It is time again to reflect back on a land of long ago in Westeros…wait…no…this is Defiance, not Lethea’s Game of Thrones synopsis. I am breaking a rule of mine: there will be spoilers this week (not the last time I’m bringing up GoT this week, either). There is plenty to talk about, so let’s get right into it.

The overall plot is intensifying. We are weeks away from an election where Amanda Rosewater will be going up against…well, probably Datak Tarr. Unless this show throws a curveball and introduces someone the town loves at the last minute. The more we learn about the Earth Republic, the more we realize they are about as pleasant as James Bond villains.

This week, we are introduced to Pol Mads, who made a bunch of nasty Votan weaponry during the Pale Wars. We also have Eddie, a former Marine buddy of Nolan’s. For me, the best part of this episode was the “I know you have more guns” moment.

The moment I saw this guy be familial around Nolan, I knew Nolan would get betrayed. It doesn’t help matters that the plot is beating people over the head with the foreshadowing of Eddie’s eventual betrayal.

Game of Thrones does a better job of introducing new people at random. Each new character gets three simple lines of dialog, more or less, that establish who they are and why we should care. Defiance, on the other hand, leaves far too much ambiguity. Characters come and go and the the viewer doesn’t always understand what their role is. It’s hard to have a “big reveal” where we find out a character isn’t who we thought they were, if we never knew what to think of them in the first place.

I was hoping that – six episodes in – viewers would get more info about Doc Yewll. Nope. That did not happen. Who is disappointed? I am.

The most surprising thing about this whole episode is that there is a hefty bounty on Nolan. You do not get a bounty of over $200,000 and not get a reputation. How did the old Defiance Lawkeeper not know this? How did Datak Tarr not know this? Tarr would have paraded Nolan all over Defiance in order to make Jeb look bad.

This is really, really lazy; and this show got renewed…so yeah.

In another throwaway line, Eddie mentions that a war is coming between Earth and the Votans. Um.Why? Better question, why have we spent three episodes now working on a railroad for Defiance when winter is coming?

I don’t know enough about Kenya Rosewater and Irisa Nolan.  Why have they both rejected Jeb and Tommy, respectively? It makes no sense.  Kenya gets hit on by Eddie, suddenly she says no to both? What.The. Hell? Do any of these characters make sense? I am reverting to the point where I just show up to see Jeb and Datak.

Speaking of Datak, right as I was wondering if I’d see him this week. BAM! There he is. The thing about Datak is that he has priorities. If you make yourself his priority like Pol does in this episode, you’re asking for a world of hurt. In this case, you get a bullet in your skull as a result of Nolan knowing Datak well enough.

Mystery dude died. Neat. Not only was he a useless character, he served no other purpose than to be mysterious. If his purpose was to trigger Quentin’s hallucinations, great. Actually, the hallucinations became my favorite part of the episode.

Two final questions: what’s with the bouquet that makes Amanda cry? And why a cover of “Have You Ever Seen The Rain?” CCR did it really well, thank you.

Bringing it to the table

I easily envision a Shadowrun or Rifts setting where the party has to get their hands on a criminal. The local government wants to hold him in their jurisdiction. An outside government needs him alive for nefarious reasons. Killing the fugitive will immediately put a huge bounty on the party (and post the bounty on Twitter, so everyone can get in on it).

In short, it would be unjust to turn the fugitive over to team 1, unethical to turn him into team 2, and killing the fugitive must be too painful for the party to consider. This will create a lot of hard choices for your party as they try to make the best of a bad situation or think of a way out.

What are your predictions for the next episode? Will Amanda keep her seat? Who will Datak kill? Let us know below!

Related Posts

• Defiance, Season 1, Episode 4: “A Well Respected Man”
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Welcome back one and all to yet another installment of my Game of Thrones recap and review series. As per usual, my obligatory spoiler warning goes here. So if you haven’t seen the most recent episode, may I suggest a riveting game of Parcheesi instead? Or perhaps some Sudoku? No? All right then, let’s get into it.

Bring it to the table: Melisandre’s magic. Both Martin and the show have been mind-blowingly creative when it comes to the red woman’s magic rituals. I mean, stealing part of a man’s life-essence in order to give birth to a death-dealing shadow demon? Burning leeches engorged with royal blood in order to place a mystical death bounty on the heads of her enemies? What sort of dark and twisted corner of GRRM’s mind is responsible for these crazy yet amazing ideas?

For your next campaign, try to inject some similar creativity into your story. This can be especially helpful for magic users who have to prepare their spells before using them. Instead of just saying “I prepare my spells for the day after an extended rest”, how about going into detail about how those spells are prepared? Do you have to collect special herbs and burn them over a brassier? Or is your character involved in dark magic, and required to prepare their spells through more diabolical means?

Also, you as a GM may want to set your players up to face a sinister sorceress like Melisandre. Establishing her (or him) as a villain through the use of dark and horrific magic rituals is an expedient and efficient way to determine their character, as well as enrich the overall storyline of your campaign.

Theme: Religion. Specifically, that of R’hllor. The Lord of Light poses an interesting juxtaposition to the pious, conservative Seven that the majority of those in Westeros follow. He also seems to be much more goal-oriented and disconnected from the natural world than the vengeful and inconsistent “Old Gods” of the North.

In the comments section below, I want to know what you think R’hllor truly represents. Personally, I think he is not the benevolent and loving deity that his followers would have the rest of the world believe. There seems to be something very evil and sinister hiding behind the “miracles” which this god performs. And yet, he’s not quite made out to be blatantly satanic or chaotic either. There’s a lot of ambiguity in the way that R’hllor’s influence manifests itself in the GoT universe, and the fact that I’m so delicately straddling the fence on this issue has me really excited for what’s to come.

Theme: Ending it with a bang. Here is yet again another instance of the show taking a clichédtrope and making it work in their favor. Where other shows stuff their episodes with boring filler and nonsensical story exposition to shove a bunch of razzle-dazzle in your face at the very last minute, Game of Thrones has learned pretty well from such mistakes and made a decent effort this season to avoid falling into the same trap.

As a viewer, I didn’t feel like I was being beaten over the head with melodrama and a desperate grab for my attention. Between Dario’s inventive declaration of love and loyalty to Daenerys and the impressive death of that White Walker, I was definitely left on the edge of my seat and wanting more by the time the closing credits began to roll.

And I didn’t think that the first 50-some minutes were boring filler, either. Sure, one or two episodes so far this season may have had such problems, but I thought that the wedding scenes were great for character development (how much do we all love Drunk Tyrion? Seriously). I was also impressed with everything that happened involvingMelisandre this week, mostly because you guys know what a massive crush I have on foreshadowing. Not to mention the fact that we get to see a love scene with a mostly-naked Gendry. Me-yow.

