Blog, Jvstin Style

Monday Mashup: Star Trek

Bryant's mashup this week is Star Trek.

Not Next Generation. No DS9. Voyager need not apply. And Enterprise is out, too. Just the original...

There are a couple of good ideas in the comments, in fact one of them dangerously close to my original idea...so I will go with my alternate.

Let's mashup Gamma World with Star Trek.

Kirk, Spock and their crew are the crew of a riverboat (on the former Mississippi and its feeder rivers--the Missouri, Ohio, Minnesota, etc.) Scions of a settlement which has sent them to explore, make contact and make sense of what was once the United States.

Spock, clearly, is a mutant--he has the ears, and odd abilities, too. But the Federates are not that intolerant of mutants.

They'll be contact with other colonies, new civilizations all along the rivers. There will be a couple of mutant groups who have gotten to the point where they, too, are sending boats along the rivers--Klingons and Romulans.

And plenty of green-skinned babes for the Captain to seduce. Who could ask for anything more?

Time Travel

Via Crooked Timber, we learn that an Aussie newspaper has an article on Time Travel today.

Sure, its not Scientific American level, but its a pretty good article.

IMC: Dragons

In my Campaign: Dragon

Arref talks about Dragons and Amber, a topic that I, too have touched upon in Strange Bedfellows...

I've mentioned Dragons in my game before, last year in fact. Thanks to the import of my old Blog entries, you can look it up here on this blog.

Anyway, I mentioned then that there are, in the SB version of the universe, shadow Dragons, and True Dragons. Shadow Dragons are the more mundane version of the same, limited to one shadow, although ferocious enough in their own sphere.

True Dragons are creatures of Power. In most cases they predate the formation of the Pattern, if not the Logrus as well. In fact, along with some colonies of Faerie, they are the oldest continually existing cultures in the Amber multiverse.

Dragons in a sense are expressions of primal power. In a few cases, the Dragons themselves could be considered full manifestations of these energies, archetypes, and concepts. The highest of the True Dragons, certainly, can be considered as such.

Although not gregarious, the True Dragons IMC are strongly aware of social boundaries and hierarchies. Most of the True Dragons are organized into affiliations called "Courts", headed by the most powerful Dragon of its type. Singletons, rogues and outcasts can be especially dangerous to the unwary, if they have no code of conduct of their peers from which to compare themselves. Such a Dragon in backstory, for instance, strongly affected the development of the shadow from which Sand and Delwin hail. However, at least as far as True Dragons are concerned, most are not so arbitrary, although dangerous enough.

As far as their role in the game, the aforementioned Dragon in Coriliaine played a significant backstory role in the development of Jayson. As far as in game time, well, there IS a Dragon, a True Dragon about. To reveal more would give away too many secrets.

The GM has to have some surprises. :grin:

As an additional note, it sounds like that in a couple of cases, some True Dragons might be represented by Nobilis than Amber statistics. And I've toyed with the idea, too, although I've not heard of anyone mixing Nobilis and Amber stated personages in the same game.

LOTR Return of the King Trailer

Return Of The King Trailer

A trailer for the third and last of the LOTR movies is now up at lordoftherings.net

Warning: The large one is over 26MB in size.

Two shot at Hennepin County Government Center

About Nine floors above me this morning, there was a shooting.

Oh, I'm all right. They did lock down the building for quite some time as they sorted this out.

Nasty business.

UPDATE: Two people were shot, a man and a woman. The woman died from the wound. The shooter has been charged with murder.

"No risk, no reward"

Okay, I am hardly a Houston Texans fan, nor likely to be one. (Sorry Ginger!) However, I was surprised and amazed by the "roll the dice" approach of the Head Coach at the end of the game yesterday against the Jaguars.

The Score is 20-17, Jacksonville. You have the ball on their 1 yard line with two seconds on the clock, 3rd down. Conventional wisdom says you (try) and kick the field goal to tie, and go into overtime.

Dom Capers decided to go for it. For the unfootball inclined, there is no way to try a play, have it fail and then kick the field goal in under two seconds. So, if he failed here, the Texans were going to lose.

David Carr took a QB keeper and got across the goal line. Texans win, no overtime needed, Jacksonville (likely getting ready for an overtime session) stunned and amazed.

As was I.

In less happy football news, the Jets lost to the Dallas Cowboys. No surprise...but now Bill Parcells' Cowboys, by beating both the Giants and the Jets at Giants Stadium, have a better record in Giants Stadium this year than either the Giants or the Jets.

Even more of a coincidence, Dallas will play Bill Parcells' OTHER team in his resume, the New England Patriots, at New England Nov 16th.

The telescope Game

Dyson Telescope

Sort of like Sokoban, you manipulate telescopes to move a ball into a hole in as few moves as possible.

Ticket to Ride

I wanted to share the "big" news this weekend for me with everyone.

I bought my first car. Yeah, I know that I am overdue, but then I've only had a license for a few years. It was due, aye, past due for me to do this.

I am now financing a 2002 Dodge Neon. White, which will be bad if I get into a snowbank, but otherwise its a *nice* car with about 26,000 miles on it. I am paying through the nose on APR and such because this *is* my first major life purchase.

But I now have wheels of my own. I know most if not all of you have done this far earlier in your lives than me, so forgive me for my enthusiasm and (especially) nervousness.

A quote from "The Big time"

"Woe to Spider! Woe to Cretan! Heavy is the news I bring you. Bear it bravely, like strong women. When we got the gun unlimbered, I heard seaweed fry and crackle. We three leaped behind the rock wall, saw our gun grow white as sunlight in a heat-ray of the Serpents!..."

"I don't know how she does it, but she does--in English, too. That is, when she figures she's got something important to report...Beau claims that all the ancients fit their thoughts into measured lines as naturally as we pick a word that will do."--The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber

Now the GA players know from where Iolaus gets it.

Lego Escher

You'd think the laws of physics would mandate that such a compound word could never exist. However, Stet has links to some interesting lego designs of famous Escher stuff.
Yes, some are photo-manipulated, but not as much as you might think.

No longer "GOLD"en

George Plimpton has passed away.

Although he was an author and a man of letters, I know and remember him for something relatively small, but important to me.

In the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, in its Gem and Mineral Room is a tiny theater which has been showing the same short movie for (assuming its still playing) for over 15 years. That movie is "GOLD", and tells the story of Gold, from its origins in the earth to its modern-day uses.

Nearly every time I went to the Museum, be it by myself, with my family, or with friends, I insisted on seeing the movie. I probably can to this day recite the movie from start to finish, since I've seen it well over a hundred times.

The voice of the narration for this short subject is...was George Plimpton.

Rest in Peace.

Overtime

Ron Borges on NBCsports.com (part of MSNBC) argues for changing the OT rule so that both teams' offense have a chance at the ball during overtime...

I disagree, strongly.

His analogies are bad, to begin with. Baseball is constructed so that it is played in innings, one for each team. So the fact that a home team in extra innings always gets a shot at winning the game is fine and dandy. And Soccer doesn't play "real" overtime--penalty kicks don't count. And he is conveniently forgetting hockey, which is as sudden death as football.

And then there is my "three-legged stool" of football--offense, defense and special teams. It's not just about offense. Sure, for most people watching the offenses might be entertaining and they are the source of almost all the points, but they are not the entire sport. Play all three aspects of the damn game, and if you can't make a go of them, well then you don't deserve a victory.

Now, I could get behind a "NBA style" overtime change--play an entire 5th quarter, start to finish. Whoever has the most points, wins. That would be fair and balanced, and if the score is still tied at the end of OT...then its a tie game, just as it normally is now (except for playoffs of course).

But this silly nonsense of "both offenses getting the ball" is a clumsy idea at best, and at worst a slap in the face to two-thirds of what football is all about.

Wish 66: Left Turn at Albuquerque

"I knew that I should have made a left turn at Albuquerque"--Bugs Bunny

Ginger asks this week:
GMs can spend hours designing an adventure and have their players take off in an entirely unexpected direction. How does a GM handle this—try and steer the players back to the designed plot, or hang back and see where the adventure goes? How does a player handle this? Stay on target or go with the flow?

Hang on for dear life and work on the fly, if everything else fails.

Sure, I have overarching plots in my game, in my campaign and also one-shots for cons. To paraphrase Clausewitz: "No Gm plot survives contact with the Player Characters"

And, really, it shouldn't. Choice and degrees of freedom, as discussed in earlier posts are important to me. So, if players decide to strike off from the main trail...I am going to manage things as well as I can, even to the point of extemperaneous stuff being whipped up.

SB, for example, got an early dose of this. Early on, I had a weak, static-filled trump call be taken by Jayson from an imprisoned Deirdre. My expectation was that Jayson would use or bargain this information in Amber, since he was headed there. I did not expect him to wind up going personally to Corwin's Pattern and subsequently tangling with Brand on the demiplane. Brand was a card I was expecting to play later in the game. And of course Jayson's early action lead to the entire Apollo subplot.

I feel that, within reason, allowing the players to bring elements to the game can be a good thing, so long as its not done to the deteriment of other's enjoyment. I wouldn't want SB to be "just" about one character's subplot that they whipped up as a detour.

On the one shot front, for example, I did not expect Alice to be such a focal character in the latest incarnation of Wizard in the Attic. Her pell-mell chase through the Mirror Realm was not something I anticipated, but lots of fun nevertheless.

As a player, I usually don't intentionally derail Gm plots. I usually color between the lines, although they can surprise me sometimes. Archard managed to dodge taking a declaration of War from the Courts of Chaos in EGB, for example. I don't think Arref saw that coming, and truthfully neither did I. On the other hand, since I don't crave the limelight, I usually don't wind up changing the plot of the entire game, just my little thread.

The Classic Blunder

I was talking with my co-workers yesterday, and apparently one of them is a Princess Bride fan, and we together came up with this little gem:

Bush and therefore the U.S. fell for "the classic Blunder"...never get involved in a Land War in Asia. In fact, we fell for it twice. At least we didn't match wits with a Sicilian when Death is on the line...

So I guess the President has never seen the movie or read the book. Even if on the other hand he is, according to JMS, a fan of Babylon 5.

Corwin's Pattern

Chris has finished part four of his series on Corwin's Pattern

I promised in a comment there that I would discuss, here, the whole "blood versus no blood" thing...the fact that Corwin did not use Blood in his inscribing of his Pattern, and what that means...

UPDATED to reflect Chris' comment that there will be more on Corwin's Pattern. Cool beans!

Well, to get something out of the way first, I do, in SB and most of the games that I run, consider the Merlin books canonical. Yes that means "singing and dancing Powers" but its not a deal-breaker. There is at least one player in SB who has not read past Trumps of Doom, and does just fine. On the other hand, a couple of players have dealt with the Powers, in various guises and mechanisms.

Let's look at the evidence.

Dworkin used Blood in his creation.
Lightning, Blood and Lyre as Chris helpfully remembers for us.

As a result, people of his bloodline, and only his bloodline, walk the Pattern and live. Consider LLewella's( or is it Flora?) reaction when she finds out from Merlin that Coral has walked the Pattern. Or even more poignant, the fact that Dara's walk clinches her bloodline in the eyes of Corwin and the Amberites, and of course Moire's attempts to have a Rebman walk the Pattern in Rebma.

Corwin didn't use blood.
I never thought of what trio Corwin used...but myth and metaphysics is something Arref is far better than I in. I like his trio of Blossoms, Wings and Wood for his CP (Corwin Pattern)

But no blood.

