Ultraman, the Netflix show, is based off of the same character as the 1966-1967 show from Japan. The original show revolves around aliens attacking earth and until Ultraman shows up, the Science Patrol (yes, it’s called the Science Patrol), are unable to drive back the aliens. Now, it’s the next generation of Ultraman. The Science patrol is still around, but the alien threat is now from aliens who are living on earth. When an alien shows up that was last seen 12 years ago when a plane crashed killing everyone on board, the Science Patrol kicks it up a notch.

The show isn’t all that complex a show plot wise, it’s aliens do something, and the human who is Ultraman shows up and has a moral quandary about he’s doing. And it kind of repeats that trope throughout the show, but it does have some through lines in the show. Especially at the end of the season you get a through line in a few episodes. This isn’t a show that has a ton of major through lines though. You tend to just get two or three episodes that are somewhat tied together. But I think some of that simplicity is what makes the show work. They don’t try and confuse it too much with misdirection upon misdirection.

I think it also works because the style of animation on the show is an interesting 3D anime style animation. It wasn’t something that I thought I’d like, but they do a solid job with it. I do think that there are a few spots where it is rough around the edges, but in some ways, that’s some of the charm of the animation style. You get that billow of smoke that looks solid, but not as good as you thought it was going to be. And since it is based off of something in the 1960’s, not sure how faithfully, having that little bit of feel where it’s trying to do something on the cutting edge is fun. It kind of works with the premise of Ultraman, and you also end up with some 3D animations that are just amazing.

Anime shows often come down to how the voice acting is done, especially in watching a dub. Netflix didn’t really hold back on getting talent for this, which was great. You have Josh Hutcherson voicing the main character and Critical Role cast members Matt Mercer and Liam O’Brien voicing character as well. So you have solid voice acting, and there’s something fun about recognizing voices in an anime, especially when it isn’t just the main few voice actors that you get on many a Funimation dubbed show.

Overall, this is a very fun show. It doesn’t try to be too much and do too much. As Kristen said about it, there’s just something fun about it, and I think that is the best away to describe it. It’s definitely a show for teenagers and adults, but it doesn’t mean that it’s too heavy. And it doesn’t have sex in it really, there’s just alien blood and once in a while human blood and various gore that you see. Even that isn’t too bad compared to what it could have been. And it’s just nice to have that action show where the character is growing that doesn’t end up relying on violence of fan service. So don’t go into it expecting anything that profound or deep, but do expect a good time.

Have you watched Ultraman on Netflix? Did you like the show?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

This one I’m starting with the book series by Brandon Sanderson The Reckoners with the first book being called Steelheart.

Story Synopsis:

There was an event that happened around a decade ago known as calamity. This even caused people to receive super powers, however, everyone who got powers became evil. Among those was a powerful epic (as the super heroes are called) named Steelheart who is invulnerable to damage. He killed our main character, David, father several years earlier. Now David, who was eight or so when that happened, has grown up and is still living in Newcago (Chicago, but now turned to steel). He’s grown up in a hard life as an orphan, but what he wants more than anything is to kill Steelheart and he knows of a resistance group, known as the Reckoners who kill the epics, and he wants to find them and join them.

Let’s meet the characters:

David – Our main character, he is eighteen years old, or so, and has a lot of troubles with metaphors. He also, growing up as an orphan and kid of a loner, doesn’t have great social skills. He’s just put his efforts into researching epics, trying to find their weaknesses, and figuring out where the Reckoners are and who they might be.

Prof – The leader of the Reckoners. He’s a very serious man who likes to plan everything out as well as he can. But he isn’t a pushover who is just a brain, he is also good in a fight. A little bit older, he has been through the wars with the epics and is still standing.

Tia – The technological wiz of the Reckoners, she has been with Prof from the beginning. She helps him plan, she has the connections for the research into epics, and she is the support for the Reckoners missions. She’s also one of the few who can talk with Prof when he is mad without her getting more mad at her.

Abraham – Heavy arms expert who really believes that there have to be some good epics out there, or that this is just a challenge for humanity and if they pass it, the good will come. He’s very even keel and relaxed.

Cody – From the south, but really loves his Irish/Scottish/Australian heritage. He’s a sniper who is kind of a jack of all trades. He’s smarter than he seems, but he puts a front of being a weirdo just because that’s how he deals with how hard everything is and how hard everything has become.