That’s all I have to say about that for this week. In the meantime, I’d like to let all of the eligible bachelors out there know that yes, I will also accept the decapitated heads of my enemies as a romantic gesture of your love and fealty. Because nothing says “I want you, baby” like rotting body parts. Amirite, ladies?

Or I guess you can leave a comment down below and share your thoughts on the events of this week’s episode. I’ll be flattered either way.

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Last week, the Japanese conglomerate Nintendo made a shocking announcement with regards to YouTube channels who broadcast videos of gamers playing through their videogames, often referred to as “Let’s Play” videos. The company has approached YouTube and requested that ads start running on those videos, and that the ad revenue be transferred directly to Nintendo (as opposed to the YouTuber who took the time to buy the game, play through it, edit the video, render it, upload it to the popular video-hosting site, and give the company profit-generating publicity absolutely free of charge).

This move has been ill received by the gaming community, and threats of Nintendo boycotts have been spreading all across the internet. This, however, has not encouraged the industrial gaming giant to step down and adjust their business model into a more community-driven, gamer-friendly direction.

If anything, it has been the radiation needed to evolve their lizardly company into a Godzilla-like monster.

As it features characters from their licensed games, we have to pay Nintendo $0.25 per page view for this image we found on Google.

Earlier today Nintendo announced that the “stealing money from people who work hard and/or can’t defend themselves” business model was so profitable that they plan to expand into non-game related industries in order to exploit it for the sake of their bottom line.

For starters, Nintendo plans to extend its reach into the restaurant industry. It is uncertain which popular franchise they will purchase, but the unlucky servers who work there will be required to turn in 100% of their nightly tips to management, who will then keep a small cut for themselves and pass the rest of the profits onto Nintendo. So far, The Cheesecake Factory or Applebee’s look like primary targets for the company given their infamous reputation for server exploitation.

There are also unsubstantiated claims that the “family friendly” conglomerate may extend this new business model into the adult entertainment industry. There are thousands of amateur pornographic videos across scores of different websites in which actors fornicate within visible proximity to popular NES consoles. And because Nintendo’s brand is present in these films, however briefly or insignificantly, the rumor is that they may throw their weight around and claim copyright infringement. If this passes through the courts, Nintendo will be granted 100% of the profits from these films, claiming that “the glory of representing Mother Nintendo” is compensation enough for the actors and producers.

When asked what’s next on the agenda for the company, a source within the company (who asked not to be named) said: “Babies. We see them everywhere, eating delicious candy, which is bad for them by the way…and they are too young and weak to prevent us from taking it away from them and selling it to others. We would be doing them a favor, really, by protecting them from childhood obesity and rotten teeth. Plus, we would make a significant profit from it. So what’s not to love about taking candies from babies? Who could possibly get angry at us for doing that?”

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What’s at Trenzalore? Do we finally find out what Clara’s deal is? Does anyone actually think they’ll tell us the Doctor’s name?

As the season finale, there are major spoilers in this review.  You’ve been warned!

Antagonists:

The antagonists in this episode, the Whispermen, are utterly unimportant: they’re basically an inverse of the Silence meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Gentlemen, but without even the most paltry of explanations as to what their powers or origin are.  Their leader is the Great Intelligence, and after his buildup throughout the season, it turns out he has decided to (somehow) create the Whispermen, capture the Doctor’s friends, and travel through time and space with them to the Doctor’s tomb in Trenzalore (also somehow, since he grabbed them back in old-timey London, but the “time travel through dreams” bit was enough of a Deus Ex that quibbling about further plot holes afterward seems pointless).

So my hypothesis about the Whispermen’s power: They hear the whispers of the world, and learn the secrets told.  It is, after all, another version of the Great Intelligence’s previous plan: to download people and make a huge database of everyone’s knowledge.  And with all that whispered knowledge, he gained the location of the Doctor’s tomb.

The plan, holes ignored, is not a bad one: it’s fairly simple and to the point, gets the Doctor where the Great Intelligence needs him, and then the Whispermen act as the scary broom sweepers to push everyone along to just the right place, and then threaten them so he would say his name and open the crypt.  For reasons not explained (but easily inferred, namely so they could enter the crypt without us actually learning the Doctor’s name) River says the name so the Doctor doesn’t have to, which then leads to the Great Intelligence stepping into the Doctor’s timeline and rewriting everything he’d done.

Overall, pretty vicious and effective. In one fell swoop, sacrificing himself to undo everything the Doctor had accomplished in his nine centuries is on par with what the Great Intelligence should be capable of, as such an ancient and powerful foe of the Doctor’s (though why they don’t mention their previous battles in the new series I have no clue) and it’s good that they kept the most recent actor to incarnate it, since he lays on the villainous monologue pretty thick, and few actors can deliver those kinds of lines as convincingly as Richard E. Grant.

But in the grand scheme of things, it’s just the means to an end as far as the show’s overarching plot is concerned: no time is spent fleshing out the Great Intelligence for new audiences, and he’s handed an idiot ball so he wouldn’t just kill the Doctor’s companions before he steps into the Doctor’s timeline.  Perhaps he didn’t know someone else COULD step into it, or perhaps he didn’t know his Whispermen would fade away once he did.  In any case, it was a stupid move unfitting something with the words “Great” and “Intelligence” making up the two descriptors of its being, and instead it proves that he was not written as a proper “villain,” but simply a vehicle to solve the mystery of Clara: namely the how and why she sacrifices herself to become the Impossible Girl.  And to discuss that, we go to:

Companion:

Though incomplete, Clara’s story arc has finally evolved beyond the “plot hook” phase, and must now stand on its own two legs: and what those legs are being asked to hold up is, incredibly, the single most important companion the Doctor has ever had, helping him (or in most cases, trying in vain to help him), in countless situations, the vast majority in which he hadn’t the faintest inkling of her involvement.

Some people may be upset about this development: personally I don’t mind it.  It was pretty cool to see all those other Doctors again, and have her inserted in their circumstances (and fairly well for the most part. Ain’t technology grand?).  My bigger concern is what it means for her character to be so intricately tied to the Doctor, and where her character and story have to go from here.

It brings up the question of destiny.  Because this is one person who really does have a Destiny, with a capital D.  Though it’s never spelled out in so many words, it’s implied that of all her millions of lives, none of them are “normal,” none of them are “complete.”  She is born somewhere in the time/space that the Doctor will eventually inhabit, she lives to around a certain age, she tries to help the Doctor in some way, and then she dies… and all without any knowledge of her other lives, or who the Doctor even is.  Perhaps that’s a blessing.  Perhaps it would be too much, to know each and every time you’re born that you have exactly one purpose in life.

Not to say it’s all doom and gloom.  She does sometimes do independent things in her lives.  In two of them that we’ve seen at least, she has a chance to take care of kids, have an impact on them.  However thankless it might be in one case, and however much her shortened lifespan may be tragic, she has happiness and meaning beyond that dictated for her lives by the sacrificial act of the meta-Clara.

