My Dungeons and Dragons - Fighters

The fighter is NOT a meat shield. His role is not to be a pile of hit points to soak up damage that might other wise affect the guys who are actually doing the fighting. The fighter's job is to fight--he can soak up damage and dish it out as well. When it comes to a straight-up fight (not a sneaky assassination or the neutralization of a whole group of bad guys with one spell), the fighters should dominate. To this end:

• The fighter has the most hit points of any of the core classes.
• The fighter has the best to-hit bonus of the classes.
• The fighter can use any weapon, and does more damage with a given weapon than any other class in a straight-up fight.
• The fighter is proficient with all forms of armor.
• The fighter has the best saving throws of all the classes. In 3e it was just too easy for a spellcaster to put the whammy on the fighters and turn them against their allies. Fighters should be good at resisting all sorts of effects, not just physical ones.
• The default fighter should probably be the "heavy" fighter. This is what you get if you don't do any tweaking. He sacrifices mobility and evasion for being able to take strong blows due to wearing heavy armor. He is big and strong and tough and hits hard with any weapon.
• Fighters are proficient with all weapons, but should choose a favored combat style (e.g. 2-handed hammers, sword-and-board, etc). A fighter gets bonuses to attack and damage when fighting in this style. These bonuses increase slowly with experience, and fighters may eventually choose to learn additional styles.
• Tweaking can yield a non-default fighter who focuses more on speed, or an archer who favors ranged attacks, and so on. The character who likes to flank his opponents and attack through weak points in their defenses is still a fighter--not a rogue (rogues attack from the shadows, and are not seen at all until they strike).
• Fighters can choose to be war-leaders at a certain level. They attract followers who will fight at their side, and may eventually acquire a castle of their own, though this will typically require a certain amount of adventuring as well (i.e. finding a keep overrun by orcs, killing all the orcs, and then fixing up the keep).

My Dungeons and Dragons - Intro

It looks like Wizards of the Coast is going to make yet another version of D&D. On a series of postings on Google+, some friends and I have started talking about how we'd remake D&D if it was up to us. I decided to start posting here, as it will probably be better for long-term use than a G+ conversation.

Here are some high-level thoughts on what my version of D&D would be like. Note, this is meant to be recognizably D&D, not GURPS, Hero, etc.

• There will be classes and levels.
• The four "main" classes will be Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue.
• Hit points will go up with level, though the rate will probably go down above a certain level.
• Fighters will have the most HP, Wizards the least, with Clerics and Rogues in between.
• HP will represent damage--they will not be an abstract "pacing mechanic." If you lose hit points, you are injured, though a given amount of HP loss will be less severe to tougher characters.
• XP will be awarded primarily for achieving goals, and to a lesser extent for defeating monsters, disarming traps, etc. The focus will be on looting dungeons, helping NPCs, and achieving personal goals, and not on fighting monsters, though obviously there will be monster fights in there.
• Attack rolls will be 1d20 + bonus, versus a defense value. I haven't decided whether armor will increase your defense, or soak up damage.
• Saving throws will function similarly. There will be at least three types (e.g. Fortitude, Reflex, Will) and possibly more. I have been toying with a save for each ability score.
• There may or may not be a formal skill system, but there will definitely be skill-like traits that at least some classes will get (e.g. rogues sneaking and picking locks, wizards making sense out of musty old tomes).
• A lot of skills will be absolute, to one degree or another. If your rogue can pick locks, he will pick any reasonable lock given enough time--the main problem will be picking it before the dungeon's inhabitants figure out he's there.
• Creating a character using the simplest rules will consist of generating ability scores (probably randomly as this requires less planning), picking a race, picking a class, making one or two choices to customize the character, and buying equipment. Making a new character should not be a full-session activity, unless you really start getting into optional rules to custom-build a character.
• Combat roles will be greatly de-emphasized, in favor of roles relevant to the adventure as a whole. Anyone can fight, but fighters will dominate. If youre not a fighter, you have to figure out how to turn the encounter from a fight, into a type of encounter that better suits your skills, or let the fighters shoulder most of the load (or run away--that's always an option).

More things will come later.

EABA

I've been toying around with several RPG systems and worlds lately, due in part to not actually being in as many games as I usually am in, and in part to things being enough less chaotic at work that I actually get a chance to think about such things. One of the ones I've been playing with is EABA, from BTRC.

For those who aren't followers of RPG systems, EABA is one that is, in my opinion, not well enough known. It is, at its root, a point-based, build-your-character-from-scratch, "simulationist" game in the vein of GURPS and Hero System. However, there are a number of nice and unique things about it that I like.

First of all, dice. The best way I can think of describing it is that it works like rolling up character stats in 3rd edition D&D (at least, the default way). You roll a number of d6s based on your attribute and skill, but you only keep the best 3 (if you roll 3 or fewer dice, you keep 'em all). Thus, more dice gives you better chances of success, but only up to a point--beyond a certain level, tasks are completely impossible no matter how good you are (unless you've got a certain trait called "Larger than Life" which basically turns you into an action movie hero who CAN do impossible stunts). Pretty much everything in the game can be expressed in this manner, and there's a nice chart correlating this with various real-world quantities--how much you can lift with a given number of Strength dice, how quickly you can read X amount of information with a given number of Awareness dice, and so on.

Second of all, Powers. Lots of games have generic power creation rules, but EABA's is different. In something like GURPS or Hero, the default model is super hero powers. Characters have some ability that they just have, like superman's flight or invulnerability, or cyclops's eyebeams. Each of these is bought as an advantage with its own cost--powerful powers cost more than weak ones.

EABA's powers are more like spells. You build them using a system of additive points--doing nastier types of damage adds points to the total, taking an hour to cast removes points, for instance. However, those aren't attribute or skill points. Instead, you look on a chart to get the difficulty to cast your spell. Powerful spells are harder to cast, spells with lots of limitations on them, such as costing fatigue or requiring expensive spell components are easier to cast. You can improve your chances by adding such limitations, or simply by improving your casting skill--but remember, you can only get so much benefit from improved skill. Some spells are simply impossible for mere mortals to cast. In some ways, this reminds me of Inhuman/Zen difficulty from Anima, only better integrated into the system.

But if spells aren't how you want your powers to work, consider this. You can reduce the point level of the spell (and thus it's difficulty) by spending 3 attribute points on it--do this enough times and you've got a "spell" that's more like a talent--easy to use, but it's something you're either born with or not. Thus, you can do Cyclops's eye beam.

The third really cool thing about EABA is "Stuff!" This is the set of technology (plus creature and settlement) design rules for EABA. It's a separate product, but useful enough to be highly recommended. I'm a big fan of GURPS Vehicles, and am still bummed that 4th edition doesn't have a version of that yet. Stuff is somewhat similar, except that a) the math is simpler, and b) it's for more than just vehicles.

Stuff is basically a set of design rules with a built-in slide rule. Everything is additive (much like Powers--a big theme in EABA), even though the quantities themselves are multiplicative. Consider weapons. Being a high-tech weapon adds to the weapon's power. Being a big weapon also adds, while being tiny subtracts. Being a machine gun subtracts from the power--it's not that machine guns are weaker, but rather that they have to be bigger than semi-auto guns for the same amount of power per bullet. Add up all the modifiers and convert the result into dice of damage. If you don't like doing that, use the included PDF worksheet which does the math for you. It takes me more time to write down the stats for a gun than it took me to design it with the PDF worksheet.

There are some caveats. EABA is a lot more generic than other systems. For instance, I like sense powers and sensors--infrared, light amp, millimeter-wave-radar, detect magic, you name it. However, there's no "Sense" power modifier, and no "Sensor" function for a Stuff gadget. Instead, you can think of these as either Acting as an Attribute (Awareness), or negating a certain type of penalty. There's a lot of thinking outside the box involved, but this also means that things are a lot more fast and loose--you can take Acts as Attribute (Awareness) to mean that a gadget can sense things, or you can take the same modifier to mean that the gadget can make decisions. A pair of infrared goggles and a computer may be the same thing in terms of modifiers, but in terms of what you can actually do with them, they're totally different.

EABA's handling of damage is also, imho, not up to the standard of the rest of the system. It's a fairly simple ablative hit point system, with the addition of types of damage (lethal and non-lethal). The problem is the same as with any system that uses ablative hit points and logarithmic damage. Targets, especially vehicles, are too vulnerable to multiple weak attacks. Two 5-point hits are as effective as one 10-point hit, even though 10 points is much more than twice as effective as 5 points. I've found a better solution is to treat size as armor, rather than giving logarithmically-increasing hit points, but this is a fairly minor point. EABA gets around this issue for the most part by using things like damage limits when hitting big things, and the fact that taking damage makes you harder to damage further, but it sometimes feels like a patch rather than a true fix.

