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..?

Fifth edition thoughts - the depriving background?

A quick comment on a piece of fifth edition D&D.

At first I was generally positive about the idea of the so-called 'background' - the personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws. Now I'm not so sure. It seems more gimmicky as time goes by, more predetermining of narrative as if establishing the characters for the first chapter of a novel, a set narrative, rather than supporting an exploration of another world - and ourselves - wherever it leads; and a shortcut avoiding the need for fuller player engagement, or further restricting player freedom.

Why play to someone else's prewritten background if you can decide one for yourself or start vague, as light as in a DCC funnel, or with a single word or less, and let specifics emerge in play, based on choice and the elaboration of the world in the interaction between players and GM, and characters, factions and landscapes? I'm genuinely curious as to the justification. Surely not just to save more of that increasingly precious time..? If so, I've got a suggestion - do less. None of us have to do everything we're sold.

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:

 

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.

Deep thought Friday

Resolving line of sight through areas like forest is a challenge in tabletop gaming. Trees? Or wood?

Heard of mycorrhizas? Turns out most plants are bonded at their root with a fungus, symbiotically. The fungus sends minerals up from the earth; the leaves send sugars down. Can these be divided?

We thought a tree was a tree - now we know it's more. But we still say 'tree', as if it's one, alone. How much interconnection does language hide..?
_

Choose-your-own-annihilation and cheese with peas

Pegboard left an interesting comment at Faeit 212 yesterday. Here's the essential part:

Tzeentch book has a table on every page. You start by rolling a d6 per page number and comparing it to the table. Your army then takes that many hits. Your opponent gets that many models back. If you roll an even number, you go back a page, odd, forward a page, roll more dice and then your opponent gets the special rules haywire and feel no pain.

It's a joke of course, presumably aimed at GW and a certain thinking on randomness and fun, but there's a radically conservative idea in there. Wargaming and roleplaying have long used tables for resolution, but they've fallen out of favour in the mainstream even if a business model based on large books of rules hasn't. Games like DCC still get good mileage, and there are the funky system-neutral tables at the The Dungeon Dozen.

Imagine this: a choose-your-own-adventure-style book of tables for use at the table, for gaming without randomisers like dice, but with more potential effects and less linearity, at least as many outcomes as table entries. Choose your action, check for contexts and apply the results, maybe jump. But not Student's-t-like distributions: there could be nested tables, option trees and 2D or 3D charts, even close-the-eyes-and-point pictures.

Ban tabletop gaming..?

Following that post on banning Warhammer from last week, look what's just turned up at Slashdot.

A request for details of the web filter that may be introduced in the UK reveals it could also block "esoteric material". What does esoteric mean..?

Choose your dictionary. From the entry at Wiktionary:

1. Intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest, or an enlightened inner circle.
2. Having to do with concepts that are highly theoretical and without obvious practical application; often with mystical or religious connotations.
3. Confidential; private.

That's pretty open. Could it cover niche interests - like wargaming and roleplaying - not always shown so positively? Or dungeons, dragons and made-up worlds, god-emperors and grimdark sci-fi? Could it just collect them up accidentally? Or not so accidentally..?

That's even before we get to "violent material".

In fact, it looks like it could be extended to cover any non-mainstream interest. Blocking an interest could mean it vanishes or declines. It could mean whole areas of knowledge being hard to find or access, maybe lost. With a tool like this you could remake a world.

_

Creating a new codex for fun, but not profit

Still haven't had your favourite codex updated? Or seen your favourite 40K faction get a codex ever, even after all these years - if not decades? Never been offered a simple method for making a whole new one? After all, the galaxy is a very big place.

Here's an idea to experiment with while you wait.

First, think about the faction's nature, then their motivations, means and methods. Write a bit of background, draw a unit or two, convert some up.

Then for each entry in the list do the following...

On those missing xeno/form/s

I'm not talking so much about the Tau delay. If I had to guess, I'd guess that's GW paring down its initial commitment to a release. If sales are falling, they might feel reducing that risk will help.

I'm talking most about the new post at Future War Stories: Where The Frak Are All The Aliens? It goes wider than many in its thinking, and it's still a pertinent question, maybe more so than ever. I recommend reading it. And thinking. Plus if you need the answer to Fermi's Paradox for any spacefaring campaign, just roll 1d10 on William's list.

Also, re the post title, I feel 'xenos' is almost a derogatory term, but 'xenoform' is a little fairer. After all, to talk about other lifeforms is to colour them with our view of what life is.

_

Towards a 'new' encounter - reading, comprehension

Very interesting discussions on OD&D go down (like lead balloons?) at Untimately. I like the blog a lot. Today in the comments Gus L and Brendan suggested - if I'm reading right - that the encounter distance, surprise and reaction rolls can be just a little lacking.

