Where Good Ideas Go To Die: The IP Farm

"Where Good Ideas Go To Die: The IP Farm"

The entertainment industry is at a tipping point. It's gearing up to evolve to an extent we haven't seen since the advent of home movie or digital. I don't know that it's appropriate to call the 2020s the "Golden Age" or "Renaissance" or "Revolution" of streaming services, but we definitely are entering a fully-competitive and saturated, if not over-saturated, streaming market. This is a streaming market that now hinges on original content, the progression of which is sped up in part due to the Coronavirus Pandemic (2020-???).

Where does that original content come from? Earlier Netflix hits like Stranger Things are wholly new properties, this one in particular jumping on the bandwagon of 80s Nostalgia and the D&D resurgence. Disney+'s flagship Original is The Mandalorian, a spin-off from a Star Wars character premiering in Empire Strikes Back (1980). And Amazon Prime finally found some success via a variety of avenues, adapting Tom Clancy's character Jack Ryan, Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle, as well as new stories like The Marvelous Ms. Maisel. This is just to address the top 3 streaming services and original scripted content.

These original programming blocks have expanded dramatically in the years since and show no sign of slowing. Some of the larger entertainment news items from the last few months are Disney's Investor Day, where they took the opportunity to announce an extensive slate of upcoming Marvel and Star Wars adaptations for Disney+ and for theatres. AT&T/WarnerMedia have made similar recent announcements between the two DC FanDome dates and throughout Fall 2020: DC Comics adaptations out the wazoo. Netflix is also cashing in on comic book properties, with The Umbrella Academy, Locke & Key, and The Old Guard. And Amazon likewise with their hit The Boys.

How did we get to this point? The classic sentiment, "Hollywood is just remakes and adaptations now" seems to ring more and more true, regardless of whether most viewers are familiar with, for example, classic comic book storylines.

Where do we go from here?

The answer: IP Farming.

What is IP Farming? I think the term is less-than-technical, and I've only heard it from a ClownfishTV video. But it's a useful description for a practice that's becoming more and more prevalent: collecting property rights with the intent to capitalize via multi-media (i.e., cross-platform adaptations, such as comic book to movie). This is different from various licensing practices and conglomeration that you might see in the music or film industries, or on a smaller scale, how comic book publishers like IDW and Boom! function with foundations in licensed properties. IP Farming also includes the secondary aspect of farming: cultivation; generating new properties is just as important as collecting old ones.

The business model and various approaches are relatively straightforward. Take a look over at the Disney+ or HBOMax apps. They are laid out as hubs of various different channels and production companies. WarnerMedia and Disney have spent quite a bit of time and money over the last decade acquiring and consolidating in order to accomplish this.

That is one model: to straight-up buy collections of intellectual properties and bring them under a single umbrella.

The second model is to generate content. Netflix has been pumping out new shows nigh-prolifically over the last several years, and the clip from South Park ("Netflix. You're greenlit!") seems all-too-true when it comes to the flood of press releases for new show announcements or just the act of opening up the Netflix homepage each week. There are various financial aspects to this strategy, from creator pay to debt and investment, but I won't go into detail here.

However, even cheaper and more prolific that the "Netflix Model" is to farm user-generated content. YouTube seems the obvious candidate for this strategy and has tried but generally failed with original programming via YouTube Red/YouTube Premium. Instead, the shining examples are in comic books and written media: Webtoon and Wattpad being the examples I'll focus on here. (Note: Wattpad was recently--Jan 2021--acquired by Webtoon parent company Naver.) Each of these websites functions as a platform for submitted stories with some extent of a 'partner'/'featured' program. Each site also has programs aimed at helping provide creators with networking and optioning opportunities by connecting them with production companies. The base setup is standard and simple: the creator owns and holds liability for the property, and the website holds a nonexclusive publishing license (further reading re: Webtoon and Wattpad). Each website is free and subsists on ad revenue. After some digging, it's not immediately clear to me what each company's role in production, rights ownership, and revenue is when it comes to optioning and adapting properties published on each site, or, for example, what a "partnership" with a production company technically entails.

I'll close out this introduction with the obvious, dissenting question: Why not "just make comic books"? In my opinion this is a valid question. Movies are not the end-all-be-all of entertainment, and comics serve as a better medium for many stories. But...the money is in Hollywood. The whole of the US comic book market amounts to over a billion in sales yearly. That's "one" billion dollars. And that's including manga and YA graphic novels in addition to traditional direct market comics. Avengers: Endgame grossed $858.3 million domestically and $2.798 billion worldwide. Those are Hollywood numbers.

I want to outline some examples that give an overview of where the industry is at right now with regards to IP farming.

WarnerMedia is making a big effort to leverage DC Comics as both source material and integrated advertising for their movie and TV productions. Synergy among divisions, really. With the recent Future State line and upcoming Infinite Frontier reboot titles, this becomes immediately clear. At first glance, here's a list of new titles directly linked to recent or upcoming screen productions: Shazam!, Black Adam, Suicide Squad (ft. Peacemaker), Wonder Woman (Yara Flor), Justice League Dark, Swamp Thing, and Green Lantern (ft. John Stewart).

It's also worth noting that WarnerMedia has a big advantage owning the rights to these properties in-house. Disney even more so, with a near-spotless track record of keeping production in-house, as well. The comics line, as noted before, is a relatively small source of revenue for the parent compant. Oftentimes, it's not even profitable: CCO Jim Lee commented in August 2020 that 25% of the comics line is losing money or just breaking even. But that's insignificant if even a moderately-successful TV or film adaptation will easily make up for that.

There's a unique recent example to keep your eye on with regards to the American comic book industry: NBCUniversal's Universal Content Productions (UCP). UCP recently launched a comic book division, headed by comics veteran Grant Morrison, and is starting to publish comics as an imprint of Boom!. And they cite in a press release specifically that the intent is to produce mirror comic book and TV productions for each of these properties. These comics exist nearly exclusively to provide TV IP.

The next major players, though, are the sources of user-generated content: Webtoon and Wattpad. The exact business model is unclear at this point with regards to optioning IPs, but it is suggested that Webtoon/Wattpad, in their Webtoon Studios/Wattpad Studios services agree with creators to a percentage of the profit in exchange for production company partnerships (I will amend these comments as appropriate as I learn more).

Webtoon has found its niche primarily with publishing content that leads to successful adaptation as K-Drama series. And more recently Webtoon has partnered with Crunchyroll to produce original anime based on some of their top series: Tower of God, Noblesse, and The God of High School.

Wattpad has found a market with some of their featured stories transitioning both into traditional publishing and film adaptations. The most prominent examples are probably Anna Todd's After series, yielding successful novels and a movie option, and Beth Reekles' The Kissing Booth movie adaptation, which temporarily topped viewership charts on Netflix.

So...What should we expect going forward? "A whole lot of comic book adaptations" is the simple answer. For both new and for old properties. Comic books are cheap to produce, effective exposure to a test market, and they provide a literal storyboard from which to produce a screen adaptation.

With regards to comics, the trend of "Netflix Pitch" comics is not going away anytime soon. And I expect more imprints in the vein of Boom!'s UCP or Mark Millar's Millarworld (under Netflix) publishing through Image.

Additionally, I do expect a lot more consolidation of companies in the near future. It's been cited that Dark Horse was about to be acquired, but the Pandemic threw a wrench in those plans, at least temporarily. I am interested in seeing what deals in that vein might be made in the near future.

What does that entail, a publisher being acquired? I think, a lot less bargaining power for creators. Todd McFarlane makes a shrewd point in his Cartoonist Kayfabe interview explaining that if you're the creator of the 100th-bestselling comic book, you've got approximately the fifth most-desirably property for studios. The rest of the top 100 comics are Marvel and DC, and Disney and WarnerMedia already monopolize those production rights. So the only available properties are: #100-200. Find yourself creating a book now under a parent production company, however, and you've lost the ability to shop around.

This marketability has provided a lot of great opportunities for creators, Todd McFarlane himself not the least of which. Image Comics, publishing creator-owned properties, seems like the ideal breeding ground for the next host of TV and Movie adaptations. This list so far includes Kirkman's The Walking Dead and Invincible, Rucka's The Old Guard, Venditti's Surrogate, Remender's Deadly Class, and and pre-Netflix Mark Millar books like Kick-Ass, to name a few.

The current state of Image books continues this trend. Big-time creators like Scott Snyder and Charles Soule with Undiscovered Country and Donny Cates with Crossover look to be making their moves to capitalize with a "Netflix Pitch" comic, Snyder/Soule already successfully optioning movie rights. And smaller publishers like Oni Press with O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim and Vault Comics with Visaggio's Vagrant Queen also provide opportunities for properties to grow cross-platform.

BUT. Image Comics nor any other direct market publisher of creator-owned comic books, so far as I am aware or can find cited, has any partnership with production companies or any direct involvement with optioning and producing adaptations based on their publications. In addition, the costs of creating and publishing print comics introduce a barrier to entry, and these book are often being marketed to a very small audience.

The prospects of Webtoon and Wattpad and similar platforms look increasingly bright. User-generated, ad-sponsored stories with an increasingly expansive and increasingly active pool of users. Each company has successfully built and is expanding partnerships with a diverse lineup of production companies, Wattpad even maintaining their own AI software to best identify and match stories to companies.

IP Farming: it's laying the backdrop for the entertainment industry's next transformation. If you're a creator, be smart. There are opportunities to be gained and to be lost. And when it comes to optioning your IP, you do have options.

The Pandora's Box of Public Health

(1)

I want to make a distinction within the field of public health: public health and the health of the public.

Traditional public health is concerned with infectious and communicable diseases. In the United States, this started with the Marine Hospital Service (later The United States Public Health Service, under the HHS), which served to fund medical care for navy sailors being ill returning from abroad. So that they don't spread foreign infectious disease in the US. The next step was the expansion of the organization into the 20th century with formalizing immigration and interstate quarantine standards. And continuing through the 20th century, the USPHS focused on communicable diseases domestically, starting with venereal diseases.

Similarly, the World Health Organization was founded as a global public health agency in the mid-1900s to address the problems of tuberculosis and malaria.