In general, though, I find EABA to be a mostly elegant gaming system based around a few central principles, and sadly underappreciated in the gaming community.

Grand Mall Seizure

I like shopping malls. I don't necessarily like shopping there (most of the stores don't sell the sort of stuff I like to buy) and I'm not necessarily into the sort of crowd that hangs out there (teenage girls are cute, but definitely too young for me). Rather, I like the buildings themselves--probably part of my general liking of buildings. So, when I go somewhere, I often find myself looking for the local malls and checking them out. Seeing what they're like.

When I first moved here (Orange County, CA) from Ohio, I did just that. I think I've been to all the major shopping areas here at least once. One of the places I went to was a mall just off the 405 in Huntington Beach. This was maybe a year or less after I moved out here--quite a while ago. I'd already explored the places closer to home, and had a definite picture in my mind of what a socal shopping mall looked like. This place was totally different. For one, the parking lot was essentially deserted--a stark contrast from other shopping centers I'd been to, with their packed garages and people parking-sharking for a spot up close. I parked near a Montgomery Wards (something they didn't have in Ohio, at least not in the places I grew up) that had either just gone out of business, or was just about to. I forget if I had managed to make it into the Wards, but I do know that I made it into the mall itself, which was sort of dark and creepy--more like the older Ohio malls than the ones I'd seen out here--and which was almost completely closed off. I was pretty weirded out by this, so I left and went to another mall up the highway which was much busier and not nearly as ghostly.

I didn't return there--there was no reason to as all the stores were closed and you couldn't even walk through most of the mall. I did hear that they were going to tear the place down (no surprise) and build a modern open-air shopping area in its place. But this was years ago, and my old car was already starting to show its age--I didn't drive places unless I had to.

I have a new car now, and I'm in the process of reviving my interest in road trips. I have a saying that "The second time makes it real." I have a tendency to have vivid dreams, and sometimes I can't remember what things I've really done and what things I've only dreamed of. I find if I go someplace or do something twice, then I know it's real. Thus, yesterday I did two things I'd only done once before. One was to go back to that mall, and the other was to drive up to Torrance, near where I used to go when I worked at my previous job, and drive back along the PCH, which is also something I'd only done once (most other times I took the 405 back).

The new shopping center in Huntington Beach is called "Bella Terra" and it's...weird. It is indeed an outdoor shopping area, but it's not like the other ones (such as the Irvine Spectrum Center, near where I work) which are basically normal malls without the roofs. That is, the stores are on the outside and you walk on the inside between them. This place is the opposite--an island of stores, with broad sidewalks around them, and one area which is more like a typical outdoor mall, complete with water feature and a place for kids to play. I parked at the Barnes and Noble (I love love love bookstores and always go in the ones I find), and walked around. Everything was different from when I was there. I saw a couple of buildings with distinctive patterns on the outside walls, that I think I remembered from the mall days, but that was about it.

Until I got around to the far side from the B&N. There I was confronted with a parking lot, as expected, but beyond that a cruddy, ruinous-looking wall. It was exactly the sort of thing you'd see in my dream world--a modern shopping center nestled right up against abandoned buildings. Only, in my dream world those buildings would be crumbling red-brick factories, and not the distinctly retail-y looking structure I was staring at. From the look of the thing, it seemed like it had once directly abutted the mall--you could see the scars from the demolition, and even the boarded-up doors that would have at one time allowed mallgoers to enter this building. I continued walking and when I could see a different side of this structure, I realized this was none other than the same Montgomery Wards that I had parked by years ago. Except for not being attached to a mall anymore, it looked more or less exactly as it had when I'd seen it the first time. Seeing it now, I could clearly visualize the rest of the old mall--I had found my anchor, in more ways than one, and I knew exactly where I was. I returned to my car and drove around the old Wards store--it was amazingly intact--even the old automotive center was still standing. Except for the old mall side, it looked like they could re-open it tomorrow. I have no idea why this building hasn't been fixed up like the other ones, or torn down to put something else in, but it was cool to be there while it was still up.

After stopping for lunch, at the same shopping mall (and the same Wendy's) that I had eaten at those years previously, I continued up the 405--a route I had not taken in a long time. I got off near an oil refinery that I had driven past many times when I went up that way for work. The weather's been humid lately, and there was a lot of steam blowing out of that refinery--gave it a very cool, creepy, steampunky look that I like.

Anyhow, I wound up at yet another mall that I had only been to once before. This one is called the Del Amo Fashion Center, and was apparently at one time the largest in the country. The one time I'd been there (the same time I'd driven back along the PCH) I recall I hadn't been too impressed by its size--it had seemed to be way smaller than South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, which is huge. This time, I parked where I had before, near the Sears. I went inside, and saw that things hadn't changed much. The ceiling was still startlingly low for a mall ceiling, and there was still the weird basement Burlington Coat Factory. I continued on until I reached the two-story section I remembered. There was a Penneys and a Macy's and...another Macy's. Most of the malls I go to have at least one of these, often more than one. Anyhow, that seemed to be it--the two-story section dead ended at the Macy's. Then, I checked a directory and realized that you had to walk through the Macy's, and beyond it was another section of mall, even bigger than the section I had been in. This section went on and on, though twisting and turning several times, and like the section I'd been in, it felt more like the malls in Ohio that I'd been in as a kid in the 80s, or as a teenager in the early 90s, than the ones I was used to seeing out here. At the very end of this section, past a corral full of really freaky ridable robot animals playing tinny children's music, was a set of doors leading into...an outdoor shopping court that felt like it belonged to a totally different mall than this one--it could have been down in Orange County, attached to South Coast Plaza or to the Spectrum Center. It was very modern and very trendy-looking and very different from the rest of the place.

On the way back to my car (which felt like I'd parked it in a different city) I discovered that this section still had some vestiges of the old mall. I found a couple of side passages that led to parking areas. One of them led to a very dark, almost industrial-looking garage that I swear I'd seen in a dream before. This whole mall was straight out of one my dreams--complete with the multiple sections that didn't quite fit together, and the store you have to walk through to get from one side to the other. Back inside, I decided to go out an exit I'd spotted on the way in (the whole place is full of these--some of them reachable only by escalator and elevator) and I found myself walking on a sidewalk, along side a parking lot, in what I would have taken as a run-down strip mall if I hadn't known that there was a regular-type mall on the other side of those doors. Ahead of me, and across the parking lot was another set of more modern-looking stores and...another B&N. There was also a Starbucks here, where I got a much needed glass of iced tea after stopping at the B&N. After this, it was back to the car. The whole place was so dreamlike it wasn't even funny--the stripmall exterior was just the icing on the cake. The malls in my dreams are massive edifices with soaring multi-level sections, outdoor areas, and cramped, run-down, hallway-like appendages stretching into the extreme outer limits of their parcels, and even beyond. They are more diverse than many cities. Until yesterday, I don't think I'd encountered one in the real world even remotely like them. Now I had.

From here, it was a road trip down Hawthorne to the Pacific Coast Highway. This runs from as far north as I've been along the coast, down almost to where I live. Along the way, it goes through very diverse areas. At the start of my journey, it led through what I deemed to be typical southern California commercial area--there were strip malls full of chain stores, and some big-box retailers. As I had remembered, however, as I progressed I found myself in crummier and crummier neighborhoods. The chain stores were replaced by no-name local outfits, and the overall character was more run-down. It continued like this for quite a while until I saw the chimneys of factories looming ever closer. I drove up a ramp and over a massive industrial landscape, like Blade Runner without the rain and darkness. Nothing but pipes and smokestacks and tanks and flame-belching flares as far on either side of the road as I could see. Multiple parallel railroad tracks, each heavily laden with cars, ran under the road, like a superhighway for trains. In the distance, I saw mountains of stacked cargo containers, like a giant's LEGO bricks. Then, the road descended down into a more human scaled industrial area, and then, more ghetto.

As I had remembered from my previous trip, the next big change took place at a traffic circle. It was there that the part of the PCH that I thought of as looking "Los Angeles-y" became the part that I thought of as more "Orange County-y" Things started looking nicer after that, and I found myself driving through a distinctly oceanic community, with both nautical and beach themes. There were boat-dealers and marinas, and surf-board shops, and at one point I passed what looked like a giant water tower, converted into a residence. I'd love to get the view from there someday. From that point on, I was driving through familiar territory--placed I'd been to many times, and which I knew were real. The rest of the trip was merely a trip home.

