/ ¤**********{ e l e c t r o n i c t r a n s c e n d e n c e }-+†‹‡±_ø£’? /*/>>>>>>ø>>« The Electronic Transcendence Website Newsletter »<<ø<<<<<<\* ¥===========ø==« A quasi-parody of corporate newsletters »==ø===========¥ ÷-----------------ø--« Issue 1: July-August, 2000 »--ø-----------------÷ *========ø==« © 2000 Electronic Transcendence Productions »==ø==========* *\>>>>ø>>« Contact: eltf@hotmail.com, Eliot.Lefebvre@uconn.edu »<<ø<<< Eliot avoids skirting the blame for a few minutes and sits down to > answer the obvious question - what the heck is this? 2: What's New > A new page, a new address, the same webman. Such is life. 3: Coming Attactions > Lots of stuff for you RPG fans - Thrash stuff, as well as some > hope of RPGM2k material... 4: Reviews > We're in a game kick right now, as Eliot takes on Vagrant Story, > Planescape, and the AD&D crossover with Diablo. But we also > manage to get Me, Myself, & Irene and X-Men on the review plate. 5: The Last Section > Various crap. Actually, that describes this entire file, but... { 1 : Introduction by the Guilty Party } > "Letter from the Editor" seemed so stodgy... "What in God's name is this thing?" It's a reasonable enough question. I know I asked that myself a couple times while writing it. Of course, on one level it's my way to fight against the overwhelming boredom of being a summer temp at the Traveler's Insurance Corporation, but that's beside the point. Electronic Transcendence is a completely new idea out of my mind. At least, it was a completely new idea about half a year ago. I was looking at my wreck of a webpage, and tried to figure out what had gone wrong. The answer wasn't hard - it was conceptually flawed, poorly implemented, and ultimately didn't cater to anything that I wanted it too. It was an expression of me to the extent that a clip on "America's Funniest Home Videos" expresses the individuals that are being victimized. You might glean some of the good parts of the family's interaction before the dog runs wild with the chainsaw, but nothing too concrete. (And that's only if you didn't expect the dog with the chainsaw, to boot.) That was when ET began to coalesce - a website, and accompanying productions, unfettered by the items I'd rather discard. Starting from scratch, but keeping the best elements. I knew what I liked about what I'd created, and what I didn't like. All that was left was to figure out where to go from there. That took a bit more thinking. What I ultimately wanted was to create something that was at once useful, entertaining, and expressive. Such was born the ultimate mission statement of Electronic Transcendence: to create a bastion of informed sarcasm, abstract intellectualism, and varied humor on the Internet. Freedom from AOL and chat rooms. The right to bare arms (or legs, or chests, whatever floats your boat). Lots of stuff that sounds nice and lofty but in truth doesn't mean a bloody thing. The mission statement, for reasons I cannot fathom, becomes an embodiment of the mission itself. Perhaps the best way to put it would be to just say "esoterica" and wander away. Having rambled about the creation of Electronic Transcendence for far too long, I will now turn to answering the first question: what is THIS, then? Call it a pamphlet. Call it a forum. Call it chopped liver, if you really want, although you'll probably get strange looks from all of your friends. It's something that you can just read to get an idea of what's going on in a psychotic little parody of a corporation that we like to call Electronic Transcendence Productions. It's a way to get yourself broken in to the style of humor that permeates the entire ET set of pages. It's even a micro-review letter, although I offer no certainty about what I will review at any given moment. This issue has a video game, two RPG accessories, and two movies. Next issue, who knows? It's also the only place where you can see one man refer to himself as "we" with stunning regularity. (Do you like scary .TXT files off the 'Net?) In short: It's a weird document for a weird production "company" that sprung from a weird idea from a weird mind. Have fun. - Eliot "The Editor Formerly Known as Eliot Lefebvre" Lefebvre { 2 : What's New } > Everything new going down with Electronic Transcendence - and, if we > get (un)lucky, with our good friend Mr. Eliot too. GROWING PAINS Electronic Transcendence isn't 100% functional - we know that. In this case, we are going for a mostly-functional site as fast as possible in lieu of a slower, but fully functional, site launch. All the linked resources are THERE, they just may or may not be: A) Correctly formatted, or B) Containing anything. Through August, we hope to get everything cleared up as the site gets updated. There are no crippling errors, however - all documents are readable and enjoyable. Updates on this situation should be made at least