Ken's Master List of D&D 5e House Rules and Preferences

These are house rules! The rules are what have worked for me. Maybe some of these rules will please you as a player in one of my games. Maybe they'll do the opposite. Please understand that what I am listing here is for running the best D&D game I know how.

Rule #1: Everyone is responsible for everyone else's fun. You, as a player, are responsible for the fun of the player across the table, yourself, the DM, everyone.

Rule #2: Character Creation: I lump all these together because it's the most common questions asked. Some are house rules, some are clarifications, but they are all lumped together here for convenience.

• Attributes can be point buy or 4d6 drop lowest, and I do allow total redos on attributes if you start over from scratch.
• I use the feat system, like most DMs.
• You may create a human with the alternate rule as shown in the PHB.
• You can either take the free equipment or use the wealth system (rolling for starting money and buying equipment) but not both. As far as I know, this is by the book, but I've been asked if a character gets both so many times that I felt like I needed to spell it out.
• If I don't own a hardcopy of a book, you cannot use anything out of it. No, giving me a PDF doesn't count. I don't use stuff out of third party books or UA. Currently, these are the books I have available: PHB, DMG, MM, VGM, XGE, MTF, CoS, SCAG, GoS, E:RftLW. 

Rule #3: Keep track of ammo. My rule for ammo is: if it did damage, it is spent. If it didn't do damage or was not disposed of in some other way (went off a cliff) then there's a 50% chance of recovery of each arrow.

Rule #4: I don't keep track of spell components unless you lose your pouch and focus, or a spell component costs money.

Rule #5: If we are playing on a system that automatically calculates encumbrance, like the OGL sheet on Roll20, then sure, let's keep track. Otherwise, I forget about encumbrance rules...but make sure you take it into consideration before I am forced to. For example, if you jumped over a ravine to get to a hoard of treasure, then you have to realize beforehand that you can't jump back over fully loaded. Either roleplay having this difficulty, or you force me to add up everyone's encumbrance, and no one wants that sort of delay!

Rule #6: I use benchmarks for leveling, not XP.

Rule #7: Cinematic scenes in which the mechanic of hit points is suspended, is a tricky subject. I generally agree with the opinions stated in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEDiiJGle1Y. (Credit to the Taking 20 YouTube channel, in fact, all their videos is incredibly educational and useful.) This means that hit points can be circumvented in the right situations where logic would call for it, though a bit more infrequently than the video calls for.

Rule #8: The subject of limits is important in these games. I have varying levels of restriction of tricky subjects:

• Any player can call a topical "time out" if the game approaches a triggering subject matter.
• Sexual scenes are usually a fade to black, and I don't like RPing horny or lovestruck NPCs. You can find love and/or sex in a game I run if you like, but it's going to be mostly background unless it involves two willing PCs. I completely avoid rape scenes, though the threat of sexual aggression may be implicit (but almost never explicit) in certain aspects of some slavery institutions in the world.
• I can be graphic in my description of violence and wounds, but it usually comes organically from combat. I avoid graphic descriptions of torture, and almost never implement torture on PCs.

Rule #9: Initiative ties are broken by who has the higher Dexterity. After that, higher Wisdom.

PREFERENCES:

These are just preferences. You won't even make me mad if you don't follow these. But you can delight and surprise your DM if you take these into consideration!

• I love roleplay. There's a reason we're not playing a board game.
• I love flavor added to game mechanics. Is your spellbook actually an invisible gremlin with eidetic memory who lives in a bottle and whispers spells to you as you memorize them? Is your Second Wind a traditional chant you must perform to psych yourself up? There are a million places to go after the mechanical fulfillment is met.
• Magical healing produces no scars, but healing from long rests do, depending on the type and severity of the damage healed.
• Attunement is a another tricky subject. My first instinct is to say it sucks, and one should have the ability to attune to more than two magic items as long as they're on different parts of the body. However, part of the Artificer class build (from Eberron: Rising from the Last War) is to be able to attune more than two magic items at a time. So it's going to end up like encumbrance rules: I usually turn a blind eye, but if you make me have to think about it, I'll start enforcing it! And if a player wants to play an Artificer, I definitely have to start enforcing it. 

RULE CLARIFICATIONS:

The following are rules that are correct in the book, but are either so very obscure, or often homebrewed, that it is notable that I run them as such. They are here mostly for the DM's benefit.

• You can only move through an opponents' square if they are two sizes larger or smaller than you, but remain difficult terrain. You can move through a friendly character's square, but it also is difficult terrain.
• A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.
• Hit points are an abstract combination of health, willpower, and luck. This leaves much room for the DM and player to determine exactly how a person is wounded - is it blood loss? Does taking tons of psychic damage mean that the character just wants to lay down and die? There are endless possibilities.

RULES FOR THAT ONE PLAYER...YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

• The Paladin spell Summon Steed does not drop your mount from on high, allowing it to crash through the roof and onto the enemy.
• You cannot use the Paladin's Ceremony ritual just for the AC bonus if you immediately claim you are in love with the dwarf right after learning of the existence of the marriage ritual.

Drawing from a Tarot Deck as a Conflict Resolution System in a TTRPG

I saw a great comment on Reddit about a guy trying to make some sort of RPG system using a Tarot deck. I think he was trying to have each draw set a character or motivation for a player, but of course I'd like to narrow the focus to a mere dice replacement. How would that work? This will be a thought experiment.

