Chris at Hills Cantons has posted a conversation with Rob Kuntz, who according to Wikipedia was TSR Inc.'s "6th employee." He's the Lord of Green Dragons contributor on the blog of that name, and taking the introduction to the conversation at face value, Kuntz is one of the celebrated originators of D&D and the RPG culture ... and from the evidence of others who speak of him, worthy of a few "fawning superlatives."
But I'll be honest. I never heard of him.
I'm just not a fanboy. I never made any connection between the blog and the Lord of Green Dragon's history. I'm sure nine tenths of the D&D community were all well aware of this, but in three years of reading blogs I can't recall it being mentioned in anyway that it stuck in my memory. Oh well. I don't read that blog, mostly because it is another rehash of old RPG shit that didn't interest me thirty years ago and doesn't interest me now, or dull RPG mechanics which leave me cold. I know there's a heap-load of contributors, but as i read through the list I notice that I've never made any connection with anyone there. A few there have commented on this blog, but that is about it.
I'm not slamming Kuntz or any of his crew, but I just want to make it clear that as near as I can tell he has little or no influence on my universe. I do think it is humourous that he grew up with a set of Collier's Encyclopedias, which had enough of an impact on him to merit their mention in the interview. The reason for this is that, connecting the Encyclopedias to his being 8 years of age, it may very well be the same set of encyclopedias I grew up with, the encyclopedia that I base all my trade tables upon. Coincidences.
That said, the interview is interesting and well worth reading, particularly the portion where he describes the decision by TSR to promote the creation and sale of pre-made adventures. The tale Kuntz tells being on the inside is surprisingly what I would have expected, having lived through the period in question and watching the proliferation of modules and their subsequent smothering of the D&D universe. Kuntz does not say flat out which specific persons in the company pushed for this change, and he could not be expected to. Such matters are universally private. But it gives the overall impression of Kuntz as disgruntled employee, forced to watch something wonderful and unique get crushed underfoot by the acquisition of money.
I've expressed that sentiment myself, even though it was experienced from way out here in the bleachers, where the participants view the tiny figures fighting it out on the field while our noses bleed. We out here did not have the benefit of having the game changes explained to us in board rooms, but somehow we managed to retain the original spirit of the game Kuntz defends by simply ignoring the business entirely. We did not buy the modules. We did not play the modules. As Kuntz calls us, we were the "dissenting creatives." We looked at the new books, stole as it pleased us to do so, and changed the particulars of virtually everything we stole. We would go to the local stores, we would browse through the booklets and shelves, but we certainly didn't bother to buy anything written because it all looked like tremendous loads of shit. There were always plenty of "eager dependents" anxious to play in our worlds who were dumb enough to buy and buy and buy, and we borrowed for free from them long enough to copy out a table here or a map there.
We ripped off the business producers of the game at every opportunity, pirating tons of material straight off the shelves by memorizing the idea and then producing our own versions of it from scratch. We stuck it to the man, and we stuck it so hard that yes, there is only one real manufacturer. We dissenters ensured that one was all there ever could be.
As always, we dissenters will remain in the nosebleed seats. We will never be the celebrated insiders, able to tell our personal tales about Gary's family or refer to him jovially as EGG. We are the misanthropes, furtively mastering the game for ourselves and our players. We will never be Knights of Camelot. We will never be Jedi. We're not joiners. We don't even like joiners.
But it is very quiet up here. The crowds don't roar too much and there's plenty of space between the seats to play a really good game of our own. Which I think was something Kuntz said was supposed to happen.
It did.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
More About The Negative Modifier
Following a very interesting discussion with one of my offline players, I thought I'd write some notes about how certain facets of the game might operate under the modifier rules I proposed on the last post. Some of this was discussed in the comments yesterday.
Starting off, I proposed that two units be employed in order to keep track of the negative modifiers adding up due to the exhaustion from combat, adding that each player could keep a store of pennies and nickels to keep track of these. To clarify:
3 pennies = 1 nickel = -1 to hit modifier
So for each nickel you gained, your chance to hit would drop by 1. Neither your damage from a hit, nor your overall movement, would not be modified. This is for two reasons: one, to Keep It Simple Stupid; and two, to allow players to continue to be somewhat combat effective for a longer time, thus promoting the playability of the idea.
Core gains in pennies and nickels then would be as follows:
Missing with a hand-held weapon: 1 penny added.
Hitting with a hand-held weapon: 1 nickel added.
Resting one round without attacking, moving more than 10' or otherwise performing any sort of labor: 1 penny removed.
Three misses would then equal one hit. Eventually, whether you hit or missed with a weapon, you would begin to feel so exhausted by the process that you had to fall back from the combat and rest.
It has been proposed that some players could opt for 'combat training' that would increase their benefit in the face of this system. I would argue that fighters obviously already have this benefit, in that they start with a better 'to hit' table, and are therefore already up on other classes. There is no present 'to hit' bonus for fighters who are more fit that other fighters right now, so no benefit would be invented in my system.
There is always a tendency on the part of D&Der's to invent additional bonuses and exemptions for special circumstances which are invented out of the air to apply to every new system that comes down the pike, and I say that if said circumstance DID NOT EXIST BEFORE, there's no reason why it should exist now. Said new exemption would be another proposed rule entirely, and if it isn't something that would be applies to the combat system as it stands now, without the new rule I'm proposing, then, ipso facto, it should not apply to the new rule I'm proposing.
A few additional elements, then, that came up in last evening's conversation:
Mounted characters: There's no reason why a mounted person on a horse should find attacking less strenuous than an standing person - again, there's no special existing premise in the game, so why should there suddenly be one now that a new rule is proposed? However, since the horse can carry the mounted rider away more easily, and since the rider is not taking strenuous action while riding the horse (and not fighting or galloping), the it is obviously easier for mounted persons to escape the combat, rest, and get back into the combat very quickly. Getting away from the combat to rest could take three or four rounds, with another three or four rounds before being able to return to the combat. A mounted person could accomplish escape and return in just one or two rounds.
Archers: Firing a bow (or any missile attack) would have the same effect as swinging any other kind of weapon, except that hit or miss requires the exact same amount of work. Unlike a swinging a sword against a shield, there is no shock from the blow (which is why a hit would gain a nickel, but a miss only gains a penny). Therefore, all attacks with missile weapons, hit or miss, only gains the participant a penny. This vastly increases the importance of archers in a battle without having to apply more damage to the weapon itself. It is simply more accurate over a longer period of time.
Casting of Spells: Unlike the Player's Handbook, my spells all require one round to cast per two levels of the spell. I don't use segments. Some might be like to say that a caster gains one penny per spell level, but I can say for my system that the caster gains one penny per round of casting (or per two levels of spell). Thus, a 3rd level spell would take two rounds to cast and cost a penny per round. A 6th level spell would take three rounds to cast. Discharging a spell would not cost any pennies, as it is really a sort of 'relaxation' as the caster gets rid of the energy they have accumulated through casting (that's how I see it, anyway). However, if the spell was one that required concentration, such as a wall of fire or phantasmal force, then the caster would continue to gain one penny each round the spell was in effect. If the caster wanted to hold the spell after casting, before discharging (which is possible in my world), then a penny would be gained for each round of continuing to hold the spell before letting it go.
Additionally, if the caster were controlling a golem or some conjured creature, or some other character were using a device of some kind that required concentration, then this concentration too would gain one penny per round. It would not affect the creature's chance to hit, but if the spell or device required the caster/controller to roll to hit according to their own ability (such as a Melf's Acid Arrow or a Spiritual Hammer) the caster's present exhaustion WOULD be relevant.
Maximum Exhaustion: Since 20 nickels would equal a -20 chance of hitting, I propose that this be accepted as the base maximum amount of activity that can be performed before the individual MUST REST before performing any other attack or casting any other spell. This would naturally be increased if the player had an inherent strength bonus for hand to hand weapons, or an inherent dexterity bonus for missile weapons. 20 nickels is the equivalent (assuming 12 second rounds - hey, its my idea, its my world) of successfully slamming a heavy weapon against an opponent for six minutes ... roughly the equivalent of hitting a moving target with a sledge hammer for an equal period of time. As I said, applying the K.I.S.S. rule, the character could still move away from combat at full movement rate (though perhaps not being allowed to run at triple or quadruple speed), they just couldn't swing, shoot or cast a spell (or concentrate on one).
Swinging for Less Damage: It was proposed that if a character were to poke with a weapon, rather than swing for the weapon's full force, the amount of damage - and of pennies gained - could be reduced each round. In other words, if a short sword does 1-6 damage on a full swing, gaining the player a full nickel and thus a full -1 modifier, then the player could opt for the weapon causing only 1-4 damage this round (intentionally not swinging hard) and thus gaining only 2 pennies, or causing only 1-2 damage, and gaining only 1 penny. This could be very important if the player sees that it will only take 1-4 to probably kill the present opponent, and wishes to conserve the character's strength.