Megan – The love interest (oooooh). But more than that, she’s a snarky character who is mainly annoyed with everyone. She’s part of the Reckoners as well and often runs point. She’s the first to meet David and that doesn’t go all that well for him.

Steelheart – He’s an egomaniac who just wants to rule. He makes it livable for the people of Newcago not because he cares about them that much, but because he wants people to lord power over.

Conflux – One of Steelheart’s right hand epics. He is the one who powers the whole city and keeps it livable for the people. But he also is the one who powers all of enforcement as well for Steelheart.

Nightwielder – Also a right hand epic of Steelhearts, he keeps Newcago bathed in darkness. He goes out and a bout and if often more involved with what is going on in the city than Steelheart is. He’s Steelhearts arm that helps deal out his justice.

So who gets cast?

David – Tye Sheridan

You’ll know Tye from Ready Player One. While that wasn’t a great movie, fun, but not great, the less great looking, more everyman sort of feel is what makes David good. He’s someone who is self conscious of being smart and not all that confident in himself, and I think that Tye Sheridan could pull that off.

Prof – Bruce Greenwood

Greenwood doesn’t have the size that I might have wanted for Prof, but he has a presence when he’s on screen. Generally he seems like someone who has a quiet confidence, and I think that matches well for Prof. And he isn’t someone who looks like he’d be a slouch in combat either.

Tia – Gina Torres

She was a calming influence on the Serenity in Firefly, so I think she could do the same for the Reckoners. It’s a pretty subdued but important role to properly create the team cohesion.

Abraham – Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

He’s immediately who I thought for the role, though I didn’t remember the actors name, because he played Heavy Duty in GI Joe: Rise of Cobra. Basically a pretty relaxed and confident character who has a big gun, and that’s what Abraham is as well. I thought about Terry Crews as well, but Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaja fits the role a little bit better and Crews is just too happy feeling to me.

Cody – Simon Pegg

Cody is the comedic relief. But he’s more than that, he’s smarter than he seems, and I think it would be a little bit more action focused but similar character to what Pegg plays in the Mission Impossible movies.

Megan – Chloe Grace Moretz

She has the acting chops for what is a fairly difficult role. Her previous performance as Hit Girl in Kick Ass is something that she can pull upon for Megan as Megan has a bit of that abrasive side to her as well.

Steelheart – Josh Brolin

Now, this is a bit on the nose with his performance in Avengers: Infinity War, but Brolin would do the villain well for this film. Someone who has a ton of ego and no fear.

Conflux – Erick Avari

It’s a small role, but Avari would do well in the role that might not be the most challenging, but has some good twists around his character.

Nightwielder – Sean Baek

From Killjoys, he’s a good actor who has played the right hand to a villain before. He fits the description in the book and with the role in Killjoys, it would be a pretty easy step over.

Who would you want to see cast?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here

For the Dresden Files series, the world of the stories might seem easier than some to describe. After all, as an urban fantasy, it’s set in modern times, in a real place. Then again, I’ve never been to some of the places in Chicago that are mentioned in the books — in fact, besides driving around it once, the longest I’ve been in Chicago was a long weekend, over a decade ago. So, in describing these new-to-me places, what does Jim Butcher do that I appreciate? In an example from the book Small Favors, the characters go to an aquarium to hold a meeting with some monsters. Instead of spending much of any time describing what the aquarium looks like, Butcher lays out the reasons why it is a good spot for the character’s meet-up (despite all appearances to the contrary). With how these details are described, you get an idea for why the aquarium was picked, not what the aquarium looks like. And there isn’t a reason to describe what it looks like — most readers will have a solid idea of this already, so there’s no need to describe the outside as you drive up, because it doesn’t matter for what’s happening in the scene. Even though Butcher used an aquarium that actually exists in Chicago, it doesn’t matter if my mind’s picture of it isn’t exactly right. In fact, this covers for him in case he ends up not having every detail right in his description, because someone would likely complain if he got something wrong. And if someone knows the location well enough to catch that, they don’t need a picture of it painted for them anyway.

