Tabletop RPG Musings: Different Eras for Different Moods

 I was sitting there, going over stuff for both old and new TTRPGs, and realizing that sometimes I was in the mood for the new, and sometimes I was in the mood for the older. 

I feel like TTRPGs have definitely changed over time-mostly for the better, mind you(my favorite system right now is Pathfinder 2e; I think it does a whole lot of stuff really well), but I also, once in awhile, occasionally find myself missing some aspects about the older systems, as well. Again moods.

I mean, moods can hit for lots of things. Sometimes I'm in the mood to play one of my modern MMORPGs(FFXIV, new WoW), sometimes I want Classic WoW, sometimes I want my straight up older games-PS2, PS1, even NES or SNES. (I don't consider playing old games 'nostalgia'-I never stopped playing them.) Music, as well. One of my favorite bands is a black metal band, Satyricon(any metal fans probably know them, non-metal fans, probably not), and one thing I really love about the band is that they change with every album a bit; they're still *them*, they're still black metal, but I get a little something new every time, so they have an album for my every mood. Other times I'm in the mood for stuff from the 80s-Bathory, Mercyful Fate, Venom, or the like. (And then other times I want some dark industrial metal, and then other times I want something that's not metal, and I turn to synthwave.) 

TTRPGs are the same. I realized over time that each type of RPGs-new-school, I guess 'middle school'(huh, maybe post 3.X stuff from the D&D side? Or maybe the 3.X stuff is middle now, I can't say), and older school(early-mid 90s and before), all offer up something different that I like.

One of the best thing about the modern times is, 100%, the amount of variety and choice one has for concepts. If you have a concept, you can probably make it(especially in something like PF2e.) I had mentioned the band above-their song, Black Crow on a Tombstone(listen to it, btw, it's amazing), actually inspired a character concept of mine. I was able to mix and match mechanics to come up with a corvid-themed barbarian from the northern regions, who dipped into druid to get a crow animal companion(the crow's name is Nero, btw), and the character follows Barzahk, who is a deity associated with the dead and travel(who has a tombstone lock on him and does often take a corvid form.) He's Animal-aspected with 'bird' taken, which is open to whatever you want; it doesn't have to be a hawk or eagle. Through backgrounds, skill choices, and everything, he was able to be crafted just about perfectly. He's by no means the only character I've managed to craft just about perfectly, either; I've made a few through class, free archetype, skills, feats and the like who I fine-tuned toward what I wanted. Oh, and not to mention weapon choices. I swear the books have an extreme variety. Some are more locale oriented, but are usable if you come from there or visit there(or just dependent on the GM, there's very little in terms of items that I restrict.) 

                        (Here are some model examples of Einar from Heroforge, just because I like showing them.)

Another great thing about modern times-at least IMO-is the games are MUCH more fair. There's more 'save or suck' instead of 'save or die', and instant death in a like-leveled fight is exceedingly rare. There might be some mathematical combination that might result in one, but it's likely not going to be in just one attack and more of a result of some very bad luck a few times in a row(either rolling poorly, or the enemy rolling really good, and probably both together.) No permanent level draining or anything like that. Solid HP at lower levels. You do need to at least try to play somewhat smart(running up in an enemy's face with a poor Armor Class and/or more middling HP means you can get knocked down for the count way more often), but in general, you are at much less risk of Insta-Exploding. 

Alignment is also basically not a thing anymore, or when it is(like in D&D), alignments aren't nearly as stringent. Neutral paladins? Sure. Neutral Assassins? Sure. No need to be good or evil. PF2e just did AWAY with alignment and has people pick something called edicts and anathemas; basically you have your characters follow things. Or if you're a cleric, follow your deity's things. And even before PF2 dropped alignment, things were generally more lenient than later. You could have optional rules like 'multi-step alignments' where a character could be 'Somewhat Chaotic, Somewhat Good'. Basically it once again leads back to choice, and letting you play the character YOU wanna make. There IS a push toward playing more heroic or neutral characters, mostly just due to the logistics of mixing bad guys in with non-bad groups, but you can at least play 'kinda naughty' types if you work with your party and GM that your character has some codes(a monk I have who follows Akuma has the whole 'Strong Opponent' PoV where he's unlikely to really bother with picking on anyone under his weight class, even if he's pretty merciless otherwise, and he'll even go after people picking on those under their weight class since he thinks they're weaklings themselves for doing that.) In any case, no alignment means you can put together a pretty complex, layered array of a character's codes and edicts that a strict alignment system had trouble with. 

(3.X/PF1 still used alignment like the older days, though it was still a little less strict. But they were still stuck in the whole 'Assassins must be evil' mindset and such, which of course we houseruled right under a rug.) 

While minmaxing and optimizing is certainly a big thing, you do kind of have to *try* to make something that doesn't work. It IS possible, and I have had a couple of concepts that, after scribbling them down, didn't quite gel together as much as I'd have liked mechanically, but it's relatively difficult to go completely useless. And even if you do have a weaker concept, I feel like hashing everything out as a group, with a GM, can be helpful. All in all, though, you will likely at least manage to make something that's 'good enough at something.' 

Now, with all of that, as I'm someone who does like talking about things I like-I wanna point out that yes, there are things that I prefer in an older game like D&D 2nd edition. Since as much as I praise some of the newer design things, there are things that I do indeed like more. I mean, that's what this whole blog is about. 