The result? Fiona claims CP won't let her walk it...but it is receptive to Merlin. And a couple of Patternghosts. So clearly the Pattern has choice in this case, choice that it exercises for its will.

Now here comes my own speculation.

Dworkin used Blood specifically for a binding agent. Dworkin had an idea that, using three spikards (in my cosmology) and the JOJ might lead to a icon of power which could be...difficult. So he bound it to himself, and his line, by using Blood. Of course Dworkin didn't foresee that the same Blood would be used against the Pattern one day.

Corwin did not use Blood...and as a result, the CP has a freedom of choice. It can choose to admit anyone that it likes on the design, according to its own will. In theory, anyone with the Endurance who is admitted by the CP can walk it. Thus we see the Patternghosts hanging about it, and Merlin is allowed the chance to walk...but the CP denies Fiona. Can you blame it?

A couple of things flow from this and each other.

A wild speculation not true in SB, but worth thinking about: What happened when Oberon fixed/rewrote the Pattern at the end of Courts of Chaos. He didn't use blood...perhaps the Pattern has lost that restriction on itself. Although, however, if you go on to the Merlin books, blood is used as a threat against it, successfully. Perhaps the Pattern is not willing to risk such a test itself, yet. Now that would be an idea for a game...starting it off with someone who clearly should die on the Pattern walking it, and surviving.

On the other hand in SB, Moire has been working toward a goal of taking the Rebman Pattern under her own aegis, thinking along these lines and the Sapphire of Justice. Can you walk a Pattern with one of the Jewels, even if you don't have the blood. (or do you? What IS Moire's ancestry anyway?). And if you do rewrite the Rebman Pattern...what happens next?

Perhaps, then, CP is actually in a sense better than the Amber Pattern, at least from its own point of view. It can choose its scions in a way Amber's cannot. It certainly needs *some* advantage if its going to survive, deep within Chaosian territory, and with a rival Pattern to boot.

To Nano or not to Nano...

Kathryn Cramer reminds us that the newest Nanowrimo is upon us. The goal? To write a 50,000 word novel in one month, namely November.

Last year a couple of readers of this Blog tried it--Deb is the one whose name comes immediately to mind. I lamented halfway into the month that I had not the cojones or foreknowledge to try it.

The question is--will I try it this time?

Ideally, if someone I knew was also doing it, I'd be more inclined...or at least more inclined not to give up. But "writing a novel" is one of those "woulda, coulda shoulda" things that many people have in their lives.

And it might even be fun. I've no lack of ideas, anyway...although sustaining them for 50,000 words might be a challenge. The longest thing I've worked on as one document is the still incomplete "Marcus Murder Mystery" which clocks in at around 8000 words so far--but I've outlined its plot and I think it will likely push 10000 once I am done.

So again...to Nano or not to Nano, that is the question.

100 Movies

100 movies. Which ones have you seen from this list?

I've put the ones I've seen (in FULL, not just pieces) in boldface

I think this is swiped from the IMDB top 100 movies list, or an old variant thereof.

Via Bruce Baugh

1 Godfather, The (1972)
2 Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)
3 Godfather: Part II, The (1974)
4 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
5 Schindler's List (1993)
6 Citizen Kane (1941)
7 Casablanca (1942)
8 Seven Samurai (1954)
9 Star Wars (1977)
10 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
11 Memento (2000)
12 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
13 Rear Window (1954)
14 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
15 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
16 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
17 Usual Suspects, The (1995)
18 Amelie (2001)
19 Pulp Fiction (1994)
20 North by Northwest (1959)
21 Psycho (1960)
22 Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)
23 12 Angry Men (1957)
24 Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
25 It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
26 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
27 Goodfellas (1990)
28 American Beauty (1999)
29 Vertigo (1958)
30 Pianist, The (2002)
31 Sunset Blvd. (1950)
32 Apocalypse Now (1979)
33 Some Like It Hot (1959)
34 Matrix, The (1999)
35 To Kill a Mockingbird
36 Taxi Driver (1976)
37 Third Man, The (1949)
38 Paths of Glory (1957)
39 Fight Club (1999)
40 Boot, Das (1981)
41 L.A. Confidential (1997)
42 Double Indemnity (1944)
43 Chinatown (1974)
44 Requiem for a Dream (2000)
45 Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
46 Singin' in the Rain (1952)
47 Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957)
48 Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)
49 Saving Private Ryan
50 All About Eve (1950)
51 M (1931)
52 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
53 Raging Bull (1980)
54 Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
55 Seven
56 Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000)
57 Wizard of Oz, The
58 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
59 Vita e bella, La (1997) (Life is Beautiful)
60 American History X (1998)
61 Sting, The (1973)
62 Touch of Evil (1958)
63 Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)
64 Alien (1979)
65 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
66 Rashomon (1950)
67 Leon (1994)
68 Annie Hall (1977)
69 Great Escape, The (1963)
70 Clockwork Orange, A (1971)
71 Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948)
72 Reservoir Dogs (1992)
73 Sixth Sense, The (1999)
74 Jaws
75 Amadeus (1984)
76 On the Waterfront (1954)
77 Ran (1985)
78 Braveheart (1995)
79 High Noon (1952)
80 Fargo (1996)
81 Blade Runner (1982)
82 Apartment, The (1960)
83 Aliens (1986)
84 Toy Story 2
85 Strangers on a Train (1951)
86 Modern Times (1936)
87 Shining, The (1980)
88 Donnie Darko (2001)
89 Duck Soup (1933)
90 Princess Bride, The (1987)
91 Run Lola Run (1998)
92 City Lights (1931)
93 General, The (1927)
94 Metropolis (1927)
95 Searchers, The (1956)
96 Full Metal Jacket (1987)
97 Notorious (1946)
98 Manhattan (1979)
99 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
100 Graduate, The (1967)

Sticky characters

The topic du jour, thanks to Arref and Ginger, is "sticky characterss". These are not PCs who eat sticky rice, nor are they candy fiends...

These are characters, mainly but not necessarily PCs, who reach out and touch other characters by their design. As Arref defines it:
"Sticky: how much does the PC really touch and affect other PCs? Just by being themselves?

So let's think about this in the context of Strange Bedfellows. Sure, its a sprawling game with a large cast and a wide location net for those characters, from Amber, through shadow, all the way to the Courts.

And yet, its not a dozen and a half single plots, either. So who is sticky in SB? Some examples...

Lorius (NPC). By design, he is sticky and he loves it. Arrogant sorcerer son of Fiona, he doesn't have all of the cards, but he's certainly useful in a lot of situations, and he does bring elements together. He colorfully accented the "First Library Scene" early in the game, helped examine the first stable Door, helped lead the team at the Fount which stymied Brand, delved into the Logrus with Jayson, and now is arriving at "The Second Library Scene". Characters are usually exasperated with him, but he's an absolute blast. I also think he is the character with the record of meeting most of the other characters. Captain Hook all the way.

Krysta (PC): Not so much by Dawn's intent and design, her character has been in the middle of a bunch of plots, herself. The buisness with Roland, she was present at the Door scene, and otherwise has been quietly meeting and interacting with a panoply of characters and settings within Amber itself. Not intentionally, she's a Daphne sort of character, to use the Scooby system mentioned on Ginger's entry.

I think Arref might dispute this in modesty, but Bhangbadea (PC) is sticky too. People seem to bond to her, and vice versa, be it NPC (eg. Hadrian), PC (eg. Dagny) and then there is always Bishop. A calming influence on the sometimes contentious "Second Library Scene", Bhangbadea has had a wide range of contact across the game, too.

Finally, there is Triton. A PC, turned NPC, but recently picked up as a PC again, Triton's story is a convoluted and long one. The player who decided to take up the mantle of the character spent weeks looking through a large sheaf of stuff...and a tangle of plots, consequences and plans. Now that he is a PC again, I expect him to renew his place as a vortex...even if he doesn't try to steal Moire's jewel again or try and kill more guards.

Livejournal account

Thanks to Deb, I got myself one of the free LJ accounts yesterday. I'm not sure I am going to use it for too much (although perhaps stuff on Delwin and Iolaus for GA and other things which might not "fit" in here come to mind). The main use is so that I can comment on other people's LJ's (Deb's, Jenn's, Ginger's, etal) without being anonymous.

Anyway, my LJ id is PrinceJvstin (Jvstin was long since taken, more's the pity). But I will likely disclaimer myself on entries on other people's LJ's until everyone realizes who I am. And Deb has been telling me about friend lists and other miscellany.

Fun fun fun.

Notoriety

I guess my quirkiness is becoming more noticed at the office. Today, when the head of the Department came over since he needed someone (me!) to fix a giant batch of mistakes in the database, he saw my background screen with Mars on it.

He asked me if it was "my home planet."

I guess my reputation for reading SF and stuff is *that* noticeable. But still...I discuss sports and stuff and other things with my co-workers. I'm not that eccentric.

Honest.

I don't know when this temp assignment is ending. I've learned a further step today, and an accidental (honest) overhearing of my immediate boss felt good--since out of the small group back here, I was the only one she deemed good enough and trustworthy enough to fully register documents. But the paper suggests Hennepin County is not hiring any more people--even if they could likely hire me and save money on the deal, since they have to currently pay me AND a fee to Dolphin.

Labyrinths

The Labyrinth Company

Jim and I were talking this evening about Labyrinths and Zelazny's inspiration to use such a device in his work. A bit of googling turned up some interesting designs and displays of same, such as the link above. Karen was the one who got the ball rolling on Jim, and he and began batting back and forth on the subject. So they definitely get credit for topic inspiration.

Chartres, though, seems to be the classic, archetypal labyrinth in Western societies (a lot of Native Americans also used similar designs). I don't know what it IS about walking a Labyrinth, but there is something to it, even if its as mundane as autohypnosis.

I've walked a Labyrinth in my time--they had one near Trinity Church in Manhattan for a while. Nicole, Matt and I took great pleasure from this fact, even if it was only a mat with the design rather than something permanent.

Monday Mashup: The Dukes of Hazzard

Bryant has a light and fun Mashup this week...The Dukes of Hazzard.

Considering my age (32 in October), I will cop to having watched the show--quite a bit. My father especially liked it, but when you are in what are now called the tweens, racing cars, Daisy Duke and old fashioned fun had a lot of appeal, even for the likes of me. So I am quite familiar with the show.

And what's more, this is a Mashup that I actually did, in my first ever campaign that I GMed. You see, I had a friend, Anthony, with whom I played AD&D. For reasons to this day I am still not sure, he decided to name one of his characters Hazard.

And thus was born the germ of an idea. I was not very original in those days, in my first attempt to GM (DM according to terminology of the time). After all, the main city of the campaign was called Dunedain, the country was named Aragorn...the capital of it was named Weshington...and other weird ideas such as Elves using irrigation to reclaim a desert, Israeli style.

Anyway, with a name like Hazard, I had his party reach the borderlands of Aragorn at one point, and stay at an Inn. I had them overhear that a local farmer was in debt to the lord of the Land, and the lord was going to seize his property.

Well, naturally these guys were convinced (by the farmer's beauteous niece with a penchant for short skirts) to help get the money to "Lord Davis", who happened to be a short man with a penchant for wearing white. And of course there were his bumbling knight henchmen who looked suspiciously like the two policemen from the series. In the end, the adventurers paid off the farm, and got out of the principality with the knights frustrated and unable to catch them in order to put Hazard and co. in jail on trumped-up charges.

Lots and lots of fun.

Issa has buyer's remorse

Congressman Darrell Issa is now urging people to vote "NO" on the Recall if McClintock and Schwarzenegger are still in the race when the election is held.