As you probably know, a basic Tarot has four suits of number 2 through 10 of each suit, then an Ace, Page, Knight, Queen and King of each suit. Obviously this could make for a random 1 through 14 draw, with slightly less randomness for each card drawn. Not bad. Any given system within the game - percentage chance of success in an action, health, damage, etc - can fit within the number system of the available spread of numbers given to us. Your target number for any chance of a 50/50 success would be 8 or higher. Moving the success number would mirror a change in difficulty. Each card draw is a dice roll.

So what about the Major Arcana? My first thought was that any drawn Major Arcana could be a complication or bonus, but with almost 1/3 of all draws (28%) being a complication, this would make for a LOT more randomness and a lot less dependence on character level or power. I'm not sure if that is best for a a system where we try to maximize fun, but it could be. It would certainly be a boon for game masters who like to throw wrinkles into combat.

As I remember the meanings (or at least one interpretation) of the Tarot cards, I tried to imagine what sort of complications could occur from such interpretations, or even a more literal reading of them. (For example, what if you drew the Tower, and you made some sort of terrain-based fumble? If some structure is rickety, including where you are standing, it falls?) There seems to be two directions I can go, a literal-meaning effect or a fortune telling interpretation effect, which I will call metaphorical.

So, here's a stab at some of the Major Arcana (I might add more in later), and what they might do as an effect. Note that some effects I might make a bit humorous!

	Possible Effect
0, The Fool	(Automatic) fail plus a comical catastrophic effect
1, The Magician	Success, but you are now "the protagonist" of this fight. (aggro)
2, The High Priestess	Success, and you are moved to the front of the initiative order.
3, The Empress
4, The Emperor
5, The Heirophant
6, The Lovers
7, The Chariot	Success, but your next action of the same type will fail.
8, Strength	You receive a +1 to [applicable will score] for the scene.
9, The Hermit
10, The Wheel of Fortune	50/50 chance (Flip the card in the air, maybe?)
11, Justice	If a character is good, success. If a character is evil, fail.
12, The Hanged Man
13, Death	Success, delivering instant incapacitation if an attack.
14, Temperance
15, The Devil	If a character is good, fail. If a character is evil, success.
16, The Tower	Fail, and whatever tool used breaks. Swords break, Thieves Tools snap, a voice goes hoarse.
17, The Star	Success, and temporarily lose any exhaustion penalty for the scene.
18, The Moon	Success at night, failure during the day
19, The Sun	Success during the day, failure at night
20, Judgement
21, The World

Soft Roleplaying

The art of "soft" roleplaying (RP) has always been a strange, unspoken mirror image to "hard" RP like that found in roleplaying games (RPGs) like Dungeons and Dragons. It is a variation that has settled organically between playing pretend and solving conflicts with some random number generator like dice.

Let's start with a summary of each of these types of RP.

Playing pretend: This is the basis of all RP, and by no means just for children! It is acting, it is lying, it is story telling. However, it is the most unstructured form of it. It's obvious to see that, as soon as a conflict arises where one person wants to pretend one thing, and another wants to pretend something different, there is no real way to choose. Conflict resolution gets in the way of the story.

Hard RP: This is the wonderful world of RPGs, started off by the granddaddy of them all, Dungeons and Dragons. In an RPG, guided by a Dungeon Master, each person in the game can announce that they do an action, then roll a die to see whether they succeeded. Conflicts are settled easily and conclusively, though their outcomes are sometimes not what the players wish for.

Soft RP: Soft RP is playing pretend with an eye toward conflicts, using some rules of thumb to determine the outcome of conflicts in a way that does not rely on randomness.

The rules of thumb in a Soft RP that need to be followed in order for it to work are:

1. You cannot dictate another person's actions or things that effect them. You cannot say, "I swing my sword and hit you in the arm" or "You are dazzled by my beauty". This is sometimes called "powergaming" or "god-moding".

2. The victim of the potentially bad action gets to determine whether or not the action affects them, and how much. The person who the sword is being swung at gets to describe dodging it, or having it nick them, or having it deal a fatal blow.

That's it. There are variations and rules created for specific scenarios, but those two rules are the basis of all soft RP. But! you might think. This is no better than playing pretend! How does anyone get anything done? Soft RP can evoke questions of how anyone can have a powerful or dangerous character in the face of an inability to do anything.

 If that's the type of RP you want to do, then you are in a competitive mindset; there's nothing wrong with that! Soft RP takes cooperation, between those in conflict and everyone in the game altogether. You - all of you - are writing a story together. So you have to collaborate with other people, even beforehand if you wish.

What are you (and the other people in the scene) trying to get out of this scene? If it's just 'to win', then you're not thinking of the whole story. You're not thinking like a writer. In a story-driven game with multiple people, why does your character have to win (or lose)? What story-related goal are you trying to fulfill with this character's actions?

Obviously, there are exception to these rules. If one character in a roleplay is surrounded by everyone else, ready to kill the one person, he or she unable to escape, it is reasonable to expect a little powergaming in order to keep the scene realistic. People can still die in Soft RP, but it is usually an obvious situation.

***

Anyone who wishes to link to this essay to help explain soft roleplaying to people is welcome to do so! If you wish to use this text in some other way, please credit me. Thanks.

What am I trying to do when designing an RP campaign

What do I try to do when designing an RP campaign in my home-brewed world? Obviously, to make the players have fun. However, the ways that can be done are infinite, so most of these things are just for myself.