It was, in short, the most fun (in my strange way) weekend I've had in a very long time. I hope to be able to do stuff like that more often, now that I've got a car I trust again.

World of Ruin - Characters

Well, I haven't posted here in a while--been busy with my new job and all. I'm being oh-so-subtly pushed toward running GURPS again, so I'm back on World of Ruin, which is probably what I'll run. Since it's looking more like this will be an actual game setting rather than a conceptual exercise, I'm going to talk about a different topic than previous ones. Specifically, player characters.

I like game settings with a "default" campaign concept. That is, unless the GM decides otherwise, the players will be making a certain type of characters, with the intention that they be used in a certain way. For instance, Dungeons and Dragons assumes a mixed party of adventurers, some with magic or other powers, others without, who delve into monster-filled underground dungeons in search of treasure. This is an instant hook for players (action! adventure! vast riches!) and a good guideline for character creation. Similarly, Shadowrun assumes as a default the titular shadowrunners: skilled but low-status operatives-for-hire, who are hired by shadowy and secretive agents of various corporations and other organizations to perform black operations. Again, a hook for players and a guide to character creation.

World of Ruin assumes Zonerunners. These are somewhat like a high-tech version of D&D adventurers. They venture into the Dead Zone in search of treasure, though unlike D&D treasure, the loot they find will more likely be in the form of strange extradimensional artifacts, pieces of magically-imbued plants and animals, bizarre mineral deposits, and the like. Zonerunning is dangerous, and thus PCs will need training in combat and survival, and will likely have powers to assist them.

Zonerunners are not low-status outcasts--SanTiMA society values their contribution. However, they are not the type to live quiet ordinary lives, and often hang out with other violent or unorthodox people. While various organizations (governmental, corporate, or otherwise) sponsor expeditions into the Dead Zone, the default PCs are "wildcat" Zonerunners who explore as they wish, selling their finds to the highest bidder. This gives them more freedom do do what they want, and not be required to ride a plot train. For those players who prefer the plot train, however, it is there for them to ride in the form of the aforementioned sponsors.

The World of Ruin is home to many extradimensional beings who were banestormed in, and who brought their own traditions of magic or other powers with them. To keep things simple, I'm limiting the number of such beings and powers in the SanTiMA area. This makes character creation simpler, and also allows for other regions to have their own mix of races, magical traditions, and so on.

Humans remain the predominant race in SanTiMA (and are the only race in Angel City, with the exception of certain artificially-created beings). Also present are the ever-popular elves, who are the ones who introduced magic to the area, and a race of cat-like humanoids. Elves are probably the most popular non-human race in gaming, so it was a no-brainer to bring them into the default starting area. I had considered adding dwarves as well, but decided against it--in most of my games, they bring with them a tradition of rune-magic, and I wanted to have only a single magic system in SanTiMA. I do however like cats (and catgirls) so a race of cat-people was an obvious choice. I may introduce others, or have the occasional individual or small group of other races banestorm in. NPCs of any race may be encountered in the Dead Zone, as the victims of a recent banestorm. Some of these may be monstrous and simply attack anything and anyone, while others might need rescuing from the horrors of the Zone. The idea is that I can throw pretty much anything I want, from any world I want, into the Dead Zone, and other similar areas around the globe.

But anyhow, back to PCs. There are two main sources of supernatural powers available to PCs: Magic and Psionics. Both are in wide use in SanTiMA. Magic was introduced by the elves, but has since been adopted by humans as well. Magic uses the standard GURPS Magic rules, but I'm using Thaumatology: Magical Styles to create various styles to help players pick their spells based on the character's background. I find that doing this helps flesh out how magic works in the world. The main source of magical instruction in SanTiMA is SUMMA (SanTiMA University of Magical and Mystical Arts). This is structured much like a regular university, and teaches mundane subjects along with magic. For instance, students of High Energy Manadynamics will learn energy-oriented spells, as well as thaumatology and mundane high-energy physics. Magic is very much a science in SanTiMA. Other organizations, such as corporations, government agencies, and criminal gangs also teach magic to their members.

Psionics are humanity's home-grown powers. Parapsychologists have been studying the powers of the mind for many years even before the cataclysm. Afterwards, instances of practical psi powers have been increasing steadily, possibly as a result of (or adaptation to) the extradimensional disaster. These use the rules from GURPS Psionic Powers. PCs will have access to all the powers there, except for Anti-Psi. I'm reserving this for certain NPCs.

Player characters will be TL9 by default, and will have access to most or all of the technology of that TL, including superscience items like plasma flamers. PCs with Gadgeteering may have invented higher-tech items. Gadgeteers (called "Makers" in-setting) have invented a lot of the technology in common use, and are widely considered essential to the continued survival of the human race. Most work as inventors, freelance or corporate-employed, but some prefer a life of adventure, and are thus also available as PCs.

I will provide more information later as I settle on specific race templates, etc.

Ending and Beginning

We tore down my old office today.  It was just a closet, jammed into an upstairs corner of an old building, and jammed full of computers, but it was my closet, and while most of the computers there weren't technically mine, they sure felt like it after eight or so years in that little room.  I made like 3 or 4 games, plus a training simulator there, in those years, and the room had become littered with the debris of those programming sessions--to-do lists, data sheets, scrawled equations and notes and diagrams from problems long solved or abandoned.  All of this, we cleared away today, sorting the trash from the treasure, and good memories from bad, and throwing away anything we didn't want or need.  How many bytes of obsolete, unwanted information were lost today, and how many over those eight years?  

I suppose it's always like this when you move--it certainly was when I left my old apartment in Ohio and made the long trek, an epic quest across the US, following the rough path of old Route 66 across the hills and plains and mountains and deserts of this country.  It was like that a bit when we left the old office for the new one--in the old office there were other workers, and so it was big and crowded with the stuff of multi-person teams.  Much of this got tossed aside when the other workers left and only I chose to remain.  This proved a good decision, as it kept me employed during those eight years, and gave me games and simulations under my belt--I'm an experienced programmer now, and not merely a well-educated one.  Still, this era of my life--the Closet Office era, you could call it, is over now.  The room is once again empty, as it was when I first saw it, and realized how much smaller my world would become.  It's funny how big it looks now, with all the stuff cleared out.  It was full of a lot of things, but mostly it was full of me.  Every object there had been placed where it was by me, thrown into a corner or under a table in search of a bit of free space, and as I cleaned it out, those memories came back to me, yet I wasn't sad.  

Yesterday I was--I broke down sobbing as I turned off computers that had sat in their spots for years: computers that I had turned off every afternoon, and turned on again in the morning.  But this time I would not be doing that--the computers will stay off.  I know that this isn't the end--someday, and soon, I will turn those machines on again, to finish up the miscellaneous tweaks and maintenence builds that any large simulation project has, but I won't be turning them on in my old office, and most of my personal files, the ones that made the computers seem like mine, are gone now.  I've still got them, of course, but at home, they're not the same.  

Nonetheless, today was closure--the end of an era, but the beginning of a new one.  I start a new job on Monday, which is better in pretty much every way than the one I had.  I will be working with people again, and not stuck alone in my little office, where I was the good, quiet neighbor that the other people in the building always say but never interacted with much.  I will be making more money, and working in a nicer place.  My old job will become just an occasional maintenence task, nothing more, not even really a job at all.  My new one will become my life as my old one had been since I moved out here nine years previously.  The future looks good for me, but the past still calls, faded and dusty with years of accumulated fallout from the dirty old heating ducts of a refurbished hotel.

When I moved out here, for a long time afterward, I couldn't look at a map of Ohio, or really of the eastern US at all, without breaking down in tears.  I had been ripped from my old ground and transplanted into unfamiliar, sandy California soil.  Eventually, though, I put down new roots and this place became my home.  I can look at maps of Ohio, or pictures of that state, or even go back to visit and return here without any problems.  Most of these roots are still there--in the form of my friends I have out here, and even my old boss and those computers that served me so well.  One root has been severed, but I know this is not truly an end, or rather, that all ends are beginnings as well, as the wheel of my life turns and the new comes to replace the old.  Already I am feeling better, though sort of hollow, as if a part of me was surgically removed, and the incision healed over by magic.  I know that come Monday everything will get better.  But for now, I shed one tear for the life I led so far, and smile, for the one that still awaits.