So, what was done differently overall in this series that sets it apart from a lot of others? In short, it doesn’t infodump — I’ve read most of the books in the series, and I still haven’t run into any long scenes of world-building; nor have there been any grand, overarching segments describing every piece of magic, lore, and landscape that’s going to be important later. There are a number of reasons why it’s good to avoid this as a writer. An example of infodump occurs in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One — the author spends most of the first three chapters world-building. He goes through a ton of 80s references and nuggets of information about the characters, their society, and their world that go on and on forever. There are a couple of issues with this; one is that it ends up telegraphing a ton of things. For most of these instances in Ready Player One, it wasn’t so much a Chekhov’s gun as it was a Chekhov’s machine gun, with the way everything was jammed into those first few chapters. It’s also frustrating because it ends up meaning that not much happens in a story full of infodump. Ready Player One is one of the few non-fantasy examples of this — authors of epic fantasy are often the worst offenders of using infodump or overly detailed description. George R.R. Martin is a bad one for this, tending to include too many details that don’t advance the plot. It also happens in Lord of the Rings (yes, I went there), in which things are described to a level well beyond what the reader wants or needs.

The question is, then, how do you balance it so that you aren’t pulling a fast one, but not putting in so much detail that it stops your story in its tracks and gets people to put down the book? I enjoy Dune quite well, for example, but I have trouble getting through it, especially early on, as Frank Herbert spends so much time developing his world, all the politics, and all the other different facets of the series. For that reason, I don’t read it in book form; I listen to it on audiobook, because that’s how I can make it through those opening chapters. But instead of just talking about how some books get it wrong, how about some ways you can do better than the big names I’ve mentioned who don’t always do it right?

(If you aren’t a writer, just think about who might do these things from the stories you’ve read or watched.)

First, I think it’s good to ask yourself as a writer/creator, does the reader/viewer need to know this? You put time and effort into coming up with all the details for your world. That is awesome, but some of those details are only meant for you. When you crest a hill and look down on the plains of Fargath, you don’t need to tell everyone about the river in it, unless the river is really important and unique. I already know what a plain looks like, so I don’t need to know the basics. The example below about the plains of Fargath is what you want to avoid:

As your band of weary travelers crested the final hill, they looked down on the plains of Fargath. Before them stretched miles of open grasslands that were turning golden in the autumn sun. Off in the distance, you could see a stream with a couple of trees standing next to it, but beyond that and a few small rolling hills, there was nothing for the eye to see. You turned to look at your traveling companions. They turned to look at you, sweat beading on their brows after a long days’ work. The horses looked tired, and didn’t appear to want to continue.

Let’s break that down. First, what I’ve described is a pretty standard plain. It’s actually a pretty boring plain. We probably already know I’ve been traveling all day, so it’s obvious that everyone is going to be pretty tired. The only useful pieces of information in the paragraph above might be that it’s autumn and that the area is called the plains of Fargath. It could be cut down to something like the following:

As your band of weary travelers crested the final hill, they look down into the plains of Fargath. The autumn air did nothing to stop the heat, but had already begun to turn the grass a golden color.

Two sentences — that’s all you need to describe what took way longer before. Now imagine traveling all the way to Mordor describing everything like the first example.

Next, unique is cool. In the example of the plains of Fargath, what sort of detail could be unique?

As your band of weary travelers crested the final hill, they looked down into the plains of Fargath. The autumn air did nothing to stop the heat, but had already begun to turn the grass a golden color. Off in the distance, you could see the head of the giant. The thirty-foot-tall stone head was clearly broken off from a giant statue, but none was to be seen.

Okay, that’s pretty cool. A thirty foot tall stone head, clearly broken off from a statue — how did that get there? It’s a detail that is probably going to be important, and that is definitely unique. Maybe they just camp by the stone head for the night and something happens there — even if it’s just an important conversation, now people are going to remember the plains of Fargath. But look at that compared to the first paragraph. It’s more interesting, because heads of statues lying on the ground are interesting. It’s still shorter, and the reader isn’t getting bored, because thirty-foot-tall stone head.

That’s one way to keep things more interesting — another would be to describe the function of the place or the reasoning for going to this place as you travel. This is what Harry Dresden did in Small Favors when going to the aquarium. He said it was off of peak season. So we now know to imagine the aquarium as being pretty empty. He talked about how unless people can see something, they don’t really know what happened or think that it happened the way it did, hence meeting indoors. We now have a clear purpose and functionality for picking the location of the aquarium. How would that work in an example that isn’t written by a prolific author?

No one went to the plains of Fargath for anything more than a novelty visit to the thirty-foot-tall head of a statue. It would be a quiet location for planning to be completed, and a place for plans to be set in motion for getting back the kingdom.

