Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Again, you can all rest assured that was a late-night shorthand typo. I find racial slurs exceedingly distasteful and I don't go about using them on public forums.

Stonegiant wrote:God save me if I have to listen to one more castrated Japanese boy band or androginous Japanese female band squeal about slip shod over simplified philosophy (My 9 year olds only failing is his liking of cartoons like Naruto, Dragonball Z, etc. )

That's not much of a failing, for a nine-year-old. It would be a sort of success if he watched those shows in Japanese, and even more if he watched them subtitled.

As for Japanese music--like America, Japan's music was at its best in the 70s and 80s, with the 90s being very hit or miss. Some stuff today is catchy, while others try to hard to imitate "American-style" music.

When playing D&D, I tend to not listen to any music--it drowns out the Dungeon Master.

It's not music per se but has anyone ever used sound effects in their games? I've done it once or twice to help set the mood (especially in my Call of Cthulhu games). I have a mp3 of frogs croaking that sounds absolutely sinister. I have a disc somewhere (in my mountain of back-up discs) that has various mp3 files of strange shuffling walking sounds, or water dripping in a cave, wolves howling at the moon, that sort of thing. Fun (and often creepy) stuff.

Cheers,
Tim

JamesEightBitStar wrote:

Stonegiant wrote:God save me if I have to listen to one more castrated Japanese boy band or androginous Japanese female band squeal about slip shod over simplified philosophy (My 9 year olds only failing is his liking of cartoons like Naruto, Dragonball Z, etc. )

That's not much of a failing, for a nine-year-old. It would be a sort of success if he watched those shows in Japanese, and even more if he watched them subtitled.

As for Japanese music--like America, Japan's music was at its best in the 70s and 80s, with the 90s being very hit or miss. Some stuff today is catchy, while others try to hard to imitate "American-style" music.

When playing D&D, I tend to not listen to any music--it drowns out the Dungeon Master.

I did mean that in jest (My son's failing). As to the statement about the music I guess I need to clarify this statement: My brother in law married an Okinawan while in the Marines. He has since left the service and lives here stateside. She never looses a chance to deride America and preach the superiority of the Okinawan and Japanese culture and politics. Also any time we go to visit her we are subjected to Japanese music and told how crappy American music is except for Hip Hop and Rap My ex-Marine brother in law also refuses to stand up to her and seems to feel we are all being close minded (WTF?) So I apologize if my statement was off color and offended but I am bitter from my own experiences (Also all of her family and extended family hold pretty much the same views as she does and trust me I do not believe America to be perfect by a long shot but I believe in fixing things from the inside and not standing around bitching)

Oh, no worries Stonegiant. Actually, I've known that kind of person before and I can see how they would turn you off of Japanese materials.

Actually, even though I'm an anime fan I can never quite reconcile myself with the whole "Japan does everything better" mindset. They do some things better, but certainly not everything and I'm not entirely certain music is one of them.

JamesEightBitStar wrote:Oh, no worries Stonegiant. Actually, I've known that kind of person before and I can see how they would turn you off of Japanese materials.

Actually, even though I'm an anime fan I can never quite reconcile myself with the whole "Japan does everything better" mindset. They do some things better, but certainly not everything and I'm not entirely certain music is one of them.

Well to be fair, you're going to encounter "<insert country here> does it better" mindset in any country (sorry to be blunt, but I've heard it more often coming from South of the border than I have in Japan - I guess it depends on your individual and/or national perspective) but I can see where Stonegiant is coming from. Any nation has their share of a**holes and no one likes dealing with people like that.

As for music or any other creative endeavour, it is such a subjective medium that one person's masterpiece is another's garbage. Course I'm also reminded of the old saying... 99% of most <insert creative medium here> are crap.

And for the record, I can't stand most of the recent kids anime as well but Cowboy Bebop, Lupin III, Gatchaman and anything by Hayao Miyazaki are in a league by themselves.

Cheers,
Tim

I didn't get into Bebop, but Lupin and Gatchaman do indeed rock!

Didja know Hayao Miyazaki directed a Lupin movie (as well as the Japan-only first series and some episodes of the second)?

EDIT: Wow, there seems to be more anime fans taking over the forum every day. We're about to need fan-supplements explaining how to roleplay, in 1e:

* transforming bio-mechanisms
* magical girls
* people with split personalities, one good and naive and totally unremarkable and the other a maniac with magical powers
* The Invid

And I want a Monster Manual-style entry for Zeiram.

JamesEightBitStar wrote: EDIT: Wow, there seems to be more anime fans taking over the forum every day. We're about to need fan-supplements explaining how to roleplay, in 1e:

* transforming bio-mechanisms
* magical girls
* people with split personalities, one good and naive and totally unremarkable and the other a maniac with magical powers
* The Invid

And I want a Monster Manual-style entry for Zeiram.

No additions necessary.

* transforming bio-mechanisms
Try a golem

* magical girls
They're called magic-users & illusionists

* people with split personalities, one good and naive and totally unremarkable and the other a maniac with magical powers
DMG rules on insanity, p83

* The Invid
I have no idea WTF this is, but I'm sure there's an equivalent.

