping out this subject, I’m going to focus on the two ends of the spectrum, recognizing that most game masters fall somewhere in between these two extremes. I’ll call them the Rules Stickler and the Storyteller. But first, an observation that applies to the whole lot of them that don the mantle of master…

One of the variables of tabletop RPGs, a fascinating aspect of its social (read: human interaction) nature, is that the rules are malleable and shaped to some extent by the personality of the person sitting behind that Dungeon Master’s screen. Unlike an online RPG controlled by a program that runs automatically at one remove from its programmers and cannot be reasoned with or tweaked (unless you’re a hacker), on the tabletop the DM calls the shots every step of the way.

Sure, the players, if they are conversant with the rules, know when they get to roll the 20-sided die and what bonuses they’ll get to add from their dexterity or their magic item or whatever. Nevertheless, the DM can add any offsetting variable he thinks appropriate. He can override the outcome and, unless he is faced with a player mutiny, so it stands.

So how does each individual DM choose to exercise this (fictional) life-and-death power?

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Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating 3 (of 3)

Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating 3 (of 3)

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bill and ted

“Excellent, Dude! This movie was totally triumphant!… Not since the McKenzie Brothers or the Frog Brothers has a group come along as wild as these Wyld Stallyns…”

So I wrote 24 years ago in my review of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Dude, I totally didn’t talk like that — for those who never saw the movie, I was riffing on the way the characters speak.

Looking back over the review now, I notice that I list the then-unknown actor who played Ted as “Keavy Reeves.” We didn’t have the Internet Movie Database — or the Internet — back then; my guess is I misread the notes I jotted down in the theater.

I also notice it was a decent review that gave readers of the high school newspaper a good grasp of what the film was all about, albeit a bit adverb-heavy: “As one can probably tell this movie had great potential to be utterly stupid. It is on that fine line between being fantastically dumb and riotously hilarious, but it succeeds in being the latter. . . . It is an incredibly funny movie and I declare it excellent.”

2001-A-Space-OdysseySo the review holds up okay. Question is, does the movie? I confess I haven’t watched it in years, but I have seen it several times, and my memories of it are fond ones (it was filmed in the places where I hung out in high school, so it is a trip down memory lane in more ways than one).

When I declared Bill and Ted’s to be “excellent,” was I (aside from playing on the characters’ vernacular) putting it in the same category as 2001: A Space Odyssey? Bill and Ted’s is nominally a science-fiction (time travel) film. Of course, it is primarily a comedy, so was I elevating it to the ranks of Some Like It Hot, Duck Soup, and Dr. Strangelove? (If you haven’t guessed, the answer is Hell no.) This leaves one big question, which brings us to the final topic I wish to consider in this series on the art of rating: When we rate a film (or a book or a television show etc.), what are we rating it against?

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Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating 2 (of 3)

Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating 2 (of 3)

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cs_lewis
C.S. Lewis

Last week, I began my reflections on the art of rating. These thoughts are based on my own 25+ years of reviewing literature and film, as well as on being an avid reader of reviews and follower of particular critics.

To recap, in last week’s post I covered the selection of a ratings scale, which can vary from the most simple “thumbs up/thumbs down” to a more nuanced 10-point scale such as I use (five stars, with half-star increments). I also touched on the implications of being either a stingy or a generous rater.

This week, I’ll delve a bit deeper by considering the importance of establishing one’s viewpoint and communicating that viewpoint (with all its preferences and prejudices) to the reader.

After I see a film, there are two additional pay-offs besides the film-viewing experience itself: 1) (social) discussing the film with friends, family, colleagues who also saw it; and 2) (solitary) paying a visit to rottentomatoes.com, the aggregating site that links to hundreds of reviewers, to find out what amateur and professional critics thought of it. It’s fun to see how one’s own impression compares to the general consensus, and I enjoy those “A-ha!” moments when a critic deftly articulates some emotional or intellectual response the film also evoked in me (or when they wittily trash an aspect of the film that I also abhorred). Doesn’t always happen, even when a critic has assigned to a film the same rating I’ve given it. It goes without saying that we can like the same thing for different reasons; likewise, we can dislike something equally vehemently, but on completely different grounds.

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Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating

Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating

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siskel-and-ebertAs a film and book reviewer for a number of periodicals and websites over the years, I have often wrestled with the art of rating. To some, the awarding of stars to a particular work might seem a simple matter, but there is a craft to it, and it is one of those tasks that can be as complicated as you care to make it — you can assign a rating on gut instinct, jotting down the first number that pops into your head, or you can (as I often do) vacillate back and forth over whether you should add that extra half star.