World of Ruin: The Dead Zone

Finally, after months of non-posting (lots of  RL stuff going on for me) I finally get around to the meat of the default area of the World of Ruin setting.  This would be the Dead Zone, the oft-mentioned region between Angel City and SanTiMA.  

I think an RPG setting should have a default campaign concept.  For D&D, this would be "a party of adventurers goes down into underground ruins and caverns full of monsters, kills those monsters, and takes their stuff."  For Shadowrun, it would be "a party of Shadowrunners gets hired by Mr. Johnson, hacks their way (in more ways than one) into a corp facility, performs some objective, and bugs out, and most likely at some point gets double-crossed by their employer."  This sort of thing provides an immediate hook for both the players and the GM.  The players know what sort of characters they're going to need to create, and the GM knows what sort of adventures to write.  Of course, a good setting will support more than just this one type of story.  Still, it provides a good place to start, and a place to return if no other options show themselves.

For the World of Ruin setting, the default campaign concept is a group of Zonerunners--adventurers, most likely based in or around SanTiMA, who venture into the Dead Zone to retrieve items, creatures, or other resources, or simply to learn more about its mysteries.  In between such trips, they engage in ancillary quests within SanTiMA's society, and perhaps from time to time they come into conflict with the forces of Angel City.  There is room for action and adventure, but also mystery, intrigue and wonder in the Zonerunner campaign.

The Dead Zone itself is a region located between Angel City and SanTiMA.  It occupies the area of south Orange County and north San Diego county, and probably extends inland to some degree (I haven't actually mapped its boundaries yet, and really the very idea of firm boundaries goes against the nature of the Dead Zone).  It serves, among other things, as a buffer between those two city-states, and has so far prevented all-out war between them.

Despite the name, the Dead Zone is far from dead, though it is quite easy to die there, particularly if one is unprepared.  The fabric of space-time is weaker there than elsewhere, and it is common for banestorms to occur.  These are usually very small, localized ones that only bring in a monster or two, or a small region of bizarre terrain, but some are larger and can swallow whole parties of adventurers and take them to other worlds should the GM decide to take the campaign on that sort of a radically altered course.  Sometimes the unstable nature of the Dead Zone even interferes with the more subtle laws of physics, meaning that technology is prone to malfunction.  Zonerunners are wise not to become too dependent on their equipment.  Of course, going into the Zone without high-tech equipment is also not advised...

Magic too is unpredictable in the Zone.  The mana level can fluctuate wildly from place to place, or even in the same area over time.  Zones of Wild or Twisted mana are also disturbingly common.  All of this chaotic magic makes the Zone a haven for mutated and tainted creatures, and even outright otherworldly monstrosities.  Some of these are common and consistant enough to merit classification and scientific names, while others are unique individuals the likes of which are never encountered again.  The GM is more or less free to invent whatever monsters he likes and put them whereever he wishes to.

All of this explains why the Zone is dangerous, and why people don't go there unless they're prepared for trouble.  But, you might be asking, if the place is this nasty, why go there at all?  The answer is that the same unstable spacetime, physics, and magic that make it so full of danger also make it full of resources.  Some of the creatures that live there have powerful mana organs that can be harvested and used for alchemy.  Similarly, crystals with strange properties can be found in the ground in the Zone (or even growing on the surfaces of ruined structures).  The same banestorms that bring in monsters from other worlds also bring in items from other worlds.  Some of these are magical, others utilize superscience far in advance of that of Angel City or SanTiMA.  All of these are in high demand by researchers, and sometimes can yield insights directly to a suitably trained PC.  The Dead Zone is, in effect, a giant outdoor (and sometimes indoor or underground) dungeon, full of monsters, traps, hazards, and plenty of loot.

The Dead Zone is also full of mystery.  Its origins remain unknown, though Zonerunners occasionally encounter artifacts from before the Manaclysm (a word which I'm borrowing from GURPS Magic Items 3 because I like it so much) that may shed some light on how and why that great disaster happened.  The Zone seems to be directly related to the Manaclysm, and there may be other Zones elsewhere in the world (expeditions sent outward by Angel City and SanTiMA rarely return with any conclusive information on this subject, if they even return at all).

So, in summary, the Dead Zone and the exploration thereof provides a focus for adventures, dangers to be overcome, material rewards to acquire, and plenty of opportunity for plot hooks into the larger-scale situation in the World of Ruin.  I think that these three regions (Angel City, SanTiMA, and the Dead Zone) provide a good microcosm for starting campaigns in, with plenty of room to grow from there.

World of Ruin: SanTiMA

Back to the World of Ruin.  The Default starting location for player characters is the San Diego Tijuana Metropolitan Axis, or SanTiMA.  As the name would suggest, it is located on the sites of the current cities of San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico, as well as points in between.  I like the idea of national borders being less significant in the World of Ruin, as the cities have lost contact with their old central governments, and these two cities are pretty connected to each other even today.  If you take out the hassle of border crossings it gets even better.

SanTiMA is, if not the "Good guy" city-state, at least much more adventurer-friendly than Angel City.  While there is obviously a city government (two, actually, San Diego and Tijuana are still technically independant, though closely allied) they have little influence on peoples' lives outside of basic law-and-order.  Most goods and services are provided by competing companies, and there are many, many of these.  Even the largest are tiny by today's standards (can't have multi-national coporations in a world where international transportation and communication is disrupted by magic and monsters), but they are big enough to be the real local power.  The larger corps have their own small private armies that mostly guard their facilities (and, in some cases, provide security to those who pay for it) but cooperate under business deals and governmental oversight in times of war.  Still, SanTiMA has less military power than Angel City, and would likely have been conquered by their northern neighbors were it not for the Dead Zone between them.

Another benefit that SanTiMA has going for it is that it is more open (or at least, more pragmatic) toward magic and non-humans.  Basically, anything that works for a corp or for SanTiMA as a whole is allowed, and their magical and alchemical research is far in advance of the more intolerant Angel City.  In fact, some of the biggest corps are magicorps.  This is also useful for PCs.  They won't be arrested or lynched just because they have pointy ears or cast spells.

Of course, SanTiMA is not a lawless anarchy--although guns and fireballs are legal, they can't be used openly in most places (in the nicer neighborhoods, even carrying a weapon is banned, unless locked in a transport container or the like).  Still, adventurers are accepted well enough, so long as they confine their adventuring to the Dead Zone (or to the rougher parts of town, where the police and corp security don't go).

Culturally, SanTiMA is a blend of US and Mexico, as befits its origins.  English and Spanish are both official languages, and most people speak both, though many favor one or the other.  Tijuana remains the poorer end of the Axis, though there are rich neighborhoods there, and poor ones in San Diego.  Most people live in very dense urban neighborhoods full of multi-story, multi-use buildings.  There are even a couple of true arcologies, one just east of downtown San Diego, and one at the old US/Mexican border.  In addition, there's a small military "mini-arcology," Fort Coronado, on the site of the old Navy base at the north end of Coronado Island.  This houses SanTiMA's only true governmental military, and mostly defends the city-state from oceanborne dangers.

Some of the most adventurer-friendly (and consequentially roughest) areas are to the north of San Diego proper.  The city-state's influence reaches up to about Solana Beach along the coast.  North of this, the Dead Zone begins, though it doesn't get really bad until somewhere around northern Carlsbad, or Oceanside.  The only people who go that far north are the Zoneraiders.  These brave (or foolhardy) souls dare to go into the Zone itself, in search of whatever magical or extradimensional resources they happen to find.  They are also the default PCs in this setting.

Gunnerkrigg Court

I just discovered this really cool webcomic called Gunnerkrigg Court.  It's kind of hard to describe, but it's got elements of Harry Potter but with more steampunk and other science-technology stuff, and a main character who embodies the GURPS Advantage of Unfazeable.  I love Science Fantasy crossover settings, and this is very much in that vein.  The first chapter involves a girl getting rid of a shadow-spirit being (or whatever, I'm not yet sure what it is) with the aid of a robot built out of spare parts.  That's my sort of webcomic.

Anathem of the Heart and Anathem of the Mind

Wow, that was a good book. I'm speaking of Anathem, the book I mentioned in my last post. I'm a Neal Stephenson fan, so I knew I was going to be reading this book anyhow, but it was even better than I had expected.

