I came into John Carter with low expectations. It had mediocre reviews and a famously bad trailer, and it had been through the kind of last-minute rewrites that often lead to a confusing, directionless story.

Furthermore, I’m a big fan of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom books. Fans like me are perennially disappointed by movie adaptations, because we often feel affronted by any changes made to our sacred scriptures.

After twenty minutes, though, I leaned over to my wife and whispered, “I think… I’m enjoying this movie.”

The big shock was that the movie was true to the spirit of the books. There were some very standard Hollywood plot changes: a magic mcguffin or two was added, and the roles of the scene-chewing villains were expanded. None of this bothered me. Plot was never very important in Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. From Tarzan to Pellucidar to John Carter of Mars, Burroughs’ formula is frequent action, power-fantasy wish fulfillment, and exotic setting. That’s what the John Carter movie delivered.

The movie lingered appropriately on John Carter’s superpowers, giving him a good long scene to get used to walking and jumping in Mars’ lower gravity. He also got some very impressive hero-vs-minions battle scenes. You want to leave a Superman movie feeling like you can fly, a Star Wars movie feeling like you have a lightsaber at your belt, and a John Carter movie feeling like you can leap over buildings and hack your way through armies of Tharks. In that respect, John Carter delivered.

Another surprise: John Carter was funny. I found myself laughing along with the audience at the gags. Here’s a way that the movie surpassed the original: if there was a joke in A Princess of Mars, I don’t remember it.

We went to great lengths to see John Carter in 2D. After suffering through a few migraine-inducing post-production 3D movies recently, it was a pleasure to watch a nice flat movie. I really think that post-production 3D makes any movie experience 30% less enjoyable.

When we left the theater, I heard a knot of people chattering about how much they loved the movie. It turned out to be some sort of Princess of Mars fan meet-up group. Fans of the books seem to like the movie. Box office evidence suggests that no one else likes it very much.

John Carter’s terrible opening weekend guarantees that there won’t be any more Barsoom movies made for another 80 years or so. I can’t complain, though: I got one enjoyable Mars movie, which was one more than I was expecting.

The kickstarter is coming in on $8k (4x the initial goal!), and reaching $10,000 or $15,000 is looking more plausible, so here are some new rewards to everyone who pledged for the poster!

New Solo Game: If we hit $10,000, everyone who pledged $5+ will get a new, highly lethal, D&D-compatible solo game which uses the Random Dungeon poster as a board. I’m tentatively calling it Dungeon Robber. It’s a D&D game mode where you, an impoverished zero-level normal human, enter the dungeon without any gear and try to escape with a few trinkets to sell – or retire on a pile of gold. In this game, your troubles start when you find treasure deep in the dungeon, and rules for escaping monsters are more important than combat rules. $5+ backers will get a PDF copy. For $22+ backers, signed print copies will be available as substitutes for the signed bonus poster.

Interactive version of the poster: If we hit $15k, I’ll program an online, Dragons Lair-style journey through the poster that generates a random dungeon for you. I’ll probably use the poster art along with some original animation; but my secret hope is to actually build the dungeon using Dwarven Forge tiles and film first-person video through every possible path. That will depend on Stefan of Dwarven Forge’s availability.

More Stickers: More artists are making stickers for $22+ backers! Here are a few samples, and I have more ready to be scanned for the next update.

More Notebook

So far, Paul’s Notebook contains “Running a Picaresque Game” and “Wilderness Adventures”; we’re pretty close to one of my favorites, “D&D In Fairyland”, and the higher-level “Notebook of the Planes” and “How to Run a Barony” are coming up next.

I’m off to run Lawful Evil characters through an art museum. Wish me luck!

This Thursday I’m DMing as part of the opening of the RPG-themed Big Reality art show in the 319 Scholes gallery, Brooklyn, curated by Brian Droitcour.

It may seem a little weird that I’m DMing as part of an art opening, but it all makes sense, I think. I (and my players, who include blogofholding friends Tavis Allison, Rory Madden and Mike Mornard) will be part of Brody Condon’s “Lawful Evil”, a performance piece where everyone plays Lawful Evil characters.

My gimmick: I’ll be using Mazes and Monsters rules to add extra creepiness and misinformation to the mix. (Check out this great clip of Mazes and Monsters gameplay.

As for the rest of the show: here’s Brian’s take on it:

“Big Reality” proposes that contemporary everyday life seamlessly integrates elements of fantasy and play through consumer technology and networked media. The exhibition explores this proposition through artworks that draw imagery, themes, and devices from a relatively young and heavily stereotyped genre of play: the fantasy role-playing game. Born in the early seventies, when Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax hacked the rules of historical war simulations to make room for individual heroics and magic spells, the RPG blends game and narrative, systems and storytelling. It brought romance and adventure to models of numerical cognition, which appealed to players familiar with nascent computing culture. “From Nethack to play-by-post forums on the WWW,” an Ars Technica blogger wrote in 2009, “the first thing that computer geeks do upon inventing a new medium is play Dungeons and Dragons with it.” Whether played with dice and pencils, costumes and props, or a videogame console, the RPG codes a particular, specifically contemporary relation of the self of the world, one in which technology and abstraction, fantasy and play are deeply implicated in the routines of everyday life.

Fluxus and Oulipou captured the spirit of a freshly cybernetic world in works that incorporated chance, systems, open-endedness and open relations between author and audience. Gygax and Arneson gave the same spirit a popular form. With a few exceptions, the works in “Big Reality” are not games. Rather, they crystallize in a variety of mediums the expansive attitude toward life that play and imagination afford. The exhibition’s artists grew up in a world with RPGs, in a time when concepts of “virtuality” and “real life” were necessarily disrupted as everyday modes of communicating and receiving information about the world rapidly changed. For them, fantasy is not an escape but one of many facets of an increasingly big reality.

