Sunday, June 30, 2013

Frasierquest 5.13: The Maris Counselor


Niles: Fifteen years with Maris, I end up in bed with her lover.

The shoe finally drops. In a way this was an episode that people had been waiting for, for many years. I don't think anyone believed that Niles and Maris would stay together by this point; it was a relationship that was fundamentally broken, and after a while it was just no fun to see Niles suffer. So "The Maris Counsellor" is only mostly sad, a bittersweet picture of the end of a relationship that, however toxic, still meant a lot to a person we care about.

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

The Tabletop: On the Oncoming Demise of Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition

Two iconic characters running from a boulder

As time goes by and columns like this come out, it's becoming more and more obvious that the next edition of Dungeons and Dragons, called "D&D Next", will in fact be the first edition designed entirely by fear. While previous revisions to the rules set were done in the spirit of expanding, modernizing and generally improving the performance of a system that, by virtue of being the most widely played RPG in the world, had its quirks and eccentricities put to the test, this is an edition in full retreat, an effective apology on behalf of Wizards of the Coast for trying too hard to do something innovative and interesting with the system last time.