But what of the future interactions with the Doctor?  Now that he knows about her, what will he tell her if he sees her again?  Will he forever keep an eye out, forever try to save her? What if he does?  Does he keep her with him until she inevitably dies, then wait until a new one appears and start all over again? The heartbreak would be too much for him.  These are questions that can’t be answered until we see the anniversary special, but they’re interesting things to ponder.

The London Trio (or Paternoster Gang, as I’ve seen bandied about the internet) were their usual welcome selves, but their presence was overshadowed by River Song, who finally showed up again… potentially for the last time, as she finally got the closure she was missing for so long as what’s essentially a data ghost.  Not only did she get that closure, but so did the Doctor.  And speaking of which…

Doctor:

Ah, so much to say.

First of course, we don’t learn the Doctor’s name. It would be a terrible let down, and functions much better as a mystery than the truth ever could (unless it turns out he is in fact a reincarnation of The Other, but that would take so much building up and the results would be uncertain anyway).  I just wish Steven Moffat would acknowledge this and stop teasing it all the time. It got old fairly quickly even before this season started, and at this point isn’t even remotely surprising/disappointing.

Right, onto important things.  As mentioned in the previous section, the Doctor finally gets some closure this episode: he allows himself to acknowledge the pain of losing River all those seasons ago, before he got to properly know her, which made the goodbye he’d already given her all the worse the more he got to know her.  For someone who hates goodbyes, it was good to see his character grow enough to give River a proper one at last… one that both acknowledges her death, and leaves open the potential they always have as a romantic couple of crazy time travelers.

The Doctor’s reaction to seeing his own graveyard was pretty interesting, and seeing the TARDIS, huge and empty, was somewhat awe-inspiring.  I loved his explanation for his grave: “What did you expect. A body? Bodies are boring. I’ve had lots of them.”  It becomes obvious when he says it, but almost seems like he’s discovering it for himself as he does.  Which makes sense, because when we’ve seen other Time Lords die real deaths, they definitely left bodies behind, for the most part.  The Doctor’s explanation that he traveled through more of spacetime than anyone in existence is a pretty cool claim, and explains better than anything why his “end point” would be a wound in the fabric of the universe itself.

As for the final tease, the final glimpse of the next story: John Hurt as the Doctor (or Non-Doctor) is going to be great.  Whether the story surrounding it is clever enough (without being overly clever, as Moffat often has a problem with) remains to be seen, but I’m pretty excited to see who this Non-Doctor was, and what he did.

One possibility is if he turns out to be an incarnation of the Valeyard, a Time Lord the 6^th Doctor encountered who the Master described as “an amalgamation of the darker side of the Doctor’s nature.”  The idea that Times Lords choose their names as “a promise” to oneself or the universe is one of my favorite ideas in the series, and has been hinted at many times in the past. My favorite was between the 10^th Doctor and Master upon their new series reunion:

“Doctor.”

“Master.”

“I like it when you use my name.”

“You chose it. Psychiatrist’s field day.”

“As you chose yours. ‘The man who makes people better.’  How sanctimonious is that?”

Of course, “Valeyard” isn’t a word (in English anyway), and if it’s an anagram it’s of nothing sensical, so there’s no help there. But even if John Hurt isn’t the Valeyard, knowing that he broke the name/promise of the Doctor clues us in on what he may have done… because the Doctor has at least one big, dark act in his past that continues to haunt him.  Now that we’ve seen John Hurt’s Non-Doctor however, I’m fairly sure he’s what was in the room, in the episode where everyone saw their worst fear, and the Doctor took one look inside and said “Of course it’d be you.”

Will we finally see the events of the Time War?  I sure hope so.  It would make for a sufficiently epic 50^th Anniversary, and regardless of what it turns out to be, the episode’s ending tease was enough, for me, to make up for its generally weak plot and poor pacing.

As far as I’m concerned, November 23rd can’t come fast enough.

Misc:

• There’s so many continuity nods in this one it’s kind of hard to list all of them, but one thing worth noting is this was the first episode in Dr. Who history to show the TARDIS default appearance, the grey metal cylinder thing, when the 1^st Doctor took off with it.
• The 1^st Doctor not wearing Gallifreyan style clothes is backed up by his remarks that he dislikes the Time Lord’s dress sense.
• The stars going out when the Doctor’s timeline was being changed very likely had to do with him no longer having stopped the Reality Bomb at the heart of the Medusa Cascade in Season 4, as however many civilizations or planets the Doctor might have saved, few threats had the power to wipe out entire solar systems.

Bring it to the Table:

What’s in a name?

As I mentioned, the coolest concept in this episode for me is the idea of a Time Lord’s name, and how it’s not just a title they choose, but a promise they make.  I want to explore how that concept can be used in tabletop settings, more specifically in character creation.

Naming characters is something that some people struggle with more than others.  A player may spend hours agonizing over the name they want their character to have, or a GM could dig through a naming book again and again to populate their world with more than just Johns and Janes, but most names don’t mean anything, especially in English.  Bob is just Bob.

For fantasy settings obviously you have a wider selection of names to choose from, but even in those cases most people don’t try and deliberate on how to sum up their character’s core concept in a single word or phrase.  Nor should they need to.

Will it smell as sweet if I call it “the Doctor”?

But I wonder whether it would be interesting on a meta-level for each PC to give their character a “Title,” a promise to the universe, as part of character creation.  This could help shape their character’s personality in the mind of the player, give them a better feel for their soul.  It could also serve as a form of “alignment” or “morality” for the character, with mechanical consequences or benefits based on how well their RP reflects their title.

Whether it’s something only on the meta-level or something mentioned and known in-game, and whether it’s purely for RP purposes or has mechanical effects, is up to the players and GM, but it’s an interesting additional factor in character creation that I may end up using myself… especially in games that include any sort of magic.  Even better are settings revolving around the fae folk, like Changeling: The Lost, where names are sources of great power, titles are more than mere words, and the universe has ways of enforcing promises made to it.

What did you think of this episode? Love the giant Tardis? Hate the Whispermen? Wish you knew the Doctors name?  Let us know below?

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Just a little eye candy to start the episode off right

It’s all come down to this.  Oliver’s time on the Island, the List, the Undertaking have all led him here. With Malcolm Merlyn’s threat hanging ever closer there’s only one question remaining – who will save this city? Spoilers after the break.

So. That happened, guys. I’m still trying to mop up the puddle of tears and brains from my floor. There was a lot of hype surrounding this episode and I’m glad that they delivered.  That was, hands down, one of the best season one finales I’ve ever seen. It was exciting, gut wrenching, and most important, left me asking for more. We didn’t get to see any post-Undertaking stuff, but I like that. There’s a definite sense of “well, what now?” going on and that final shot of the Glades just lying in ruin is…powerful. The whole season really built to that shot and I loved it.