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

I think this is the first openly and explicitly science fiction novel I've read in quite a while. I don't know...it seems like SF is on the way out, and then I read a book like this. It's got classic SF tropes like a spaceships (including one of the best hard-SF generation ships I've encountered, the Daban Urnud) and other worlds. Moreover, it takes scientific ideas, such as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and builds a good story around them. Very well done in that respect. And it even has a satisfying ending, though enough loose ends remain to make me hungry for more of this.

And it left a lot of room for speculation. We got just a glimpse at Urnud's version of the mathic tradition (and of course heaps of detail on Arbre's). It makes me wonder if "Laterre" has its equivalent. More specifically, it makes me wonder if this is, in fact, the Society Eruditorum, and if the Laterran versions of Fraa Jad and his ilk are none other than Enoch Root and the others who would be considered Wise. In addition, I wonder at the connections, if any, between newmatter and the alternate chemical elements of the various alternate worlds, and the Solomonic Gold. In short, I wonder if there is any connection between this novel and Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle.

There were certainly lots of references to other Stephenson novels. Yes, even The Big U, with the nuclear waste hidden beneath the millenial maths. The descriptions of how the Bolt, Chord, and Sphere worked also reminded me of the various nanogizmos from Diamond Age.

Anyhow, I am very pleased with how this book worked for me. It gave me a lot to think about, which I always consider a good thing.

Anathem

No, that's not a misspelling. I picked up the latest novel by Neal Stephenson recently, and am in the midst of reading it. I'm not far enough along to properly review it but I must say I love it so far. The last few books he read were all historical tales, and were set in the real world, so he didn't get to exercise the world-building skills he did in earlier stories like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, which were set in the future. Anathem is set in...well...I don't know yet if it's a parallel universe, an alien planet, or what, but it's not Earth. Despite this, it is just enough earthlike to be comprehensible, yet tantalizingly different. In some ways, it reminds me of the feeling I got when I watched Wings of Honneamise for the first time. I felt like I was exploring a world that was not mine, but was nonetheless a real place.

Hopefully I'll have more to say when I finish the book.

Theocracy

I had a conversation with a friend the other night, in which the topic of theocracy came up, in particular, as it applies to a potential future system of government for the US (or some other country, but we were talking about this one in particular). I kept thinking about that last night, and I came to the conclusion that I can't really support establishing a theocratic government here in the US.

This is despite the fact that I'm a Christian and a) believe in God, and b) believe that God is basically a good and benevolent being. Certainly, then, it should make sense that putting God in charge of running the country can only be a good thing. After all, God is better able to see the "big picture" and make decisions based on how things truly are, rather than being limited by personal perception and prejudice, as human beings are. The Bible is full of passages describing Him in terms appropriate for a great ruler or leader, so why not put Him in charge of the country?

And I can't really argue with that. If God's name was on the ballot (for any office, not just President) He'd have my vote hands-down. Problem is, He's not on the ballot (as far as I've seen at any rate). And, I doubt He'd step into the oval office even if we wrote His name in.

Which leaves us with the closest alternative--electing some human representative to stand in for God, to rule as He would rule and to speak His words to the people to be their laws. Such a person would be a sort of living conduit for divine will, much as the prophets were in the Old Testament. The OT is full of God talking in the first person, through the prophets, who were talking as if they were God, though they weren't. Rather, it was God speaking through them. I can envision something like this working as well. The problem here comes in finding someone who is a completely reliable prophet of God, and not either a) a false prophet who speaks his own words as if they were God's, but instead serves some other power (such as a false god, himself, or some conspiratorial organization) or b) a genuine prophet who is still a mere human with his own failings, who will sometimes fail to properly channel God's words for reasons similar to those given above.

This brings us to a third alternative, which is probably the closest to what comes to mind when one hears of a theocracy. That is, a person or person who rules in the name of God, and who probably claims divinely-granted authority, but who does not claim to BE God, or to speak directly for God. Priests, rather than prophets.

The Old Testament had its priests, of course. So did the New Testament--and they were often the ones whom Jesus was slamming hardest. So it isn't entirely sure that a priest-ocracy is what we need either. In general, Theocracy generally turns into Me-ocracy, where Me is typically the person proposing the theocracy (i.e. "Why don't you just put me in charge--I'll get things back to the way God wants them!").

So we have to be wary of leaders claiming to be/speak for/rule by God. But what about God's laws? The OT's full of them--people who set out to read the Bible from cover to cover often don't make it past that point in Exodus where was had been a rousing adventure story full of armies clashing and waters parting and strange Fortean meteorological phenomena descends into something more akin to a legal text. The laws of Moses are pretty extensive, and parts are surprisingly modern to readers such as myself (I was intrigued to note that the Bible distinguishes between degrees of homicide, for instance).

Still, Jesus died to set us free from "The Law" which seems to imply at least some subset of the Mosaic Law. Certainly the dietary laws are mentioned explicitly in the NT as not being binding anymore. On the other hand, there are parts of the law that we like, such as that old favorite "Thou Shalt Not Kill." I don't want to be killed, and I'll bet you don't either, so we want to hang onto that law. We don't want Jesus's death to separate us from that one.

The thing is, even if that law is no longer binding on us, that doesn't mean we should go around wantonly murdering people. If I don't kill people, it's not necessarily because the Ten Commandments contain "Thou Shalt Not Kill." It could be because there's nobody I really want to kill--because I personally consider killing so unpleasant and distasteful that it would take a lot to make me do it. It could also be because a totally separate set of laws (the ones that happen to govern the land in which I live) also contain homicide laws that differ from those given in the Bible (perhaps postulating more degrees, and stipulating different sets of punishments) but still are generally along the "Don't do it" vein.

There are a lot of laws in the modern world that have nothing to do with morality. We don't really think the Brits are going to Hell because they drive on the left side of the road--but if one of them comes over here and decides to go for a drive, he'd better stay on the right side instead. I call these laws "Protocols" in the sense of networking protocols. When you're writing network software that's meant to interact with pre-existing hardware and software, you have to follow certain rules in order to ensure that the other machines can make sense of the data you send, and you can make sense of that which you receive. Network protocols ensure the smooth functioning of the network, and protocol laws ensure the smooth functioning of society.

Even the murder laws can be seen this way. Killing people is bad because murder is morally wrong, but it is a crime because it disrupts the smooth functioning of society. Morality does not necessarily enter into the picture (though there's often a lot of overlap). The New Testament talks a lot about love--God's love for us, and our love for God and for each other. To me, this is the source of true morality, not the law of Moses and certainly not the laws of the State of California. But you can't legislate love. You can't put a gun to someone's head and say "You WILL love your fellow man or I will blow your effin' brains out!" Or rather, you CAN, and I have heard proposals from some who favor theocracy that amount to basically this. Or worse, something like "You will believe the things I believe or I will blow your effin' brains out!" Romans 10:9 states "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." You can make someone confess at gunpoint, but you can't make him believe. Force, and thus law (which is backed by force or threat of force) cannot truly convert and cannot truly save. It can only make people act in a semblance of salvation.

But is this enough to be worth the threat of this kind of coercion being misapplied? The current US constitution is incompatible with Mosaic law (which IS law and CAN be applied through force, unlike love and belief). Applying a system of government like that specified in the laws of Moses would necessitate changing or removing many parts of the constitution (which is perfectly possible, and explicitly allowed by the constitution itself--it's a meta-document meant to be changed as needed). However, I personally don't believe that the benefits to be gained by doing this are worth the cost. I think that one of the reasons why Christianity has thrived so well in this country is because there is no official religion. People are free to believe whatever they want. There are countries in Europe where everyone's automatically Lutheran (or whatever) unless they state otherwise, which has resulted in a lot of apathetic, non-practicing Lutherans. Here, you're a Lutheran (or a Baptist, or a Methodist, or whatever) because you choose to, or because you were raised that way and have chosen not to rebel, not because the government says you are. If everyone were forced to at least behave like Christians should, to me that would negate the whole significance of a person behaving like a Christian because he IS one. The law of Moses is not the only legal system that can ensure a smoothly functioning society, and it's certainly not the only one under which Christianity can thrive and grow.