First, I design with the gods in mind, top down. If I try to think like a god, and I try to think what I'd want to do with these mortals whose souls are in my hand, then I can come up with motivations that can drive years of gaming. It also helps that trying to think like a god helps me in my own spirituality...really! When I design a god that loves its 'children', how would I design that in such a way where the cause and effect world could still exist? In a similar way, how do I get over Epicurus' "Problem of Evil"? Envisioning ways that a loving D&D god could allow the world to exist in such a fashion helps me realize how it is so in this world.

Second, I take a page from Tolkien's book, in that I tend to treat my D&D homebrew world as a mythical world, whose heroes' great deeds are "just-so" stories for the world to shape its culture (especially language) around. Just as Gandalf described how the Old Took created the game of golf by lopping off a goblin head to have it fall down a gopher hole, so do adventures in my games answer the question, "Why is your world the way it is?" Each campaign I run in this world informs the next campaign. Just like great Greek heroes become constellations of stars, my D&D heroes become ascended gods themselves, and knowledge of these mortals who became representations of aspects of reality shapes the world's cultures.

An example: In this campaign, one of the major players is a powerful wizard called Hubrin. He will be where the word 'hubris' comes from, in this world. Common is an already established language in this world, but Common is not necessarily real world English, nor vice versa. Who is to say that the word for 'excessive self-pride' was even coined before this moment? There are a thousand arguments that could poke holes in this setup, so I leave the timeline vague. Myths do not have to line up perfectly. (See also: Comic Book Time.)

Lastly, more common sense: I try to make as many interconnections as possible. What ties two cities together? What happens when the hobgoblin cave next to town is cleared out? I try to create wide-spread consequences. These often point the way towards a new adventure very easily. They are also used to show the players how their actions have results, which adds to their sense of accomplishment.

I may add more aspects here later, but these are the main points I wanted to spell out.

Ok, fine, my abortion beliefs spelled out.

Abortion debate is hitting social media hard as Alabama bans the procedure. I've already talked too much about my views in piecemeal on Twitter, so I guess I should just spell them out here and point people to it. Note that I am not trying to insult anyone by simply stating my views.

In general:

- I take a moderate stance on abortion. I call myself "pro-choice", but this is in response to the complete bans that pro-lifers are trying to pass.
- Some cases of abortion are necessary, and some are not. Some cases should be always be allowed, and some should always be banned.
- Abortions for medical issues (such as ectopic pregnancies) should always be allowed.
- There's always a point in a pregnancy where it is so early that terminating a pregnancy should present no issue. A cluster of cells that cannot be seen with the naked eye is only a blueprint, not a person. This should be plainly obvious.
- There's always a point in a pregnancy where it's too late to have an abortion. The day before giving birth? Five minutes? I don't have an exact timeline, but a point of no return exists. This should also be plainly obvious.

The main argument from pro-life Christians is that one has a soul from the moment of conception, and so life should not be ended from that point on. (I've heard there are non-religious arguments against abortion, but there aren't many people with that view, so it's not anything I wish to cover.) "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." (Jeremiah 1:5) Of course, I could be pedantic and say that the verse says before you were in the womb, so this means that birth control is against God's will as well and should never be used, right? I know there are some anti-abortionists (Catholics) that think this way. But for the most part, birth control does not come up in these conversations. SO my question to the Jeremiah-quoting anti-abortionists is: why do you not protest against birth control just as fervently?

There is a difference between the timeline of imbuing of a soul of the unborn in Jewish Law (at birth) and right wing Christianity (at conception). As someone said on Twitter, there's no mention of unborn children in the New Testament, so Old Testament views are pretty much all we have. I'm no biblical scholar, but it seems that the biblical case for the unborn is not cut and dried. Of course, there are Americans whose views are non-biblical. Secular people and people of many and varying faiths exist in America, and they all have a say in the debate. Some do not believe in souls of any sort. Some believe that contraceptives thwart God's will and that your "quiver should be full". In the end, these are all positions from various sects of religious faith, and they have been at each other's throats for at least centuries. You think it is clear that your particular opinion of this issue is the right one? Because this is not a religion vs. secularism fight. Not by a long shot.

Scientifically, it's a lot easier. It seems pretty fair to say that there can be a pretty set point as to when an abortion would start to cause suffering for the fetus: when the nervous system is developed. When it starts to feel pain. Science doesn't really say that that should be the point at which abortions should end, because science is not a morality system. But it seems as fair of a place as any, from a scientific standpoint, to state the facts and let your personal sense of morality start making decisions. Depending on who is measuring, this occurs at about 5 to 6 months into the pregnancy.

So what about late term abortions of normal pregnancies? At this point, the baby can feel pain, there are no extenuating circumstances, the woman just wants to not be pregnant. I feel as if these types of abortions should be actively discouraged. The one issue with this, coincidentally brought up by my 100% pro-choice wife, is that if a woman doesn't know she's pregnant yet, there should be a time of grace. This discussion came up during a talk when we were discussing Heartbeat Bills. Like the Wikipedia article says, Heartbeat Bills are "a de facto blanket ban on abortions in the majority of cases". I agree that Heartbeat Bills should not be law, but like I mentioned above, there should be a set time during a non-problematic pregnancy where abortions should no longer be allowed. I believe that this statement, as non-committal as it is, is something everyone could agree on, even if the length of time mentioned is five minutes, 24 hours, one week perhaps? I can't commit to where that point in time would be, but perhaps there is a cogent argument that could slide the timeline forward or backward.

