Review: Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised

I funded the kickstarter, still waiting for my lovely print book, but you can get PDF now, and I assume print-on-demand (POD) will come eventually.

S&W was one of the first “Old-School Renaissance” games. Matt Finch had worked on OSRIC (an AD&D-like retro-clone) in 2006, and took that and applied it to the original game.

I’m going to review the new book by looking at three (plus a bit) editions over time.

Swords & Wizardry Core in 2008, had most of OD&D (Original D&D, 1974) and fragments of Greyhawk (Supplement I, 1975):

  • Stats (“Ability Scores”): Uses the “modern” order of STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA (instead of SIWDCCh), but rolls 3d6 for each. Like OD&D, bonuses are only -1 to +1. INT has reduced extra languages, which I prefer to replace with CHA-10 languages. Has a bizarre new EP bonus system, where WIS, CHA, and class Prime give +5% each, no penalties for low stats. M-U with INT 15+, and Clerics with WIS 15+, get an extra 1st-Level spell.

  • Classes: Only Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, and a few non-Human species (“Race”, as was the fashion at the time): Dwarf (with their own class table), Elf (with their own class table), Halfling (barely defined, Fighter up to 4th-Level). Fighter has a base save 14, everyone else has 15, Dwarfs only get +4 save against magic; in OD&D they get +4 levels against all saves (which varies from +2 to +4 bonus depending on level).

  • Combat: Mostly OD&D-like, but opinionated because there are not clear procedures in the original. For both legal and modernization reasons, it changed Armor Class from descending 9 (unprotected) down to 2 (plate+shield), to combination ascending, 9[10] (unprotected) to 2[17] (plate+shield); saving throws went from five different numbers for Death, Wands, Petrify, Dragon Breath, Spells & Staves, to a single target number, with bonuses for some classes and species.

    Turn Undead is a new table, based on the D20 SRD, using a d20 chance to turn all of the same type. It’s pretty generous, and makes Clerics OP against Undead and Demons!

    You know what’s hilarious? There’s no rules for falling, fire, or disease. Some monsters list damage for poisons, others it does death. How is Neutralize Poison useful? It’s unknown.

  • High-Level Adventuring: Followers, mass combat, spell research, all very brief.

  • Magic: Almost all of the OD&D + Greyhawk + some later spells. Notably, Magic Missile has both variants, auto-hit for d4+1 damage, or to-hit as a +1 arrow.

  • Referee: How to design a dungeon, very light. Two sample maps, side-layout lines, and small dungeon. Random dungeon & a couple terrain-specifc encounter tables, but no overall wilderness encounter table.

  • Monsters: Most of the OD&D monsters, but not the under-defined “Maybe dinosaurs, giant bugs, robots, Martian Thoats” entry. As in later games, but contradicting OD&D, Skeletons are 1 HD not 1/2 HD, Zombies are 2 HD, not 1 HD. There’s only 2 Demons, Lemures & Balrog (“Baalroch”). Dragons are Black, Blue, Gold, Green, Red, White, Turtle.

    Officially it uses d8 hit dice. OD&D was unclear, Holmes and later specify d8 hit dice, but I continue to use d6 for all except very tough monsters (Dragons x3 HP, Demons, Elementals, Giants get larger HD by type).

  • Treasure: Core through Complete (unrevised) used a system of giving GP = 2-3x monster XP, with trade-outs that almost never (5%) generated magic items. The item lists are minimal compared even to OD&D, intelligent magic swords almost never happen (1/1440 of major treasures!) and only have a 10% chance of spell-casting.

Core’s fine for a quick and very minimalist game, and has higher-Level options almost all other retro-clones ignore, but you need to add a lot to finish it.

Offshoot: There’s also a White Box variant, cutting out even more of that material, and later another publisher made White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game (FMAG), which is more variant, adds Thieves, and limited to 10th-Level (12 for M-U), but it’s very compact, a good pick-up game system; while apparently some people have run long games with FMAG, you’d do better with Core/Complete/Revised.

Swords & Wizardry Complete in 2010, was a major upgrade. Where I don’t mention, it was the same as Core, but often expanded and rewritten for clarity. Boxes sometimes explain the rationale for rules, which at least helps you write house rules to change them!

  • Stats: Adds more of the Greyhawk tables, increasing power of STR but doesn’t add the 18/d100 mechanic so that’s… overpowered but not the worst. INT removes the M-U bonus spell, and adds a bunch of stupid spell choice mechanics. I hate the INT table, so much. I give M-U Detect Magic, Read Magic, 2 spells of choice, +1 spell for INT 15+. Done. Never make spell gain rolls. WTF Gary Gygax, let’s not perpetuate this.

  • Classes: All the classes of the OD&D supplements, Ranger (stupidly overpowered) from The Strategic Review/Dragon, but not Bard, Illusionist, or Barbarian. Stat minumums for the “better” classes are an optional rule, but listed. Non-Humans are standard classes or multiclass, and Half-Elves are added. “Halflings” are still garbage. Multi-classing is explained clearly, tho not necessarily the way I like. But it’s A system.

    The Cleric spells/day table changed, more like OD&D, but I think this is a design error. In Core, 5th is 2/2/1, 6th is 2/2/1/1, Complete jumps from 5th is 2/2 to 6th is 2/2/1/1; inexplicably gives 2 spell levels at once.

