Showing posts with label giant robots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label giant robots. Show all posts

Saturday, March 17, 2018

"With Great Power Comes Great Mental Illness..."


Apologies, apologies. Yes, I disappeared for a damn long time there...it's been a pretty busy month and a half. So sorry.

[what happened to the Middle Earth "guide?" Um...let me get back to you on that]

I gave up drinking (alcohol) for Lent this year and it's been a fairly tough go. Not (just) because I'm a (functioning) alcoholic...going without doesn't give me the shakes or anything like that. It's just that I'm so used to having a drink or three just in the course of doing stuff...cooking, watching a game, going out, streaming some show. Not to mention I've been mainlining NPR since the end of the football season and alcohol really helps take the edge off of whatever the Trump administration is doing these days...

(*sigh*)

Caught myself actually thinking about wanting a smoke the other day, and it's been nearly two decades since I last had a cigarette. Crazy. Instead I pounded a box of Girl Scout cookies ("thin" mints) over the course of three days (my daughter did help). Obviously, I'm a man who needs his vices.

So hear I sit, drinking yet another can of LaCroix (because it's cold and bubbly and, no, I don't know why I don't just drink water, dammit). But at least I'm blogging something, which is a start. Got to start somewhere. Even after you've started, sometimes it's necessary to start again.

And again. And again.

I'm going to talk about Shadowrun in a minute, but I just need to get a couple things out there first. I have been gaming a lot lately, but it's been almost exclusively Axis and Allies, which was a Christmas gift to my son, and which we've been playing non-stop for three or four weeks. We're using the 1941 rules, which are wonderful...the game is short and streamlined compared to other versions, and you can get through a game in about an evening and a half. We've played probably a dozen times, my son resetting the board after every defeat (no, he hasn't won yet, but he loves the thing and he's stubborn as hell...kind of like his old man).

We're even experimenting with our own rules. We wanted to add giant diesel-powered mecha to the board (inspired by the Japanime/manga Kishin Corps, as well as Pacific Rim), but haven't been able to decide on rules for the things. Instead our most recent game has introduced kaiju (giant monsters, a la Godzilla or...again...Pacific Rim), to act as a neutral, third party "spoiler." Jury's still out on their inclusion (we're in the middle of our first game using them), but we'll see if they'll swing the tide of the war one way or another...or if they simply devastate civilization while world's powers burn each other to the ground.

Something like this...
So, yes, I am doing "tabletop gaming" (of a sort), and A&A isn't the only one, though it's the only one worth mentioning. I was really, really looking hard at rewriting Heroes Unlimited to my own specs...and I may still do so...but when I open the book and start hacking through jungle I find it Just...So...Daunting. Hats off to Mr. Siembieda for actually putting together this thing...I mean, I couldn't (certainly wouldn't) put together these lists of gadgets for hardware characters and implants for bionic character and this system of magic, and All These Random Tables, and...and...

(*double sigh*) It's actually kind of hard deciding what exactly to keep.

But I did get a little inspired watching the new season of Jessica Jones this last week; at least, binging it added fuel to the smoldering blaze. I've decided I LOVE Jessica Jones (the show, not the character). Unlike prior Marvel Netflix shows, the new season of JJ is awesome right out of the gate, rather than waiting 2-3 episodes to find its feet. It does hit its peak about three episodes from the end season, resulting in a looooong denouement but...whatever. The show is filled with such bitterness and sadness and melancholy, you KNOW how it's all going to end, even if you're not sure the exact path the plot takes to get there. And you're already bought in, so...yeah. Tears and booze. And regrets and recriminations. Jessica Jones.

She really reminds me of a girl or two I used to know.

Even added the Whizzer!
With mongoose!
Anyhoo, the thing about JJ (and ALL the Marvel Netflix series) is how "small time" the superhero world is in the setting. And Heroes Unlimited may be...hmmm, I'm not exactly sure what I want to say.

...may be the only supers RPG that does small time(?)

...may be the "best" supers RPG at doing small time(?)

Probably something like "may be my personal favorite RPG for doing small time." And yet every revision, every supplement has seen increases in the power level of the game. Never mind Rifts and its (wholly compatible) madness. But if you dial that power creep way down, you can really start to see a good system for modeling the likes of Jessica Jones and her associates (not to mention antagonists). It's just that looking at the words "good system" makes me want to guffaw aloud as I consider Palladium's systems. So, so sorry.