It is also one of the most subjective undertakings. It is one thing to decide whether you enjoyed a movie; it is quite another to assign it some value on a fixed scale. First off, you, the reviewer, must decide on what criteria and within what framework you are going to base your ratings. In fact, this varies so dramatically from one reviewer to the next that the best you can hope for is to be as consistent as possible with yourself.

Believe me, there is no set, agreed-upon code among professional critics to which you need worry about conforming; you just need to make sure your readers can understand your reasoning. It is also helpful to communicate your personal tastes and preferences insofar as they influence your assessments, so that readers know where you’re coming from. Here are some other considerations…

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Weird of Oz Reminisces: A Friend of the Imagination

Weird of Oz Reminisces: A Friend of the Imagination

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cobra_hiss_When I say “a friend of the imagination,” I do not mean an imaginary friend. Shane was, and is, real. The only son of one of my mom’s dear friends, he loomed large in the first decade of my life, though I only saw him about once a year.

I’m sure that when you cast your mind back to that first, formative era — to the halcyon days of youth that began your journey and shaped its course in ways both obvious and subtle — you recall some friend or acquaintance who holds a special place in your own private history’s pantheon of important people. Perhaps he or she first introduced you to something — an idea or hobby or sport — that would prove to be a lifetime love, a lifelong pursuit.

Shane was one such person, a boy who unwittingly (and, perhaps to this day, unbeknownst to him) enriched my creativity and broadened my imagination. I can’t help but think his example had some impact on my career as a creative writer; it was, at least, one branch in the confluence of influences that brought me here to this moment, writing a blog for Black Gate.

Shane’s mom had grown up with mine but moved to California, so about once a year she and her son came to visit us in Arizona. These visits account for some of my earliest and fondest memories. To them I can trace important moments in the unfolding path I have followed. Granted, some of these imaginative leaps might have come in other circumstances had Shane never come from that faraway country sung about by the Beach Boys. There were many other seminal formative events, particular authors and movies (it is a time of life that is littered with such discoveries, naturally), but Shane happened to be the one who nudged my imagination along on almost an annual basis throughout my grade-school years, like a sensei who periodically appears and says, “All right. You’re ready for the next level. And this one is particularly rad and gnarly.” (Okay, I can’t recall if he actually used ‘80s surfer slang, but I think he did use some. We all did. It was in the air.)

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Weird of Oz Rides the Blu-ray, visits Betamax

Weird of Oz Rides the Blu-ray, visits Betamax

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the-dark-knight-rises-combo-packJust a brief post today, some passing thoughts not about sci-fi, fantasy, or horror in particular, but about the formats in which we receive much of our sci-fi, fantasy, and horror entertainment these days…

One of the odder examples of hybrid entertainment packaging to come along in some time, I think, is the DVD/Blu-ray combo pack. Since all DVDs play on Blu-ray players, the DVD is a little redundant. The only market I can think of for which this combo would be a practical necessity is people who do not yet have a Blu-ray player but plan to upgrade to one in the near future. This way they can watch the movie now and have the Blu-ray in their collection already when they do make the jump. That must be a fairly small demographic, and shrinking by the day as people upgrade out of it.

I suppose there could be a few who have a Blu-ray player in one room and just a DVD player in another, and they want to be able to watch the film in either room? “Serious mysterious,” as Alfred Hedgehog, the latest cartoon character my daughter is obsessed with, would say. Aw well, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. Here’s how combo-pack mania has played out in our house: the Blu-ray disc gets put up out of reach of prying hands, and the DVDs are left out to get smudged up and scratched all to hell.

Speaking of new technologies, those of you who, like me, are old enough to remember when VCRs debuted in your living room may recall that initially there were two competing technologies: VHS and Betamax. The fate of the latter is well illustrated by the fact that Word flags it as a misspelling and suggests I replace it with “Bateman.” Now, the conventional wisdom is that Betamax was the superior technology and that the only reason VHS won out is thanks to superior marketing. In other words, like sheep, we embraced the inferior product because more money was spent on getting us to do so.

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Weird of Oz Reviews Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies

Weird of Oz Reviews Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies

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showgirlsA non-fiction fad of the past decade has been for an author to do something outrageous for a year and then write a book detailing the experience. If you know someone who inexplicably stopped bathing for months, or who stopped shaving or cutting his hair, or who started eating all her food raw and communicating only with gestures and grunts, you may know someone who has embarked on living like a person in the Middle Ages, or like a caveman — with an eye, of course, to chronicling it all and cranking out a bestseller. Do them a favor and tell them it’s probably already been done. Writers like A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically) have cornered the market on myself-as-the-story immersive or “stunt” journalism.