JamesEightBitStar wrote:I didn't get into Bebop, but Lupin and Gatchaman do indeed rock!

Didja know Hayao Miyazaki directed a Lupin movie (as well as the Japan-only first series and some episodes of the second)?

Yup. The movie is The Castle of Cagliostro (which I have on DVD) and I have two of Miyazaki's Lupin episodes on VHS. It's called Lupin III's Greatest Capers (has 2 episodes: Albatross, Wings of Death and Aloha, Lupin.

JamesEightBitStar wrote: EDIT: Wow, there seems to be more anime fans taking over the forum every day. We're about to need fan-supplements explaining how to roleplay, in 1e:

* transforming bio-mechanisms
* magical girls
* people with split personalities, one good and naive and totally unremarkable and the other a maniac with magical powers
* The Invid

And I want a Monster Manual-style entry for Zeiram.

Heh heh, as much as I enjoy anime I don't think it has influence my AD&D games that much. My V&V games sure, but not my D&D games.

Cheers,
Tim

TheRedPriest wrote: * The Invid
I have no idea WTF this is, but I'm sure there's an equivalent.

The Invid are from the Robotech series (which is based on three separate anime series rewritten into one series for the American market - in this case the original anime series was Genesis Climber Mospeada). Basically the Invid are an alien race of invertebrate, biped, crab-like hive creatures. I guess you could use the Crabmen from the FF as a base for a conversion.

Cheers,
Tim

TheRedPriest wrote:

JamesEightBitStar wrote: EDIT: Wow, there seems to be more anime fans taking over the forum every day. We're about to need fan-supplements explaining how to roleplay, in 1e:

* transforming bio-mechanisms
* magical girls
* people with split personalities, one good and naive and totally unremarkable and the other a maniac with magical powers
* The Invid

And I want a Monster Manual-style entry for Zeiram.

No additions necessary.

...

On second thought, James, you should write the OSRIC Anime Supplement. Anime's not my cup o' tea, but I'm sure there are 1e-playing anime fans out there.

Stonegiant wrote: I did mean that in jest (My son's failing). As to the statement about the music I guess I need to clarify this statement: My brother in law married an Okinawan while in the Marines. He has since left the service and lives here stateside. She never looses a chance to deride America and preach the superiority of the Okinawan and Japanese culture and politics. Also any time we go to visit her we are subjected to Japanese music and told how crappy American music is except for Hip Hop and Rap My ex-Marine brother in law also refuses to stand up to her and seems to feel we are all being close minded (WTF?) So I apologize if my statement was off color and offended but I am bitter from my own experiences (Also all of her family and extended family hold pretty much the same views as she does and trust me I do not believe America to be perfect by a long shot but I believe in fixing things from the inside and not standing around bitching)

My brother, too, married an Okinawan lass. My experiences with her are the opposite of yours, thank goodness. She loves American music (well, American Pop), whereas my YOUNGER brother listens to only Frank Sinatra, causing her to say things like, "What are you, sixty?" It is pretty amusing. She and I get along great.

As an aside, which has little to do with music or which country is better, my brother was stationed there for 8 years in a row. His two daughters from his previous marriage grew up in Okinawa. They are Caucasian on both sides of the family, yet Japanese is their Native language! It was a bit of a shock to first meet them as young ladies, rather than infants and to hear the accent.

Thoth Amon wrote: My brother, too, married an Okinawan lass. My experiences with her are the opposite of yours, thank goodness. She loves American music (well, American Pop), whereas my YOUNGER brother listens to only Frank Sinatra, causing her to say things like, "What are you, sixty?" It is pretty amusing. She and I get along great.

I must say, your younger brother has great taste in music! I consider myself a Frank Sinatra fan as well and I'm not in my sixties either (just over half way there though *grin*).

Cheers,
Tim

Turgenev wrote:Basically the Invid are an alien race of invertebrate, biped, crab-like hive creatures. I guess you could use the Crabmen from the FF as a base for a conversion.

Actually, the crab-like things are just mecha that the Invid ride.

The Invid themselves begin life as these blob things but they can control their development to mature into a form of their choosing. In Mospeada they mostly go for human form, though at the end we see them take some sort of light-form. Robotech II: The Sentinels shows us a different, off-Earth branch of Invid that have more insectlike forms.

JamesEightBitStar wrote:Actually, the crab-like things are just mecha that the Invid ride.

The Invid themselves begin life as these blob things but they can control their development to mature into a form of their choosing. In Mospeada they mostly go for human form, though at the end we see them take some sort of light-form. Robotech II: The Sentinels shows us a different, off-Earth branch of Invid that have more insectlike forms.

Heh heh, it has been ages since I've seen the Invid parts of Robotech. In my defense, I got my info from a quick google search (I was actually quoting the Invid Wikipedia entry in my previous post). *grin* I'm a huge fan of the Macross saga but never got into the rest of the Robotech stuff (Carl Macek liked to change things around too much for my tastes... it reminded me too much of Sandy Frank I guess).

Cheers,
Tim