Old Stuff Day - For the love of Spock

It's Old Stuff Day today, for bloggers to highlight a post or two deeper in the archive, that might not otherwise be seen.

Leonard Nimoy passing makes me feel mine could be this:

'The glad lightness of a far future and alterpluristemics'

The video also has Mr Nimoy giving some thoughts on the nature of Spock as a character, and clips from the episode.

Thanks to Miniature Musings of a Bear for the memory jog, and Rob at Warhammer 39,999 for setting it in motion four years ago, not to mention Nimoy for helping make old stuff like Trek some of the newest we've got, even decades later. Per The Secret Sun, where are the moon bases already?

The rot might have set in even while the original series was being prepared, if it is true it was Mariner-4 that rattled our confidence, showing us a Mars different than in the fiction.

And if you're a blogger, for any tabletop space, and want readers for newer posts too, maybe join the House.
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Dragoncrawls and behavioural deployment

Still here. One of the posts I put up ahead of the lull was Dragons & Dungeons, on reversing the standard emphasis, and since then Red Orc and Jens D. have given the idea a bit more thought.

Suggested reading order would be the original post, Red Orc's follow-up then the latest.

I'm still wondering how it might work in wargaming. Maybe the forces would be set up based on likely unit activity, and the terrain simultaneously? Each force could be divided into a few categories, say Special, Scout, Column, Support and Patrol, which already happens to some degree in various games, with organisational charts, special rules etc.

Edition whoring; fifth and seventh; and things unseen

So we've lived to see a fifth D&D and a seventh 40K. Who'd have thought it, back in 1974 or '87?

I've been reflecting. The more editions, the more I think the magic, and the truer quality, was in the first, in OD&D and Rogue Trader; and the more I think that after any new thing appears, if we love it, the way to honour what it represents is to carry on truly developing, to push the limits in corresponding ways, not just rework.

The Return of the Jedi and/or the Rise of the Galaxy

I'd think that in a leg of western history that looks heavily shaped by and for the internationalist, disaffected and atheist 'nerd' with a moderately idealistic view of nature - I'm generalising and conflating a bit - the Ewoks would be more popular.

After all, they're an ungainly, galactic everyman, underdogs who come good, mastering a tyrannical aggressor with their own tech, even taking the first steps in a new paradigm.

And if not absolutely popular, at least relatively, compared with, say, the Jedi, presented as physiologically favoured, aristocratic alpha warriors not so much seeking progress by intelligence as led by an abstraction to restore a presumably established religious order.

Why this dissonance? Is it just the Jedi having more readily identifiable individuals, or traditional hero figures? Or is it the personally empowering mysticism of the Force, or the Jedi access to not just spiritual but worldly power? Or is it something more subtle..?

When worlds collide! or share a barycentre for a while

I've not done a funky link set for a bit so here are some recent crossover posts, or more intricate combinations of theme, you might not have seen.

• JD at The Disoriented Ranger pondered design and play in light of the OSR
• Zhu Bajiee statted up some Tékumel miniatures for third edition Warhammer
• Stelios linked Oldhammer to the OSR and will do a third edition readthrough
• The Beat Ronin reflected on growing up and changes in approach over time
• Von showed the making of a Black Legion warband with Realm of Chaos
• Jonas at Deathworld Adventures played GW's Inquisitor with action figures
• Trey at From the Sorcerer's Skull sketched a superheroic science fantasy
• Wayne R. at SIU listed classic modules, with work by Raggi and McKinney
• Early D&D player Cyclopeatron converted a Menoth Avatar for Warmachine
• The Alternative Wargamer scratchbuilt a YG-4210 for FFG's popular X-Wing
• Nathan at Corehammer compared past GW artist Ian Miller to HP Lovecraft
• The Secret Sun looked at the evidence for Lovecraft having a secret source
• Tim at The Other Side wrote up Mary Poppins, as both witch and time lord
  

There's a lot more weirdness going on, especially in the upper three blogrolls on the left.
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From the Osteolix to the Inner Clumps

Underworld Lore #4 is coming this week, which means the Arcane Dwellings table needed to be done faster than expected, so I did the last nine myself, to be sure there are 30 ready to go.

