Misc.
Verbiage & Other Sundry Tales
In the Life of Jim
It's been a summer of travel, first to
Taiwan where my wife's parents held a
massive hometown reception for their
two daughters who'd both gotten
married during the previous two years.
This involved going around from table
to table and drinking numerous glasses
of Chinese beer. •Hic• However, the
highlight of the trip, at least for me, was
a visit to the national library in Taipei.
What can I say? I like books.
The next trip, which we'll be in the
midst of by the time you read this, will
be to Greece. The point, ostensibly, is to
introduce Shuo-tai to all of my Greek
relatives. For her, however, I think the
real point it just to see a small piece of
Europe. This is a girl who really loves
to travel. I'm personally more of a
homebody, but as long as I get a little
time for swimming and reading, I won't
complain too loudly. In any case, it
should prove an adventure.
Revisions & Errata:
Dictionary of the Future
(better than I thought)
In A&E #358 I reviewed Faith
Popcorn's and Adam Hanft's Dictionary
of the Future, calling it somewhat of a
coffee-table book and making the
scurrilous claim that it wasn't terribly
serious. Boy, was I ever wrong. This
book is serious!
I took it along with me to Taiwan and
started reading it the way it's supposed
to be read, that is to say, from cover to
cover, and I quickly realized that it
would be time wasted unless I was also
taking notes. So there I was like a
college freshman studiously absorbing
his textbook in active-reading mode,
and I found myself somewhat stunned
by the sheer amount of work the authors
have done.
This book represents years of
research, yet it has all been condensed
and distilled into bite-sized morsels,
meticulously organized, cross-
referenced to a degree, and essentially
made as easy to digest as possible.
Nonetheless, there's so much here that it
does take a little bit of determination to
wade through it all, but it is worth the
Jim Vassilakos (jimv@uia.net)
effort. For a prospective science-fiction
writer interested in the near future, I
would go so far as to say this book is
indispensable, provided you are willing
to read it with a notepad in hand.
My thoughts on this are as follows.
Most science-fiction seems to take the
form of "tweaking" a few things
(advancing technology as well as
mucking around with the current
political situation) and then examining
what such a society might be like. That,
however, now seems to me as sort of
lazy. While it's certainly easier to
examine a few changes as opposed to
many, it has the effect of parsing
society, whittling it down to the writer's
chief areas of interest, so that in the end,
whatever the story is about says much
more about the writer than it does about
the prospective future.
Although this book focuses
predominately on western society, it
discusses so many trends and
predictions that it seems to me to have
the effect of opening the mind to all
sorts of possibilities that would
otherwise never have been considered.
And I think that going through this
process is important, indeed, perhaps
even essential, if one hopes to take a
more comprehensive approach to one's
contemplation of the near-term future.
The one misgiving I have, however, is
that I really think my mind is too small
to incorporate even half of what this
book has to offer. While some of the
predictions are good for little more than
background dressing, others are
potentially far-reaching in their
implications. How to really make sense
of it all? Nonetheless, I think this book
is important enough that there should be
a copy in every futurist's library.
Countdown to a Meltdown
While I was in Taiwan, the holy grail
suddenly fell into my lap. No, not the
actual holy grail long sought by knights
and kings. This holy grail turned out to
be an article in the July/August 2005
issue of The Atlantic, an article by
James Fallows entitled "Countdown to
a Meltdown." In this article, Fallows
describes the impending economic
crisis as told by a political campaign
manager of the year 2016. It reminded
me of my Prognostications article from
A&E #356, but unlike the miserable
author of that piece of trash, Fallows
actually did his homework, and, in any
case, he can write, which is always a
plus.
Oh, how I wished I possessed the
intelligence and skill to put together
something like this. It's a masterpiece in
twelve short pages. If you can locate a
copy of the magazine, do give it a read.
It says, essentially, what I wish I'd been
able to say.
