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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 6 years

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Let’s debunk this hot trash

“Part of the problem in front of Marvel Comics is the Marvel Universe is one long, mostly-unbroken line since its inception in 1961's Fantastic Four #1. There have been retcons, changes, tweaks, and cuts, but by and large it's a straight run. The universe has seen a number of resets, but it's mostly been returned to the state that long-time fans are comfortable with.”

Why is this a problem? Marvel is the highest selling comic book company in America and the long continuity is objectively not a problem.

It’s just something people incorrectly claim is a problem.

By the 1990s Marvel already had shittons of complicated continuity that had been going longer than most other long running franchise stories.

The readers back then jumped on ship just fine.

The AMOUNT of continuity you have is never the problem it’s how you manage it. In the days where every issue was treated as someone’s first and made accessible the amount of continuity was never a problem.

“Marvel Comics as a whole and the current creative stewards of its characters have to roll with 57 years of punches. They have to take the good and the bad. In the case of Spider-Man, the current writers, artists, and editors have to occasionally tackle the fact that Peter Parker hit his wife, made a deal with Mephisto to wipe out his marriage, or that Gwen Stacy had sex with Norman Osborn. ”

They don’t HAVE to deal with any of that.

They already dealt with the first of those things and simply SHOULD deal with the other two by erasing them.

But it’s also not like the presence of those things (sans OMD) is a huge hamper on the storytelling abilities or sales of the writers.

“Many of these are moments that readers and creators would simply like to forget, but they're a part of the fabric of the character. ”

Yes and welcome to ‘This is how a dramatic character on serialized fiction’ works.

“With Marvel's Spider-Man for PlayStation 4, Insomniac Games had the chance to start from scratch. They get to pick and choose what works for their version of Peter Parker and his alter-ego. The only backstory he brings to the table is that which Insomniac has carefully considered. This allows the team to drop the facets of Spider-Man that maybe didn't work and play around with some new ideas that might be better. And if Marvel's smart, they should steal some of what Insomniac Games did here.”

Why?

Insomniac already stole from Marvel.

Sales and storytelling potential for Spider-Man is NOT hampered by large continuity or even negative patches of it for the most part.

When bad stories happen so long as they are fixed then things get to move on. Even something as bad as Sins Past isn’t overly a drag because the story itself is so nonsensical it might as well not be canon, people have isolated and ignored it and the scope of the damage it can cause is fairly limited, it doesn’t really cut to the heart of the franchise. The time he hit his wife on the other hand was dealt with and moved on from.

So the existence of bad patches doesn’t really matter. Doctor Who has had no end of bad stories merely in it’s TV incarnation (to say nothing of it’s plethora of spin-off media which are all canon to varying degrees) and all those things still happened. But the show is still going strong and hit stratospheric popularity in the mid-late 2000s and early 2010s.

Hell the Simpsons is still going despite there being at least 20 years of mediocre-bad stories.

“I'm going to be honest. I'm not a huge fan of Mary Jane Watson. I don't necessarily have a problem with the character, but I've never really been a fan either. The marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson was done on a whim and many writershated it at the time.”

Oy vey this shit again.

The marriage was not done on a whim. Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man wanted it to happen and EIC Jim Shooter decided to synch it up with the comics.

At the time Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz had been building up to Peter and MJ’s wedding with the intention of her jilting him.

But the build up from them, and other writers like Peter David, was still there.

Only the outcome changed.

As for this ‘many writers hated it’ thing, the article links to ONE writer’s opinion on the subject.

If we actually look at the majority of Spider-Man writers to have written for Spider-Man during and after the marriage we see most of them were okay or neutral on the subject.

David Michelinie wasn’t thrilled with it, but he came on side eventually. Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz were the same. Matt Fraction wasn’t too sure about it but wasn’t innately against it either. Nick Spencer clearly liked it. Howard Mackie has given statements indicating he was against it at a time but might over all be neutral. Roberto Aguirre Sacasa has never said anything on the subject to my knowledge but his work implies he’s supportive of it. Mark Millar has never said anything on the subject. J.M. DeMatteis, J. Michael Straczynski and Peter David have been outright supportive of it, as was probably Todd McFarlane, Jodie Houser and for sure artist Ryan Stegman.

Oh and Stan Lee the creator of Spider-Man. Let’s not leave him out.

Compared to that we have Roger Stern, Terry Kavanagh, John Byrne, Paul Jenkins, Gerry Conway and Jim Owsley who were against it.

Conway’s opposition was possibly due to his going through a divorce at the time. Stern’s opposition was based upon his idea of MJ being stuck in the Silver Age but he wasn’t innately opposed to Spider-Man marrying in general. Jim Owsley on his linked to blog (where he routinely lies, including claiming Ron Frenz was potentially suicidal when he never was) had a stupid sexist rationale for disliking the marriage. John Byrne is creepy shithead who would’ve preferred Spider-Man was dating underage girls anyway and along with Terry Kavanagh never wrote a good Spider-Man story in his life. In Kavanagh’s case he never even wrote a good story in his life.

So of all those people only Paul Jenkins dislike of it wasn’t unjustified. But he was an outlier.

Every other writer either liked it, was neutral on it, disliked it for nonsensical reasons or didn’t know about good storytelling in the first place to make citing them worth a damn in the first place.

And aside from aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall of this...does the author realize Peter and MJ’s relationship and MJ’s whole character doesn’t begin and end in the years they were married?

Like he talks about their marriage as though this being bad proves their relationship and her character is bad when there was 20+ years of MJ prior to that.

“I think Peter has had better love interests over the years, including Gwen Stacy. ”

And the author would be wrong.

Gwen Stacy is neither better nor more interesting that Mary Jane.

That’s why THEY KILLED HER!

“Part of that is giving Mary Jane something to do. She's been a model and an actress, but the books were always more concerned with the superheroics, so you never really got the chance to feel her drive there. She was a nightclub owner, but again, the same problem persisted. ”

Except Spider-Man stories ARE NOT MORE CONCERNED WITH THE SUPERHEROICS!

My God. How the fuck can someone have read any number of Spider-Man stories and not realized, oh yeah, the book is about Peter’s life over all and his normal life is as if not MORE important than whoever he is punching this month.

By this logic Harry Osborn, Aunt May, Flash Thompson and literally every supporting cast member who isn’t J. Jonah Jameson or like Ashley goddam Kafka, is a better supporting character than Mary Jane.