weekly, if not daily. ALL TOGETHER NOW One of the big "irritation" factors of the Alias Productions site was the fact that you had to keep shifting entire page networks to change genre. Electronic Transcendence, on the other hand, has all materials together and sorted by topic. So, non-TF stories and BWC sit side-by-side. With any luck, this'll make page navigation a little less of a nightmare. Or not. SHUFFLING TECH SPECS Ah, yes. The debacle that is the Tech Spec Arena. I originally thought that the Arena was a good idea. I quickly found that I was, in scientific terms, being an idiot. The Arena was a fiasco that I am glad to be rid of. It will not be making any reappearance in the near future, and I would not hold my breath waiting for any reappearance whatsoever. That said, what happens to the specs that have been submitted? After some mental debate, I decided my options were either to risk being a jerk and only put up the specs that I would actually want on my page, or be philanthropic and put up all submitted specs as long as they followed the guidelines. I am going to risk being a jerk. Sorry, but some of the submissions are just too sorry. (One I might put up just as a World's Worst Tech Spec.) GIMME AN "E"! As you've no doubt noticed by now, visiting ET immediately brings up a small poll (courtesy of BeSeen) asking to choose a mascot. Of course, only five of our quasi-mascots gets the nod thus far, since there are only six response slots. (We are getting it for free, so I suppose we can't complain.) If "Other" wins the vote, we'll restart the ballot with a new selection. IMAGEMAPS Hope everyone likes the new imagemap. We are working on a second sidebar section that requires no images, but heck, we love how that sidebar looks. (Just like we think the the GoPA font is too cool for words...) AS MECHA THRASH TURNS This one's kinda old and mentioned in MT itself, but still worth noting - Eliot and Daishinaga have joined forces on Mecha Thrash to create the Holy Grail of Thrash sourcebooks. Ultimately, the idea is to create an "optional" sourcebook that is almost necessary for playing the game. This is annoying for games like AD&D, but since Thrash is completely free, I only feel pity for having to read both the Thrash main rulebook and Mecha Thrash (they are LONG). SO, HAPPY TOGETHER? He hasn't exactly been bloody subtle about it... Eliot has once again embarked upon a relationship! The lovely Ms. Erin (last name omitted to protect the innocent) and Eliot have been seeing one another for a while now. Only time will tell how well this relationship goes, but if current affairs are any indication, we will have to remove all of the single jokes from the ET pages. C'est la vie. { 3 : Coming Attractions } > What is Eliot doing when he's supposed to be doing actual work, aside > from writing this? Look inside and see. MECHA THRASH Description: Ewen Cluney's highly cinematic game gets a major anime fix with giant robots, tanks, lions, and the like. The whole and breadth of mecha get a thorough treatment in this sourcebook - and nearly everything commonly associated with this genre, to boot. Status: Top priority right now, getting closer and closer to completion. FRONT MISSION 3 SOURCEBOOK Description: Welcome to the future of warfare, where huge nations battle one another in wanzers - humanoid machines with more firepower than a tank. This sourcebook for Mecha Thrash features new rules and new ideas as well as the setting for Squaresoft's incredible mecha tactical combat system. Status: Still in planning - will probably coalesced quickly once MT is finished. WORLD OF DARKNESS THRASH Description: There is a world behind what we see - a world where vampires and werewolves still roam, where fairies live in secret and magic is real, and a special breed of humans hunts out the forgotten children of the night. White Wolf's World of Darkness is ported over to the Thrash rules system. Status: Still in heavy planning. Don't hold your breath for this one just yet. TRANSFORMERS: GENESIS Description: It's been five hundred years since the Predacons and Decepticons reunited... and fell to the Autobots. Now, as six students of the most prestigious academy graduate, they learn that there may be more left of the Precepticons than legend... and that nothing is as black and white as they have been taught. Status: Still being worked on at odd moments. I might post Chapter 1 soon... on20 Description: In a school where everything is bizzare, who needs to hold stock in normalcy? on20 follows the exploits of the students of Crecheb University - the most out-there location on the face of the planet. Status: Both the Thrash Sourcebook and the story are being worked on at odd moments. (It's a good time to be a Thrash fan, ain't it?) POETRY Description: To quote Critical Miss, "Still mad, still pointless, still going". Status: When inspiration strikes, I