If you want to add any, like Red Orc did with the Threshold of Eternity on Monday, go right ahead, and Greg can push that many of mine off the list.

Firepower of that magnitude: FFG, GW and licensing

Fantasy Flight's X-Wing has been causing a great disturbance in the FLGS, being unusually accessible with its well-known setting, light rules and prepainted miniatures. And soon there'll be Star Wars: Armada, for battles with capital ships.

At Offalmongers' Folly

I'm going to finish the Arcane Dwellings table at Gorgonmilk entry by entry. This is the first. If you want to jump in, no need even to ask: post here.

Here it is then, weird and maybe a little gross. If it's a mealtime, you might want to stop right now.

Waiting for Ragnarök - Oldhammer to win by default?

It's true. There's a new Space Wolf codex out for 40K, the fourth since the codex cycling began, and all three original characters - Ragnar, Ulrik and power armoured Njal - are still available, over 21 years after they first appeared in White Dwarf.

Pro-millinerial tension

Hats can be big in adventure fiction. Best known of all maybe is that myth made for Indiana Jones.

But how do we know how important they are, or more importantly when they've fallen off? In mass wargames, who cares? In skirmish games many might, and in tactical roleplay it could be critical, not least because there could be things under them. But where's the rule, or rather that option?

And what about wigs, bandannas or weirder, grimdarkling-ish things? The navigators of 40K have a third eye with an effect that in D&D and related games could be save or die: if it slips, we really need to know. They might be the season's must-have accessory - or not - and affect reactions. Here's a simple approach:

What's made 40K pay?

My post on aesthetics in 40K, Von's follow-up and Patrick's comparisons produced some solid discussion and several insights. This builds on it.

The success of GW's various games hasn't given it a license to print money, but once the company captured a critical mass of attention* it's quite possible it did gain a set of very powerful tools for keeping the money flowing. Thanks to the responses to certain events over the past few years we've probably all got a better idea of what they might be.

* I'm thinking especially of the UK in the early days and the benefits of importing D&D, opening shops in so many towns and having White Dwarf in newsagents large and small, especially as WD moved towards coverage of GW exclusively, and of course creating one or maybe two major settings and several major systems amid a whole constellation of smaller. It's worth bearing in mind that a tabletop game producer can't sell one key piece of the puzzle - fellow players, who have to be numerous enough to make play worthwhile.

Once the interest was there, and assuming the interested parties had their own income or the income of parents or others to fund it, transfers of cash could well have been regulated by a set of general processes I'm going to call elaboration, recodification and devaluation in the case of three primary, and rotation in the case of a secondary.

Dragons & Dungeons

I wonder how different the world would look today if 'D&D' actually stood for 'Dragons & Dungeons'?

Maybe no different. The typical module might be creature-focused rather than site-based. But the cascading consequences of even that fine change, in minds across the lands and down the years, could have done odd things.

The Unbearable Lightness of Grimdark?

This particular thread is one of the more useful discussions on the aesthetic trends in 40K that I've seen in a while, going beyond level of detail, phwoar factor and producer ranking. It's at BoLS believe it or not, on a more or less ephemeral post.

One of the arguments corresponds to that idea that D&D is now its own set of reference points, which came up again with the nods to past fiction in fifth edition. A couple more:

 

Deep thought Friday

Haven't done one of these in a quite a while now.

The background reading includes two posts from today: Trey's review of Guardians of the Galaxy, and the idea certain aspects suggest Farscape, and a post at Realms of Chirak on 'citogenesis', essentially a lack of care in recording knowledge.

What's the connection? Read this article at the IEET site on the idea of intelligence limiting itself.

The question then. Is intelligence an evolutionary dead end and what role does culture play in this?

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Digging the Gravelands

Have you seen this? While I was in stasis, Hereticwerks released a first shortform module, GL-1, Taglar's Tomb.