At present, I have not decided to incorporate any of these rules into my campaign, and obviously none of them are tested. Hell, I just invented them this last week. But I think there are some interesting angles here that deserve being examined, and I think at some point I might be inclined to include some or all of them into a campaign.
Starting off, I proposed that two units be employed in order to keep track of the negative modifiers adding up due to the exhaustion from combat, adding that each player could keep a store of pennies and nickels to keep track of these. To clarify:
3 pennies = 1 nickel = -1 to hit modifier
So for each nickel you gained, your chance to hit would drop by 1. Neither your damage from a hit, nor your overall movement, would not be modified. This is for two reasons: one, to Keep It Simple Stupid; and two, to allow players to continue to be somewhat combat effective for a longer time, thus promoting the playability of the idea.
Core gains in pennies and nickels then would be as follows:
Missing with a hand-held weapon: 1 penny added.
Hitting with a hand-held weapon: 1 nickel added.
Resting one round without attacking, moving more than 10' or otherwise performing any sort of labor: 1 penny removed.
Three misses would then equal one hit. Eventually, whether you hit or missed with a weapon, you would begin to feel so exhausted by the process that you had to fall back from the combat and rest.
It has been proposed that some players could opt for 'combat training' that would increase their benefit in the face of this system. I would argue that fighters obviously already have this benefit, in that they start with a better 'to hit' table, and are therefore already up on other classes. There is no present 'to hit' bonus for fighters who are more fit that other fighters right now, so no benefit would be invented in my system.
There is always a tendency on the part of D&Der's to invent additional bonuses and exemptions for special circumstances which are invented out of the air to apply to every new system that comes down the pike, and I say that if said circumstance DID NOT EXIST BEFORE, there's no reason why it should exist now. Said new exemption would be another proposed rule entirely, and if it isn't something that would be applies to the combat system as it stands now, without the new rule I'm proposing, then, ipso facto, it should not apply to the new rule I'm proposing.
A few additional elements, then, that came up in last evening's conversation:
Mounted characters: There's no reason why a mounted person on a horse should find attacking less strenuous than an standing person - again, there's no special existing premise in the game, so why should there suddenly be one now that a new rule is proposed? However, since the horse can carry the mounted rider away more easily, and since the rider is not taking strenuous action while riding the horse (and not fighting or galloping), the it is obviously easier for mounted persons to escape the combat, rest, and get back into the combat very quickly. Getting away from the combat to rest could take three or four rounds, with another three or four rounds before being able to return to the combat. A mounted person could accomplish escape and return in just one or two rounds.
Archers: Firing a bow (or any missile attack) would have the same effect as swinging any other kind of weapon, except that hit or miss requires the exact same amount of work. Unlike a swinging a sword against a shield, there is no shock from the blow (which is why a hit would gain a nickel, but a miss only gains a penny). Therefore, all attacks with missile weapons, hit or miss, only gains the participant a penny. This vastly increases the importance of archers in a battle without having to apply more damage to the weapon itself. It is simply more accurate over a longer period of time.
Casting of Spells: Unlike the Player's Handbook, my spells all require one round to cast per two levels of the spell. I don't use segments. Some might be like to say that a caster gains one penny per spell level, but I can say for my system that the caster gains one penny per round of casting (or per two levels of spell). Thus, a 3rd level spell would take two rounds to cast and cost a penny per round. A 6th level spell would take three rounds to cast. Discharging a spell would not cost any pennies, as it is really a sort of 'relaxation' as the caster gets rid of the energy they have accumulated through casting (that's how I see it, anyway). However, if the spell was one that required concentration, such as a wall of fire or phantasmal force, then the caster would continue to gain one penny each round the spell was in effect. If the caster wanted to hold the spell after casting, before discharging (which is possible in my world), then a penny would be gained for each round of continuing to hold the spell before letting it go.
Additionally, if the caster were controlling a golem or some conjured creature, or some other character were using a device of some kind that required concentration, then this concentration too would gain one penny per round. It would not affect the creature's chance to hit, but if the spell or device required the caster/controller to roll to hit according to their own ability (such as a Melf's Acid Arrow or a Spiritual Hammer) the caster's present exhaustion WOULD be relevant.
Maximum Exhaustion: Since 20 nickels would equal a -20 chance of hitting, I propose that this be accepted as the base maximum amount of activity that can be performed before the individual MUST REST before performing any other attack or casting any other spell. This would naturally be increased if the player had an inherent strength bonus for hand to hand weapons, or an inherent dexterity bonus for missile weapons. 20 nickels is the equivalent (assuming 12 second rounds - hey, its my idea, its my world) of successfully slamming a heavy weapon against an opponent for six minutes ... roughly the equivalent of hitting a moving target with a sledge hammer for an equal period of time. As I said, applying the K.I.S.S. rule, the character could still move away from combat at full movement rate (though perhaps not being allowed to run at triple or quadruple speed), they just couldn't swing, shoot or cast a spell (or concentrate on one).
Swinging for Less Damage: It was proposed that if a character were to poke with a weapon, rather than swing for the weapon's full force, the amount of damage - and of pennies gained - could be reduced each round. In other words, if a short sword does 1-6 damage on a full swing, gaining the player a full nickel and thus a full -1 modifier, then the player could opt for the weapon causing only 1-4 damage this round (intentionally not swinging hard) and thus gaining only 2 pennies, or causing only 1-2 damage, and gaining only 1 penny. This could be very important if the player sees that it will only take 1-4 to probably kill the present opponent, and wishes to conserve the character's strength.
At present, I have not decided to incorporate any of these rules into my campaign, and obviously none of them are tested. Hell, I just invented them this last week. But I think there are some interesting angles here that deserve being examined, and I think at some point I might be inclined to include some or all of them into a campaign.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Weakening With Time
When I was in university, many of my profs would strongly emphasize that the whole of extant works from the classical period would fit on a single shelf about six feet high and four feet wide. This would include everyone, Greeks and Romans, from the great historians like Livy and Tacitus to the hacks like Vegetius and various other writers of the late Empire. It would include the encyclopediac writers like Strabo and Pliny, the biographers like Plutarch and Suetonius and the philosophers like Aristotle, Plato and Marcus Aurelius. It would include all the plays, all the poems and all the satires. It would even include Apicius' cookbook.
In other words, very, very little. It is a small enough collection that a diligent reader can comfortably read the whole lexicon in the time it takes to complete a four year degree in Classical history. It is small enough that a dedicated scholar can become so familiar as to recognize virtually any passage the moment it is spoken.
As such, most of what is written about the Greek and Roman period is speculation based upon the speculation of earlier sources, who themselves are speculating upon writers who speculated upon the original sources, in a tradition going back two thousand years. Every time new work on the original material comes out, it usually represents an insight which is nine parts personal creativity, ninety parts the copied personal creativity of other persons, and one part original source material.
But that's really okay, because the original source material is, as well, merely conjectures largely written by people who were not present at the events they describe. We read Livy, who writes about things happening centuries before his own time, which he has based upon hearsay and tradition and quite probably blatant lies, the historical tradition between the 3rd century and Livy's own time (he lived as BCE became AD) being fairly catch-as-catch-can.
Take, for example, the Battle of Cannae, 216 BCE, during which Hannibal slaughtered the Roman Army. If you compile all the bits and pieces surrounding the event that were written before the year 400 AD, it will take you all of five, perhaps ten minutes, to read the words. But since that time, so much has been written conjecturing the events at Cannae that you can easily spend ten years reading through the mass of source material on the subject. So if it seems that a modern author presents a viewpoint as though they have recently built a time machine in order to gather their information, it helps to remember that two thousand years of amassed writing is essentially a time machine in itself.
With this introduction, I want to draw the gentle reader's attention to this interview with Robert O'Connell, author of The Ghosts of Cannae. By clicking the link in the center of the page, the fifty-minute podcast is available to all.
And I'd like to refer now to the part beginning at 6:45 minutes into the podcast, where the interviewer asks O'Connell about what fighting was like, and O'Connell answers,
"One of the most prevalent misconceptions about combat, especially the sort of, you know, we get from movies, is that it was continuous. You have this sense that these armies come together and they fight and they fight, and they're hacking away and they're hacking away, and our hours past, and people die, yada yada yada. It really can't be like that. It could never have been like that ... Put yourself in that position. Try to fight somebody with a sword when your life is on the line for even five minutes and what you find is that you're more exhausted at the end of those five minutes than you've ever been in your life."