Mary jane doesn’t have to be involved in the superhero side of Peter’s life because the Spider-Man series isn’t about that. It’s about his life in general and sometimes one blurs over into the other but not always and frankly if you go by the classic stories not even most of the time.

That’s why on the occasions where such things did happen it was a big deal.

“Other than supporting Peter Parker, what did Mary Jane Watson really want? ”

To be an actress

To be taken seriously as more than a model

To support her sick cousin

To earn a psychology degree

To avoid commitment

“Sometimes she just wanted Peter to not be Spider-Man anymore, which is a downer of a conflict.”

This is another lie.

The ONLY times during which Mary jane didn’t want Peter to be Spider-Man were during the Clone Saga when she was pregnant, he’d retired and Ben Reilly was the new Spider-Man and new main character (meaning there was no issue there) or during the Mackie/Byrne reboot where she was being written deliberately out of character as an act of sabotage.

Unless the author meant like in specific stories where Peter was injured and she didn’t want him to go off and be Spider-Man at that moment or in that specific context, as opposed to wholesale retiring. At which point...how is this a downer conflict? It’s a starkly realistic and emotionally justified conflict in a series built off the back of realistic emotions because Spider-Man is a human drama and soap opera FFS!

“Sometimes, things are good... ...sometimes, they're not.

Go to the article itself and notice the second image the author uses.

If you’ve ever encountered similar lines of anti-MJ/anti-marriage argument before those panels, that artwork or stuff similar to it might strike you as familiar.

Why?

Because it’s from the exact same story. Maximum Carnage.

Every asshole who tries to make this argument uses Maximum Carnage, one of the worst Spider-Man stories over all to bolster their claims. The repetition of scenes from this story (and usually the same scene) is telling because it’s either cherry picking from a notoriously bad story and pretending like it represented a norm (and removes it from important context FYI) or...these people don’t know what they are talking about and just parrot one another with the same examples.

“Over in the Ultimate Comics line, writer Brian Michael Bendis would give Mary Jane a career choice that dovetails well with superheroes: journalist. See, the reason DC Comics' Lois Lane works is her driving motivation—to be the best investigative journalist in the world—puts her on a path to run into Clark Kent and Superman. ”

Yeah and the problem is that MJ worked as well for decades even when she wasn’t a journalist. Shit she worked for the majority of Ultimate Spider-Man’s run prior to her becoming a journalist!

Yeah, remember that tiny piece of vital information the author conveniently ignored. For MOST of Ultimate Spider-Man’s 10 year tenure with Peter Parker as the lead character Mary Jane wasn’t a journalist!

Shit, she worked for her school paper so the idea that it made her involvement in heroics more organic is pretty bullshit.

More importantly prior to her journalist job Ultimate MJ’s role and function within the narrative was strikingly similar to her 616 married counterpart!

“Her intense curiosity and lack of self-preservation makes her endearing; the audience knows what she wants and the lengths she'll go to get it.”

And MJ’s goofy deameanor at times, inner strength, sociable nature, insecutirs, struggles with guilt and commitment make her endearing.

“So Insomniac decided to take the Ultimate version of Mary Jane and play it up to Lois Lane levels. She's an investigative journalist at the Daily Bugle searching for more on the recently-arrested Wilson Fisk. Her own adventures put her on the path to meeting with Spider-Man. You get that moment where they're both asking, "What are you doing here?" and you realize there's old, unmentioned romantic history. MJ already knows Peter is Spider-Man and she's fine with that side of his life. ”

And it works great...in a video game setting where you truly are spending 90% of your time in the middle of action and the plot needs to be entirely in service of that plot.

But in the context of a comic book more about the normal lives of the characters than revolving around superheroics and starring the most famous character (who’s clad in red and blue) of one of the two biggest companies in the world MJ as a journalist would die on it’s ass because it WOULD just be derivative of Lois Lane.

I mean Jesus Christ people also deride Black Cat and Norman Osborn for being derivative of Catwoman and Norman Osborn even though they deviate in big ways. But if Spider-Man major love interest/wife literally also became an investigative journalist and primarily interacted with Spider-Man (at least within the context of the main plot) within that role it would literally just be Lois Lane.

“This Mary Jane's problem is one of equal partnership. She's a great, inventive journalist. Sure, she could die on an investigation, considering where she decides to focus her talent, but in her mind, that's no different from a police officer or firefighter dying in the line of duty. The truth is important. This flips the dynamic a bit; her problem is that Peter doesn't acknowledge that she's also right where she needs to be. She's his equal, even if she doesn't have fancy Spider-powers. ”

MJ was Peter’s equal in the comics too.

Being someone’s equal as a person doesn’t mean doing the same job as them, working in the same line of work or directly contributing to the superhero action.

You just need to be an equal in your personality and agency which in-universe MJ has had.

This is to say nothing of how by this logic Alfred, Batman’s FATHER FIGURE, is not his equal or how Ganke Lee in Miles Morales comics wouldn’t really be HIS equal either or how, again, Spider-Man stories do not innately codify the superheroics as MORE important than the normal life stuff.

“It's a great change.”

Yes it is, in the context of a video game.

“This Mary Jane is funny, a bit headstrong, and leaps sometimes before she looks. ”

You mean just like comic book Mary Jane.

“ Comic Mary Jane has many of these facets, but it's tough to get a grasp on what she really wants outside of Peter. ”

Unless you’ve literally read the issue immediately after Peter meets her where she makes it clear she wants to be an actress. Or read any comic in the interim where she wants to have financial security, be taken seriously, reconcile with her family, indulge in/get over her commitment issues, help her cousin, learn psychology, etc.

“Journalism doesn't have to be the answer, but there needs to be one that intersects with the lives of Peter and Spider-Man. ”

No there doesn’t. In the real world couples jobs don’t have to intersect. Many of Peter’s supporting cast members do not have jobs that intersect with his life outside of the fact that they are his friends and/or family. This is true of other heroes too.

MJ being Peter’s friend/girlfriend/wife is enough of a reason for her to intersect in his life and be featured in this stories, beyond that she can be given subplots of her own just like many other characters had.

Two of the best subplots in Spider-Man involved Flash Thompson. One of them was his and Betty Brant’s affair and the other was his struggles with alcoholism. These were problems that for the longest time Peter wasn’t even aware of but they were compelling and entertaining unto themselves because Flash was a great character and we cared because he was Peter’s friend. However these stories also at no point ever really involved Spider-Man’s life. It was strictly confined to the problems of Peter Parker’s world.

MJ’s job can be much the same.

MJ’s normalacy is in fact a MAJOR reason why so many fans love her so much and why so many people love Spider-Man himself.