scribble down some verse on the poetry page. When it doesn't strike, I don't. Make some amount of sense? ;> OTHER STUFF Description: Stuff that I'm toying around with from time to time that may be up before the rest of the coming attractions or may never see the light of day. Who knows. The List: I've got a revision of grossly incorrect X-Men stats for MSH kicking around, and might add in some stuff from recent issues. There's a lot of WoD stuff I might put together. There's a Thrash sourcebook for my "Genesis" setting, and the world of Xeronia for the FFRPG. Fantasy Thrash is being tossed around in spare moments. Various RPGM95 projects are chugging along, mostly Time Forgotten and Final Fantasy Promised Land, both of which might wind up becoming new RPGM2k projects once I get the program. BWC isn't dead, just sleeping until I get to work. I've always got a couple rants and humor ideas kicking around my head. And who knows - inspiration might strike in some other area, too. { 4 : Reviews } > You might be asking, "Why does this newsletter need a review section? > I can't figure it out." > Well, we can't either. But it's got one, so let's all play along. > So you can understand the rating, this little document rates on a > scale of brackets, from 0 sets (lousy) to 5 sets (excellet). So, > a rating of {}{}{}{}{} would be something you should buy ASAP, a > rating of { would be missable if you even wanted to by it, and a > rating of {}{}{ is average. Make sense? Video Game: { Vagrant Story } Tech Stats: Adventure-RPG from Squaresoft for the Sony Playstation. 2 discs, consisting of 1 game disc and 1 preview disc. Players take the role of Ashley Riot, a highly trained special agent in a Renissance- style setting, as he infiltrates a dark and secretive city. Review: All right, first things first - Vagrant Story is not "Medevil Gear Solid" as some people have suggested. The only points it has in common with MGS are the fact that it stars a "secret agent", it has a similar camera perspective, it uses in-game cutscenes, and it has a masterful storyline. There isn't any real similarity beyond that point - which is actually a good thing. Much as I liked MGS, I didn't want to see Square try to remake a proven game. They did not. Instead, the same team that produced Final Fantasy Tactics produced a masterpiece of storytelling and gameplay. Outside of MGS, I heard Vagrant Story compared to Parasite Eve, and that isn't so incorrect. Vagrant Story borrows the heavy focus on weapon customization and the simultaneously real-time / menu-based combat system from Parasite Eve, although it builds upon both to much higher levels. In fact, weapon customization is almost a game unto itself. However, unlike PE, the world in VS is fully 3D. It features a variety of jumping puzzles and an immersive diversity of battle areas. Where in PE, location meant virtually nothing, VS allows you to hack at enemies from above, dive behind a bulkhead to avoid attacks, and even make your enemies accidentally smack one another. It also uses a more in-depth system that PE. Weapons gain their own form of experience, so the more you use a weapon to kill one sort of foe, the better it gets at it. This adds a heavy new edge for custom creations. The core of combat is the idea of Chain Abilities, which are a mixed bag. While they are very inventive and a neat idea, the timing is quite unforgiving, so hard-core RPG players might find themselves outpaced. In addition, Risk, which was created to balance out Chains and maintain some level of control over sick characters, is either too easy or too hard to avoid, resulting in some rather irritating fight sequences. Innovative, but not perfect innovation. Vagrant Story lives up to the "story" part of its name, however - it weaves an intricate tale that easily surpasses any found in PE. The characters are wonderfully defined, even those with a minimum of in-game exposure, and the world feels remarkably complete. Dialogue is classic and sounds unarguably right for each character. (There are also some subtle and not-so-subtle hints that VS and FFT take place in the same world, which helps a little.) Though it has a couple flaws, Vagrant Story isn't something you can ignore - and if you want to keep seeing impressive games like this one coming out of Square, then you shouldn't ignore it either. Rating: {}{}{}{}{ Vagrant Story will not redefine RPGs, but it will certainly remind everyone that first and foremost, Square produces games that are interesting. With a fresh system and an extremely engaging engine, VS isn't for everyone, but those who take the time to play will get something worthwhile from it. RPG Material: { Planescape Campaign Setting } Tech Stats: Boxed Campaign Setting from TSR for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. Consists of 4 books, a GM screen, and 4 poster-sized maps. Players take the role