So what do I propose? Keep things basically the way they are, in terms of religion's role in life. A person's faith is a deeply personal thing, not something that can be spread at gunpoint, at least not without perverting it and turning good spiritual food into poison. I'm a Christian, and would prefer it if everyone else were too, but I also believe in freedom of religion. I'd rather you were a Christian, but if you want to worship Cthulhu instead, you're free to do so. If you ever get tired of squid-gods and want a more loving (and lovable) deity to worship, I'll be here for you, ready to tell you the good news of Jesus Christ. But if you choose to worship Cthulhu instead, I'll not stop you with violence or threats thereof, unless you take some action to interfere with the functioning of society (i.e. violate the protocols that we happen to be living under now). So no human sacrifices, for instance, because that's not allowed, because it prevents the victim from functioning in society (due to being dead). But aside from that, your faith is your business, and that's the way it should be here in the US.

Poser

I attended SigGraph last month, just a one-day, exhibit-hall-only visit, but it was the first time I'd been to one in years.  While there, I picked up a copy of Poser 7 from the Smith Micro booth.  I've been trying to draw characters in somewhat more interesting poses than just "standing there looking cool," and I'd been wanting to pick up a pose reference book.  I figured that Poser would do the job for me, and be more versatile since I could create any pose I wanted, and view it from any angle.

And it's been all that, though I haven't been drawing much lately for other reasons.  Thing is, when I bought it, they gave me a coupon code for a free 6 month passport on their web store, Content Paradise, along with a sampler CD-ROM of stuff available from there.  The stuff (including a fully posable M1-A1 Abrams tank) is cool enough I decide to give the site a shot.  I download the major freebee packages, including three male figures and one female.  Looking around at the stuff starts giving me ideas of characters, settings, and plots.  I find an anime-esque girl named Terai Yuki and a texture pack for her, and that suggests a character to me--a sort of female version of L or Near from Death Note (one of my favorite manga series) only instead of tracking down a killer notebook, they're looking for terrorists who are using supernatural means in their attacks.  There's a lot of spy and action/adventure stuff on the site--commando outfits, vehicles, guns, etc.

So, what started out as a universal pose reference thing for me has morphed into this addictive character-creation and visual story telling program.  I picked up a few scenery packs, including a really cool industrial area with pipes and factory-type buildings (I'm a sucker for industrial imagery)--just the sort of place for our heroes to infiltrate--or blow up.  I also got a stealth outfit for my infiltrator and blower-upper, who I've named Rydlie.  I've created some action poses, including a hanging-from-a-wall pose that I've been trying to draw (unsuccessfully) for a while.  This is a really fun program.

Thing is, my main character, the Terai Yuki variant that I've named Kiya (it's amazing how you can throw together clothing and texture options, maybe tweak face and body geometry a bit, and a character materializes, complete with name) only has one outfit.  The default Terai Yuki minidress totally fits the way I envision the character, but she really needs more variety.  I went through the Content Paradise clothes list looking for outfits, but I mostly just find morphs for existing outfits that don't seem to be present there.  I google a bit, and I discover that these are available for sale from a totally different website, called Renderosity.  Curious, I decide to poke around to see what they've got there--in particular if there's any outfits or accessories for the other characters I have.  

I find very few, but a whole lot of other characters listed that I saw products refer to on the Content Paradise site, but never actually found for sale there.  I just figured that they were older versions of the Poser men, women, and children, that they no longer bothered selling because they'd been replaced with newer, better ones.  There was a bit of content for these on CP, but not a lot.  Renderosity was chock full of such content, much of it very cool.  But these figures weren't for sale there either.

More googling turned up Daz3D as the makers of these figures.  And they had yet another web store, with these figures and more.  I knew there was a Poser community out there, but I had no idea it was this huge, with at least three large, well stocked web stores.  I'm wondering what I got myself into.

I also noticed some patterns to these stores.  Content Paradise obviously focuses on the e Frontier/Smith Micro figures and content for these, but seems to have more real-world stuff.  There are cop and firefighter outfits, office and factory scenes, business equipment like laptops and cell phones, and that sort of thing.  Also a lot of military vehicles, such as the Abrams tank I mentioned earlier.  This was suggesting some relatively realistic stories, albeit with some fantastic elements (and thus, the Death Note esque storyline).  Renderosity has more SF and fantasy stuff, including some really cool looking cyberpunk sets, and some very revealing fantasy outfits for the (Daz) women, which look like something out of Boris Vallejo (or in some cases, Masamune Shirow) painting.  And I like SF and fantasy too.  Now I don't know what to do!

The funny thing is, I find all of this appealing in more or less the same way I find RPGs appealing.  I don't play RPGs to fight, or to loot, or even to socialize (though I enjoy all of these) but mostly to create imaginary people in imaginary places.  I think the whole Poser thing is appealing because it lets me do the same sort of thing.

Sigh, now I've got one more drug in my life :)

The Dark Knight

WARNING -- Spoilers for the Batman movie, The Dark Knight

I finally got around to seeing the lastest Batman flick last night. I wasn't even aware that it was still in theaters, but it obviously was. Not only that, but the theater was packed! I'm used to seeing movies well after their premieres in nearly-empty theaters. This was not at all what I expected.

There was a good reason there were so many people watching the movie though. I agree with those who think that Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker deserves a posthumous Oscar. They finally found someone who can out-crazy Jack Nicholson, and he up and dies after making the movie.

A couple of things struck me about the movie. The first was how long it was! It was almost 3 hours long, and there were several points in the movie where it felt like it was nearing the end--the bad guys seemed to be defeated or nearly so, and the good guys started talking like movie characters do toward the climax of a film. Then something happens and the plot does a 180 and the audience is hauled up yet another lift hill for yet another roller coaster ride. The rhythm of the film was different from the norm for movies, and I think that made The Dark Knight more disturbing, as you really didn't know what would happen next.

The second thing was that Ledger's version of the Joker is now my reference for Chaotic Evil. I like to have characters that, to me, epitomize the various D&D alignments, as an aide to role-playing. Jack Shaftoe from the Baroque Cycle, for instance, is my iconic Chaotic Neutral character. The Joker is CE, caring only about causing destruction, mayhem, and suffering. It's notable that, unlike the first Batman movie, they didn't give the Joker an origin story. He wasn't a crook who got dumped in chemicals that gave him a clown face and a taste for joke-themed crime. The Joker himself was fond of telling stories of his past, but they were all contradictory, and in the end we don't know who he was or what he was--he remains an enigma.

The third thing was that Batman is NOT the "World's Greatest Detective," at least not in this continuity, as he constantly fell for the Joker's tricks. The REAL World's Greatest Detectives (actually the world's THREE greatest detectives in one) would have seen through the deception as he saw through Light's more subtle trickery. Or maybe I'm just an L fan :)

I was thinking of Death Note at a few points during the film. I was curious just what a person with Shinigami eyes would see when he looked at the Joker. Did he really have a real name? Fiction is full of nameless heroes and villains, but is it possible for a person to be truly nameless?

And yes, I managed to turn a blog post about at Batman movie into pointless Death Note speculation. Oh well, I guess I just like Death Note.

But...I also liked The Dark Knight! If you haven't seen it, and you like tense, psychological, yet still action-packed movies (or you like Batman), go see it while it's still in theaters!

World of Ruin - Angel City

OK, every good campaign world needs a "starting area," which is given more detail, and which can be expanded as needed as the PCs venture further afield. By default, I'm making this starting area be southern California. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, it's where I live, so I have a good idea what the geography is like.

Second of all, it's an interesting place, even if you take away the social aspects--it's got mountains, ocean, deserts, hills, and so on. I've also lived much of my life in central Ohio, but that's not as physically interesting--it's mostly flat or nearly flat, and you can pretty much go anywhere you want to if you're not concerned with things like private property. The geography of SoCal lets me more easily define physical limits and barriers, and say things like "These monsters live on THIS side of these mountains," and "troops from THIS valley rarely go to THIS OTHER valley."

Third, it's almost got a World of Ruin flavor to it as is. Ohio's cities blur into the countryside. You might be driving along a busy street lined with strip malls and fast food joints, and as you go along, those businesses are slowly replaced by homes, and the homes by farms, and the farms by forests until you finally realize you're in the boonies. Here where I live now the cities are cut out from the wilderness almost with a laser beam. I've walked through residential neighborhoods where the last row of houses borders scrubland that looks like it hasn't been changed since before the Spanish discovered the place. Yet, on the other side of that divide are new, modern homes with lawns and swimming pools. In short, it's got that "Civilization-bordering-on-raw-wilderness" feel that I want.