This makes a lot of sense. The 18th and 19th century saw an increased understanding of pathogens as transmitting diseases (see: germ theory of disease), as well as the Industrial Revolution, which resulted in crowded cities and consequentially worse sanitation standards for many people.

On the other hand, the health of the public is a separate issue. This is probably best associated with the Food and Drug Administration (also under the HHS). "The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health" (their own website). How so? They provide regulation and recommendation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, food and beverages, household chemicals and cosmetics, and so on. These are not standards concerned with infectious diseases.

The health of the public is rooted in personal health, what one consumes and what medical treatment one exposes oneself to. Whether it be food that can increase the risk of heart disease, a perfume containing a chemical that inhibits pituitary gland function, or a cholesterol-lowering drug with side effects that include depression and suicidal thoughts, it's under the FDA's umbrella.

However, there is a crossroads at which these two disciplines of public health meet. The health of the public becomes a public health issue when issues arise including predatory marketing practices by pharmaceutical and fast food companies, or when health insurance or public healthcare options need funded by a general constituency or when type 2 diabetes is considered a "preexisting condition."

But what if I were to say that there is no overall perceived difference at all between these two public health functions? What happens to America then?

That is exactly what has happened. And it's served to damage our relationship with health.

(2)

What is your experience for some of the following situations?

Do you choose not to sit next to a person on a bus who is actively coughing? Do you avoid a coworker who is congested and showing clear cold symptoms? Do you ask a friend who was in bed with the flu over the weekend to not attend your dinner party?

Or what is your experience being the sick person in those situations?

Alternatively, what is your experience with mental and visual abnormalities? How do you talk differently to someone who you know is going to therapy for their depression and is talking about having called the suicide hotline yesterday? Do you stare when you're introduced to someone whose face is riddled with burn scars, or who was born with Myelitis and has a stub and two half-fingers in place of a fully-developed right arm? Do you ask about it, or do you talk around it? What's your preference in these situations if you are the one with mental illness or with visible abnormalities?

My impression of the general social consciousness and my life experiences have led me to believe that the answer is 'yes,' 'yes,' and 'yes.' To all of the above. Cough once in public, and you become an undesirable.

There is a health stigma in the United States.

(3)

Where did this health stigma come from? I think there are innumerable examples of this showing up in Western culture throughout the years, so I'll stick with two straightforward instances.

The New Testament of the Bible. It's easy to point to the verbiage used when Jesus performed his miracles curing the sick and see where modern issues may arise.

> "He [Jesus] said to the paralytic, 'Courage, child, your sins are forgiven." (Matthew 9:2).

> " 'Why does your teacher [Jesus] eat with tax collectors and sinners?' He heard this and said, 'Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.' " (Matthew 9:11-12)

> "A demoniac who could not speak was brought to him, and when the demon was driven out the mute person spoke." (Matthew 9: 32-33).

> "[A leper] said, 'If you wish, you can make me clean.' Moved with pity, he [Jesus] stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, 'I do will it. Be made clean...Show yourself to the priest and offer your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.' " (Mark 1: 40-44)

Muteness is caused by demons, paralysis by sin, and a priest is the medical authority who clears the cured leper. There is a very clear connection between physical infirmity and being cursed or being straight-up evil. This may be a ~2000-year-old text, but the cultural impact of these statements by no means quickly or, in some instances, ever, went away.

Take a step forward in time to something during our lifetimes: the Disney Renaissance, from 1989 with The Little Mermaid to 1999 with Tarzan. Although all of the films included feature this to some extent, two examples are most striking: Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

A classic fairy tale premise is the subversion of physical appearance with moral quality. In Snow White and Rose Red, in response to the girls' generosity for somewhere warm to stay through the winter, the otherwise-fearsome bear is revealed to be a prince who cursed by an evil dwarf. In The Frog Prince the frog, described as "wet and green and cold...horrid old Frog...wet and ugly and his eyes bulge out...cold, fat, goggle-eyed," in response to the princess being true to her promise, transforms back into a handsome prince.

And similar is the story in Beauty and the Beast, which ultimately concludes with the Beast transforming back into a prince after finding true love. "She marries the Prince, and they live happily ever after" is the story.

Of course, implicit is the part where any physical ugliness, beastliness, or deformity is a curse and that any prince's "true" form is beautiful and charming.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame takes it one step further. Hunchback Quasimodo doesn't get his transformation, so he's never even seen as an eligible suitor for Esmeralda, and instead she and Phoebus fall in love.

These are stories in which physical deformities and curse-illnesses make one intrinsically "lesser."

It's also important to note that these are all congenital, chronic, or condition-based illnesses that are being represented in the Bible and in Disney films. These aren't communicable or infectious diseases. No common cold, no malaria, no flu, no HIV/AIDS, and so on. There's no chance that Saint Peter is going to catch blindness.

We know the risks of coughing in someone's face or having unprotected sex and that those are things to avoid. We understandably are afraid of the consequences of risking exposure to infectious diseases.

However, what happens when a condition that is not infectious is treated the same way as an infectious one? And how does that even happen?

The quick answer is: visibility. You can see if someone has Down Syndrome or if they're a quadriplegic, or if someone with Tourette Syndrome exhibits physical twitches, if someone has dwarfism, or if someone has a glass eye.

Sometimes infectious disease is visible, as well. Coughing, sneezing, congestion, fever, fatigue, and so on. But not immediately and not necessarily.

You can also see if someone is fat. Obesity is treatable, though. Obesity is not permanent or entirely genetic.

And, at what point is being overweight or having a prosthetic eye a health condition? How about the ugliness of our fairy tale frog?

The visibility, the curses, the sigmas are all the same. What happens when you see someone with an "abnormality"? Especially one, physical or otherwise, that is treatable?

What happens when you conflate "public health" with the "health of the public"? And beyond.

It's the health stigma in the United States.

(3)

A quick disclaimer: not all of the following examples are concerned with health or abnormality. They are concerned with social stigma.

What has been done about health and social stigmas in the United States? A lot, really. The last decade has shown massive strides in destigmatizing some of these issues. Here's an abbreviated few-year timeline for several examples, so far as I have been able to observe it and see it recorded and reported on:

> 2012: Body positivity movement popularized on social media (anti- fat-shaming)

> 2013: Same-sex marriage federally recognized

> 2014: Destigmatization of depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders

> 2015: Destigmatization of transgenderism

But... what has happened since?

Regarding the health examples, can one so immediately reverse a culture that stigmatizes health? After generations of "just be happier" and "stop freaking out" and "what's wrong with you, needing to go to a therapist?" can we progress over the course of just a few years to understanding the nuance of mental health issues, importance of professional help, and acceptance of people despite their chemical imbalances?

Firstly, widespread destigmatization does not mean universal destigmatization. Obviously fat-shaming, homophobia, transphobia, and mental health stigmas still exist.

But what about when acceptance goes too far? What if the "slippery slope" is real?

The body positivity movement, with celebrity advocates like Tess Holiday and Amy Schumer, has transformed in part into #HealthyAtAnySize. Take a look at Tess Holiday. The majority of research in nutrition has confirmed that weight is the number one factor for heart health. Also keep in mind that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Tess Holiday is not healthy at her size. And the troops of obesity apologists on Twitter have been deluded (supplemental podcast links: 1, 2). And another side of this issue is when women like Adele and Rebel Wilson lose significant amounts of weight but are condemned for their efforts to get healthier because they're supposedly being tricked into subscribing to conventional beauty standards or are giving in to being fat-shamed.

This applies to each other movement in turn. The acceptance of formerly-taboo same-sex marriage and trangenderism has acted as a cue for fringe groups to advocate for the destigmatization and inclusion within the LGBTQ+ movement of pedophilia and zoophilia. The last several years on, and increasingly off, the internet have seen constant debate about pedophilia, from lolita hentai/artwork to the Netflix-licensed movie Cuties (succeeding films like Thirteen and Lolita) to questions about lowering the age of consent to even the questioning the moral standing for the illegality of child pornography. Zoophilia, similarly, has gained some momentum in various communities, from podcasts to internet forums. Of course, these people always existed, but the blanket acceptance and advocacy for the LGBTQ+ movement has seen attempts by individuals and communities of other taboo sexualities to co-opt this for their own platforms.

And of course, mental health. This movement has maybe seen less abusive overshot than the others but is still subject to corruption. The acceptance-turned-over-acceptance of mental disorders has led to the prominence of listing "depressed," "anxious," "bipolar," etc. as a point of pride and in one's Twitter, Instagram, dating app profile, or written fictional character. One other issue that's come up is the debate over assisted suicide and whether, with acceptance of one's depression, there should be acceptance of one's suicidal thoughts and a doctor's facilitating those thoughts into actions.

These over-adjustments to health perceptions are actively harmful. They are promoting heart disease, glorifying mental illness and suicide, and endangering children. Gender may be acceptable as a social construct, but heart disease is not.

Yes, we have made progress. Yes, it has gone too far.

What happened here? Is this just liberalism and progressivism tearing apart the fabric of our society and our traditional values?

Not really. Or, at least, that's not a good answer, I don't think.

If a fat person is treated as inherently bad, what is the proper course correction, both from within and from without? Is regularly accepting a person's excess weight issues enough? Or should we, as a culture, glorify fatness and condemn fit-ness? As reparation. As confirmation that we are progressing the right way to the right extent.

After we figured out that depression and anxiety aren't simple or well-understood issues we necessarily can't approach any future mental health condition with any skepticism. It's a knife's edge to walk, and it's sometimes the life of a person afflicted in the balance.

And what about the case when this approach comes to infectious and communicable diseases?

It has, in some cases.

Cue: Life With Herpes podcast. Much of herpes support culture has become entrenched with that single-word mission statement: acceptance. Acceptance of someone's behavior of having unprotected sex with multiple partners after testing positive with herpes.

Do you see the problem here?

(4)

Let's go back to fairy tales. What's the moral of the story here?

Culture ruined public health. As well as the health of the public.

This is the culture that spent the history of Western civilization labeling diseases and abnormalities as curses and as the consequences of sin. And then Overton's pendulum swings back to an equally-distorted extreme, and we're no better off.

So, what do we do?

Ultimately, I would suggest distinguishing between the two public health functions.