So, you ask? Well, Issa is the man who spent $1,600,000 dollars of his own money to make the recall happen in the first place. This was his baby, his big idea.

He's apparently afraid that the Recall will go through, and Lt. Gov Bustamante will win the election thanks to a divided Republican vote.

And here I thought :sniff: this recall was only about fiscal principles and removing the 'dark lord' Gray Davis. :sniff:

The Sound of the Big Bang

Via Kathyrn Cramer's blog, her father, physicist John Cramer has a auditory representation of the Big Bang event.

This is to say, the "sound of the Big Bang." This strikes me much like the stuff about the "color of the universe" that came out last year, but go ahead and take a listen anyway.

I suppose its only a matter of time before someone like YES or Rush takes this sound and works it into one of their pieces.

Felicia, the Baby, and Everything II

Well, almost on cue to Jenn's comment on the last topic of this name, Scott and I had an interesting evening last night.

First up, we went to a used auto parts store and fortunately found a replacement side-view mirror for the Dakota. Scott and I then proceeded to replace the mirror. Yes, I actually participated, significantly in this venture--Scott is a strong believer in that Protestant work ethic.

So, the car has a mirror again.

We also discussed other matters at length...

The dispensation of cooking duties, for example, is going to be a tennis match. Last night Scott cooked up sausage in buns. Tonight, I am going to cook buffalo chicken breasts that were in the freezer, and also make a Lipton Noodles and sauce packet. And so on. (So, the culinarily interested on this Blog will see a lot more food entries as I document my highs and lows in this venture).

We also discussed the "Exit strategy" for me. I cannot stay in the Olson household much longer, logistically and otherwise. They need the room with the baby coming in, and the guest room must perforce revert to office status. I might move into/with the apartment of Matt (mentioned here) but at this point, its a disaster area. Fortunately, from my piece of mind, this is not quite the bum's rush that I got from Bonnie and her mother. I don't think Scott expects me to go live at a hotel if nothing else comes up.

We also discussed auto transportation. Paying off Bonnie, unfortunately, was a hit as far my savings, but this is the season for relatively good deals on automobiles, and getting wheels of my own would open up more options. It would also prevent me from damaging the Olson's vehicles any further. I don't think I am going to go new, unless I get a really good deal.

And if I do wind up staying in the house past when the baby comes back, well there is paperwork that I must fill out and hopefully have California and NY process quickly--a background check.

Now if I would only get some of these job applications turn up for interviews, my days would really be packed...

Autmunal Equinox

The Equinox is today, the official end to Summer (although it feels like it long since up here, with early morning temperatures in the 40's). Fall, the season of changing leaves, Halloween, NFL Football, and new network TV shows, is here.

And on a not so cheery note, it seems that the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf up in the Arctic has broken apart.

Said ice shelf has been a feature for the last 3000 years.

That's right, my friends. This ice shelf is (was) as old as the Iliad and the Odyssey. And now it is in pieces, and the freshwater lake that it was damming has drained into the ocean.

Certainly, its not necessarily due to Global Warming, man-made or natural. But when features thousands of years old break apart...its worrisome to me.

Attention Airports of the Solar Federation

we have assumed privatization, except in Alaska.

Alaska's sole congressman Don Young, who supports efforts to privatize air traffic control, got two Alaska airports struck from the privatization hit list.

Why? Let me quote:

"Of course the criticism of myself," he said, "is that I exempted the state of Alaska." But there were ample reasons for that, he said, ticking off a number of them.

"Lastly," Young said, "my hotel room is on the top floor of the Sheraton, and the airplanes take right off towards my hotel room. Every morning I look out and there's one coming right at me. It's an interesting experience and I want to make sure everything is done right in that field."

(Emphasis added by myself)

Now, I watched Sixty Minutes last night, and I was surprised to learn just how much power Young has in Congress. The episode featured a story about building a Natural Gas pipeline...but Young wants it built in such a way that it traverses most of Alaska before heading into Canada--and considering his influence, he is going to get it....even if a shorter trip across the Arctic Ocean over to Canada, where there is already a pipeline in the works, would be cheaper and more efficient.

Being House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman has its perks and clout, of course. You do want the Interstates in your area repaired of potholes, right?

Why don't Hurricanes hit LA?

The Slate's Explainer has an explanation of why Hurricanes don't hit the West Coast, as opposed to the beleagured East Coast.

It does leave out a crucial detail, though. It mentions that the Northern Pacific is "usually under 75 degrees" as opposed to the warmer (and hurricane-friendly) North Atlantic. It doesn't explain, however, WHY. After all, to those who have never been to, or lived in Southern California, you'd think that the ocean water would be warm, right?

It's not, and I can personally attest to this. But the reason for this coolness is that the current that runs along the west coast is the Alaska current, and it is a mirror image of the more well-known Gulf Stream. The Alaska current runs in a southerly direction along the west coast of North America, bringing cool waters all the way down to Mexico.

The upshot of this is that a theoretical LA-targeted Hurricane would have to climb north, being bled away by a cool current. (Hurricanes feed off of warm water after all). This is why a true tropical Hurricane has not hit the West Coast in recorded history. This current, too, also explains some pecularities of Southern California weather. In early summer, the water is much cooler than the air off of the land, and thus a "marine layer" of moisture forms off of the cool water and obscures the sun in the morning. Locals call this "The June Gloom", since it is most prevalent in June (although last year it went well into July).

As you get away from the coast, though, this moderating effect dissipates, and the climate slides toward desertification.

Driving sucks

Well, I am not going to be picking up Scott from the airport today, as planned. And in fact my weekend plans are shot to pieces.

Why? I managed to destroy the driver-side side-view mirror coming out of the garage yesterday. A classic case of not watching what I was doing, and not seeing that my angle exiting the garage was askew, and *crunch*. What's worse is that this is the second time in a month that the side-view mirror has taken a bullet (Scott did it in August).

Needless to say, though, Scott is not going to be a very happy camper when he gets in tonight, and without Felicia here as a buffer...I think I am going to be in a modern-day Ice Age...and that's if I am LUCKY.

Felicia was a bit concilatory on the phone today, but today sounded perfunctory and brief. Hopefully the rest of her drive down to Florida will be without incident.

I hate driving. And driving hates me.

Of course I am going to pay for this, and I am going to also pay for the cab ride that Scott by necessity now needs to take to get home.

Shoot. Me. Now.

Ancient South American Rodent

Ancient rodent the size of a buffalo

I'm guessing that most of my readers have seen this already, but I thought that I would provide a link in any event.

Life really is stranger than fiction...this looks like something that would fit right in the post-human world of AFTER MAN.

Felicia, the Baby, and Everything

I am home alone again this weekend, as Felicia and Scott have begun a driving trip that will take Scott as far as Atlanta before he flies back home, and Felicia all the way to Tampa, Florida.

The reason is something that I've resisted talking about in this space because, and this will sound foolish, I didn't want to jinx it, even though people like Deb already know about it...

Felicia and Scott are going to adopt a baby--a friend of Felicia's from one of the RPG message boards.

Anyone who knows Felicia as well as I do knows that she is a born mother. She loves children, is unhappy that the custody arrangement for Damion only allows her to see him a few scant months of the year, and the fact that she cannot have any more natural children is a sadness to her.

Felicia and Scott have talked about adopting a child for a long time, but this sort of dropped on them. One of her friends, Pam, called a few months ago with the news that she, a single mother, was pregnant again, and that she didn't feel that she could handle raising a second child by herself. And Pam didn't want to abort the baby, either. Instead, Pam wanted Felicia to adopt her baby, knowing that it would go into a good home.

Felicia and Scott debated and thought about this for a long while before Felicia convinced Scott. There have been ups and downs, a long series of paperworks, and other things (last night was a home study interview), but the due date for the baby is approaching, and so Felicia is heading down to be with Pam when she gives birth. (Felicia has long since met her before at "Portalfest"--a con for the message board where they met).

Scott's driving endurance is amazing, and driving such a long distance alone is a hardship, so Felicia and Scott are driving today all the way to Kentucky, and tomorrow as far as Atlanta. There, Scott will fly home, and Felicia will drive the remaining distance to Tampa.

Where I come in this is that I will have to pick up Scott from the airport, in Scott's truck. Scott offered to let me beg off and he take a cab-but I am no coward. Even if driving his truck on an Interstate is a sobering thought.

Goodbye Galileo

The robot probe Galileo, which has been tootling around the Jupiter mini-system for eight years, is being crashed into Jupiter this weekend.

Why? Well, the little guy is at the end of its life. NASA scientists do not want it to crash on one of Jupiter's moons, especially Europa, since there is a possibility that there is life in the ocean beneath its ice cap. Galileo might have some terrestrial bacteria on it, and thus if it crashes into Europa, such organisms might confuse the issue of the existence of Europan life forms.

Besides, burning up in Jupiter's atmosphere is a sort of a funeral pyre end for the little probe that could. I think its fitting, myself.

Matters of Import

Inspired by Arref, and chagrined by a previous failure to successfully do so, I tried to import my old Blogger entries once again.

This time, I succeeded!

WISH 65: That's My Job

Ginger asks us:

Does what you do for a living have any impact on your gaming? Have you had occupational details intrude on your descriptions of how something works? Have you ever dared a player to go “Hotwire a car, then, if that’s how you think it’s done?”

Well, considering the variety of things that I have done which have nothing to do with my degree, I really haven't put those talents to true use, and thus my jobs haven't really influenced my gaming.

My education/training however, has. With a Biology degree under my belt, with some other sciences thrown in, my scientific frameset has definitely influenced my gaming. I've used Quantum Mechanics, for example, in my cosmology (and I've not seen anyone else go there, although I've seen some mathematical descriptions of the infinities of shadows)

My descriptions of shadows include things like Biomes. I've borrowed extinct animals for shadows, especially my beloved Ammonites. Most of my magic-wielding character's approaches to sorcery are very much by the scientific method, especially Marcus and Cadmus.

The funniest ancedote I have about an intrusion into gaming doesn't involve me personally, although I was there. In Tony Pi's Silver Sails game, Rob "Xagnut" Bergeron started throwing detailed stuff about ships and sailing at Tony, much to his constertation, especially because it was derailing an important plot point that Tony wanted to have happen--namely, the boat sink.

Book Review XI

This time, I am going to discuss Ken Macleod's THE STONE CANAL, Michael Stackpole's THE DARK GLORY WAR, and Michael Flynn's IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND

Ken Macleod has been quietly writing some odd leftish political-influenced Science Fiction novels in Britain for some time, and now he is starting to stir the waters on this side of "the pond"

The Stone Canal is part of his "Fall Revolution" novels, involving the disintegration of a US-UN hegemony in a 21st century that has also seen a Singularity (in the Vinge sense), and the one-shot colonization of a planet beyond a wormhole constructed by the Post-humans.

I'd already read the Cassini Division, which deals with the first contact between Earth and "New Mars". This novel, however, deals with the founding of New Mars, some aspects of the Fall Revolution, and the nature of the weird society that forms on New Mars.

It's decidedly a mixed bag. It takes the story of Jon Wilde and cuts between his life in the British Isles in the late 20th and early 21st century, and his new incarnations here on New Mars a couple of centuries later. Unfortunately much of Jon's history is dominated by dull politics and debates about the same. I felt like it was a progressive version of The Probability Broach. The stuff on New Mars, the quest for Dee Model to be free, there are a lot of interesting ideas here, but the matrix they were suspended within was not palatable. And aside from Jon, and Dee, few of the characters were memorable.