In the World of Ruin, there are two main centers of civilization in the area, corresponding to the modern cities of Los Angeles and San Diego. In the place of the former, there's the similarly-named "Angel City." They're my default "local bad guys." Despite the angelic motif of much of their military technology, they're far from heavenly. They're your typical high-tech fascist police state. If you're familiar with the Coalition from Rifts, imagine those guys with a fixation on angelic imagery (feathered wings, halos, etc.) rather than skulls. That said, they are a force for civilization, and they are able to keep their territory mostly safe from monsters, though people who don't back the current government wholeheartedly are probably a lot less safe than they'd be out in the wilds. They're a force for civilization, but probably not the type of civilization that player characters typically favor.

Despite the obviously religous nature of angels, I don't really want Angel City to be a fundamentalist theocracy--that would be too obvious. Instead, they're run by a military government advised (and some people would say, controlled) by a group of four AIs. These AIs occupy heavily fortified structures, called "Citadels" which are located around the central arcology structure of Angel City itself, and are responsible for much of the actual policies of the city-state. The AIs are named Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel, and collectively referred to as the Archangels. These squabble amongst themselves, but generally present a unified front to outside threats.

Downtown LA is completely covered over by a massive arcology tower, nearly as well fortified as the Citadels that protect it. The majority of the population lives in here. Life for a typical citizen is, above all else, safe. There is constant security, protecting the people from crime and accidents, but also from dangerous thought and hurtful speech (where "Dangerous" and "Hurtful" are defined by the government, of course). Most people don't mind this, and go about their daily lives working (at government-supported jobs) and playing (government approved games and sports). The military occupies the highest stratum of human society here, with officially-supported businesses (nominally independant, but in fact subject to significant oversight) directly beneath them.

Other, smaller satellite arcologies are located elsewhere in the greater LA area. These are generally owned by large businesses, and dedicated to housing their workers. People here generally have a bit more freedom of thought and expression (at least, as long as there are no Angel City forces "visiting" at the time), but also lack the protection that those forces provide. Crime and corruption are common, and workers are often exploited by their employers.

Surrounding these arcologies are the "exurbs" -- the remains of the old cityscape from the pre-arcology days. Services of any sort are spotty here--many areas lack electricity, running water, or adequete sanitation. The people who live here are both a resource to be used by the government and corporations, and a constant thorn in their side. It is difficult to adequately police such an area, and violent crime is ubiquitous, but this lack of policing also makes the exurbs a hotbed for revolutionary activity. To help combat this, the Angel City authority offer money and other rewards for turning in subversive elements. This means that betrayal and treachery are a constant concern here, with everyone trying to stab each other in the back for a few handouts--which is exactly how the authorities like it.

In what would be present day Orange County, the influence of Angel City decreases as you head further south. South Orange County and adjacent parts of San Diego County are home to the mysterious and dangerous "Dead Zone." I'll cover that in a later post.

Real World Weirdness - The Tribe that Doesn't Count

No, I don't mean that they're unimportant. I literally mean they don't do the whole 1-2-3 business. An aside on a web forum post I was reading introduced me to the Pirahã (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people). They're a tribe of hunter/gatherers in the Amazon, who'd probably be much like any other such tribe (there are a lot, though fewer than in the past) except that they seem to eschew pretty much all forms of abstract thought. Not that they're stupid--they're great at concrete stuff like day-to-day survival. But they have no religion, no fiction, and no mythology, at least as far as researchers have been able to determine. Their language is one of the simplest known, and seems to lack recursion--you can't embed one sentence into another like you can in english and every other known language. And they can't count. Their language has no numbers, of course, but other languages also lack these, and speakers of those languages have no trouble counting. They borrow number-words from other languages if they have to, but they can count just fine using those borrowed words. These guys seem to be unable to learn to count, or at least unwilling to.

Now I don't know why this is, or even if it's really the case or if these guys are just putting on an act to fool those weird pale people who have nothing better to do than to ask random rain forest tribespeople about their personal beliefs. Still, the idea is intriguing, and it suggests a whole range of fictional scenarios based on this concept.

• First of all, this is a good example of "alien" thought patterns (albeit in humans). Perhaps a race of non-humans is completely incapable of abstract though, while still being intelligent. They might be somewhat like this. I am reminded of the Garuda in Perdido Street Station, who, while very different from the Pirahã, are nonetheless very concrete thinkers. A Garuda criminal refers to himself as being "Too Abstract."
• One article I read mentioned that only men had been interviewed. Perhaps in a fictional culture the women do all the abstract thought, and for all we know are accomplished mathematicians and theologians.
• An article mentioned that the children are largely raised by other children, not by their parents, and have a sort of subculture of their own. Maybe the kids are the philosophers of a culture, and become more focused on daily life when they reach adulthood. There could even be a rite (possibly involving magic) whereby they formally give up their childish thought patterns and devote the rest of their lives to living in the moment. This reminds me of an alien species I read about in a SF novel ages ago, which had a life cycle similar to that of butterflies. The larvae were sapient, and had developed space travel, while the adult forms were largely mindless and devoted only to reproduction.
• The Pirahã apparently only cat-nap, and don't sleep for long periods at a time. Why is this? I can understand the need to not be unconscious for hours on end in a dangerous environment like the jungle, but their neighbors manage to get by just fine sleeping at night like we do. Perhaps there's a connection. I don't know if anyone's done research on what this type of sleep pattern does to peoples' thought patterns.
• Despite not believing in gods, they do believe in spirits of a sort, all of which are actual physical objects. They also believe that these spirits can possess them in some way and change them at a fundamental level. As a result of these changes, they often change their names. This makes me think of a novel called "Vaccuum Flowers" in which it was common to "reprogram" people with different skill sets and even personalities. When the police raided a place, they would reprogram some of the people they caught into more cops, for instance. Or, imagine a world in which aliens were taking over some segment of the population, sometimes switching hosts. These aliens would have different ways of viewing the world than humans do, and might act somewhat like the Pirahã.

The real world is, most likely, not this strange. The most reasonable explanation I encountered is that the Pirahã were as they were for cultural reasons, and felt that their way of life was superior to that of outsiders, and refused to change for that reason.

Still, it's things like this that give ideas to fiction writers. I hope that I'll continue to find real-world wierdness and it'll be come a recurring feature of this blog. I will share my ideas with others, for their benefit and my own.

World of Ruin

I've been toying around with an RPG setting for a while now. It is meant for use with the GURPS rules, my favorite RPG system, and is a sort of post-post-apocalyptic cross-genre world. It's meant to be a setting for somewhat traditional "adventuring" with lots of weird powers and toys and plenty of fights with strange creatures, and a healthy amount of exploring and discovery. I've been writing up individual elements--character templates, martial arts, and such, but nothing on the setting as a whole. I decided to use this blog to jot down some ideas on larger-scale elements.

• The setting is tentatively called "World of Ruin." It is set on Earth in the medium future, maybe 100 or so years from now, though I've not settled on a specific time frame.
• Most of the world is uninhabited, or sparsely inhabited. There are "barbarian" tribes with primitive technology and primitive magic but lots of survival skills, and plenty of howling, monster-filled wilderness. All of this is dotted with the ruins of past settlements and installations, both modern and futuristic, though all in a state of serious decay.
• Civilization has never truly fallen, but it has receded. Most of the population lives in large, fortified arcologies, or in nearly-as-fortified outlying communities. These outliers would be things like farming towns for crops that can't be grown well in the arcologies, or mining towns, or the like.
• Similarly, technology has continued to advance, in small spurts and leaps at least. Overall Tech Level is mature TL9 with superscience. The smaller and more remote settlements may have only TL7 or TL8, or even lower, and a lot of older tech is still in use, especially by the poorer folk. There are lots of toys, but in most of the world those toys are unavailable or expensive, and difficult to repair, so the PCs will still have situations where they have to rely on their own talents.
• The disaster which brought the world to this state wasn't anything traditional like nuclear war or ecological catastrophe. Rather, the laws of nature changed subtly, and the boundaries between worlds broke out. Magic returned to the world with a bang (actually, quite a lot of bangs) and with it creatures of legend--and nightmares.
• Magic and Psionics both exist in this setting. There are several different types of magic, ranging from standard RPG-style fireballs-and-lightning spell magic, through more subtle (and far-ranging) ritual magic, to primal control over reality itself.
• The civilized world consists of, to borrow a term from 4th Edition D&D, "Points of Light." These are mostly independant, high-tech and/or high-magic city states, separated by wilderness and possibly connected by tenuous lines of communication or transportation.
• Each of these city states is different from the rest. One might have the latest TL9 (or even early TL10) tech, but ban all forms of magic, while the next has only moderate tech but full use of spell-magic, and so on.
• There should be many, many options for player creation. Standbys like Elves and Dwarves are available to play, as well as exotics like cat-people, and high tech cyborgs and bioroids.
• The city states are (mostly) lawful places, with functioning societies and public services like police and firefighting--they are safe for law-abiding folk, and (usually) not oppressive police states. However, weapons ownership is common elsewhere, and the world beyond the immediate control of the city states is lawless and dangerous--great places for adventure are commonplace, and not too far from civilization should things get too bad.
• There is plenty of intrigue both within and between the city states, so there are opportunities for adventure even within civilization.
• Other worlds exist, and characters may be from them, or descended from beings from them, but Earth itself is the usual location for adventuring.