SO...Shadowrun. I picked up a copy of the 4th edition the other day (I think it's the 4th...it says "20th Anniversary Core Rulebook" on the cover). I did this for a couple reasons: first, it was dirt cheap ($9.99, used). Second, I wanted to see what was new and great  and "happening" with Shadowrun, thinking maybe it would galvanize me to take action with my long unpublished Cry Dark Future manuscript. However, I've yet to read page one of the tome (it's sitting in bed next to me as I type this) because...well, because I've been busy. And maybe because I'm lacking the heart (or stomach) to look betwixt its covers.

This one...pretty sure it's
the fourth edition.
HOWEVER (still with me folks? Okay, almost done)...however, even though I've been lugging this thing around in my backpack, NOT reading it, it's been on my mind a bit. And so, when I was in a local game shop Wednesday, making the acquaintance of the 23 year old store manager and found out her RPG experience was mainly with Shadowrun, I found myself not only talking about my own experience with the SR game, but about my own, unpublished, SR-knockoff. And I ended up giving her an old manuscript Thursday, and picking up her feedback Friday. AND, as was the case SIX YEARS AGO (jumping Jesus on a pogo stick!), the comments were universally positive. There is, apparently, still a market for Shadowrun (who'd have thunk it?), and one that has serious complaints about the RPG's current level of accessibility (low), and that might find real enjoyment in something a little more "lightweight" while keeping the same Shadow-isms.

In other words, publish the damn thing already.

Now for those of you who have followed this blog for...Christ, years!...for those who've been following the saga of this thing, you might recall that I basically started rewriting the whole damn book from scratch, making it much more of a post-apocalyptic fantasy game. Something like Appleseed (at least the cinematic version) with elves and dwarves. Ralph Bakshi's Wizards meets Thundarr meets Heavy Metal meets Ghost in the Shell. With pointy ears. And VERY different game systems (especially pertaining to character creation, advancement/development, and material resources). A complete frigging overhaul might be a good way to describe it. An overhaul that I have never completed.

Here's the thing I've just realized in the last couple days (as I dug up and reread both my original manuscript and the current, unfinished rewrite): the overhaul is a different game. It has the same name, and a few of the systems but the setting and theme are completely different. Hell, the name "Cry Dark Future" doesn't even fit. Dark future? Whose future? Tolkien's? It's post-apocalyptic fantasy, it's not "future" anything. Hell, even the guns are about the same as current (real world) technology...the only thing "futuristic" is the cybernetics, and those could just as easily be skinned as magical or steampunk or whatever.

What I really have on my hand are two different books. One finished and one not. Two games, not one. The finished one is even playable.

It is, though, in need of a lot of polishing. Rereading it really made me cringe in places. I kind of hate how I wrote it: my style, my wording. It does need an overhaul, but mainly in phrasing. It needs to be clearer, more succinct and useful in conveying its rules. And it needs to be more creative in how it models certain in-game systems.

So, yeah. Looks like I'm back to finishing Cry Dark Future. Just to put it to bed...finally.

Expect the blogging to be light and sporadic for the near future. Again: apologies.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Another Thursday, Another Cup o Coffee

Plenty of musings the last couple weeks (as well as one near-finished post about *mumble*mumble* paladins sitting on the draft board), leading me to my usual predicament: too much to say and little hope of putting together a coherent blog post.

But as I'm at the Baranof, fairly coffee'd up, and out of blogs and sports news to read (I mean, do I really care the Mariners have picked up a player for their godawful bullpen? They've only been above .500 once this season!), I might as well write something. Writing something is better than writing nothing. In fact, it's a LOT better: I almost always feel better after doing so.

Like I'm getting something accomplished or something.

Watching Ye Old Television the other day (late at night) I was struck again by the thought of how many gaming geeks must have fallen into the business of producing, scripting, and directing business.  Caught a bit of some Transformers sequel (don't ask me which. I watched the first one in the theater when it came out years ago and have since tapped out), and could not help but think THIS is what Siembieda is trying to convey with the whole S.D.C. versus M.D.C. thing. THIS is Rifts (or Robotech or whatever): giant alien un-killable monsters that snap their fingers and inflict huge amounts of property damage. Clearly the creators of this series used to play Palladium around the cafeteria table in high school, same as me and my old buddies.