For one, while you can minmax(trust me, I was good at it)-there really isn't all that much you CAN do. Besides juggling a couple of scores if you do a 4d6 drop low rolling, or the Points Plus Dice method(in 2e, everything started at 8, you roll 7 dice, and add them onto the scores to get what you want-it was a nice way to qualify for the harder classes with a lot of prime reqs like a ranger, or really high ones like a paladin or specialist wizard.) But not needing to minmax is not a bad thing. Newer games almost sort of *push* you towards optimization a bit, the way the math and mechanics work. This is fine, since I think we usually gear toward that ourselves, but I can't lie that it's not fun to just kinda cut loose and do something less optimized without worrying about screwing with the rest of the party(since teamwork is very, very emphasized in newer games. Again, not a bad thing, but it puts a level of character creation pressure on folks, even if subconscious.) The 2nd edition character I have is a fighter/death cleric multiclass with the points + dice, who I did manage to get an 18 and a 16 in his Str and Wis respectively(even rolled a 94 for his percentile!) but his other scores are pretty...okay? he gets no other bonuses with Dex 10, Con 14, Int 13-and one is slightly below(his Cha is 8-he's a little creepy and weird, though not unable to function in society by any means.) But he's fine and does his classes well. I didn't minmax his weapon loadout-he does have a scythe(Death cleric, again), and he swaps this with a morningstar + shield. I probably could've given him a better weapon that Clerics can use, like a flail to trip with or a warhammer for a better chance at finding a magical one-but I liked the morningstar on him. 

Besides this, you kinda minmaxed a bit in terms of taking spells, or maybe some weapon or non-weapon choices(Longsword vs. Bastard Sword was a common one, mostly due to longswords being the most common kind of magical weapon, but bastard swords just being awesome mechanically), but even then there was only so much you could really do. When it came up, it was often just a case of X vs. Y, and the difference was likely on the more minor side. 

Then there are times where it's kinda fun to play the concept of "Ordinary people becoming heroes" to quote a late old friend on this. Throwing 3d6 down the line, or 3d6 twice down the line and coming up with a concept from what you get has its own kinda fun. It might not be good if you have a specific concept in mind("I REALLY wanna play a Ranger"), but if you really dunno what you want to play, it can be a lot of fun. 

Math nowadays assumes a certain level of bonuses and penalties; this becomes difficult without a lot of GM fiat. In the old days, typical enemies were made in the monster manual assuming the standard character creation system, which usually resulted in one above average/good score, one below average score, and four in the more average range. Luck could change this, of course, but generally that's how the monsters were tuned. And for me-I dunno, I always found it easier to add a few HP onto an enemy for a party that had a bit higher stats(even then I didn't have to do that often.) I did a character like this; a pretty average dude who ended up a dwarf cleric(his Con was high so I decided to go dwarf, and his 2nd highest score was Wisdom at a whopping 13, everything else was like 8-12) who was a brewer, who got the Call from Gond, one of the Dwarven pantheon, so off he went. He had Brewing as a non-weapon proficiency along with Religion. Definitely a pretty average dude who became an adventurer and probably will join some other average folks in a tavern to go clear out a kobold lair or something and then see where fortune takes him.  

There's also this level of freeform, chill adventuring in those days. Now, 1e, maybe not so much, that was cut-throat dungeon crawling Dark Souls stuff(yes, I just called 1e the Dark Souls of tabletop), but in 2nd edition? You could just kinda meander along, fights weren't overly tactical(I don't mean ToM vs. grid-hell, lots of folks used grids back in 2e-I just mean they were less...mathy and crunchy?), and just the general design of the game was 'Group of hearty adventurers poking around places and chatting a lot.' It had dangers(like I said above, the old days were not kind in terms of insta-kills and some really unfair mechanics like the godforsaken level draining), but....it's difficult to really put into words beyond "A laid-back atmosphere." 

Another cool thing is that there's far fewer abilities in the old days, and there are times where I kinda like that. Because a lot of modern games give all classes lots of abilities, that have like ranges, durations, properties, traits and the whole nine-almost like a video game-that's a LOT to keep track of sometimes. Like, your average mid level fighter in PF2e has probably to keep track of than even a higher level wizard or cleric in the old days. You had spells, spell slots, the occasional ability like lay on hands or a druid's shapechange, but in general, your character sheet was not 20 pages long(unless you wanted it to be.) I'm looking at an example 5th level fighter in my collection here, and he has quite a bit to keep track of already. Sometimes, when I play something, I just want to be able to have 2-3 pages in front of me and maybe a piece of scratch paper. 

At the end of the day, though-there's room for old and new. that's why I like the fact that all the books still exist, just like I like the fact old CDs still exist. Can always pop one in no matter what the mood.

(2e/3e Shadowrun is still the best, tho.) 

Why I picked the platforms I did

So after a nice healthy dose of cloud-yelling, I figure I'd do a shorter bit here discussing why I picked the platforms I have. I touched on it a little bit in the other posts, but I thought it'd be worth it to go into the ones I picked and why. 

I have not unplugged completely from social media. I've simply curated it down to a few platforms that I know work the way I want to-at least, for the most part. Also keep in mind a couple of these platforms are...somewhat debatable about how 'social media' based they are. If you squint hard enough, you could consider an old message board a form of social media, but it's way, way different than, say, Tiktok or IG. I'll go into my little ideas and such in each section.

1. Bluesky. Bluesky I like because it allows me to keep my feed as my feed. it does have a 'discovery' place where algorithms come into play, but I don't have to use it; whatever I see on my feed is from my followers, or whatever they repost. And on top of that, I keep my collective relatively small there. It's definitely 'hard social media' (for lack of a better term), but it's relatively easy to curate, and keep my interests as my interests. I don't fall into that algorithmic complacency(a term I used that I quite like.) 

2. Facebook, TO an extent. It's friends and family only-I have to know you to add you, and preferably know you pretty decently, and trust you on top of it. I use it to keep in contact with friends and family for meetups via messengers, or abroad, and to keep in touch with what events(concerts, conventions I'm interested in like gaming related ones, and so on), since I don't use IG. FB is generally an alright place to keep in touch with these. I generally keep my posting light, however. I'd like to break away from it completely some day, but trying to convince my older family members to swap to SMS or Signal or something is...trying, to say the least, heh. 

3. Reddit. I consider Reddit "Soft Social Media." It's still social media because it sneaks an algorithm based on stuff you like, but you can also just make it go away(you can turn off recs) and keep yourself to a heavily curated bunch of subreddits; from there, you can just treat them like a light version of internet forums. They aren't as cool and personal, but it's something. 