Collapse: A New Book
by Jared Diamond
I haven't even seen this book yet, so it's
a tad bit premature to be doing a review,
but I saw Diamond talk about it on
Book-TV, so I just thought I'd mention
what he said it was about. C-SPAN2
was doing a broadcast of a brief lecture
he gave at the San Diego Natural
History Museum, and judging from the
many points he made, it looks like it'll
be an interesting read assuming I can fit
it into my copious spare time.1
Diamond, an active environmentalist
who also wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel:
The Fates of Human Societies,2 now
turns his attention to why societies
choose to fail or succeed, and he
identifies various factors which lead
them either to the promised land of
ecological stability or to the well-
traveled alternative, that being a fall into
famine and, ultimately, cannibalism.
In the case of Easter Island, he
ponders what might have been going
through the mind of the native who
found himself cutting down the island's
last tree. At that time, certainly, this
Easter Islander could not have imagined
that the great majority of the island's
population would soon disappear for
lack of protein,3 and that in a few
generations, the worst thing one of his
kin could say to the other would be
1
Me being sarcastically optimistic.
2
This book apparently put a highly
geographic spin on the story of human
history.
3
No more trees to build fishing boats, you
see.
"Your mother's flesh sticks between my
teeth."
Likewise, Diamond posits that the
Inca civilization probably fell due to
deforestation and soil erosion, the Inca
elite so removed from the commoners
that their goal wasn't to save the society
but was rather simply to stay on top of
the crumbling carcass of what had once
been one of the world's great ancient
civilizations.
In both cases as well as many others,
he blames an overexploitation of the
environment as the root cause of most
societal downfall, and insofar as
societies prove able to make the right
choices when confronted with the
limitations of their environment, he
pinpoints a high degree of social
stratification (insulation of the decision
makers from the immediate
consequences of their decisions) as well
as social inflexibility (an over-reliance
on tradition and dogma) as the key
structural components resulting in poor
decision-making and impending
societal collapse.
Needless to say, he's anxious about
the future, but he's not without hope,
remarking that at no time in history has
man possessed such clear understanding
of action and consequence, nor such
knowledge of past failures and the
reasons behind them. In any case, I
think this is a book I'm going to have to
read if I want to better understand
history as well as our future prospects
from an environmental point of view.
If nothing else, you might want to
present a copy to your Republican
friends on their next birthday. As for
myself, I fear a nerd's lament is in
order: "So many books; so little time."
IgTheme: Power Reduction
in RPG Campaigns
(Kill the Rules; Save the Story)
Having GMed AD&D more than any
other RPG, I've many times confronted
the problem of campaigns becoming
overpowered, or to be more specific,
too overpowered for the AD&D system
to effectively govern. When dragons no
longer pose a credible threat, you know
the characters are past the point where
monsters have meaning.
What then? Well, many GMs have
suggested character retirement. Others
have tried to find a way to kill the PCs.
Some have perhaps even been so bold
as to strip the PCs of their magic and hit
them with a graveyard full of level-
draining undead.
I think these are all worthy and well-
tested solutions, however, some years
ago another option was suggested to
me. I happened to be in a car talking
with the creator of The Primal Order,4
and what he suggested took me by
surprise. He said that there's no reason
to have the campaign come to an end
just because the rules don't support the
power level of the characters. Create
new rules. Expand the campaign
universe such that credible threats exist.
In short, the story is what is important,
and ruleset limitations should not be
used as an excuse to kill a good story.
This is more or less the tactic I've
taken with the Jinx campaign, and while
I'm still fumbling around trying to keep
up with Jinx's power level, I'd have to
say that I think it's worth the effort. By
keeping things going past the point
where most others campaigns would
have long since terminated, we rather
feel like we're breaking new ground.
This, of course, is not to suggest that
other PCs haven't done battle with
devils and demons. Nonetheless, I don't
know how many have actually gone to
the trouble to detail the internal politics
of the outer planes as well as create the
necessary backstory to explain it all. It's
a very large tapestry upon which to base
a campaign, probably a bigger hunk of
meat than most GMs will be willing to
thoroughly chew.