I want to point out that Ollie technically failed. The Undertaking still happened. He got the bad guy, the girl, helped save a lot of people and stopped one of the devices…but the Glades still got destroyed and Tommy was killed. It’s an empty victory in a lot of ways that will drastically change the tone of season two. I am sad to see Tommy go. Colin Donnell has been wonderful all season, especially in the last few weeks. Tommy’s had hell of a ride. I’m glad that he got to go out a hero and not a villain. He didn’t compromise what he thought was right, not even for his father, and he died protecting Laurel. He seemed okay with that, so his final scene with Oliver is just heart breaking. Colin and Stephen Amell really take it up to eleven. There’s a lot going on in that scene, especially jut under the surface. Even Oliver’s final assurance in the form of a lie—that he let Malcolm live—is absolutely gut wrenching.

Even though they killed Tommy, I love that they leveled the Glades. Of course Malcolm had a backup plan – I would have been shocked if he didn’t. It’s not something that I expected but as soon as it was pointed out, I was on board. I loved the juxtaposition of Malcolm in this. The well dressed business man who is so filled with hatred and violence that he can’t even fight for his son’s affection. I knew he would lose the instant he hit Tommy because, really, Malcolm was fighting for an idea. He may have been willing to make the sacrifices, but so was Ollie. Everyone had something to lose except for Malcolm.

Everyone gets in on the action, too. Moira reveals the Undertaking on live televisions. Moira has got some kind guts. Seriously. Bravo. I really like what they’ve done with her this season and was glad when at the end of the day, she put the well being of her children first. She turns herself in so that they can stay safe. Felicity and Detective Lance are in a similar boat – Felicity is brought in for questioning, but winds up teaming up with Lance to stop the device once he gets suspended. I love that Lance does what’s right, even without his badge. I’d be willing to bet that both characters have to deal with this next season. Felicity is now pegged as an ally of the hood, even if only Lance and the tech guy seem to know.  Then there’s Diggle. Good old Diggle. Without Diggle’s support in the final confrontation with Malcolm, Ollie would be dead. I’m glad to see the two of them more solid

The stuff with Laurel and Ollie was a little bit corny, but I liked it.  Oliver’s always been kind of corny at heart and his willingness to be (mostly) honest with Laurel shows just how much he’s changed since the pilot. Except that he hasn’t. We’ve seen time and again that Laurel just expects him to be better than who he is and he’s always tried to meet her expectations. Now we know why. It was a simply a beautiful scene.

On the Island, Oliver takes his first real step into being that man that Laurel always knew he was. All season I’ve been waiting for the inevitable showdown with Ollie and Fyers and I wasn’t disappointed. Ollie finally puts all of his training to use and gets everyone free before finally taking out Fyers.  When Ollie finally shot him I got chills. This is the Oliver Queen we know and love. That is the moment he ultimately became the Hood. The fight sequence was, as always, really amazing. I’m not sure what they have in store for the Island next season, but my interest is definitely piqued. We didn’t see the woman with the expensive shoes but I can’t imagine that she’s going to be pleased. Neither Shado nor Slade were around when Oliver was rescued and we’ve got four years to fill in.

I only have one major gripe with the flash back sequence this week – why did no one on that plane notice the giant explosion or the missile heading towards them? Seriously. I know that flights like that are long and a lot of people are asleep, but no one—not even the pilots—noticed that there was a missile heading toward the plane and giant ball of flames over the area where they were mysteriously and suddenly re-routed? No? Alright. If everyone in the Arrow-verse is as oblivious as the people on that flight, it’s no wonder that it took Ollie four more years and a random fishing boat to get off that Island.

What did you guys think? Did Malcolm’s back up plan surprise you? Were you glad to see Lance get in on the action? What was your biggest surprise this season? What are your theories for next season? Let me know!

At the Table

The theme this week was, obviously, what you’re willing to sacrifice to accomplish your plans. We’ve talked about making your choices meaningful, but sometimes you don’t know which choices are yours to make

Things don’t always work out how you intended, especially at the gaming table. Oliver didn’t intend for there to be a second device, nor did he intend for Laurel to be near ground zero. Tommy knew Laurel wouldn’t leave if there was something that she could do to help. Both men had a choice and a sacrifice that was theirs to make, even if Tommy didn’t know it. Choices come with consequences regardless of whether or not you know it. Tommy sacrificed himself to save the woman he loved – to what end? Because of this, perhaps Laurel will become a hero herself, perhaps she’ll come to resent the Hood for not arriving sooner. Regardless of the outcome, Tommy’s death is going to drastically change the world he left behind and that makes his sacrifice meaningful.

Don’t limit these changes to PC’s – if your bad guy is affected by something, let it happen.  Would Tommy’s death have changed Malcolm? Possibly. Look what the death of his wife did to him. This whole Undertaking is ultimately because people chose to not help his wife and now Malcolm had a hand in killing his own son. Rebecca’s death led not only to the Undertaking, but also Oliver’s mission to save Starling City. Fixing the city is as much of an honor to her as it is to Robert.

If your players make a sacrifice, acknowledge it. It’s hard to lose something you’ve spent months, perhaps even years, working on. Whether it’s death, a limb, or finding a way home, giving something up is not an easy choice to make. Whatever it is, there’s bound to be some personal fallout for your characters. Dying to save the world means something, even if you’re not around to see it.

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In true Arrow fashion, and gearing up for next week’s season finale, there was a lot going on this week.  We’ve got a heist, a few reveals, a few sidesteps, one step forward and one potential slip to the Dark Side, two set ups, one epic fight, and a grappling hook mini crossbow. All the makings of a good drama. Spoilers abound.

Also, extra apologies for taking so long to get this review up. It was written before the finale aired, but we’ve been slow. Let’s do this!

Things aren’t really going well for the Queen women this week. Thea got reprimanded by her brother in a public setting, she breaks up with Roy and it looks like things might be over between Walter and Moira. I’m glad that Walter isn’t just going to ignore what happened, and he shouldn’t. I can’t imagine that Moira thought that things were just going to go back to normal, like Walter would forget that she was involved with something that nearly cost him his life. I do genuinely love Walter and Thea’s relationship, though, and I’ll be sad to see them all split up again. Meanwhile, Ollie and Roy finally meet face to face and it was…less than thrilling. As much as I love them, I could have done without the Speedy Adventures this week. There was a lot going on in this episode, and watching the two teens spiral wasn’t one of my highlights. Aside from their break up, the only thing that we really got out of it was the news that Roy ‘lost someone.’ It’s probable that he means his parents, but I doubt it. He does seem a little young to be on his own, but I don’t think he means them in this particular instance. Whether Lian makes an appearance remains to be seen.