Watching the new Game of Thrones season kick-off I was again struck by the thought of how much it looks like someone's old school D&D campaign, just bashed together with house rules and shoot-from-the-hip historic analogues thrown in. How does an assassin use their disguise ability? Like this: some magical latex mask that you can whip out of your pocket at the drop of a hat (I went back and reread my old PHB and DMG and could find nothing that would contradict the way a "faceless man's" ability is portrayed in the show). Who needs fake beards and padded clothes? Not these guys.

[there is quite a bit more in the books on the manufacture of poisons, but nothing that would preclude the kinds of mass assassination...with as little explanation...as what we see in GoT]

Same holds true for the undead (someone likes their wights!), or rangers, or...well, you get the point. Game of Thrones the show (I haven't read more than a couple of the novels) feels a lot like an OD&D campaign run by some curmudgeonly Old Schooler who said, "We're going to get rid of humanoids and just cannibal hill people," and "We're really going to dial back on the availability of magic in the game" while still retaining out-and-out gonzo elements.

[actually, reminds me a bit of Gus over at Dungeon of Signs]

You still have your plate-armor wearing dudes in a world without gunpowder. You still have your magic weapons ("Valerian steel"). You still have "raise dead" though on a much smaller (and darker) scale. Heck, you still have dragons...but these are much more of the Chainmail type (and used in the same way) than the latter-day McCaffery-color-based creatures.

Anyway...

What other bits of gaming geekery did I spot on the screen recently? Hmm...something, but it's escaping me at the moment. I know I see all sorts of moments in the superhero genre that seems to have been influenced by gaming...but then, as superhero games have been influenced by the comic book genre, it's possible that I'm just confusing the origin of the tropes.

One show that inspired gaming (rather than the other way around) was the old Robotech TV-series (translated and re-branded from an even older Japanese series. Well, three series, but whatever...). The kids and I finally finished watching the first season of that (the "Macross saga") on Netflix last week. It was still a lot of fun (I haven't seen it in decades), and even Minmei's music, while grating, was bearable. Of course, my children are now singing her songs all the time...

Still lurking in some bargain bins...
Of course, we had to go out and look for a copy of Palladium's old Robotech RPG so that we could play. And fortunately we were able to pick up a used copy for $10. Man, I haven't played or run that game for...well, for decades. I had a trio of gaming buddies in high school (Michael, Mike, and Ben) who LOVED anime and comics and we're huge Robotech players...they were my introduction to the game (as well as Heroes Unlimited), and I had a chance to borrow their books and play it with them on one or two occasions.

Funny enough, now owning my own copy, it's pretty much what I remember: a mess of a game which uses the Palladium system in a manner that makes it really, really difficult to capture the feel or themes of the show. Not even via the combat system (which is Palladium's emphasis). *sigh*

[I'll have to write more about my high school gaming sometime. Those guys introduced me to the extended Palladium catalogue...I'd only ever played TMNT prior...and I introduced them to Stormbringer, BattleTech, and Vampire the Masquerade. This was during the twilight years of TSR and we NEVER played "those games." At least not together...]

Diego REALLY wanted to play Robotech (of course), but just running the chargen is So Damn Boring And Slow (all those useless skills...) that we quickly gave up and decided to write our own, streamlined game. I've got a couple-three pages of notes for the thing so far, and if I can get my kid to draw some robot pictures maybe I'll publish it as an e-book or something. I'm pretty happy with what I've got so far, but I'd still like to work in various Robotech-isms to make the game something other than a map-less war-game. We'll see, we'll see...fortunately, it's a pretty lightweight project so I might be able to bang it out in a week or so (Ha! I've said that before!) if I can find some time between the playdates and summertime chores (yard sale this Saturday...).

Let's see what else have I been up to...? A lot of game-related, post-apocalyptic stuff (infer what you will). But that's a subject for another post (waaaaaay too long). Oh, I met someone who's known and worked with Mike Mearls and we had an interesting conversation about him (nothing bad). Picked up a new RPG that has perhaps the coolest presentation ever...hoping to run that one in August (when my family is out-o-town). What else, what else...