There are, of course, campaign aids
which help in this respect. Planescape
comes to mind, as does several more
recent RPG books about Hell or some
deranged facsimile thereof. However, as
a set, these books don't hang together at
all. They're a web of contradictions, so
unless a gamemaster is willing to use
just one to the exclusion of the others,
there's still a great deal of massaging to
be done.
I suppose whether or not it's worth the
trouble will come down to one's
personal reasons for gaming. As for
myself, however, I'll admit that it's more
work than I'm used to as a GM, but the
campaign certainly has it's moments,
moments that I don't believe could be
adequately replicated in a "normal"
campaign.
In short, we'll just have to see how it
goes, but so far, the story remains
interesting.
4
See my article for A&E #300.
Comments on A&E #360:
Myles Corcoran: I liked your ideas on
the future, however, it now seems to me
that the thing that many futurists are
really dancing around is this notion of
singularity. I mean, if smart-AIs are
really in the cards, then it seems to me
that, at least over the long term, human
intellect will no longer be subject to the
limitations of grey matter hardware. At
some point, mind uploading will occur,
and once this happens, then we're truly
in a post-human future. What would
that be like? Well, let's think about this
for just a moment.
When my friends in college first
started getting into MUDs,5 what many
of them discovered were the joys of
coding virtual environments. I
personally never got into this, as I was
never much of a mudder, but with
human intellects immigrating into
virtual space, I would imagine that
much the same phenomenon would
occur, each person/entity building their
own home/realm, and each making it as
simple or as complex as they desire.
Space (volume, area) would not be a
limitation, at least not within reasonable
limits, so each individual might occupy
as ornate or as impressive a domain as,
say, a greater God in AD&D. I could
imagine it getting somewhat ridiculous,
people competing with one another not
in terms of resources but rather in terms
of pure imagination as well as the art of
virtual imagery.
"Yes, notice how the singing water
flows uphill, then back down, then back
up, then through the mountain, and
finally it swirls upward into the clouds,
catching the rays of the twin suns, all
the while vocalizing my symphony. It's a
treat for the ears as well as the eyes,
no?"
Of course, as you indicate, the basic
RPG trope of "kill them and take their
stuff" becomes rather obsolete to the
point of appearing almost comical in
retrospect. I mean, people born into
such a world would likely have no
concept of scarcity, and what that very
fact would do to their personalities I can
scarcely imagine. In any case, it creates
an obvious dilemma over how to create
sustainable conflict, and, at least at first
glance, it seems to me that the only
5
Multi-User Dungeons on the campus
computer network.
conflict that would have any meaning to
such people would be the sort of battles
we might see on daytime soap operas
which are typically waged over
infatuation and pride.
Would that be fun to roleplay? I'm
inclined to doubt it. After all, gamers
derive much of their enjoyment from
the effect they can have on the game
world. What sort of effect can one have
on a world where each person can
create their own private world, where
each person's domain is a work of art,
and where everyone can seclude
themselves in their own private paradise
almost indefinitely?
It would be like roleplaying a bunch
of gods, I suppose, each player literally
the master of their own realm, but
interacting merely for their own
education or amusement. Speaking of
education, I'm inclined to think that
people growing up in such a society
will be so spoiled, so inherently rotten,
that it might serve the society to
demand that each one of them
experiences a number of "simulated
lives" not only for the purpose of
learning the history of their race back
from before the time they went virtual,
but also for the purpose of learning
about themselves and learning about
life, that thing which they emulate, but
which they have long since shed.
Likewise, putting such lives on public
record could serve as a permanent
chronicle of their individual character
and may, in fact, play some factor in
determining their status within the
society, as well as the level of
responsibility that they may be trusted
to assume.
I'd love to read a book about such a
society, but I have absolutely no idea
how all this could be effectively
translated into an RPG.