In classic D&D terms, five minutes is a mere five rounds. I play with the rule that rounds equal 12 seconds ... but five minutes is still no more than fifteen rounds. O'Connell suggests that long battles, therefore, would break up with the contestants on either side backing away, catcalling and taunting while resting up for the next melee. That in effect a battle going on all day would include many hours of both sides not fighting at all. My imagination thinks of men sweating, sitting on stones or the ground, pouring water over their heads to cool down - assuming they have the water to waste - then tiredly lifting themselves to steadily advance again, the two armies flowing and ebbing over the landscape, moving steadily this way or that, looking for opportunities to flank the other.
For all I know all battles, right up to the present day, operate like this. I can't be certain, as I've never been in an actual battle, and certainly have never had the opportunity to observe one like a football game, an analogy O'Connell makes later in the interview.
But I'm curious how this would play out in D&D, if the rule were created to force the reality. There had been a discussion months ago about the exhaustion effected by travelling through the wilderness causing damage, and I made the exhaustion connection there with combat ... but upon further thought (the Cannae interview was last Friday) I came up with a completely different solution.
Suppose that each combat round, or possibly every three combat rounds (depending on the length of round), a -1 "to hit" modifier was applied to all attacks, regardless of success. Swinging the weapon is still an effort, though it is hitting with the weapon that causes the shock to go up one's arm. Perhaps you could say -1 per successful hit and -1 per three misses. It's a real bookkeeping mess, and it wouldn't be popular with players, but imagine the effect it would have on combat when after six or seven rounds the players and their opponents were all attacking with compounded minuses to hit. How long would players keep at it? Would they stop when it no longer became possible to hit at all, or would they begin to realize when their odds were shortened to 3 in 20 or 2 in 20 that it was time to back off?
The balance, of course, is that for every round of not fighting (or every three rounds, or every ten rounds - the number is up to the house), a negative modifier is dropped. Eventually the participants regain their strength and resolve, and go at it again.
It could very seriously change the face of a mass D&D combat, particularly when you consider how this creates the importance of keeping some participants IN RESERVE. So that, when the front fighters begin to weaken, the rear can defend their retreat ... particularly in situations where five or six player characters are fighting fifty or sixty goblins. God, what a disaster that could prove to be!
In other words, very, very little. It is a small enough collection that a diligent reader can comfortably read the whole lexicon in the time it takes to complete a four year degree in Classical history. It is small enough that a dedicated scholar can become so familiar as to recognize virtually any passage the moment it is spoken.
As such, most of what is written about the Greek and Roman period is speculation based upon the speculation of earlier sources, who themselves are speculating upon writers who speculated upon the original sources, in a tradition going back two thousand years. Every time new work on the original material comes out, it usually represents an insight which is nine parts personal creativity, ninety parts the copied personal creativity of other persons, and one part original source material.
But that's really okay, because the original source material is, as well, merely conjectures largely written by people who were not present at the events they describe. We read Livy, who writes about things happening centuries before his own time, which he has based upon hearsay and tradition and quite probably blatant lies, the historical tradition between the 3rd century and Livy's own time (he lived as BCE became AD) being fairly catch-as-catch-can.
Take, for example, the Battle of Cannae, 216 BCE, during which Hannibal slaughtered the Roman Army. If you compile all the bits and pieces surrounding the event that were written before the year 400 AD, it will take you all of five, perhaps ten minutes, to read the words. But since that time, so much has been written conjecturing the events at Cannae that you can easily spend ten years reading through the mass of source material on the subject. So if it seems that a modern author presents a viewpoint as though they have recently built a time machine in order to gather their information, it helps to remember that two thousand years of amassed writing is essentially a time machine in itself.
With this introduction, I want to draw the gentle reader's attention to this interview with Robert O'Connell, author of The Ghosts of Cannae. By clicking the link in the center of the page, the fifty-minute podcast is available to all.
And I'd like to refer now to the part beginning at 6:45 minutes into the podcast, where the interviewer asks O'Connell about what fighting was like, and O'Connell answers,
"One of the most prevalent misconceptions about combat, especially the sort of, you know, we get from movies, is that it was continuous. You have this sense that these armies come together and they fight and they fight, and they're hacking away and they're hacking away, and our hours past, and people die, yada yada yada. It really can't be like that. It could never have been like that ... Put yourself in that position. Try to fight somebody with a sword when your life is on the line for even five minutes and what you find is that you're more exhausted at the end of those five minutes than you've ever been in your life."
In classic D&D terms, five minutes is a mere five rounds. I play with the rule that rounds equal 12 seconds ... but five minutes is still no more than fifteen rounds. O'Connell suggests that long battles, therefore, would break up with the contestants on either side backing away, catcalling and taunting while resting up for the next melee. That in effect a battle going on all day would include many hours of both sides not fighting at all. My imagination thinks of men sweating, sitting on stones or the ground, pouring water over their heads to cool down - assuming they have the water to waste - then tiredly lifting themselves to steadily advance again, the two armies flowing and ebbing over the landscape, moving steadily this way or that, looking for opportunities to flank the other.
For all I know all battles, right up to the present day, operate like this. I can't be certain, as I've never been in an actual battle, and certainly have never had the opportunity to observe one like a football game, an analogy O'Connell makes later in the interview.
But I'm curious how this would play out in D&D, if the rule were created to force the reality. There had been a discussion months ago about the exhaustion effected by travelling through the wilderness causing damage, and I made the exhaustion connection there with combat ... but upon further thought (the Cannae interview was last Friday) I came up with a completely different solution.
Suppose that each combat round, or possibly every three combat rounds (depending on the length of round), a -1 "to hit" modifier was applied to all attacks, regardless of success. Swinging the weapon is still an effort, though it is hitting with the weapon that causes the shock to go up one's arm. Perhaps you could say -1 per successful hit and -1 per three misses. It's a real bookkeeping mess, and it wouldn't be popular with players, but imagine the effect it would have on combat when after six or seven rounds the players and their opponents were all attacking with compounded minuses to hit. How long would players keep at it? Would they stop when it no longer became possible to hit at all, or would they begin to realize when their odds were shortened to 3 in 20 or 2 in 20 that it was time to back off?
The balance, of course, is that for every round of not fighting (or every three rounds, or every ten rounds - the number is up to the house), a negative modifier is dropped. Eventually the participants regain their strength and resolve, and go at it again.
It could very seriously change the face of a mass D&D combat, particularly when you consider how this creates the importance of keeping some participants IN RESERVE. So that, when the front fighters begin to weaken, the rear can defend their retreat ... particularly in situations where five or six player characters are fighting fifty or sixty goblins. God, what a disaster that could prove to be!
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Owl and the Pussycat
Over the weekend I was able at last to continue with mapmaking, having finally researched the 600+ cities of India that I needed to have done in order to identify how large the cities were and estimate what political entity in 1650 was in control of those cities. India has historically been a very bloody subcontinent, with intra-regional wars almost a constant reality, and it hasn't always been easy to identify from scattered histories who really was in control in any given year. Still, we do the best we can. It was a pleasant rest from equipment tables.
A year ago I did parts of Kashmir and the Punjab, so on the weekend and up until last night I mapped out Uttar Pradesh, the central valley of the Ganges River, and thus increased the defined population of my world by more than 20 million persons. While the wiki page linked indicates 116 million plus, the number is now more than 138 million.
So I should be posting maps of the subcontinent sometime this Autumn, for anyone who's interested. The work goes on.
While drawing lines and measuring mountains, however, I found myself thinking about the link from ChicagoWiz yesterday, ADD Grognard's request. I don't want to lambast Grognard; I've made enough personal attacks this week, contributing to the number of Paul Lazzaros in the world, so let me say that I'm sure the request is sincere and well meant.
I want to speak about the reasons why people might want to delete their blogs. The very act of blogging is seductive. You are writing about yourself, and your feelings, and things that you find enjoyable or about things which you think matter. Chances are, you will have someone, a complete stranger, stumble across your blog and post some kind of praise on it, which will encourage you to write again, and come in from the cold wilderness that is blogging in the first few months.
With a little more encouragement, and a few followers, you'll feel inclined to say a bit more of what you think. For most people, what they think tends to be positive, and it will be positively received. In the long run, the experience that they have, and which you will have, is that of being accepted by a blogging community that seems to respond almost as soon as you post your thoughts. Within an hour or two someone will write 'good post' or even something a little deeper and personal about their experiences with the world.
Now, I said this was seductive ... but it is more than merely receiving accolades for a little bit of writing. The truly seductive part is in thinking that what you have to say is harmless and in fact reasonable to everyone. But as your popularity grows, you will find yourself attracting people who won't find your innocent remarks to be reasonable.