4. Discord, which to be honest isn't so much social media as it is a big chatroom. IRC does a similar thing. Not much to say here except that you can just chat with whoever you want, set your profile to private so you don't get bothered and whatnot. Not really a big deal(you can spend too much time on this like any computer thing, but it's just...basic.) THAT said; Discord utilizes some stupid things, and I'd sooner swap to something else-but for now 'it'll do.' 

I am not sure I even want to count Whatsapp, since I *only* use that to contact the minion, since he doesn't have a FB messenger. It's just there.

Then there's stuff like Youtube(which might be my most active entertainment site, but I use it for music, podcasts, recipes and the like-BUT, I also try to keep it to Stuff I Know rather than randomly scroll). 

I don't think I can call myself a 'digital minimalist', so much as someone who is just being more mindful of what they use and how. I know some people who feel better getting rid of all of it, but what I am attempting is to more or less dial my use back to something resembling the midlate 2000s. (I might go back to the earlymid 2000s sometime, who knows.) What this means is "If I could do it on something like a Blackberry in the late 2000s, I'll do it on my phone." So pictures? These are cool, but I'll wait to upload them(unless it's necessary at that moment, like for directions, or if I need to buy something and I'm in a messenger.) I can surf websites, but I don't have social media apps(with the exception of messenger stuff, which, again, you could message people from that.) 

If I'm out and about, I don't hit up the social media I do use(Bluesky is from the browser), again, with the exception of messenger. If I have a particularly boring doctor's office visit, sometimes I'll bring a book with me, but if I don't have my backpack or whatnot then I might read a few websites or listen to music. 

I like the idea of using a phone as a "Swiss Army Knife" that you choose what goes into it. Having cameras/camcorder on my phone? Good stuff for when I want to use it, carrying around a minicam? Look I'm not a luddite-I don't mind technology at ALL. I mean I'm a computer and game nerd. I just don't take pictures of everything and upload them all the time. Music? I was considering getting an ipod again, believe it or not-but for now, I'll use it for music. I think it's fine to keep the amount of stuff in my pockets down, plus I DO like my bluetooth headphones. Books and reading-it's better for my eyes to do it without the phone, but I don't have all of my old cool RPG books back, so I do read PDFs sometimes. But as I reacquire them, I read them more and more, and I try to read regular books whenever I can. 

I go between Google Drive notes, and handwritten ones. Depends on where I am. If I can, I'll take a small notebook around with me. If I'm just out on a fast errand, I'll use the phone. At home, I just use notebooks, OR a PC. Mostly, what I'm trying to do is ask myself "Can this wait until I get home, like I used to?" And if the answer is yes, then I'll just do it at home. Essentially doing not "Minimalist" so much as "Digital Balance?" I've always liked taking a measured look at things when possible, and while I think going pure minimalist is great for some, I think I like that balanced late '00s approach as my favorite. 

That said, I fully plan on continuing to re-acquire my CD/LP collection for DJing, since I DO want to do that mostly hard copy, and continue buying hard copy games and books as much as I can, too. 

Anyway, I think that's enough dedicated to cloud-yelling, I might make my next post about games and music, heh. 

Cloud Yelling Part 2: Early 2000s internet was peak

In keeping with my theme, the last blog I ranted somewhat about how I dislike a lot of social media and how it makes things so impersonal(while letting everyone just share a ton of aspects of their life to thousands of strangers.) 

But with this one, I'd like to actually discuss aspects of the Old Internet for some of the younger readers, and why, for me, it was kind of the peak. It really comes down to a couple of things; it was a good balance of on and offline, and actually had some community to it. 

I have noticed nowadays more and more people sort of getting sick of the current 'ways.' I'm not sure when the turn happened, but it feels very recent. I'm not sad for it at all, but I'm noticing that I guess the "social media bubble" started to burst a little bit. People are talking about taking apps off of their phones(some folks go as far as the dumb phone; personally I am of the "Take a bunch of apps off, leave a few on that come in handy like Messenger/FB for international family contact, necessary ones like the public transit ticket buying apps we all need now, etc" camp. I think having a good camera/camcorder on my phone is cool; after all, I did say I enjoy taking *some* concert footage and the like when I go. 

The whole "Good Balance between On and Offline" is, for me, the biggest thing that I enjoyed about those years, pre-iPhone(though to be fair, not everyone had one of those at launch at their price.) Online was a place you went, and you had to actively look for things. You looked for communities that you were interested in, via, say, webrings or just surfing. Despite keeping in contact online via message boards, forums, and AOL/AIM chat(or other chatrooms), you still sent each other things. We still traded hard-copy demos and CDs over the mail and so on, and even sent each other stuff. And yeah, we met in person, too!

While there was definitely an air of that "online stranger danger", a bunch of us were 18 to 25 and were generally able to tell. I had online meet-ups with a lot of cool people from the message boards I was from, and saw many others-some of these people I'm still friends with! Hell, one could connect with the scene in one's own town from the message boards, chatrooms, and forums. Some folks we'd meet at gigs and local record stores, others we'd meet online, and then proceed to meet AT gigs and record stores in person. I met a LOT of cool folks from online in those days! And we got the webzine together by a lot of like-minded folks meeting on a message board for another band(Danzig 7th House Crew, Unite!)

As time went on, online and offline started to blend more and more. I'd say this absolutely had to do with the smartphone-even moreso than social media itself. I have been on record saying that if I couldn't get back Internet, 2005-2006, I'd go for Internet, 2009-2011. Social media existed, but it was sort of in its larval stages, and when you look at worldwide smartphone usage, in 2007, it was around 122 million units sold. This went up over time, but unless you were a very high-tech and kind of on the rich side business person, you probably still had a flip phone or maybe a Blackberry at the time. 2012 is when I kinda remember smartphones becoming more of A Thing, and even then the worldwide smartphone sales were around 1 billion, according to charts-still less than it is now. 