That, however, only helps with health. There's a whole basket of social stigmas here that is facing the same issues in parallel.

Broadband acceptance? "Acceptance" is a solution that ends at step one. We accept that someone is fat or depressed, and they accept themselves as not having something morally wrong with themselves. Then what? Nutrition and exercise and therapy and medication are starters. One-step thinking has clearly been part of our downfall.

Education is another start. Here's a primer on one historical example of how nutrition in America has become so horrible, here regarding the example of polyunsaturated fats and processed seed and vegetable oils. And then there's the observation of spiking obesity rates after the FDA released dietary guidelines and later, the Food Pyramid. The list goes on.

It's an ongoing cultural journey that involves learning from history.

I want to leave you all with a question to reflect on.

Next time, ask yourself this, "Is someone coughing on the train really an evil person?"

News: It's Real! (11/13/20)

The upcoming "Million MAGA March"... What are people saying?

https://dcist.com/story/20/11/11/maga-rally-trump-dc-election-counterprotest/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=engagingnetworks&utm_campaign=DCIST_DAILY_11_11_20&utm_content=DCist+Daily+11/11

This is a fun one. It's a classic exercise in loaded language.

For background, there is a pro-Trump rally, The Million MAGA March (not a protest or demonstration?), taking place in DC this Saturday 11/14 in protest of alleged widespread voter fraud and election misconduct.

Let's stick to the first few paragraphs and some of the verbiage used there:

"pro-Trump and white nationalist"

• Implied association

"promoting a rally...online promotion and social media chatter"

• Unique verbiage from the left-wing "organize"

• Evokes images of people behind computer screens and that the movement is fake or blindly radicalized

"claims/claiming [...stolen election]" (baseless, falsely, unproven)

• Stronger language and increased implied falsehood than something like "allegations of/alleging [fraud]" or "with suspicions/suspecting [fraud]

"protests associated with white nationalists have tended to have a limp turnout in the city, dwarfed in size by counter protests"

• Suggesting that a wider republican and bipartisan movement for election transparency is a subset of groups assembled at specifically far-right rallies in the past

"experts on extremism"

• Implied that the #StopTheSteal movement and planned rallies are extremist in nature

Other than the intro and the intended bias, the article is good coverage of what's going on.

I'll say, it's interesting to point out that for the #StopTheSteal rallies, multiple groups have submitted and gotten approved their "First Amendment Activity" permits, as the Metro PD puts it. There's nothing cited, not to say that this isn't the case, regarding permits for any counter-protest gatherings, which the article suggests may bring more people than the original rally itself.

I'd recommend skimming through other coverage for the upcoming event. Going through specific news outlets and the first page and change of broader search results, it looks like much of the M5M is refusing to advertise the event. I'm coming up with blanks for TV outlets NBC, ABC, and CNN, outside maybe some local affiliates with relevant street closures and traffic updates. Maybe half of the coverage is about Airbnb cancelling reservations in DC for alleged Proud Boys planning to attend. And of course, Facebook is getting press for shutting down group and event pages associated.

A few such articles:

• https://www.the-sun.com/news/1793017/million-maga-march-proud-boys-trump-who-what/

• https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN27T2VV

• https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/13/trump-supporters-plan-washington-dc-rallies-experts-warn-extremists/6265591002/

• https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mcenany-predicts-quite-large-turnout-at-million-maga-march-in-dc/ar-BB1aXdpA

• https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/million-maga-march-trump-supporters-washington-dc-already/65-8164769d-2d43-4a11-bff5-c16563167586

• https://www.wsj.com/articles/groups-supporting-trump-expected-to-rally-near-white-house-11605293690

• https://www.foxnews.com/us/airbnb-proud-boys-member-million-maga-march

News: It's Real! (11/12/20)

Syria Envoy LIES to Commander-in-Chief: Is that the whole story?

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/11/outgoing-syria-envoy-admits-hiding-us-troop-numbers-praises-trumps-mideast-record/170012/

This is definitely the top news story for Thursday, Nov 12. If you haven't heard any coverage or read the piece, go do so.

The headline says it all: "Outgoing Syria Envoy Admits Hiding US Troop Numbers; Praises Trump's Mideast Record." Whether or not you agree with Trump's military and Middle East policies, this story points out a fracture of trust in the government bureaucracy and whether the title "Commander in Chief" holds any weight anymore. Also note the repetition of the term "stalemate" in the latter half of the article. I'm not sure if it means anything, but the line "stalemate is stability" is a very depressing outlook on foreign conflict to me. (screenshots attached below with highlights)

The secondary thing to note with this article is that they (author Katie Bo Williams) puts a lot of effort in to bury the lead. The secondary focus of the article, "Praises Trump's Mideast Record" is secondary. However, it inhabits approximately 2/3 or so of the article. And it serves as a convenient segue from any deeper discussion about the implications of direct lies from a Special Presidential Envoy to the president, additionally in the context of the major controversy and the 500-700 US military lives in Syria that this now includes.

It's still a good piece. Give it a read. Suffice it to say, I'd hestitate before going to play a game of Diplomacy with Jim Jeffrey.

The Fractional Money System

D&D: The Fractional Money System

What do your players go shopping for in a D&D campaign?

I want to start with this open question.

I'd imagine survey responses might include some standard items: potions of healing, extra torches and rations and ball bearings, a newly-smithed set of plate mail, or a restock on arrows and crossbow bolts. This is generally my experience with low level campaigns, a focus on survival elements and equipment upgrades.

But for a higher level campaign, your players' party enters a new city, makes their way to the market district, and then... what? Have you made available some magic item stores or artificer custom-craftsmen? Do your players go stock up on gemstones and other 1k gp-worth spell components? Do your players fund construction and manning and maintenance for a castle keep/fortress/guild hall?

I'm also curious, do your players' characters function very independently from each other? Do they just have different motivations, or do these differences devolve into intra-group conflicts? Do they split up when they get into town, or do they split up even when delving into a dungeon? And, of course, how do they split up money among the party members? Do they spend as a group or individually? Do they split up loot equally, or weighted on a merit-based system, or is there a rogue that always slips a few extra gp up his sleeve after disarming a chest's traps?

Let's take a step back. How much do things even cost in the D&D world? And how much money do you give to your players?

Regarding the standard non-magical weapons in the PHB, costs range from 5cp to 75gp. So, depending on the local economy and your players' ability to haggle, they may be looking at upwards of 150gp for a hand crossbow.

The price tags for armor, though, do get expensive quite quickly, and the pinnacle of protection, plate mail, adds up to a pretty penny at 1500gp. However, studded leather armor only sets the player back 45gp, and that's the end-game-tier non-magical armor option for rogues. Plate mail itself, too, isn't nearly as hard to get as the MSRP would suggest: it's available as a drop from creatures as early on as Duergar (CR 2, 6), Hobgoblin Warlord (CR 6), or Orc Orog (CR 2). There's a good discussion of this over on Mr Rhexx's YouTube channel, if you want some more depth on standard equipment and the meaning of money discussion.

And how do the standard retail values stack up next to standard quest rewards? Well, for reference, The Lost Mines of Phandelvar side quests offer 100 gp each, intended for 2nd-to-4th level characters. And the end-of-dungeon treasure adds up to 565gp, not including the various other treasures, magical items, mine equity, etc. along the way.

I have a mixed bag of experiences for running money in D&D campaigns myself.

Overall, I'm not strict on smaller costs like replacing or buying new standard equipment, adventuring pack items, inn stays, etc., so long as the party is not specifically flat broke at the time. Otherwise, I haven't really built up a lot of shopping infrastructure in cities, not made it key to campaigns, and my players haven't placed a lot of importance on shopping, either.

With the enemies my players fight there are regular high quality and expensive drops, including things like sets of plate mail and large-size or enchanted weapons. I also do on occasion make magical item shops or even customized magic item commission opportunities, usually in the ~1k-10k gp price range.

For high level spell components, if it's a gemstone, I usually allow the players to just spend that 1k gp instead, but for anything more specific, such as the sacred relic required for Holy Aura, I do enforce the material components as written.

Here are some specifics from various campaigns I've run:

The Island Resort and Casino and Spa
Most of the prices were in units of 1k gp. The primary purchases were randomized item enchantments, available at 5-15k gp for different tiers and on different days. And the party earned money in sums of ~1-5k gp between corporate sponsorship and the value of loot from battles.

        The Lost Mines of Phandelvar
The big expense was an instance of needing to pay for a Raise Dead spell (priced at 1k gp) in Neverwinter after a party member died to the Young Green Dragon in Thundertree. This involved some makeshift sales, dragon-hunting finder's fees, and negotiations and ultimately served to get the party in more trouble later on.

        The Central Bank of Babel
The party started with 3k gp and were given the option of paying it all to get referred to a contact in Babylon and gain access to the plane, though ultimately finding a different route. Since, there have been various opportunities for 10k gp bounties on debtors, ranging from a Dracolich to a Devil crime lord. There are various other prices along the way, as well, including 5k gp for a tip on where to seek a cure for Babel-speak, [undisclosed amount] (spoiler) cost for certain Guild entry, [undisclosed amount] (spoiler) quantities for betting in the Bank casino, and then, of course, [undisclosed amount] (spoiler) available from the Bank for personal and small business loans.

All of these prices are very general for a reason: I don't usually keep strict track of the party's current coinage.

What if? The Fractional Money System.

Instead of keeping track of party and individual gp/pp/ep/sp/cp, you set money and prices according to "fractional money." Think, "one half of the party's gold," "all of the party's gold," "a negligible amount of gold."

The Zoned Dungeon Terrain (Ultimate Dungeon Terrain 2.0) from Professor Dungeon Master's Dungeon Craft uses a similar principle. Instead of measuring 5/10/15/20/25 ft. across a grid map, this is a concentric circular map with far/short/near-range distances, each zone functionally being situated to require 1 round of movement to go between.

I talk about another similar application for overworld map travel that I used for the campaign I ran in The Shadowfell, the "Fractional Time" system. As a reminder, this functions on the basis that overworld travel, or the time required to complete a task, ritual, investigation, etc. can be quantized into negligible time, half a day, a whole day, multiple day spans. This is as opposed to keeping track of the specific minutes and hours, as well as in contrast to explicitly playing overworld travel.