If this were to happen all at once, you would see the danger. But it does not. At the same time you are attracting the sort who don't, or won't appreciate your efforts, you will find yourself reaching around for things to write about. Because you are essentially a decent, considerate person, you will apply a belief that you've been raised with all your life and which in fact you likely agree with: Honesty is the Best Policy.
Well, online, it is not.
Fact is, when you are speaking about yourself, and being honest with others, whether in your loving relationships or out about town, your honesty will tend to be self-deprecating. You will confess that you don't have the job you wish you had. Or that you didn't do as well in university as you could have. Or that you second-guess the decisions you've made as a parent. A lot of the stories you will tell your friends, the ones that will make them laugh, are self-deprecating. You will tell the story about how you fell out of the boat and nearly drowned, or how you drove your tractor through the barn wall, or the time you got yourself lost in the city you grew up in, because the municipality changed the street signs. These are endearing, meaningful stories, and they go a long way to expressing how you are a person, and how you're not perfect, and how for the most part you're just struggling through this mess like anyone else.
If the stories are funny, and your delivery is real, you'll get more encouragement ... and with time and a lot of blog posts to write, you will cast about for other stories. And so you will find yourself writing things that are not quite as funny, where you are not quite so much a protagonist. You will write things - opinions, beliefs, ideas - on your blog in which, frankly, will make you appear somewhat dickish.
And when you have done that, you will find out what the internet has in store for you.
It is not so much that the internet is made of assholes and trolls. The real truth is that it is made up of johnny come lately's, who don't remember you from your considerate self-deprecating tales. They only know the later you, the you that is a self-righteous dick. And no matter how many times you explain to them that they've got you wrong, they won't listen. They haven't the time to read your backlog. But they will have the time to hound you and hound you, and they will do so until you are absolutely sick of this whole process.
Let me stop here.
Some will think I am speaking about myself, but I'm not. I am a pitbull, and I have been fighting flamewars since long before there was an internet. This is my nature, and I thrive in it. But many people are not Quixotic like myself. They don't see the value in battling ignorant forces ad nauseum with no expectation of gain. They lose, eventually, any further will to write another post, particularly when the next post sounds like something they've written before. Their blog has been on for three years and they have written the novel they had in them two or three times now. They're done. They'd just like to go.
Why don't they want to leave the blog up for ADD Grognard's benefit? Well, because now they just fucking hate the thing. It has gone from an enticing nymph to a slatternly, aging whore. We, the blogging community, have fucked the thing dry. Just the thought of having the page online at all is a matter of distaste. Better to kill it, get rid of it ... and get rid of its beckoning nature, the thing asking that more be written there. Because you know, if it still exists, you will walk back into its trap again and write something. And experience a brief thrill of your old friends coming back and saying, hey, where were you, we missed you, glad you're posting again, great to have you back, etcetera.
Which will only lead into another arc of being at a loss for something to write, and the guilt of being expected to write, and the abuse at what you have written.
Hey, look, it's better just to stab the thing into oblivion and have done with it, once and for all. You just don't know what you're asking, Grognard.
It is an obscure play, made into an obscure movie, but I first learned this lesson about writing more than 25 years ago. Felix, the writer in the Owl and the Pussycat, smashes his typewriter and Doris asks him, "What did you do that for?"
"It was either him or me," says Felix. "The son of a bitch was trying to kill me."
A year ago I did parts of Kashmir and the Punjab, so on the weekend and up until last night I mapped out Uttar Pradesh, the central valley of the Ganges River, and thus increased the defined population of my world by more than 20 million persons. While the wiki page linked indicates 116 million plus, the number is now more than 138 million.
So I should be posting maps of the subcontinent sometime this Autumn, for anyone who's interested. The work goes on.
While drawing lines and measuring mountains, however, I found myself thinking about the link from ChicagoWiz yesterday, ADD Grognard's request. I don't want to lambast Grognard; I've made enough personal attacks this week, contributing to the number of Paul Lazzaros in the world, so let me say that I'm sure the request is sincere and well meant.
I want to speak about the reasons why people might want to delete their blogs. The very act of blogging is seductive. You are writing about yourself, and your feelings, and things that you find enjoyable or about things which you think matter. Chances are, you will have someone, a complete stranger, stumble across your blog and post some kind of praise on it, which will encourage you to write again, and come in from the cold wilderness that is blogging in the first few months.
With a little more encouragement, and a few followers, you'll feel inclined to say a bit more of what you think. For most people, what they think tends to be positive, and it will be positively received. In the long run, the experience that they have, and which you will have, is that of being accepted by a blogging community that seems to respond almost as soon as you post your thoughts. Within an hour or two someone will write 'good post' or even something a little deeper and personal about their experiences with the world.
Now, I said this was seductive ... but it is more than merely receiving accolades for a little bit of writing. The truly seductive part is in thinking that what you have to say is harmless and in fact reasonable to everyone. But as your popularity grows, you will find yourself attracting people who won't find your innocent remarks to be reasonable.
If this were to happen all at once, you would see the danger. But it does not. At the same time you are attracting the sort who don't, or won't appreciate your efforts, you will find yourself reaching around for things to write about. Because you are essentially a decent, considerate person, you will apply a belief that you've been raised with all your life and which in fact you likely agree with: Honesty is the Best Policy.
Well, online, it is not.
Fact is, when you are speaking about yourself, and being honest with others, whether in your loving relationships or out about town, your honesty will tend to be self-deprecating. You will confess that you don't have the job you wish you had. Or that you didn't do as well in university as you could have. Or that you second-guess the decisions you've made as a parent. A lot of the stories you will tell your friends, the ones that will make them laugh, are self-deprecating. You will tell the story about how you fell out of the boat and nearly drowned, or how you drove your tractor through the barn wall, or the time you got yourself lost in the city you grew up in, because the municipality changed the street signs. These are endearing, meaningful stories, and they go a long way to expressing how you are a person, and how you're not perfect, and how for the most part you're just struggling through this mess like anyone else.
If the stories are funny, and your delivery is real, you'll get more encouragement ... and with time and a lot of blog posts to write, you will cast about for other stories. And so you will find yourself writing things that are not quite as funny, where you are not quite so much a protagonist. You will write things - opinions, beliefs, ideas - on your blog in which, frankly, will make you appear somewhat dickish.
And when you have done that, you will find out what the internet has in store for you.
It is not so much that the internet is made of assholes and trolls. The real truth is that it is made up of johnny come lately's, who don't remember you from your considerate self-deprecating tales. They only know the later you, the you that is a self-righteous dick. And no matter how many times you explain to them that they've got you wrong, they won't listen. They haven't the time to read your backlog. But they will have the time to hound you and hound you, and they will do so until you are absolutely sick of this whole process.
Let me stop here.
Some will think I am speaking about myself, but I'm not. I am a pitbull, and I have been fighting flamewars since long before there was an internet. This is my nature, and I thrive in it. But many people are not Quixotic like myself. They don't see the value in battling ignorant forces ad nauseum with no expectation of gain. They lose, eventually, any further will to write another post, particularly when the next post sounds like something they've written before. Their blog has been on for three years and they have written the novel they had in them two or three times now. They're done. They'd just like to go.
Why don't they want to leave the blog up for ADD Grognard's benefit? Well, because now they just fucking hate the thing. It has gone from an enticing nymph to a slatternly, aging whore. We, the blogging community, have fucked the thing dry. Just the thought of having the page online at all is a matter of distaste. Better to kill it, get rid of it ... and get rid of its beckoning nature, the thing asking that more be written there. Because you know, if it still exists, you will walk back into its trap again and write something. And experience a brief thrill of your old friends coming back and saying, hey, where were you, we missed you, glad you're posting again, great to have you back, etcetera.
Which will only lead into another arc of being at a loss for something to write, and the guilt of being expected to write, and the abuse at what you have written.
Hey, look, it's better just to stab the thing into oblivion and have done with it, once and for all. You just don't know what you're asking, Grognard.
It is an obscure play, made into an obscure movie, but I first learned this lesson about writing more than 25 years ago. Felix, the writer in the Owl and the Pussycat, smashes his typewriter and Doris asks him, "What did you do that for?"
"It was either him or me," says Felix. "The son of a bitch was trying to kill me."
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
This Side Of The Line
Timeshadows, whose blog The Grand Tapestry has never really interested me, yesterday posted a rant from Harlan Ellison about being paid as a writer. It's from back in 2007, so it's not new ... in it Ellison gets worked up over being asked to work free for Warner Brothers. I think the telling moment is where the woman representing Warner in this place suggests that it would be "good publicity" for Ellison to give his time, as though Harlan fucking Ellison needs publicity at his point in his career. Ellison doesn't say exactly why in the rant, he assumes the listener knows very well that Ellison does not need the work. He has as much money as he needs, and if he wants more, he only needs to call any university in the country and agree to talk for 45 minutes. For that they will pay him $20,000. At least.