of inhabitants of the planes, able to walk through fantastic worlds and maybe interact with gods themselves. Review: Just when you can come up with another reason to dislike AD&D, you find another reason to like it. For starters, the system is just broken on a basic level. For another, it caters predominantly to hack and slash games - even the name, Dungeons & Dragons, hearkens to the days when the whole idea was to kill things and get bigger. (Truth be told, there's a lot of AD&D games that still have killing things as the primary focus.) Then again, every now and then, you find something in the system that is so surprising and refreshing at once that you'd be willing to overlook all of the stupidity of the system. That, in short, sums up the way I feel about Planescape. Planescape, to paraphrase the books contained within its exotically intruiging top and bottom, is the setting of beliefs and wonders. There is quite literally no end to the things that can be created within Planescape. Although the majority of the action in the games is expected to take place within the outer planes, even in that "limited" scope you can find yourself nearly anywhere. And at higher levels (or with a more imaginative GM), you can find even more incredible places, possibly even visiting some of the more famous AD&D locations. There is no end of things to do and people to see - you are not constrained by any of the hard and fast rules of reality. The original "wonder" that RPGs, and especially fantasy, is supposed to create gets recaptured in this setting. More than just mind's eye candy, however, Planescape fleshes things. It presents Sigil - the city at the center of everything, where you can move from the tavern to the depths of Baator in the blink of an eye. It creates a whole - and believable, at least for the setting - entourage and worldview. The factions and elements with the city, such as the trademark Lady of Pain, are well-defined, interesting, and feel like actual elements of the setting instead of surface gloss. It helps that the books are written in the unusual slang of the planes - it both gets a reader in a mindset and provides a taste of the setting's ambiance. I want more from the boxed set of Planescape - like details on the Blood War, more about tieflings, and so forth. But that's a critical success of the product - it makes you interested in learning more. If I read anything about Forgotten Realms, I start yawning, because it all gets so stale and repetitive. Planescape cuts out of that mold by being intrinsically dynamic. It brings forth everything that ever made me interested in RPGs to begin with, and cuts out the chaff of AD&D. No small task, but still one it accomplishes with liquid grace. Rating: {}{}{}{}{} Planescape is probably the most imaginative product to come from TSR since the SAGA rules system. It provides a wealth of ideas for any DM, incredible background and setting, and allows almost any campaign to be run with ease. If you run AD&D, you need Planescape, simple as that. It's a lot more interesting than Forgotten Realms, for starters. ;> RPG Material: { Diablo II for AD&D } Tech Stats: Paperback book from TSR for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. Contains character kits, new spells, new magical items, new monsters, and an adventure that encapsulates the events of the PC game Diablo. Players take the role of adventurers taking down the lord of Hell himself, Diablo. Review: I was late for the whole Diablo craze. Only recently did I get a computer that was competent enough to run the game at all. So I will admit to missing the core of the frenzy for the game. Maybe that's part of the reason why I'm not so absolutely enraptured by Blizzard's dungeon crawl RPG. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy it a lot. But I have some definite beef with the game and its structure. That might be part of the reason, as well, why I find that I have mixed feelings about the adaptation for AD&D. First of all, "serious" role-players should forget about this entirely. Diablo is not role-playing, it is hack and slash. Only an incredibly skilled DM is going to be able to make it anything else, and William Shakespeare would be hard-pressed to make it a moving human drama. This is carnage, plain and simple. Given the ancestry of AD&D, it's unsurprising that it took on the game instead of, say, White Wolf. If you're willing to put intellectualism aside for a while, then you may yet enjoy yourself. The book prides itself on all the new things it contains, and it does itself proud in that respect. It keeps the actual magical item system from Diablo, as well as the plethora of monsters. (There are only 20 monsters, but 5 variants each, so they have that element of the game down pat.) The character kits and powers are the only ACTUAL D2 material - everything else is from Diablo and not Diablo II. No