So, what does Fractional Money look like in application?

This magical cape costs "more money than you have" and may require additional haggling, stealing, or fundraising in order to acquire from the shop. Does it cost only "slightly more than you have"? Then haggling or a short side quest worth of loot, and you're set. Does it cost "a lot more than you have"? Then this magical cape may not really be available for purchase, and the party may have to rely on planning a heist or that the cape be a reward for a quest later on. The "a lot more" option is ultimately the same price as a bicycle in Pokemon. A bike costs 1 million Pokebucks, which is more digits of money than the player is even able to get in the game. But, in every Pokemon game, the bicycle is received readily as a reward for a quest.

That's how it works. But, then, what is the point of Fractional Money?

Firstly, I find it very tedious to keep track of money, especially for small purchases, and think that it distracts from playing the game more than it contributes. After 3rd or 4th level, a stay at the inn or replenishing rations, or restocking arrows functionally costs "negligible money" for the player characters.

And secondly, ask yourself, in D&D what quantities of money are meaningful?

Compare an early-game shopping trip totaling 25gp from a purse of 50gp to a late-game shopping trip totaling 2.5k gp from a pool of 5k gp. Both instances amount to 50% of the party's gold. It's the same RPG scaling principles you see in any video game, that, after a certain point, numbers just get big for the sake of big numbers. I would argue that instead of listing 25/50 or 2.5k/5k numbers, that the purchasing decisions are more impactful to frame directly as "half your money." And of course, this personal finance principle has its own roots and applications, advantages and drawbacks in the real world, as well.

Fractional Money also serves to clearly define financial obstacles for the party.

Does the party need to make "a little bit of money"? I think that this makes more sense for a challenge than the classic video game task of needing to sell off inventory items or go complete a collection quest in order to accumulate that extra 23gp+4sp+7cp for the new sword you want.

Does the party need to take a break from the main quest for fundraising? Or do financial straits make this purchase route a dead end, and the party has to make the decision to move on from this town or obstacle and pursue another, more profitable quest. This brings character motivations and problem-solving to the forefront, if the DM is able to define the challenge and obstacle in plainer words than sums of coins.

Does the party want to plan a heist and steal this item? Or, in the case of a toll road cost, passport fee, guard bribe, etc., are they going to plan a stealth mission to get where they want to go? If the price is defined as an unobtainable "much more than you have" amount, then the party is immediately faced with the impasse. Do they steal from the shop, or sneak past customs&immigration, at the risk of creating longtime NPC enemies or becoming wanted and fugitive individuals, do they give up on paying altogether and find a new quest, or do they succeed in their mischief and get away consequence-free?

So, I have tried this out in a limited setting. I wrote and ran a desert-set one-shot twice recently. The premise is, the party starts out by fighting and killing a group of aggressive baby Kruthiks and provoke an imminent monster attack from the vengeful hive mother, for which they have a limited amount of time to prepare.

The time is quantized, and I've run it as either 3 or 4 available people/place visits around the oasis town that the party has time to complete. And then there's the Fractional Money. Healing potions: cost "all the party's gold." Resist Poison potion: costs "more gold than the party has." Any other equipment, tools, items: "half of the party's gold." It's a pretty simple implementation but does set up some direct decision-making questions for the party to figure out.

Considering a one-shot, too, I think that simplifying the party's budget into Fractional Money makes everything easier, especially considering that the players didn't even play through the implied previous quest where some specific amount of money would be earned.

When doesn't fractional money work? I won't claim that it's a perfect catch-all system for fantasy finances, and there are situations and scenarios in which it would definitely be of detriment to the game.

There is the argument for individual money. Some players I've run games for, as well as players for other DMs I've talked to, really enjoy tallying and keeping track of money for their individual character. It definitely can be disengaging when the party gets their treasure, and it's just a Final Fantasy post-battle sequence prescribing "the party gets 33gp" for defeating this group of monsters.

Individual money includes, as well, individual purchases. Low level characters may need to put a lot more effort into saving up specific sums of money for that set of plate mail, that magic black belt, or for a case of healing potions after the healers couldn't keep up last encounter.

There is also the case of intra-party disputes and the RP and mechanical methods for resolving these conflict. If this is a dynamic that works and isn't purely self-destructive for your players and games, it can be a pretty involved portion of gameplay. The Web DM YouTube channel offers some advice and resources both ways.

This isn't to say that Fractional Money can't be applied to individual money. But when money is defined relative to both the retail prices AND other party members, the premise as I presented here very quickly lacks the nuance to become usable in any meaningful way.

And then there's the shopping-forward parties and campaigns. These can be conceived a number of ways, whether it be a survival-oriented campaign and the stock of rations and torches and wear on equipment matters, or it be a situation in which a party is investigating and preparing for a monster hunt , or it be a campaign of humble beginnings, and the party needs to be progressively buying their way up armor and weapon tiers. These are just a few scenarios where gameplay would benefit from retaining tallied coin-specific money very precisely.

I won't deny, I am weak at DMing when it comes to market infrastructure and shopping opportunities, either that they be available or that they be important to any story element in a campaign.

And, with regards to my DMing style, it ultimately isn't worthwhile to get caught up in the weeds of specific money quantities and keeping track of small-cost items.

There are enough details going on in running a session that, if a nuanced money system isn't key to the story and relevant challenges, it's worth simplifying instead. I think that PDM's "no initiative" argument is valid for reasons like this. If you're not running a highly-technical TRPG-forward game, then rolling intiative and maintaining precise turn order probably slows down the game and provides opportunities for your players to disengage more than it benefits play. (For the record, I still do use default initiative in all the games I run.)

What do you think?

Poll your players: how do they feel about the idea of "Fractional Money"?

And then try it out with your players, even just for a one-shot, and report back with results.

The Hero's Journey vs. The Everyday Hero

The Hero's Journey vs. The Everyday Hero (updated)

Heroism is perhaps THE trademark of adventure stories. From the original The Odyssey, fantasy adventures like The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, prophetic journeys like Dune and The New Testament of the Bible, and the comic book marvels of Superman and Batman, heroes are found in all shapes and sizes. Our heroes are pretty straightforwardly and demonstrably defined by the selfless good they do in the world around them. But past what makes a hero and what motivates a hero is that intrinsic question: what is that world that they are saving?

Gotham city is as inherent to any Batman story as is the cowled crusader himself. Batman typically focuses his hero duties very much on his hometown.

Meanwhile, the cast of The Lord of the Rings travels all the way across Middle Earth. This journey introduces them to a multitude of characters and communities across the world, as they shift setting constantly in the midst of pursuit of their ultimate quest.

There are two types of heroes to look into here: The Hero on a Journey, and The Everyday Hero. What is the difference between the hero who journeys across the world to slay the big bad and the hero who stays at home and daily slays the little bads in his own backyard?

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The two heroes which will embody the Hero's Journey are Ash from Pokemon: Indigo League ("Pokemon (1997)", 1997-1999) and Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender ("Avatar," 2005-2008). And The Everyday Hero will be exemplified by Ash in Pokemon: Sun&Moon (2016-present) and Korra in The Legend of Korra (2012-2014).

Pokemon: Indigo League follows the story of Ash and companions Misty, Brock, and Pikachu on Pokemon Trainer Ash’s journey across the Kanto region to collect all 8 Pokemon gym badges and challenge the Pokemon League and become Pokemon Master.

Avatar: The Last Airbender follows the story of Aang and Team Avatar across the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation to train Aang in mastery of all four elements and ultimately defeat Fire Lord Ozai and the imperial Fire Nation to bring peace and spiritual balance to the world.

Pokemon: Sun & Moon follows the story of Ash as he visits the Pokemon School in the Alola region, enrolls, and engages in the Island Challenges in his continuing quest to become Pokemon Master.

The Legend of Korra, for the most part, follows the story of Korra and Team Avatar in Republic City as she enacts her role as Avatar to prevent the world from falling out of balance through her engagement with politics, the spirit world, and international conflicts.

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It is important to begin with how each type of hero is being identified. I will point out two features here that are generally clear in delineating between Hero on a Journey and Everyday Hero.

The incidental specifics of each story differ. For example, in Pokemon (1997), Ash and his friends are traveling across the world, and there is a new locale almost every episode. In Pokemon: Sun&Moon, Ash settles on Melemele Island and attends Pokemon School every day, only occasionally leaving his regular spot for excursions.

The specifics also differ with regards to the story within the setting. For example, in Avatar, at the onset Aang only has access to airbending, and he spends the whole of the show finding teachers and mastering the other three elements, as well as the Avatar State. The Legend of Korra opens with Korra already having mastery over three elements with the fourth and the Avatar State following by season 2.

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It is worthwhile to delve into what characterizes the opposing settings of The Hero's Journey and the Everyday Hero. Drawing from the original, The Odyssey, The Hero's Journey takes place episodically cross between different "islands" which each feature their own systemic problems, which the hero must either fix or escape from while growing past his own mirrored shortcomings. Whereas, the Everyday Hero resides in a city of integrated communities, all of which is laid before them and accessible to them at once.

Avatar is a prime example for these isolated communities. The story takes place in a war-torn world and, by political, military, and geographical borders, the heroes must proceed through the world linearly from town to town and community to community, resting only briefly. War is also important for thematically linking the systemic problems across all the towns in this world. Aang and Team Avatar encounter towns of extremists and xenophobes, imperialist colonies and regressive tribalists, and even a capital city modeled after Communist China, all accentuated in the midst of war. It is arguable that, in this way, "war" is inherent to the setting of The Hero's Journey.

The Legend of Korra focuses in on Republic City. From the get-go, Korra encounters gang violence and political corruption, revolutionaries and isolationists, capitalism and progressivism. "From the get-go" refers to the first episode, as well as practically every subsequent episode afterwards. When Korra goes to settle in Republic City and Ash on Melemele, their whole world is before them at once, and it is the purpose of each episode to focus in on specific communities and conflicts. One phenomenon of Korra is her involvement in Republic City politics, whether with Tarrlok, Tenzin, and the council, or President Raiko. Because of a single-city-setting and the problem-solving quest of a hero, it is arguable that politics are inherent to the setting of the Everyday Hero.