Why make her more like Lois and her dynamic like that of Lois and Superman, those two characters who famously are awesome but also not as relatable as Spider-Man and MJ!

“With Insomniac's Mary Jane, everything just clicks into place.”

As would it for comic book MJ if you bothered to pay attention.

“The problem here is Marvel never sat down and explained how this worked. Again, Peter's death was the impetus for Miles becoming Spider-Man. In the Ultimate comics, he had the powers long before he actually put on the costume. Miles' creator Brian Michael Bendis never sat down and explained the new backstory before he jumped over to DC Comics. We don't know the specifics of why this version of Miles took up the mantle, the question of his motivations always remains a bit fuzzy.”

No it isn’t. Miles wasn’t REBOOTED into the 616 universe. He was integrated in with everyone’s memories altered around.

His backstory was the same as in the Ultimate Universe he just literally, physically migrated over.

Miles motivations were thus the same albeit undermined from a creative POV.

“When the title of Spider-Man was passed on in the Ultimate universe, that made sense. But the question the Prime universe needs to answer now is: Why do they share the title? ”

Because that was Miles’ chosen title and Peter gave his blessing for it and on a meta-level it is intended to represent how anyone can be Spider-Man.

“Peter has offered it to Miles, but why does this version of Miles want it in return?”

Because Ultimate Peter died and Miles wanted to honour him.

It isn’t the case of he just ALWAYS existed in this universe. You cannot time travel back like 15 years into the 616 Marvel universe and locate baby Miles Morales He literally, physically doesn’t exist there.

“That's really why these new versions of the characters work. I can see what they offer Peter and what he offers them in return. ”

Comic book MJ offered Peter a human connection, a friend, a confidant, someone to support him and companionship.

Why does she need to offer any more than that when in real life no one is hinging their deeper relationships upon the basis of what that person does for them in terms of their jobs or hobbies.

“And that facet is sometimes missing in the Marvel Comics iteration. ”

No it isn’t.

“I see what they offer Peter, but sometimes it's hard to see what they get out of the relationship.”

MJ gets a friend, companion, someone who understands and supports her, someone who helps emotionally fulfil her and make her a better person and sometimes someone who can help her in times of emotional and physical crises.

“Great artists steal, Marvel. The comic publisher is already bringing Insomniac's Spider-Man into the the universe with the upcoming Spider-Geddon crossover (shown below). Now it's time to steal certain facets of the storytelling for the universe. Marvel Comics is stuck with the millstone of continuity around its neck, but that doesn't mean there aren't new directions the company can move Spider-Man and his amazing friends toward. ”

Marvel has never rebooted it’s history since 1961.

DC has done so in varying ways 5 or 6 times.

Marvel outsells DC.

Of all iconic characters owned by DC, Batman’s history has altered the least from one reboot into the next.

Batman outsells every other DC character.

In the 1980s Marvel fans had no access to the internet, few information books or other resources and few reprints with which to catch up upon the 20-25 years worth of history for the characters and of the few resources they did have not everyone had access to them.

Marvel comics sold more physical copies back then than they do now.

The highest selling Marvel titles of the 1980s and 1990s were the X-Men related titles which had objectively the most complicated, convoluted and least accessible .

So STFU about too much continuity oh my God!

#Spider-Man #Spider-Man ps4 #Spider-Man Playstation 4 #Insomniac Spider-Man #insomniac games #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #mary jane watson parker #MJ Watson #Peter Parker

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junker-town · 4 years

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5 winners from Week 14 of the NFL season

Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images

Erstwhile safety Ryan Tannehill. Kicking duels. Quarterbacks named Drew.

Dec. 7 was the day college football’s conference titles were decided. Dec. 8 was the day the NFL’s playoff race got a little clearer.

Week 14 was a litmus test for postseason contenders. The Patriots and Chiefs each had plenty to prove in a rematch of last year’s AFC title game — only this time it was New England’s late rally that fell short. The Bills’ quest for their first division title since Toy Story was in theaters ran into their biggest challenge thanks to a visit from MVP candidate Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. The Titans kept their hot streak alive against the fading Raiders in a battle with major implications for the AFC’s final wild card spot.

Those games each had their moments, but none were as thrilling as the controlled chaos of a 49ers-Saints showdown in the Superdome. San Francisco outlasted Drew Brees in a 48-46 shootout that saw 10 passing touchdowns and only three punts.

In the end, Kansas City clinched the AFC West crown, Baltimore took a nigh-insurmountable lead in the race for homefield advantage, and the Niners kept their hopes for the NFC’s top spot alive by finishing the toughest three-game stretch in league history with a 2-1 record. But Week 14’s winners weren’t solely decided by final scores and their place in the standings.

Before we get who we picked as this week’s winners, let’s look first at who it wasn’t ...

Not considered: the Jacksonville Jaguars. All of them.

It was only a few weeks ago that things looked promising for the Jags. They were 4-4 and only a few wins from working their way into the AFC Wild Card race. With Nick Foles set to return from a broken collarbone and the heart of an intimidating defense still intact — minus Jalen Ramsey — there was hope Jacksonville could return to the postseason for just the second time since 2007.

Because this is the Jaguars, that hope was misplaced. Jacksonville was so outclassed that, for the third straight week, Big Cat Country published their postgame recap before the third quarter was even over. In Week 14, they lost 45-10 to a Chargers team that averaged 19.3 points per game over its last eight weeks. It was the Jaguars’ fifth straight loss, all of which have come by at least 17 points.

Jacksonville inserted Gardner Minshew back into the starting lineup when it became Foles couldn’t spark his new offense, but the rookie was ineffective in his return. The former Washington State star needed 37 passes to throw for just 162 yards, and while he protected the ball well (zero turnovers) he also finished the game with a lower passer rating than his punter Logan Cooke (83.4 to 104.2).

How are the Jags going to fix this? Minshew has some ideas.

"So maybe we'll try to play good more, and play bad less"#Jaguars 25 year history summed up with one promising line from Gardner Minshew pic.twitter.com/WE3Rl0LwzO

— Ben Murphy (@BenMurphyTV) December 9, 2019

Some extremely vague ideas, sure. But for a team that’s handed out $142 million in contract value to Foles and Blake Bortles since 2018, it’s not the worst plan they’ve come up with.

Now on to Week 14’s actual winners, starting with ...