I was surprised and pleased to see Felicity back into the field so soon. I love the dynamic that Felicity adds to our trio. Not just with her fairly obvious (and totally understandable) crush on Ollie but also with her palling around with Diggle. The two of them show, once again that Ollie really needs both of them to succeed in his mission. Without Diggle he never would have been able to get more information about The Undertaking (and Unidac, which is apparently owned by Queen Consolidated now) from his mother. Using himself as bait while Diggle reprised his role as the Hood was a stroke of genius, and a twist on the classic bait and switch. Meanwhile, Felicity and Ollie get to play Star Wars in the Elevator shaft (though I bet Felicity was hoping for that good luck kiss.)Even though ultimately, and unknowingly, Felicity got  ID’d by the cops and wound up getting the device moved, she really got to shine and show what she’s made of.

This is how I imagined it

It’s worth pointing out that at no point did Tommy threaten to reveal Ollie’s secret — not to the police, not to his family, not to Laurel. Never. He does however, throw it in Oliver’s face just about every chance he gets, so I’m not really sure what that says about Tommy. Is he trying to protect his former friend in whatever way he can? Or is this just a case of setting Tommy up as a villain? He’s certainly got all the makings of one. Also, Ollie. Come on. I play World of Darkness, I know common sense is expensive but get a grip. Ollie and Tommy have been having this argument for a while now and it’s getting kind of annoying. I don’t know why Oliver thought that seeing Laurel was a good idea after his discussion with Tommy, but seeing Ollie and Laurel could be the thing that pushes Tommy over to the Dark Side. Now’s not a good time for Ollie to be pulling away from his friends, especially after his earlier talk with Tommy.

The list of people who don’t know the identity of the Hood is getting rather small, and may only consist of the Queen and Lance families at this point. After a really awesome fight between the Hood and Malcolm Merlyn, the ever well dressed Merlyn finds out that he’s just beaten the stuffing out of Oliver Queen. I don’t think that’s going to go over well.

On the Island, we finally have the whole gang together again, including that poor sap that Ollie refused to free in the cave. Turns out it was a trap, kind of like this. Fyers uses Yao Fei as a scapegoat in a plan to destabilize China’s economy in what has got to be the most idiotic idea since The Undertaking. It is a horrible plan that I don’t really see them getting away with. The flashback makes a second nod to Green Lantern, with Ferris Airlines being owned by Hal Jordan’s long time gal pal, Carol Ferris. I really hope that means we might get to see Hal next season, because Ollie could use a hand. Also in the flashbacks, we lose Yao Fei, which is terrible. I was hoping to see more of him, but sadly that doesn’t look like it’ll happen. We also catch a glimpse of Fyers’ employer. We don’t know much beyond that she’s a woman with expensive taste in shoes. While Moira would be an obvious choice, it doesn’t seem in character for her, so I think we’ve got a new player on the board.

Do you guys think this was a good set up for the finale? How do you think Ollie will handle the situation on the Island? How do you think Merlyn will handle knowing Ollie has been the one thwarting him?  Who’s going to jump in and save this city? One man can’t do it alone, so tell us what you think!

At the Table:

We can all see Tommy headed down a dark road, but what happens when it’s at the table? Some games like World of Darkness suggest that your character becomes an NPC once their morality has dropped to a certain level, but rules are meant to be broken.

If a character is becoming too dark, consider allowing it to be played out. A GM once allowed me to play out my evil side (because power corrupts, guys) and actually fight against the regular party. My character had been MIA for a while and rather than remove her from play entirely, my GM allowed me to move behind the scenes, so long as I kept it to myself. It raised the stakes of the final battle when they realized that in addition to the big bad they would be fighting someone that they intended to rescue.

Don’t be afraid to let your characters run amok. Just because they’re no longer around doesn’t mean that they still can’t cause some drama. As Ollie’s about to learn, it’s always harder to go up against your friends.

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Hello everyone, and welcome back once again to another recap/review of Game of Thrones. As always, let me start things off by asking you all to “bear” with this maiden fair while I discuss this week’s episode and recklessly abandon all protection from spoilers. So if you still have this episode sitting untouched on your DVR, you might want to click away.

Theme: Bring it to the table. The scene in which Joffrey gets “counseled” by his grandfather got me thinking about the prevalence of inept rulers in the tabletop campaigns I’ve played in the past. Some had kings or other benevolent patrons who tasked our adventuring party with some job or another, but not many of them had a good, intriguing, and-now-for-something-completely-different type of backstory.

So what if, for your next campaign, you put a ruler like Joffrey in your adventurers’ kingdom? You know, a ruler who doesn’t really know how to rule, or who somehow acquired their position through illegitimate means. How will your adventurers react to that person? How will your character (if you aren’t the one making the campaign) react? For an additional wrinkle, maybe the quest giver is not the king himself, but someone like Varys or Tyrion who is trying to mitigate the bad king’s rule. How can you incorporate that person’s story into your game? How will it affect the PC’s loyalty to the crown to know that the king is rotten, but the PC’s friends in his court could get caught in the crossfire if there’s a revolution? I think a plot like this could really enrich and liven up what would otherwise be a pretty vanilla roleplaying session.

Theme: Incorporating the title into the story. Yes, I’m bringing up this topic for the third week in a row. And I’m doing it because, yet again, the show has worked its magic and impressed me. The practice of a character saying (or literally acting out) the title of a movie/show/etc. within that movie/show/etc. has been so overdone and mishandled in the past, I used to see it as a tired and trite cliché. GoT, however, is turning that stereotype on its head. They are “taking it back”, as they say, and owning it to the max. And I’m loving them for it.

For some reason, though, I was actually surprised to see the arena battle in this episode. I remember the bear fight from the books. I looked at the title of this episode and thought “Hmm, ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair.’ I wonder what this week’s episode is going to be about?” I should have seen this coming, and I have no excuse for being surprised. But let’s talk about that bear for a second: was that CGI? Or did they use a real bear? I would assume that designing a virtual bear would work better for their budget, but it was so well done that I’m sitting here wondering about it. Plus, the awkward angles at which the scene was shot near the end and the clumsy editing make me think it was the show’s way of trying to hide the non-presence of a real live animal.

Theme: Foreshadowing. I’m going to plop down another spoiler alert here for this section of my review, because I need to take a second and talk about events from the books vs. how it’s playing out in the show. So if you haven’t read the books and don’t want spoilers, turn away now.

For those of us who have read the books and know what is going to happen to Arya – can we talk about how amazingly well her story is unfolding in the show? I was especially impressed with her big line this week: “My one true god is Death.” Keep that in mind, people who haven’t read the books and ignored my spoiler warning a few sentences ago. That will be important later on in subsequent seasons (because I’m not sure that the storyline will progress that far in the next three weeks). Death is, in fact, her one true god; and worship him, she will.