After that, though...when the apps rolled in and more and more phones became good at stuff, everything started to blend together a hell of a lot more. And that's when the internet lost its feel and became homogenized. 

I never really fell down the social media rabbit hole TOO hard. I used it, and I have spent some time doing the dumb doomscrolling(especially over the pandemic), but I am pretty happy that I never really tumbled fully down the hole like many. I did quit certain ones because I just thought they were stupid(I will never in a million years understand why people just wanna upload videos and pictures of themselves and/or their friends, and/or SOs, and or other family members Doing Random Shit for thousands of people, I said it before and I'll say it again), and I've since kinda cut down screen time on others. I've gotten to the point where my phone is just another tool. I make a point of not using social media when I first wake up in the morning until I've had some coffee, and I try to leave off it before bedtime(though I'll play games or something on PC or my retro handhelds.) Mostly, if I'm chatting, it's on Discord with friends of mine, sort of like in the old IRC-days or AIM days. 

I'm pretty serious when I say that if I could snap my fingers and return the net to the way it was in 2005(limited social media, Youtube, message boards, webrings, etc), I would do it without a second thought. Myspace was a thing, but it was pretty...alright. It was less invasive than a lot of stuff. Smartphones? You know what, they can stay-without social media, they're just cool pieces of tech that you can surf the actual internet on, which is fine. I loved having to actually seek stuff out. I will say cutting out a lion's share of social media kinda brings that back again, but it IS still sorta crappy since websites just aren't what they used to be. A lot of places just use social media AS their sites now. Not just musicians-for example, the old comic store I used to frequent in the US uses a Facebook page and has an Instagram. It's...pretty normal for a business. (If I got back into regular DJing, I might end up grudgingly using an IG just to announce gigs, but I'd rather first just unlock my FB to more public and use that, instead. Which I'd try first.) Websites for artists, businesses, and everything do still often exist, but as I said, they're kinda more bare bones. I missed when they had the message boards to meet people. 

Artists and businesses do have those official FB groups...but they always end up feeling so much more impersonal, somehow. I'm not sure what exactly it is, but whenever someone posts to one, it just doesn't have the same community-building effect as it did when folks would post on a message board. It just feels so...empty.

In a pinch, though? I'd take that '09-'11 internet again. Yeah, there was a little more social media around, but it *still* wasn't as bad as it was now. Forums and message boards were still used, websites still existed, and while things were getting a little too cross-pollenated, it was still an alright place to be. Twitter was used to mostly talk about other media and odds and ends, Tumblr was a pretty cool place for talking about other media(though things could get a little weird there, you could keep your circles small), IG was still pretty dumb but way, way more tolerable and less used than now. 

And let's face it, nowadays, jeeze. There's so much of your info out there. I'm not one of those tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists(though if you live in the US right now I'd be, uhh, protecting your data for reasons), but I really dislike oversharing online, and feel like there was a form of...I dunno, anonymity in the older net. It's weird, since forums were there and it was easy to get access to them, and they could get hacked and everything, but generally all you had to do to sign up was use an email(which could've been some burner hotmail account) and a screen name, which could generally be changed whenever you wanted. You didn't really have to give out any info you didn't want. Sites got more and more pervasive until they ALL want you to sign up and half of them want you to pay.

I also think the more 'connections' we got, the less connected we got. I can think of very few people I met through twitter or whatnot alone. Most of my modern, post social media online friends were met via Tumblr and the Final Fantasy XIV circles-we kept in *touch* on Tumblr, Twitter, and Discord, but we met originally other places. There is one friend that comes to mind I me through a mix of Twitter and Tumblr, but I saw their Tumblr first, and then added them on Twitter. One other set of friends I DID meet thanks to Twitter, but we mostly got to know each other on Discord. But before that, I certainly grew closer to people I met via message boards. (And even then-the folks I met on twitter were met somewhere between 2015-2020...which was, believe it or not, quite a different time. Even social media, at one point, was a little better in those days before algorithms and all the other bullshit blasted it into what it became post 2020.) I find it's just not very good since 2020 for actually *meeting* people online. 

I know nothing I am saying here is new and I am once again probably preaching to the proverbial choir, but I do feel like we're coming to a sort of boiling point where I think more and more people are jumping out. In the communities I AM in, I've seen more and more discussion about it. Perhaps it's due to how the world has been going, or perhaps it's something else, or a mix of things. Maybe the lockdown still has some of the remnants of its tendrils stuck in us. It could be any number of reasons. But perhaps it's just a lot of us having just mentally gotten tired of being constantly connected, and it's all hitting a bunch of us at once. I think since it's been probably a bit over a decade now that social media and smartphones have gotten their full grasp in us(I feel 2012 was the biggest major turning point, and it just sped up from there), maybe a whole lot of people decided collectively that it was enough. Smartphones are still selling(there are more now than ever), but with SO many things online turning into such shit-well, one can hope that perhaps we can start blasting the more OG internet out of it. 

I'd love to be a part of a couple more message board communities again. 

Old Metalhead Yells At Cloud, Part 1: Random Reels Suck

I want to preface this by saying that I have, as of the past half year or so, basically ditched most social media. To be honest, I wasn't particularly attached to a lot of it; but I had accounts, used them from time to time(albeit casually), and eventually just got tired of them. 

I was never into Tiktok, I felt that Snapchat and especially Instagram were pretty stupid and vanity-chasing nowadays, though I think IG was alright at the start when I used it to follow artist friends of mine, and actually managed to FIND stuff like cool artists and cool photography, but it turned into a reel-soaked vanity mine that made me feel like a disconnected alien, so I ditched it. (I could never fathom why people would need to show so much of their lives, doing whatever, with whoever, or whatnot, but millions of people like to do it so I guess I'll never get it.) Twitter I ditched for obvious reasons(I didn't delete, but I locked and basically let it gather dust), and anything else is just...whatever, I never really needed it. 

Basically I have a F&F Facebook since a bunch of my US family uses it(and I basically have to know you to add you), Bluesky, and I do use Reddit, but I consider that almost *close* to a message board, since one can at least sorta just post to communities that one cares about. 