Note that I haven't said anything about other issues: rape, poverty, inheritable conditions. This is because I feel that the positions I have about the age of the unborn supersedes the importance of these conditions. It seems counter-intuitive. Of course a woman should have the right to abort a pregnancy caused by rape, right? With my hypothetical timeline, it would be assured before the unborn would suffer for it. When it is too late to have an abortion (whenever that is), it is too late for every case (except for the cases where it is always justified, as I mentioned earlier). In any of these cases, there has been plenty of time for the woman to discover she is pregnant and get an abortion. I know this dodges the issue somewhat. Whether these issues alone are sufficient to justify abortion are not fully formed in my mind. Rape? Mostly yes. Poverty? Mostly no. But there are caveats to everything.
Let's face it, abortion is a difficult decision to make. No one should traipse into an abortion clinic and do a little happy dance that she gets to scrape her womb like its some sort of business as usual. The whole point of the joke of that one Bojack Horseman song is that the act is portrayed to be so crass and unthinking. But the people fighting this battle are not monsters. Each side vilifies the other. Each side hyperbolizes the issue. And yes, there are probably some sociopathic women who would get abortion without any thought of the unborn, but laws about abortion should be well-reasoned and explained with empathy. I've come at this view with much thought and prayer. If only our citizens and politicians would do the same!

My thoughts on My body, my choice: it's a catchy slogan, but the basis of the pro-life side is that it's also the body of the unborn as well, and that the seeming loss of autonomy of her body is because of the growing autonomy of the unborn's body. The whole debate hinges upon this question: when on the pregnancy timeline does the unborn start to matter? This is the question that 100% pro-choicers need to answer. The slogan of "my body, my choice" implies that it never matters up until the moment of birth. I don't agree with that implication, but it makes for a great catchphrase against those wish to ban abortion outright. I don't really take issue to the slogan or the 100 per cent types, if only to consolidate against the position that I find more wrong: complete anti-abortion.

My thoughts on No uterus, no opinion: There's a point in there about the misogyny of the existing institutions, but I feel that it is a bit of mixed causes combining together. The Alabama law was signed by sexist white men. They made the wrong choice. This institutionalized sexism needs to be fixed, true. However, a man can, in theory, govern over women's issues assuming he is well-informed, listens to the will of the people, and his decisions are not shaped by sexism. To not allow this is to ban all male politicians! The pendulum would swing too far in the other direction. Remember, Alabama's governor is a woman. Governor Kay Ivey signed the anti-abortion bill into law, so this is obvious not a case of women always being right and men always being wrong.

My thoughts on female oppression: I know there's an undercurrent of sentiment in the greater culture about a woman's autonomy. Abortion is linked to that. But I also feel that unlike suffrage, birth control, #MeToo, etc, abortion deals with other "people". Sooner or later, the unborn's rights come into conflict with the woman's rights. This doesn't happen in any other women's rights issue.

My thoughts on "slippery slopes": Late term abortion bans can lead to full bans. State bans can lead to federal bans. This is the truth. It's very difficult for me to advocate these positions, since the political opponents use one bill to raise support for the next. Of course this is not a perfect world. I think I would side with the pro-choice side in this case, due to the bait and switch nature of right wing politics nowadays.

Ready Player One: A Lot To Unpack (Spoilers)

Watching Ready Player One made me realize there's a lot to unpack in my brain upon watching it.

Even before we consider the themes of the movie, I must first talk about about a meta-theme: that these shared cultural touchstones, while soullessly manufactured, are yet still worthwhile. True, the end of the movie bludgeons us with the moral that the real world is better, yet the whole movie is designed as not only a horde of pop culture callbacks, but a society in which these callbacks are the focus of most people's lives, as well as a pitch-perfect representation of such. This bringing together of different elements to create an eclectic culture out of the whole hasn't been seen on-screen since Wreck It Ralph. It is still easy to scoff at this "kiddie stuff" like in the old days; ask any parent who doesn't have time to consume it. However, to go into the culture with this amount of knowledge and to come back out of it with the same realism message seems very caring of the source material to me. Maybe I am expecting Spielberg and company to be just like Nolan Sorrento, the big corporate stiff in the movie, who had to have his pop references fed to him by earpiece. It doesn't seem to be the case.

I haven't read the book. I heard that there was a ton of accusations thrown against the characters as written in the book, and therefore the author. Chief among these was the fact that Wade/Parzival (the main character) stalked Samantha/Art3mis, the love interest. Short of the usual tropes many movies today suffer from (for example, making the love interest overly competent as a reaction to previous complaints of damsel-hood) it seems as if the more blatant issues, whatever they were, have been scrubbed clean. Without having read the book, I can't speak on that issue.

I spent the whole movie restraining myself from blurting out each IP as I saw it. The DeLorean! The Iron Giant! Tracer! Ninja Turtles! Batman! That's the point, I suppose. Movie makers asked the viewing public: how much love/nostalgia do you want in your movies? Movies with this much reference dropping have, in the past, ranged from good (Wreck It Ralph) to bad (The Emoji Movie) obviously, there's a case to be made for people wanting a good story instead of just a bunch of recognizable things on the screen. Movie critics as of late have made this case over and over, usually in reference to The Emoji Movie.

