Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them: Bigger Potential Makes for a Bigger Letdown

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them came so close to being a good movie that it hurt. It had so many things going for it, and all they needed to do was just fall into place to tell a story far better than any of the Harry Potters. But alas, it was not meant be! The refusal to take the last necessary steps into awesome territory and a final fifteen minutes that came crashing down around what had been built up, as though to telegraph just how badly I was about to be disappointed, managed to drag the whole thing into the rubbish bin. When I found myself thinking “Oh, my God, a pulpy story in the Harry Potter universe?!” I realized that there was no way I would not be disappointed, and no amount of finger crossing could save me.

Fantastic Beasts has a lot of stuff going for it, especially early on. In fact, up through the scene where they’re at the goblin speakeasy, I’m thinking “Man, this is fantastic!”

To begin with, FB starts essentially the same way as Mo-Sanshon!; an outsider crosses the path of a normal guy and drags him off on a wild adventure. Newt Scamander, a squirrely wizard with a menagerie of monsters enlists the help of the unwitting Jacob Kowalski to help him recover creatures that have escaped. Kowalski is the normal joe, everyman hero like the kind you’d see in the pulps – he was a part of the expeditionary forces in World War One, he’s a blue collar worker, and he has a dream of starting his own business.* Where these two cross paths is in the bank where Kowalski is trying to get a loan to open a bakery; at this point, we don’t know if Scamander is going to be a shifty villain or wild trickster, given the trouble he’s causing, but we know right away that Kowalski is someone we’re going to be rooting for!

Not only does it have the perfect pulp adventure setup, it’s got dames! Tina Goldstein is tough and no nonsense; she takes her job seriously and she’s capable – unfortunately, her compassion (and a bit of temper) had put her in a bad spot with her superiors and it’s shaken her confidence a bit. Her sister Queenie is smart and sexy, a powerful master of domestic arts (I know how this sounds, but watching her make dinner for Kowalski was absolutely one of the best scenes in the whole movie), and devilishly clever, but even though she can read people’s thoughts, she doesn’t resent men for thinking she’s a bombshell. She even falls for the normie every-joe!

The fact that Kowalski holds his own fairly well, a few bumbles aside, and isn’t reduced to a punching bag works out really strongly for a good chunk of the film. Unfortunately, the movie can’t fully embrace the fact that Jacob Kowalski is the real hero of the story. Wizards can do, get into, and get out of just about anything; Kowalski can’t, which is why the stakes for him as a mere mortal who’s won the heart of a gorgeous wizard dame are incredibly high and why he’s the one to root for. Unfortunately, when things reach their head with the uninteresting A-plot-that-feels-like-a-B-plot with whatshisname the evil wizard and the crazy orphan boy, Kowalski never gets his big-damn-hero moment that he desperately needs…that WE desperately need. Frankly, Scamander doesn’t get one either, and the whole unmasking of the bad guy as being some other bad guy felt incredibly anti-climactic. I didn’t care about the kid with the crazy chaotic magic powers or the guy trying to manipulate him; I cared about whether or not Kowalski would be able to break the no-normies-hooking-up-with-wizards taboo and if he’d get that bank loan!

Spoilers! There have been spoilers before, but I’m really going to spoil it now.

Even though the movie was starting to completely fall apart by the big wizard… conversation at the end, I’m thinking “Okay, there’s still a chance… there’s still a chance!” President Wizard Lady says ‘this is a disaster, we can’t wipe the memories of everyone in Manhattan’, and Scamander says ‘lol, yeah we can, cuz this thing I have’. Kowalski has to get wiped. There’s a teary scene as Kowalski steps into the rain where he’ll forget his big adventure and his love with Queenie. While Scamander gets pardoned and is allowed to go off back to England with his monsters and publish his book, the best he gets is an awkward derpy scene with Tina; we needed a moment of ‘Damnit all, New York is the publishing capital of the world, I’ll stay!’ with a big kiss on the docks. The final scene where Kowalski has his bakery with pastries shaped like the half-forgotten monster and a smiling Queenie shows up tries to bring things back around, but it’s nowhere near as good as we’d gotten to see him stand up to the President Wizard and say “I’ll have any dame I want, and I want her, and she wants me, and you wizards be damned if you’re gonna stop us!”