5. Terry McLaurin, the No. 1 reason for Washington fans to be excited for its future

Washington doesn’t have much to look forward to. The franchise fired longtime head coach Jay Gruden after five-plus years and zero playoff wins. It fell to 3-10 after losing in Green Bay Sunday and currently fields the league’s 32nd-ranked offense in both points scored and yards gained.

But late in that Week 14 loss was a glimmer of hope. Not for 2019 mind you. Though Washington could still fight its way to the top of the NFC East with a 6-10 record, it’d lose on a tiebreaker no matter what. Instead, it’s the twinkle of untapped potential McLaurin could bring to an offense that’s lacked a homegrown star receiver since the glory days of Gary Clark. McLaurin faced double-teams from the Packers’ secondary, but still finished as his team’s leading receiver with four catches, 57 yards, and one completely absurd touchdown catch.

Terry McLaurin, oh my goodness pic.twitter.com/wo0hR83Imt

— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) December 8, 2019

That touchdown capped off an expertly run two-minute drill from rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins. Haskins had gained just 95 yards on 19 passes with zero touchdowns and an interception before he was tasked with leading Washington back from almost certain defeat. The former Ohio State star — Haskins, not McLaurin, in this case — leveled up to complete six of seven meaningful passes (with one clock-stopping spike) for 75 yards and the points needed to turn a 20-9 deficit into a one-possession game.

That wouldn’t be enough to lead a road upset in one of the league’s least accommodating stadiums, but it was still enough for the two young prospects to stake their claim as part of Washington’s foundation. Even if 2019 is a lost year, the Haskins-McLaurin combination could make 2020 a lot more tolerable in the nation’s capital.

4. Quarterbacks named Drew, who had a whole day

We expect big things from Drew Brees. The future Hall of Famer is close to owning the league’s all-time touchdown record. His five touchdown passes against the 49ers weren’t enough to lead New Orleans to a home win, but they did give him 537 career passing TDs — second only to Peyton Manning’s 539 in NFL history.

Brees dialed up a throwback version of himself. The soon-to-be 41-year-old completed 29 of his 40 passes for 349 yards, even after losing key target Jared Cook (two catches, 64 yards, two touchdowns) to injury in the second quarter. Unsurprisingly, it was Michael Thomas — currently on pace for an NFL-record 149 receptions this season — who served as Brees’ co-conspirator when he needed to carve up San Francisco’s defense:

Mike's just been waitin' for the right moment.@CantGuardMike | #ProBowlVote | #SAINTS pic.twitter.com/PwJtPLEOrP

— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) December 8, 2019

Despite a prolific day, Brees wound up on the unhappy side of the scoreboard. Another, overlooked Drew wouldn’t be denied.

Drew Lock spent the bulk of his rookie season on injured reserve after falling to the second round of the 2019 NFL Draft. He only got the chance to earn snaps with the Broncos after Joe Flacco suffered a season-ending neck injury and Brandon Allen sputtered through a three-game stretch of mediocrity in his stead. That pushed Lock into a Week 13 debut against the Chargers. In a 23-20 win, he threw touchdown passes in each of his first two drives.

That was just an appetizer compared to what he was cooking up against the Texans. Houston had been flying high after shutting down Tom Brady through most of a win over the Patriots last week. On Sunday, that unit was rendered helpless to Lock’s whims in a 38-24 Broncos win.

The rookie quarterback finished with 309 passing yards on 27 attempts, three touchdowns, one interception, and one epic Buzz Lightyear celebration inspired by the teammates who’d busted him up about checking his wristband playsheets too often in practice.

Drew Lock’s signature celebration is epic @DrewLock23 @MizzouFootball @Broncos pic.twitter.com/NJqDBjacyB

— The Checkdown (@thecheckdown) December 8, 2019

Lock’s sudden mastery raises an important question. Has John Elway finally found his franchise quarterback? His swings at creating a homegrown version of himself to haunt Mile High Field had resulted in whiffs like Brock Osweiler, Zac Dysert, Trevor Siemian, Paxton Lynch, and Chad Kelly. Somehow, the most successful member of that group in Denver was Siemian.

Lock still has a long way to go before he proves he’s a capable starting quarterback in the NFL, but he’s 2-0 as a starter for a team that was 3-8 before he took the reins. That’s something from which Elway and the Broncos can build. Lock’s got three more games to prove he — and not Flacco, or a 2020 draftee, or a veteran free agent signing — should be Denver’s go-to guy next fall.

3. Ryan Tannehill, who just needed to hit someone to kickstart his heart

I’m not sure enough can be written about Tannehill’s absurd journey through 2019. He began the season facing a probable release from the Dolphins, only to be traded to the Titans for a Day 3 pick. He began the season as Marcus Mariota’s backup, throwing zero passes before Week 6.

Then Mariota got benched, and now Tannehill is the league’s most efficient passer through Week 14 (I know, right?). It looked like his Cinderella magic was going to wear off against the Raiders when his sixth pass was tipped at the line of scrimmage and intercepted by Maurice Hurst. That could have sent him into a spiral, but Tannehill hit the reset button before that play could even finish.

Like, really hit it.

HARD.

Ryan Tannehill with the HIT STICK pic.twitter.com/gYnQEjL1Gq

— Sam Monson (@PFF_Sam) December 8, 2019

Tannehill got right back on track soon after, elevating his cast of unheralded wideouts and tight ends into a lineup of monsters over his following nine possessions. The Titans scored touchdowns on each of their next three possessions, including this one-play, 91-yard drive courtesy of rookie A.J. Brown.

Ryan Tannehill throws a BOMB. AJ Brown does the rest. Touchdown Titans.pic.twitter.com/99ZX2Vci0O

— NFLonCBS (@NFLonCBS) December 8, 2019

Tannehill threw for 391 passing yards, three touchdowns, and the aforementioned turnover. He hasn’t started a single game in 2019 where he hasn’t scored multiple touchdowns.

And the Titans, even after what’s now a 6-1 run through the middle of their season, are still stuck behind the Steelers in the race for the AFC’s sixth and final playoff spot. The good news is they’re now tied with the Texans for first place in the AFC South — and they’ll get the chance to prove their divisional superiority with two games against Houston in their final three weeks.

2. Emmanuel Sanders, the veteran receiver the Patriots wish they’d traded for

Sanders was stuck on a rebuilding team this October when the Broncos made their long-tenured deep threat available in advance of the trade deadline. Hours after the Patriots snapped Mohamed Sanu from the Falcons’ roster, the 49ers swooped in to free Sanders from Colorado.