The YouTube video, named by someone who obviously is deficient in the way of intelligence, is entitled "Media Whore." For the record, a media whore is someone who will do anything in order to get recognized by the media. In other words, if Ellison was a media whore, he would have done the gig for free because he did want the publicity. The fact that he spits on the publicity demonstrates that what he definitely is not is a media whore.
Ellison makes the same argument here that I made on my own post just 12 days ago. I don't work for the gentle reader, I'm not here for the gentle reader's benefit, and if the gentle reader would like me to change that policy, the gentle reader can pay me. Ellison is merely viewing the general bullshit circus of appearing on anything for a major studio as a waste of time, taking him away from things he'd rather be doing. I realize that most of you reading this aren't personally aware of what it's like to work on a television set. It is hell. It is contracts, and sitting around waiting, and listening to self-important people tell you what to say and think. There's no respect and there's an ever-present veiled threat in whatever you're being told. It is being treated as an infant and being threatened by a lawsuit at the same time. If I had Ellison's kind of clout, I wouldn't fucking do it if they did pay me.
Sure, Ellison in the video seems mad as a hatter. If you weren't very familiar with the influence of Ellison in the science fiction universe since the 1960s, you'd have to wonder what the shit this guy is on. If you were very young and very stupid, you might think this fellow had a head much, much to large for the planet he's on. But you would have to be very young and very stupid.
But nothing tops the truly stupid comment left by Zzarchov, which I want to be sure I copy here so he can't delete it t
here. Here it is in its entirety:
"I always laugh when I hear professionals rant about amateurs. Yes they devalue you work, yes they set a bad precedent.. But in the end if other people are willing to do it for free (or even pay to do it), you can't expect to be paid for it and should count yourself either very lucky, very skilled or both if you can. The term media whore is appropriate. That is a profession that is also undervalued by all those giving away for free what they expect to be paid for ;)"
I would have responded on Timeshadow's blog, but she doesn't like me all that much and I really don't want to get insulting in someone else's universe. I'll respect her that much. But Zzarchov, who comments regularly on this blog and really just pisses me off sometimes with his inability to get my fucking point, shows here that I am not the only one who's point just doesn't get past the goal posts.
Apparently, if I consider my writing to be work for which I deserve to be compensated, I am the equivalent of a whore, for no other reason than that there exist in the world writers who will work for free. I don't know which writers in the world are writing at the level of Harlan Ellison for free, but that doesn't matter, apparently. Professionals who consider themselves worth being paid are, according to Zzarchov, laughable. Furthermore, I have no right to expect pay, because "other people are willing to do it for free."
It is remarkable that Zzarchov is making this comment in reference to someone who IS very skilled, though Zzarchov seems completely unaware of that. That's why Ellison DOES expect to be paid for it. Because he is very skilled.
Zzarchov's is the sort of reasoning that has been applied to this post over and over again, missing the point over and over no matter how many times its stated or how clearly it is written. It is the reason this blog's comments are now moderated. I found Zzarchov's comments about Ellison personally insulting, because if this is something Zzarchov believes, it applies to me and it applies to every blogger out here. The fact that I write this particular post for free does not create a moral obligation to work for other people if I don't wish to do so. The fact that other people choose to write for free does not morally obligate me, either. And I am not a whore for insisting that my time and my work is compensated.
Why am I writing this on a D&D blog? Well, for one thing, it is in answer to another D&D blog. For another, this is where Zzarchov tends to comment and I'd like to make it clear that his contributions here are pretty much finished. There comes a moment in a person's relationship with other people where a revealing fact about someone's character makes it impossible for that relationship to continue. For some of the people who read, or used to read this blog, it is my acidic delivery and my condescension that crosses the line. For me, it is another person's willful ignorance in the face of facts or evidence. In this case, Zzarchov insults personally a writer I respect, presenting facts and evidence which fit with my own experiences with regards to people who want delivery for nothing. If he will do it with Ellison, he will do it with me. I see no reason to wait for that to happen. He's crossed my line and I'm kicking him back over it.
The YouTube video, named by someone who obviously is deficient in the way of intelligence, is entitled "Media Whore." For the record, a media whore is someone who will do anything in order to get recognized by the media. In other words, if Ellison was a media whore, he would have done the gig for free because he did want the publicity. The fact that he spits on the publicity demonstrates that what he definitely is not is a media whore.
Ellison makes the same argument here that I made on my own post just 12 days ago. I don't work for the gentle reader, I'm not here for the gentle reader's benefit, and if the gentle reader would like me to change that policy, the gentle reader can pay me. Ellison is merely viewing the general bullshit circus of appearing on anything for a major studio as a waste of time, taking him away from things he'd rather be doing. I realize that most of you reading this aren't personally aware of what it's like to work on a television set. It is hell. It is contracts, and sitting around waiting, and listening to self-important people tell you what to say and think. There's no respect and there's an ever-present veiled threat in whatever you're being told. It is being treated as an infant and being threatened by a lawsuit at the same time. If I had Ellison's kind of clout, I wouldn't fucking do it if they did pay me.
Sure, Ellison in the video seems mad as a hatter. If you weren't very familiar with the influence of Ellison in the science fiction universe since the 1960s, you'd have to wonder what the shit this guy is on. If you were very young and very stupid, you might think this fellow had a head much, much to large for the planet he's on. But you would have to be very young and very stupid.
But nothing tops the truly stupid comment left by Zzarchov, which I want to be sure I copy here so he can't delete it t
here. Here it is in its entirety:
"I always laugh when I hear professionals rant about amateurs. Yes they devalue you work, yes they set a bad precedent.. But in the end if other people are willing to do it for free (or even pay to do it), you can't expect to be paid for it and should count yourself either very lucky, very skilled or both if you can. The term media whore is appropriate. That is a profession that is also undervalued by all those giving away for free what they expect to be paid for ;)"
I would have responded on Timeshadow's blog, but she doesn't like me all that much and I really don't want to get insulting in someone else's universe. I'll respect her that much. But Zzarchov, who comments regularly on this blog and really just pisses me off sometimes with his inability to get my fucking point, shows here that I am not the only one who's point just doesn't get past the goal posts.
Apparently, if I consider my writing to be work for which I deserve to be compensated, I am the equivalent of a whore, for no other reason than that there exist in the world writers who will work for free. I don't know which writers in the world are writing at the level of Harlan Ellison for free, but that doesn't matter, apparently. Professionals who consider themselves worth being paid are, according to Zzarchov, laughable. Furthermore, I have no right to expect pay, because "other people are willing to do it for free."
It is remarkable that Zzarchov is making this comment in reference to someone who IS very skilled, though Zzarchov seems completely unaware of that. That's why Ellison DOES expect to be paid for it. Because he is very skilled.
Zzarchov's is the sort of reasoning that has been applied to this post over and over again, missing the point over and over no matter how many times its stated or how clearly it is written. It is the reason this blog's comments are now moderated. I found Zzarchov's comments about Ellison personally insulting, because if this is something Zzarchov believes, it applies to me and it applies to every blogger out here. The fact that I write this particular post for free does not create a moral obligation to work for other people if I don't wish to do so. The fact that other people choose to write for free does not morally obligate me, either. And I am not a whore for insisting that my time and my work is compensated.
Why am I writing this on a D&D blog? Well, for one thing, it is in answer to another D&D blog. For another, this is where Zzarchov tends to comment and I'd like to make it clear that his contributions here are pretty much finished. There comes a moment in a person's relationship with other people where a revealing fact about someone's character makes it impossible for that relationship to continue. For some of the people who read, or used to read this blog, it is my acidic delivery and my condescension that crosses the line. For me, it is another person's willful ignorance in the face of facts or evidence. In this case, Zzarchov insults personally a writer I respect, presenting facts and evidence which fit with my own experiences with regards to people who want delivery for nothing. If he will do it with Ellison, he will do it with me. I see no reason to wait for that to happen. He's crossed my line and I'm kicking him back over it.
Monday, August 8, 2011
The Unreliability Of Firearms
And once again, it's a question of firearms.
Furthermore, since it is on my blog that I run the 17th century, and Anthony's post included the words "17th century," there seems to have been a connection made. These last seven months I find myself having to answer questions regularly about why I don't use firearms.
There's no rational, reasonable way for an army in a D&D world to store gunpowder in any conceivable way that doesn't demand several high level mages, and I promise you my little army of low level apprentice-trained casting scum is going to out do your scant number of wizards in the long run. Answer: armies in a world with magic have to train their warriors to fight with swords, because firearms just aren't dependable. No matter what suppositions you make, in the long run the first battle you lose because the enemy used magic and swords is going to be the last time you lose a battle that way.