 

This movie came SO CLOSE to being what I wanted from a gonzo fantasy movie set in the Roaring 20s New York, and that’s what makes it hurt the worst. Frankly, the characters were far more likable than anyone else in the Potterverse. But one of the major problems the movie had was trying to work in a good versus evil conflict that just wasn’t nearly as interesting as the main good-guys and the host of cool, scary, and cute monsters. If they had completely excised the stupid and inane plot about Grindelwald pretending to be Graves and the kid who’d gone crazy supernova from being forced to hide his magic powers by a crazy magic hating orphanarium marm and just made it about tracking down a bunch of weird monsters that had escaped and undoing the damage they’d done, it would’ve been a much better story, because all of the parts of the movie focusing on the later were absolutely wonderful. Supposedly, there are going to be several more movies about Grindelwald, which sucks, because his storyline was the worst part of the movie that dragged the whole damn thing down. I don’t care about what the wizards do with boring generic evil wizard-guy, I wanted to see Scamander throw his British reserve to the wind and give Goldstein that hero’s kiss she obviously wanted and was literally crying because she knew she would not get.

*:Normal joes tended to be a lot more awesome back then; it’s a law of averages thing.

The Wise Red Fellow

AC: 0
HD: 12****
Move: 90’ (30’)*
Attacks: Gaze / 2 claws + 1 bite
Damage: Special / 2d6 each + Special/
No Appearing: 1
Save As: F12
Morale: 12
Alignment: Chaotic

The Wise Red Fellow stands well over 9 feet tall, even though his body appears to be that of a frail and stooped old man. His body is hunched over to support his enormous triangular head.

The head of this creature appears to always face the person observing it, even if directly behind it. Any individual caught in the Wise Red Fellow’s gaze must save vs. paralysis or be transfixed. If the victim succeeds on their saving throw, they must again make a saving throw against spells at -4 or be affected as per the spell Fear. Dwarves need not make the first saving throw and suffer no penalty on the second. Elves need not make either saving throw.

The Wise Red Fellow will move towards a paralyzed target, taking two rounds to reach them regardless of distance. Upon reaching the victim, the Wise Red Fellow will swallow them whole. Characters killed in this manner cannot be restored outside of a Wish spell.

If forced to fight, the Wise Red Fellow will attack with its two long-clawed hands. If both claw attacks hit, the Wise Red Fellow does no damage but will attempt a bite attack; if the bit attack succeeds, it does no damage, but the Wise Red Fellow will swallow its victim whole.

The Wise Red Fellow is immune to spells cast by Elves. Damage dealt to the Wise Red Fellow by magical weapons is halved.

The Wise Red Fellow is thought to be either a demon or a creature of fey, perhaps even a forgotten god. Legend holds that its head is filled and weighted with polished stones and its heart is an uncut ruby that oozes blood on the solstices. Supposedly, it possesses the knowledge of all beings it has consumed; some witches claim it can be summoned and petitioned for aid on an equinox by pouring sacrificial blood onto uncut rubies.

Thoughts on Berserker — PC Bushi

Earlier this year, I read Berserker and thought it was a pretty solid collection of short stories. I don’t know that I’m ready or have the time to plunge headlong, committing myself to the extensive Berserkerverse, but the first book was pretty great (even though I keep hearing folks say ‘the writing wasn’t as good in that one).

I wrote a little about Berserker last week. Though the series isn’t specifically name-dropped in Appendix N (Saberhagen does get an “et al,”), I thought it was quite good and a spiffy intro to his stuff. My enjoyment of the first installment may have contributed to my Black Friday purchasing decisions (Changeling Earth and the Complete […]

via Thoughts on Berserker — PC Bushi

Projects, Projects, and More Projects

We’ve just about finished going through all of the submissions for 2017. We should be able to announce the line-up for at least issue 5 by mid-December. Issue 6 may be a little later, partly because the incredibly tough choices that need to be made within the constraints of budget and space. While I can always adjust for space, the only way we can adjust for budget is by our reader’s support.

• Buying copies for stocking stuffers helps, naturally.
• If you’d like to buy a back cover advertisement for either issue, that covers an entire story, right there.
• We’re also considering doing some merch, for people who’ve bought all of our issues but still want to find new ways to support us. We will be setting up a CafePress or similar store soon, hopefully in time for Christmas, but it’s looking a little late for that, now. We also need to touch base with our artists to make sure that they’re okay with that in the use terms for the art we’ve commissioned.