FB features those reels, too; luckily a lot of my friends that use them don't really use them like the majority on the other sites do.

So what is tonight's cloud-yelling about? How I notice reels just made so many things, especially concert stuff, so freaking boring and samey now. This was mostly brought on looking at some cool old pictures(like, actual photographs) of some 1990s gigs online, as well as watching some old video(as in, camcorder footage) of some old gigs. 

All of those were so exciting to watch! I thought getting to see the time Megadeth played Lepakko here in 1988(a small club that used to be popular, the building was torn down in...'99 or so?) was really cool. And the quality was pretty damn good for a camcorder; I imagine the person recording it was *probably* with a magazine or publication at the time. I also saw footage of a 1996 Satyricon gig from Belgium, likewise taken from the side of the stage. Again, really nice quality for what it was! 

Then I started to get nostalgic for Tuska 2006(yeah, almost 20 years ago now), when Celtic Frost played; the gig was fantastic, and I managed to find a few videos of it-not too many, though, as iPhones weren't actually out yet at the time, so this was likely taken with a digital camera or mini-DV. Not the best quality, but nonetheless, cool to look at.

While I did all of this, I started asking myself  "Damn, if these were on now, I could have my absolute pick of footage. Like, I could have footage out the ass. I can call up concert footage even on Youtube, let alone the other sites, from the past few years and get my pick of a hundred different smartphones." 

And then I realized like-this may well be why so many of them are boring now. I love having a nice professionally shot concert to watch, but the glut of everything else just...oversaturated things. 

At any given gig, 99% of the crowd has a smartphone, and of those people, at least half are filming a whole bunch of footage from the gig. Mostly from the start and end, sometimes from the middle, etc, etc. The day after a recent concert, I had my pick of a few songs that were uploaded overnight. 

And I was...barely interested in it. 

So...what happened?

I feel like footage back then was taken with more consideration? More care? Like, usually when I'd take gig pictures with press, I'd take a few of the first 2 or 3 songs, and *maybe* a video. I was lucky, I got to use a proper digicam. Others only got to use a disposable camera, which for a lot of places was the only allowed format if you weren't press. (Some places allowed digital cameras, so long as you didn't have a zoom lens.)

Thinking more about it, I'm going to set up a scenario of BobTheMetalGuy, both a 2002 member of a message board, and a 2023 member of whatever social media, to try to explain why I feel like reels and such got mega boring. 

In 2002, BobTheMetalGuy is going to a gig in Philadelphia(we'll use Philly since I used to live there.) So, in those days, again, there were a couple of choices. Digital cameras or disposable cameras. The former were definitely more convenient-but still limited. They didn't take *the worlds best* pictures, they had limited space(a large card in 2002 was sixty-four of god's own megabytes, 32s or even 16s were more common), and you had to transfer them, pick out the best ones and so on. Video? Only if you had 32 or 64. 

Disposable cameras net you roughly 24 pictures, and you had to get them developed the next day(luckily most drugstores had one-hour service.) You didn't even KNOW how well they turned out until after the fact. 

Your whole night-including any pregame with the crew, post-game with the crew, band pictures, AND concert photos-were basically at the whim of this space. So BobTheMetalhead is gonna make damn sure that the ones he takes counts. Thought and care are put into them. 

Now keep in mind, at a typical gig, not everyone is gonna have these. Maybe a handful of people. And out of this handful of people-not everyone necessarily ran in the same circles! Maybe one of Bob's RL friends belongs to this message board, but that's it. And they might not even be taking pictures. It could be the other 30 people at the gig with cameras don't belong to this particular community, so will be posting their pictures elsewhere-or not at all, maybe keeping them.

So Bob gets done the gig, gets some good photos, and decides to post them to the message board. There's some really cool ones, and everyone gets to see pictures of a gig they weren't at. Maybe he has a digital camera, and the band played a song they usually don't, so people get a 30 second clip of it! It's pretty freaking cool. Later on, some professional video of the gig comes out, and that's cool too-but Bob's pictures are still, in a sense, one of a kind. 

And this happens for other cities; but even then, it's something different. One of Bob's message board friends, Abyss Fracture(we'll go with that name) posted some really neat front-row pics from the LA gig, and another person neither of them know managed to get a rather excellent top-down view of the drummer from the Chicago gig. 

There's pictures, the pictures were shared, and they're online; they aren't locked to the forums itself or anything. These pictures are freely available for anyone to look at, as are the videos. And they're probably still around even later. The video might get uploaded to Youtube 3 years later, even, as a short video! The pictures were discussed and shared in a community. 

Now, we'll go into 2023 Bob, and we'll compare the two. 

Bob, like everyone, has a smartphone. About 99% of the people at the gig he's going to has a smartphone, too. He really doesn't have to be careful what he films; he films a ton of the pregame(and uploads it instantly to his reels), and at the gig, he, along with 1/3 of the audience, watches a good portion of the gig through their phones-not all, no, but a lot-and uploads it pretty much instantly to whatever sites he's uploading too. As does everyone else. And then he films a bunch of the post-game(uploading it), so a bunch of strangers who might be looking for a little gig footage-perhaps they couldn't make it-ends up getting a bunch of reels and clips of people they don't know going to a bar because of the algorithms. 

Maybe I'm sounding a little scathing and biased here; I can't lie, I AM biased. This is what it feels like.

Instead of some nicely thought-out pictures and maybe a video, we get a ton of the same gig, in the same city, of some of the same songs(maybe some mixing up there, sure, but definitely the intro and the encores), at maybe slightly different angles depending on where whatever uploader was standing. These videos are all shown to a bunch of strangers, rather than a community, and the posts on said reels and whatnot are all impersonal emojis. 

I'll try to be fair here. I try, when possible, to look at the good in things. So I try to look for advantages where I can, and that goes for things that I'm not particularly a big fan of. 