Michael Cule: re Roleplaying the
Future: The notion of playing a
wandering Time Traveller or a long-
term corpsicle who is revived by
medical professionals at some distant
date and is discovering the future has
always appealed to me, although I've
never participated in either sort of
campaign. I don't suppose you or
anyone else can suggest any fiction
(particularly a good, first-person
narrative) that does a good job of
exploring either situation.
Lee Gold: re NPC Goals & Morals:
Loved your random tables. Perhaps we
should have a random tables IgTheme
with everyone submitting something to
help GMs come up with cool stuff on
the spur of the moment.
re Gene Loans by venture capitalists:
That's an interesting idea. Dictionary of
the Future talked about venture
capitalist speculating in a young
person's future as a scientist or artist,
but gene loans takes it to a whole new
level. Nicely done.
Of course, this idea of social
manipulation going as far back as an
individual's genetic traits is rather
Huxleyian in it's implications. One
wonders, however, what price parents
wouldn't pay to give their children a
"leg up" in life, and, in fact, if we ever
find a "crime gene", it may be the case
that society would demand doctor's
screen for it. Likewise, I can easily see a
straight father wanting to screen his
progeny for homosexuality, just as a
homosexual one, perhaps, may want to
raise a gay child in the loving,
understanding home he never had.
Speaking of which, the concept of
single parent families may not be so
far-fetched if artificial wombs come
into being. Immediately, they would
raise the possibility of women past the
age of childbirth being able to
contribute their pre-frozen eggs to the
conception of their own natural
children. But more far-reaching, they
also create the possibility of the end of
marriage as we know it, and a world
where children may be ordered as if out
of a Sears catalog, all their physical and
innate psychological traits pre-selected,
their "ability scores" maxed to the limits
of biological and genetic manipulation.
Would this necessarily be a bad thing?
I don't know. Imagine a world of
"Alphas". Huxley predicted it would
never work. Likewise, someone once
said that it takes all kinds to make a
functional society.
We have all kinds right now, yet we're
still at each other's throats, at least
geopolitically speaking. I wonder what
a world of Alphas raised by a primary
mother or father, rather than
assembly-line socialized and
programmed as in Brave New World,
would be like. What would it entail?
What would be the possible
consequences of such a sweeping
redefinition of the family unit?
There's another issue that occurs to
me as well, and here I really trot out
onto thin ice, because I don't have a
whole lot of data to back myself up, but
perhaps somebody more knowledgeable
can comment. It occurs to me that with
the explosion of women in the
workforce and the subsequent sliding of
the birth-giving age of women from the
onset of female puberty to a woman's
20s and now 30s and in some cases
even 40s, it seems to me that there's the
possibility of creeping genetic error,
which may slowly and rather quietly
overtake a population before it realizes
what's going on.
Now, granted, we all know that
genetic diseases are more common for
the children of older mothers. My
mother was around forty when she had
me, so I suppose I should count myself
lucky that I've got all my fingers and
toes. But what is less well known is that
people such as myself who are born to
women late in their reproductive life are
at a higher risk for all sorts of diseases
later on. It's quite a long and expanding
list, I though I don't have it in front of
me at the moment, I believe we're even
at a higher risk for diseases like
Alzheimer's and cancer, though I'm at a
loss to understand precisely why, except
to suppose that our genetic makeup
must have something to do with it..
Well, my point here is that if these
problems are genetically driven, then
they are probably being passed from
one generation to the next, yet it is
happening over such long periods of
time and is so pervasive that we don't
notice it. This, of course, suggests that
perhaps due to creeping genetic
regression, maybe we're not as
genetically error-free as even our more
recent ancestors. And if that's true, then
is it really wrong for society to use
advances in science and technology to
try to fix this problem?