Eh. That's enough for now. I need to finish this coffee and make a run to the post-office. For those who bothered to read my ramblings, thank you! It feels good to get some of this clutter out of my noggin (perhaps my next post will meander less).

Oh, By The Way: print copies of my B/X Companion are about 60-70% sold. If you've been wanting to order a copy, I wouldn't wait too long...not sure when I'll get around to doing another print run.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Thrones of 'Mail (Redux)

So, after some reconsideration I am probably NOT going to do any type of Chainmail mash-up with Game of Thrones. Probably. And for a couple reasons (neither of which has anything to do with me lacking the time, or having too many projects as is). No, instead I've realized:

A) The project has limited usefulness considering my actual resources. Which is to say, I have neither the money nor the time to purchase and pain hundred of different minis of different Westeros armies, much as I might like to. Even using a Chainmail scale of 20:1, we're talking about battles featuring thousands of troops on both sides. I mean, who runs that kind of thing? Well, war gamers (obviously), but I've never been that hard core. And folks who are tend to be pretty devoted to a single genre, historic time, and/or game system. And I'm just not that devoted to GoT.

B) Despite its popularity as a television program, a lot of fans quite frankly "don't get" what the show is about. And I don't mean "blood-and-soft-core-Tolkien-porn;" I'm talking about the overall story of the show.

Take my wife as an example. She is a very smart lady. She is a fan of the show and has watched every episode. After watching last night's episode (twice...something we tend to do as we'll often miss parts of the first broadcast while putting kids to sleep and whatnot), we had a brief conversation and I realized she has almost no clue as to how the whole backstory-plot ties together. She didn't know why the blonde girl is on the other side of the world, or who Ned Stark's sister is, or why those Dornish chicks seem so upset, or...well any of the setting's history, really.

Which is fine: you don't need to know this stuff to enjoy and be a fan of the show. There's plenty of Hatfields-McCoys stuff to latch onto ("You killed my brother/sister/father/child/cousin, so now I must kill you.") She knows Ramsey is an asshole. She thinks Jon Snow is the hero. She thinks Tyrion is great (though she doesn't get why he's helping the dragon lady). She knows Cersei has problems with the religious zealots.

Etc. There's plenty of engrossing, immediate things going on to keep one's interest. But when you ask "do you know who these people are" or "what their relationship is" or "why are they doing these terrible things," my wife is like, huh, I don't know. Hadn't thought about it.

And honestly, I would probably be the same way if I hadn't read the first two novels of the series and spent a ton of time surfing the A Song of Ice and Fire wiki researching Martin's world and characters for various projects over the last couple years. That to me is the most fascinating part of the fantasy epic: the fictional world, its history, and the complex way in which its history unfolds.

[the wife's special area of interest is actually in the technical side of filmmaking...she can tell you all the gaffes and editing snafus that occur in a show, which such things go right over my head]

But as I said, you don't really need a "deep understanding" to enjoy a thing. One of the few memories I have from when I was five years old is the first time I got to go over to a school chum's home without the presence of my parents. My best friend at the time, his name was Eric Foy...no idea what happened to him, he left the school the following year and I never saw him again. Anyway, we spent the morning watching Spectreman on a television in a shady basement, then emulating the show the rest of the day. To this day, I honestly don't know any more about Spectreman now than I did then...some guy turns into a giant (hero) robot and fights giant monsters, generally by flying around and shooting bullets/missiles out of his fingers...but, really, what more do you need to know? Do you like giant robots shooting bullets at giant monsters bent on destroying the Earth? Here you go!

It's the raised arm that gives
you the "Shazam effect."
[I realize there was a similar, more popular Japanese import called Ultraman, but that was a show I never did get into, and thus no little about. Why not? Because I already had Spectreman...duh!]

[on a mostly unrelated note: considering how little I actually remember from when I was five...the same age my son is now...I wonder if our years spent in Paraguay will leave more than a handful of memories in his mind. I don't know. My parents were never ones to rehash the past and retell old stories, whereas Diego's father is an excessively long-winded dweller on "what-has-gone-before" and spends a lot of time conversing and reflecting with the boy. Who knows. He just went over to his best buddy's house (Seba) a week ago...the first time he's been allowed to go on a playdate solo]

SO...(getting back to Game of Thrones)...while for me, Chainmail (or something like it) might be a good way to model the basic (fantasy) war-game of the setting, I'm really not sure it would appeal to anyone but me. People fascinated with history and war (and war-games) often could care less about a fantasy world like Martin's, and folks interested in fantasy worlds like that in Martin's books don't need to recreate the fiction they're enjoying.