Nowadays, getting a lot of high quality video of a gig CAN be cool! Maybe if you can't make it, it's nice to be able to see. Granted, a lot of the coolest videos still end up coming from the professionals who can get the stage shots and everything, but yeah, it's pretty cool to be able to see gigs you missed. Also, having better quality of things is nice, too, and sometimes, having more of it is beneficial. When your only footage of a gig is a grainy video, or a video from someone who, say, never films the drummer or keyboardist or something, then it can make you kinda yearn to be able to see them, and being able to maybe call up another video or set of reels that DOES do this is kind of nice. I can even use the example above of that awesome 1996 Satyricon gig; that band is known for having one of the most proficient, fastest drummers in black metal, and the camera person didn't film him nearly enough, if I had to nitpick. I'm still grateful I got to see that gig, but yeah, if I had to pick an advantage of the 'Modern Times', the fact that you get more footage means you might, possibly, end up with some better footage. 

And hell, not ALL reels are just mindless oversaturated drivel. I mean, if, say, Metallica(just to throw a band out there) posts a few behind the scenes reels for their fans of them heading to the studio, or heading to a city, that's pretty cool? It reminds me of footage you'd find on an old tour video, the only difference being you'd have to wait for the tour video or DVD to come out.(Back then, that was how we got the behind the scenes tour and studio stuff.) In this case, I'm not bothered by it and even think it's cool. Fans like getting inside peeks and the studio and tours-it's just they can get them a little sooner now. These reels and such have a purpose. Same thing for when a friend of mine takes a trip overseas to see a festival, and makes an album out of it to share on their F&F Facebook or something. That's got some purpose, I think, when you at least share to your circles. And sure, some of these include those pre and postgame, some overseas food and the like. 

Essentially, I think the format can be used "for good". Like many, many things in the world, the actual tech itself is just...neutral. It's there. It's not good or bad. It's how it's used, as always. I've seen Youtube Shorts used for good(I love ones that deal with cute animals and follow a few), and for the boring(a million and one reels of the same thing.) 

But I think, here, the cons outweigh the pros at the end. I can almost feel that the reels are 'soulless' in a sense; they're just done to post material online. While Bob may not care about getting a ton of followers or anything like that, these hundreds of reels just feel...posted. Very little discussion(if any, since often reels don't allow them, at least some pictures that get posted to, say, FB or something allows for some discussion about them), just...content. 

Content. There's that word. 

That cursed(in a bad way, not in a cool hellfire kinda way) word.

"Information made available by a website or other electronic medium." Even the definition of the word has a new addendum, now, to discuss online content. 

People LOVE uploading content. 

Uploads nowadays just feel like...content. That's the best possible way I can think to explain it. When I watched those videos I mentioned above, they didn't feel like "content." They felt like neat views into the time period, concerts that I didn't get a chance to see, and the photos felt like cool things posted to a community to share them with others and spark discussion about stuff. And sure, we all liked to show off JUST a little if we met the band! (After awhile working press, and moving overseas, it became pretty common for me to do that, so it was like, Just Another Night, but I know people liked to see the pictures, so I posted them.) And I'll post a picture of the gang together at a bar or something(to my F&F FB, which...just basically involves the people I was with.) 

I think we're ALL, in modern days, guilty of uploading 'content' now and again. You could argue this rambling blog of mine is content under a modern definition. I don't like using the word for thought-out things, though. 

And this rambling brings me back to why those reels always feel so soulless; they're just recorded, uploaded, rinse and repeat. Why? I guess millions of people just really like uploading stuff. There's endless reasons why. Maybe it's because it's "the thing to do" now. It's just...*normal* to do so. 

This is maybe why it lost me and why I started feeling so disconnected to a lot of modern social media. The "this is just how it is" aspect. I already will never understand why people want to show off so much of their lives online(look, if it makes you happy, you do you, find happy where you can get it in this world, but I will never understand why), and now I just don't understand why, for example, you'd wait so long for a gig just to watch it through your phone. Again, by all means snap a few good pics and a video for memories! We've been doing that for decades.  But does it ALL need uploading instantly? Do you need to watch the entire gig through your phone? 

And hell, imagine being the band. Imagine being onstage and just looking at a sea of phones instead of feeding off the crowd energy. I really don't blame Ghost for banning phones from their gigs(though I do think medical use should be allowed, of course-smartphones do have necessary medical uses, so they should be allowed to *exist* at gigs.) 

I kinda miss having a little bit of friction or inconvenience is all. I really didn't mind waiting until the next day to do my uploads(and who knows, maybe even nowadays with a smartphone I'll practice patience myself before uploading a few pics to my friends, just because I can.) I know I missed not knowing everything that everyone was doing-that's why I ditched a lot of social media. I was able to get rid of that. 

I know I'm preaching to the choir when I say I feel like people have been changed by this; I've seen it firsthand. I guess what I'm saying is maybe take a chance. Take a few good pictures of a gig(I think rarer gigs are pretty cool to take more of?). Take one video. Maybe even two, if you get a rare song or a killer encore. But wait a day to upload it. Find some of the best or coolest pictures like we used to. Maybe try uploading the video to a more personal friend and family circle instead of adding to the online reel glut of which there will be hundreds of. Maybe the whole world doesn't need to see the trip there. Maybe post a pic of the pre or post game to a tighter community like in the message board days to talk about it instead of blasting antics to thousands of people who don't even know you or you don't know. I mean I admit if I fly to a different country for something big, it's natural to have several pictures, and I also think there's intent behind it. Sometimes I get the impression people just post stuff to post, and one can tell the difference between a 50-picture album made with thoughtfulness(like a group going to Wacken and posting it to their friends) and a 50-picture album that's just thrown into public social media for the hell of it where thousands upon thousands of people end up tripping over a stranger's antics. 

But in any case, maybe enjoy the gig swinging your neck around in the front row instead of watching the entire thing through your phone and give back some of that energy that the band is feeding to you. 

So...it's...uhh...2025

 Yeaah...it's 2025. 