I don't know the answer to that, of
course, but I'm tempted to think that it's
an interesting concept to explore within
a near-future setting. Although, I'll not
neglect to point out that as George Will
accurately warned, this is a slippery
slope. Where will we end up if we
should slide down it?
re knowledge workers versus
creativity workers: I'm not sure that this
is a distinction that I would necessarily
draw. I tend to view "creativity
workers", as you call them, as a subset
of knowledge workers, but I also tend to
view all knowledge workers as
exercising some degree of creativity in
the performance of their jobs. However,
for some examples of knowledge
workers, there are, of course, teachers,
librarians, journalists, engineers, etc.
My question regarding Transhuman
Space was over how society will
transform once AIs start squeezing
humans out of these sorts of
professions. Once one postulates truly
smart AIs, it seems to me that this is a
question that inevitably must be dealt
with. We're talking about the end of
work as well as the end of the
responsibility and satisfaction that
comes from work.
While many humans (like you and I)
might devote themselves to their
personal hobbies, I think there's an even
greater number who will immerse
themselves in the short-term
satisfactions of their most pronounced
vices. What that would end up looking
like is anyone's guess, and what sort of
one-upmanship will replace "he who
dies with the most stuff wins" is
presently beyond the scope of my
imagination. Certainly, however, it
would make for an unusual RPG setting
(as Myles Corcoran observes in A&E
#360).
re the Tragasi: Thanks for all your
questions. I'll try to use them in order to
flesh out the write-up in the near future.
Spike Jones: re your political
comments: I really like talking politics
with you. What you have to say never
fails to make me rethink my
point-of-view, and that's definitely a
good thing. I also appreciate the fact
that you can argue the issues without
becoming "heated" about it. In short, I'd
like to talk with you some more about
all this stuff, but unfortunately, at least
one A&Eer has requested that we cut it
out, and Lee has, in her own way, asked
us to keep to gaming as a central topic,
so I'm going to abstain from political
discussions which aren't in some way
tied to gaming or game setting
development.
Nonetheless, if you want to help me
create an offshoot publication where we
do nothing but talk politics, I'm game
for that. Just send me your A&E zines
for issues 358-360, and I'll get busy
trying to put something together. It
might even be worthwhile to try to get
Paul Mason on board if he'd be
interested, since he also has the general
quality of making me think, and this
news about him leaving A&E has me in
a dismal mood.
One non-gaming political comment I
will make, however, is with respect to
your grieving-widow test. It now turns
out that my wife's sister's husband's
youngest brother is being sent to Iraq,
and unfortunately, he's in one of the
most dangerous military occupations:
driver and transportation mechanic.
Apparently, broken-down military
vehicles are a favorite target of
insurgents. So, needless to say, I'm a
little worried, and I can only imagine
what his immediate family is going
through.
He's a good kid: funny, tough, and
with a soft spot for animals. If
something happens to him, I think I'm
rather likely to take it hard, and I'm not
altogether sure that I'd be able to forgive
myself for supporting the war. It's
something I don't really want to think
about, but if anyone reading this
wouldn't mind taking a moment to pray
for his safety, or, at least, that whatever
is best comes from his decision to serve,
his name is Private Kenny Christman.
In short, I clearly fail the grieving-
widow test. I suppose this makes me a
bleeding-heart liberal 
re GAMA & Ryan Dancey: I tried
talking to GAMA, but except for my
dialogue with the one person I
mentioned, that whole route got cut off
fairly early. I did manage to get ahold of
Nicewarmer and asked him for access
to the mailing list so I could read past
discussions, and he said he'd take it to
the board and get back to me, but I
never did hear back from him, and I
don't believe he responded to my last
email.
In any case, like I said before in our
email correspondence, I don't think I'm
knowledgeable enough about the
history of the whole affair to do a
decent job separating truth from fiction,
but I also have doubts that anyone who
is knowledgeable will be emotionally
removed enough from the events to be
able to analyze them in a completely
even-handed way.