With work by: Arcanebolt (Mark Beasley, Taras Kemenczy, Alex Iglizian), Bradley Benedetti, BFFA3AE, Laura Brothers, John Bruneau, The Center for Tactical Magic, Jacob Ciocci, Brody Condon, Chris Coy, Julia Ellingboe, Desiree Holman, Timothy Hutchings, Butt Johnson, Daniel Leyva, Guthrie Lonergan, Nick Montfort, Shana Moulton, Brenna Murphy, Oregon Painting Society, Robby Rackleff, Billy Rennekamp, Deb Sokolow, Eddo Stern, Third Faction, John Tynes, Andrej Ujhazy, and David Wightman.

In 4e, your Intelligence modifier is applied to your Armor Class. That means we can finally determine the AC of real-world geniuses!

It’s easy to translate your IQ score to your D&D Intelligence. According to Dragon Magazine #8, “look up the results of the most recent IQ test you have taken and divide the result by ten. This number is your intelligence rating.” That does give us a fairly realistic range: an average IQ of 100 would translate to an average Intelligence of 10, and an 18 Intelligence would translate to a 180 IQ, which is around the point where IQ tests stop measuring.

We all know from experience that it is hard to hit a genius with a sword. But now we can answer the question, “how hard?”

Richard Feynman: IQ 126
Source: His autobiography.
Feynman’s surprisingly low IQ is both evidence that IQ is a deeply flawed way to measure intelligence and proof that Feynman gets a puny +1 bonus to his Armor Class. Unless Feynman’s Dexterity is 14 or higher, that means that Richard Feynman’s Armor Class is 11.

Bill Gates: IQ 160
Source: A conversion of his old-style SAT score of 1590.
Bill Gates had an Intelligence of 16 in high school. If he has leveled up to level 8 since then, he would have gotten a stat boost up to an Intelligence of 18. In AD&D, of course, Bill Gate’s level would be astronomical, because he would have gained so much XP from acquiring wealth. In 4e, though, he’s probably low-level, having gained all his XP from Major Quests to defeat Apple and the Department of Justice. Note: Bill Gates recently bought the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by famed genius Leonardo Da Vinci. That sounds a lot like the type of item that would raise the reader’s intelligence. But without hard evidence, we have to assume that Bill Gates’ Armor Class is 13.

Stephen Hawking: IQ 160
Source: this PalScience article
Stephen Hawking’s AC is difficult to determine, because although he gets a +3 AC bonus for high intelligence, he is almost completely paralyzed. It’s hard to say what status effect that is. At best, he’s Immobilized, which means he can’t move; he might also be Restrained, which means he’s immobilized and grants combat advantage. Let’s say that’s the case, in which case Stephen Hawking’s Armor Class is 13 but he grants combat advantage.

Dave Mustaine: IQ 160
Source: An unverified rumor that went around when I was in high school. I can’t find any reference to it online, but I believe the burden of proof lies with the accusor. Besides, look how well Dave did at Celebrity Jeopardy.

As you can see in this picture of Dave, he is wearing leather armor. That means Dave Mustaine’s Armor Class is 15 (+3 for Intelligence and +2 for armor).

Marilyn vos Savant: IQ 228
Source: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/marilyn-vos-savant/
Marilyn vos Savant was listed in the Guiness Book as the smartest person in the world. Her Intelligence score of 22 is out of the normal range of human intelligence, and indicates that she must be at least level 8 (starting with an 18 Int, getting 2 points from race, and getting attribute increases at levels 4 and 8). Since she’s level 8, she also gets a +4 bonus to her defenses, including AC. Her Intelligence is the same as a Cambion Hellfire Magus, a Pit Fiend, or a Rakshasha Assassin. That means that, in the event of her death, any of those monsters could take over her column “Ask Marilyn.” Marilyn vos Savant’s AC is an astonishing 20 – and that’s unarmored.

Gary Gygax: IQ over 200
Source: The Washington School of Psychiatry via Gary himself. “When I was at the Washington School of Psychaiatry in 1984 (IIRR) speaking to the faculty on creatiity, the concensus was that my IQ was very high–over 200.”
Who am I to argue with the Washington School of Psychiatry? If they say Gary’s IQ is over 200, Gary’s IQ is over 200. He certainly had a high functional vocabulary. Therefore, Gary Gygax’s Armor Class is 15.

The response to my Random Dungeon kickstarter has totally floored me. Two days after it went live, it’s at 150% of its goal!

We’ve officially hit our first bonus goal of $3000, so everyone who pledged $22 or more will get a bonus signed poster. If you already pledged $17, consider adding $5 to your pledge: you’ll either get a second Random Dungeon poster to give to a friend, or a Wandering Monster poster that you can use to populate your random dungeon.

Now we should start talking about what else you guys will get for pledging. If the kickstarter keeps going strong, I’ll keep making up bonus goals, and your poster tubes will arrive jangling with all sorts of booty.

Bonus goal #2: If we hit $4000, every backer who’s donated at least $22 will get a bonus dwarf in their poster tube. Probably not a real dwarf. Either a patch, sticker, or (my favorite option) a rub-on transfer of the Suspicious Dwarf from the Random Dungeon poster. I had D&D rub-on transfers when I was a kid and they were boss. I’m investigating pricing now and I’ll keep you updated.

PDF note: I should also mention that everyone who gets a poster will also get a PDF of the poster: the PDF is not limited to $5 backers.

Art donation: Finally, I’ve agreed to donate my original artwork to Tim Hutchinson of PlaGMaDA (The Play Generated Map and Document Archive). He might regret that when he sees the bundle of assorted scraps he’s getting.

Thank you so much for backing the poster, guys! You’re all amazing!