They’re doing some interesting things with the foreshadowing of Gendry’s storyline as well. They’re even keeping me guessing, because the plot of the show has deviated from what Martin did in the books. To the best of my recollection, Melisandre never finds Gendry (not yet, at least). Heck, I don’t even remember if she was looking for him or knew about his paternity. There was a completely different character in the books that filled the role which Gendry is now playing in the show’s storyline. And honestly, I’m glad they went in that direction. My sincerest apologies to Mr. Martin, but replacing Edric with Gendry serves the story much better, and it gives life to a character which I was sad to lose track of when he just sort of faded away into irrelevance in the books.

Well, that’s about all I have to say about this week’s episode. What did you all think? Go ahead and leave a comment down below, I’d love to hear your two cents. Otherwise, I might get mad and sic my pet dragons on you.

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It is time once again to saunter into St.Louis Defiance to see who commits this week’s ludicrous boner. We have plenty of potential; if I were a betting man, I’d say that Tommy has been awfully quiet, and is long overdue for an otherwise innocent mistake. There is good news and bad news about that last sentence: the good news is that I’m right; the bad news is that this wasn’t the focus of this week’s episode. Follow below for more hijinks. Spoiler: Datak isn’t in this episode.

Alak Tarr however, IS in this episode. Is Radio Defiance a thing? I find that entire premise neat, and it would have been nice if the 10 other things going on would have made it easier to hear him. I saw this episode with two other people, and we all agreed: no one could understand the last few things Alak was saying. Apparently there’s a bus, and another one will not be around for weeks.

Is it too much to ask for the Foley to turn down the sound effects?

There were two major and minor things worth noting in this episode: What Nolan did, what Irisa did, and the culture of new Earth. On the ‘less-than-important’ front, there is the proliferation of multiamorous marriages (especially where the two husbands are buddies), and more Tommy/Irisa scenes (writers went a bit farther than I would have liked them too).

In a cardinal show like Defiance, I would not be surprised to see recurring characters…but do we really need to expand on the irrational Irathient from two weeks ago? Does anyone remember the plot of Con Air with Nicholas Cage from the 1990s? If so, you already know most of this episode.

Irisa found someone she does not like which is everyone. This is another episode diving into Irisa being a super-special snowflake. This feels contrived at best.  I don’t like how one of the biggest plot reveals of this episode was that the person Irisa saw from her past had different eyes than she remembered. Did contact lenses cease to exist? Is there no fancy surgery to change eye colors? I remember a James Bond movie where this was covered.

Is there a particularly good reason the united Earth Republic has such a nefarious attitude towards independent settlements? That remains to be seen. What I can completely wait to see is the fallout from Tommy’s shenanigans. Yes I’m being vague – go watch it to find out what I mean.

BRINGING IT TO THE TABLE

After watching this week’s Defiance, I am immediately reminded of Paranoia, the game where not trusting your team is part and parcel with the adventure.

However, if Paranoia isn’t your bag, it is really easy to adapt a similar plot structure. Get your players separated for an entire game until about halfway through. Make sure that they all have separate information. Some of it is true, much of it is either conflicting…or seems like it does.

If you have a chaotic-evil character who likes to lie in character a lot, get them to help (without actually asking) by retroactively allowing certain players to see a scene with them. Entrap the players by putting them in situations where they would have to act like conniving liars in order to get by, but mislead the rest of the party.

A smart party will eventually figure out that someone (something?) is intentionally leading them astray. A not-so-smart party will kill each other, and that’s entertaining, too!

What do you think? Is the plot too contrived? Convenient?

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Dance with Dragons is an expansion to the Game of Thrones 2nd Edition, and as far as board game expansions go, it’s simplicity meets elegance.  It brings the story up-to-date for the latest book by providing 7 new House cards for each House to use in combat, along with placement cards to guide how each House’s units and influence should be set up.  In other words, it’s an alternate way to play the game that breathes some fresh air into it for veterans.

Warning: Unlike the last one, playing this expansion contains spoilers for those who have not read up to the latest book.  That said, knowledge of the world is unnecessary to play the game, and knowledge of the story doesn’t give you any advantage.  Additionally this review will only make sense to those who know the core game: if you’re looking for a “how to play,” check out my previous article on it.

General Changes:

First off, the game starts at Turn 4, which makes for a shorter game overall.  Also, most of the map is covered in units and power tokens, which jumps past all the normal build-up that takes place in regular games.

Stark:

Or should I say Bolton.   The new effects and position of this House means it’s no longer meant to be played on the defensive “turtle then spread.”  With Winterfell, White Harbor, Moat Cailin and the Twins already occupied, instead it rewards pushing contested areas early to secure more land before others reach it.  There’s a sizeable Baratheon force along the Wall and in the eastern ocean, while Greyjoy holds the western waters and the spit of land to the left of Winterfell.

Stark’s new cards are also much more offensive: Roose Bolton is a basic 4 with 1 Sword, but Ramsay Bolton is a 3 that gets +1 and THREE swords if you have Reek in your hand.  Reek is a 0 that returns Ramsay from your discard pile, and if you lose the combat, returns Reek after combat too.  So you can bully your way through multiple combats with 4s, as long as you play Reek at the right moments.  Meanwhile, Walder Frey is a 1 that, true to form, shifts any support a third player is giving your opponent toward you instead.

Baratheon:

Here’s a strange one.  House Baratheon has the vast majority of its units all the way up north, in the top two “Stark” areas, and the sea to the right of them.  Meanwhile it has one unit at its capital in Dragonstone, which is surrounded by Tyrell ships and units, and another at Storm’s End, which is surrounded by Tyrell and Martell units.

The new House cards are pretty strong for Baratheon.  Stannis as the 4 has the ability to cancel all support (including your own) in a given combat, helping assure your victory in a straight-up fight.  Jon Snow as the 3 can increase or decrease the Wildling Track marker (up to 10) if you win, which synergizes well with Mance Rayder as the 0, who makes your final combat strength equal to the Wildling Threat token.  Which can turn that lone, unsupported Footman into a 10, as a best case scenario: not enough to stop the most dedicated assault or defense, but not too shabby either.  And finally Melisandre as the 2 finally gets a power, and one that fits her lore too: she can “revive” a card from your discard pile by paying its Strength in Power tokens (so Stannis would be 4, while Mance would be free).

Greyjoy:

Greyjoy is another strange one.  With every ship they can muster already on the field, occupying the entire west coast of the map, they’ve clearly got options in regards to unit movement.  They start with land units on Pyke, the Stony Shore up north, and the Searoad Marches down south.