That was my concern about your
comments on Dancey. I saw you railing
against him, and there was nobody
around to defend the guy, and I thought
maybe he had a reasonable
point-of-view and it's just not being
covered. So I talked with someone at
GAMA who holds your point of view
about him and I talked with Dancey
himself, and after talking to both sides,
what I see is a big can of worms with
enough blame-game politics to fill a
stadium, and without conducting
detailed interviews of all concerned
parties (which I'm not about to attempt),
I just don't know who to believe. But
what I do know is that both sides have a
point of view. Yours may be right. But
I'm not convinced either way, and until
somebody goes to the trouble of really
reporting what happened in a
dispassionate, even-handed way, I think
it's unlikely that I'll personally come to
a fixed conclusion.
re withdrawing from a campaign via
the self-deprecating method: That's
actually a good idea. And it has the
advantage of being honest. We played
again last weekend, and I was struck
again by how long combats took.
Running my streamlined AD&D rules
with the miniatures thrown out and my
combat program running on a laptop,
we could fly through combats in a
couple of minutes, perhaps 15-20
minutes at the outside for particularly
difficult ones.
By contrast, the D&D3e rules crawl.
Combats are easily three to four or even
five times as long as what I'm used to.
Yes, there's a lot of detail and such that
goes into them. Everyone and their
mother gets to use a special feat. But it
crawls. Add to that the utter lack of any
meaningful roleplaying, and I just can't
stand it. He's gonna ask why I think I'm
not suited to it, and my answer is going
to be long combats killing me and lack
of interesting NPCs with spiffy dialogue
leaving me bored senseless.
Nah... I can't be honest. That'll just
firebomb a friendship. I'm just gonna
have to go the busy-schedule route,
which actually isn't too far from the
truth. I am busy these days. In any case,
I wish there was a way to be honest
without hurting people's feelings.
Perhaps if session-satisfaction
questionnaires were part of the standard
process of running a campaign. I don't
suppose anyone wants to take a stab at
drawing up such a beast? "Are you
having fun? Why or why not?"
To his credit, he has asked on one
occasion, and I talked a little about the
problem of combats taking forever. But
he's really into these combats. I think
perhaps he's a wargamer at heart. I'm
not. Nuff said.
re Free Press and Underground
pamphleteering: I was reading
somewhere how Bacon had remarked
that all the components of the printing
press were well-understood well in
advance of it's actual invention, and that
it seemed somewhat astonishing to him
that it took so long before it actually
came into being. Of course, add magical
photocopying into the mix, and you get
much the same result. For that matter, I
feel a variation on the infamous magic
mouth spell coming to mind. Call it
magic soapbox. The caster can create
some obscene number of magic mouths
through which he can project his own
voice for giving speeches to his friends.
Perhaps every mage's tower will have a
room full of such mouths so that mages
from far and wide can do some magical
teleconferencing.
Mark Kinney: Interesting history if the
Neo-Mythic Age. Although skeptical
about elves wishing to rule over
humans, I liked how you established
their motivations as having to do with
really being about stamping out
technology. Wouldn't, however, it be
easier for them to lend magical
assistance to the sides not using
technology in order to wipe-out the
technologist prince, and then let it be
known that they will stand against any
prince who violates the ancient pact?
This, it seems to me, would be a good
explanation for why a world's tech-level
might remain stagnant for thousands of
years, not because technology wouldn't
be useful (as some have suggested), but
rather because its development is being
actively suppressed (because the Elves
know it will inevitably lead to their
extinction). In this way, the Elves
needn't be the masters of the world, but
they could be the critical third party
which balances the titans of human
politics, always positioning their
alliances so as to preserve the status
quo.
Louis La Mancusa: re Political
discourse: One problem, I think, is that
if I let myself really get started, I just
won't be able to restrain myself to two
pages. Hence, I figured I should
probably just try the cold turkey
approach long advocated by recovering
addicts. Otherwise, I'm more than likely
to jump the limit.
re The Future of Roleplaying:
Loved/hated your essay. Loved it
insofar as I think you're absolutely right.
Hated it insofar as I wish the prospects
for PnP (or tabletop) RPGs were less
gloomy. That said, I hold out hope that
Internet publishing will continue to
serve the market even if we should
decline substantially in numbers.