I need to put together the pre-order Kickstarter for next year. I’ll probably flip it live in January so you’ll have someplace to spend that Christmas money you get.

With everything that’s been going on, I’ve struggled to keep up with both my pulps column AND writing new gaming content, but the last couple weeks, S:tT helped inspire me to get a few more gaming posts, and the long weekend let me not only catch up on my Planet Stories reading, I started the first volume of Swords of Steel. I’m always a little wary of promoting advertisers by way of review (ethics, and all), so I wanted to read it for myself before I started going into how you need to buy this (but really, support our sponsors, so they’ll continue to sponsor us). You need to read them. I’ll do some mini posts on it, if not actual reviews of the stories, but Swords of Steel is the real deal, and if you want more stories like the kinds we love and publish, DMR’s anthology series is a must read.

Lastly, things are coming along nicely with the Stark project. I’m probably going to go over the text AT LEAST one more time before I say “the text is good to go”, but I have the text from all three novellas prepped, formatted, and checked against the original Planet Stories text. I’ve avoided taking an editorial pen to the text except in occasions where an obvious typographical error is present and in one or two instances where a missing comma creates a confusing sentence.

The stage I’m at now is writing up character descriptions backed with examples from text, assembling project specs that could be turned over to artists. Once that stage is done, I’ll just need to scrounge the money I need to get things started. Fortunately, the Kickstarter for that is more or less ready for me to flip a switch on. When the day comes, I’ll have a press release to send out.

Lastly, I’m considering writing a self-help/DIY book on how to put out an SFF mag or anthology. I’ve gotten a lot of comments along the lines of “oh, wow, that’s so impressive, I wish I could do something like that, it’s crazy how you managed to put out a magazine that looks as good as it does.” The truth is, anybody can do it, and unless you go at the breakneck pace I did for 2016, it doesn’t cost a lot of money, either. So, I may try to collate and impart what I have learned.

Music – Free Bird, Lynyrd Skynyrd

http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/23/brooklyn-grocery-store-played-sweet-home-alabama-everyone-lost-minds/

 

Have a Great Thanksgiving!

You may notice things are scant here this week, but that’s because we’re busy with our submissions stack and hunkering down for the Holiday!

I hope to get lots of reading done over the long weekend, including catching back up on my pulps and some other anthologies I have acquired.

See you next week!

Solutions to Bring Vancian Magic into Your OD&D/Holmes/Moldvay Game

I’ve written in the past how Basic D&D’s magic system isn’t truly Vancian. I’m not talking Vancian in the “Fire and Forget” manner which has become so reviled because it is so misunderstood. I’m talking Vancian in the sense that the flavors of the mechanics evoke the sense of one having to scrounge for and collect ancient lost and forgotten arcana at great cost.

In OD&D and (to a lesser degree) Holmes, Magic Users have access to all spells at levels they can cast at. There are even rules that imply they can simply go down to the spell emporium and buy a replacement spellbook at fixed cost to replace any spellbook they lost. In B/X, Magic Users only learn one spell/add one spell to their spellbook per level. In all of those cases, there’s no finding scrolls to learn new spells by adding them to your spellbook.

Shitlord: the Triggering settles on a hybrid of Holmes and AD&D that allows you to incorporate truly Vancian magic into your setting, and it arrives at the place that my own house-rules on magic were more or less heading.

S:tT uses Holmes’s Intelligence chart for chance to learn spells and minimum/maximum number of basic spells per level for its Bullshitter (Magic User) class. It specifies that “a beginning Bullshitter’s spell book contains as many of the eight basic first level spells as the newb character can know.” However, it goes on to specify that a MU would need to find and copy new spells into his spellbook. So, here is how it would work:

-At first level, the DM would select the MU’s INT guaranteed 1^st level spells, then MU would roll to see how many of the other 1^st level spells they know. Based on the wording, the rules imply that those spells are simply not in their spellbook, but they CAN be learned in the future if a)the MU finds the appropriate scroll, b)the MU has not reached the maximum known spells for their INT, and c)the MU succeeds on the chance to learn the spell.