Without anyone willing to spend hordes of money developing, manufacturing and distributing weapons that will likely never work as anything other that complicated clubs, swords and magic will persevere as the only practical options for armies to use.
Oh, and for those who would suggest that armies wouldn't distribute the gunpowder in the field, or store it there in large piles, that only means that it will be the manufacturing centres that will be hit, blowing up every factory that dares to mass produce black powder. While perhaps some small maker might be able to produce a few pounds at a time in a basement (which I presume is true for my world), it would never be enough for an army.
So sure, a few people might make their own weapons, and use them, but most would never waste the time training apprentices to make a complex tool that will go to waste anyway. The knowledge of how to make guns would never be widespread. So expecting to find them for sale in a public market would be foolish. No one would buy them. The general sense would be, yeah, they're interesting, but when your gun doesn't fire in an alley, what are you going to do?
It is important to note that firearms were not a hugely embraced phenomenon in human history. It took more than 250 years for guns to outnumber hand held weapons on the battlefield, mostly because of the consistent unreliability of firearms ... I feel without question magic would tip the balance in the matter, and that firearms were finally just abandoned after their early development in the late 1400s did not prove their worth. The intellectual energy of the world was put elsewhere.
Does this at last put the matter to rest?
Some time ago, Anthony who writes in the blog Of Pedantry suggested putting up a firearms page on the Same Universe Wiki, which seemed like a good idea to me although I don't use firearms in my world. The Wiki as I imagined it then wasn't intended to be strictly for use to describe my world, but as I published an inordinate amount of stuff there, more than 150 pages, and alternate sources (I think) published 3 pages, it seems like it was made for my world only.
I had asked Anthony to write something about the use of magic vs. firearms on the Wiki page, and he duly complied ... but I feel he did not go far enough with regards one circumstance.
Firearms, unlike hand-held weapons, are not in and of themselves more than just intricate, heavy clubs. Without bullets, or more to the point powder, they don't deliver a lot of damage. And while powder is, for use, split up into tiny parcels, during its production phase it tends to be conglomerated into some rather nifty large packets that are just aching for a magic user's intrusion.
 |
| Take 30-300 damage |
Yes, that's right soup fans, unlike the modern army that can pile up munitions for convenient acquisition by moving armies, with a reasonable assurance that a random shell or spy won't succeed in blowing them to hell, this is all changed when a mage or druid can turn invisible, walk right up to a great big pile of gunpowder, put a fire trap on any convenient keg and then have a programmed lackey open the keg a half minute later, giving the mage time to skedaddle. Or any other convenient spell of your liking. If we can train assassins to sacrifice themselves for the good of the state, we only need a first level mage with a burning hands spell to do the job personally. And the invisible spell can be cast by someone else.
There's no rational, reasonable way for an army in a D&D world to store gunpowder in any conceivable way that doesn't demand several high level mages, and I promise you my little army of low level apprentice-trained casting scum is going to out do your scant number of wizards in the long run. Answer: armies in a world with magic have to train their warriors to fight with swords, because firearms just aren't dependable. No matter what suppositions you make, in the long run the first battle you lose because the enemy used magic and swords is going to be the last time you lose a battle that way.
Without anyone willing to spend hordes of money developing, manufacturing and distributing weapons that will likely never work as anything other that complicated clubs, swords and magic will persevere as the only practical options for armies to use.
Oh, and for those who would suggest that armies wouldn't distribute the gunpowder in the field, or store it there in large piles, that only means that it will be the manufacturing centres that will be hit, blowing up every factory that dares to mass produce black powder. While perhaps some small maker might be able to produce a few pounds at a time in a basement (which I presume is true for my world), it would never be enough for an army.
So sure, a few people might make their own weapons, and use them, but most would never waste the time training apprentices to make a complex tool that will go to waste anyway. The knowledge of how to make guns would never be widespread. So expecting to find them for sale in a public market would be foolish. No one would buy them. The general sense would be, yeah, they're interesting, but when your gun doesn't fire in an alley, what are you going to do?
It is important to note that firearms were not a hugely embraced phenomenon in human history. It took more than 250 years for guns to outnumber hand held weapons on the battlefield, mostly because of the consistent unreliability of firearms ... I feel without question magic would tip the balance in the matter, and that firearms were finally just abandoned after their early development in the late 1400s did not prove their worth. The intellectual energy of the world was put elsewhere.
Does this at last put the matter to rest?
Sculptor's Shop
To be honest, I'm going to be glad when this series is done. At my count, I have posted 901 different items in the last two months, not counting the gems I posted back at the beginning. This makes 38 tables so far. By my count, I have 20 tables left to post.
If that doesn't make the gentle reader's jaw drop, I don't know what will. At this point I'm exhausted with the whole process; most of the tables posted will have to be reposted, as certain changes in the back system has affected prices on the spreadsheet that are obviously not automatically changed on the blog (it will be so much fun to fix them, yay). I know I have another month, month and a half ahead of me. One a day would make it quicker, but I know I don't have the enthusiasm I had at the beginning of this, and that I'll limp to the finish with it.
At this point I could use some encouragement, believe me.
That said, this table was somewhat fun, in that I screwed around with working out the price for a couple of existing items. Sadly, the prices aren't strictly accurate; the prices given for Michaelangelo's David and Hatshepsut's column are for what they would cost if they were in existence in Kronstadt, Transylvania. Their actual price in their actual location would be somewhat different. Still, I think they both serve to give an impression of what a really large monolith would cost, should a city wish to put one in place. Incidentally, the various qualities of the items are measured according to the table on my Bard character, which can be found here.
It's good when things can fit together like that.
Otherwise, I don't see much here that needs explanation, so I will move on. The Shipwright is next, and that might take a bit more time. I started the bigger fixes because I change the wood algorithm from the ground up. Next post I write probably won't be an equipment list.
Scrivener's Shop
The small collection of items here are hardly considered in the game, but that is perhaps because the matters are not remotely considered. Things like patents, contracts or writs are among those things that DM's must pull from the air when asked how much will this cost or that. I am especially proud of being able to add these sorts of things to the equipment list as I attempt to 'flesh out' the campaign beyond the giving of prices for swords and horses.
I tend to be in agreement that the equipment table in the game is central to presenting the game's reality. This last weekend, as players in my offline campaign considered what they were going to eat for dinner, from foods they had bought from these lists, I could not help smiling. When they came to an inn, and chose from the food there, not merely the cheapest food but whatever they felt like buying, I recognized that even without the benefit of taste there is still the remnant of perceiving what their character might eat or enjoy. I think there's something base in the human senses that insists we buy according to our fantasies and not merely according to the measure of the rules of the game.
So what does it matter if the playing cards are hand painted? A great deal, I think. Just as it matters if the quill is brass-tipped, whether or not the player can detect any difference.
It is a shame that power players deny themselves such pleasures.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Long Times
In a long conversation with a horse trainer earlier in the week, she happened to mention something which got stuck in me and which manifested as a blog post in my head at 4:10 this morning, when I woke because it was too hot. Between getting a drink, spending a penny, turning on the fan and dropping off back to sleep, I thought of what the trainer had said.
If you want to train the animal to do something, you must repeat the lesson 700 times. That is 700 responses, 700 times mounting the horse, 700 turns, 700 jumps and so on, if you want to consider the horse 'trained.' With some horses, it takes more than that - and if you're thinking about taking the horse into competition, it is much, much more than that.
While this all applies to horses, there is a parallel in human development to be found in how a baby increases its motor development, its use of language, it's cognitive and social interactions and so on. If we replace the adage of 700 times with 700 days, we can see how a baby that learns to walk at 11 months becomes much more proficient by 33 months - by that point moving up stairs at one-foot per step. An infant that speaks mostly unintelligible words at 18 months is filled with questions and speaking in full sentences at 3 and a half. I don't mean to suggest the process of development or learning is strict or measured by anything as generalized as the number 700. I enter such examples here only to suggest that great increase of ability takes a great deal of time, and that if enough time is spent the individual does more than master the skill, the individual increases the limit of what can be mastered.
Thus, if we apply it to something closer to home, the playing of roleplaying games, and we substitute a "day" with the "session" experience of playing the game, we can make a rough judgment of how much effort it takes to become experienced at D&D. If we can vaguely agree on a few ad hoc guesses about how much most people would play the game from the age of 15 on (and of course we can't hope to agree, but let's just forget that), I propose that 40 games a year could reasonably be the standard. I probably played more than that when I was 16 or 17, but generally there are other events in life that ruin this or that weekend for play. Still, the gentle reader can always impose the average number of games which they themselves seems more accurate and refigure my math at will. For the present we will suppose 40 games.