In short, the "World of Ruin" is meant to be a perfect place to play capable but not omni-powerful heroes who get into a wide range of adventures, and where almost anything is possible. One adventure might be a standard dungeon crawl, only with guns and robots as well as fireballs and elves, while the next might be a cyberpunk style mission to infiltrate a research facility in a city state.

I hope to add more ideas in future posts, but I think this is enough for now.

Death Note (Spoilers and Thoughts)

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE END OF DEATH NOTE!!!









OK, so I finished off my Death Note manga collection at Anime Expo last weekend, and read the whole thing in rather a marathon session (well, the whole thing except the parts I read in line at the convention). And, I have to say, I was completely satisfied with the ending--it was pretty much how I'd expected it to end, and pretty much how I hoped it would end.

Afterwards, I talked with one of my friends, who had also seen the end of Death Note (in his case, the anime rather than the manga, but I understand they're similar enough in that respect). He liked the ending, but was also a bit bummed that Light had to die. I was not only expecting this (Ryuk had promised as much from the very beginning) but was glad to see him go. Light annoyed the crap out of me from the very beginning--he was one of those guys who's good at pretty much everything and thinks he's better than everyone else. Exactly the sort who'd jump at a chance to make themselves gods. Throughout the manga, I was saying things like "L! You're right, Light IS Kira! No, don't believe what he's saying--it's just a trick!" and later I was saying similar things to Near. (No, I wasn't actually talking out loud--don't worry that I'm going crazy and literally talking to manga characters). I was really starting to fear that Light had got the better of Near, and that Kira would really prevail.

I was horrified by Kira's ideal world--yeah it might SEEM safer, with the criminals living in fear of inescapable death from an invisible judge, but I'd be too afraid of getting on the wrong side of Kira. Plus, even if Light Yagami really was a just judge, he doesn't get to add the years he takes off his victims' lives to his own like a Shinigami does. Who's to say the next Kira wouldn't turn out to be a straight-up psycho killer? That lawyer that he had do his dirty work while he was unable to do so himself was a good example, taking Kira's ideals too far (or at least too fast).

I understand there are quite a few Light/Kira fans out there, but I'm definitely not one of them. I'm firmly in the L/Near camp, and liked both of those characters the moment they were introduced.

I'm wondering if some of this is due to my personal beliefs. I hate to pass judgement on people or things, but I like to understand them instead. If I see someone doing something bad, my first thought isn't "They're bad--punish them!" but "Hmm...I wonder why he did that..." Perhaps that's wrong, and bad people are just straight-up bad, with no understandable reason, like D&D monsters that are "Always Chaotic Evil." But that's how I am, and I will likely go on trying to fix things instead of condemning them.

I like to debug programs--I treat it like a mystery in need of solving, as I add debugging code to gather evidence and narrow down the list of suspects to a single line of code that's not doing what it's supposed to be doing. That's one of my favorite parts of programming. Debugging is a challenge to me like tracking down Kira was a challenge to L. Though, null pointer exceptions and array overflows aren't likely to get my name written down in a death note, fortunately. I know that my friend with whom I was having my conversation about Death Note isn't like me in that respect. He likes to design error-free code from the very beginning, using engineering principles rather than the scientific ones I favor, and he likes to be tough on crime and criminals whereas I tend to be more forgiving (so long as I can understand the reasoning behind a crime, even if I don't accept it).

It's with thoughts like these that I tend to get recursive, thinking about thinking about thinking about things. I'm wondering now why the two of us (who like so many of the same things and get along so well) differ in this respect, and whether it's a matter of innate genetic tendencies, upbringing, or some intangible factor that transcends both of these. I suppose in the end it doesn't matter. Some people like Kira and are fine with killing dangerous (or even not-so-dangerous) criminals, and others like L and prefer to understand and "solve" criminal problems. Just like some people like anime and others can't stand it. I just have to think about things like that, just like I feel compelled to watch anime and read manga--I'm addicted to thought like I'm addicted to Japanese comics and cartoons (and gaming, and many other "nerd" things). It's just how I am. Whether this is a fault in need of correction, a fatal flaw that condemns me, or just a quirk, I don't know, but it's me.

Gurren Lagann

OK, I don't really want this to become just an anime blog, but since anime's obviously on my mind at the moment, I'll keep on that topic. I watched the first disk of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann last night, and it rocked! It's utterly ridiculous, silly super-mecha action, but done with so much enthusiasm (and quality) that it's hard not to like it. I felt a lot of FLCL-ishness in it (not surprising, as both are from Gainax) with the insane mecha designs and exaggerated character designs and animation. FLCL had a robot that looked like a giant hand--Gurren Lagann has robots that look like heads. And of course, no Gainax anime would be complete without bouncing boobies, and Gurren Lagann has plenty of "Gainax Bounce." All-in-all, one of the most fun anime shows I've seen in quite a while.

So, like, watch it. And stuff.

Anime Expo 2008

Woohoo, I'm finally getting into the whole Blog thing, and decided to start on a high note. Anime Expo 2008 was last weekend, and it was a blast. I was a bit worried about the location--I'd been to the LA convention center a couple of times before, and while I knew it was huge, which AX needed, it was also in...let's say not the best of neighborhoods. Things have improved there a lot! There's still some bad-looking areas not far, but most of the off-site stuff I was interested in (such as food!) was to the north, and that was pretty much standard downtown business district, and didn't feel bad at all. There was even a convenience store there that sold Pocky--a necessity for any anime convention attendee.

I have to say that this was the smoothest-run AX I've been to in a while. Certainly went better than last year's Long Beach debacle. They've finally figured out how to do prereg badge pickup right, for one thing. Even though there was a car wreck on the highway on Wednesday and my friend and I missed the pre-con badge pickup by like 5 minutes, and had to get our badges in the morning, it was still only a matter of a few minutes, not hours. Even the AMV contest ran smoothly--no stolen DVDs or unresolvable technical issues.

The only downside to the location was transportation. Traffic was mercifully light, especially for LA, but it still was a long way from Orange County, where I live, relative to Anaheim. But that's just my own perspective. If you're coming from Japan, or even just from out of state, there's not that much difference between LA and Anaheim. But I'm a self-centered bastard, so I'll allow myself to gripe about that :)

As far as con content, there were some good panels and workshops this year. I learned some very cool Photoshop tricks, for one thing. Also, the Paranormal Japan panel was very good, despite the technical difficulties. If you were also there, and you're curious, I'm the cat who talked about foxes.

I confess that at first I was disheartened by the exhibit hall. Not that it wasn't huge and stuffed to the gills with anime and manga stuff. It was, and I bought way too much, as I usually do at AX. But it was mostly retailers, and a lot of them were selling toys and anime collectibles, which I'm less interested in than I am actual anime and manga. I missed the huge ADV booth, which was a fixture of AX in my experience. With Geneon gone, and ADV boothless, I felt concerned about the companies that provide my drug of choice (anime).

However, when I attended the panels I started to feel better. ADV had a real reason for not having a booth, and they're working to get their issues resolved and get back to selling anime--hopefully they'll be back in full force next year and I'll be able to buy some anime at that big booth again. The anime market is changing, and some of those changes I don't like (I don't watch television, and I don't download video files over my slow internet connection, so broadcast anime and iTunes anime aren't that useful to me). However, some changes I do like. It sounds like Funimation is going to do more full-season box-sets rather than individual DVDs, which makes it easier for me to buy a whole series. I tend to get impatient and buy the individual DVDs, and sometimes I have trouble completing my collection. I think the only whole-series packs I have are Escaflowne (my all-time favorite series, which I didn't buy individual DVDs of because I already had it on VHS) and Noein, which I just bought last weekend.

Anyhow, I had a great time, and most of my fears turned out to be unfounded. And I got tons of anime and manga, so I'm happy.