real fault there - the quests and so forth are all very religiously kept, and all the major personalities in the game do show up. Unfortunately, the heavy reliance on Diablo's strengths also means that the book falls victim to Diablo's major weaknesses. For one thing, the whole concept gets pretty old pretty fast. There's a time when cutting down hordes of monsters indiscriminately seems like the most entertaining thing in the world, but it doesn't last all that long and eventually gets downright boring. "Wow. Another fifty archdemons. Ho hum." Even in a more varied system than a CRPG, you'll still feel like you're just clicking a mouse frantically at times. The other big problems don't come from the Diablo side, but from the fact that it's an AD&D book, and it simply falls down in some areas. The introduction explicitly states that the whole thing was written by a big Diablo fan, and it does read like that. It's not badly written, but at times it feels like the author is a little too in love with hacking things apart. Don't get me wrong - I'm all in favor of keeping true to the game. But when I bring a game over to a pen and paper RPG, I do so because I want to flesh it out and bring it beyond the two-dimensional screen. This supplement fails to bring Diablo into the third dimension any more than the game manual does, and that would have to be my biggest complaint about what would otherwise be a truly spectacular AD&D supplement. Rating: {}{}{}{ Diablo the game is a mixed bag, so it's no real surprise that this adaptation comes out much the same. The magical items and new monsters are probably the highest point, but even there, it's tough to port things out of Diablo. Good and fun, but not essential unless you're a Diablo freak. Movie: { Me, Myself, & Irene } Tech Stats: Stars Jim Carrey and Renée Zellweger. Originally mild- mannered RI State Trooper develops schizophrenia after years of abuse in his hometown and is called upon to protect a young woman being hunted by criminals. Review: The Farrely Brothers (probably misspelled - pobody's nerfect) are at it again, and like you might expect, it's more schtick, more totally tasteless jokes, and more over-the-top gags that you pale at before shrugging and saying, "Oh, well, what did I expect". And Jim Carrey is at it again, meaning more schtick, more totally tasteless jokes, and... well, you get the idea. After his pit-stops in some more "serious" filmmaking (The Truman Show, for example), Carrey is joining forces with the Farrely Brothers in what is one hell of an unholy alliance. You don't expect highbrow humor from either end of this group, so it's no surprise when you don't get it. Me, Myself, & Irene is not exactly A Midsummer Night's Dream. Complexity is kept intentionally low. Moreover, the jokes that the film makes are not always thoroughly obscene, but there's a definite bias here. The number of sex jokes, in particular, might start to get a bit much for some people. There isn't a whole lot of redeeming social value here - avoid letting young children see it, and don't you see it with anyone over 50 unless they are VERY liberal-minded. If this review sounds negative so far, it isn't because the film is bad. In fact, Me, Myself, & Irene is probably the funniest film I've seen in a long while. Jim Carrey is toned down from the absolute wack-job routine of Ace Ventura, but he's not playing the role stiffly. In fact, the over-the-top elements of his acting have gotten better because he's tuned them down just a tad. Instead of coming off as gratuitous, he lends both sides of his schizophrenic character a certain amount of credibility. Neither one is absurd (completely), but neither one is anything less than decisively Jim Carrey. People who found him a little much beforehand may very well find that he's tolerable here. The plot of this movie simply cannot be praised. It's downright impossible. Analyzing it on that level is worthless, because the chain of events is too absurd to be accepted anywhere outside a Vonnegut novel. The key here is to decide whether or not it succeeds in its main goal - being funny. On that note, the movie deserves high praise. It keeps up a steady stream of jokes without dropping the beat or getting stale, and the more-or-less simple plot is still engaging enough to avoid photo-gallery syndrome ("Well, that looked cool, but what was the point?"). The movie's repeating gags are also well-handled - they are re-used often, but not enough to loose their touch. The Farrely Brothers don't achieve a comedic epiphany here any more than in, say, There's Something About Mary, but they manage to create a film that is genuinely funny and thoroughly entertaining. Something, in truth, that a lot of other filmmakers might want to start trying. Rating: {}{}{}{} Although the tasteless humor and absolutely transparent plot can wear thin, Me, Myself, & Irene