  • Alignment: Defined as a juvenile, He-Man, Law-good, Chaos-bad thing. I reject this, I’m more Moorcockian where everyone is bad except maybe Balance (and, you know, not everyone likes my Captain Planet “replace Humans with trees” definition of good).

  • Combat: Has an alternate version of the OD&D saving throws, tho they’re not integrated into the rules. If you do want to use these, understand that the deadliest, most environmental things are easiest to save against, mere inconveniences are harder, directed effects are hardest. You can read hardest to easiest if you’re a bastard DM, easiest to hardest if you’re tolerant.

    There remain no rules for falling, disease, and minimal for fire and poison. Starting fires is listed under Lamp Oil (which is ridiculous, lamp oil is not napalm or Greek Fire). The use of poisons is barely touched on in Assassins, but not their effects.

    Surprise is completely rewritten and expanded, and includes a hard-to-read monster reaction roll.

    Initiative rewrites the Core mechanic, and then presents two alternate systems: Holmes-like DEX rank (which is what I use), and Eldritch Wizardry activity points. All 3 systems are still using a 1-minute round which isn’t clear in OD&D, contrary to Holmes and B/X which are 10-second, I use the 10-second round (and 100-second combat turn) from Holmes.

    Turning undead uses almost the same table (slightly harder at Level 9+), but changes from d20 to 2d10, and turns only 2d6 Undead (no Demons), so now high-powered Undead are up to 10x harder to turn.

  • High-Level Adventuring: Followers, strongholds. Research is moved to Magic, rest is moved to Referee.

  • Magic: Same spell list, with minor changes.

  • Referee: All-new dungeon examples, an evocative side-view cross-section, a much better detailed dungeon, and a sketchy part of Rappan Athuk with no key, but good design. Better dungeon encounter tables (from 6 to 10 options) and adds a very good, detailed wilderness encounter system. Mass warfare, siege warfare, aerial combat, ship combat are all fleshed out and quite usable; tho in practice I’ve always used the GAZ4 Kingdom of Ierendi larger-scale naval system.

  • Monsters: Adds many classic monsters:

    • Bulette (ludicrously lists Tim Kask’s pr. “boo-LAY”, when French pr. would be “bu-let”)
    • Crocodiles
    • Demons (13, from Manes to Orcus)
    • Clay Golem
    • Leech (which drain a life level like undead!)
    • Naga
    • Rakshasa
    • Fish, Octopus, Squid, Sea Monsters (adds a 30 HD variant! Screw you! Never get on a boat! Never go in the water!)
    • Shambling Mound
    • Shrieker, Lurker, Piercer, Slithering Tracker, Trapper (screw you to dungeoneers)
    • Yeti
  • Treasure: A few more items, swords are now intelligent more often, but there’s no real mechanics for this. Adds cursed scrolls.

I’ve run S&W Complete for 11 years, I use the nice blue-cover kickstarter edition (look under “Troll Slayer” in the back), it’s a very solid OD&D-that-doesn’t-suck. I don’t use everything, but it’s nice to have the options. It’s easy to extend into a “modern” (2nd-gen or later) RPG, adding professions & skills, more character background options, situational rules, and there’s not many interacting parts to stop you. Very importantly, saving throws are basically D20’s “DC 15” skill roll. Just add a stat or skill modifier, and Level bonus is built in.

See under “Previously Swords & Wizardry” my notebook of Olde House Rules for Complete. I’m currently hacking up all my character & referee notes for a new version. If you like opinionated house rules, you’ll like that when I’m done.

Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised has just completed its kickstarter. It’s the same size book, 144 pages, but more usable pages: 140 vs 125 in Complete. This is because there’s No Fucking Index. Complete’s 2-page index wasn’t the most useful thing ever, everything’s listed in contents and reasonably organized, but occasionally I have to search in PDF instead of checking the index. SIGH, why, Matt? No kickstarter credits in new book, either.

Many places in the book now go from 2-column to 3-column layout, which can be helpful or too tight. It’s fine for spells & monsters which have a lot of data fields, less great for species.

  • Character Sheet: New sheet is a fillable form, many more boxes, but less aesthetic than the old one. In any case, I just use James V West’s character sheets, many of which have single-save boxes. I will note, the new one lists AC from 0 to 9, instead of 9[10] to 0[19] order & labelling. I really dislike that.

  • Stats: Same as Complete. CHA does get a new use for follower morale.

  • Class: Cleric spell table remains in design error. Fighters now have a standard 15 save, BUT get a +1 bonus against all except spells, which is a little better balanced, more OD&D. Monks no longer have stat minimums, BUT most of their powers require higher stats, so an average-Joe Monk would have only minimal skills. There’s no stat minimum for Paladin, except when a Fighter takes vows they need CHA 17, inconsistent.

    Thieves remain up to 10d4 HD (while Assassins are up to 13d6!), but have a +2% chance to Climb Walls, Dwarf Thieves get a +15 on Traps, no +10 bonus on Pick Locks, finally this travesty is corrected! Must-buy for this change! :) Seriously, all the classes are pretty close.