For those who don't speak OD&Dese, encounter distance is the distance at which another party or situation is spotted, a surprise roll determines - surprise, surprise - whether each side is surprised and the reaction roll is a roll made to determine how a potential threat reacts, usually on 2d6 modified by charisma or an equivalent.*

Gus wonders if there's a way to generate more specific circumstances, like what exactly the goblins are doing other than "'goblin things'". I can improvise goblins okay, but I would be interested in a useful tool. I'm also the kind of guy who might help make it, even link to the project. But my worry is a new tool is more complication, especially when different settings and GMs have different takes on who or what a goblin actually is.

So I have a simple idea.

Words for worlds (2) - getting on top of falling stars; tabletop curvature, troid warfare and the sphericrawl

Back in November I made a suggestion regarding the classification of celestial bodies, coining the term troid to group the many terms for objects of lower mass than the newly-minted dwarf planet.

Beyond the pressing and practical concerns, the meteor that broke up over Russia last week poses a supplementary question in this context: can the related terms 'meteoroid', 'meteor' and 'meteorite' be rolled into an expanded solution? We know they can be confusing, and the past few days have been a reminder.

So how about this then - a possible 1d3 table to go with the two 1d4s in the earlier post.

1. troid     2. introid     3. postintroid

It's fairly clear I imagine. The first is the term for a troid outside of an atmosphere, the second while inside but still in motion and the third when in contact with the other body or an immediately adjacent entity, e.g. held by one of us, or on a display cabinet shelf.

Forget the 'stalactite' / 'stalgamite' trouble of 'meteor' / 'meteorite': it's now 'in-', or 'in-' and 'post-'. The Greek-derived root for the whole is altered by the Latin prefixes. Seems apt.

It also leaves an opening for the preintroid, as well as the intriguing idea of an extroid...

You could see this is a form of Newspeak of course, but it needn't be. If science wants all of our minds, and if English is a lingua franca for scientific discourse which non-native speakers have to learn, and if clarity of construction helps young minds comprehend, and if these terms supplement existing terms in the language rather than replace them, enriching the language rather as borrowings from other languages do, we only gain by it.

Dunroamins & Decline - GW, the OGL and its OSR

First, Itras By has finally been published in English. There's a fine review of the original at Harald's and the sample pdf is here. Thanks to Nørwegian Style for posting the news.

Second, in a discussion at BoLS on GW licensing its IP Vossl claimed "the OGL died a horrible fiery death 4 years ago". The OGL is the Open Game License. Part of my reply:

The OGL is alive and kicking. Pathfinder, which was built through the OGL, has at least for some time outperformed the official fourth edition and an Old School Renaissance is thriving because of it too, via what may well be hundreds of smaller publishers. The fact we know about fifth so early, not to mention the general direction it's headed in, may be in part down to the power the OGL has given the player base.

Vossl is clued up and a crisp thinker, so how many other people have never heard of the OGL, a licence that lets gamers create materials compatible with a much-loved system or IP and sell them. It's essentially D&D, but other companies, like GW, might catch on.

One of the beneficiaries and drivers of the development is this Old School Renaissance, or whatever we choose to call it, specifically the D&D OSR. But where are the pioneers vanishing to? How will we stumble across their worlds, or talk to and learn from them?

A few bits and pieces

First, BoLS has a major update on the ongoing GW vs. Chapterhouse case - there's a little more here - and HoP flags up a clever thunderhawk.

Second, if you've been having trouble seeing The M42 Project's vision of an improved alternative to 40K, SandWyrm posted a force organisation chart and revised game introduction. 

Third, there's a discussion going on at Trey's last Warlord review, on change in people and genre, and Roger the GM sees the old school in ITV's classic show Knightmare.

Fourth, one or two of us were commenting a while back with Lovecraft's favourite words, and to expand a shrunk vocabulary I've decided to build on that. I started here and here.

Lastly, it seems no one got that movie reference from the last post, so I've put a slightly more open reference into the next entry for the Maelstrom table. This is entry no. 6 of eight unless someone else jumps in before Saturday. If you have a suggestion, go for it.

     The descent into the Maelstrom... (heading for 1D8)

     6. ... wakes the traveller - who is afloat and wired up in a sensory deprivation tank.
_

Words for worlds (1) - working past dwarves in space

Many people are likely aware of the IAU decision a few years back to create the new classification of dwarf planet, which reduced the 'full' planets in the solar system to eight and added five dwarves: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris. Not everyone was happy, not least with the definition going beyond intrinsics to cover orbital clearing.

Beyond this issue, there's also the problem of division into comets and asteroids, bodies at Lagrangian points, the extra terms like 'minor planet', 'trojan' and 'centaur', transitions from gas giant to star and the challenge of reflecting relative size of moons and planets.