Likewise, I hope PBeMing and
teleconferencing technology on the
desktop keep gamers in the hobby even
if our numbers dwindle to the point that
finding compatible local players
becomes a near impossibility.
Jonathan Nicholas: re Space Battles:
Good thoughts in your essay. I'd be
curious to learn if you've tried Full
Thrust, which is a system I've often
heard mentioned in somewhat glowing
terms. Would also be curious to hear
more about the pros and cons of the
systems you have taken out for a spin.
Lisa Padol: re Ugh the Troll and my
initial supposition that he would be as
dumb as an AD&D troll: I've played
dumb characters several times, and in
some ways I prefer it. It gives me a
chance to kick back and be the
campaign's comic relief whenever
things are getting too tense. In any case,
I was somewhat surprised to learn that
Warcraft's trolls are supposed to be
played with a Jamaican accent. Not
being able to affect a Jamaican accent, I
decided to just play a somewhat smarter
version of my comic relief character.
Nonetheless, there's so little roleplaying
going on in this campaign that it hardly
matters. I could be playing Adolf Hitler
on steroids, and I don't think anyone
would notice.
re Campaign Newsletters: If it were
doing one, I think what I'd do is simply
ask the players for some sort of
contribution, whether it be a session
write-up, a piece of campaign-related
art, or even a new creature or NPC
which I could insert into the game. This,
I think, would allow them to make more
of a contribution than just via their
character's actions, which might, in
turn, lure them into taking a greater
stake in the campaign. Nonetheless, if
one of the players is of the beer-and-
pretzels variety and doesn't want to
contribute anything, I think I'd just
accept it, but depending on how well
they're playing their character and what
they're contributing in terms of the
game's social climate, I'd have to ask
myself if they're just dead weight.
re RPGs as instructive interaction: I
came up with this term in order to
describe Brian Misiaszek's point, that
RPGs are inherently instructive insofar
as they lure players into adopting (at
least temporarily) a particular world
view. If that perspective says that killing
and looting is reward-worthy behavior,
then perhaps what they're teaching isn't
necessarily what is best for the
individual or for society.
Now, you ask "Is there anything that
is not, by its very nature, instructive?"
Certainly. I think that one thing that isn't
instructive by its very nature is school.
For example, sitting in a classroom
listening to a lecture is not, in my
opinion, particularly instructive. I've
made numerous comments on the
modern educational system in my
previous zines, and I don't really want
to reiterate them, but to summarize, I
think it's a crime to let school get in the
way of one's education.
re Combat: I think you're right in that
my comment was somewhat of a
general one. I've obviously been heavily
influenced by AD&D where dungeons
traditionally exist simply for the
purpose of being looted and where
monsters are merely obstacles between
a character and his next level. This was
great when I was a kid, but I've since
reached the point where I want a tighter
story where if the combat doesn't mean
something in terms of story and
character, then perhaps it ought to be
dispensed with (or, at the very least,
minimized in terms of the amount of
attention that it is given).
Granted, this argument leaves
traditional D&D players at something
of a loss: "So what are we supposed do
then? Just sit around and talk? How
boring." Which is true insofar as there is
no real story. I think that when we were
young, we didn't have much of a clue
how to create stories, so we rolled dice
instead, counted hitpoints and damage,
and if a story accidentally fell from
heaven, we were as amazed as anyone.
Now, however, I think we're older and
we can honestly do a little better than
that.