    There’s an argument here “Why Would I Play a Fighter?” that Rangers & Paladins are not Fighters, so don’t get Fighter STR bonuses, etc. I’d rather that it just went back to stat minumums, so you can’t be one of these advanced classes unless you roll well. Especially this makes no sense for Paladins, who are JUST Fighters who’ve taken holy vows; why would they suddenly lose their fighting skills?

    The non-Human species (now “Character Ancestry”) are the same; this is a little disappointing since there was room to improve the class/levels permitted from long dialogues to clearer lists:

    Dwarven player characters must be Fighters or Fighter-Thieves. Multi-classed Fight- er-Thieves are limited to 6th level as Fight- ers, and may not advance beyond this point. (For more information on multi-classed char- acters, see below.) A Dwarf who is purely a Fighter may advance beyond 6th level only if the warrior has Strength of 17 (maximum 7th level) or 18 (maximum 8th level). Such a Fighter may also take advantage of any XP bonus due to a high Strength score to gain experience more quickly.

    Could be cleaned up to:

    • Fighter (max Level 6th, 7th if STR 17, 8th if STR 18), Prime requisite bonus applies.
    • Fighter/Thief (max Level 6th/unlimited)
  • Movement: Encumbrance & movement has been changed, and now combat speed is faster, 60-120′ per 1-minute round (Core was 3-12′, Complete was 10-40′!), walking & running out-of-combat are still per 10-minute turn. Combat speed is now nearly plausible if you use a 10-second round, Usain Bolt did 100m in 10 seconds, so 1/3 rate for equipped normals is fine. The per-turn speeds are still nonsense, even with mapping it should be 10x or more. There’s a collected movement chart here that is much clearer.

  • Combat: Morale rules have been added, and a morale stat to every monster. Now, here’s the thing: It copies B/X (Basic/Expert, 1981) in using roll 2d6 under morale to save. OD&D almost always had roll high good, and Chainmail’s morale system was roll 2d6 high over a number determined by troop type. I would have greatly preferred a standard d20 save with morale modifier per monster, or some such. But the presence of any morale rule and stat is helpful.

    There’s arguments, most recently on Wandering DMs, about the use of morale, but I think it’s an essential tool, both as wargame simulation, where people in battle do sometimes just crap their pants and “Run away! Run away!”; and narratively as a way to avoid mass-murdering everyone you ever meet and fight.

    There remain no rules for falling, disease, and minimal for fire and poison.

    Healing has been reduced back to OD&D rate of 1 HP per 2 days, 4 weeks heals all. Death is at –1 HP, with an optional rule for survival to negative Level. Whoof. Since I don’t use Clerics, that’s not really practical.

  • Magic: Magic item creation is detailed, including the very popular rule from Holmes that Magic-Users and Clerics can write their own scrolls at 100 GP per Level, which makes a massive improvement to their quality of life. All new layout and a spell index, which since they’re in alphabetical order I didn’t really need. The page numbers could’ve been on the spell list instead!

  • Referee: Alas, the side-view dungeon & Rappan Athuk maps are gone, the dungeon from Complete is kept in 1-page dungeon form. Which is convenient for design, but less in depth for training new Referees.

    A new system for generating random castles, inspired by OD&D Book 3, is very welcome. And there are stats for generic high-Level NPCs, with sometimes magical equipment, spell lists, etc.

    A Referee Session Log (“control sheet” as I call them) is added, with fillable form fields, which may be very helpful to new Referees. There’s no explanation of its use, but at least they can see how to organize information for a game. There’s no time tracker on this one, I use a 6×24 chunk of graph paper in Turns for mine.

  • Monsters: Each monster now has Morale, Number Encountered, % in Lair (but I prefer % is Liar from OD&D and Arduin), and a full stat line you can copy-paste out:

    Bugbear: HD 3+1; AC 5[14]; Atk bite (2d4) or weapon (1d8+1); Move 9; Save 14; Morale 9; AL C; CL/XP 4/120; Special: surprise opponents (1–3 on d6).

    New monsters:

    • Dinosaurs: Ankylosaurus, Brontosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus Rex. They’ve always been 20% of the Clear encounters (Oof!), but weren’t defined in previous editions.
    • Horse finally gets full stats.
    • Mammoth
    • Night Hag
    • Nightmare
    • Otyugh

    Designing monsters, there’s new CL modifiers, EP values for CL 8+ have increased a bit, and the table goes up to 21+ now, more fairly rewarding very powerful monsters.

  • Treasure: System has been totally redesigned. You now roll on GP value tables, which give more specific coin & gem results, and many more of them have chances for magic items. At 4001-7000 GPV, you now have a 1/6 chance to get a major item, 1/6 to get a medium item, 2/6 to get a minor item. I’m not really gonna complain it’s too rich now, but it’s a big jump from 5%.

    Intelligent weapons are at the same rate as Complete, but now there’s actually rules for ego contests.

    Items seem to be the same.

Book abruptly ends. So, the current license situation is there’s no license (“all rights reserved”). There will be a Mythmere license very like the old OGL, or ORC with an SRD, or something, in the very near future, as a downloadable thing.