I haven't done anything here since...2022. Which was still pretty lockdown-like. 

I have no idea what I'm going to add to this; I kinda want to have an all-in-one blog for my retro games, fighting games, black metal and other odds and ends. 

I'll let you know when I think of something to write about. Maybe "old grump yells at cloud on how the early 2000s internet is better." 

Maybe I'll wax poetic about my hopes for the collapse of social media or something...

SNK Lore Misconceptions(and possibly where the came from)

 In the process of trying to clean up(to only somewhat successful ends) the SNK wiki(which is quite good, but still not 100% accurate, running more of a 75-80% accuracy or so I'd say), I decided, for fun, to put together a list of some very common misconceptions. 

Now, I don't unfortunately know every one of these-but if others know other misconceptions, please by all means let me know. 

Canon Side Material:

It should be said that the only known canon side material are:

A. The Team Stories(located online and sometimes, like in the case of Adel's story in 03, in the Gamest mooks, which carry the official team stories, 

B. Official books, which sometimes have lore bits you don't find elsewhere(Character Encylopedia, Perfect Reader, Gamest mooks as mentioned above which also have character concepts, things like that), or

C. The Ureshino novels, which basically just novelize the games themselves but add things-his work is all official. 

No Manhua, other mangas or anything are official canon. Now, I am not saying that you can't have fun with your own headcanons or whatnot, by all means do that, but for purposes of recording canonical lore, I try to keep things to the official material.  The manhua in particular are not canon-no, Mr. Karate did not ride a T-Rex to fight Geese riding a mammoth, and I don't think over in Street Fighter land that Ryu ever fought Gene Simmons, but I'm not as schooled on Capcom lore so someone might need to corroborate that one for me. ;p 

(FWIW, the manhua are great, entertaining reads-but treat them like some fun fanworks, and not canon material. But if you do fanwork and want to borrow from them, by all means go ahead, like, I'm not trying to police fanwork here. I'm just trying to keep the wiki-lore straight.) 

"What about ANB/The Shingo Manga?"

These aren't stated as to be actual canon yet. ANB was said to have been written to be able to line up as to not mess with the timeline too much, that they 'could' take from as canon if they wanted, but AFAIK they haven't used very much of it. The Shingo manga is a big unknown; I guess we wait to see if he has some blue flames in the game, eh? 

"Shipping?"

The only 100% bonafide confirmed ships in this game are Andy/Mai and that took forever, and stuff in the background like "Daimon and his wife," "Saisyu and Shizuka", "Seth and his wife," "Vanessa and her husband"(See below for this one.) The rest? Are all just up to the fans. Ryo/King were never confirmed in the game-they keep dancing around it. They keep going back and forth constantly on Robert/Yuri and seem to love to just stop at confirming the Terry/Mary ship(which I thought they had confirmed, but I seemed to have been mistaken.) The latter two of these are 'Almost There', but SNK seems to tease everyone, lol. I have a feeling if you asked the devs themselves they'd say they'd all say something different. Something could change here of course and they could decide to finally hammer home another canon one, but yeah. (I notice most of the '100% confirmed ships' are all in the background.) Mature and Vice are another fanon ship-in the source material, they are barely even friends; they are co-workers who happen to work together often. (Mature and Rugal were never really confirmed, either, just hinted that they had a fling from some flirting, but again, never written in stone.) 

So anyway, here's a few misconceptions for you:

-"Leopold Goenitz."- Goenitz' first name to any novels, as checked by someone I know has read them, was never stated in any source material. A side comic made up a name for him. Like, use it in any fanwork you want, but this sort of thing doesn't belong on the wiki. 

"Gaidel the Water User."-Gaidel's element, if he even had any, was never stated in past material, either. The only elements actively stated in lore were the Four Heavenly Kings(Wind, Earth, Fire, and Lightning.) This was once again due to a non-canon manhua. Also, Gaidel was reincarnated without his powers anyway in the official material. He didn't even remember who he was fully. He MAY have had some subconscious memories that got passed onto Leona, but the reasoning behind his reincarnation going wrong was never even stated in the original novels. It was probably just to facilitate Leona's plot, a means to an end, rather than a technical reason why it went wrong. 

"Goenitz had Mature and Vice killed by Iori": Unlike the other two things that were caused by weird manhua/comic stuff, this one was instead caused by the game itself being translated imperfectly back in the day. As we know, Dweebenheimers, SNK had some...interesting translations back in the day, wubba-wubba. This unfortunately carried over to some more important things. It was a minor mistake all told, but one that changed the full context of the ending(once again, needing to go to the novelization for this.) 

What actually happened here was that Goenitz warned Mature and Vice from messing with Iori, because he was extremely powerful. They were basically poking the bear, wanting to use Iori for their own purposes to mess with the Orochi stuff, and in the process-between that and everything else that happened during the end of the '96 tournament-set him off, so to speak, and he killed them on the spot. But there were no issues with Goenitz wanting the other two dead. They basically brought that on themselves. 

"The Hakkeshu Dislike Goenitz": They don't. Not even Mature, Vice, or whatever. Gaidel, should he return, probably has a bone or twelve to pick with him but he's technically no longer a Hakkeshu as he reincarnated wrong, and of course Leona hates him, but the rest? They don't really...care. They're indifferent. Like you can even see in a recent team story, CYS and Goenitz are more cordial, but they aren't a bunch of buddies who go out for bowling league every Saturday or something(though this would make for some good artwork.) Think of the Hakkeshu as 'business partners.' If you notice, Goenitz in the recent Awakened Orochi story is more disappointed in the others than mad, but he knows that when 'The Call' hits, they'll come. They're a bunch of reincarnating beings of a force of nature; they have all the time in the world. They don't always get along, they sometimes butt heads on methods, but they aren't really enemies or anything. Yamazaki doesn't give a rat's ass, M&V are just in their own little world(they're still ghosts, too). Btw-adding this on: CYS, as we see in the game, are close, so that's all correct. (I mean, if it's in the game, unless it was specifically retconned by SNK, it's fine.)