It's a revised and expanded take on a site they posted for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day last year. If you're a regular reader, you know what I think of Hw, and this is as accessibly weird and as dreamily expansive as ever.*

If you play a tabletop game, or like a speculative genre, you can probably do something with the contents. If you play a rules-light roleplaying game, like D&D or a game inspired by it, like S&W, you can probably do even more.

Even for wargaming, and not just for Oldhammer. For an unusual scenario, the tomb could be set in a hill in the centre of the field, with a scaled up version of the map on a side table and troops entering moving between. The objective would be to get in, hold the line while the diggers go to work and get out with more goods. Assign a tolerance to the surrounding slopes and walls, agree a rule for collapse and let the madness commence.

The trek with the guide could also work as a rolling road, with one side deploying hidden.

It's PWYW so you can get it for free and if you like it go back to pay what you think it's worth. They've also got a page of extra material, developing some of its vaguer elements.

As ever, check out their blog too, and Bujilli especially - he's got a big decision to make.
 
* As says André Breton via their sidebar: "Objects seen in dreams should be manufactured and put on sale."
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Weapon patterns, marks and mods, and the squearoll

This has been on the list a while. It was sparked off by a discussion on weapons in 40K at an old Outside the Box, but could work for all kinds of games using dice to resolve success and failure.

The starting point was the fact 40K is nearly 27 years old now, in which time a lot of the core weapons have been sculpted in various forms. Compare the original lasgun for the Imperial Guard - or Army as it was - and the Squats, cult etc. to more recent versions. In the real world, reflected in historical and modern wargaming, various modifications and variants also exist, and the same could well be true for other more fantastical settings.

Think about all the possible forms that slings, bows, crossbows etc. can or could take, let alone the range of melee weapons. This is true also for many if not all technologies in conventional science fiction, science fantasy and fantasy, possibly even innate abilities.

Near future wor*fare

When mum came back from the war her skin was on inside out and she was crapping through a hatch in her belly button. That was nothing. Last time she'd coughed her lungs up and if not for the nanopills we'd have needed to stuff them back in ourselves. Like we did with aunt Claire's. Hanging down her front like a forked bib they were. *Yeugh.*

We did laugh though.

But this time it was the baddies came off worse. She had a vid to play us and it was a case of your tote destruxor. She took out two bungalows and the playground beside the old folks home, and Mrs Moggins vaped the brick flats on Mill Street. They pulled everyone back when the 'topes came in.

'Topes? No snopes. We never opened the windows anyway these days, what with the smell from next door. All just piled up out there they were. Good neighbours. Plain bad luck...

Bzzz...

Traveller, the epi-character and a very long game

First go read this. Epigenetics focuses on the idea of meaningful genetic change being passed down the generations by means other than DNA. Lamarckism is the supposedly discredited thinking that change to an organism in a single lifetime can also be inherited.

The article suggests that life has developed methods to transfer by reproduction not only genetic information, but even the experiences of the parents, a form of actual knowledge.

The significance of this is difficult to downplay, and the ramifications are going to keep people occupied for a long time. This is something traditionally fantastical, hard sci-fi at best. Before I come back to what this could really mean, a quick detour through gaming.

Up and at 'em = down and out?

Thanks to the film Gravity the Kessler syndrome is getting plenty of discussion at the moment. That's the idea that objects colliding in orbit could trigger a cascade, with the mass of debris produced potentially rendering spaceflight very hazardous, keeping us on the ground, grounded.

It's easy to imagine it used as a weapon, but for sci-fi and fantasy it could make for a strange new world - one not so far from the world we're in now.

Zone-age Rumours (1d30)

If you've read Roadside Picnic or seen Stalker, you know how inspirational they can be.

John at Fate SF is running a creative project, open to all: add a Zone-inspired work to the gaming canon, for any system. Just write it up and post - maybe using the funky image by Hereticwerks up top - and leave the link at John's, to go into the master table.

Here's my starting point, for narrative skirmish and tactical roleplaying especially: a d30 table of rumours from a Zone-struck world, for some context and large-scale campaign seeds. Feed them into a weird, modern or near-future setting or use them for inspiration.