Conclusion

So this has been a long haul over a few days comparing PDFs until my eyes bleed out. I can’t speak to the print book condition until I get it; my old blue book is in perfect (well, Very Good) condition after a decade of hard use, but printers are random.

There’s several other retro-clones of OD&D, in particular Fantastic Medieval Campaigns which is VERY precise at copying warts and all of the original books, with minimal spackle over the rough spots. There’s a lot, a kaiju-sized shitload, of B/X clones, which have a goofier, overpowered style, poorly adapted to swords & sorcery; I have played some Basic Fantasy lately and it was fine, very candy-coated Saturday morning D&D cartoon tone, but not a replacement.

Swords & Wizardry is much more eclectic and opinionated. It’s also much more playable, more hackable, and more easily used as a “modern” RPG (I always air-quote that, but RPG design has moved on from Dave Arneson’s game that Gary Gygax published & ripped off). There’s still a lot of weird little gaps.

★★★★½ — S&W is a really great “dnd”-like to run, and Complete Revised is the best of these. I really dislike not having an index. I still need a booklet of house rules to play.

Covers: One last thing, the cover art over the editions is… not the best progression. I think the Core rules cover was the most D&D-like, an homage to the AD&D cover but grimmer. The Erol Otus blue book cover was fun, the electric demon and portal are eerie. The old city is meh, you can barely see the adventurers. The flying polyp thing is hideous. Giants are amateur. FMAG has gone thru many variants, they all look like (often are) clip art with airbrushing. The new edition comes in a green embossed cover, classy but boring, or a POD cover with maybe the most hideous art I’ve ever seen; only the teeny preview is available, and that’s a blessing like Langford’s Parrot basilisk.

Social Media Deathwatch II

Not content with seeing Elmo destroy Twitter, Reddit’s management have one-upped them, and killed Apollo, the good mobile app (there was Alien Blue, but Reddit bought it and screwed it up; it’s trash now).

Many subreddits were going to protest by going dark on June 12-14, some ongoing, but now while that’s probably still happening, it’s irrelevant.

When a site tells you they don’t want you using it, except by their captured clients, you should stop using it. All they want is to control you and put ads in your eyeballs, until you explode.

That happened for me years ago with Twitter. It happened before that with MySpace; I know it sounds like a joke now, but if you liked music and web design, MySpace was a fantastic place to meet people. And before that, there was LiveJournal; now owned by Russian criminals. Reddit came out of Digg being fed into a woodchipper just because Kevin Rose wanted a little bit of money. I dunno what keeps a billion people trapped in Facebook, but they’ve never had open clients, those people like being property.

Don’t use closed networks owned by someone else.

Use fediverse and IRC, and be prepared to jump servers if you don’t like hosting your instances. There’s a Reddit/Digg-like Lemmy built on ActivityPub, so you can subscribe to things from Mastodon, etc.; I’ve started reading that and will probably start posting to it some. There’s dozens of fedi/mastodon/pixelfed clients; hopefully someone makes one as nice as Apollo for Lemmy.

Update: Lemmy.ml is overloaded, there’s instructions on how to pick other instances and join groups. It’s happening!

What I’m Watching: Wednesday

I dunno why I only watched E01 when it came out, catching up now. And mostly it’s fine. Sometimes excellent, but suffers from Netflix Wants Eight Episodes Syndrome, where it could be a good 90-120 minute movie instead.

It’s very very blatantly Harry Potterage. The spooky old castle school Nevermore, with secret passages, four cliques (Fangs, Claws, Scales, and Stoners, but also shapeshifters & psychics like Weds). The “Normie” (ruder but less obscure than Muggle) town where they sneak off for forbidden beverages (coffee instead of butterbeer), tho you rarely see them drink. There’s places it’s shot-for-shot ripping off Chris Columbus, but to be fair Columbus ripped off Tim Burton.

Like HP, you never see the supposed students in class, except rarely in Herbology, er, “Care of Carnivorous Plants”. Which is Morticia’s thing, it’s odd to see it as a whole course here.

Composer Danny Elfman & producer Tim Burton are somewhat more restrained than usual, it’s gothy but not goofy like his later stuff. I’m disappointed and surprised the episode in a circus (inexplicably present decades after touring circuses ended) didn’t get all surreal and have chases thru halls of mirrors and dark rides while camera tricks simulate hallucination! THIS IS YOUR MOMENT, and you just miss it entirely.

Writing & direction are all over the place. Some eps are gothic mystery, very Poe-like. Some have gruesome action scenes, very nice. Others are wacky school hijinks like discovering the secret clubhouse. The psychiatrist visits are ’60s sitcom trash, with a few wisecracks by Wednesday. In the last 4 eps, repeatedly: Wednesday barges into a room, makes accusations or demands, they turn out to be false or stupid, proven in the next scene or so. Sometimes she’s assaulted with no fighting back. I expect more caution, forethought, and actual violence (not just threats) from an Addams.

Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) is 20 playing 16, and she’s fine at it, very cute. Fits her ancestry by way of Gomez. She’s maybe a little too stiff, classic Weds was sweet like arsenic, not bitter like cyanide. But awkward teenage serial killer years. Gotta love ’em.

Thing is fantastic. He’s clearly the best actor on the show, and the real hero. They give good long closeups of his scars and stitches. He’s never looked so alive. Just perfect.