Not recommended. Maybe Macleod's other series (beginning with Cosmonaut Keep) is better. I had purchased Cassini Division at the same time as this novel, another of my "leftovers". I don't intend on finishing the Fall Revolution novels, but his potential is clear. But this book isn't good enough to warrant recommendation. Too much chaff to get at the wheat.

Michael Stackpole's The Dark Glory War (A Prelude to the DragonCrown War Cycle)

A mule cross between Tolkien, Robert Jordan and Glen Cook, the Dark Glory War starts off innocently enough, with a quartet of young companions being tested in a rite of passage that gets far more dangerous than their elders anticipate. Three of the four friends (the fourth is lamed and drops out of the story unceremoniously) wind up initiated in a secret society for their bravery. Subsequently the wind up going on successively dangerous missions as they make a "Grand tour" of the map in the phat fantasy style. Throw in a cursed magical sword, lots of battle scenes, and a villain who would twirl his moustache if she weren't a woman, and it is the book in a nutshell.

There are a couple of good things in the book, but they are overwashed by the bad. A few interesting bits and minor characters, such as the genis locii of a bridge that the heroes are trying to destroy to stymie an invading army are overwhelmed by the bad...

Characters not even out of their teens with military savvy and skill more suited to characters twice their age? A stunning lack of character development, and a patched in romance for the main character in the last 60 pages of the book don't help either. Chytrine seemed way over the top as a villain...and I don't buy the whole set-piece in the northern fortress. And while the disgrace of the hero at the end doesn't bother me--it just seems forced, too.

The book is a prequel to a epic fantasy series that he is writing, and it definitely seems Stackpole forced certain things in this book to set up that in turn. The battle scenes are convincingly done, except of course for the age of the protagonists versus their skill, luck and verve, especially their uncanny success in dealing with Chytrine's "Dark Lancers". To use a Tolkien analogy...imagine if Merry and Pippin had together killed three Nazgul. Even with a magical sword and a magical arrow, wouldn't that stretch the bounds of credulity? Even for Aragorn to perform such a feat would be asking much. I think I know why Stackpole did it, in relation to his Dragoncrown War epic series, but I just don't buy it.

*Strongly Not Recommended*. I've no desire to read subsequent novels in this epic cycle.

Michael Flynn's In the Country of the Blind

His first novel, back in print, uses a variant of Asimov's Psychohistory, here called Clitology, as the backdrop of a nest of conspiracies, secret societies, and many of the elements of a thriller. A real estate developer (and ex-reporter) accidentally discovers papers and the remnants of a Babbage Engine in a property she is interested in developing. Research into the mysterious items leads to assassination attempts, people disappearing, and her getting mixed up in multiple secret societies who have been using this sort of information for two centuries to predict, and sometimes alter, the flow of history.

The writing isn't as sharp as his later novels, but that's forgivable since this is a first novel reprinted again. And while I think too many of these societies crawl out of the woodwork by the time the novel ends, the novel feels much more like a thriller than SF. The novel includes an appendix in the form of an essay on cliology, and while not a guideline on how to predict history, it does show rather interesting trends in history, on all sorts of scales.

Recommended.

Another song for the soundtrack of my life

I was listening to my Yahoo Launchcast at work today, and it picked for me a song that I never really listened to before...

Matchbox 20's "Last Beautiful Girl"

It gave me eerie flashbacks to my relationship with Bonnie.

I put the lyrics in the extended entry, if you're not familiar with the song.

Anyway, I've been playing with my Launchcast at work today. It's nice to have some music to listen.

Last Beautiful Girl
matchbox twenty

This will all fall down
Like everything else that was
This too shall pass
And all of the words we said
We can't take back

Now every fool in town
Would've left by now
I can't replace
All the wasted days
The memory of your face - I can't help thinkin'

Maybe if we ever coulda kept it all together
Where would we be
A thousand lost forevers
And the promises you never were giving me
Here's what I'm thinking

It won't be the first - heart that you break
It won't be the last - beautiful girl
The one that you wrecked - won't take you back
If you were the last beautiful girl in the world

So tell me one more time
How you're sorry about the way
This all went down
You needed to find your space
You needed to still be friends

You needed me to
Call you if I ever couldn't keep it all together
You'd comfort me
Tell me bout forever
And the promises I never should have believed in
Here's what I'm thinking

It won't be the first - heart that you break
It won't be the last - beautiful girl
The one that you wrecked - won't take you back
If you were the last beautiful girl in the world
Last beautiful girl in the world

It's over now - And I've gone without
Cuz you're everybody else's girl
And it seems to me - you'll always be
Everyone else's girl
Everyone else's girl

This will all fall down
Like everything in the world
This too must end
And all of the words we said
We can't take back

It won't be the first - heart that you break
It won't be the last - beautiful girl
The one that you wrecked - won't take you back
If you were the last beautiful girl

It won't be the first - heart that you break
It won't be the last - beautiful girl
The one that you wrecked - won't take you back
If you were the last beautiful girl in the world
Last beautiful girl in the world
If you are the last beautiful girl in the world

Beautiful girl

The Edifice of Non Confidence

One of my achilles' heels, perhaps one of the root ones in my psyche...

Non Confidence.

Even with a track record of success, I can be terribly insecure about my own abilities. It's a poison that I've not managed to leech out of my bloodstream.

I'm always thinking that I don't measure up. At work or at play, its one of those things which make up who and what I am. And I do it entirely to myself.

Consider, when I was recruited to join A Grand Affair...my first reaction was: Why would you ask me?

Or more recently, the business of Chaos interpretations. Ginger's points on the non-alienness of Chaos were not meant in derision to what Arref, Chris and I came up with...and yet a portion in me immediately thought. "Of course, its logical that my Chaos isn't good enough, it doesn't measure up to what other people have done." That was hardly the point Ginger was trying to make.

Even if, as Meera pointed out in a comment, its patently NOT true. Logically and intellectually, I know its utter bullshit, pardon my Aramaic. And yet my emotions want to run with the "Nothing you do is worth anything" meme.

At least I recognize some of my own psychological problems these days. It's an improvement that I am, after 31 years, beginning to see the traps I set for myself. Now I need to stop stepping in quite so many.

IMC: Benedict's Fight with Corwin

Arref has a IMC on Benedict's fight with Corwin. You know the one, where Benedict gets tangled with the Black Road grass and thus loses.

Benedict. The soi disant best warrior in Amber, if not Shadow.

While I am not liable to go quite as far as my friend and partner on Benedict's motivations, my own take is that Benedict was not fighting with his full capacities.

Why?

Well, Arref points out that Corwin has threatened, killed something under his protection. Even the rat-bastard Corwin from before the books is not stupid enough to try it. So why would Corwin do such a thing?

I think Benedict, in turn, became wary of his brother. And thus he did not fight with his full strength. It's not that he was trying to lose per se, more of a sense that he should not show his own hand. Judging the mettle of Corwin, possibly even concerned about Identity issues. Recall that Benedict has already dealt with minions of Chaos at this point.

So Benedict is cagey. Plus, to give due credit to Corwin, Corwin has learned a trick or two on Earth, and then there is that grass. Thus, Benedict loses the battle, but in the end, gains Intel on Corwin's return. And thus wins the war, even if the battle was lost in getting there.

I trust the very competent Benedict knows what is more important.

Gm Referral Database Review

I just came across this today, a review of my GMing on the Shadows of Amber Bulletin Board. Honestly, I never thought to even look before now. The whole award thing got me thinking along those lines, though.

I am flattered by the mostly positive nature of the review, although by a process of elimination I can think of only two people who would have written it. But the point about my achilles heel...is true, damn true.

But as I've said earlier today in multiple locations, I have no illusions about the level of my GMing, or anything else I do, Amber or otherwise.

Shadowstorm Award

No, not for me (that would be absolutely silly, and unlikely at best. Heck, I don't even get nominated for such things, much less win. There are far more deserving souls).

But an Amber site in Germany has given, rightly so, kudos to Arref (for In the Shadow of Greatness AND Nine Ladies Dancing), The team of Ginger and Michael (for House of Cards) and the Shadow of Amber bulletin board.

Congradulations to all.

(Update: AS rightly pointed out to me, Ginger is not a one-woman band, and HOC (and daresay, GA) would not be what it is without her partner and husband, Michael. Sorry for leaving you off the first time, Michael.)

And on my Amazon front page...

On the front page of the book section of Amazon.com this morning (for me anyway) was none other than a book called:
Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools

Funny, to me anyway, that they would allow such a book to wind up being promoted on my front page. If they had something to do with its authorship or approved it, of course, that would be a different issue entirely. I guess it shows the power of a once-small internet book store that such a book could be published, and possibly sell well. I don't see "Barnes and Noble Hacks" around, after all. (Although I understand there is a Google Hacks book out, too)

Hometown paper goes Nuclear

And that's Nuke-le-ar, not Nuke-cu-lur.

Anyway, the Strib (as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is sometimes called) has an editorial taking the VP to task on his mendacity.

Admittedly, the Strib is the more left of the two major papers in the Minneapolis area (the other being the St. Paul Pioneer Press) and admittedly, this is a fairly progressive place (or to be more accurate, the Democrats here are very progressive, the somewhat less numerous Republicans are equally strongly conservative, it still washes out to overall somewhat progressive). In fact, Scott has told me that sometimes the Strib has been derided as "The Red Star and Tribune."

But still, the Editorial Board gives Cheney no quarter in this editorial. Sure, there have been some (mostly tepid) criticisms before of the Executive Branch's mendacity, but this qualitatively and quantatitively different. Read it. And wonder when other papers will dare to do the same.

Thanks to Eschaton for pointing out the weblink for the online version of the Editorial, I read the 'dead-tree version' of it this morning.

Monday Mashup: The West Wing

A toughie from Byrant this week, as he asks us to mash up...The West Wing

This one was tough for me. I don't watch the show, I just never had the chance to get into it, and haven't sought it out to do so. I have a general idea of what the show is and its theme.

Still, not knowing the peculiarities of Bartlet and his staff makes it hard to strike more than generic tones on this one.
The game I'd mash this with is one I've done before...Nobilis.

Get a set of players with high realm scores...ie, players who are very invested in the Chancel. This way, the plots and foci of the game will revolve around the Chancel's administration, the interpersonal relationships between the ennobled and their subjects. If the government of the chancel (perhaps an Imperator of Liberty?) makes at least lip service to being something other than autocracy, the PCs are going to have to juggle the needs and demands of the people with the realpolitk of keeping the Chancel healthy against Excrucians, other Nobles, and so forth. The GWB even mentions that governing the Chancel is something that the PCs can and should do--this sort of setup would bring that front and center, rather than a sideline in the Excrucian War.

An undiplomatic display

Now this is rather odd.

It seems one of those weird things, why on Earth would anyone want to see a George Bush Diplomatic Montage in the State Department. The old exhibit seemed far more thematic.

And besides, this sort of montage sounds like its more suited for the White House, than the State Department. It's just...weird.

Ten Little Indians

With the word that Wesley Clark is about to announce his candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination for president, I've already thought of a shorthand for the entire group as a whole. And I am sure that I'm not the only one to think of it.

In the tradition of the 1988 crop of "Seven Dwarves.", with Wesley Clark becoming the 10th Democrat...I give you "Ten Little Indians".

Still, just about any of the ten are better than what we have now at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Kevin Drum interviews Paul Krugman

Kevin Drum, aka Calpundit, has an interview with Paul Krugman, economist and op-ed contributor to the NY Times.

