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Art of the Genre: The Top 10 Role-Playing Games of All-Time

Art of the Genre: The Top 10 Role-Playing Games of All-Time

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SFAD Cover-1In my continuing series of ‘Top 10s’, I’m very happy to be doing a subject that incorporates two things I would simply have a hard time living without: fantasy gaming art and the games themselves.  So, considering I’m currently in the middle of running a Kickstarter that not only is looking to produce an absolute load of original fantasy fiction, but also an RPG and art book,  what better time to compose a list of The Top Ten Role-Playing Games of All Time.

Now, I suppose I should mention that I’ve been playing RPGs since I was 10, and without revealing just how old I am, it must be understood there is a measurable amount of time involved there.  Certainly, I’m not the foremost expert on role-playing games, but I’m going to put myself in the upper 10% of gamers and that should give me enough perspective to comprise this list.

Having established that I can’t help but say that going back in time, weighing the impact, reach, and longevity of so many games was an absolute thrill, and so many memories came flooding back with each one.  I was also surprised at how many I’d played (all of them), even if just once during a random gaming session in some long forgotten era of my life.

These games, you see, are like time capsules of memory, and when they come up in conversation with gamers, I think every one of those in the discussion is ripped back through time to the point where they sat at a table, rolled dice, and laughed with friends most likely long out of their lives.  Only games that take place on a table-top make such an intimate miracle happen, their power unmistakable and their reach deeper than most non-gamers would ever understand.

So, without further ado, let’s get into the meat of this list and find out just what games made it in, which ones were snubbed, and how many people can disagree with my choices!

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Art of the Genre: Art of the Iconic Female #4: The Baroness

Art of the Genre: Art of the Iconic Female #4: The Baroness

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It seems to me the Baroness was made to be drawn by Adam Hughes...
It seems to me the Baroness was made to be drawn by Adam Hughes…

What isn’t to love about The Baroness?  Well, I suppose a great deal if you are on the side of ‘good’, but nonetheless she’s still a character that has captured the imagination of a generation of young men growing up in the 1980s.

I was a fan of action figures, and when Hasbro initially released their G.I. Joe A Real American Hero  line in 1982, I spent three days one weekend catching nightcrawlers (bait worms in southern Indiana speak) by hand with a flashlight at five cents a pop until I had enough to purchase the first run (rough calculation, I caught upwards of 1000 of the slimy little buggers).

At the time, I was eleven, and my G.I. Joe figures provided a great combat story to be told over and over again in the woods by my house, in my sandbox, on the riverbank, and on the floors of various friends living rooms, but I must admit a purely war-driven story can get tiresome without something more meaningful to fight for.

Enter Cobra, the G.I. Joe nemesis. But still, even after you could lay hands on villains to fight, there was something lacking until women were finally added to the story.  The addition of Scarlet was a turning point for me in my action figure storylines, and yet a great deal of imagination had to be used because to this point action figure manufacturing hadn’t really ‘figured women out’.  That is to simply say, female action figures weren’t all that alluring, mostly because you couldn’t effectively produce their hair.

Sure, there was Star Wars, of which I had a nice collection as well, who had Princess Leia, and that figure was fine, but they (the manufacturers) had a huge advantage because of Leia’s famous head-buns.  Those could be sculpted, but free-flowing hair was a much more difficult endeavor and so figures like G.I. Joe alums Scarlet, Lady J, and heaven forbid Covergirl (probably the ugliest figure ever created and based on a model turned soldier of all things!) never really made boys’ hearts go pitter-pat unless you were reading the Marvel comics or watching the animation.

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Adventure on Film: Flesh and Blood

Adventure on Film: Flesh and Blood

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2206Se_ores_del_AceroFlesh and Blood (1985) is neither high art nor Paul Verhoeven’s best film, but it does contain flashes of genuine magic and an exceptional eye for the grime and grit of Medieval Italy. It also carries its fair share of star power thanks to the presence of Rutger Hauer, Verhoeven’s frequent co-conspirator, as mercenary soldier Martin.

The plot in a nutshell: Martin and his band of trouble-making friends are part of Hawkwood’s Army (though which of Hawkwood’s many armies is allowably unclear), but soon enough Hawkwood turns on his scruffy, ill-mannered war-hounds, stripping them of their pay and their pickings. Demoralized but determined, Martin and company make a break for the countryside, where they kidnap Princess Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh), then hole themselves up in a rural castle in which Agnes teaches her captors, as best she can, the fine arts of civilized behavior. But of course Hawkwood comes calling, paid now to recapture the princess. The clash that follows pits swords against fumbling attempts at science, with bubonic plague waiting in the wings.