That’s really short, but again, without going into great detail about the plains of Fargath, we now have an idea of what the place is like. It’s quiet, it’s empty, there’s nothing there. We also know why we’re going there — probably something the reader would know already by that point, but a nice thing to clarify form time to time. We also know that this is going to be their base of operations. That tells us a lot about the place and why they are going there instead of just what the place looks like. Using this method also cuts down on a planning session ahead of time. It literally cut two scenes way down, potentially. It also has a sense of action to it that you lose in just a purely descriptive scene. Sure, there are plenty of ways to make description more active, but generally that adds to the length of the description. See the plains of Fargath example below:

As your band of weary travelers crested the final hill, they looked down on the plains of Fargath. Before them stretched miles of open grasslands that were turning golden in the autumn sun. The grass twitched in a breeze that barely cooled anyone. Off in the distance, you could see a stream babbling slowly across the plain with a couple of trees standing next to it, but beyond that and a few small rolling hills, there was nothing for the eye to see. You dropped out of your saddle and looked at your traveling companions. They turned to look at you, sweat beading on their brows after a long days work. The horses hung their heads and didn’t appear to want to continue.

It’s a little bit longer, and while we now have sense of motion with the grass twitching in the breeze, cresting the hill, the stream babbling, and the sweat beading, it’s still pretty much a long descriptive paragraph. If you felt like my two sentences above about reasoning weren’t enough, we can even add a little of the detail back in while keeping it very short:

No one went to the plains of Fargath for anything more than a novelty visit to the thirty-foot-tall head of a statue. Even fewer people came to see the statue as the autumn days grew shorter. It would be a quiet location for planning to be completed and plans to be set in motion for getting back the kingdom.

Now we know the season and also sets up more why the plains of Fargath will be empty. It’s probably not needed to add that, but maybe the shortening days will matter to the plot later, or that will be a trial they have to overcome. It only adds in a sentence, and not a long sentence at that.

The final way to make interesting world-building is on-demand world building. This basically means that you only add a detail to the world when you need it. Patrick Rothfuss does this in The Kingkiller Chronicle series. His narrator, Kvothe, only tells the parts of the world that are interesting to him, and only when they are relevant to the story. That does mean that information is sometimes sprung on you, but not often, and as a writer, that would be something to try to avoid if the piece of information is important for a later plot twist. What Kvothe does is about the opposite from what Wade Watts does in Ready Player One. In both cases, you’re dealing with a narrator who is the star of their own story, but Wade Watts gives you all the information to start, whereas Kvothe sprinkles in what is important where it’s needed. In Ready Player One, however, I don’t know that it could have been information dumped a ton better. As I said above, it was a Chekhov’s machine gun in that information dumping, so how do you avoid springing a surprise on the reader with that? It could have been cut down some, as there was a plethora of information and details given that weren’t needed, and that likely would have been the best solution.

With on-demand world building, it’s something that you just don’t have to use in writing or in shows or movies. I’m actually doing that with season two of Dungeons and Flagons (Found Here) where the players are helping me create the town of Bresson on the fly as well as NPCs. As a Dungeon Master, this can be a little bit scary to do, but it’s also a lot of fun, they are giving me the cast and location for this adventure, and I get to see the places that are interesting to the players and really get to be along for the ride with them. All of the suggestions above are great ideas for pulling into your RPG as well. Giving information on demand, or keeping descriptions short for a theater-of-the-mind game, or even just describing why a place is a good spot for the characters to go can all make for an interesting story.

What are some of the best and worst books that you’ve read or movies or shows you’ve watched in terms of world-building and information dumping? Is there someone who really stands out to you as being a great world-builder?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

We are trying a new thing with Amazon Links. If you’re interested in what we talked about in our articles or used for the podcast, please consider making a purchase through our links. Purchases help support our website and offset our costs. Thanks!

[amazon_link asins=’0441172717′ template=’ProductGrid’ store=’nerdologists-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’2b7b8d13-1d70-11e8-b1f9-cd306c7e5fbb’]

[amazon_link asins=’0345538374′ template=’ProductGrid’ store=’nerdologists-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’3383fa23-1d70-11e8-966d-19e8d19851db’]

[amazon_link asins=’0756404746′ template=’ProductGrid’ store=’nerdologists-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’3b08e03a-1d70-11e8-a755-136f0627881a’]

I didn’t know a ton about this novel before reading it, beyond the fact that it was near-future sci-fi, and that you can’t go more than a couple of sentences without hitting an 80s reference. What I didn’t know, however, was that this story takes the concept of virtual reality technology to its logical conclusion in a really satisfying and unique way, and that it, like so many sci-fi novels, is eerily prescient in terms of the ideas it deals with.