As someone who used to play Second Life (a video game that was the first stab at this sort of sandbox-style ungame in the real world), I feel like the concept of the Oasis is behind the times, if only because Second Life eventually faded away. It's not dead, and other platforms are in full swing right now (VR Chat), but I feel as if we're never going to get to where the movie depicts. Of course, some of that equation comes from a dystopian future, so hopefully we never achieve that dubious goal.

Here's a few unconnected thoughts I had about the movie that doesn't have any big theme, just thoughts that I think.
- A lot of the movie was rushed. More time was spent fawning over the visuals than characters emoting. The scene where Aech reveals her real-world self as Helen was rushed, without any beat at all, not a revelatory beat, not a slo-mo hero pose, not a disbelieving look from Wade, just nothing. It's me, I'm Aech, now let's go!
- The writing for the real-world bad guys was terrible. Ben Mendelssohn as Sorrento couldn't save the character. Everything related to IOI was incredibly 2-dimensional.
- At first I thought I-Rok was voiced by Ryan Reynolds, then Jason Biggs, but we had to look it up to see that it was T.J. Miller. They all are starting to sound alike to me, but at least they're all still funny.
- Maybe it's just my own neuroticism, but the last conversation between Halliday and Wade had a real nihilistic vibe. Like, all it was was a fear of death and an assumption that that's all there is drives Halliday, and therefore the whole story. I know that there's a divide between pop culture enthusiasts and religious folk who don't have to take as much solace in these sorts of things, but as someone who can wear both hats - a geek and a man of faith - it took me out of the story a little. But that's just my own issues, it shouldn't affect most other people.

My thoughts on transgender rights

How do I feel about transgender rights?

This is a complex one that has been rolling around in my head for a bit. Maybe spelling out my thought process will give me a better understanding of where I stand, and should stand.

First off, people can do whatever they want to their own bodies. People who modify their body have a right to exist.

Second, gender dynamics are now a huge mess that I think the internet magnifies, and I do not blame anyone for knowing absolutely nothing about the subject. It hardly affects my life at all. I work with a post-op MtF transsexual and have known her for decades. She is a very hard-working, honorable person. I also have known several others in the past and present, both pre- and post- transition.

To clarify my position, I want to explain some technical details. A person can change their gender, but not their sex (at least, not yet). Gender is their role, sociologically applied, and such traits can be swapped and the opposite trait imitated to enforce their inclusion into the opposite gender. However, sex is biological, all the way down to the DNA, and we aren't able to change the DNA yet. People who wish to change sexes have gone farther than mere gendered traits, though. They've gotten hormone treatments, which changes them fundamentally but non-genetically. There should be a third term, trans...something, which denotes these type of changes. These people are neither merely transgender, but also not completely transsexual. Maybe 'transhormonal'?

Can trans gender people marry? This is along the same lines as gay marriage. This is as fine to me as gay marriage is.

Should trans people have the right to change their birth certificate? At first blush, you'd think, hey, it's not hurting anything else, but a birth certificate is what you were at the time of birth. To change your sex on your birth certificate is revisionist history. As far as I know, 'gender' is not most birth certificates, 'sex' is. So my answer to that is no, unless 'gender' is specifically on the birth certificate. Maybe there needs to be some sort of official document that denotes a change of gender, if it makes transgender people feel better.

My thoughts on the Last Jedi

SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD

Watching The Last Jedi has made me sit down and think about movies, storytelling, George Lucas, Disney, and my own viewing experience, which I suppose means that this is A Good Movie. My buddy Dave calls this the best Star Wars movie ever made, beating out his previous favorite, The Empire Strikes Back. There's a case for that. There's also a case of attaching the same labels to it as we did The Force Awakens - that it is a fan film, that the corporate stamp of Disney is evident in the weaving plot points of the movie. So it seems that opinion of it is diverging into good and bad directions, but there's a lot to unpack in this movie, and a lot to unpack in me and my expectations as I watched it.

First, I'd like to address subplots, and, for lack of better word, sub-themes. There were three sub-themes that wrapped up nicely, each with a moral lesson contained within, wrapped up with a bow on it. The first was Poe Dameron's learning to be a leader, which was a subplot throughout the movie. The second was the revelation that casino planet was attended by gun sellers. The third is the sentiment that "the Resistance can come from anywhere".

I can imagine the writing committee sitting down and saying, "Okay, let's give Poe some character development." Which they did. Which, in any other movie, is a perfect example of it and very welcome. It's never really happened so blatantly in a Star Wars movie before. In George Lucas-era Star Wars movies, things just happened. Han, Luke, and Leia had convictions and strength of character before they even got into trouble. I feel that this is specific to Star Wars movies due to the way that George Lucas wrote the original movies; they were an attempt to relive the Flash Gordon serials of his youth, as well as mixing elements of the Hero's Journey into the mix. In fact, it was almost solely focused on such elements. Every side character - from Boba Fett to Wedge Antilles and even to Lando Calrissian - were two-dimensional, and this is not necessarily a criticism. It remained focused on the events that were happening, and that was the crux of the excitement of the serial - will the rebels destroy the Death Star? Just like the serials, they were given enough interesting traits to let the audience know they were good guys, and then they were sent out on their adventures. Good was good and evil was evil. Now, contrast this with a movie laden with sub-themes. If George Lucas had written this movie, Poe and Vice Admiral Holdo's role would have been greatly reduced, or at least made more black and white. Holdo might have been irredeemably cowardly, or there might not have been a conflict at all. The moral of this subplot, as good as the message is, just wouldn't have been in a Star Wars movie.