"Goenitz gave Rugal his Power": What happened here was Rugal took the power, Goenitz(when he was only 18, Rugal was a young man himself in his early-ish 20s), whipped his ass, and took his eye. He let him *keep* the power, however, as a bit of a test on how it worked out. In addition to this one, Mature and Vice were not some long-time workers of Rugal, they were sent to spy on him like, around '94 and only lasted until after '95. They weren't with him very long. As mentioned above, it's unsure how close he and Mature were, but Vice didn't care one way or another about him. (This stuff's origins is I think simple mistranslations.) 

"Leona is somehow the leader of the Ikari team.": I have no idea where this one came from as this is just common sense with "How the Military Works, Rank-Wise," but here we go. This *may* have an origin in the '96 story where Heidern had her handing down his orders for one first mission, in a sense that he was still the Major Head behind the mission but he used her to pass down his orders for this one, and this somehow got taken as 'she is the leader in all games despite not outranking anyone.' It's the only thing I can think of how this one proliferated. I

But the rest all clearly state either Heidern as the main lead, or Ralf as the leader, with Leona not even having a proper rank(Heidern is a commander, Ralf is a Colonel-which is a rather high rank, mind you-and Clark a First Lieutenant.) He's even stated straight up as heading the team in a few stories('97, '03, XI and XIII come to mind), and in XIII Heidern goes as far as to ask Ralf and Clark their opinion on how the mission should be handled, despite his rank being above them in said team story. This stuff's even available in English, so I don't know how this gets mistaken. That said in the games themselves, it's pretty clear the three just...work smoothly together with no real 'power fights' or anything, some humor in the 03 story where he jokingly states "Is this how you treat your leader?" after some teasing. 

(On this note, it's ALSO an occasional misconception that Clark is higher ranked than Ralf, probably because he's more chill, but no, Ralf is clearly stated as a Colonel, which is a higher rank than a First Lieutenant.) 

Billy Kane Hates Smoking: The guy has a favorite cigarette brand. I think it was even stated that he just thought the jacket was cool. The origin of this was his jacket, I guess? Where they saw his fav cigg brand and then that he hated smoking is beyond me but I guess the jacket was that convincing, lol. 

Vanessa's Dead Husband: This one originated from a website of a guy who was writing his own what-if stories(he even said as much, mind you, but the site is not in English so it got mis-translated as canon, I guess.) But yeah, there's a strange bit of fanon that Vanessa's husband is dead. He is not; in the lore her husband, and kid, are alive and well as of now. Unless this changes in the future, this was basically someone's bit of fanfiction that grew out of control that started getting believed as canon. 

Whip Dislikes Krizalid: Whoo boy, this was a doozy of a mistranslation in KOF '99. Much in the realm of 'You Jerks', during these days SNK's EN department loved to add insults when there wasn't any. The original translation had Whip extremely sympathetic toward Krizalid when she went to go see him at the end; there was not one insult, or even harsh word, to my knowledge, said. I can even link, thanks to a Discord member who I know, what the ending REALLY said right here: 

Needless to say, '99 butchered it and yeah. I would go as far as to say that at least half the time you see weird insults back in the day there was likely something much different written here. I remember people being so confused at this ending because Whip was throwing around words like 'Simp' and 'Puke' while crying after the fact and the Westerners, who I am now convinced were robbed in this, were had no fucking idea on why that was. Whip was incredibly sad about what happened to him. 

There are some other things that are not misconceptions, per se, but things that have never actively been clarified, like Ron killing some of his sons(it's *hinted*, but never confirmed, yet, if he did so, we just know the other sons besides Duo Lon are missing.)  Iori had a girlfriend that was mentioned in the past on and off, but nothing ever came of her; this is one of those 'Unknowns' in the background. The last time anything like this was mentioned was early NESTS saga, however, so as of now there is nothing in official material about her. Also, Rugal has an estranged younger brother-he was only mentioned once in a Falcoon interview from 2005, and was never named. He was never mentioned since that, either, so no idea what's up with this. 

Then there's other weird bits like "Why Not Team Bernstein?" I have NO GODDAMN CLUE on this one but the games spell out in black and white in big, block letters that Adel is nothing like his father and literally show the man working with Heidern, with him on speed dial like they're friends. Why they keep trying to shove him and his dad on a team together is beyond me. This is just pure fanwank. (And Rose isn't a fighter anyway, so it's not like this team would even work from that angle. Sport Fencing doesn't equal fighting and the stories make it pretty clear she hates even lifting a finger in the first place.) Since nothing like this happened in the games or anything I didn't put it above, but it's a really damn strange suggestion I keep seeing that basically flies in the face of the established lore, so I just stuck it at the end. (It's a damn shame the 2003 story was never officially translated since that explained a lot of their dynamic.) Btw, for those interested, here is the link to the 2003 translated story, with credits to the translator, Miau: https://twitter.com/AzzyFGC/status/1516428477918023707

Anyway, if I think of more of these(more like, WHEN I do, since there is quite a few, lol), I'll just keep adding to this, but after trying to fix the wiki today I was sort of inspired to put this together. 

Uhh...hi again!

 

Well hello again. It's been awhile, heh. 

Long story short: I've been busy, which is why this hasn't seen an update in about four months. On the bright side, I'm going to be working on a blog where I go over some of my fav KOFs, just for fun. More like a few blogs. 

I'll probably go over six of them, two per blog. 

For some Spoilers:

6. 2k2UM(The Dream Match with Everything)

5. KOF 97(The One with the Badass Story, even if it's busted)

4. KOF 2003(My Nostalgic Baby, it might be broken but I love it anyway)

3. KOF XV(It does everything really well, but nothing the best, but enough it places highly because it's super fun to play. It may tie for most balanced, though.) 

2. KOF XI(The Best Roster, and a really freakin' fun game)

1. KOF '98UMFE(The Best Gameplay, and some of the best balance.) 

Anyway, see you all soon!