The new Cards keep Greyjoy as powerful as ever, though in new ways.  Euron is a 4 with the unique power of adding +1 if the opponent is higher on the Fiefdom track.  Since Greyjoy starts with the Sword again, this is largely useful later in the game incase you lose it, to ensure that you might still win what would otherwise be a tie.  Aeron got a huge upgrade: still a 0, this time he lets you discard Power Tokens to raise his power, making him potentially the strongest card in the game.  He works well with Qarl, a 1 that, if you are attacking and lose, lets you gain 3 Power Tokens.  This can easily be taken advantage of with an ally you trust: just use a single footman to attack a place it can’t possibly win against, and have both of you use weak cads, so you can use Qarl for money and they can get rid of some trash and regain their hand faster.  Finally, Rodrik is a 2 that gives a very unique power: if you win, he can search a Westeros deck and put one of the cards on top.  Need a Muster? To the top it goes.  Need to consolidate Supply? Up with ye.  Want to force a bid on the thrones?  So mote it be.

Lannister:

Lannister has a fairly solid starting position, with a ship in The Golden Sound and control of most land between Lannisport and King’s Landing, but has no knights to start with, making early musters important if it wants to keep its territory from Tyrell or Greyjoy incursion. They also hold the Iron Throne rather than the Raven this time around.

Lannister cards seem weaker overall, and in many cases I prefer the original versions, but there are a couple powers worth noting.  Ser Ilyn Payne makes an appearance as a 2 that, if you win, lets you snipe an opponent’s Footman from anywhere on the map… and if it’s their last unit on a space, they remove whatever Order token is there.  Qybern is a 0 that lets you discard two Power tokens to copy the printed combat strength and combat icons (sword/fortresses) of any card in any discard pile, giving you another potential 4 or 3 to use.

Martell:

Martell has another very solid starting position, with all “their land” already in control, and 2^nd position on both Fiefdoms and King’s Court tracks.  Of course, Tyrell is right on their western border, Baratheon holds Dragonstone, and Greyjoy has a naval route directly into their lands, so what alliances they form, and where the choose to muster first, is still very important.

Of all the new House cards, Martell’s are the most disappointing.  Doran Martell is a 4 that gets -1 combat strength and gains 1 Sword and Fort for each card in your hand… so at either extreme, it can be a flat 4 with no Swords/Forts, or a 0 with 4 Swords/Forts, both of which are so situationally useful they’re overall useless. Ser Gerris Drinkwater is a 1 that, if you win, lets you move 1 position higher on an influence track of your choice, which would be useful if he wasn’t a 1 or you didn’t have to win.  And ironically Quentyn Martell is potentially the best card, as a 1 that gets +1 combat strength for each House card in your discard pile, upping him to a possible 7.  Overall I wouldn’t begrudge any player at my table from preferring to use original Martell House cards rather than the new ones, especially the loss of their amazing 0… you can tell how little effort was put into this House when one of the cards, a 2 with a Sword icon, is named Big Man, the generic sounding nickname for the actual character Archibald Yronwood.

Tyrell:

Tyrell has a strong starting position, with a high amount of units, land and water in a virtually unbroken line from The Arbor to Shipbreaker Bay, and positions 2 on Iron Throne and 1 on King’s Court. But those advantages come with having potential enemies on every front, with Greyjoy to the west, Lannister above, Martell below, and Baratheon to the east.

The new Tyrell cards are a fair shake to the old ones.  The loss of Loras is daunting for offensive plans, but defensively Margaery Tyrelll is a solid 0 that turns any army attacking your Capital or a space with your Power token on it into a final strength of 2, regardless of support or House card bonus.  The Queen of Thorns is a 1 that ignores all text abilities on opposing House cards, an invaluable counter card to some of the more nasty tricks opponents have, if you can properly anticipate them. And finally, Paxter Redwyne is a 1 that doubles the strength of your participating ships in sea battles, virtually assuring at least one naval victory with the three ships around Dragonstone.

Meta Strategy:

The replay value of Game of Thrones has a lot to do with the people you play with, and the alliances that are formed and broken from one game to another. Not only is playing as a different House a very different experience, but even playing the same House with different alliances leads to a completely different game.

Take Greyjoy for example.  Because they have access to the entire western coast, and some of the southern, they have tons of options on strategies to win. If they decide to join with Lannister, they can grab the Arbor easily on the first turn for some constant Power token income.  If they side with Tyrell, they can jump all the way down into Martell lands and start carving them up from beneath.  Or they can say “screw the south” altogether and just head north with all its units, fortifying the lands around Pyke’s waters or attacking Winterfell.

Baratheon has a much more defensive concern to their alliances.  Storm’s End is allowed the usually neutral garrison to help it not get immediately overrun, but with 3 Tyrell ships around Dragonstone, they can’t reinforce either position from the outside, and since they start at 5 on the King’s Court, they can’t muster initially either.  So Baratheon needs to ally with either Tyrell or Martell if it wants to keep them.   Of course, Tyrell and Lannister can easily decide to join forces, which secures King’s Landing for Lannister and frees Tyrell to deal with Martell.  Baratheon could theoretically ally with Lannister instead, as both have an easy common enemy in Tyrell, but this would free Tyrell and Martell to ally with eachother, which would make things very difficult for Baratheon unless Greyjoy jumps in and messes with Martell, perhaps for some returned assistance up north.

Otherwise, Stark and Baratheon are generally a safe bet for an alliance, as Stark and Greyjoy have much more to fight over, and is mutually beneficial for both: it frees Baratheon’s units to head south and try to support his castles, and in the meantime helps Stark kick Greyjoy out without worry.  Of course, late game Stark and Baratheon will likely be at odds over the empty spaces around the Eyrie, but by the last few rounds any and all alliances are generally accepted to be mutable anyway.

Hope you enjoyed the review, and any discussion is welcome in the comments!

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Antagonists:

Woo, the Cybermen return once again!  I like the Daleks well enough as a Big Bad, but however dangerous they’re portrayed to be, there’s something about the Cybermen I find more viscerally frightening.  It’s probably their drive to “upgrade” humans into other Cybermen, a fate that, like the threat of a zombie outbreak, has an aspect of horror to it that seems worse than the regular old death that Daleks do.

Unfortunately, while most previous episodes where the Cybermen were a main antagonist did a great job of conveying that horror (Rose Tyler’s alternate-universe mum being converted was a powerful shock) there’s very little assimilation that occurs in this episode, instead showing how the Cybermen have upgraded themselves to be far more formidable on the combat-front.  I feel this dilutes their distinctiveness from the Daleks however, who already have the “unstoppable war machine” thing down.  More interesting to me were the new “cybermites,” a far more insidious and versatile upgrade to the cybermats of tradition.

The cybermites’ ability to assimilate people borg-style into the collective “Cyberiad” (not cyberia) without full mechanical conversion is the real major new threat they pose, in my view: not superspeed or even upgrading defenses, but the potential of spreading like wildfire through any organization they might need to infiltrate.  Sadly that potential was largely squandered, as all they do with it is capture a few useless hostages.