I'm a strange duck.

Painted by a different strange duck.
I would also like to say, for those who did read my last post on the subject, that I was talking out of my ass when I started talking about "Braunstein sub-plots." I don't know shit or shinola about Braunstein...other than what I've read about its part in the historic origins of the hobby. However, a game that could be used to model the political machinations and alliances of Game of Thrones (as an add-on to a war-game) can be found in the old Dragonriders of Pern board game (which, in the past, I've compared to a kind of "proto-RPG").

In fact, if I did change my mind about doing something with GoT, I would probably START with Dragonriders of Pern (rather than Chainmail), as there are some strong similarities in its premise: like Game of Thrones, it features a world of bickering, feudal lord types who must find a way to resolve their differences to combat a greater, world-threatening menace.

[yes, they both have dragons, too, but they're not really used the same...]

Yeah, that's an idea...but NO, no, no it still doesn't change my points A and B above! Plus, my copy of Dragonriders is back in Seattle so there's no way for me to cannibalize for rules at this juncture. So I'm going to stop talking (and thinking) about it now.

Really.

Well, I'm going to try to stop anyway...

Friday, August 7, 2015

Mutants Rule

Earlier this week (Monday? maybe) my son and I finished watching the last episode of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes animated series. Ye Old Netflix suggested another show we might like to watch: Wolverine and the X-Men animated series. As it is (like Avengers) rated TV7 and (also like The Avengers) lacks the "FV" ("fantasy violence" tag) I figured we could give it a shot. My son understands superheroes and cartoons are just fiction, after all.

Welp, we haven't been disappointed. The boy digs it (he now says the X-Men have been added to his favorite superhero teams which previously only included the Avengers and "the Superfriends"). He does continue to refer to it as "The Mutants" ('Papa, can we watch The Mutants while we eat lunch?') which would probably have been a more apt title, if (perhaps) not one with the same cache.

[though "cache" is a relative term...I see the name "Wolverine" in a title these days and I'm pretty immediately disinterested. I reached my saturation point with little, furry guy some years back]

Anyway, the show's not bad, if a bit disjointed and grabass, story-wise (compared to tight story arcs of The Avengers). At least the characters and plots are recognizable to Yours Truly. And in addition to be a good model for teamwork, there's a nice message of tolerating others and their differences which allows me to justify my child's exposure of the program.

And from a gaming perspective, it's starting to percolate some inspiration in my brain.

The "gamers ADD" thing is a tired subject for blog posting, but it's no revelation to long-time readers of this blog that "game designer ADD" is a much more serious topic...in that flitting from project to project is a sure recipe for not getting shit done. Now, if I was a big company with a staff of writers and designers, this wouldn't be an issue: I'd hand off ideas and concepts to staffers and just oversee the development of "products" [anyone see my recent post about "entering a new phase" as a publisher? This is a taste of the direction I'm ruminating on]. But at this point I'm not a "company;" and multiple inspirations are dangerous de-railings when it comes to completing projects.

It is what it is.

The part that's got me thinking is the whole post-apoc, (anti-)mutant war, sentinel-filled future those X-Men folks always seem bent on preventing. The idea of such a future was a good and interesting one when it first came out in the comics...taking the mutant analogy for the Civil Rights movement (and general history of prejudice and intolerance in this country) and ramping it up in combination with the themes one finds in the 1984 film The Terminator (dudes from the future traveling back in time to prevent a war with "the machines"). Actually, the Days of Future Past storyline predates Terminator (1981), but the later storyline involving Nimrod and Rachel Summers physically traveling back in time was in 1985 and feels a bit derivative (to me). ANYway...

That's a lot go giant robots.
In 1987, TSR published MX1: Nightmares of Futures Past for the Advanced Marvel Superheroes RPG. MX1 isn't really an adventure module; instead, it's an entire campaign setting placing PCs in the dystopian future where the machines (the sentinels) have taken over. Most of its 36 pages contains information on the world, the sentinels, equipment, antagonists, procedures for searches, and a sample internment camp, as well as special (new) rules regarding popularity and karma use in the setting. Only the last 4 or 5 pages contain adventure ideas and possible scenarios. It's really a toolbox to run your own guerrilla war against giant robots in a dystopian future setting. Later TSR offerings MX2 and MX3 were straight "adventure modules," but ones set in the same campaign setting.

