Sorry it took so long for this review, ya’ll, I had to wait for finances to behave. ^^; For those who are curious, I am going to do the other short stories in this universe and Lord Mettlebright’s Man…eventually. It’s a matter of timing at the moment. (A small part of me wants to wait for there to be four and just do my big paperback purchase then, get everything all at once.) But let’s get to what you actually care about.
Tamiko and the Two Janitors takes the Amaranthine Saga to a location that’s only been referenced before–America, where the Emergence has not been going over well (and is anyone surprised? Nooooo). Enter elementary school principal Tamiko Reaverson. While she has no connection to the In-Between, she is determined to help the Amaranthine find a place among humans, opening up her school and the community to them so they no longer have to hide. Unfortunately, it turns out there’s secrets a-plenty in both the school, in her family, and on her family’s farm, and in true fashion, it all starts coming to a head all at once.
Alright, from here on out there may be spoilers, so read ahead at your own risk. I’ll try to keep them to a minimum though.
Characters, as always, were amazing. I think I particularly liked our “B” plot with Melissa and Jiminy the most in this one, watching as they tried to figure themselves out and what they really wanted while working together with the wolf pack. I also liked Ash and Tamiko, though their relationship felt a little rushed to me? Maybe that’s just because the last two books it was this huge…figuring out thing, and this one it was pretty straight forward. It does break the pattern, which I totally appreciate. Kip was amusing, but the relationship between him and Joe is still murky for me, so I want more of that. The wolves sort of got to touch on things that we at least barely skimmed in earlier books, so it was nice to see more of them and how other characters react to these new elements to their world, even the ones who think they are in the know!
This book it really felt like the established characters took a step back. Oh, there were still there, but I think getting away from Japan helped keep them from taking over the whole thing and making it a web. Instead, we just got little flashes, which totally worked for me, since I definitely still want to see these characters, I just want to focus on the current story too. The way their on-going plots were touched on, such as Argent and his hunt for both the rogue fox and the rogue dragon who may or may not be working together and I can’t figure it out yet, and Kimiko and Quen and their courtship, it all wove together with this story so I didn’t question why it was included, and yet I still got an update and to see these characters I love.
Speaking of plot, I wasn’t always one hundred percent sure of where this one was going to take me. Partly because I hadn’t read either of the two fanfics I could see working into the mix (just the summaries so I recognized them, lol), but also because she kept the story moving. It wasn’t in the bad way, either, the way certain writers who shall not be named tried so hard to subvert expectations that they ruined it, but instead in a way that pays off so that the reader stays with the story and is satisfied with the conclusion (aside from the obvious series hooks dangling). Like it shocked me right out the gate, I had a little freak out, and it sort of just kept going. I was highly amused by both my own reaction, and what I was reading.
I am going to touch on world building here. There were some pretty subtle prods at the situation in America being like the civil rights movement. As a local from Oklahoma, I definitely saw it more like the indigenous population and their struggles. This really pushed it more towards being like them in my head. They have a lot more of the land struggles and issues with being between nations in terms of laws and practicalities (spoken as someone who has to work with the tribes as a foreign nation at work). That makes it very personal to me, and something that I’m pretty strong about. I hope we continue to see this situation improve in future books.
As a series whole, this felt like a solid continuation of the series. I didn’t get lost like I did in Kimiko, and it excited me similarly to how Tsumiko did. This isn’t a series I’m going to put down after the third book, like others, so you can expect these reviews to continue. I think each one actually gets better…of course, Argent is still my favorite, so I also could be biased, lol.
Tabletop RPG: Serenity the RPG System Thoughts
(After a long drought, finally an RP post! Sorry ya’ll, I had the plague and it will not go away.)
So I had bought the Serenity the Roleplaying Game’s book ages ago, along with a big old Verse map and a giant book about a specific cargo run. Why? Because I was interested in seeing how playable it was. Now, the book itself isn’t laid out in the most logical of senses, and sometimes it seems a bit screwy to me. I’m not going to critique the system as a whole, but instead, talk about how it plays.
I ran it this last weekend for a group of three players. It was specifically meant to be short, one or two sessions, three at an absolute maximum that I didn’t see happening, and so in an effort to keep it short, I chose to use one of the episodes of the series (“The Train Job”) as my framework. Bonus, most of my players had either never seen the show, seen only a small percentage of it, or hadn’t seen it in well over ten years and had since forgotten a large chunk of it. I had no worries about them actually recognizing what I was up to.
The game started off a little shaky–I’m not used to DMing, and I was trying to think of how to describe something I had seen in a show to convey exactly the right tone. But as the players started to make their plan and I got comfortable, we all started to enjoy ourselves. This is where the good parts of the game really started to show themselves. It isn’t loaded down with rules and schematics, but instead relies on the imaginations of the players and the DM, and on the way that they RP things out. It also gives some players a bit of flux.
What I mean by that is the use of Plot Points. I know of other DMs who will deliberately fudge rolls if a character rolls poorly and it may lead to someone having a bad night, or for similar reasons. Serenity makes that almost unnecessary with the use of Plot Points, provided the characters haven’t been just slinging them around. By really using them when they can tell a roll is important, it lets them get the desierable outcome without some…somewhat shady but good intentioned shady…actions on behalf of a DM, which I can appreciate.
That being said, 1’s still happen, and critical failures can lead to problems. But I’ve taken the stance that just because you failed the roll it doesn’t mean something catastrophic has to happen, and depending on what it is, the party isn’t screwed. In my most memorable case from this last weekend, one failed the hiding roll with a 1 while the other did really well. So I did something like you’d see out of a comedy skit to explain how both got hidden because of how well the other person rolled covering for both of them. Everything still proceeds, and everyone at the table got a laugh out of it. Failures don’t have to mean instant-death, and I was glad to get to DM something like that.
Is the lack of detail sometimes annoying? Oh very. And the rate of lethal damage applied to the weapons, while realistic, means that combat is never going to go well, and I’m still thinking about how to balance that out in a longer game. I also have to figure out whether I’d want to do something similar to Whedon’s work, where there is a long arc that we’re building to but a lot of it plays out in small moments, or if I want the long arc to be the focus with occasional side jobs. But that comes back to the flexibility of the system. It really lets you run the type of game that you want to run.
I don’t know if I would recommend this system for a newbie DM and newbie group of players. It’s not laid out in a way that’s neat, there’s a lot of holes, and the combat is harsh. But for a group that has messed around with a few systems, it is pretty forgiving to let them let their hair down for a bit. As a newbie DM, I had the advantage of knowing the world best, which gave me the measure of control that as DM I need to have any kind of confidence. With a group of die-hard Firefly fanatics, that isn’t going to be the case…but other new DMs may not have my anxiety crutches, so your mileage is just going to vary on that front.
If I can trust my players to stay off my blog, I might talk about the planning I go into for longer campaigns, but that’s a big maybe. I wouldn’t want to accidentally spoil anyone’s backstory or arc for them, and that will cause sour feelings. (Plus some of the players are uber private, which I respect.) In the meantime, if you can get your hands on the book or a PDF of it, it’s worth a page-through at the very least.
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