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Each hero surrounds himself with a team, friends, allies, companions in their story. There supporting characters are key to both the world and to the hero's arc itself. But there is a key difference between the Hero on a Journey and the Everyday Hero's companions.

Pokemon (1997) highlights Ash meeting Pikachu, Misty, and Brock and how it comes that they leave their homes to join Ash on his journey. His allies are travelers just like him, which means that they are also visitors to each new town they enter. They are trailblazers and history-makers.

Pokemon: Sun&Moon features Ash's enrollment in the Pokemon Academy and his induction into the class of students who become his friends and allies. Ash is a visitor, but Lillie, Lana, Kiawe, Mallow, and Sophocles are all residents of Melemele Island, citizens of the setting whose history is intrinsic to the setting. Additionally, this means that the supporting cast has outside friends and relationships and access or denial to resources within the city that Ash does not. And it is a part of Ash's story to explore their histories.

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The two heroes diverge a bit more sharply when it comes to the conflicts that define their stories, specifically the villains behind those conflicts. The baddies can be boxed into two categories in both stories, recurring villains and overarching villains.

Aang's Team Avatar faces episodic conflicts fueled by the chase of Zuko and, later, Azula and her allies, Mai and Ty Lee. While they are enemies of Aang and his friends, Zuko and Azula are causing real damage to the world around our hero, burning down villages and drilling through city walls. And the Hero on a Journey is forced to protect the towns he visits from these recurring threats, which makes his journey and conflicts all the more pressing. This is the same case for Ash and his fight with Team Rocket's Jesse, James, and Meowth and their Pokemon-thieving exploits.

Korra's Team Avatar is faced with episodic villains like Councilman Tarrlok and President Raiko and business-tycoon Varrick. These types of enemies act as obstacles barring Korra from being a hero, or manipulative influences, or just as kidnappers. But apart from kidnapping, their activities are not nefarious enough to make their episodic misdeeds into nail-bitingly tense drama. It may be better to call then "annoyances." There's also the unique situation where these villains are sometimes also allies. Unique from characters like Avatar's Zuko or Mai and Ty Lee in a Hero's Journey, these villains do not undergo any transformation when they assist the heroes. They generally assist when there is a greater evil to band against or some common interest. This also applies to Team Rocket and Team Skull in Pokemon: Sun&Moon.

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Avatar features a final boss: Fire Lord Ozai. Aang's whole quest throughout the 3-season timeline of Avatar is in pursuit of defeating Ozai. Ozai is a classical black-and-white embodiment of evil villain, and although Aang experiences some human empathy for him, there is never a moment that Ozai is represented as a redeemable character. Pokemon (1997), though less oriented towards the battle between "Good" and "Evil," also features looming final bosses: Giovanni of Team Rocket and The Elite Four of the Pokemon League, after defeating whom The Hero's Journey is completed.

The Legend of Korra introduces new overarching villains season-by-season: Amon, Unalaq, Zaheer, and Kuvira. The first divergence of these villains is that their motives are sympathetic, although their actions radicalized. In contrast Fire Lord Ozai, in the four-part finale, is simply seeking to destroy the Earth Kingdom with fire. Korra admits it and sympathizes, that Amon wanted equality, Unalaq wanted balance, Zaheer wanted freedom, and Kuvira wanted order. The secondary divergence is the world-ending nature of each of these threats, particularly with regards to the giant spirit form of Unalaq and the giant mecha suit and spirit vine cannon of Kuvira. This characteristic may be a more stark contrast from episodic conflicts in Pokemon: Sun&Moon, where Ash goes from making cutsie pocket-sized Pokemon friends to fighting against world-ending Ultrabest Necrozma.

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Regardless of these divergences, The Hero on a Journey and the Everyday Hero do tell a very similar story, which is characterized by their heroics and the type of challenges they face along their ways.

In both cases, the hero is a visitor. Whether Ash is traveling across the Kanto region or settling in the Alolan region, he was born and raised in Pallet Town.

Both heroes undergo Coming of Age-style growth. This is tied closely with their visitor-status, that they leave their homes to experience a fantastical journey of Pokemon or magical Bending and return a changed person. The distinct application of this principle, however, is that the growth comes from the heroics and the conflicts which the protagonists engage in in their settings. Episodically, both the Hero on a Journey and the Everyday Hero learn about a systemic issue in a community and are forced to face shortcomings in themselves as they face shortcomings externally.

These same transformations and challenges are experienced by the supporting cast, as well. But what is unique to the Hero on a Journey and the Everyday Hero is that growth in the hero and supporting cast is necessarily tied to dynamics within the group. Whether this be the life-changing field trips with Zuko in season 3 of Avatar, or Ash struggling to find a Pokemon Center for an ailing Pikachu, it's the interpersonal exchanges that characterize these arcs. On a practical level, this is also where each of these series excels: team battles, which also become more engaging and meaningful when the teamwork means something.

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The Hero's Journey and the Everyday Hero tell parallel stories across very different settings. These are stories of growth and community and, most importantly, heroism.

"How can we go on a quest to regenerate the world if we can't even save the people standing right in front of us" - Lloyd Irving (Tales of Symphonia)

Surveying The Shadowfell

What makes a memorable campaign setting?

The easy answer: The people, the places, and the things!

The world of Bahumia featured in Not Another D&D Podcast (NADDPOD) features quirky and colorful NPCs for every different location. Just think of how much more three-dimensional that, for example, The Crick is made by Ol' Cobb, Iron Deep is made by Jaina Bronzebeard, and any halfling locale by Denny Cobblepot.

Wizards of the Coast has done an excellent job exploring the Forgotten Realm's setting in Faerun through the number of campaign modules that are set throughout, as well as the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. And how it does this most prominently is by leading characters throughout the towns and cities, from Neverwinter to Waterdeep to Baldur's Gate to Phandalin.

What is a good quest without acquiring a legendary sword at the end? The things of D&D are key, and what good story involving Vecna would be complete without the Hand and Eye of Vecna, The Sword of Kas, and the Book of Vile Darkness, all artifacts which evoke the rich histories?

I recently ran a campaign set in The Shadowfell (dark mirror of the Material Plane), titled The Inheritance of The Shadowfell, and the player characters going from 13th to 16th level. The plot hook was, the party had killed the previous Lord of the Shadowfell when he was a guest at Dracula's Castle, and now they are journeying to The Shadowfell to take part in a contest to become the new Lords. With this in mind, how did I go about attempting to flesh out the setting in order to make a memorable campaign experience?

Before that, let's step back and take a look at the available source materials. The majority of my reading was split among Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, the Dungeon Master's Guide,  Ulraunt's Guide to the Planes: The Shadowfell (unofficial), and various searches between the Forgotten Realms, D&D, and Greyhawk wikis.

The DMG has <2 pages on The Shadowfell but does offer the Shadowfell Despair Table and a brief description of the city of Evernight (mirror-Neverwinter). Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes features a lot of creatures native to The Shadowfell and some info in their bios, as well as some more extensive lore on the Shadar-Kai and the Raven Queen, including her Fortress of Memories located in a demiplane in The Shadowfell.

Ulraunt's Guide to the Planes: The Shadowfell provides some more expansive and specific resources for the plane. This book is partially intended as an Epic level campaign reference book and focuses heavily on CR>20 creatures. The book also features zero mentions of The Raven Queen and some possible disregards for otherwise established Shadowfell canon. However, I did appreciate being able to draw from its expansions on monster lines, including Sorrowsworn, Wights, and Vampires. And although I did not feature them in the campaign I ran, the book does have exhaustive sections on 3 major Shadowfell cities: Gloomwrought, Evernight, and Thultanthar, City of Shade.

So, what did I personally contribute to the world? I'm going to focus on the locations here, though of course mentioning any key NPCs that may be inherent to a place. 8 of the 9 locations feature a playable grid map.

I will say, I never created a world map for The Shadowfell. Part of this was that it is just not part of how I conceived the world in my head. And part of this is because it wasn't necessary for exploring the world. Travel operated on the "fractional time" system, akin to the "fractional money" system (in which something costs negligible/half/all/more than the party's money, as opposed to a specific gp amount). Locations would take half a day or a day to travel to.

Overworld travel had several aspects to it. Considering half a day or full-day travel, the party could generally only visit one location a day, unless they wanted to travel overnight (which is more dangerous via increased rate of high-power random encounters). The consequence of this: things can happen while the party is away from various locations. And if they were traveling to a new location, not necessarily on their map yet, or somewhere off the main roads, there were random encounter opportunities. It's also important to note that, according to the geography, different modes of transportation were available to different places: boat, train, carriage, etc., and the consequence is that sometimes the party was not able to bring monster/construct pets along with.

But let's get on to the actual locations that I featured in The Shadowfell:

001: Dracula's Summer Home

After helping save Dracula's life ("unlife"?) in the previous campaign, this serves as a home base for the players, who are welcomed by steward and trickster Aleppa the Alp.

002: The Shadowfell Imperium

This is the centralized seat of power in The Shadowfell. A Shadow Dragon holds sway as steward and issues the quest for the party and competitor candidates to complete in contest for the throne. The quest: "Bring me the shriveled heart of the Raven Queen. There can be no king of The Shadowfell without the heart of his queen!"

003: Church of Kelemvor

This is the original cathedral and pilgrimage site in worship of Kelemvor. The party's Grave Cleric who follows Kelemvor visits but is rebuked and disavowed by the high priests there, sparking the beginnings a redemption quest which ultimately ends the party's cleric at the pulpit as high priest of the Church.

004: The Amnizu's Tower

Imagine Saruman's Tower in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers when the surrounding lands are overrun by Saruman's army of Uruk-hai. That it The Amnizu's Tower. The Amnizu is a devil warlord with an extensive military encampment around his tower, and he will stop at nothing to conquer The Shadowfell.

005: The Academy of Mad Sciences

This is the home of Shadar-Kai artificer Papalou Kazoo and his Kenku assistants. Papalou is an old associate of Dracula's, and the party visits to cash in on a favor after saving Dracula's life.