Flesh and Blood proves to be a trifle cartoonish at times, a la Robocop, but one thing Verhoeven never lacks is energy. He’s a naughty schoolboy, yes, and at times his fondness for splatter, gore, and, well, flesh, threatens to undermine the film’s highbrow, philosophical script, but he’s also a craftsman with the heart of an animator –– both the camera and its subjects are in almost constant motion –– and provided you’ve got a strong stomach, Flesh and Blood provides ample period entertainment and many a fine battle.

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Adventure On Film: Westworld

Adventure On Film: Westworld

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westworld-1How any adult, in this day and age, can approach Westworld (1973) in anything remotely close to the appropriate frame of mind is beyond me. To further complicate an open, honest viewing, the film could not possibly telegraph its intentions more bluntly. Will the tourists attending Western World, Roman World, and Medieval World have the time of their vacationing lives? Well, yes –– but in short order, they will be done in by their out-of-control hosts, robots one and all, semi-sentient machines understandably tired of living out their days getting gunned down by their rich and warm-blooded doppelgangers.

Pardon me if in the course of this review I don’t concern myself with spoilers.  If the DVD’s cover doesn’t give the game away, the first two minutes of the film surely will.

Leaving, then… what? A cautionary tale, in which we fragile mortals should learn to stop messing around with simulacrums? Or is it an adventure in which the stakes are high and the six-guns are fast?

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Adventure on Film: Why Hollywood Gets it Wrong

Adventure on Film: Why Hollywood Gets it Wrong

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star-trek-game-beams-up-in-april-2013.jpgAs I write this, April is just around the corner, and now that Hollywood’s best and brightest studios no longer know how to calculate the beginning of summer, I smell blockbuster season ripening fast on the vine. Just think, in mere weeks, we can all flock to see Star Trek: Into Darkness, Iron Man 3, Wolverine, Oblivion, Pacific Rim, Elysium, and Man of Steel.

What do nearly all of these movies have in common? I’ll tell you, spoiler-free: the fate of the world will hang in the balance.

Which is why I shall be staying home –– again –– for blockbuster season. If I have learned anything in all my forays into drama, it is this: cinema offers no more boring subject, no greater snoozefest, than global peril.

Heresy, I know.

But I’m right. Here’s why.

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Master of Shadows

Master of Shadows

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MoS 6As I mentioned last week, Red Sonja’s first series ended with issue fifteen. But cancellation often came quickly and without warning in the Bronze Age of Comics (look it up – it’s my favorite era). So there was already another Red Sonja story written and illustrated, no doubt ready for coloring, when the axe fell.

Well, nothing went to waste at the House of Ideas, so in October 1979, the story was published as a back-up feature in Savage Sword of Conan 45, in glorious black and white. Master of Shadows reads like a new direction for the series was seriously being considered before the whole thing got shut down. It’s one of the rare Red Sonja stories completely free of the supernatural and with a plot that’s far more coherent than what we’ve come to expect from the She-Devil with a Sword.

The new direction is likely due in large part to Roy Thomas being replaced as writer by Christy Marx. If that name sounds familiar, it might be because you heard an interview with her a couple months back. Maybe you’re a fan of her sword-and-sorcery limited series, Sisterhood of Steel. Maybe you’re following her current take on Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld in the pages of Sword of Sorcery.

But, more likely, you’ll remember her as the creator of Jem, the truly outrageous holographic pop singer from the 1980s. Jem would occasionally get transported back in time or shanghaied by yetis in her never-ending quest to keep the Starlight Home for Plot Device Girls open. So Marx certainly would seem to have the writing pedigree to follow-up giant clams and ancient green robots. But she instead chose a rather straight interpretation of the character.

Of course, there’s still room for fun in a straight version of Red Sonja. The story opens with our heroine trying to catch a nap in a public park. Draped out on a park bench in her chain mail bikini, she certainly draws her share of appreciative leers, but three men in particular decide to approach her with the standard “show you a good time” dialogue. Two of the three get tossed in a nearby pond, while the third, who only identifies himself as the Master of the House of Shadow, tells her that she was right to toss them, but now she should leave town as they’ll want revenge. It’s good advice, but Sonja won’t be driven off.