Here’s how the two players have performed for their new teams in the seven weeks since:

Sanders: 28 catches (on 39 targets), 407 yards, three touchdowns, one passing touchdown in seven games

Sanu: 18 catches (29 targets), 135 yards, one touchdown in five games

Sanders’ value was in full display as San Francisco emptied its tanks in order to outrace the Saints in New Orleans. Not only did he lead his team with seven catches for 157 yards and one score, but he also threw a touchdown pass of his own — something for which Sanu (four career TD passes) has typically been better known:

@ESanders_10 to @RMos_8Ball ‍♂️#GoNiners #SFvsNO pic.twitter.com/3AzpuJVbPE

— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) December 8, 2019

And yet, he may not have had the most impressive single play of the game. That honor goes to George Kittle, who refused to be tackled on a massive fourth-down conversion late in a 46-45 game, even as Saints safety Marcus Williams grabbed onto his facemask like a handhold on a climbing wall:

NO FEAR.@gkittle46 | #GoNiners pic.twitter.com/g3vprcCOpX

— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) December 8, 2019

The Niners are 11-2 with wins over the Packers and Saints in the last three weeks. They may not have gotten there without the extra gear Sanders brings to their offense.

1. Jason Sanders and Sam Ficken, who gave us an old-fashioned KICKER DUEL

You know who doesn’t belong on this list of winners? The Dolphins, who turned eight drives to the Jets’ 29-yard line or deeper into exactly zero touchdowns. However, their stunning inability to near the end zone gave Sanders a chance to shine.

The second-year kicker, who earned acclaim last week for being on the receiving end of 2019’s best fake field goal (so far), was pressed into duty early and often to bail out Miami’s impotent offense. Seven out of eight times, he came through. Sanders drained kicks from 22, 25, 28, 31, 53, 47, and 37 yards in MetLife Stadium, missing only a 34-yard attempt while falling one kick shy of tying Rob Bironas’ NFL record of eight field goals set back in 2007.

Ficken wasn’t nearly as prolific, with only three field goals (and one extra point on two attempts) to his name. He had the last laugh, though; it was his final kick that ultimately decided the game. The former Penn State walk-on, playing with his sixth team in the NFL since joining the league in 2016, celebrated his biggest moment as a pro — this 44-yard game winner as time expired:

Money.#MIAvsNYJ | #TakeFlight pic.twitter.com/qeUNR45PA5

— New York Jets (@nyjets) December 8, 2019

That gave the Jets to a 22-21 win on their home turf and kept Miami’s tanking plans intact. Now everyone in attendance can regale their grandchildren at Christmas 2050 about the time they went to an NFL game and saw the AFC East’s two worst teams combine for eight more field goals than touchdowns scored on a calm December afternoon.

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drundertalescum · 7 years

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The Kings Beneath The Mountain - Fic Questions

SOOOO...

@audaciousanonj asked a few questions, and then @rabbitpietale decided to challenge me to do ALL the questions for this fic, so I’m doing all the questions for this fic.

Please send me questions for not-this-fic.

I’ll put it under the cut. It’s long.

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

I was in an angst mood and started writing for a few hours and ended up with a huge, disconnected mess. A week later I decided to publish the first part since it was pretty solid and could stand on its own. Then I made the mistake of trying to continue before I was really ready for it.

I don’t really remember the exact inspiration for the first night of mad typing. It was probably a migraine. That’s the cause of most fics I write down.

2: What scene did you first put down?

HONESTLY? It’s a scene way in the future. Like... 20 chapters ahead if it continues at the pace I want to? I’ve got doubts about going down that route for a few reasons, so there’s a chance the fic will divert before it ever gets there, but it’s... uh... it’s really not pleasant.

Maybe if I do divert I’ll spin that off into another fic. I do really like the scene. I just... I dunno. Self doubts.

3: What's your favorite line of narration?

It’s a paragraph, not a line, but this:

Undyne would have known what to do. She knew all sorts of things about magic, and about Asgore, too! She knew how he handled things, the way he made it all work. This was knowledge he desperately needed now. And it just would have been lovely hear her stories and share a cup of tea! (Papyrus himself hated tea, but he drank it all the time now. Asgore must have had good reason for drinking the stuff. Which flowers did he use again…? He was so forgetful lately.) They didn't have to spar or cook or do any of the stuff they used to. They could just chat or walk around the garden and reminisce about older, better times. His joints hurt so much; that sounded more appealing. She'd probably think it was boring, but he could make it fun! She could play piano for him and he could try to sing along. They should have done that more. It was fun. Or maybe they could watch some of those baby cartoons together. He didn't know which one was her favorite, and he felt now that he'd really like to know.

I just love their friendship so much and it hurts knowing how much he missed her and how much he was ignoring about his own self-destruction while still thinking about her opinions and ways to spend more time with her.

I also like this ultra secret future snippet:

Creativity was always strongly associated with humans, and for good reason. Papyrus had seen so many old maps and books about human buildings and architecture. If, with unlimited time and resources, you asked a single human to build you two great cities, you would get exactly that: two cities. Different streets, different buildings, different names. A monster, on the other hand, would just build the same city twice. After all, the first was fine, wasn't it? There was no reason to betray tradition-- even if it was a tradition of just a few short days.

There’s another actual line that might be my favorite but it’s spoilers.

4: What's your favorite line of dialogue?

Of what’s currently written:

“WOWIE, UNDYNE! I DIDN'T KNOW THERE WERE FRIEND RULES!” “OBVIOUSLY! That's rule number two of the Friend Rules!!” “AND WHAT'S NUMBER ONE?” “‘Don't talk about Friend Rules!’” “BUT YOU JUST--!!!”

I also like:

COOLSKELETON95: THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS FOR BABIES THAT ARE STILL VERY GOOD FOR GROWN MONSTERS! LIKE MILK! AND DEADLY SPIKES!

ALPHYS: * ummmmm * spikes!?

COOLSKELETON95: OF COURSE! KIDS LOVE SPIKES!!!

There’s a conversation way down the line that I love (part of the sequence that might get cut that I mentioned) but the whole thing is spoiler-town.

5: What part was hardest to write?

The next chapter. (:

I’m serious. It’s awful. I thought I would be able to get it done months ago! It’s not really all that hard, it’s just finding a balance, because the way the scene plays out really determines the direction of the story in a lot of ways. It’s just the chat with Undyne, it’s not some big surprise, but it’s hard! It doesn’t seem to want to work out right! And I get overwhelmed when I try to work on it.