I’ve read a number of these “stunt books” by various authors; frequently they are entertaining page-turners, and they do offer interesting perspectives and provide some bizarre, oftentimes fascinating trivia. But I have also grown oversensitive to the tendency of some such writers to indulge in a bit of melodramatic self-pity: “For 200 days now I haven’t been able to [fill in the blank], and my wife is totally exasperated!” Yes, these folks put themselves through some crazy regimens of self-denial and eccentric behavior, but journalists have gone through far worse to get a story: try reporting from a war zone, for instance.

For his “stunt book,” Australian film critic Michael Adams undertook a task that puts him squarely on the radar of this blog: he decided to watch at least one bad film every day for a year in a quest to find the Worst. Film. Ever Made. Ever. As somewhat of a connoisseur of B- and Z-grade films, I eagerly picked up this comprehensive report from a fellow cinephile: Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies (2010). So here, now, is a brief review of the bad-movie viewer…

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Weird of Oz Wishes you a Happy Easter

Weird of Oz Wishes you a Happy Easter

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Mixed-media collage by Nick Ozment

Happy Easter! Or, if you do not celebrate that holiday, happy celebration of spring and the goddess of fertility!

I have nothing to review or to report today. I will soon be following my young children around as they fill their baskets with eggs. But for those of you who snuck away from the ham and hardboiled eggs long enough to log on and drop by, I wanted to be here to chat at the Gate a minute or two.

This weird blog of Oz’s is about three months old; last week, its entries entered the double digits. Today, for post number 11 (“This blog goes up to 11.” And thumbs up to those of you who get that allusion), I thought I’d mention a few of the projects I have in the works for upcoming posts. And, if you’re feeling chatty, you could help me out by letting me know if any topic in particular piques your interest, which may influence my prioritizing.

  • I’m reading Manly Wade Wellman’s complete John Thunstone collection, which I recently won in a Black Gate giveaway. When I’m done, I’ll post a review.
  • I have a stack of the complete run of Arak, Son of Thunder that is just crying out for a series of issue-by-issue breakdowns.
  • In a follow-up to an earlier post, I’d like to do an episode-by-episode guide to the new Scooby-Doo series Mystery Inc., “annotated” to note the fantasy/sci-fi/horror allusions and references peppered throughout.
  • In another follow-up, I’m hankering to try some more single-player RPGs similar to the Fighting Fantasy books that I reviewed a couple weeks back.
  • As I said from the outset, a large part of what fuels the engine of this blog is nostalgia. In that vein, I’ll be revisiting some vintage fantasy board games like Dungeon!.
  • Also — top secret confidential hush hush — over the past few years I’ve been doing some research to uncover the sources or inspirations for certain D&D monsters that burst straight from the mind of Gary Gygax, i.e., iconic D&D monsters that have no clear antecedent in myth or folklore (the rust monster, for example).
  • The last two comments to last week’s post inspired me to begin writing a piece considering the spectrum of RPG game-masters and players ranging across the continuum between pure gamers (the rules sticklers) and storytellers (those who may consult the dice, but the GM’s final call is always more bound to the service of the unfolding narrative over and above any game rules).

There are more — always more ideas floating around up here in this egg than I can pursue to all their rabbit holes — but I’ll leave it there for now.

See you in April.

Weird of Oz Huffs About Hit Points

Weird of Oz Huffs About Hit Points

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evolutionWith gamer-geek hat still squarely donned following last week’s review of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, today I want to chat about hit points. First off, I think it’s safe to say that the concept of hit points revolutionized gaming for all time. Its influence is seen in almost every video game in existence today. Any arcade game that featured a life bar in the corner of the screen, growing shorter with each bit of damage inflicted until the inevitable “Game Over,” originated from the idea of hit points — a scale that keeps track of the damage a character has sustained and that lets the player know how much more punishment the character can take before he/she either has to retreat or drink a healing potion or die.

What got me thinking about this was reading Michael J. Tresca’s book The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games (2011). Tresca notes that hit points were introduced by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in the 1972 wargame Don’t Give Up the Ship! from Guidon Games (p 50). They would later incorporate it into their most famous collaboration: Dungeons & Dragons. In prior strategy wargames, the winner of a skirmish was determined by first move, rank, or number of troops (sometimes with the added luck factor of a dice roll).

First move is employed in chess or checkers. If your knight lands on my pawn’s square, I lose my pawn. But if my pawn lands on your knight’s square, you lose your knight: There’s no question of whether a pawn could beat a knight in combat, or whether the knight might be able to defend his square against some lowly upstart pawn — even if the pawn did get the drop on him!

Rank is exemplified by card games. King of hearts beats a jack of hearts every time. Never has the scenario come up when a player laid down a king on a jack, and the other player said, “Surprise! My jack was harboring a poison dagger in his sleeve — your king is dead. Et tu, jack of hearts?”

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