Ready Player One is set in the year 2045, and centers around a young man by the name of Wade Watts (so named because his father thought it sounded like a superhero’s alter-ego). Born into a world where poverty, drudgery, and misery are the prevailing winds (for his family even more than most), Wade escapes his harsh reality the way everyone around him does — by spending most of his waking hours logged in to the virtual reality platform known as the Oasis. When Wade was about 15, the mastermind behind the Oasis, James Halliday, passed away — but not before leaving a video clue letting the world know that he’d hidden an extremely hard-to-find easter egg somewhere in the Oasis. The first to find that egg, he tells them, will become the heir to his multibillion-dollar fortune, and will gain ultimate control over the Oasis itself. For Wade, who came from nothing, this chance at untold wealth is irresistible. So he joins the legions of others like himself in the search for the egg, under the guise of his Oasis avatar, Parzival. He learns every possible detail about Halliday’s life and absorbs as much of the 80s content Halliday so dearly loved as he can possibly stuff into his brain, in hopes of finding the secret that will unlock the series of gates that will finally lead him to the ultimate prize.

I have to admit — as this book began, I soon started to doubt all the hype I’d heard about the story. And let me tell you, there had been a lot (which may have been part of the problem). The book begins with infodump — a lot of infodump. Like, we’re talking most of the first six chapters’ worth. There were stretches where it was so tedious it was almost physically painful (hyperbole, you say? Just barely, trust me) — this was somewhat by virtue of the fact that, when listening to the story via audiobook, we weren’t able to just skim over the lists upon lists of information Wade offers when describing what, among Halliday’s repertoire, he has studied. But regardless, it felt excessive to say the least.

Thankfully, the infodump mostly subsided after the first few chapters, and that’s when things really got going. Once the setup has passed, the pacing takes off, and it doesn’t let up until the end. As you go along, it’s hard not to find Wade’s/Parzival’s obsession with all things Halliday/1980s to be infectious, and as the tension mounts, all you want to do is keep reading (or listening, in our case) to find out what’s going to happen next. Wade makes a lot of realistic decisions, both in-game and out — he’s almost preternaturally smart, to be sure, but it’s sometimes his downfall, and when he becomes too confident in his abilities and in his (staggeringly vast) knowledge of 80s canon, he’s often confronted with his humanness, as that last key bit of knowledge or foresight eludes him, and something just barely slips through his grasp (whether it be the latest clue, something happening in the real world, or one of his few but important relationships). It’s these moments that make the story both believable and compelling, and make us root for Wade/Parzival as he fights to win the prize against all odds.

One of the main things that stood out to me about this story (aside from the infodump) is how cinematic it feels. Part of this was due to listening to the story on audiobook, but a lot of it was because of Cline’s way with words. No matter what was happening in the story, I felt like I could visualize everything, vividly and easily, every step of the way. Strangely enough, it’s this aspect combined with the infodump portions that lead me to believe that the movie adaptation of the book (due out in March 2018), is going to be amazing. In fact, I think there’s a chance it could even better than the book itself. And book purist that I am, I can assure you that I don’t say such a thing lightly. My prediction is that the movie version will be able to quickly show many of the aspects of the story that the book took so much time to explain, just by virtue of being a different medium. And along with that, since the story has such a visual quality even in book form, I think it’s going to be dynamite when it’s translated to the screen. And the trailers we’ve seen so far have done nothing to diminish either of these notions, in my mind. Suffice it to say, I have high hopes for the movie, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

The other aspect that makes this story successful, as I see it, was its ability to look into the future with a keen eye — or at least one version of the future. The world of RPO has fallen into disrepair and decrepitude, mostly because everyone is so caught up in virtual society that they can’t be bothered to maintain the real one. Everything is run by corporations (most of them evil), and the number one concern on everyone’s mind is the next time they can log in to the Oasis, real-world responsibilities be damned. As I mentioned, this is taking the idea of addictive technology to its logical conclusion, and this naturally introduces some elements that feel pretty farfetched. Nevertheless, when our own world is seeing technology encroach into our lives to exponential degrees, the very concept of RPO feels like a wakeup call. Like similar cautionary tales in the world of sci-fi, it’s hard not to see it as a sign that we’re at a crossroads, and that how we move forward from here will determine whether our world starts to look more and more like Wade’s.