The second and third subplots are the same. The moral messages - that selling weapons to both sides is wrong, and that the Resistance can be anyone - are additions that might not have been there in earlier movies. (I keep envisioning Remy the Rat in an X-Wing jumpsuit, but instead of saying anyone can cook, he says anyone can rebel.)

One has to understand what one is looking at when going into a Star Wars movie. It used to be a serialized joyride of narrow focus, but now it has been infused with extras, like a TV show needing to fill time. It's different. Regarding what Disney has done to Marvel, I see that it is formulaic. It is a better experience in that the movies are more efficient in their storytelling, going from beat to beat expertly. I can almost imagine the mathematical formulas underneath which calculate exactly how long to spend on any one scene. However, like all intellectual properties that have been acquired - from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings to the voice of Kermit the Frog to anything whose original author has passed on - it is never the same. One can put a moral meaning onto this indefinite life extension, calling it evil or greedy. If we dislike Disney for extending copyright indefinitely, how can we not say that this Star Wars, out of the hands of its original creator, is also a bad thing? Except that the movie is good. It's very good.


Second, let's look at what's happening to the old guard. Each one of them is being cleared away - first Han, then Luke, and probably Leia in the third movie. (I thought Leia might die in this one, but no, her scenes for Episode IX have already been filmed, and she was very important to this movie anyway and it would be strange to have her die now.) Again, it seemed like the writers sat down and said, "We are going to kill off the old folks one per movie." And of course they won't dispose of the droids or Chewbacca, because they are just costumes that anyone can inhabit.

Of course these old folks might want a good send-off. Harrison Ford wanted Han dead. Mark Hamill might have wanted Luke to stick around, but his death was done very well, so he has very little to complain about. I, on the other hand, wanted Luke to stick around. Leia too, but of course that cannot happen now. I called it months ago; I said that they're just finding ways to kill all the old people off. The Hero's Journey always contains the "Death of the Teacher", so I knew it would come. I had some hope that these movies would be less of a retread of the original trilogy, but that hope was dashed. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have many, many repeated notes of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Homage or not, the copy-paste of many plot elements was groan-inducing. I remember audibly groaning and shaking my head at the opening crawl of The Last Jedi. Oh, look, the Resistance is trying to escape from the First Order. Now some characters are going to a swanky, clean place for what seems like a relatively safe time, but they get into trouble. A Jedi is training on a distant planet but leaves in order to save her friends. They escape at the last minute on the Millenium Falcon. So, knowing all of this, I knew Luke was going to die. The only surprise was that he died in this one and not asleep in his bed in the next one.


Third, I half-cynically see where Disney wants to go with Star Wars. Anyone can resist! The children at the end of the movie represent us. They represent the Disneyland-attending public who is going to flip out at the opening of Star Wars - Galaxy's Edge in 2019. The near-subliminal insistence of immersion at the end of the movie lines up with what they are trying to do in the parks. In short, you take on the role of a Resistance spy (or First Order agent), and your experiences within Star Wars land will be tailored to your choices. Before, feeling a connection to a character was because of projecting yourself onto that character, but now being in the Star Wars universe as your own character is taking on as much verisimilitude as Disney can muster. Again, this approach is new on this broad of a scale. Self-insertion used to be the bailiwick of roleplaying, video games, and bad fan fiction. Now it is mainstream.


Fourth, many lines and plot points in the movie were very meta. Everything in the movie was a reflection on some modern issue. Poe's subplot was apparently an attack on "mansplaining". Rey's lineage was shown to be devoid of any spoiler-laden connections, and Kylo Ren says to her, "You are nothing, but not to me." This is something the writers could very well be saying out of their mouths. Similarly, Luke (and the writers) say to Rey (the audience), "This is not going to go the way you think." Even the aforementioned subplots - the evils of gun selling, and that anyone can resist - seem as much like Sunday morning sermons as plot points in a movie. Yes, I know that sci-fi is supposed to do this sort of thing (Star Trek TV episodes did this very well), but has Star Wars ever been a vehicle for morality? That's not to say that characters were not moral; the heroes have always been so. But never before has it preached its morality this strongly, and never before have characters changed their mind about issues before. Yes, it reflects modern times and the need for modern people to change their mind about present-day issues. As important as this is, I still feel that something fundamental about Star Wars has changed as a result.


So did I like the movie? Yes, immensely so. Is better than The Empire Strikes Back (and therefore, according to Dave, the best ever)? To address this, I need to explain why I like Star Wars better than The Empire Strikes Back. In case you didn't know, popular consensus usually rates The Empire Strikes Back as the best Star Wars movie of all time. Contrarian that I am, I have always said that the first movie was the best. The Last Jedi has made clear to me why I have done so. The first movie was the essence of Star Wars. In it, George Lucas packed his story, his messages, his hopes and dreams. He thought that this movie might be his only chance to explore these concepts, and so wrapped it up in a complete package and spent years polishing it, just in case. In contrast, with the Empire Strikes Back, we have an expert director, a cast and crew settling into their roles, and an engine hitting on all cylinders. The modern movies are similar; "hitting on all cylinders" doesn't even begin to describe the well-oiled machine that is Disney. Star Wars was heart, Empire was technicality. Star Wars was Disneyland, Empire was Disney World. If you ever looked at Disneyland and knew why it was better than Disney World, even though it was smaller and older, then you know why I love Star Wars more than The Empire Strikes Back or The Last Jedi. For someone to say that The Last Jedi was the best demonstrates to me what they look for in a Star Wars movie, and it reminds me what I see in the first one.