The dinner with Sans was really tough, to, and the conversation that followed dinner. I didn’t want to give too much away from what Sans was thinking or what he’s aware of and that made it pretty tricky getting the dialogue to not go the wrong way.

The brothers actually wanted to talk things out and this is an Undertale fanfiction. It cannot be allowed.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

It’s really long.

And uh... aside from Papyrus and Alphys friendship showing a bit it hasn’t really reached any of the “different” parts yet.

Fun fact though: pretty much every detail of the King Papyrus ending Papyrus came from is the reverse of the details of my other (planned) King Papyrus fic Observe:

TKBTM:

Fell down 9 months in

Aborted genocide run

not Frisk’s first rodeo

features at least 2 timelines

Papyrus banned himself from sleeping

Papyrus has near-perfect reset memory (from origin timeline to new timeline)

Flowey died in Origin timeline

KPCV:

Takes place 1 year into reign

“Coward” run

the first Frisk run

the only Frisk run

Papyrus sleeps whenever he can he gets it now

No reset memory, only deja vu

Flowey lives

7: Where did the title come from?

It’s a reference to Asgore’s intro-to-battle music, which translates to The King Beneath The Mountain. Only there’s plural kings. Because Papyrus is also a king.

It’s really clever, you see. I’m really good at names.

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

Naw, not this one. This one is just pure self-indulgent fulfillment of my Papyrus angst needs.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Not really! There’s a lot of scenes that I changed or cut and by the end of it there may be a very different ending than the self-indulgent trash I was aiming for but right now its not that far.

Here’s a cut part of the scene where Sans and Papyrus are goofing off after Papyrus throws a glove at Sans’s face. Originally he missed:

“i feel so attacked right now. i better get going before you start throwing your boots too. ‘m weak, not sure my sole can handle it!”

“ARRRGHHH!!!” Sans had shortcut a short distance away before the shoe could properly land, as both knew he would. They’d played this game many times, but it never got old. If anything, it only got better with time. It was hard for Papyrus to maintain his look of great offense while he was holding back a giggle. He started to chase after him, using his magic to prevent himself from tripping from having only one shoe. “GET BACK HERE!!”

“i wouldn’t do that! you’re running a temperature!” Sans dodged out of the path of the second shoe before it even came close. “later!” Sans yelled from his spot down the road, then shortcut out of sight once more, this time for good.

Papyrus smiled as he floated above the ground and gathered up the strewn pieces of his gear.

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

There’s no pairings here besides maybe one or two if-you-squints in the future. And one of those squints is... really not a healthy relationship if you read it as a relationship. Please don’t ship that.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

This isn’t clear yet but it’s super self-indulgent on my favorite tropes.

12: What do you like least about this fic?

This isn’t clear yet but it’s super self-indulgent on my favorite tropes.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn't listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

hmmm....

You know, I don’t really listen to music when I write. It doesn’t work. (Conversely, I MUST listen to music while I draw). I can’t remember what I was listening to around the time of writing, since music usually plays a role in brainstorming.

Maybe a nice, soft, sad orchestral ASGORE. Or if it exists, a soft, sad, orchestral ASGORE/Bonetrousle mashup.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

Sleep is healthy.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

“Nope! Still can’t handle longfics! A pity!”

#my fics #the kings beneath the mountain #tkbtm #bad opinion zone

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ciathyzareposts · 4 years

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Camelot: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

There I am, third from the top, above even the creator himself.

Camelot

United States Independently written and released on university PLATO system in 1982

Date Started: 20 April 2019

Date Ended: 5 January 2020

Total Hours: 69

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Summary:

The last of the PLATO RPGs, Joshua Tabin’s Camelot united the two previous traditions present on the terminal-mainframe system. From the Dungeon/Game of Dungeons/Orthanc line, he took the single-player approach using a multi-classed character. From the Moria/Oubliette/Avatar line, he took first-person dungeon exploration (with a menu town on top) and a combat system where you fight “stacks” of multiple monsters. Players control individual characters but can message each other as they explore the same shared dungeon, which resets on the hour or whenever all the rooms of a level are cleared. The ultimate goal is to get strong enough to explore Level 10, get Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, and use it to force Lucifer to cough up the Holy Grail. It takes a while to learn the game’s features, and it’s pretty hard even with its “relaxed permadeath” approach, but it has an addicting approach to leveling and inventory acquisition

*****

I’ve often wondered how I would have fared if I had been a student at one of the PLATO universities in the 1970s or early 1980s, and now I have my answer: my life would have been ruined. I would have skipped classes, missed deadlines, plagiarized papers–anything to spend more time on the computer. I know because that’s basically what I did this week. I procrastinated on an already-overdue report to win this 40-year-old game. The fact that money, and not just a grade, is riding on this report probably makes it worse.

Like all of the PLATO games, Camelot is about mechanics. It hardly has any story at all. Its allure comes from its constant sense of character development–the idea that the next level, the next epic item, the next 10,000 points (putting you one position higher on the leaderboard) are all just around the corner. This is the kind of game that transitions you from 1:00 AM to 4:00 AM before you’ve noticed what happened.

I don’t often schedule my games to offer compelling comparisons, but what an amazing lesson in contrast we have between Camelot and Challenge of the Five Realms, written 10 years apart for very different audiences. Challenge has all of the content of an excellent RPG–game world, NPCs, dialogue, and plot. Camelot has the mechanics of an excellent RPG–statistics, inventory, and combat tactics. I think it’s fair to say that I appreciate and enjoy Challenge‘s approach, but I am addicted to Camelot‘s.

Part of the fun of my experience came from author Josh Tabin’s occasional presence as I played. (He and his son stayed up with me until 1:00 AM the other night, cheering me on as I won.) I couldn’t experience the game the way it was with 20 players swarming the dungeon, but at least I got some of the experience. He helped me fight a few tough battles (the game divides the treasure among the number of people in the room, I discovered, even if you can’t see each other) and alerted me where he’d seen a particular foe or item. I want to say that he gave me a lot of hints, but perhaps a better way to say it is that he led me to a lot of hints. He avoided most outright spoilers and instead said things like “Hey, I saw a TARDIS in the shop–you should buy it and see what it does.”

Unfortunately, players can’t directly help each other by giving each other money or equipment. But they can alert each other to where they’ve seen, say, a group of lizard men with a particularly large chest, knowing that lizard men often drop magic boots. They can say stuff to each other like, “I just sold a Manual of Quickness to the store if anyone wants to buy it.” And of course they can help each other directly in combat.