006: The Crow's Nest: Shadar-Kai Capitol City

This is the major city and center of commerce in The Shadowfell, and it's broken up into three class-tiered rings: The Harbor District, The Market District, and The Temple District. It's a diverse population here, including undead, shadar-kai, drow, devils, demons, fiends, material-plane-people, etc. The city, between the three districts, is home to cultists of Kyuss, a disenfranchised priestess of The Raven Queen performing death rites out of her home, a plaza of 4 temples in The Temple District, to Lolth, Wee Jas, Cyric, and The Raven Queen, and more.

007: Drow Ex-Pat Outpost

The party were accompanied to The Shadowfell by a fugitive Drow Inquisitor in search of a home away from The Underdark, hoping that this secretive colony of expatriated Drow might be it.

008: The Fortress of Memories

This is the home of The Raven Queen and final location for the Inheritance Cycle quest for Lordship, although it is currently occupied by a Lich and an infestation of Sorrowsworn.

009: Mask's Shadow Keep

This was post-adventure and served as a hopping-on point for The Central Bank of Babel story arc. The Shadow Keep is home to now-disgraced god of thieves Mask and his Sphinx companions.

EXTRA: Random Encounters

It's always important to keep a few extra maps on hand. I bought most of these from 2-Minute Tabletop. And whether it be for a random encounter while searching the wilderness for a Drow Outpost, for a grid-map to set a battle with Kyuss cultists in their backroom church, for an encounter with demons inside the extradimenisonal cells of the Mirror of Life Trapping, or a placeholder city map while the party hunts down the partners from the Law Offices of Yugo&Yugo, these maps were important, too, to the setting of The Shadowfell.

This is a broad overview of all of the locations in The Shadowfell, after the fact. But at the outset, the party began with an incomplete map and was tasked with exploring and uncovering the world. And then with visiting and revisiting each destination.

The locations served, too, as leads for quests. The party starts at Dracula's Summer Home and otherwise only knows where to find The Shadowfell Imperium and The Academy of Mad Sciences. From Dracula's Summer Home, the team is cued to visit The Shadowfell Imperium and initiate the Shadowfell Inheritance Cycle, quest for the throne. Visit the academy, and the party needs to continue on to hunt down a team of Yugoloth lawyers who are threatening Dracula's associate Papalou. Visit the Imperium, and the party is invited to The Amnizu's Tower, to be offered a "quit your pursuit of the throne, and join my army... or else" ultimatum. And the party can also spend time questioning NPCs and exploring to find the Drow Ex-Pat outpost, in assistance of the Drow fugitive whom they are accompanying.

And this is disregarding the continuations of those quest leads and character motivations that lead players to seek out The Church of Kelemvor and The Crow's Nest and so on.

This is the ultimate advantage of establishing a plurality of locations within a D&D campaign setting. There are elements of exploration. There are elements of a sandbox environment. And there are elements of a living world. Something is happening everywhere, and the party has to make a decision on what leads to follow, knowing that something consequential may be happening offscreen somewhere else.

What do you think? Do you like this approach of specific settings, each with playable grids? Or do your games put a larger emphasis on wilderness travel and overworld maps and occupying a single town throughout a campaign?

What could I have improved? How would you have differently approached surveying The Shadowfell setting?

And have I piqued your interest in The Shadowfell and the campaign I ran? Would you be interested in hearing about the NPC candidates for the Shadowfell Inheritance Cycle and their story arcs?

(screenshots of maps posted below)

What is...The Island Resort and Casino and Spa?

What is...The Island Resort and Casino and Spa?

The Island Resort and Casino and Spa (IRCS) is a D&D campaign module that I designed and ran back in late Summer-early Fall 2019. My motivation coming up with the Island was to make this the most fun possible for the players.

IRCS is a combat-aggressive module intended for a party of 4 player characters at 10th-11th level. It is a 5-day gauntlet against teams of CR 7-13 creatures, monsters and people alike, taking place throughout 8 playable map locations across the Island.

I'll introduce it with the pitch:

• "IRCS is a Battle Royale island that functions on a combat-first basis. The party receives in response to their notoriety a direct invitation to come stay at IRCS from a devil concierge. But the players learn almost immediately that IRCS is no vacation, and they're thrown into the middle of a ranked team-based anarchy of fight and survival."

Imagine all of the elements that make up a Shonen anime Tournament Arc, including the emphasis on fun, themed teams. Here are a few examples: Slaad the Impalers, The "Yeet-i" Efreeti, Revenge of the Gith, Four's Company, and so on.

The IRCS module takes place over 5 in-game days and follows this general outline and pacing:

• Day 1: Thrown into the mix; battle at once, assassin in the night, constant danger

• Day 2: Receive pamphlet with a formal description and rules; introduction to the Island's NPC inhabitants

• Day 3: Headliner fight direct challenge; "Casino" with defective magic items

• Day 4: Mysteries! Shop prices double? Leaderboard #1 Dracula not on the island? NPC ally Jonesy disappears!

• Day 5: Finale! No zone is safe, shops are closed, final boss

• Epilogue: The party has survived and the coliseum institution is dismantled -> what next?

My intent was to create an inherently fun setting that allowed for flexible gameplay. And I had several ideas in trying to achieve this.

Firstly, the premise is to strip down the game to the basics and reintroduce more complex elements throughout the story. In this case, "the basics" is referring to combat. Though combat is just the stepping-on point, and in response to how the players approach the island, the DM adds in pieces of intrigue.

Day-by-day, the players discover an underground and unregulated magic item market, get involved in the shady happenings of born-and-raised IRCS-ers, and soon after everything is amiss. The Leaderboard rankings must be fraudulent: the party is always lower than they should be, and the perpetual #1 Dracula has never been seen by anyone on the island. And then the party learns that the pamphlet is a lie! There are no safe zones, no point system, no law and order...

Apart from the introduction and story progression, there are several other design factors I incorporated into the Island. The party is supposed to be able to play however they want. This is because the module is on a timer: 5 days, and then the Island institution is dismantled. So aggressive players can fight to make the top of the Leaderboard. And cautious players can stay out of trouble, survive, and investigate the mysteries. Meanwhile, everything still runs smoothly, and the campaign concludes satisfyingly (in theory; my players played the aggressive route).

There is a lot of freedom, as well, for the DM to customize the campaign. The 5-day timeline and story beats are guidelines and provide a framework to inject original story developments and campaign-recurring NPCs and more, in place of or in addition to what I wrote for the Island. The combatant teams also can be easily swapped out or nerfed/buffed in order to account for lower/higher level players (I include in the Module notes a few examples for alternate teams).

IRCS was a fun, and I'd say, successful, experiment. It helped teach me the important lesson as a DM to not over-complicate things. IRCS starts out at a very base level: fight to survive. And then it is free to evolve from there, depending on what works for the players and their decisions. IRCS also avoids certain roadblocks and railroading that may occur for a more linear or prescribed story with objective-based progression. I was a fan of how the 5-day time scale and handful of simple, automated background events played out.

What do you think? Does this sound like a campaign module that you'd want to run or to play?

How do you think that your players would approach the challenges of the Island? Or, if you are a player, which team would you challenge to combat first?

More importantly, what's your team name? My players settled on "Dio's Holy Divers," after their rogue Dio.

And what could I do better with designing this campaign? More story? More quest goals? More sandbox-style and less prescribed events? More or less than 5 days in the timeline?

Let me know your thoughts. I hope I've piqued your interest. And feel free to reach out if you want a copy of my resources to run the campaign.

Blurry and Bizarre: The Bigfoot's Biggest Secret!

Blurry and Bizarre: The Bigfoot's Biggest Secret!

A quick Google search (or DuckDuckGo for the privacy-minded) for "The Bigfoot" and you'll encounter a bunch of familiar pictures. It's a series of photos featuring blurry shot after blurry shot of a dark silhouette of a human-like figure in the woods.

Why is it always such a grainy, low-quality photo? Were cameras really that bad back in the day? Of course not! Is The Bigfoot so fast that he only appears as a blur? The footprint evidence would suggest not. And now with the ubiquity of professional-camera-equipped smartphones and hiking never having been more in vogue, why don't we have a clear picture of this fee-fi-fo-fum-footed creature yet? Unless you don't think that The Bigfoot is real. Along with the Moon Landing, 9/11, and The Holocaust...

Well, there's actually quite a simple (and highly technical and scientific) explanation for that. The Bigfoot emits electromagnetic radiation.

Let me give you a parallel example. Have you ever watched the live broadcast of a rocket being launched into space? And have you ever wondered why the video feed cuts out for a few seconds right at the moment the rocket leaves the ground? Well, that is a similar phenomenon, and there's a great video providing the whole explanation for a recent SpaceX rocket landing. In summary: vibrations. The unsteady thrust from the engines emits such a high frequency vibration and acoustic response that it interferes with the video antenna feed, and the broadcast cuts out.

Now imagine your amateur phone or polaroid camera and what similar electromagnetic radiation may do to affect your photo-taking abilities.

The Bigfoot is already known to emit electromagnetic radiation as a defense mechanism and as a predatory advantage, by which is will numb the senses of their prey or of human threats. It is suspected that The Bigfoot evolved a gland which amplifies neural impulses--electrical current, which generates an electromagnetic signal--and that through some rudimentary psychic ability it enacts this defense mechanism. But there are just as many people out there who think that The Bigfoot is an alien and shoots tourists' cameras with a ray gun. We'd really need an autopsy to know for sure.

There are still more unanswered questions, like with any good urban myth. Including, why does only the silhouette of the Bigfoot ever appear, in black with no color or detail? And there are some theories, such as the one that The Bigfoot's hair acts as some sort of electromagnetic "metamaterial" which bends or absorbs the light and leaves just a gap there where a face might be. Eyewitness accounts describe The Bigfoot in extraordinary detail, so we know that he isn't just a black silhouette of a man. But alas, this theory is still just that: a theory.

What are your thoughts on this revelation concerning the cliche of the "Blurry Bigfoot Photo"? Do you have any strange encounters of your own to share? Do you think The Bigfoot is a man or a woman?

The Antisocial-Asexual Hierarchy

    The Antisocial-Asexual Hierarchy

In the realms of Toxic Masculinity there are number of labels and status symbols that may boggle the mind of any reasonable person. Some of you may remember the Pickup Artist trend of the late 2000s, early 2010s, populated by sordid figures like the alt-right blogger Roosh V. This trend was a guise for chauvinist men based on the premise that if you play "the game" right and tell a woman the right lies, you can convince her to sleep with you. Eww. Clearly these men are overcompensating for something here.