This would suggest that it would take 17 and a half years to reach the 700 mark, or the point where the player felt immensely comfortable with the game's concept and very likely restrained by the original framework. If the individual began playing at the age of 15, this would now make the individual in their early 30s, and inclined to recreate or restructure the game to suit their personal whims. I would propose that a person who had sat at the table 700 times would feel compelled to do so, just as a 3-year-old becomes bored with climbing stairs by stepping with the one foot and then the other on the same stair before continuing. The child learns to take the stairs one foot at a time because the child grows weary with the time it takes to do it in the slower, more infantile manner.
Yet we are only speaking of playing the game. It is probable that by age 30 only half the incidents of involvement with the game's play were as a DM ... or less, depending on the player's personal interest in ejudication. The occasional DM who spends more than half their experience DMing is, I think, losing out on the perspective of the player and will certainly be deficient in some fashion for having not played enough. The desireable quality would be for the DM to have both 700 sessions as a player and 700 sessions as a DM under his or her belt, thus having the experience and the benefit of both positions at the table. This obviously increases the total time necessary, so that we are now speaking of 35 years playing the game slighly more than 3 weekends in 4. That would make the player older than I am, or 50 years old if they started playing at age 15.
This period is shortened if you find yourself playing twice or three times as week, as sometimes I did when I was in university; but overall, the length of time will be considerable, simply because you cannot play as often as you wish. Moreover, you have to consider that every game you've ever played that ended in a disaster taught the wrong things with regards to proper game play ... so those are sessions that must be discounted.
Things are mitigated somewhat in that much of the game can be played - particularly by DMs - when no one else is present. I am certain I am not alone in having played out hundreds of combats as a solo player, sometimes out of fascination for the game and sometimes to explore a new idea or system I wanted to implement. Quite a few of us I reckon have played with the self-generating dungeon at the back of the DM's Guide, and have spent much time working out our own, in the hopes that we could have a feeling for the game while solo. I don't read much about this sort of thing on blogs, no doubt because of the mastubatory feel of the subject and the general unwillingness of players to admit the obsession required to sit in a room and play the game by themselves. But even so, this is a kind of experience, as it contributes to the familiarity of the weapons, the combat system, memorization of the tables, the variety of equipment a player carries and so on.
If we then consider also the hours spent drawing maps and working out puzzles, filling imaginary rooms and sketching out new game features such as monsters or spells, this too is experience of a kind. We can break up all the time that is spent doing such things in session-length chunks and apply that - after a fashion - to our overall experience with the game.
Neither of these last two forms of game play are, however, representational of a DM's ability to interact with players, or a player's ability to work with other players or outwit a DM. These interactional qualities of the game cannot be obtained with solo play or frittering around in one's room with tables and maps. Practice is practice, but it isn't the World Series.
What that leaves are a vast number of players and DMs who, having begun playing the game perhaps five or ten years ago, and having little or no experience with a variety of systems because of their age and comparable experience, haven't the chops to make distinctive statements about the play of the game. Not that this will keep the comparable noobs silent, since anyone can run a blog and the writer's experience with the game is - by the community's standards - never called into question. We are all equal here unless one of us wishes to recuse his or herself by confessing refreshingly that he or she has only played a few times, or has never DM'd a continuous campaign. Otherwise, we are to presume that every drop of rain that falls cometh from the blackest cloud.
I do not write this to pick out any individual, but rather to encourage each speaker to assess their own level of expertise, and to judge for themselves if they are in a position to know of what they speak due to the years put towards their knowledge, or if they are really only armchair propositioners with more years of solo play and game design than hardbitten experience. No person can make any accusation to the contrary, and being online no person can know for certain any protestation of one's supposed experience.
I could be a paper tiger, for all anyone online knows. And I encourage others to view me and what I say with head askew, inquiring of themselves, "Does he really know or is he just very clever?" And then I encourage the reader to consider how they themselves are viewed by others, and if they themselves are really the shit they claim to be, or if they wouldn't do with a little more game play before speaking further on the matter.
If you want to train the animal to do something, you must repeat the lesson 700 times. That is 700 responses, 700 times mounting the horse, 700 turns, 700 jumps and so on, if you want to consider the horse 'trained.' With some horses, it takes more than that - and if you're thinking about taking the horse into competition, it is much, much more than that.
While this all applies to horses, there is a parallel in human development to be found in how a baby increases its motor development, its use of language, it's cognitive and social interactions and so on. If we replace the adage of 700 times with 700 days, we can see how a baby that learns to walk at 11 months becomes much more proficient by 33 months - by that point moving up stairs at one-foot per step. An infant that speaks mostly unintelligible words at 18 months is filled with questions and speaking in full sentences at 3 and a half. I don't mean to suggest the process of development or learning is strict or measured by anything as generalized as the number 700. I enter such examples here only to suggest that great increase of ability takes a great deal of time, and that if enough time is spent the individual does more than master the skill, the individual increases the limit of what can be mastered.
Thus, if we apply it to something closer to home, the playing of roleplaying games, and we substitute a "day" with the "session" experience of playing the game, we can make a rough judgment of how much effort it takes to become experienced at D&D. If we can vaguely agree on a few ad hoc guesses about how much most people would play the game from the age of 15 on (and of course we can't hope to agree, but let's just forget that), I propose that 40 games a year could reasonably be the standard. I probably played more than that when I was 16 or 17, but generally there are other events in life that ruin this or that weekend for play. Still, the gentle reader can always impose the average number of games which they themselves seems more accurate and refigure my math at will. For the present we will suppose 40 games.
This would suggest that it would take 17 and a half years to reach the 700 mark, or the point where the player felt immensely comfortable with the game's concept and very likely restrained by the original framework. If the individual began playing at the age of 15, this would now make the individual in their early 30s, and inclined to recreate or restructure the game to suit their personal whims. I would propose that a person who had sat at the table 700 times would feel compelled to do so, just as a 3-year-old becomes bored with climbing stairs by stepping with the one foot and then the other on the same stair before continuing. The child learns to take the stairs one foot at a time because the child grows weary with the time it takes to do it in the slower, more infantile manner.
Yet we are only speaking of playing the game. It is probable that by age 30 only half the incidents of involvement with the game's play were as a DM ... or less, depending on the player's personal interest in ejudication. The occasional DM who spends more than half their experience DMing is, I think, losing out on the perspective of the player and will certainly be deficient in some fashion for having not played enough. The desireable quality would be for the DM to have both 700 sessions as a player and 700 sessions as a DM under his or her belt, thus having the experience and the benefit of both positions at the table. This obviously increases the total time necessary, so that we are now speaking of 35 years playing the game slighly more than 3 weekends in 4. That would make the player older than I am, or 50 years old if they started playing at age 15.
This period is shortened if you find yourself playing twice or three times as week, as sometimes I did when I was in university; but overall, the length of time will be considerable, simply because you cannot play as often as you wish. Moreover, you have to consider that every game you've ever played that ended in a disaster taught the wrong things with regards to proper game play ... so those are sessions that must be discounted.
Things are mitigated somewhat in that much of the game can be played - particularly by DMs - when no one else is present. I am certain I am not alone in having played out hundreds of combats as a solo player, sometimes out of fascination for the game and sometimes to explore a new idea or system I wanted to implement. Quite a few of us I reckon have played with the self-generating dungeon at the back of the DM's Guide, and have spent much time working out our own, in the hopes that we could have a feeling for the game while solo. I don't read much about this sort of thing on blogs, no doubt because of the mastubatory feel of the subject and the general unwillingness of players to admit the obsession required to sit in a room and play the game by themselves. But even so, this is a kind of experience, as it contributes to the familiarity of the weapons, the combat system, memorization of the tables, the variety of equipment a player carries and so on.
If we then consider also the hours spent drawing maps and working out puzzles, filling imaginary rooms and sketching out new game features such as monsters or spells, this too is experience of a kind. We can break up all the time that is spent doing such things in session-length chunks and apply that - after a fashion - to our overall experience with the game.
Neither of these last two forms of game play are, however, representational of a DM's ability to interact with players, or a player's ability to work with other players or outwit a DM. These interactional qualities of the game cannot be obtained with solo play or frittering around in one's room with tables and maps. Practice is practice, but it isn't the World Series.
What that leaves are a vast number of players and DMs who, having begun playing the game perhaps five or ten years ago, and having little or no experience with a variety of systems because of their age and comparable experience, haven't the chops to make distinctive statements about the play of the game. Not that this will keep the comparable noobs silent, since anyone can run a blog and the writer's experience with the game is - by the community's standards - never called into question. We are all equal here unless one of us wishes to recuse his or herself by confessing refreshingly that he or she has only played a few times, or has never DM'd a continuous campaign. Otherwise, we are to presume that every drop of rain that falls cometh from the blackest cloud.