There is a definite catastrophist streak in Krugman's work--comparing the future of the US economy to something like Argentina is pretty radical even to suggest, much less to warn about in a Cassandra-like fashion.

The interview shatters the divide, too, between newspaper journalism and "bloggers", since this interview is as detailed and thoughtful as any you would find in a paper, or on Slate or Salon, say.

The problem with Cassandras, though, is that they sometimes turn out to be right. I don't want Krugman to be right, but ignoring what he has to say is not going to change reality.

But its a very good interview...go forth and read it. As for the book, I'll wait for the paperback (as usual).

Role Call 32: Licensed to Play

James asks:

When playing a licensed roleplaying game like Lord of the Rings, do you like to play characters from the setting, or original creations? Why or why not?

I prefer my own creations.

It's not a failure of characters...who wouldn't want to be in your favorite RPG setting--its just that I think that I do better with creations of my own, than with established characters.

Consider Amber (as always). I usually don't play Elders at all, or seek out Elder games. I much rather would create a new Amberite/Chaosians than play a pre-existing Elder.

And consider that although Delwin seems to break that rule--Delwin and Sand as Liz and I have envisioned them are very acanonical. It's really playing brand new characters, rather than anything gleaned from the books.

Heck, I even wrote a piece of erotica once that was set in the Stak Trek The Next Generation Universe. On the Enterprise, no less. But my two protagonists were NOT cast members, nor was their any, um, prurient action between them and the characters from the show. I just liked the setting.

So too, Amber, Star Wars, LOTR, etal. Give me the universe, but let me create someone of my own.

IMC: Dara's Descent

All the Marks of Humanity
Dara was the first of her line to bear all the marks of humanity. Given that her grandmother (or mother, depending on what theory you subscribe to) was the child of Benedict and Lintra, that starts the line at half Chaosian and half Amberite. In order to filter out the Chaosian blood and bring forth a shapeshifter capable of bearing a human form as a natural form, that implies not introducing more Chaosian blood to the mix. Given that it was a breeding project, I wouldn't expect them to dilute the power of her blood with shadow genes. Which makes one wonder... who the hell was Dara's father?

Arref, Deb and Ginger each have their views on this, so I suppose its time for mine own, too...

Dara's phrase is "first of her line to bear all the marks of humanity." It is parsing this sentence that helps to delve into the origins of Dara.

A digression first, however, is in order, since i need to mention the origin of the Chaosians. Quoting from my cosmology page:

One branch of the Sidhe in the Amber Multiverse, in the meantime, had broken from their kin. Embracing the art of changing form to a degree rarely seen, they decided to settle in the most dangerous place imaginable. Like a hole punched into the shadows lay a crack in the very nature of space...a gap to the Void between Multiverses.

This group of Sidhe that broke away from their kin decided to make the area around this gap to the void their home. Were they fleeing from their kin for some reason? Perhaps their experimentation with Shapeshifting cast them out, and so they decided to go to the one place where it was necessary, rather than an abomination. Or, perhaps, they were lured there, somehow, to settle and create what would later become the Courts. In any event, the name of these Sidhe who left their kind to settle in this most inhospitable land has a name familiar to some.
They were known as the Thari.

So, a human-like form is in the ancestry of every Chaosian, since the Chaosians themselves once had forms which are somewhat close to the human. They never lost this form, even if it is not always emphasized in the Courts.

Thus, Dara's comment about the first of her line to fully bear the marks of humanity is not so much a breeding project so much as it is genetic engineering and shapeshifting training, over two generations. Dara was the culmination of unlocking and enhancing a potential every Chaosian has and exercised anyway--but making it dominant, whereas only some Chaosians did so beforehand. (The no longer existing House Barimen did this, for example).

Before Dara, by and large, most Chaosians did not prefer their human form, or use it overmuch. In Dara, the fully human form is dominant, her primary form, and that achievement was what led to her being placed in Corwin's path, to produce a Chaosian who might sit on the Throne of Amber--Merlin.

Human forms in Chaos are more common nowadays but in a real sense Dara was a pioneer.

The Two out of Three rule

There is a theory about NFL games that I espouse, and I call it the "Two out of Three Rule."

Basically, it says that out of the three areas of Offense, Defense and Special Teams, if you are better in two of the three areas, you will win that particular game.

Offense and Defense are easy to see, but Special Teams--the kicking game, returns as well as kicks, are the one people forget. You *can* win a game with Special Teams and Defense.

The Panthers upset of Tampa Bay is proof positive. Not only did Carolina kick four field goals and play great defense, but they blocked the extra point at the end of the game that would have given TB the win. The result was a tie game, overtime, and Carolina going on to winning it. And last week, Carolina blocked two kicks (a punt for a safety, and a FG) to help preserve their win.

Admittedly its not *easy* to win with this combination, but it does work. Even on Super Bowl champions.

The origin of Darrheabarr

in the Shadow of Greatness: Dariabar !

I've always wondered where the name Darrheabarr came from, whether Arref invented it out of whole cloth or borrowed it.

He's revealed it in reference to Dariabar, and the old Douglas Fairbanks Sinbad movie, since there is apparently a jewelry site named for it as well.

I wonder if Dariabar was in the recent Sinbad movie--the animated one recently in theaters.

Baked Alaska

Baked Alaska on the Menu?

Nicholas Kristof, writing in the NY Times, is changing his mind about the need to get a handle on climate change.

I suppose visiting the Inuit would change a person (I dislike his use of Eskimo in the article--there is a little bit of controversy over its etymology and its use).

One of the money quotes:

"The Okpilak River valley was historically too cold and dry for willows, and in the Inupiat language "Okpilak" means "river with no willows." Yet a warmer, wetter climate means that now it's crowded with willows."

There are two tangled ideas at work here. Climate Change is a fact, the Earth as a whole is warming up. The question is not that it is warming up, but how much of it is due to our own meddling with the climate. That's the really difficult question. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, but there is a correlation between industrialization and the rapid spike in global temperatures in this century.

It's even possible that we are staving off an Ice Age by our industrialization. The "Little Ice Age" seems to have been arrested just as the Industrial Revolution was getting underway in the 18th century.

The slope of the curve, the first derivative of the change in temperatures is what worries me. Bangladesh, New Orleans and Florida under water is not my idea of a good time.

Wish 64: Deities and Demigods

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 64: Deities and Demigods

Ginger asks us to Give us that old time religion when she asks:

Name three gods or religions that have appeared in games you’ve played in. Were they good, bad, or indifferent? What made them so?

The funny thing is, I could answer this question and stay completely within Strange Bedfellows.
Old Gods, long asleep and dreaming have played a role in several character's plotlines.

The biggest one, however, by far was Apollo. And he will represent Amber in the WISH answer.

The plotline originated in an idea of the character's, early on in the game when his character had literally gotten out of the universe in a bold and daring attempt to rescue Deirdre. In a battle with Brand, he called out for help, and found it. Sleeping for a very long time, Apollo was able to touch Jayson, outside of the protection of Pattern and Logrus, and infused him with the power to battle Brand to a standstill.

Apollo, however, was not content with just a taste of his former glory and began working to use Jayson as a conduit to increase his power within the universe. Matters recently came to a head when Jayson entered the Logrus in a bold stroke to try and remove the taint of Apollo from him. Pattern was already regarded as useless, since Apollo had been able to work upon Corwin's Pattern.

The aftermath of that exorcism is still playing out, but it is this that caused the "Shockwave" that has rippled throughout the game. And thus characters as diverse as Leigh, Beastie, Rhionde, and Amberites alike have been affected by it.

In a AD&D game I ran a long time ago, the Player Characters wound up helping Keldor Hearthflame in his attempt to move up the deital ladder. He wasn't an actual participant in anything the PCs did, but he was more or less the patron of the PCs efforts to elevate him (then a demigod) up to lesser god status. It was a nice epic arc, and in the end the PCs did wind up getting enough of the right major artifacts in place to give Keldor his ritual a chance of success.

Of course I thought that while cliche, the big battle that the PCs had to fight to keep the enemies (a motley mix of strange bedfellows to be sure, from CG Valkyries to two demons) at bay long enough for Keldor to get his ritual done.

I never did get the PCs to go for demigod status themselves, they had had enough of meddling in deital affairs by that point.

The third instance of Gods and religions was a game that I didn't play in, so much as witness, at Ambercon. (I was feeling awful and so just watched). It's Rachel Holmberg's Of Light and Darkness game.

Basically, the PCs create Deities as player characters, and through the GM, work out their own creation, and the creation of the world. It's a cerebral game, and very different than the typical game at ACUS. It's myth-creation of a type that reminds me of Pegana more than anything else.

GURPS Planet of Adventure

GURPS Planet of Adventure

It seems that this is at the printer and will soon be available.

And the guy who did this has done some of the better (in my opinion) GURPS books--Krishna, Falkenstein, one of the Alternate Earths, as well as other stuff.

The Planet of Adventure novels were some of the first SF novels that I read, borrowing copies from my brother. Tschai is a complex, varied, and typically Vancian place.

Some entry template changes

Thanks and a shout out to Ginger for helping fix a deficiency in my entries. Namely, you couldn't see trackpack pings, or even the trackback URL, from individual entries. What good are follow-ups if its a hassle to go to the follow-up in the first place?

That has now been corrected.

I've decided to stick with the azure against the dark blue color scheme. It seems to work well and much more of a signature palette than white ever was.

Chaos: Alternate Inspirations

Great stuff from both Arref and from Chris Kindred on Alternate Chaos set-ups. (a sequel to the Nine Princes... idea a little while back)

Chaos is decidedly on a larger scale than Amber itself. Lots of Houses, royal, major and minor. In the novels we see evidence and infer references to lots of species and creatures, from shroudlings to vampires to demons to Lords of the Rim.

Chaos meets Dragaera.

Seventeen major houses, fey like Chaosians, different specialties for every House, a great-cycle of succession between Houses. Probably a lot of Chaos interpretations out there borrow from Brust, explicitly or subconsciously anyhow. But play up how they aren't quite human, with alien senses of honor and authority.

Having an Issola visit Amber and have to deal with a new set of customs and manners...mmmm, I like that idea as a PC.

King of Kings

Go Sumerian/Babylonian with Chaos. "King of Kings". Multiple wives and concubines and enunchs scheming in the royal court. Satrapy governors itching for power. Hippogriff and Griffin motifs as steeds. Wide-flung Empire, with lots of nations (types of creatures?) being held together by the central government. To say nothing of using the mythos...Tiamat, Ishtar...is Gilgamesh perhaps a Hendrake?

You could go a little later in history and make it more Persian in flavor and tone...which would cast the Chaos Emperor as Xerxes and Amber with its Golden Circle as the Greek City States. Or if you wanted a more peaceful game, throw a over-their-heads Amber delegation into this beautiful and complex culture.

The Taj Mahal of Chaos
Chaos, Mughal Empire style. You could go either with the high culture and toleration under Akbar, with courtly culture and hauntingly beautiful artwork. A model of civilization that would likely put the drabby Amber to shame.

If you went with the later history under Aurangzeb, on the other hand, it would be a far less tolerant state, where the faith of the Serpent was to be enforced and spread by any means necessary. (replacing Islam in real history with worship of the Serpent).

Yes Minister

Crooked Timber, a blog that has rapidly reached "daily read" status, has a post about the old British TV series Yes, Minister.

I've watched the show recently, since it turns out Scott is a fan of the series. He bought the complete DVD collection of Yes, Minister some time ago, and more recently, Yes, Prime Minister, its shorter-lived sequel.