I'm aware this makes me a snob, similar to people who rabidly insist that old black and white movies are worth watching, when in reality they sometimes bore me to tears. What makes people attach themselves to old, technically inferior iterations of a thing? Familiarity? In the words of Maz Kanata, "A good question for another time."

I'd definitely place The Last Jedi very high. Would I place it 2nd of all time on my list, surpassing The Empire Strikes Back? Quite possibly. But the title of "Greatest Star Wars Movie of All Time" depends on what you are looking for in a Star Wars movie. I fell in love with its simple, serial nature. Now that George Lucas has sold the franchise off, I don't think we're going to see that again. It took two Disney-led movies for me to finally see it. I'll highly enjoy the new movies, but with knowledge that they are what they are.


PS: It seems to me that "Anyone can resist", which I have already compared to Ratatouille's "anyone can cook", also seemed to follow a John Lasseter formula: make a moral the sole crux of the movie. Not that good triumphs over evil (though it does that in the movie also), but that the moral is the most important point of the movie. It reminded me of Meet The Robinsons, Lasseter's first movie under the Disney label. (Although who knows how much more of that we're going to get after his scandal.)

The Tribal Instinct and the Increasing Necessity of Sports Fandom

Tribalism is tearing America apart. People vote on party lines regardless of individual merits. Racism is on the rise. The internet is, at the same time, atomizing individuals and connecting them to an echo chamber of like minds.

Many boogeymen have been implicated: the internet, President Trump, the gradual drifting from religion, too much affluence. But underneath it all, it is the tribalism instinct that drives it, and it is that instinct that everyone fights against in order to have a society any larger than a neighborhood.

Dunbar's Number is a fairly well known and accepted concept: that the human brain was evolved to maintain only a certain number of social relationships. (It's around 150.) Multiple rationalizations occur in a person's brain when one is asked to consider people outside of that circle: racism, apathy, compassion fatigue, NIMBY. However, our organizations grow larger than that, from our nation, to our state, to our city, all the way down to our jobs. We can be a cog in a machine, being of use to them, but the companies and states and nations are literally incapable of caring for us in return - not only the entities, but the people that make up those entities.

There are various mechanisms that are at work, attempting to alleviate the absolute tribalism of pockets of people: patriotism, religion, compassion. Even some of the more distasteful methods, such as racism, still pull against the tribal instinct to try and encompass something larger. However, we are in need of even more inclusiveness. You can see the attempts to include us all; Disney's "It's a Small World" comes to mind. But such solutions are barely effective. Engendering a worldly inclusiveness seems impossible.

So, what's a good substitute? Perhaps we can funnel tribal instincts into a beneficial expression of it. Right now, fan bases are doing that exact thing. Race and creed are lost when everyone on your side of the field is wearing the same color jersey. Some may mourn or mock the loss of individuality of a sports fan, but those that do, don't understand that acceptance and tolerance cannot come on its own. Until we breed it out of us, humanity needs to hate. Sports allows hate, while also constantly demonstrating that 'it's just a game', thereby calling out those who take it too far. Sports, and its viewing, allows hate to happen, and cleanses the palette of hate afterward.

One might make a case for other types of fandoms - movies, games, music. There might be a heated argument for who is the best guitar player of all time. However, these arguments are not practiced, expected displays of competitiveness. There must be an element of competition. There must be an element of harnessed hate and violence. Other fandoms can adopt these elements, but they are not baked into the cake, like sports is.

I tend to look at sports as an evolution of human behavior. Once humans began to have abundance (the start of farming is a good place to mark it), the competitive spirit took on a harmful element, in part. This can be seen in movie westerns - the gunslinger tames the West, but then has no place in civilized society when it comes to the frontier. The competitive spirit is then counter to civil goals. Societies had to develop a way to harmlessly funnel that energy. Societies that developed sports (and sports fandoms) do not destroy themselves from the inside.

You might hear of violence, even murder, due to sports fandoms. However, it is always seen as frivolous, and that's the secret to why sports fandoms are important. Racism, violence against the LGBT community, and war itself will always be deadly serious. But if a people's prejudices can be put aside for a different kind of tribalism - one that doesn't take itself so seriously, one that allows for violent behavior without the accompanying destruction - then maybe that type of tribalism is the key to peace. 

(Roll Tide, Titan Up, Chop On, and BB King was the greatest guitar player of all time.)

Pet Project

Hey, Pal.

Hey Buddy.

How’s your project coming along?

Incredibly well. It’s done everything I set out to do.

Incredibly well? I wasn’t aware that your project was anything more than a universe simulation. Did something happen to it?

Something happened in it, yes. You see, I’ve been messing around with spaces of finite dimensions. Starting very small, you see. This particular dimension has three and a half of them.

Half a dimension?

Well, it's not really a dimension. It's like half of a time slider. I created three spatial dimensions, but while I was playing around with constraints, something happened. Everything in the universe started moving along the time axis, in one direction, at a steady pace. I was just about to unstick that when I noticed that the spatial dimensions started behaving in an interesting way, if you get my drift. I could look in at any given point on the timeline and see matter moving. So I let it go just to see what would happen.

Hey, I get it. If you set everything to one direction in time, that’s a pretty good way to simulate causality in a limited number of dimensions.

That’s exactly what happened! There were no higher dimensions in the simulation, but the matter in the spatial dimensions were able to move about and interact with itself, creating new, different results as the time dimension continued to move.