-At third level, when an MU gains ability to cast 2^nd level spells, instead of suddenly gaining access to a new spellbook full of all 2^nd level spells that they either can or cannot cast, the MU can begin to inscribe 2^nd level spells that he finds. Up to their minimum spells per level number, the MU would not have to roll to learn the new spell. Once the minimum number of spells per level has been reached, the MU would need to roll their % chance to learn the new spell.

While not flawless in its explanation (some of this is my own extrapolation), this offers a potential model, along with the necessary charts missing from Moldvay, of how to do AD&D-style Vancian magic in a Basic game.

 

Cover and Defense

Two completely separate things, in this case!

At Seagull Rising, Jon Mollison talks about Cirsova’s cover art in comparison to some of the big-name magazines.

One thing, as a heavy fantasy-leaning magazine with most of our SF stuff being more Sword & Planet, we have ended up with more fantasy-esque covers. Worth noting, though, the guy on the cover of issue 2 has a pre-Star Wars light saber (Star Lances; the first Dream Lords book was 1975).

It may be a bit before we get an outer-space SF cover, especially since issue 5 is going to be Lovecraftian Sword & Planet, but we’ve always wanted to go for really cool, bright and colorful covers, not just to set us apart from so many of today’s magazines*, but because we want them to look awesome. We really could not have achieved this without Jabari Weathers, who is amazingly talented.

Meanwhile, Doug Cole at Gaming Ballistic has taken a look at our post on Parrying and extrapolated a bit on his own ideas for various defensive mechanics in RPGs. I don’t know that anyone will ever agree on the best mechanical way to handle the defensive utility offered by a shield, but Doug has a few of his own to offer up in his Dragon Heresy game.

*:Though FWIW, the cover art for Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has almost always been a consistently bland and muddied mess of abstraction.

Music – A Salty Dog, Procol Harum

Parrying: I Get It Now

Sometimes you can know something, or two somethings, but they don’t quite click in your head for whatever reason.

I’d never been a fan of Parrying skills; why spend time not attacking when clearly the obvious way to stop being attacked is to kill the monster that’s in front of you? Games like Neverwinter Nights that are basically “D&D without a party” makes Parrying seem even more useless because while you’re parrying, no damage is being dealt!

One of my big pet peeves is that a lot of people do melee wrong; in D&D, once two characters are in melee, they are in melee period, until one of them dies or spends a round trying to run away. Characters who are in melee can be attacked by characters not in melee without those characters attacking becoming locked. Now, this is important for a reason: high HP low AC fighters and clerics lock down the bad guys by getting them into melee – those baddies so engaged  cannot just say “Well, I’m going to attack the squishy wizard/thief now because I’ve randomly chosen a new target!” They are stuck fighting those opponents until they die, run away, or kill them. While stuck fighting the bruisers, the baddies can be backstabbed and bespelled with impunity by the thieves and magic users, unable to strike back.

In comes Shitlord: the Triggering, which has a Dex-based Parrying skill unique to the Dickpuncher (Fighter) class. For each point of Dex over 13, the Dickpuncher can effectively improve his AC by one against the combatant he’s in melee with instead of making an attack. Now, my first thought is “He’s wasting his time parrying; why would he not just attack instead?” Then it clicked:

With an active defense vis a vis Parrying, a Fighter character can potentially lock down a much tougher opponent longer without sustaining damage to give thief classes more opportunities to backstab. As strong as a fighter’s attack is, a Thief’s backstab is ALWAYS better. Depending on the system, you could easily be doing 3-4 times as much damage per hit with a bonus against the enemy’s AC. The high dex parrying skill negates that huge attack advantage monsters tend to have over PCs and classed NPCs so that a fighter can go toe to toe against something that could very well cream him otherwise for an extra round or two. Yeah, he may not get his chance to do 1d8 damage, but the Thief is almost guaranteed to get 4d6 damage. As long as the DM is abiding by proper melee rules, the Fighter can always keep one baddie locked down so as to ensure that the Thief can get his backstab on.

Thank you for opening my eyes to this, Shitlord: the Triggering!

Also, this is not a real review, but silly Alt-Right shit-talk aside, S:tT looks like it’s a pretty solid retro-clone. It borrows from the best and presents it well, but it also brings in a few original ideas that are absolutely worth incorporating into your game. My group is fairly liberal, so I don’t know if I could get away with running this even as a one-off except for April Fool’s, but I’ll probably borrow several bits and bobs from it.  Also, thank you for not sorting spells by level.