I find it quite funny. But then, that is no surprise. I love another British series, The Prisoner, too, and I do have the complete collection of that on DVD. To say nothing of Clockwise, or Monty Python...

UPDATE: Fixed broken link. Thanks Mike!

String Theory...on Television

Brian Greene, author of the excellent book on String Theory called The Elegant Universe, has apparently made a PBS Nova 3-part series based on ideas from the book.

The series is going to air the end of October through early November. The show has a PBS website up already for it.

This does remind me that with all of the books in New York that I had to discard because I had too many, I need to get a new copy of Elegant Universe.

And, really, its not as difficult and obtuse I feel, for the layman as, say, A Brief History of Time (Hawking's famous book). So I heartily recommend it to all.

David Letterman's Monologue 9-17-2003

I'm not sure if it was copyrighted, and I am sure that no one really cares too much...but Crooked Timber has the text of the speech Letterman gave a few days after Nine-Eleven.

Two years, and now a thousand miles away, it still moves me.

Spiders, SF, and more on the subject

Well, I've enjoyed the comments and thoughts on my entry about Spider Robinson's rant.

I am regretful that I missed that Harald had already beaten me to the punch and wanted to respond to Li's response.

I do lump alternate history into the category of science fiction, probably more because that's the way its marketed than anything. Certainly, except for the fact that it takes place in another timeline, a lot of Harry Turtledove's work cannot be classified as SF, per se.

Besides Nonfiction (which I need to buy and read more), my fiction reading habits alternate back and forth, like a metronome, from an SF book to a fantasy book, and back again. Thus, I recently finished The Stone Canal (SF--Macleod), The Dark Glory War (Fantasy--Stackpole), and now am reading In the Country of the Blind (Sf--Michael Flynn). And yes, I know I owe reviews of the first two books...

Li is right, and science fiction doesn't have to necessarily be about Space and I have enjoyed stuff ranging from Connie Willis to Bujold to even Heavy Weather. I like Space-oriented SF, but its not the only SF that I like by any means.

It is disheartening, though, to look at the myriad ads in Locus, and see most of them are for fantasy series that are beginning, or continuing. Escapism? Anti-intellectualism? Bad Science education? A combination of all these and more? I'm not sure.

I'm not David Brin to point evil fingers at Lord of the Rings. After all, I've seen both of the movies now numerous times since its a common choice to put on if the TV selection is crap (and when isn't it?) here at the Olson household. However, its clear that, before LOTR took off in the 70's, and the imitators (who don't need to be mentioned here) began bastardizing and making a formula of his story, science fiction was far more popular than fantasy. How many adult fantasy novels can you name from before that explosion? Dying Earth (really a collection of stories), Well of the Unicorn, and Dunsany's stuff, sure. But certainly not as much as the amount of SF. But Lord of the Rings helped make adult fantasy marketable.

I'm ranting again, and without much point. I had a discussion with Deb some months ago about these subjects. It's disheartening to see that she is winning the argument, that with the graying of SF fandom and with fantasy ascendant, SF is not doing as well as it should. Or could.

But as long as its not complete crap, I'll still read the stuff.

In Memorial 9-11-2001

The wheels of Bureaucracy really do run slowly

Working in the Hennepin County Government Center as a Temp has been an educational experience.

For instance, I've seen for myself just how slowly the gears of government turn.

While working in the Public Records area here, I've done a number of tasks relating to mortgage documents. Until recently, I was reviewing Satisfactions of Mortgages, checking their details against what we have in the computer. It's just a process in the chain of handling these documents.

Now, I am doing document registration, taking documents which have already been reviewed, and assigned a new document number, and registering those in the computer, entering them, basically. Since I am registering Satisfactions and outright new mortgages, I am seeing some of my old Satisfactions.

The thing is, the Satisfactions that I did are over a month old. In essence, in a month's time, the document went to me, I approved it, stamped it, it moved on to someone to be assigned a number, and come back to be registered.

A month. For one intervening step in the process, and a rather mindless one at that. I know there is a huge backlog here (and one of the reason why there are a horde of temps), but that's ridiculous.

I personally think they should train and hire some more full time personnel but with budget cuts and a lousy economy, its not that likely. But to all of my friends doing refi stuff...now you know why it takes so long for the county/state to get their act together. I can't imagine that my observations of county government in Minnesota are atypical.

Monday Mashup: Beach Boys

The Monday Mashup this time is...The Beach Boys?

This one stumped me for quite a while. I resist using Amber and coming up with a sun-washed Empire in shadow with beautiful beaches...because Arref already has done one of those.

This is not to say I can't do light and fluffy games. Not everything I do involves something seriously out of joint, so here goes:

Game system is...Blue Planet. A light Blue Planet scenario or game, set on one of the uncharted islands on Poseidon, maybe in the Pacifica Archipelago. No terrorisms, struggles between new and old colonists, or any of the usual themes of the game. Teenaged or young-adult protagonists, evading responsibility and having a good time on a completely new planet. Blue Planet is partly about freedom, the freedom of a new (and sometimes deadly) world. So I think it would be a natural.

A facet of Iolaus

Well, the Grand Affair has started, and an interesting facet of him has popped out. I know where I got inspired to do it, too, but when Iolaus opened his mouth to speak for the first time in game, he did so in blank verse dactylic hexameter.

When I read "The Big Time", by Fritz Leiber, I remember a character from ancient Crete who had a tendency to do this as well, especially in formal situations. Iolaus has adopted that tendency.

Here, let me share:

"Iolaus Diotrephes is how I am called, pleased to meet you all." His
voice has a cadence and a rhythm much alike an epic poem.

He grimaces.
"I have much regret to say, Proper Speech is harder in Thari." He then
loses the strained expression as a thought comes to him.

"Syracuse is my home. Polis, Island, world unknown. From whence my seed sown."

Land Developers as Tolkien fans

Clearly there is at least one out there.

While doing Document Registration of Mortgages today, I came across a Mortgage for a property in "Lot 4, Block 1, Isengard Second Addition."

It's the sort of thing almost no one is ever going to see outside of a Real Estate office, or, well, Public Records here in Minneapolis. It's not like a street name, which everyone can see. This is far more subtle, and I thought it amusing enough to share.

Spider Robinson on the State of SF

The Globe and Mail

Spider Robinson has a editorial/rant on the state of SF as versus Fantasy these days. It's bitter, to say the least.

One thing he forgets is that a lot of SF these days, and not just tie-ins, is crap. It also doesn't help that publishers have seemingly decided to throw money at people to write Fantasy instead of SF. I personally think its because its easier to sell fantasy novels as "first in a trilogy" than SF novels. Those repeat customers are bread and butter to everyone in the book industry.

Birth Announcement

I am proud to announce that Bridgette Ruggles, well known in Amber circles as Egwenna (and my RPG partner here at All-Roads-Lead), has given birth to a bouncing baby boy.

Baby name is forthcoming, as Bridgette and her husband Brian did not elect to even know the gender of the baby in advance. Mother and baby are said to be doing just fine.

UPDATE: The baby has been named Issac Luis Ruggles Altman.

Nine Princes in ...

Chris Kindred has a great post on Historical Settings for Alternate Amber games, and I thought I would expand from my comment on same, to here.

This is a topic near and dear to me, although I've not had the guts yet to run an Alternate History Amber. I'm not a history major, although I think I have a fairly good grounding in it for someone who isn't such, and knowing what details to emphasize or diminish can be important.

I refer you to Chris' post for his own ideas, here I am going to mention a few of mind which are percolating in various stages.

Nine Princes in Byzantium

Byzantium meets Amber, heavily influenced by Turtledove and Norwich. Chris rightly points out the drawbacks of having cannon in an Amber setting...you could set this Byzantium at any number of stages in its history. Personally, I like a three-sided conflict, between Byzantium, a Persian Power perhaps based on sorcery and Trump, and the "Courts of Chaos" of the setting, the "Caliphate of Chaos".

Nine Princes in Byzantium
The Guns of Anatolia
Sigil of the Unicorn
The Heresiarch of Oberon
The Caliphate of Chaos

Nine Princes in Memphis
Amber in Ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh and the Royal Family of Egypt were seen as emissaries of the Gods (and the Pharaoh a God himself). Princes and Princesses of Amber in such a setting would flourish in such an environment. Lots of dynastic quarrels are tailor made for throne-war like affairs, and despite the deserts, there are plenty of enemies to fight, intrigue and foreign adventures, and if you wanted to set it in a later era, the Amberites might even dare to delve into the secrets of their older and now dead brothers and sisters. (Tomb Robbing, Amber style!).
And most important is the River. The River Nile is the lifeblood Egypt and is an obvious highway into Shadow, and control of it therefore paramount.

Nine Princes in Memphis
The Guns of Alexandria
The Sign of the Serpent
The Hand of Osiris
The Courts of Babylon

Nine Princes in Carthage

This idea would be a good counterpoint to Chris' proposal of "Rise and Fall of the Amberian Empire". Rome's old enemy Carthage would be the Amber in this case, perhaps the depiction thereof influenced and seasoned by Mary Gentle's "Ash" novels. And it would give the GM some liberty, since we don't know as much about ancient Carthage as we might, thanks to the Romans both destroying their civilization, and heavy use of propaganda. After all, for example, the Romans did perform human sacrifice at that point in their history, just as the Carthaginians did. Rome just wrote most of the history on the matter.

One could make a really different Amber using Carthage as its basis--and have it in fact be weaker than its Roman counterpart. Throw in other Mediterrannean powers as trans-shadow forces (eg. Macedon, Egypt, Parthia) and this could be a lot of fun. Hardly the hegemony that Amber usually enjoys in set-ups.

Djinn in the Green

I've known for some time, but now I give especial mention to Djinn, and the fact that she, too, has moved her Blog work to a hopefully more stable environment. Of especial interest to readers here will be The Glimmering Green, her gaming page. She also has a home blog page, and even, as mentioned and linked on the recent WISH, a blog for her Strange Bedfellows character, Beastie.

Drought, Drought, let it all out...

Well, its now official. Minnesota is in the throes of a drought, and apparently the driest summer in fifteen years.

The crops are just doing awful, up here. Yields are going to go down and prices will likely go up. The economics of this will eventually ripple out to the rest of the US, too. Sure, the dry, warm, clear weather is great in the short term (and it does help cut down on the mosquitoes), but this is just not funny anymore.

I'd gladly take some of the rain which has inundated the NY city metropolitan area as of late.

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Felicia picked up this DVD up the other day, and I've finally had the chance to watch it.

I was impressed. There was a bit of confusion given the fact that it had been dubbed in English (and not labelled as such). I distinctly remember it being in French--and the deleted scenes are in French.

I liked the atmosphere and the sheen of authenticity of the historical time period. I especially liked Monica Belucci as Sylvia, and now I am certain that if I do "cast" my SB NPC Noys as Monica Belucci, everyone is going to be looking for a hidden agenda from her.

It's also definitely not an "American" movie--where else would a main character be in love with the Noble's daughter...and yet visit a House of (not so) Ill Repute?

The fight scenes seemed too "Matrix-like" but I guess this is the norm, these days. On the other hand, the complicated politics and alliances are definitely a level or two more complex than most fare on this side of the Atlantic.

Role Call 31: Game Balance

Roll the Bones: Role Call 31: Game balance

James asks:
Is it the responsibility of game designers to prevent munchkinism through imposed balance? Why or why not?

Munchkins are an annoying sub-species of Homo Ludius to say the least. Fellow players don't want to deal with such people, and GMs find them a source of game friction and annoyance.