If there are more large worlds in the outermost reaches of our system and billions around other stars or travelling between them, these problems in classification could get worse.

To see if it can be helped based on existing terms, here's a simple two-term approach to core body type. The first word covers construction, the second mass. Here 'dwarf' shows only intrinsic aspects: its mass and hydrostatic equilibrium. Two words are coined: troid, from 'asteroid' and 'planetoid', for bodies of a mass below a dwarf, and mid, for stars and planets between the extremes, which seems fair but not too prosaic, has long roots and could be a nod to our geo- and heliocentric exceptionalism. The word 'planet' is optional.

1. ice / icy          1. troid
2. rock / rocky       2. dwarf
3. gas / gaseous      3. mid  
4. stellar            4. giant

As far as I can tell, it covers the core forms. Gamers will see immediately it's set up like two 1d4 tables so it could at least be used to generate locations for gaming. One or two purely conceptual results could make for interesting sci-fi experiments, like 'stellar troid'.

I think it's clear how it works. Using this approach, rather than teach children that Earth, Mars and Pluto have one or more 'moons', we'd say Earth is a mid with a dwarf, Mars is a mid with two troids and Pluto is a dwarf with five troids. It's still simplified, but less so.

With it our system gains lots of secondary dwarves, and if we're talking status that feels fair to worlds like Titan that may be home to terrestrial life's nearest neighbours. It sees our system become, as far as we know, one stellar mid, two gas giants, two ice giants, four rocky mids, I think 24 mainly rocky dwarves, and the oceans of ice and rock troids.

Various more extrinsic elements can be shown as extra terms, the most obvious being:

1. [primary / secondary / tertiary etc.]   1. [orbital / eccentric [dominant]]

                      2. Langrangian

                       3. interstellar

Halley's Comet then becomes a primary ice troid, or - more fully - a primary, eccentric, dominant ice troid. The adjective 'interstellar' still covers those so-called 'rogue' planets.

Who can see the problems with it?

_

Rogues' gallery - the Orəq

Here's the next faction in the series, what I hope is a fresh approach to a familiar fantasy creature.

I've called them the Orəq, with the 'ə' pronounced roughly 'uh' to load the word with more meanings, like the 'ʒ' in Citiʒant. Like the Trippies they're written up for Rogue Space so should be easy enough to adapt to other rulesets.

So who are these, erm, Orəq then?

The biopoietic homunculars known as the Orəq are born deep in the earth on a number of worlds and have a shifting colouration believed to be an oracular quantum expression.

And what's that got to do with us?

At the GM's discretion, the Orəq may be taken as starting characters and/or be NPCs.

Starting characters: Origin, nature and lifestyle mean around 50% of the Orəq have the Warrior Archetype, and all have a further +1 Acquiring and -1 Repairing plus the Psionic power Clairvoyance, in addition to any powers usually permitted. The Orəq are sensitive to the presence of each other and their creators over short distances in space and time.

NPC groups: A group may include 2D6-1 Orəq drawn from 1D3 spawning cohorts, likely from the same homeworld; 1D3 members of the group will be battling for the role of seer.

Homuncular: At the GM's discretion, Orəq may be of any human clade, gaining clade-specific stats, modifiers, features, rules and options not in conflict with any for the Orəq.

Oracolouration: Once per short cycle, or following a major personal event, there is a 1 in 6 chance that an Orəq's colouration changes by a degree. The GM sets the incoming colouration, but the Player defines in general terms the significance of a first appearance of each colouration for the in-game future - the GM must then cause some interpretation of this definition to occur. Oracular accuracy falls further with distance from homeworld.

Technologies: The Orəq use relatively primitive equipment, but learn rapidly and borrow readily. All Orəq carry a variety of dusts, shaped stones and naturally occurring detritus and a means to utilise these as distractions or weaponry, as per the profile given below.

                                                                                                                              

Blowpipe, sling etc.   S    LOL* or alternatively Target at -1 to Tests next round    Silent

                                                                                                                              
* A Rating of LOL is one lower than S, and does Damage of 1D6-1.

But what are they doing here..?

The GM may want to roll below for each starting character or NPC group, who is/are:

1. ... emerging from a subterranean spawning complex, or an equivalent location.
2. ... trading, or otherwise offering skills, services or technology, likely borrowed.
3. ... acting as a mercenary element, possibly part of a precognitive strike force.
4. ... drawn by or pursuing an intuition, thought or vision, perhaps unconsciously.
5. ... gathering with a vast horde, likely preparing for or conducting spiritual war.
6. ... seeking others of their kind or a creator, or attempting to induce spawning.