I do not write this to pick out any individual, but rather to encourage each speaker to assess their own level of expertise, and to judge for themselves if they are in a position to know of what they speak due to the years put towards their knowledge, or if they are really only armchair propositioners with more years of solo play and game design than hardbitten experience. No person can make any accusation to the contrary, and being online no person can know for certain any protestation of one's supposed experience.
I could be a paper tiger, for all anyone online knows. And I encourage others to view me and what I say with head askew, inquiring of themselves, "Does he really know or is he just very clever?" And then I encourage the reader to consider how they themselves are viewed by others, and if they themselves are really the shit they claim to be, or if they wouldn't do with a little more game play before speaking further on the matter.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Puddler's Forge
Strictly speaking, 'puddling' was not invented until the 18th century, but I like the word better than 'smelter' and since I already have a history of cheating on these words under my belt already ...
Metals were in the 17th century still being smelted either with bloomeries or early blast furnaces. I'm afraid the system isn't gritty enough to distinguish between metal formed from one or the other - I can't say I feel bad about that.
I don't have much to say about the table above. So I'll simply steal this picture Wikipedia shows from the Deutsches Museum of Germany's first blast furnace, circa 1150 A.D., because it is, well, cool.
Printer's Shop
So, back to plugging away. The above table includes those items that might be obtained from a book printer, or bookbinder, using a printing press. The press can be employed for printing purposes, such as the pamphlet or the playbill prices above. These are the minimum prices for said items; it bears little value to the printer to set up his or her press for the purpose of printing only one page, so even if the character only wants one page, the full price for 10 or a 100 pages must be paid.
Spellbooks are necessary for mages and illusionists in my world, and are limited in how much they can hold. A first level player can usually get away with the apprentice's spellbook, though they may need two to start if they have a great many cantrips. This is the moment that someone steps forward and points out that 8 apprentice spellbooks are a bargain compared to the one large spellbook; my answer would be that it is easier to keep one large spellbook from falling into the hands of thieves than eight little ones; alternately, the large spellbook has a better saving throw against fire or other attacks, since the cover is heavier and more protective. In any case, I perceive a typical mage sitting down with various spellbooks, all locked together in a box or tied together with string or ribbons, poking through the various books to find the necessary spells, gathering books as the player increases level. The larger books become necessary when higher spell levels consume more and more pages.
There are a number of holy books listed here; obviously these work in my world but probably nowhere else. They are measured according to the size of the actual book based on the total number of words known to make up those volumes. Many might find it odd that the Koran is quite small compared with the Bible. I confess, I did not make allowances for the Koran to be written in a different, paper-using language; I only have one language in my world, so in my world the Koran is written in common. They may seem less Romantic, but I am lousy at other languages than English and I'm not interested in the playability aspects that come from a lack of communication. My game style depends on much communication and so that is how I play the world.
The various book forms, common, unusual, rare and arcane, are part of the sage's system I use which indicates the likelihood for some piece of knowledge being known about any part of my world. The more books you amass, the greater that likelihood; unusual books have more knowledge value than common books, rare books have more than unusual books and arcane books have the most knowledge of all. The sizes and number of pages of these books should indicate the total volume of knowledge contained within.
Books make treasure, too. A library of two or three thousand common books would make a fair haul .... if they could be hauled.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
The Protracted Process
Thing is, about these tables going on one after another, and the breaks between as I shape up this or that table against the vicissitudes of corporeal existence (the joys of paying attention to things other than D&D), the process is necessarily protracted and exhausting. Each time that I've tackled the reworking of the system has been a trial, this one more than before since I'm increasing to a greater degree the complexity of the system and I am posting it online at the same time. This has meant occasionally going back and fixing things that would have remained unfixed except for inside the occasional running when a player complained.
For some of you out there in professional jobs this will reflect the work you're doing for payment. A technical system has to be rebuilt, a new schedule of events or promotions have to be vetted and brought into the spotlight, a tour has to be planned, upgrades put in place, etcetera. And this means meetings, and more meetings, and extra work, and long hours, and look - we've been at this for six months already and the thing isn't yet in place.
I've only been at this for two but I feel it. The present project has been ongoing since 2003 when I finally cracked how the process worked, and since 1988 when I first conceived of how the project might work. The distance tables the project depends on were advanced first in 2004, and have slowly progressed to a complexity that now means several tables with enough numbers to take up 35 megs on my computer. And the distance table on the linked page hasn't been upgraded in three years, so it doesn't include the other half of Germany or all of Italy, which together make up another 150 trading cities. At present I have worked out the distances between 600 cities, which is a total of 360,000 excel cells with pertinent data, with an estimated 1.8 million pieces of calculating cells to support it and let me know if something changes.
I don't do 'small.' People I hope have seen the 77 maps of my world that show what I've done and what my plans are to do in the immediate few years after today. At present I haven't actually done any mapmaking at all in about 4 months; I just haven't been motivated. In fact, I spent a good period not being motivated to doing anything at all, something I put down to letting myself get bolluxed up trying to create a marketable product when I should have been enjoying life. I am working on a marketable product ... my book, which received another rejection answer on the weekend, thank you very much.
This blog, and to some extent the other one, has been my primary source for inspiration and creation this year. I'm not sure if I'd be doing the good work I'm doing without it. Publishing and being pushed to publish is a good thing. I believe the expectation for good work forces one to produce good work. O Gentle Reader, I can't say how often I guiltily feel that I should come up with something profound and new to bring new inspiration to the hardworking DM out there. The Civ Posts were started on account of it, as was the combat simulation I produced this last spring, the wiki of course, and the long lost online campaign. Which - I confess - I have been considering getting started again, though gawd knows I don't know where I'd find the time.
For the record, unlike a professional job, I like this plodding difficult work because I like the results it gives ... the ability to proudly give the prices to the players and have them know there's a logic to the world that isn't based on my ass. And I admit that I learn a great deal, which itself gets applied to other trials and campaigns and off-handed runnings. I am simply happier when I am working. It doesn't matter that it will take years from here to get to the end. Yes, accomplishing something is nice, but getting to the next stage brings the endorphins too.
Like finishing this post, for example. It isn't the end. There will be another post tomorrow, and another one after that. Blogs are never finished. But ah, feel the chemicals.
For some of you out there in professional jobs this will reflect the work you're doing for payment. A technical system has to be rebuilt, a new schedule of events or promotions have to be vetted and brought into the spotlight, a tour has to be planned, upgrades put in place, etcetera. And this means meetings, and more meetings, and extra work, and long hours, and look - we've been at this for six months already and the thing isn't yet in place.
I've only been at this for two but I feel it. The present project has been ongoing since 2003 when I finally cracked how the process worked, and since 1988 when I first conceived of how the project might work. The distance tables the project depends on were advanced first in 2004, and have slowly progressed to a complexity that now means several tables with enough numbers to take up 35 megs on my computer. And the distance table on the linked page hasn't been upgraded in three years, so it doesn't include the other half of Germany or all of Italy, which together make up another 150 trading cities. At present I have worked out the distances between 600 cities, which is a total of 360,000 excel cells with pertinent data, with an estimated 1.8 million pieces of calculating cells to support it and let me know if something changes.
I don't do 'small.' People I hope have seen the 77 maps of my world that show what I've done and what my plans are to do in the immediate few years after today. At present I haven't actually done any mapmaking at all in about 4 months; I just haven't been motivated. In fact, I spent a good period not being motivated to doing anything at all, something I put down to letting myself get bolluxed up trying to create a marketable product when I should have been enjoying life. I am working on a marketable product ... my book, which received another rejection answer on the weekend, thank you very much.
This blog, and to some extent the other one, has been my primary source for inspiration and creation this year. I'm not sure if I'd be doing the good work I'm doing without it. Publishing and being pushed to publish is a good thing. I believe the expectation for good work forces one to produce good work. O Gentle Reader, I can't say how often I guiltily feel that I should come up with something profound and new to bring new inspiration to the hardworking DM out there. The Civ Posts were started on account of it, as was the combat simulation I produced this last spring, the wiki of course, and the long lost online campaign. Which - I confess - I have been considering getting started again, though gawd knows I don't know where I'd find the time.
For the record, unlike a professional job, I like this plodding difficult work because I like the results it gives ... the ability to proudly give the prices to the players and have them know there's a logic to the world that isn't based on my ass. And I admit that I learn a great deal, which itself gets applied to other trials and campaigns and off-handed runnings. I am simply happier when I am working. It doesn't matter that it will take years from here to get to the end. Yes, accomplishing something is nice, but getting to the next stage brings the endorphins too.
Like finishing this post, for example. It isn't the end. There will be another post tomorrow, and another one after that. Blogs are never finished. But ah, feel the chemicals.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)