But the Pickup Artist scene popularized the idea of Alpha and Beta males. Alphas are like the polygamist male in the pride of lions, and the Beta is a weak, unassertive male that no woman wants. It's this strange, binary worldview where people define their own and other mens' values based on how many women they can pick up.

Years later, also-alt-right commentator and author Vox Day started preaching a new version of this Alpha/Beta dynamic. He coined the term "Socio-Sexual Hierarchy," the idea that you can categorize males and their relationships with both men and women into these 5 categories. He gives a defining characteristic for each: Alpha (leadership), Beta (loyalty), Delta (competence), Gamma (dishonesty), Omega (socially-handicapped). At the root of this is that it's still a hierarchy. The alpha males are supposedly the most attractive to women and have status over men, and life becomes an equally-toxic competition as was the case with the previous Alpha/Beta tiers.

Now, if you've stuck with me through the unsavory topics, let's get on with it. Do you see the trend? It's alt-right men defining themselves and their value based on how many women they can manipulate into sleeping with them. Or how they measure up in an endless pissing contest with other petty men. The Socio-Sexual Hierarchy and its predecessors are, by nature: toxic, over-competitive, and misogynistic.

In this article, I want to provide a framework that gives us a better way to look at our roles in society and how we relate to others.

The Antisocial-Asexual Hierarchy.

Because it's not a male-only issue. Here we recognize the importance of women, nonbinary, and all other genders.

I do hate to call it a "hierarchy," though, because this isn't about some ranked tier list where everyone desperately over-compensates to try and be an Alpha.

The Antisocial-Asexual Hierarchy is intended to observe how some of us relate to the world around us and to others. This list of personality types is by no means exhaustive, and you are free to choose how you self-identify. This list is intended to provide some healthy, non-toxic options. Because we're more important than what's in our pants, and we don't have to define ourselves by our relationships, romantic or platonic, with other people.

The basis for the Antisocial-Asexual Hierarchy traces back to a series of sociological studies conducted in the early 2010s (T. Dickson, et al) that have given us more insight into the study of personality type-ing. Unlike a Meyers Briggs or Gallup's Clifton Strengthsfinder test, which are often intended for an academic or professional environment, the Antisocial-Asexual hierarchy is intended to target how we see ourselves as individuals and as people. Whereas the results of the previously-mentioned type-ing "tests" may reduce us into their narrow definitions and what they expect out of an individual, the Antisocial-Asexual Hierarchy is designed to empower us and not be restricted by the labels of supposedly "good"/"bad" personality traits.

The rest of the Greek alphabet is our "oyster," as it were. So let's get on with defining the 5 personality types of the Antisocial-Asexual Hierarchy: Epsilon, Zeta, Kappa, Omicron, and Xi.

Epsilon (ε)

Someone who is an Epsilon fulfills the role of an older brother to a baby sibling. An Epsilon is an effective teacher and mentor and role model, though there is often an age or generational gap that prevents them from forming a genuine friendship with their baby sibling figure.

The key characteristic of an Epsilon: protective. Epsilons are very dependable for their wards. Although an Epsilon may be in a situation where only see their baby sibling when they're visiting home from college, they stand up for them and are allies to them in a way they would be to a loved one they see every day.

Note that the Epsilon is not a teacher or a coach. They lead more by example than through direct influence in one's life.

Zeta (ζ)

The Zeta is the classic NEET ("Not in Employment, Education, or Training). This person may be lacking direction in life and, as a result, coupled oftentimes with social anxieties, may not leave home much or be around other people regularly. The Zeta can also be embodied by the "free spirit" type, not bound by conventional career paths or relationships, but their wandering still tends to be aimless.

The Zeta is defined by the key attribute: apathy. These individuals lack direction because the direction to them doesn't matter.

Some people might try and diagnose this feature of a Zeta as "Millennial disenfranchisement" (reductionist, in my opinion) or as "nihilistically enlightened," but these people don't understand the trappings of a Zeta. The Zeta is not beholden to the traditional ideas of a "successful life" (whatever that means), and this can be offputting to some people.

Kappa (κ)

A Kappa is who you see when you turn on Twitch late at night and tab over to the "Just Chatting" category. This is the solo internet streamer, the majority of social interactions for whom is through Superchats and comments on their videos (oh, and Twitter).

Kappas may struggle with direct social interaction irl ("in real life") and with little things like maintaining eye contact while talking with someone.

The core idea behind a Kappa is: abstraction.

Kappas tend to be very intelligent and analytical. They usually exude charisma and confidence, sometimes feigned but which is important for holding the attention of their Twitch/YouTube/Twitter audience when they broadcast live for hours on end and often on a daily basis.

A Kappa is more interested in ideas than in people, which is why most may feel more comfortable on an internet forum than at a party.

Omicron (ο)

This is the crazy cat man/woman/nonbinary/other (yes, crazy cat men are a thing). The Omicron has an obsessive personality. Omicrons are who fuel the Gig Economy and tend never to hold a hobby or job long. They're the friends who use their dogs and cats as an excuse not to go out to the club with you (on more than one occasion).

The key attribute of an Omicron is: distraction.

The Omicron is a kindred spirit to the Zeta. They both lack specific direction in life. But the Omicron is characteristically passionate, whereas the Zeta lacks that particulate passion or fire. Omicrons engross themselves short-term into every little thing that interests them and can never settle one life path. They are the ultimate hobbyists, the jacks of all trades but masters of none, and so on.

This is also why the Omicron may gain more from animal relationships over human ones. Omicrons can be good caretaker-types and benefit from the consistency of a cat or a dog (or a lot of cats and/or dogs).

Xi (ξ)

A Xi ("she") is a trivia master. This is the person who speaks only in obscure facts about nerd culture. Xis relate better to people through quoting a director's commentary than on any personal level.

Xis are defined by the key characteristic: unfiltered. There's a phrase, "facts over knowledge," and I think that is core to understanding the behavior of a Xi.

Xis are databases prime for the mining. But others may not understand the logic behind a Xi, and this is because Xis tend to speak very directly and very literally. This directness may be interpreted by some people as being brash or even insensitive.

So? Isn't that a lot better?

No more of that, men fighting to see who is the most cis-heterosexual and chauvinist, idea that was core to the Socio-Sexual hierarchy.

A lot of us don't have the "traditional" family, work, and relationship structure that other, closed-minded people may assume and may try to identify as "normal." So it really doesn't make a lot of sense for us to try to fit into their little boxes and into their out-dated worldview. That's one thing I really want to accomplish by spreading the word about the Antisocial-Asexual Hierarchy.

Leave a comment and let me know how you self-identify!

This is something I'd like to see popping up in Twitter bios, right below preferred pronouns.

I personally think I'm a Zeta/Kappa (major/minor types) 🙂 .

DM's Critique: The Lost Mine of Phandelvar

The Lost Mine of Phandelvar leans too heavily into the fight-'em-up genre of D&D campaign. The dungeons lack the design to properly facilitate a "dungeoncrawl," and the linear main plot and collection quest side plots are not peak role-play scenario.

The Lost Mine of Phandelvar is set up like a video game, and I don't think that's an ideal approach for a tabletop RPG. "Find specific NPC to give you a quest," and go from there into some monster-bloated dungeons, ultimately following the nominal low-level money rewards as motivation.

However, The Lost Mine of Phandelvar does provide a lot of good resources to expand upon. After an introduction goblin hideout venture and a free-town-from-bandit-mob-rule objective when the party first arrives in Phandalin, the world opens up. Phandalin hosts 9 name-specific NPCs, most of whom have both side quests to offer and some backstory that connects to the rest of the Sword Coast environment. For example, Halia Thornton at the Miner's Exchange offers a reward for the death and personal affects of Redbrand bandit leader Glasstaff, and she also is a member of the Zhentarim faction, to which she will extend an invite to the player characters on a job well done. The Zhentarim faction, a.k.a., "The Black Network," has a presence in Waterdeep, and its members have roles in the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist official campaign module. The train of thought is, The Lost Mine of Phandelvar is a robust addition to the Sword Coast setting.

Wizard of the Coast has put quite a bit of effort into placing a number of official campaign modules in settings up and down The Sword Coast. These include, but are not limited to: Storm Lord's Wrath, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Sleeping Dragon's Wake, Dragon of Icespire Peak, Divine Contention, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus.

The Lost Mine of Phandelvar is compatible with the world and plots of all of these campaigns. But it takes some minor tweaks to do it effectively. I recently watched a Matt Colville video in which he describes his approach to a sandbox-style D&D campaign. The premise he gives is that he will set up the players in a neutral territory and introduce a bunch of story hooks, each appealing to a specific player's character and their motivations, and that the party is immediately put in a position of having to prioritize and strategize their queue of heroic exploits. Each of these hooks corresponds to a different low-level campaign module, the settings for which Colville places all accessibly within one general region.

I think that The Lost Mine of Phandelvar, in tandem with the other Sword Coast-located campaigns, would work very well to this effect. I would place a starting party in Phandalin, and there would be a number of directions to go:

• Investigate the Redbrand Bandit problem and learn about The Black Spider and his bandits, Gundren Rockseeker, and Wave Echo Cave, in the vein of the canon The Lost Mine of Phandelvar.

• Meet and become acquainted with Halia Thornton, probably link her to a separate throwaway side quest, after which she invites the party to join the Zhentarim. The party members go and man a hideout outside Waterdeep, encounter and kill a team of PC-proxy characters, and then conveniently pick up in the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign at that point in Chapter 1 of the module.

• Merchants and prospectors arrive in town, acting suspiciously, and through some investigation involving Elmar Barthen and Halia Thornton, the party learns about cultist spies and an impending attack on Phandalin (a la Storm Lord's Wrath). After surviving the attack, there merchants hire the party to escort them back to Leilon, from where a number of Storm Lord's Wrath and Sleeping Dragon's Wake quests are available.