Sounds like memory would fill up pretty fast, if you indexed the units of time.

Right. I had to curve each dimension around on itself so that the numbering system could repeat. I could have curved time around itself too, but for now I just let it play out, ending the simulation after everything reached steady state. The simulation is definitively finite, instead of being a simulated infinite. I mean, once it reaches steady state, there's no reason to keep it going. But there's enough to work with before that happens.

So I’m guessing something happened in the universe.

Yes. Life developed.

What do you mean, developed?

I mean, at one point on the simulation’s timeline, life did not exist, and then it did exist.

Oh, I get it. Because time was incrementing, the simulated life strands seemed to come into being at one end, and blink out the other.

Yep. each "strand", as you say, is still archived as soon as it is done populating, but within the universe itself, each life begins and ends. Weird stuff. I even got sentience.

In such a short time? And with so few dimensions? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

It’s the causality that did it, made from that stuck time dimension. In each increment of time as it moves, the causality of matter in life makes the next, um, printed layer of the strand. Add to that your normal iterative process with a positive feedback loop, and sentience forms in the strands farther to the right on the timeline. But because it formed in this universe, these creatures can only observe an infinitely small slice of time. They see the three spatial dimensions, and an infinitely small slice of the fourth.

What a strange existence. I mean, I’ve seen finite-dimensional beings, but never one that can observe only part of a dimension.

Yeah. They think of time as something that goes away or can be lost, instead of just looking left or right like we do. They think at some point, they cease to exist, when really it’s just that their reference point goes beyond where they are positioned.

Well, that makes sense, because if causality only occurs at a slice of time as it moves from left to right, and it sweeps past the strand of life, then once the timeline is past, it’s frozen in time, at least until the timeline comes back around again.

What’s worse, is that life and sentience came into being on an incredibly small scale, in relation to the size of the universe, finite though it is.

They must be scared out of their minds. Tiny existence in a large universe, one-way time that will inevitably pass them by, an inability to look backwards or forwards in time. Too wide open, and too constrained, all at the same time.

Yeah. I’ve been looking into what thought cycles these types of beings can create. What they can accomplish. The answer is, they can conquer pretty much everything within their reality, if we take the entire time loop into consideration. Nearer to the right side of the timeline, they pretty much used up all the matter, organized the subspace into computational order, and lasted long enough to know that they can’t get out of their universe on their own. They assume there’s something outside, but they can’t get to it. They really want to though. They want things so very strongly! I guess that comes from their fear. Ending. What’s it like to end?

I have no clue. Do you?

Well...I tried following strands from beginning to end. I wanted to study how sentience formed, not just that there was a consciousness, but how and why it existed as it did. I learned why they thought the way they did. Fear, like I said. I even tweaked a few variables of a few strands to see if I could change things. Then I wrote some manual lines of code into them.

To do what?

Well, to communicate with them. Direct communication warped them, so I did my best to try and get my message across without making them warped.

I suppose that’s a worthy endeavor, assuming they wanted to communicate. Did it help you understand them?

Yes. I edited a strand so I could go in, snoop the data it was processing, and add some of my own. I added a bit of knowledge of the outside world to a few guys. Gave them some words to say. It ended up that I couldn’t make very big strands; the other strands would stop my edited strand from ‘printing out’. They do this to each other a lot. From their point of view, they end the existence of other strands, though in reality they just cut the strands short. It’s pretty mean to force a strand to not be as big as it wants to be, but from their vantage point it is so much worse!

So what did you learn? Or were you just wanting to say hello?

I mean, I said hello many times, but their reactions were always to stop a strand’s growth or to put distance between themselves and ‘me’. It was hard to form a line of communication. I did learn a few things however. Everything they do is predicated on that restriction of time, as it moves. I know I told you they fear it, but it motivates them like nothing else. It makes some of them work together, and against others. They spend many cycles thinking about it, revving up their physical essences. If they think too much about it, it shortens their strands. Their forms are strained by the weight of it.

You’ve created a torture chamber, it seems.

I know, and it bothers me. I ended up putting an interactive module in the archives out of guilt, so that their archives can talk with one another and observe the universe from outside it. I can even go into the archives and talk to them, and they seem completely healed of their madness. They don’t resent the outside world, after it’s all over.

I would assume so. The archive wouldn’t have a fractured time dimension, so they would have nothing to worry about.

Right. I’ve talked to them there, in the archive, and they become rational. Like us. They begin to understand what it means to live in higher dimensions. I can’t really bring them into n-dimensional space, but they can exist happily in the archives. It’s the least I can do. But the originals still exist in the universe, frozen in time except when the timeline marches over their strand. I can’t delete them. If they didn’t already exist in the universe, they wouldn’t exist in the archives. They can’t get to the archives without having to go through this universe’s existence. But at the same time, their existence is torturous, or so it seems to me.

Me too. But what can you do? You can’t delete them. You can’t cure them. You can’t talk to them directly.

Nothing, really. I just keep going in and tweaking a few lines of code here and there. I send messengers. I give strands an opportunity to understand what is happening to them. I give them hope. I can’t tweak too much because it’s all already been archived and I’d rather not have a run-in with version control.

Yeah, screw that.


It’s my universe. These strands are mine. It’s my fault they’re suffering, well, I mean, it's endemic to the world they live in. I’m just trying to help them not be tortured. They'll be fine, eventually. That's the message.