is an extremely funny film and worth going to see. It also makes a surprisingly good date movie... Movie: { X-Men } Tech Stats: Stars Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin, and Ian McKellen. Movie adaptation of the popular X-Men comic book, featuring otherwise normal humans granted superhuman abilities from birth due to an extra chromosone known as the "X-Factor". Review: Movies based on comics tend to suck. It's a time-honored tradition. Of course, they always have a devoted fan base that would go to see the movie even if it was just a guy making shadow puppets against the wall. But the devoted fan base isn't enough - the movie might be based off a comic, but it needs to first be a decent movie. I was sold on the X-Men movie before I saw it, but only after I saw it was I really impressed. The movie manages to simultaneously capture the elements of the X-Men and make itself interesting, even to people who have no idea what the X-Men are. First of all, the special effects deserve the credit they have been given by critics. When Cyclops starts blasting away with his optic beams in the film, it looks like Cyclops is blasting away, not like somebody went through the film with a computer and pasted in the effect. There's a preponderance of physical powers in the movie (for an obvious reason), and they lack the "over-the-top" nature of the comics, but they are still impressive. Magneto's stunts are particularly well done, even without the glowing blue field around everything. The story is impressive, flat out. It is not a great work of literature, but it succeeds were most comic films fail. It makes the characters believable (helped in no small part by some excellent acting - Hugh Jackman *is* Wolverine) and gives them discernable motivation. It explains what the hell the X-Men, mutants, and so forth are, but without sounding patronizing or sledgehammer. Instead of setting it up as one big visual treat for fanboys, they set it up as a serious science fiction film. They also include plenty of parts that are interesting to both fans and non-fans, but the fans will be suitably rewarded with. Kitty Pryde, Pyro, and Bobby Drake are all recognizable, despite not being specifically noted, while the Wolverine-Cyclops interplay ("Would you rather have yellow spandex?") is done perfectly and played to the hilt. There's nothing a fan can argue with, even without Wolverine saying "bub" once. What could have easily been a film that was boring to non-fans and only a source of twisted recognition to fans becomes a good, well-paced film that holds merit of its own without relying on the name of X-Men. It isn't perfect, of course - there is still comic-book cheesiness at times, and it's hard as hell to convince anyone who hasn't actually seen it that it is really a good movie. But above everything else, X-Men proves that done right, comics can make good, interesting movies. With or without Mystique wandering around naked. ;> Rating: {}{}{}{}{ X-Men is a comic action film, so it might not be for everyone. But darn close to it. The traditional clichés and weak points of films like the Batman series aren't here, and the result is a thoroughly enjoyable film for both X-Maniacs and average viewers. { 5 : The Last Section } THE FINAL WORD: "Hold on. It's me." "Prove it." *pause* "You're a dick." *pause* "Okay." - Wolverine and Cyclops, /X-Men/ ELECTRONIC TRANSCENDENCE WEBSITE NEWSLETTER STATEMENT: The ETWN is published six times a year (hopefully) by Electronic Transcendence. Its express purpose is threefold: to keep a running tally of what is on Electronic Transcendence, to give people an idea of what will be coming in the near future from the site, and to continue to further Electronic Transcendence by being an easily-distributable read. It also exists to give Eliot something to do from time to time. No animals were killed in the making of this newsletter. We did, however, kick two squirrels and possibly caused irreprable psychological damage to a labrador retriever by calling it fat. Many meat-bearing animals have been killed in the making of this editor, because Eliot likes hamburgers. That site again: http://members.fortunecity.com/lostfactor The name Electronic Transcendence, the "Transens" logo, and the Electronic Transcendence ASCII Text Bracket Design are all ® Electronic Transcendence Productions. All rights reserved. © 2000 Electronic Transcendence Productions. All rights reserved. Any copyrighted material mentioned within this (ahem) publication is owned by its respective author. This document in no way challenges that ownership and is written with the utmost respect for the original authors and owners of such material. Electronic Transcendence is owned by Eliot P. Lefebvre. Permission is granted to freely distribute this document so long as no money is charged for it and no part of it is changed in any way. Peace. Out.