Within the campaign module itself I have a handful other adjustments I'd make were I to run this campaign again. In addition to the above comments with regards to the hooks, world integration, and, ultimately, motivations, I would make some changes to the encounters. My earlier comment about the 'video game'-y-ness of The Lost Mine of Phandelvar applies in part to the encounters. Each dungeon/hideout/ruins/cavern map features a dozen or so rooms, each with a paltry set of goblins, undead, bugbears, indigenous monsters, etc. This makes no sense with regards to encounter design and made very slow pacing when the players got zealous for completionism.

Consolidate the encounters. Feature maybe half the number of encounters by combining groups of baddies. A lot of the maps include narrow hallways and cramped rooms. And while this is a useful mechanism to prevent lower level characters and newer players from getting overwhelmed, it also makes combat very one-dimensional, literally. My proposal for a simple change: initiate battles when the party enters any wider space, most of which connect to multiple rooms or hallways. Enemies file in from multiple directions, sometimes in waves, sometimes all at once, and the party has a bit more room to maneuver, implement tactics, and to experience more challenging, faster-paced combat. The party also won't get stuck exploring a dungeon for 3 sessions because of the time it takes to initiate and complete innumerable small bouts.

A number of these critiques and suggestions are based on my personal style and preferences as a DM. I struggle with running linear and combat-heavy scenarios and prefer a more open-world and more targeted, planned encounters. I want to make Phandalin into a living, changing environment, and I think that's very possible with these minor adjustments and with recourse to the expanded catalogue of official D&D modules (as well as, I'm sure, countless options over on DMsGuild/DriveThruRPG and via other such resources).

EyeOneEye 01

EyeOneEye 01 (08/02/20):
The Issue #1 Inquirer

(spoilers)

I'd like to give a quick 'thanks' to Wes at the Thinking Critical YouTube channel, whose recent video on The Kill Lock and original series published at IDW introduced me to these two comics.

The Highest House #1

(Writer: Mike Carey, Artist&Letterer: Peter Gross, Colorist: Fabien Alquier)

The Highest House is a medieval fantasy that follows precocious young boy Moth after he is sold into slavery and sent to work at The Highest House, a castle city compound under the Aldercrest royal family.

Moth is picked up by a taskmistress who starts training him as a peg-healer (roofer). And this first issue spends the majority of a whole page (14 panels) outlining various tools and processes for roofing and shingling and roof repair, which I found fascinating. This excerpt, in combination with the respect given for the gravity of slavery and a consistency with the use of medieval archaic vocabulary and the visuals with cohesive design made the story immediately immersive.

Meanwhile, the first half of the issue introduces Cael Extat, representative of House Aldercrest, who originally purchases Moth. Cael performs "not-magic" magic, and he has taken a keen interest in Moth for some unexplained connection to magic that the child has, finally culminating at the end of the issue with Moth hearing a murderous voice in his dreams. Cael also provides a succinct and effective 1-page history of the world into which we are stepping.

I explained a lot of things in that summary, but I only described select parts of the first issue, and there are a number of other characters introduced and events that passed. This is all in 24 story pages, not some legitimately "over-sized" comic. I will say, too, that I found the issue very readable, generally well-paced, and the panels not crowded.

I am excited about this comic now. In addition to telling a lot of story effectively, it does something else that I don't see a lot: mystery. While the story moves along and things are happening, the magic surrounding Moth is provided zero details or explanation, but it clearly has some major significance to the story, and that makes me want to keep reading.

The art is standard indie fare (similar tone to something like Iscariot), not particularly good, but I don't think it detracts from the story, and the colorist does some beautiful things with textures and color pallettes.

This is a recommend from me. I'm picking it back up right when I finish typing here.

The Kill Lock #1

(Story and art by: Livio Ramondelli, Letters by Tom B. Long)

This is a good comic, but it's missing something.

The premise is the title: the "Kill Lock." The four main characters are criminals and their punishment is exile and to have installed in them the Kill Lock, if one of them dies they all die, and the story follows their journey of survival.

Did I mention that these are all robots? The story takes place in a hyper-classist interplanetary robot society. The four exiles we meet in issue #1 are described as such: soldier, addict, murderer, and child, each with their related crimes, except that the child is supposedly innocent.

The first issue covers a fight with a mechanical parts scavenger but otherwise is almost exclusively exposition.

This comic excels at characterization.

I don't know the characters names or titles. And these characters are faceless robots, although Raomondelli does successfully make them easily distinguishable by size and design. But despite all this, I already have a good idea about the characters.

The "murderer" is an amoral, condescending, quipping prick, akin to a more realistic Rick Sanchez from Rick&Morty. The "soldier" is more feeling and is working to protect the child, physically and psychologically, in an effort to redeem himself for the civilian children he killed in war. The "addict" is the short-tempered straight-man everyman; he's relatable. And the "child" is a robot child, naive and innocent and curious. Although the child is also mysterious, and I suspect a twist will involve him having committed the worst crime of all.

But this comic is missing something.

Since the first issue is tied up in exposition and characterization, the Kill Lock and exile are not particularly pressing issues. The plot of the first issue is a pretty generic introduction: murderer is rude to a guy at the bar, the party gets attacked outside of town, and the reader gets the surprise of soldier stepping from the shadows and proving to be legendarily powerful.

The robot designs are unique, though not quite iconic, and the art generally looks very good and clean. Ramondelli has a lot of experience on Transformers books, and it shows.

All the elements are there, but they don't quite come together and balance out in the first issue.

It's a good comic, and I do intend to continue reading.

"It doesn't end with the N-word"

Michelle Obama's landmark podcast (self-titled: The Michelle Obama Podcast) launched as a Spotify exclusive today, and featured her husband, the former Mr. President Barack Obama. As one might expect, she touched on a variety of topics that come into play in her relationship with Barack: family, community, love, and life. But she also didn't shy away from talking about race.

Michelle Obama introduces us to some very important nuances of racial language with her use of the soft 'a' "boy" ("boh-eh," @ 13:26). Many of you may be familiar with the soft 'a' version of the N-word, which some white supremacists falsely claim is an acceptable use of the word (it's still unacceptable).

But it doesn't end with the N-word.

I have to admit, until a couple years ago, I was ignorant of the powerful historical context behind the term "boy." "Boy" has connotations stemming a long way back from slavery times, through the Emancipation Proclamation, and more recently through the Civil Rights movement. The word is used to refer to a black person, oftentimes a slave or servant, in a demeaning way, looking down on them (e.g., "boy, get over here!" Ugh, now I feel dirty).

And Michelle has the awareness to speak properly and avoid using this word in the hard 'y' form. (#Kween)

This is part of a larger discussion on the role of racial slurs and derogatory nomenclature in our culture.

It doesn't end with the N-word.

Take, for example, Roseanne Barr's racist and dehumanizing tweet "vj [Valeria Jarrett]... Muslim Brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby," likening a half-black woman to an ape. And remember how many people came to her defense claiming, it wasn't that bad. Well, it was.

Or even today in some Arabic countries like Jordan or Kuwait, as well as Arabic-American communities, the prevalence of the word "abed" ("ah-bēd") used to refer to African or African American people. This word translates from Arabic literally meaning "slave." And although there are some who might claim that this meaning and so-called "American historical context" is not intended in the use of the term, it is still just as hurtful, and these people have the duty to learn about this egregious offense of anti-Blackness.

The N-word gets a lot of attention because of how vile it is, particularly in modern-day America. However, it is not the exclusive end-all, be-all of hate speech and anti-Blackness. We need to have this discussion now (we should have had it a long time ago) about eliminating these other words from our speech because of how they harm the Black community, at home and abroad.

It doesn't end with the N-word.

Thank you for your bravery, Michelle Obama. And you can bet that I'll be eagerly tuning in each week for new episodes.

"The Greatest Danger to Space is... Ourselves?: Growing Concerns Over the Effects of Climate Change"

As Climate Change remains a pressing issue in the face of world and corporate leaders doing little to reign in carbon emissions and prevent out-dated disinformation and anti-science sentiment, we see the much-needed emergence of the Climate Justice movement. The main precept is that there needs to be consideration for the ethical consequences of Climate Change, particularly with regards to the most disadvantaged of our neighbors across the world.

But despite progress, in recent years, there seem to be some lingering questions with regards to Climate Change science. First and foremost in many of your minds, I'm sure, is the question, "What ever happened to 'Global Warming'?"

Let's take a step back.

Pictured here are NASA astronauts performing work on the exterior of the ISS. You can see in these images, and more clearly in the source video, what appear to be air bubbles escaping from these astronauts' space suits.

NASA has later come out and identified this as a feature of their space suits. In order to keep the air inside clean, there is a release valve that lets out carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts, while maintaining the pressurized environment within the suits. Astronauts are knowingly releasing carbon dioxide into space.

Now, back to Climate Change.

Not many people seem to be aware, and I think it's important to note, the real reason that the use of "Global Warming" has fallen out of practice. It's not some "PR move" or "rebranding campaign," as many far-right media outlets might have you believe. This change in terminology is because Climate Change is not just a global issue. And many scientists have spoken out against the ethical irresponsibility that was taking place in being so geocentric in our thinking.

Thus "Climate Change" was born to account for all of our extraterrestrial brothers and sisters (and non-binary siblings) out there.

New studies indicate that there could be as many as 36 intelligent alien civilizations in our galaxy. And similarly to the Climate Justice issues we face here on earth, the indigenous peoples of other planets may be more vulnerable to the irreparable damage that humans are causing with carbon emissions. Other species should not be subject to the carelessness of our interplanetary pollution.

And mind you, the pollution most definitely is interplanetary.

Space isn't as empty as we previously thought. Deposits of gas can be found all around our universe, often in the form of "rivers" and "clouds." These gases, primarily hydrogen, can travel between planets, solar systems, and even galaxies, and are thought to be responsible for the formation of new stars. And we are actively polluting these gaseous rivers.

Astronauts aren't the only problem, even taking into consideration waste off-boarded from the ISS. With the ever-deteriorating ozone layer, damage to which can be traced back to pollutants, including aerosols, there is evidence that some amount of gas may be escaping out of the atmosphere and into space.

Carbon emissions are no longer a global issue.

Be the best Universal Citizen you can be, and stand up for the well-being of your neighbors. Both on and off Earth.