I guess the key problem I have with
the Warcraft campaign as it currently
stands (see my comment to Spike Jones
in this issue re withdrawing from a
campaign) isn't really over the combat
so much as the whole thing being GM-
directed rather than being player-
directed. We're like bit-actors in the
GM's plot, rather than the GM being a
facilitator of the players' plot. That's the
real key that my friend seems to be
missing as a GM, and I'm not sure how
to convey this idea to him. He's seen me
do it years ago when I was GMing, but
he's also played a lot of Warcraft on the
computer since then, and of the two
influences, the computer game has
clearly been the stronger.
re trying to get people to think: I agree
with you that it's not as nice as saying "I
want to discuss my confused thoughts,"
but neither do I see it as flamebait. If
you perceived your nation as falling
into a deep, dark pit, and everybody
around you was just going about
business as usual, wouldn't you want to
scream and holler about it? Imagine
living in 1928 and knowing in your gut
that the big crash is only a year or two
away, but nobody seems to care. As
soon as you start talking, they all make
like a flock of skittish ostriches at the
beach.
So yes, I wanted to get folks here to
think about some of the things that I see
going on, and if that pissed a few people
off, oh well. My main regret is that it
detracted from the gaming-content of
the APA while helping to ignite a few
pointless brushfires, but seeing Brian
Misiaszek's essays, which were
basically a call for RPGs to be more
relevant, did my heart some good. It
told me that I'm not the only one who
wants RPGs to be about something
more than rolling dice and playing
make-believe. And while I realize that
not everyone shares our views (in your
comments to Brian in A&E #358, you
make it abundantly clear that you do
not), perhaps this is a direction which
the hobby ought to be moving. And for
more on that thought, please see my
comments to Louis La Mancusa in
A&E #360.
Nonetheless, having said this, it
doesn't seem to me very likely that
we're going to come to agreement, but
perhaps it's not necessary that we do so.
RPGs currently cover a wide expanse of
genres, and so I think there's ample
room in the hobby for both fantasy
escapism as well as social relevance.
Likewise, I think there will still be room
for a player to blow off steam in a
socially relevant game. In short, the act
of serving one segment of the market
doesn't exclude the others, and further,
perhaps many of the same perceived
needs may be met by more than one
segment.
We can, of course, argue over where
we'd like to see the majority of
publishers place their resources, Vhallan Gypsies): This is a stellar
however, such discussions are write-up of a fantasy culture, one of
ultimately of little value, as it will be very best that I've read here. Great job.
our dollars, our disposable income, that re Timelines in near future SF-RPGs:
cast the ballots concerning where the Like you, I see the obvious problems. I
market moves next. What Brian has wonder if perhaps timelines ought to be
argued for is that more publishers used as internal documents, and other,
should give social relevance an honest less-clunky documents ought to be used
try, and while this sentiment may not to convey the setting to the reader. Just
meet with everyone's approval, I don't a thought.
think any of us should perceive it as
being flamebait.
John Redden: Complete agreement
with you about Battlestar Galactica,
although the series is written so nice
and tight, I don't know that any game
played in the setting could measure up
to the scripts the shows writers are
putting out. And that, come to think of
it, is very high praise. In any case, I'll be
rather surprised if we don't soon see a
Battlestar Galactica RPG.
Simon Reeve: re Roleplaying in a
Future Setting: I liked the funny news
stories. Actually, I think news stories are
a pretty good way of introducing a
setting. Traveller capitalized quite well
on this idea with it's regular Traveller
News Service section in JTAS.
Likewise, Cyberpunk had a grand old
time with their version of a TV Guide
from 2020. This little tidbit really lent
the game a boost, I think, giving the
players a curious prop to distinguish the
setting from others of the SF-genre.
SF-RPGs, I think, should do more of
this.
re Church of Elvis: Cute. And let us
not forget that he was The King, after
all. Dying white sitting on the can,
though…it's just not all that
awe-inspiring. Somehow, deification
and feces don't mix, unless, of course,
religion is just a big pile of….
Patrick Riley: re your earlier
comments to me and my interpretation
of them as being a personal attack: It's
quite possible that I was being
overly-sensitive. If so, then please
accept my apology, and let us consider
it merely a misunderstanding.
Regardless of the true situation,
however, I do understand how a person
can get angry over politics, and while
angry retorts are rarely conducive to
constructive discussion, they are
forgivable offenses, particularly where
an apology is offered.
re The Nishendi (which are apparently