I’m shocked to see myself write this, but Fred Armison as Uncle Fester was actually good. I loathe Fred, he’s a black hole where humor goes to be sucked out of the Universe, he’s grating, whiny, and hideously ugly in a way only a truly rotten Human monster could ever be… And the Fester makeup and writing, and his delivery, were… Not Jackie Coogan good, but acceptable. How. What dark rituals were enacted to make Fred act, for once in his fucking miserable object lesson of a life‽

Some actor casting…

Would-be boyfriend Tyler (Hunter Doohan) is 28 playing, uh, 30? He’s creepy in the way Matthew Lillard was in Scream, and this (and his ability to never be useful in an emergency) is why I pegged him early as the monster.

Enid & Xavier (ludicrously pronounced “Eks-ave-ee-er” rather than “havv-iyeh” or “szav-iyeh” like cultured people do) are played by young-looking 21-ish kids, but many other “students” are in late-20s and it shows.

Luis Guzman is adequate at the romance with Morticia, clearly dotes on Weds, but he’s ugly, unsuave, physically unfit to be sword-duelling Gomez Addams, and is 20 years older than Catherine Zeta-Jones even tho supposedly they were students together. John Astin & Raul Julia were the ideal any Gomez should aspire to. There’s a million Mexican telenovela actors who could do this role better.

★★★½☆ So uneven I don’t respect it, but I watched and so should you.

What I’m Watching: Silo

Over on “TV” (Apple TV+, Apple now believing they own all proper nouns), an adaptation of Hugh Howey’s Wool (2011) and sequels. Currently S1E01-2 are out, and they’re trickling out more every Friday. That’s how they get you to keep a “TV” subscription.

“We do not know why we are here.
We do not know who built the Silo.
We do not know why everything outside the Silo is as it is.
We do not know when it will be safe to go outside.
We only know that day is not this day.”

And they really try not to know. They live in a bunker after some apocalypse, look at projected screens of a wasteland from a single camera. Climb hundreds of floors of stairs between management and engineering, so really not much has changed.

You know what’s weird? They have wool (sheep? Or something else?), linen, leather. Coffee, beer, bread & cake. We never see (in eps 1-2) any farms, real plants, or animals. Maybe they’re somewhere, but oxygen generation inside doesn’t make sense from what’s shown.

I’ve read the short story and a bit of the first fix-up novel, but I’m a little confused. There’s another series, Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember (2003), which had a really trashy movie starring Bill Murray; the book (and sequels? I didn’t read them but I think I should) was much better. And it addressed their very limited resources immediately and constantly. Short story Wool didn’t cover this, maybe the fix-up and later in the show does?

Anyway. Sheriff Holston (David Oyelowo) & wife (Rashida Jones) have been given breeding permission, which they go at; until her frustrating day job in IT gets her into forbidden knowledge, and we… don’t find out what’s outside. Then we bounce between flashbacks and investigations a couple years later, because no modern writer’s able to stay on one timeline anymore; I shouldn’t complain, Ember’s dumb movie added a giant monster.

The sets are grim industrial awfulness, a little too blatantly greenscreen CGI, where a practical set, model, and matte painting would’ve looked better (The Machine in particular). Most of the people in the first two eps are well-acted, tho I’m not always sure how much the Mayor (Geraldine James) knows; is she in on it? She’s reading old journals, doing all but heresy to understand the Silo, but her reactions don’t always match. She reminds me greatly of “Mom” from Futurama before she dropped her façade.

The premise is great, but having killed & retired a few people right off, there’s only Mom and engineer Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) left. I want to see a lot more development of the background as this goes on, and I suspect it’s going to be more political infighting instead. We’ll see.

Probably worth starting, but you could also wait a bit and binge when it’s further along.

What I’m Playing: Honkai Star Rail

(screenshot gallery at bottom)

In short, it’s a space fantasy RPG, turn-based combat, gacha but generally free-to-play (F2P) friendly. I’m running it on iPad, but it also has Android, Windows, soon Playstation. Like the company’s previous two games, Honkai Impact 3rd & Genshin Impact, it’s very pretty. Unlike them, it’s turn-based combat, with heavy emphasis on elemental rock-paper-scissors, getting team skill synergies, and better gear (“light cones” are weapon buffs, “relics” are armor).

It has some of the best writing I’ve seen in a game. There’s in-universe lore, letters between characters, chat logs, database dumps, a ton of weird people with semi-branching storylines. Occasionally some really serious consequences; telling the truth might set someone free or destroy them, I’ve seen both happen. Could I have avoided a crushing, cruel fight if I’d been more subtle? There’s also a lot of comedy, and references to science fiction and other culture. The trash cans are more than they seem.

HI3 was all waifus, very blatantly taking advantage of Chinese & Japanese otaku. GI was a little less predatory and monotone, tried a little harder at the global audience, but then had the most annoying mascot ever, Paimon, that did all your talking for you. HSR has found a nice balance, there’s a lot of hot female chars, but also boys (alas, all twinks; none have body or facial hair or any build other than “teenage swimmer” except a couple older NPCs), and the game tends to throw opposite gender flirt at your main character; I’m glad I chose the male MC.