Therein lies my major complaint of this episode: something can only be judged as powerful with a sufficient oppositional force to overcome.  Here however, the Cybermen are facing a “punishment squad” of soldiers so bumbling and inept that we never get a real sense of threat from the Cybermen’s new capabilities.  Whoever’s idea it was to make the soldiers’ role in the episode a source of comic relief did a huge disservice to the Cybermen and audience, who get shown all these nifty new powers they’ve developed but don’t even need: all the fights that occur would have ended the exact same way had the Cybermen been their usual slow, only mildly resilient selves.  Hell, even upgrading themselves to be immune to the laser cannon was pointless, because it was about to run out of charge anyway!

As a result, the most entertaining part of the antagonists this episode was Mr. Clever, the Doctor’s evil Cyber incarnation. A delightful (if at times sometimes overwhelmingly flamboyant) villain, gone was the usual emotionless cruelty of the Cyber-Planner’s central communal intelligence: instead it found itself influenced by the Doctor’s memories and personality, and was somewhat more frightening as a result. It was especially horrifying when he would use the old Doctors’ favorite phrases: when the Doctor does it, it’s heartwarming and nostalgic. When something that has access to his memories gives out a “FanTAStic!” or “Allons-Y!”, it’s almost profane.

Companion:

I feel like I’m trying too hard to like Clara despite… not.  In this episode she’s put in charge of the aforementioned idiotically unskilled military unit by the Doctor, despite having no military or command experience whatsoever, merely by the virtue of the Doctor knowing she won’t prematurely blow the planet up.  What she then does with this power is react with casual indifference when the soldiers under her command are reported as being neutralized and organize the others into finding a defensible position and fortifying it with tactics reminiscent of Home Alone. Maybe I’m being unfair to her, but overall, nothing in this episode made me see Clara any differently, which was disappointing because I was looking forward to seeing how her dynamic with the two kids might show a new side of her character.  Speaking of which…

I feel like this episode was written for a longer air time and ended up getting cut down, at the loss of some character building scenes.  Artie’s portions were alright, but Angie was absolutely repugnant.  The problem is we had no context for her repugnance, so it came off as jarring and out of place.  Her relationship with her babysitter seemed laced with the usual teenage angst the first time we saw her, but after travelling through space and time, she suddenly treats Clara like she’s a wicked stepmother. Besides shrieking abuse at Clara in utterly disproportionate anger than the situations warrant, she also thinks nothing of walking into a military encampment to exclaim “I’m bored,” as if anyone should feel obligated to give a damn, let alone amuse her.

As a friend of mine noted, the only function the kids seem to serve for this episode’s plot was to provide a “damsel in distress” that wasn’t Clara, so Clara could be Ms. Large and In Charge, and it didn’t even succeed in that since Angie was so unlikeable that I wasn’t particularly concerned for her well-being.  All of which is a shame, as Dr. Who has a relatively good track record of treating kids seriously in its stories, and I’m not sure who to blame for it.  Maybe the director, Stephen Woolfenden, since I happen to like Neil Gaiman as a writer and he’s never shown a propensity to resort to such pointless stereotyping before in the other works I’ve seen.

Doctor:

The Doctor had some undeniably cool moments in this episode.  At the top of the list was his threat to regenerate himself to burn out the Cyber-Planner.  Not that he wants to, of course: “Use this me up, eh, who knows what we’ll get next… but I can.”  Regeneration is rarely touched upon by the Doctor, but the attitude of it is endlessly fascinating to me.

The paradox of continuing to live on with all your memories, but as a separate person, must do such strange things to one’s sense of self.  As described by 10 in The End of Time, “Even if I change it still feels like dying.  Everything I am dies.  Some new man goes sauntering away… and I’m dead.”  Seeing him threaten it to break the Cyberiad’s hold on him gave me a thrill: in terms of a trump-card, it was definitely a situation that warrants its use, and is a sufficiently epic form of self-sacrifice, rather than the usual response to simply avoiding death.

The Doctor’s delight in encountering the Cybermites is also worth mentioning.  Calling them “beautiful” is par for the course: regularly getting excited by the newness of the threats he faces is part of what keeps his long and lonely life interesting, however reluctant he may be to admit it.  Whenever it’s pointed out to him that even when horrifying and potentially deadly things are happening, some part of him acts like he’s “loving it,” he equivocates rather than denying it.  Simply put, newness fascinates him, and his fascination is contagious to us as the audience.  We may use the companions as our relatable fantasy-persona, but it’s ultimately the Doctor who reminds us how amazing and interesting, and even beautiful, even the threats can be.

Misc:

• The idea that Time Lords created chess was actually first teased by the 2^nd Doctor.
• The Doctor’s exclamation of “Don’t shoot, I’m nice!” in the face of guns was his former companion Rory Williams’s go-to defense.
• The Doctor’s “impossible chess” logic bomb strategy was also used against an Elder God enemy of the 7^th Doctor, Fenric, when they engaged in a battle of chess.

Bring it to the Table:

For this week’s connection back to tabletop gaming, I’m going to explore the idea of mind control as a threat to PCs.

Mind control is one of those issues that players can be split on: some see nothing wrong with it, since if your characters can be tortured, maimed and killed it hardly seems particularly worse, while others feel it’s against the spirit of the game to utterly lose control of your character, and have the GM decide what they do instead.

I’m of the latter of opinion, but this episode presents an interesting middle ground: the idea that in any case of mind control, whether it be from psychic domination or nano-chip brain implants or magic spells, the player character retains some form of divided control over their body, where they can influence their actions while under the control of another being.

How the GM and player decide to manifest that internal struggle is up to them, and should be more entertaining than simply having them sit there and watch as their character does what the GM says.  For the player and GM (or both players involved) to actually act out their internal-selves arguing with each other and struggling for control would be much more exciting than “And then he makes him do this.”  The actual mechanics of resistance may vary by the system they use: World of Darkness may allow dominated players to spend a point of Willpower to roll Resolve + Composure and attempt to regain control of themselves.  A Pathfinder GM may ask the player to do a Will saving throw each time they would try to make their character do something against their morals or self-interest to resist the impulse.

But if you want to take it one step further, the idea of playing a mental game against your alter-ego is a neat thing to do, and not particularly hard thanks to the convenience of technology.  Pull out a chess app on your phone, and imagine the character playing against themselves in their head.  Each piece they capture lets them resist the mind control in some way, and if they have strong mental stats, give them an opportunity to cheat somehow through successful rolls (maybe going twice in one move, or moving an opponent’s piece for them, or taking a move back).

It could be other things besides chess of course: what matters is the symmetrical suspense created by trying to win mental control through means of mental skill.

What did you think of this episode?  Am I being unfair to Clara or Angie? Did you find the new Cybermen threatening?  Let us know below!

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