No matter what the system, they are going to come out of the woodwork. I suspect even a rather cerebral game like Nobilis is not immune to Munchkins.

The question is, should designs help alleviate Munchkins via game balance? I do think that game designers should do one of two things.

Either, a game designer *should* try for at least a reasonable balance between races, classes or whatever categories are used, or should be honest and upfront about such issues for the sake of the GM.

James mentions Rifts as an unbalanced game, one other that I've only seen, and wish I had, is Talislanta. In Talislanta, some races are clearly superior to others, sometimes overwhelmingly so. A GM, however, needs to recognize and plan for such inbalances.

I'm going to use a sports analogy and compare Baseball to NFL Football. In Baseball, at the beginning of a season, you pretty well know what half of the postseason is going to look like. Perennial teams that spend the extra money to load their rosters, and everyone else be damned, such as the Yankees and the Braves. And there are teams which have zero chance of a playoff spot, mainly because they don't even try to spend money for a team.

NFL Football, however, has a salary cap. Teams only have so much to spend, period. This does break up the threat of continued dynasties from teams, and its a lot more level playing field. I do think,however, that this is a virtue, since unless you have a truly inept owner (eg Cincinnati, Arizona), your team does have a shot, if not this year, then perhaps in a couple of years of work. After all--Tampa Bay, a doormat and a laughingstock back in the 80's and early 90's when Football was much like Baseball, last year won a Super Bowl.

This is not to say Munchkinism can be completely avoided by means of a system tweak, but a GM either needs guidelines to help avoid exaggerations of innate biases, or such biases should be minimized.

Gaming is about fun. Reducing Munchkinism is a part of that fun.

Warlords IV demo

The computer game that I've been anticipating for a while, and mentioned in this space earlier now has a demo.
It's a thick and meaty 142 MB, and, unfortunately, the server is rather slow. It took several hours (even on a DSL) yesterday to download it.

The look is definitely a change from the previous Warlords series, much more along the lines of Heroes of Might and Magic than Warlords. I'm still experimenting with it, so a full and fair and balanced report will be forthcoming.

Color

Experimenting with colors for the main text of my blog today. I want something other than plain white for a change, but nothing too far away that I have to change text colors and the like, too.

Just so you all know not to adjust your television sets, err, adjust your monitors.

In the Shadow of Greatness

Has moved to a new location with a spiffy Movable Type Installation. It's the same gaming goodness, though. Update your bookmarks and blogroll, and add him to your newsfeeds.

Immigrants and the Presidency

Perverse Access Memory: Immigrants for President

Ginger mentions a NYT editorial promoting the idea of an amendment to the Constitution that would allow foreign-born, naturalized citizens the right to become President of the United States.

I agree with her and the editorial. The reasons to not allow "citizens by choice" the right to become President has long since evaporated.

On a couple of side notes, in the underrated movie Demolition Man (where Stallone's character is cryogenically frozen and left there for 20 odd years), there is a throwaway conversation with Sandra Bullock's character about how Arnold Schwarzenegger became president because of the "37th amendment".

The second piece of trivia is that early America could have had a foreign-born president, legitimately, but the individual was shot in a duel before such an event could have occurred.

Alexander Hamilton, of course. Not everyone remembers that he was actually born in the West Indies. I'm betting that if we had a Hamilton Presidency, there would be more of an awareness of the situation with naturalized citizens and the Presidency, and perhaps the amendment might already be in place.

Game WISH 63: Contributions

Ginger asks:

What kinds of game-related things do you do when you’re not gaming? Do you write journals or fiction, create web-pages, make character images, or indulge in other outside game-related business? If you game regularly face-to-face, do you play by email or chat outside the game? Does your GM give you experience or character rewards for your efforts? And if you don’t do any of these things, what are your reasons for not doing them (disinterest, insufficient time, etc.)?

I love to Contribute to games that I am in, as well as receive them. As almost all of my gaming is email these days, that means game-related things which are NOT email. And there is never enough time to do all the Contribution-related stuff that I would like.

First, let me talk about what I do as a player, and then spotlight my players in my RPGs (primarily, of course, Strange Bedfellows).

Webpages and items which can be put on the web are the primary focus of my energies as a player in terms of contributions to a game. I've done webpages for characters for quite some time, and have a page on my site which links to all of those. I always of course do a webpage for the game that I run, and Strange Bedfellows' rather labyrinthine site needs no further mention.

I also do some game fiction. This is harder, since I need my Muse as well as time to inspire me. But there are always backstories lurking in my character's personae. To point out one example for you, I wrote a story about Archard, my Empire of the Gleaming Banner character called Point of Divergence. For quite some time now, I've been working on a story for Marcus for Bridgette's Age of Retribution. Other characters, like Iolaus, and Cadmus have ideas lurking back there, but nothing has come through as yet.

I am not very good, however, at creating Phototrumps. I have only a unsupported Adobe program in which to work rather than Photoshop, and my efforts pale against the real artistes of the Amber community. In fact, most of the "trumps" I've done are what I like to call word-trumps, a written description of what the trump card actually looks like. In point of fact, it was not long ago that I finally began "casting" my PCs in terms of actors. I find it difficult now to go back and assign actors and actresses to portray my PCs and NPCs, a fact which has hobbled my own attempts to emulate Casting Calls such as that at House of Cards or Eternal City.

I've done a few other things, too, but they usually are in the literary sense. For example, I created and detailed a shadow for Arref's Empire of the Gleaming Banner. It was a natural idea, considering my modestly famous Shadowwalker's Guide to the Golden Circle. Is it any wonder that, given a chance, I created an entirely new shadow for my secondary character in A Grand Affair?

As a GM, I've received a lot of contributions over the years, of various types and media. Much of what I've received is at the SB Contribution Page.

I've received diary entries, stories, word-trumps, character profiles of other characters and NPCs, drawings, graphical works, and character-created webpages. One PC has a blog up for her character.

I'm very lucky, as a GM.

2003 NFL Predictions

Although the season technically started last night with the Jets' loss, herein lies my picks for the NFL 2003 season...

Tampa Bay will not repeat.

I proposed my theory of Franchise Quarterbacks and Repeats earlier. Brad Johnson is good enough to get the Bucs a Super Bowl Ring. He's not good enough to get them a consecutive second.

NFC:

East:
The Giants never put two good years in a row anymore, so by default, the Eagles will take the division. I think it's their time anyway.

North:
Besides the Packers, who else is there? Green Bay will pad their win total with games against the Bears and Lions. It will help them get fairly deep into the playoffs.

South:
Until Vick went down, Atlanta was a "sexy" pick to unseat the Bucs. I don't think the Saints have enough horses, although they'll get a wildcard out of the deal. Bucs take the division, but definitely not homefield advantage. If Atlanta comes back from Vick's injury, they could take the second wildcard.

West:
San Francisco makes the playoffs, upsets the Giants...and the coach gets fired. Imagine what would have happened if Mariucci had gone 3-13 instead? With such turmoil, the Niners will slip. If Warner can stay healthy, the Rams have a good chance to take this division back for themselves. Seattle is not a factor, and Arizona is a perpetual joke.

Conference Championship: Eagles stop the high octane Rams on a cold January day in Philadelphia.

AFC:

East:
Until Pennington went down, ANY of these teams were a legitimate threat to win the division. Now, its just the other three in contention. I am going to roll the dice and say...New England. Miami takes a wildcard.

North:
The Bruiser division. Are the Steelers better now that the Kordell experiment is finally over, and is the Bus out of gas? I think, scarily enough, that the Browns are going to squeak out a division title over the Steelers and Ravens. The Bengals are doormats, as usual.

South:
A much stronger division, with the Titans and the Colts, and possibly the aging Jaguars. Of course there are the Texans, too. Patched up and hopefully not as beat up, McNair and Eddie George outrun the Colts and take the division, and homefield advantage. Colts take a wildcard.

West:
Last year it was the "aging heroes" ride of the Raiders? Can they do it again this year? Denver has the hot-and-cold Plummer as QB, Kansas City is tantalizingly close to respectability (if only they could play defense!) and the Chargers always fold after a good start. I am going to pick Kansas City, figuring they can outscore their way to at least a Division title.

Conference Championship: The Titans get a home conference championship for a change, and the magic of Tom Brady is not enough for the Pats to overcome McNair.

Superbowl XXXVIII: Tennessee 27, Philadelphia 17

IMC: Shadow Paths

I've been thinking about these as late, as I did make peculiarities of their nature a plot point when it comes to Iolaus' Syracuse. in A Grand Affair.

What is a shadowpath?

A shadowpath is an inter-shadow conduit that connects two worlds.

How do shadowpaths originate?

There are several ways they originate. The most common, ironically, is that they are made. Paths require the use of a High Power, or High Sorcery¹ to form something permanent. The best known examples are the shadowpaths laid down by Oberon and his line around the Golden Circle.

Paths can also form naturally, following the topology of the metaverse. Shadows can be in the right alignment so that a pathway can form and be maintained between them. These are relatively rare and are usually short.

Paths can also form as a result of cataclysmic events. Conduits and paths can be created as a side effect of strong magical or technological events. The wave that spread through shadow after the rewriting of the Pattern, or in SB's timeline, the Shockwave are events which no doubt changed, altered, destroyed and created new paths in its wake.

How do they work? What do they look like and what is the experience of traversing one like?

Shadow Paths are subtle things. In the oceans of the Golden Circle, for example, a captain often has little more than a current and their own foreknowledge to judge where the path lies in the trackless sea. In some convenient cases, the path's route lies between two islands, through a strait, or some other coastal feature that makes it easier to locate.

On land, paths are usually right on a road or path itself. There is usually a marker that designates the border or the alignment of the path through which the travelers must travel.

The key thing to a shadow path, however, is intent. The traveller must usually *want* to use the path to go from one world to another. This is absolutely essential where there are no clear borders to the shadow. Shadows which only consist of a finite area and the shadow pathways are at those borders have routes which don't need such intent.

This is why ecologies are not usually devastated by the creation of a shadow path. Not a lot of the local fauna from either side is going to migrate through the path and onto the new world. Now, a more destructive power, like the Labyrinth in Strange Bedfellows is ecologically devastating since the "rips" in shadow it creates are readily useable without the concept of "intent".

In any case, the experience of travelling a path is rather anticlimating. In a short series of footsteps (or whatever vehicle she uses), the traveller goes from one world, to another. The law of similarity makes it likely that two shadows connected by shadow paths are going to be similar--or similar at the point of contact.

How can my character create a path between two worlds? How are they maintained?

Pattern, Logrus and High Sorcery¹ are the most well-known ways, as mentioned above, of creating a path. This is a time consuming and arduous process, however. It is not as simple as shadowwalking or casting a single spell to create the initial path. It takes effort, concentration and diligence to push the fabric of two shadows together so that a path runs between them.

Even a full Basic Pattern initiate can do this, although those with Advanced Pattern can do it far more readily and with much faster results. Since it is not as attuned to this sort of manipulation, a Logrus scion needs the advanced power Manipulate Shadow in order to achieve shadow path creation. The Black Road is another matter entirely, too. High Sorcery usually requires a long spell-casting, or even better, a metaconcert of several sorceresses casting in unison. This is the schemata I envision occured in Syrcause, in A Grand Affair, to allow Iolaus access to the outside world.

Now, once a path is made, the best way to maintain the path is to use it. The more use, or well-trod, a Shadow Path becomes, the more stable it will become. Thus, if the canny Syracusians continue to exploit their new path, it will become more and more stable and part of the Golden Circle network.