They’ve learned how to make maps. HI3 had very narrow corridors to do linear action fights in. GI has a vast, largely empty and samey world to scrape over for materials, and then closed mini-dungeon arenas to do jumpy puzzles & action fights in. HSR maps are fairly small, mostly interiors or box canyon mazes, with connected zones at a couple places, but they’re much more interesting than the HI3 maps, it’s worth going back a few times to find all the secrets, kill the special monsters. Many HSR maps have 2-3 floors, and switches for different paths, just like a real RPG.

The daily grind is a mix of little fetch quests and other tasks in explored zones, Simulated Universe which is a “roguelite” series of fight rooms & random buffs, Forgotten Hall boss fights, Calyx Trees where you grind mobs for specific materials.

If you overlevel the mobs, you can just set combat on auto, 2X speed, and it’ll be fine. As soon as you hit any kind of elite or boss, or near your level, that stops working, you need to KNOW how elements interact, PLAN your fights, and use skills intelligently. Read the hints as they pop up, and the books in your database/library, it’s all explained.

HSR owes an enormous visual & story debt to Galaxy Express 999 (Matsumoto Leiji anime, willowy long-haired girls & emo boys in dusters with hair over their face, trains in space, vast cosmic threats treated as secondary to personal squabbles and little children, etc), with a much better thought out variant of the cosmology in HI3. Gameplay and visuals are extremely similar to Star Ocean, SMT Persona, some Phantasy Star (esp. the architecture). That’s not to say it’s a “ripoff”, just fairly obvious about its influences. Weirdly just before this, I was playing Eroica, which is fantasy-steampunk-science fiction gacha game about a train on rails of light, fighting magically-corrupted monsters in turn-based combat with the same kind of time-to-strike counter; Eroica’s much lower budget, but it was good training wheels for this.

The UI is pretty much the same as Genshin Impact’s, but a little more smartphone-like; you hit the phone icon, and that gets you a single top-level menu (and your char holds up their phone! Every char has a custom phone skin/dangly bits). There’s hot-buttons around the screen for specific parts of that menu. There’s a soft joystick in the bottom left, action buttons bottom right, border’s full of widgets and data like any MMO. Sometimes it’s a little crowded, but not like a WoW raid screen.

Gacha

So, the gacha needs to be addressed. You get “star rail passes” which are for the normal banners, and there’s a starting banner at 20% off (8 passes = 10 pulls). My advice is to spend the 40 passes for 50 pulls it gives you, just for the discount and one five-star char you get from it; I pulled Gepard the tank, not my favorite but useful later. Then keep pulling those passes on the regular banner after that, and enjoy whatever you get. Don’t spend jade (F2P gems) or anything else on this.

There’s also “Special Passes” for the event banner, currently Seele who is the best single-target DPS char so far, and I loved the version of her in HI3, so I want her back. If you play intensely, and spend all your jade on it, you may be able to hit the “soft pity” level where you have an increased chance to get her. Even if you don’t, the pity apparently carries over to the next event banner. I’m planning on doing everything F2P to get her, and then if that doesn’t work, I’ll think about spending a little real money on it; I have paid for the $5 monthly pass, so I’ll have some paid gems. I’m not willing to spend $200+ to guarantee getting her like some streamers have!

You don’t need any of these. The main character (Trailblazer, same whether male or female) is actually pretty good as physical DPS/tank, and after an event becomes a top-tier fire DPS/tank (Eroica did the same thing, but without the choices! Sei is the best tank in the game). The free shielder (March 7th), healer (Natasha), AOE (rock star Serval), hunter (the very boring Dan Heng), etc. are more than good enough to get you through all the story and all but the very hardest optional bosses. Don’t waste money thinking you need a better character; only spend if you can afford it and really want a specific char. I don’t believe in rerolling, I think it’s a very stupid & anti-fun waste of time, and this game takes a couple hours to reach the point where you could reroll hoping for a 0.3% chance at a specific char.

Rating

I’ve spent, uh, rather too much time in game; since Tuesday, I’ve done consistently 4-8 hours per day, total 27 hours. That’s clearly deranged; I’d like to get it down to ½hr daily, 2hr weekends. But I’m now on the 3rd world! So that should calibrate your JRPG-grind meter. Like all live service games, it’ll presumably keep getting material until we don’t pay/play anymore, HI3’s still supported after 7 years. Shockingly HSR’s not as CPU/GPU/battery-burning as others, a couple hours is <25% battery used.

I have one world left to slowly explore and then nothing but dailies to do until the next update (maybe in May when the next banner starts). If you’re less obsessive about it, this could be months of game right at launch, and you’d never run out.

★★★★★ absolutely must-play if you like JRPGs. Don’t spend money until you know you like it.

Screenshots

What I’m Watching: Florida Man

I managed to watch a TV (‘flix) show!

  • Florida Man (2023): Produced by Jason Bateman, so you should know what you’re getting into, but this is more funny white trash film noir than outright comedy.