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Adventure on Film: Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

Adventure on Film: Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

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Under a fearsome black-and-white moon, a boy, perhaps twelve, enters a fever dream of navigator2orange-fired torches whirling down infinite chasms, of men clambering up a towering church steeple, of skies moving too quickly for thought. The boy’s careworn, grubby face melts into black and white rippling water, and the nightmare — if nightmare it is — comes to a sudden end.

Welcome to Fourteenth Century Cumbria, a snowy, monochromatic waste, all bare rock and snowdrifts and blackwater lakes. In a hardscrabble mining village, young Griffin, plagued by his apocalyptic visions, waits for his idol, Connor, to return from a visit to the wider world. But even before Connor’s return, all talk is of death, for the Plague is come, marching inexorably closer.  The villagers quickly convince themselves that only a holy quest can save them, and on the slimmest of evidence — Griffin’s disjointed prognostications — Connor, Griffin and four other men set off, bound for a mineshaft so deep (it is said) that it leads straight to the other side of the world. Griffin’s band brings a copper cross that they hope to mount to a titanic cathedral as an offering, a Cumbrian plea to stave off death itself.

Griffin finds the mineshaft right enough, together with a mechanical battering ram with which the men bore a hole to the far side of reality. And what do they find once there?  Twentieth century New Zealand.

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Adventure on Film: Mirror, Mirror

Adventure on Film: Mirror, Mirror

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Stand back, comrades, the gloves are off.mirror-mirror-440

I hate this movie.

Unfortunately — and somewhat confusingly — I also love it.

Help.  I’m so confused!

Riddle me this: why exactly did Mirror, Mirror’s good king have to marry the wicked stepmother queen? Perhaps it’s because she’s so smartly played by Julia Roberts, but no: the reason given, in a sassy prologue, is that the king discovered certain things (martial skills) that he could not teach his daughter. Therefore, he had to marry anew, his first wife having conveniently died giving birth to Snow White.

Let’s stop right there. This is an example of what we Black Gate critics call GLOSSING OVER. In certain circles, it’s also called DELIBERATE OBFUSCATION.

The information that the king must remarry is presented so fast, and with all the confidence of a logical fait accompli, that we are supposed to ignore its hypocrisy, stupidity, and outright vapidity and quickly move on.

Well. This lil’ critic ain’t fallin’ for it.

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Genre 2013: The John Pierce Experiment

Genre 2013: The John Pierce Experiment

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Unknown-1You remember John Pierce: his Bell Labs team invented the transistor, and he coined the term. But, like the rest of us, he had his little gaps. When in his eighties, he met up with author Dan Levitin, who was busy writing that complicated puzzler of a book, This Is Your Brain On Music. Much to Levitin’s dismay, Pierce revealed that he had never knowingly heard any rock music. Now, as to how one can live in a developed nation and achieve this, I don’t know, but once Levitin discovered this curious deficit, the two had a little heart-to-heart, and Pierce asked Levitin to provide six –– count ‘em, six –– prime examples of rock and roll from which he might form an opinion and make appropriate generalizations about the whole.

What does this have to do with Black Gate and fantasy literature? Trust me. Read on.

Levitin’s six tunes were as follows:

  • “Long Tall Sally” by Little Richard
  • “Roll Over Beethoven” by the Beatles
  • “All Along the Watchtower,” by Jimi Hendrix
  • “Wonderful Tonight,” by Eric Clapton
  • “Little Red Corvette,” by Prince
  • “Anarchy in the U.K.,” by the Sex Pistols

Scary choices, methinks, especially those last two. But regardless of my opinion (or yours), Pierce’s request poses two dilemmas.

First, if faced with this same conundrum, which songs would you choose?

Second, what if this situation were applied to fiction? Or better yet, to the ongoing divide in genre vs. literary fiction?

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Adventure on Film: Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather

Adventure on Film: Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather

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Hogfather DeathHaving been all but dared, following my rather critical summation of The Color Of Magic (2008), to view a subsequent Pratchett adaptation, Hogfather (2006, made for TV), I confess I embarked on this quest with great trepidation, especially when I learned the production team responsible was essentially identical to that assembled for Color.

However, I am happy to report that Hogfather is a much superior effort. First, the comedy is spot on. Second, the concept of assassinating Santa Claus (or whatever) is fine dramatic fodder. Third, the film continually asks questions that we (the viewers) really want answered.

Questions such as, who is this Susan woman who looks like Keira Knightley (but turns out to be Downton Abbey‘s Michelle Dockery), and why exactly is she posing as a monster-fighting governess, when it’s perfectly clear she’s some sort of extremely powerful something or other –– and when do we get to find out what?

Great art has been made from less.

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