MX1 is interesting and has lots of good, useful information but, in my opinion, doesn't do enough to tweak the original MSH rules for compatibility with the rather dark and gritty setting. For example, there's no changes in character creation to insure appropriateness (i.e. a tightly themed setting could easily devolve into an ordinary cosmic weirdness/kitchen sink game MSH is prone to do). Normally, "appropriateness" isn't an issue as MSH does a great job of modeling the exact same weirdness found in the Marvel universe circa the early to mid-80s...but MX1 would probably work best in a "standard" MSH campaign wherein a PC hero group makes a (temporary) foray into the future to save a blighted alternate timeline.

A more manageable take on the "mutant hunted apocalypse" was suggested by Dennis Laffey in his recent Gamma World/Marvel mash-up campaign that uses Mutant Future as its base system. Dennis has been busy of late with a new baby and his ongoing Chanbara project, so I'm not sure if the campaign is still up and running, but the idea of using the Gamma World system (or, rather, the BX version of the GW system) is a much better starting point for grim-dark future than superheroic, narrative re-writing, nobody-can-die system that is MSH. Still not a perfect fit for the original concept of the setting (the war machines of GW far outclass the mutations)...but then, Dennis isn't trying to do the original concept. His campaign's apocalypse is inspired by the concept, but the campaign world is a far more primitive one (I use the term in a good way), more akin to the easy savagery and general weirdness found in Thundarr the Barbarian.

B/X is a good choice for gritty...I wish Dennis would publish his house rules for the campaign. But it's not quite what I want. A civilization that's already fallen (the default setting for GW) is one that's more about heroic survival in the wilderness and building a new community/civilization. I want a heroic quest to SAVE the civilization BEFORE it falls. But I still want gritty. Hence the need for a new game.

See? This is why I'm a fan of multiple game systems rather than the proponent of the "one-size-fits-all" universal RPG. If I actually pursue this inspiration (and start writing up notes), it will be the THIRD superhero RPG I've started since May. Well, third for which I've done substantial work...one was already a "work in progress." But all have different themes, settings, and styles of play. My street level game (heavily inspired by the Daredevil net series and my favorite Marvel small-timers) utilizes some narrative mechanics, explores a "closed system" (with a definitive endgame), and also attempts to run GM-less. My "hero team" game draws its inspiration from the Avengers, Justice League, etc., makes use of my updated DMI system (previously demo'd as Legendary Might), and focuses on cinematic supers action, as opposed to the comic book style and tropes.

But this would be something different. You're not harnessing your rage (a big theme in my low powered game) to "clean up the streets." You're not blowing up buildings in an attempt to save the Earth from alien empires and high-tech terrorist organizations bent on world domination. Instead, you're battling a World Gone Bad, in which humans have turned on each other (and continue to turn on each other) under the sight of their gigantic robot overlords. I kind of like the idea of different character classes (limited to, say, mutants, cyborgs, normals, and genetic experiments) with separate power suites and leveling to represent how experienced your resistance fighter is.

"I eat mutants like you for lunch."
On the other hand, how much mileage can you get out of fighting giant robots again and again and again? Would anyone be interested in playing a Terminator-style RPG fighting against the machines and "Skynet?" It feels more like a board game...or perhaps a video game...in which there'd be an actual objective, "get-to-the-end" target to obtain. Wipe out the bad mecha, return to normalcy (or, at least, the possibility of rebuilding the world that was lost). Is that enough for an ongoing RPG?

Maybe not.

[see the game Bliss Stage for ideas of running an RPG that focuses on the relationships and mental stability of survivors fighting a war of resistance against hopeless odds in a post apoc future; similar mechanics could probably be adapted if you wanted a more character exploration-style version of this concept]

Anyway, I don't really have time to start another project, so the question is probably moot (though one I'll continue to mull over). Too many other things to work on, including the post-apoc revamp of Cry Dark Future (which will NOT be turned into a supers game, thank you very much). Then again, if I had the right collaborator....

More on this later. I've got to put the kid down for his nap.