Mike Valentine (really? Star Wars-level joke names for romantic hero? played by Édgar Ramírez) is a degenerate gambler ex-cop in Philly working for Moss Yankov (yes, names are this bad, slow growing parasite Eastern European trash mobster, by Emory Cohen), and banging his moll Delly West (dolly, Mae West, we get it, played by model Abbey Lee, but she’s too scrawny, vapid, and Millennial to pull the role off; she tries “sultry” and it’s just “waif needs a cookie”) and holding a torch for his ex-wife Iris (oddly, no obvious connotation? played by Lex Scott Davis, hot but mean). Delly runs off to Florida, Moss sends Mike to catch her. Down there, they get tangled up with Mike’s father “Sonny” (inverted parental relationship, Anthony LaPaglia), and recovered pirate treasure.

So there’s dense setup in the first episode… and then there’s 4 eps of screwing around, not getting to the point, 1 ep of actual plot(!), 1 ep of resolution. There’s a lot of fun but irrelevant side plots, the EMT & the tweaker, and the dumb vacationing deputy who has increasingly bad days down there, and the honest but simple-minded deputy Andy (not Taylor or Clutterbuck, but meant to evoke that incompetence, played a little too broadly by Paul Schneider of Parks & Rec), and the old hit man Dutch (Ritchie Coster, piece of shit not-really-actor who appears in every bad remake, but he’s adequate here, even has some fiery moments!), and the motel owners, and I haven’t even got into the sister’s family drama they all keep wandering thru. But very quickly you can see they just kept writing junk to fill episodes until someone told them to stop.

If this had been edited, and cut down to just what it needed, it’d be a brilliant Jim Thompson-level Grifters kind of movie of betrayal and femme fatales and “Valentine” thinking more with his other brain. But it’s not, so it meanders around and you lose sight of actual plot until it sneaks back in at the end.

★★★½☆

Gretchen, Stop Trying to Make ALAC Happen!

I have a bunch of FLAC files from an album I bought, it was that or low-quality MP3. iTunes (“Music.app”) doesn’t read FLAC, even tho it’s the industry standard for lossless audio.

So I fought with ffmpeg (each “f” stands for “fuck you”), and it converted about half of them into usable files.

Eventually I found XLD X Lossless Decoder: Lossless audio decoder for Mac OS X

Had to right-click, Open to get past Mac Gatekeeper, ugly little program, been in development forever, but it works perfectly. Converted a directory full of flac into m4a, then just dragged them into iTunes and now have music where I want it. If I’m real excited for it, I could downgrade them to AACs, but eh good enough for now.

Everyone be sure to tell Apple that ALAC is stupid and not going to happen.

(the ffmpeg I did was:

for f in *.flac; do
  echo "$f"
  ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a alac -c:v copy -acodec alac "${f%.flac}.m4a"
done

but now I really don’t wanna hear about how to fix that.)

Angry Wires Monday Music

Vim the Next Generation

So I figured I should modernize my Vim skills, from 1995 to 2023. A lot’s changed since I last configured Vim.

Installed a modern MacVim, in my case sudo port install MacVim. It’s launched with mvim, but I just change alias v=mvim in my .zshrc

In the code blocks below, ~% is my shell prompt, ## filename shows the contents of a file, cat into it or whatever. Neither of those lines belong in the file!

To start, I want to use vim9script. So my old .vimrc now starts with that mode command, then I changed all my comments from " to #. Not much else had to change. The way to detect MacVim etc is clearer now, and I can get ligatures from Fira Code!

Syntax highlighting files can just be dropped in ~/.vim/syntax/

Update 2023-04-11: added statusline highlight colors, under syntax loading

## .vimrc
vim9script
# Mark Damon Hughes vimrc file.
# Updated for Vim9, 2023-04-09
#
# To use it, copy it to ~/.vimrc
# Note: create ~/tmp, ~/.vim, see source commands below.

set nocompatible    # Use Vim defaults (much better!)
filetype plugin on
set magic
set nrformats=

set errorbells
set nomore wrapscan noignorecase noincsearch nohlsearch noshowmatch
set backspace=indent,eol,start

set nosmarttab noexpandtab shiftwidth=8 tabstop=8

set encoding=utf-8 fileencoding=utf-8
set listchars=tab:__,eol:$,nbsp:@

set backup backupdir=~/tmp dir=~/tmp
set viminfo='100,f1,<100

set popt=header:2,number:y  # 2=always

set tw=80       # I use this default, and override it in the autogroups below

# ctrl-] is used by telnet/ssh, so tags are unusable; i use ctrl-j instead.
set tags=./tags;/
map <c-j> <c-]>

# Don't use Ex mode, use Q for formatting
map Q gq

map <Tab> >>
vmap <Tab> >
map <S-Tab> <<
vmap <S-Tab> <

# Always have syntax highlighting on
syntax on

# https://github.com/mr-ubik/vim-hackerman-syntax
# changed:
# let s:colors.cyan         = { 'gui': '#cccccc', 'cterm': 45 } " mdh edit
# let s:colors.blue         = { 'gui': '#406090', 'cterm': 23 } " mdh edit
source $HOME/.vim/syntax/hackerman.vim

set laststatus=2    # 2=always
# %ESC: t=filename, m=modified, r=readonly, y=filetype, q=quickfix, ff=lineending
# =:right side, c=column, l=line, b=buffer, 1*=highlight user1..9, 0=normal
set statusline=\ %t\ %m%r%y%q\ [%{&ff}]\ %=%(c:%02c\ l:%04l\ b:%n\ %)
set termguicolors
hi statusline guibg=darkblue ctermbg=1 guifg=white ctermfg=15
hi statuslinenc guibg=blue ctermbg=9 guifg=white ctermfg=15