Feedback is always welcome. If you haven't got a copy yet, Rogue Transmissions #2 is out, and Hereticwerks have been posting more of their own great Rogue Space material.

Rogue Space downloads - Rogue Space news

Hereticwerks - Swords & Stitchery - Mik's Minis - TheFairlyUnkempt - Sam Z's Blog 'o Doom - Roll for Treasure - P'sE

_

Ceramic monitor commune

A while ago I rolled up a term on the unpublished Worldboat table. It turned out I didn't need it then so here it is now: ceramic monitor commune. I'm interested in any weird ideas for what it might be.

_

Deep thought Friday

With a recent reminder of the Apollo programme and the clear contrast with Curiosity, it's natural there's been a lot of talk about how things stand.

So when we say a given entity was ahead of its time, could we in fact be a) recognising that we ourselves are behind our own time, b) admitting that we've allowed ourselves to become trapped in a future the given entity helped create, and/or c) accepting the entity as a creator and in doing so exonerating ourselves of failure to do better?

_

Deeper dice (2) - Dice+ and networking

If you haven't heard of Dice+, there's some info here at BGG.

It's a powered die, for use with tablets and so on. The version shown seems to have a battery, accelerometers, LEDs and a wireless transmitter. You roll as normal, the LEDs show the roll was recognised and the result is sent to the main device.

With all that tech inside we might wonder how balanced it can be, and how big the market is. After all, how many of us would want to carry it with a mobile device, especially for a possible US$30? I'd guess the firm want the niche to support long-term development with an eye on larger electronic gaming surfaces.

Whatever, it has me pondering how else a die like this could be used. There's clearly potential for peer-to-peer with setups like Pluristem and Flailsnails, and for any dispersed group. But what about in face-to-face games too? If all the dice were hooked up as a network, some of the ideas on relationships in the last post could be automated, and explored much further.

Assuming we're even willing to accept the idea - and I'm not convinced it's a good move - what else could a network do?

Think how cybernetic our kind of gaming already is. The basic language we use can seem quite limited, and tabletop games very mechanistic - we're all but chess computers at times. So what if the dice had voice recognition? If they realised one roll was a hit roll, they might guess the next die picked up was for damage, and even identify the rules needed. They could follow the game. With a speaker they could even tell us the number we need, or the chances, or correct us, and maybe advise us.

If terrain and miniatures were tagged, or the map scanned, the dice could triangulate the positions. The network could act as an opponent. Maybe one day we'll be pieces in their games..?

_

Deep thought Friday

Another DtF via Mr Clarke, with a warm-up here.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.         Arthur C. Clarke

Is "advanced" the right term? If we perceive time as linear, are we mistaking the nature of change, seeing it as progress? Seeing what was or could have been as failed? Is our thinking on science a teleology, or teleological argument, with science the deity? Would 'sufficiently unfamiliar' be more accurate? Could elsewhen than our future hold unfamiliar technology and our age be 'backward'?

_

Gdub, the beeb and us

You've quite likely now heard about, read or watched the recent BBC report on 40K.

We've had comparisons to the Greek article and plenty from a gamer's point of view, but with a former national newspaper editor arrested in the UK yesterday and the Leveson Inquiry on, that seems too shallow. At BoLS eeore said of the BBC look: "It is a hatchet job, it's just more subtle"; I disagree, but I'd say that level of thinking is far more useful.

There's a lot to ponder, but I'll keep it simple. The first thing that stands out for me is the interviewee's claim that: "people fall back into [40K] as as an adult when they realise 'I don't care any more'." But that isn't a reason for return as much as an openness about having done so. So what could those reasons be then? In a recent commment I wrote:

Remember, 40K could now be so deeply a part of the way each of us experiences the world, and the emotional bond so strong after years of reading, modelling, painting and gaming with friends, that few of us can make a clean break.

Hold that thought. The next most outstanding element for me is the response from GW CEO Mark Wells to the claim of price exploitation: "It's just not in our nature," he says.

This from the CEO of a public limited company whose executives, so the journalist tells us, "say they don't do media interviewees". Why not? The two statements feel more like the jumping off point for some fuller investigative journalism than the closure of a thing.

What's the connection? Watching the lawyers at the Leveson Inquiry do what I'd call a rather poor job of questioning Paul Dacre, another UK newspaper editor, I couldn't help but wonder: how do we scrutinise a media that shapes language and mental landscape if we have to use that language itself, appealing to an audience shaped the same way?

How do we keep powerful institutions in check when they form the media which informs us, when we work within them nine to five and spend our free time with their products?

How far can we freely grow into new spaces if pruned any given way at an early age?

Are we trapped today in an imaginative and perceptual loop? Are we doomed to return to the old because we can't make a new, and because we can't articulate why we might?

_