Overall, despite the pitfalls along the way, I found Ready Player One to be a satisfying, exhilarating read. As I mentioned, once things start moving with this story, they don’t stop, and the heights and depths to which the story takes the reader are well worth the wait. I’d recommend this book to any sci-fi fan, 80s afficionado, or pop-culture geek. After powering through the rough beginning, I found the payoff to be as good as I hoped, and if this book sounds up your alley, I think you will, too.

__________________

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @Kefka73
Visit us on Facebook here.

We are trying a new thing with Amazon Links — f you’re interested in what we talk about in our articles or use for the podcast, please consider making a purchase through our links. Purchases help support our website and offset our costs. Thanks!

[amazon_link asins=’0307887448′ template=’ProductGrid’ store=’nerdologists-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’1126a709-eb0c-11e7-a3f1-859063e13748′]

[amazon_link asins=’0307913147′ template=’ProductGrid’ store=’nerdologists-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’1a82e4c0-eb0c-11e7-8d4d-f92338f82170′]

Highlight #1: Running a one-shot for the second time. This w\game that went in a completely absurd and amazing direction when I ran it for the first time last year, and it was fun to see how things turned out differently running it a second time. It was also interesting because I had one player who is around my age in the group, and then three other players who are probably closer to my parents’ age than mine. So it was interesting to be teaching Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition to someone who really knew how to play 2nd Edition.

Highlight #2: My Pride, PrejuDICE, and Zombies game. This was another game that I ran, and it was a blast; I had two people who were huge Jane Austen fans in the group, and getting to run them through the absurd scenario that is Pride, Prejudice and Zombies was great. We also had two people who weren’t as familiar with the original story, and that was a lot of fun as well, as I got to tell some of the story from the movie (and book, but I’ve just seen the movie). We had Jane, Lizzy, and Kitty Bennett and Charles Bingley as player characters. I also tried a very cinematic version of combat, since they were fighting through a zombie horde; it took a little bit for a few of the players to really get into it, but it is fun to get these absurd scenes and to have a single player describing it, and using other characters to help fight off zombies. The game is a bit short, and the big battle was a bit too easy, but everyone had a ton of fun.

Highlight #3: Hanging out with friends is a huge part of the con. Getting to talk for a long while with Amanda, whom we met last year and who played in the game I mentioned in Highlight #1, and later playing Five Tribes with her and one of her friends was a ton of fun. We also had a great time hanging out with our friend Tom Cantwell (he’s given suggestions for our Eating Nerdy series) at Warped Wing Brewery, having him as a player in the Pride, PrejuDICE, and Zombies group, and then playing Machi Koro with him after that. Last year, we knew a few people through Twitter, but didn’t meet them in person until the con, and this year we met and hung out with even more new people. AcadeCon is great because it’s still growing, so you tend to run into some of the same people, and that’s a lot of fun.

Highlight #4: Playing three new systems, two of them with the game creator. We got to play Axon Punk Overdrive (think Cowboy Bebop and cyberpunk) and managed to get a cure for a disease without killing any guards. That was a ton of fun, and we got to build our own characters for that. I picked up the manual for that game system, and we may be featuring a guest post from him soon–stay tuned! We also got to play Dreamchaser with Pete. It’s an interesting game in which the players build a story collectively, using the dreams of your characters as plot points. We were trying to capture a fairy, and I played as an eccentric uncle character.

Highlight #5: We got to play in some really interesting worlds. Axon Punk Overdrive was a fun world to live in, and the creator had clearly put a ton of effort into creating something that was really immersive. But the one that took the cake was playing a game using the Cypher system. We played as vampires, werewolves, and magi who were fending off techno-zombies, aliens, and a cult. It was a super cool, dark world in which humans had been killed off and the whole earth was generally in perpetual daylight, except for the city we were in. We were playing a raiding team that had to solve how an artifact caused a demon to be released in our town. Kristen and I are thinking of getting the components for that system so we can run a game of that ourselves. It’s fantastical and awesome, and with Cypher, the scenarios are always in the future. Throughout the course of gameplay, you find  items called cyphers, which are always tech items that have a one-time use for your character. You can only hold so many, but they allow you to do awesome actions. Another feature of the system is that the players are the only ones who roll dice, so the GM can focus more on the story and less on the mechanics, as they’re mainly just setting difficulty levels and framing the story.

Overall, the con was a blast. For people who want to play different RPG’s and learn new systems, I’m always going to recommend that they attend AcadeCon. This year, we did a really good job of balancing out how much we did, resting, and enjoying our time there. Many thanks to everyone who made it awesome, especially The RPG Academy.