I think it’s been a while since Tabin had anyone take such active interest in his game. He used the occasion to make some tweaks while my own experience was in progress. One was to add a “difficulty setting.” He said the programming was already in there, but he had never turned it on. Now any player can customize his own difficulty from “easy” to “nightmare.” Easier games make enemies less effective but also give you a lower score. “Nightmare” lets you build your character fast for some extra risk. He also added a few more trap types and introduced a system by which low-level enemies run away from high-level characters. I’d often wondered why some of my charmed companions would up and ditch me for no reason, and it turns out that they do it when you attack other enemies of the same type. In a recent update, he made that explicit by having the companion say “he was my BROTHER!” as he leaves your service.

The author added a difficulty setting during the middle of my session.

In my previous entries, I talked a lot about the game’s difficulty. It is perhaps most accurate to say that like a good roguelike (which Camelot does an excellent job anticipating), it is very difficult until you get a lot of experience and get a natural feel for what’s going on. I was well into my 40th hour before combat tactics really “clicked,” and I started to learn instinctively when to use spells, when to attack, and when to run. It took a while before I got to the point that I always had my hands on the right keys as I entered a room, allowing me to act before the enemy. I died a couple dozen times in the first 30 hours of the game and only half a dozen in the last 30.

Another important insight was learning how to strategically develop inventory. Each item has a label (the game calls it a “table”) from 1-12 associated with it, and these levels are highly calibrated with the monster levels. A mithril sword (Table 3) simply isn’t going to do much against a red dragon (Table 8) no matter how high your level or attributes. So instead of blundering all of the dungeon hoping to find anything, you prioritize trying to upgrade your lowest-level items. The average “table” of a looted piece of equipment is the same as the dungeon level on which you find it. So let’s say that most of your stuff is Table 7, but you’re still stuck with Table 4 armor (Frosty Plate Mail). Hopefully, you’ve noticed that dragons tend to drop armor, so you want to be on dungeon Level 7 looking for a Table 7 dragon (blue dragon) carrying Tale 7 Azure Plate Mail. If you’ve mapped carefully, you’ve noted that dragons tend to show up in rooms with scorch marks on the walls, and you thus head for that room on Level 7. No luck? Wait for the hour to roll around and the dungeon to reset, or reset it yourself with a TARDIS.

Running into a high-level enemy with a high-level chest in a “stud room,” I use my Scroll of Identification to check the odds.

I had originally thought that a lot of the dungeon room messages were just flavor text, but they actually alert you to the type of enemy you’re most likely to find there. Monsters of the “slime” table (green slimes, yellow molds, ochre jellies, black puddings) are usually found in rooms that say “the ground is very soft here.” If you want to avoid slimes, you avoid those rooms. If you’re trying to find enemies from the “bad cleric” list and the potions and scrolls that they often carry, you look for rooms described with “crosses and an altar.” Thieves are in rooms with “empty wallets” on the floor. The specific composition of the rooms resets on the hour, but the locations of the rooms of each description do not.

The dungeon levels are full of the types of navigational obstacles that you’ve experienced if you’ve played any first-person wireframe game. These include spinners, pit traps, one-way chutes, and teleporters. Some of these are necessary to navigate the dungeon, and you have to map carefully. For instance, you can take regular stairs all the way to Level 6, but to get to Level 7, you need to take a teleporter behind a hidden door on Level 3. Level 8 can only be reached via a teleporter from Level 5, which is in a section that can only be reached via a teleporter on Level 7. Despite the complexity, you learn the steps pretty fast, and I found I could make it from the town on Level 1 to Level 10 in about 3 minutes–faster, of course, if I had the rare Wand of Teleportation.

As you explore downward, it’s a good rule of thumb to make sure that either your weapon or your spell item is one or two levels higher than the current level you’re exploring. You can do this by repeatedly attacking each level’s “stud room”–cued with a note that the walls are covered in blood–which reliably offers monsters and items 1-2 levels higher than the level’s average. So if you defeat the stud room on Level 6, there’s a decent chance you’ll find a Table 8 item.

I was lucky to get a Ring of Wizardry (Table 9) at the stud room on Level 7, and it let me blast my way through the rest of Level 7 and Level 8. (Downside: every time you use a spell item, there’s a chance it will run out of charges, and re-charging it at the store is expensive.) Then, early in my Level 10 explorations, I ran into a “friendly” Asmodeus and bribed him $140,000 to drop his chest and leave the room. It had the Level 12 Ruby Staff of Asmodeus in it, which let me kill most things on the level.

Leveling is pretty constant during this process, but it caps at Level 60. I don’t like level caps, but in this case I think most players would be hard pressed to hit the level cap long before the end of the game.

My map of Level 10. The numbers are all teleporters.

Level 10 has the game’s final encounters with Lucifer and the Lady of the Lake. Lucifer has the Holy Grail but kills you instantly if you don’t have Excalibur. The Lady of the Lake, meanwhile, won’t give you Excalibur unless you’re fully outfitted with Table 12 gear. How do you get Table 12 items when there are only 10 dungeon levels? You can get extraordinarily luck, as I did with Asmodeus, or you can camp out at the Level 10 stud room, which will feature a new Table 12 enemy every hour on the hour. The Table 12 enemies are a rogue’s gallery of pop culture references: Asmodeus, Tiamat, Zeus, Poseidon, The Evil One, beholders, Thor, Jubilex, Lolth, Saruman, Sauron, the Master of Shadows, and–at the top of the “bad clerics” list–Jerry Falwell.

Finding a Level 12 artifact.

There’s no guarantee that these enemies will always drop Level 12 artifacts. And if they do, there’s no guarantee you won’t accidentally destroy them by fumbling the trap. So you have to churn through dozens of encounters to assemble your list. If you don’t want this to take dozens of hours, you have to load up on TARDISes (which reset the dungeon manually) and keep using them. This took me about 6 hours by itself and would have taken longer if Tabin hadn’t sold one of his character’s extra TARDISes to the store.

When you finally have a complete set of Level 12 gear, you go to a water room at the bottom of Level 10, and the Lady of the Lake hands over Excalibur.

Yes, everybody knows it’s no basis for a system of government. Please let it go.

From there, it’s just a few steps to the stairway to HELL, where you meet Lucifer. He cowers the moment he sees Excalibur, hands over the Holy Grail, and flees.

Satan flees and hands over the Holy Grail.