How can Shadow Paths be blocked or destroyed?

It's much easier to block a Path than to destroy it. Destroying a Path utterly takes time and effort equivalent to the creation of one. Much more practical is to block one end of a shadow Path. In that way, the Path does not go anywhere and is thus rendered unusable. Sand and Delwin in A Grand Affair did this...as did Sand and Delwin in Strange Bedfellows. As Sand and Delwin found out in A Grand Affair, this sort of blockage can be undone as well, by events natural and unnatural alike.

¹High Sorcery is defined as Sorcery beyond the standard 15 point power. Examples in my own canon include Eso-Elemental Sorcery, Runic Sorcery, Pattern(or Logrus) based Sorcery, or Unity Sorcery. See my ADRPG Sorcery page for more details.

Female PCs and SB

Both Ginger and Jenn in one of the comments to the entry about IMC Romances, noticed that SB has a high proportion of female characters...

It's true, and always *has been* true for the life of Strange Bedfellows.

The main reason why is a preponderance of female versus male players. I started off with more female players than average in an Amber (or any other) role playing game. Also, I have a fair number of male players crossdressing as female PCs. Ably, too, I might add. (Brandeigh, Toireasa(although she was originally the PC of a female player that a male player took over), Bhangbadea, Destiny, Rhionde).

Grrl power is alive and well in my universe. In fact, thinking about it, most of my lasting additions to the game have been female players and their female characters.

It is peculiar, but it IS part of what makes SB what it is. Oh, and Jenn...remember that Astin is part feline. Beastie might just be up his alley, if they ever should meet. :grin:

September the Fourth

Today is not exactly a red letter day in the calendar of my life.

Besides it being the birthday of my brother (sometimes seen commenting on this blog. Happy Birthday, brother), its also the birthday of the first real love of my life, one Lisa Shandler.

It is, also, the day that she passed away.

I'm all right. Last year, now, was no picnic, the breakup of my relationship with Bonnie was another stone on the pile. And I will try and keep in mind the happy memories of the short time I was able to spend with her. It's the best thing I can do.

IMC: PC Romances

Ginger offers up her own IMC this time around, talking about PC Romances in House of Cards

With the usual caveat of possible spoilers, and even though the temporal time frame of Strange Bedfellows is short, game wise, there are and have been such relationships in my own game...

Perhaps as consequence of not fleshing out NPCs as well as I might, most of the liaisons and potential matchings have been inter-family. Of course, a Chaos-Amber summit might help alleviate that sort of pressure...

PCs

Angel
Quite happy at present with Carl. A relationship centuries in the making, too...

Anya
She has apparently won the "Valerian" sweepstakes in the rather messy to-do with the other ladies interested in him. She's also now carrying his child.

Astin
Well, as part feline he certainly is a flirt, and he did win the first "fade to black scene" award for the game, but he has no main target at the moment. But the night is still young.

Beastie
Umm, are you kidding? :grin: Right now, anyway.

Bhangbadea
Nothing in "game time", too new to Amber to really find a bond with anyone.

Brandeigh
Had an established pre-game interest in Percy, and by gum, got him. The feelings turned out to be mutual. Possibly an early candidate for "Will Random allow cousins to marry?" plot.

Brieanne
Julian's daughter is not so much well-chaperoned as the fact that her father's reputation puts off a lot of possibilities.

Destiny
Part of the aforementioned "Valerian Sweepstakes", pressing her claim on knowing him since childhood and angry she didn't capture his heart. She just recently got angry at an NPC denigrating him, too. Love and Hate are awfully close.

Hideo
Nope, he's stayed clear of the ladies, although he'll eventually get to Amber.

Jayson

After spending much of the early game with a lot of female interests, ranging from one his Mother Sand set up years in advance with Dulcinea, to Cyllene with whom Jayson had a fling, to flirting with Asteria, Jayson is not currently seeing or pursuing anyone. Currently.

Krysta
No fish are willing to bite on this one. And she's not really apparently interested in anyone, except maybe Rylan.

Leigh
She's been flirted with by a fellow Helgram, but that's it so far.

Rhionde
Way too new to the game to garner any real male attention. Yet.

Toireasa
Part of the "Valerian Sweepstakes" although she apparently has drawn interest from another quarter entirely, even if she hasn't really met him yet. Long distance relationship, SB style...

Trista
In perhaps the best coup of the game, romantically, she has the ardent interest of the Emperor of Chaos.

William
Flora's son is back in town. Lock up your daughters now.

Be careful of what you wish for...

Remember my entry a few days ago about Blog Spam?

Well, today, I got a comment which really crossed the line. It was basically the type of email that your spam filter is designed to catch.

Let me say this so as to be perfectly clear to any potential spammer reading this blog. THIS IS NOT A PLACE FOR SPAM. Polite comment on posts is welcomed, encouraged, desired. Advertisements are not. Period. No one here is going to want to look at your links to enlarge body parts that my female readers don't even have, and the male readers are likely happy with, thank you very much.

What do you call a lifeboat with room for one, and a spammer and a computer virus writer both trying to get into it before being eaten by sharks?

--A "win-win" situation.

Monday Mashup #7: Shogun

This week's Monday Mashup is the James Clavell classic, Shogun...

I was actually thinking along these lines a few weeks ago. During one of the Olsons' trips away for the weekend, I found myself watching a slice of Shogun on a cable channel (the same channel that later showed the entirety of I, Claudius), and as I watched it, I mused about the possibility of mixing an Amberite's history with a Shogunesque theme. I debated just which of my characters might do well in such a story and how it might fit into their history.

To me, Shogun is about a man who enters a world which he considers barbaric and uncivilized, only to learn the rules and culture of an alien society and become an active force within it. It's that raw plot which is the juiciness of the novel/miniseries. I should read the novel, its on my list of classics to pick up and read...

So, I am going to mashup Continuum with Shogun, and put the player character (Shogun seems to be more suited to a single or few player setup than a large gaming group) in an alien environment in the past. The PC could be asked to work in a Corner in an earlier culture as an experience tool--or even have a Gemini which suggests that they must do this in order to avoid frag. That is to say, make it clear that a period spent in such a milieu *must* be in their Yet. So, the PC will have to learn to work within a culture which is certainly primitive compared to their home time, and learn to see the worth and the complexity of that culture. It wouldn't even have to BE Medieval Japan, although the more unusual from the standpoint of the character and player, the better.

Hugos Redux

Li bounces off of my previous post on the Hugos, and fills in her own thoughts. Since she *did* attend Torcon/Worldcon, she does have an up-close and personal view of the affair.

I concede the points she makes about Sawyer's win. It had slipped my mind, or I had blotted out the fact that he's already won a Nebula some years ago, and the fact that he is Canadian did give him "home field advantage". Probably there was a higher percentage of attendees from Canada as usual, and that might have sent him over the top. No way to tell, except when the voting comes out (either on Locus' site or elsewhere).

I also see her point about Mieville. I can think of a couple of people whom I would never dream of giving Perdido to read, since I know they would abhor it. So assuming the Scar is in the same vein...I can see how it didn't stand a chance. But still, I think Rice and Salt should have won, although I see how Sawyer's win is not the end of the universe. He's not L. Ron Hubbard, after all

Ah, well. Do go over to Li's site and read all of her Torcon entries, though. Hopefully if my ducks align in a row, I'll be able to do stuff for next's years Worldcon over in Boston.

Book Review X

This time around, I'm going to look at THE KINGDOM OF INFINITE NUMBER by Bryan Bunch, PROBABILITY MOON by Nancy Kress, FIRES OF THE FAITHFUL by Naomi Kritzer and ISSOLA, by Steven Brust

Kingdom of Infinite Number: A Field Guide, by Bryan Bunch

I haven't read as much nonfiction as lately as I should, or would like to read, and so this purchase along with some other amazon books was designed to help remedy that deficiency.

The book looks at the lore of numbers, treating individual numbers in turn as species in an invented taxonomy of mathematics. Sidebars and digressions talk about such things as primes, triangular numbers, and other such groupings.

Kingdom of Infinite Number ranges from discussing the integers, to real numbers, complex numbers, and finally a short section on infinities. Didn't know there were more than one type of infinity, did you?

The book is mainly written for the layman to mathematics, as it does not touch on some of the more esoteric corners of number theory, although I was surprised at the wide breadth of topics that were covered. A helpful guide to using individual numbers in calculations without resorting to a calculator or computer was a throwback touch that I enjoyed.

In a format like this, Mathematics is for the masses. Recommended.

Probability Moon, by Nancy Kress

First of a trilogy, and set in the same universe as her "Flowers of Aulit Prison", Probability Moon is the more usually soft-science Kress dealing with some harder SF for a change. We are given World, a planet with aliens who seem to be forced to share "reality", that is, to share a viewpoint or ethos. Such a system makes violent crime (a grievous crime against shared reality) extremely rare. Add in a system of traversing worlds, and a second-contact between World and visiting humans, and the fact that one of World's moons is an alien artifact. Oh, and an equally starfaring, implacably hostile alien race to serve as antagonists.

The two stories in the book did not mesh well. Although hard SF is more of my thing, the story of the scientists on World was more compelling and interesting than their counterparts dealing with the alien artifact, and the sudden visitation of their Faller antagonists. Somehow, Kress stumbled a bit on the characters here, and I can't point a finger as to why they seemed wrong to me. The science itself is interesting, with a mechanism of wormholes, as well as what the artifact does, and why. By contrast, although some of the characters on World seem off, the milieu is much more interesting and compensates for it.

I don't really recommend the book; I certainly have little interest in continuing the series at this point. Too many other things to read instead.

Fires of the Faithful, by Naomi Kritcher

Half of a fat fantasy split into two parts for marketing reasons, Fires of the Faithful takes place in a Italianesque sort of fantasy setting reminsicent of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana. Eliana is a violinist at a conservatory in an Empire wracked by religious intolerance and the aftermath of a War, including a devastating famine. After a inquisition-like visit upon the Conservatory, Eliana soon leaves, and we see a slice of her world, with her ending up at what can be uncharitably called a concentration camp, deep in the devastated region. Conflict of religions, magic, and political conflict make this a rather flavorful stew. The division point is fine, I didn't feel that I was dropped precipitously, and I do want to finish the story. It's ground that has been trod before, but this path is not muddy and over worn, and it reminds me somewhat of Illumination that way.

Recommended.

Issola by Steven Brust

I've said before that, if a nonsensical statement like "The heir to Zelazny" can be made, Steven Brust is probably the best candidate. (Although recent books like Gaiman's American Gods show him in Zelaznyesque territory, too).

Issola is part of the Vlad Taltos sequence, set in his universe of Draegera. I've felt that two of the last three Vlad books, chronologically, were not quite up to what I've liked. Dragon, which is actually set early in his life, and now Issola, put Vlad in much better territory theme-wise and stylistically. Vlad is our narrator once again, and Savn hardly even gets mentioned.

That doesn't preclude this from being an...odd Draegera book. Vlad and his comrades range out of their home universe, and wind up confronting the mysterious and powerful Jenoine. There is a lot of talking, rather than straight action, for most of the slim book, with the end chapter packing it all in.

But it's odd. Perhaps the best comparison I can make is that Issola is somewhat to Draegera in the same vein that the later, Merlin books are to Amber. Where Vlad goes from here will be rather interesting, and hopefully not in a negative way.

And, Issola seems to blatantly contradict "A Dream of Passion" in several aspects, too. I guess the story is not canonical, after all.

Recommended, but definitely not before reading most of the Vlad canon beforehand.