hi Todo term=bold guifg=red
# Use `:set guifont=*` to pick a font, then `:set guifont` to find its exact name
set guifont=FiraCode-Regular:h16
if has("gui_macvim")
    set macligatures
    set number
elseif has("gui_gtk")
    set guiligatures
    set number
endif
set guioptions=aAcdeimr
set mousemodel=popup_setpos
set numberwidth=5
set showtabline=2

augroup c
    au!
    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.c set ai tw=0
augroup END

augroup html
    au!
    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.html set tw=0 ai
augroup END

augroup java
    au!
    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.java set tw=0 ai
augroup END

augroup objc
    au!
    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.m,*.h set ai tw=0
augroup END

augroup php
    au!
    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.php,*.inc set tw=0 ai et
augroup END

augroup python
    au!
    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.py set ai tw=0
augroup END

augroup scheme
    au!
    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.sls setf scheme
    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.rkt,*.scm,*.sld,*.sls,*.ss set ai tw=0 sw=4 ts=4
augroup END

Package Managers & Snippets

Next I need a package manager. I’ve settled on vim-plug as complete enough to be useful, not a giant blob, and is maintained. There’s at least 7 or 8 others! Complete madness out there
(I’ve already picked one, I don’t need further advice, and will actively resent you if you give me any. I’m just pointing at the situation being awful.)
Install’s easy, drop it in autoload, mkdir -p ~/.vim/plugged

The first thing I want is a snippet manager, and SnipMate’s the best of those. Edit .vimrc at the end, set your “author” name, it’s used by several snippets.

## .vimrc
call plug#begin()

Plug 'https://github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-mw-utils'
Plug 'https://github.com/tomtom/tlib_vim'
Plug 'https://github.com/garbas/vim-snipmate'
Plug 'https://github.com/honza/vim-snippets'

g:snips_author = 'Mark Damon Hughes'
g:snipMate = { 'snippet_version': 1,
        'always_choose_first': 0,
        'description_in_completion': 1,
    }

call plug#end()

Next part’s super annoying. It needs a microsoft shithub account; I made a new one on a throwaway email, but I don’t want rando checkouts using my real name. includeIf lets you choose between multiple config sections, so now I have:

## .gitconfig
[include]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-kami
[includeIf "gitdir:~/Code/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-mark

## .gitconfig-kami
[user]
    name = Kamikaze Mark
    email = foo@bar

## .gitconfig-mark
[user]
    name = Mark Damon Hughes
    email = bar@foo

~% git config user.name
Kamikaze Mark
~% cd ~/Code/CodeChez
~/Code/CodeChez% git config user.name
Mark Damon Hughes

But shithub no longer has password logins! FUCK.

~% sudo port install gh
~% gh auth login

Follow the prompts and it creates a key pair in the system keychain. I hate this, but it works (on Mac; Linux install the package however you do, it works the same; Windows you have my condolences).

Now vim, :PlugInstall, and it should read them all. I had to do it a couple times! Then :PlugStatus should show:

Finished. 0 error(s).
[====]

- vim-addon-mw-utils: OK
- vim-snipmate: OK
- vim-snippets: OK
- tlib_vim: OK

Let’s create a snippet!

~% mkdir .vim/snippets

## .vim/snippets/_.snippets
snippet line
    #________________________________________

snippet header
    /* `expand('%:t')`
    * ${1:description}
    * Created `strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")`
    * Copyright © `strftime("%Y")` ${2:`g:snips_author`}. All Rights Reserved.
    */

And if I make a new file, hit i (insert), line<TAB>, it fills in the snippet! If I type c)<TAB>, it writes a copyright line with my “author” name; it’s highlighted, so hit <ESC> to accept it (help says <CR> should work? But it does not). Basically like any programmer’s editor from this Millennium.

Update 2023-07-24: Added header, which is my standard document header, expand is filename with extension, rest are self-explanatory. Sometimes I add a license, which SnipMate preloads as BSD3, etc.

Use :SnipMateOpenSnippetFiles to see all the defined snippet files.

File Tree

NERDTree seems useful; read the page or :help NERDTree for docs. Add another plugin in .vimrc just before call plug#end(), do a :PlugUpdate, and it’s that easy. But I want to hit a key to toggle the tree, and another key to focus the file, which takes me into the exciting world of vim9 functions.

## ~/.vimrc
Plug 'https://github.com/preservim/nerdtree'

# open/close tree
def g:Nerdtog()
    :NERDTreeToggle
    wincmd p
enddef
nnoremap <F2> :call Nerdtog()<CR>
# focus current file
nnoremap <S-F2> :NERDTreeFind<CR>

Update 2023-04-11: In NERDTree, on a file, hit m for a menu, and you can quicklook, open in Finder, or reveal in Finder, and much more. Doesn’t seem to be a right-click or anything functionality, so it was not immediately obvious how to make it open my image files, etc.

And I think that’s got me up to a baseline modern functionality.