Once you have the Holy Grail, you need only return to the town, where the game gives you the option to retire permanently. If you want, you can keep playing and finding more treasure to increase your score, which affects your position on the leaderboard. I retired with a score of 673,809. That was enough to put me at the third spot on the board, behind two characters fielded by the mysterious “greg” or “gregl.” I could have beaten his high score, but it would have taken another 6 hours of gameplay, roughly.

Am I ever.

When you retire the character permanently, you get the following endgame text, suggesting a never-ending cycle of grail-finding. Then again, there has to be a rationale for more than one winner.

In a GIMLET, Camelot earns:

0 points for the game world. I thought about giving it 1, but I couldn’t even justify that. Despite its name and the presence of the Lady of the Lake (nonsensically on the bottom of a dungeon), the game doesn’t make any use of Arthurian themes, nor does it replace or supplement them with any story or sense of place. This was the norm with the PLATO series.

4 points for character creation and development. There are a few choices in character creation–particularly the race–which make a big difference during gameplay. I chose to take the elf, a weak character who has a low risk of dying of old age (he ended the game about 30 years younger than he started, thanks to Potions of Youth). During the game, leveling is continually rewarding even though it doesn’t give you any choices. The little sub-quests to kill specific monsters to reach some levels was a fun addition.

I just turned Level 60. I assess the level of my equipment as the game gives me my next mission.

3 points for NPC interaction. Okay, there are no NPCs. But for past PLATO games, I gave a couple points here for the PC interaction that accompanies those titles, and I like how it works here. You don’t need other players to enjoy the game, but they can enhance your experience. I also gave a point here to the ability to charm monsters to joining your little “party.”

4 points for encounters and foes. The game’s long list of monsters may be derivative, but Tabin did an excellent job programming their various strengths and weaknesses. A player has to balance his desire for treasure with the knowledge that thieves can steal treasure and slimes can destroy it. A careful player has to note what enemies cause sleep, paralysis, petrification, and destruction. The best part is that all of these strengths and weaknesses are determinable with a Scroll of Identification.

4 points for magic and combat. The game has a nice set of options for dealing with creatures, including spells, physical assaults of different types (trading accuracy for power), popping in and out of rooms until you “surprise” the enemies, hitting and running, stealing their treasure out from under them, and bribing them to go away. Only the spell system is underdeveloped, with the character only having access to one “spell” (more of an inventory item) at a time.

6 points for equipment, one of the best parts of the game. The player has 15 equipment slots with 12 levels of items for each slot. Even better is the wide variety of equipment that works in the “Other” slot–scrolls, wands, potions, and the like. There are manuals that permanently improve attributes, cordials that temporarily improve them, scrolls and wands that make navigation easier, items that charm different types of enemies (figuring out what works on which type is a mini-game in itself). Particularly well done is the Scroll of Identification. You can use it at any time, including in-combat and when in the middle of pulling items from a chest. Use it on a monster, and it tells you his hit percentages, damages, and special abilities. Use it on an item, and it tells you what it is and whether it’s cursed. Use it on an unopened chest, and it tells you what trap you’re facing.

The store always held a chaotic selection of items.

6 points for the economy. For most of the game, you’re trying to make enough money just to level up, so deciding whether to sell a potentially useful item for some extra cash, or whether to splurge on that item in the store, or whether to bribe a particular enemy (who may have more gold than the bribe in his chest) presents a continual set of decisions. Even late in the game, when you have plenty (especially after you hit the level cap), finding money contributes to your score.

3 points for quests. There’s only one main quest with no decisions or role-playing options, but there are also sub-quests throughout to kill specific monsters.

3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are what they are, although I think the monster portraits are well done. There’s no sound. The keyboard interface for me was easy to master (and the game usually shows you all available commands at the current moment), and I like how everything is always laid out on the main screen, even if it makes the exploration window a bit small.

3 points for gameplay. This is from a 2020 perspective, of course, where I could have fit three other games in the time it took me to win Camelot. There were a lot of moments of frustration, and the linear nature of the dungeon reduces replayability even as the character options (and ever-present leaderboard) increases it. What feels to me today too long, with too many moments of frustration, would have felt the opposite on a college campus in 1982, with plenty of friends around to compare experiences and jockey for high scores.

The final score is 36, which crosses my “recommended” threshold, but not by so much that it would be absurd. It is notably the highest score I’ve given to a PLATO title. What’s particularly amazing is that Josh Tabin wasn’t even a college student when he wrote Camelot–he was 12! As a member of the Explorer Scouts, he had access to a special program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where PLATO was born) that taught middle- and high-school aged kids how to write code. Tabin explicitly joined the program because he wanted to play Oubliette (1978) and Avatar (1979) on the PLATO system. Somehow, he found time to complete Camelot in 18 months. Years later, he attended the university as a student and kept adding to the program.

It’s an extremely mature game, and the age of the programmer doesn’t come through at all except in a few bits of juvenile humor (in addition to “poison dart,” there is a type of trap that rhymes with it; one of the magic bags is called a “large hairy sack”) and the varied but predictable pop culture references. The game mixes the monster list from Dungeons and Dragons with the TARDIS from Doctor Who and the occasional quote from Blade Runner or monster or item from Lord of the Rings.

(Tabin waited a long time for this review. He first contacted me in 2013, and I assured him I’d play the game eventually. Somehow it disappeared from my master list, so he contacted me again in late 2017 to ask what had happened. I apologized and promised again that I’d get to it “soon.” In anticipation, he sent me a long, enormously valuable set of instructions. Then, it wasn’t until July 2018 that I took an initial look at the game and sent back some questions, then April of 2019 before I fully engaged it.)

I’m one of only four wins in 15 years (since the PLATO system was ported to Cyber1), but there were 43 winners between 1985 (when Tabin started keeping track) and 2003, including an early 2000s war between two users who went by the names “kappes m” and “pilcher,” each of them winning about a dozen times, trying to push each other off the leaderboard, and changing their character names to poke fun at each other. “kappes m” was responsible for a 20-hour speedrun in which he managed to get the Grail at character level 30 using a challenging pixie character, basically exploiting the pixie’s high dexterity to run dungeon levels that should have been out of his league and to steal high-level items from creatures that would normally have been able to stomp him.

But I’m the only one to have documented the ending, which is good enough for me. And with this, we have finally played the last of the PLATO games. I won’t be returning to the setting unless I go insane and decide to try to win Oubliette or Avatar or record some video of the games I’ve already won. It’s been a fun ride seeing the complexity that these amateur games achieved in the pre-commercial era, and Camelot was a fitting capstone to the series. But now I’ve got to stop procrastinating and work on that report.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/camelot-won-with-summary-and-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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