Heritage Chaos

I pulled the trigger on importing my heritage postings from my prior days at KORPG Games. Everything I wrote there has value and more importantly history. That said, many issues arise. Importing isn’t a pretty process, all the previous internal links lead nowhere since the posts have been purged at the prior site. Previous media inclusions are broken.

I’ll have to fix a lot of image insertions and purge a crap load of formerly internal links. Importing doesn’t have a lot of options so it is what it is until it isn’t.

Update: There’s a plugin for everything. Its on the job to scrap the dead links.

Thoughts on RPG Utility Software

Over the last month, I’ve been cranking out utility software for role playing games. The bulk of them covered either Labyrinth Lord or modern elements. Randomly generated information is central to RPG’s. Like many, most of the time I’d rather make the selection via dice. At times, picking up dice and making a series of rolls is not convenient or you may just need a lot of rolls. They are useful in certain situations but not others. Writing them is rewarding in many ways. .

When to Use

Although many purists would never utilize a coded system, there are situations where they can useful. My top two reasons are speed and inspiration.

Speed

Speed is simply explained. If you need a 100 different results and have 10 minutes to do it, a utility is going to get you the information. Rolling dice and writing up the results by hand is significantly slower. Copy and pasting the information or even a quick download is far faster. If you trust the random number generation used, the results are similar. If you can cut prep time and spend more time gaming, the benefit is a win-win for the players and game master. I’ve never met a gamer who would prepare materials over actually playing. Bulk results are far faster from a coded system.

Inspiration

Everyone hits a wall at times. Randomly generated information can provide a spark to get creativity flowing. Perhaps you want a specific bit of information to spark a group goal but cannot quite come up with what it should be. It may be a friend, foe, or magic item. Rather than racking your brain after it has failed you, hit a generator that focuses on that portion of the information. Maybe 1 of the hundreds of results they can produce in seconds will get you over the hump. Although its far less interactive than asking people, at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday, the generator won’t mind you calling.

When Not to Use

Specificity

If you already know the results you want, you shouldn’t be looking for them within a random utility. For example, if you want a small 7 room dungeon that features a water crossing and a shrine to a long dead god, you are unlikely to find it in a random series of results. You may find a few elements for inspiration but you already know what you want. Design what you know and use the random utilities for the rest if you need more inspiration.

Balance

I’m not a big fan of overall balance in a system or a group. However, everyone and everything needs the spotlight at some point. Perhaps you’ve given everyone but one character a useful magic item and you want to place one in the current dungeon. Random results will not help. You know the character and the goal, its specific, so just pick it and place it appropriately.

Why Produce Generators

A few people have asked me why I write utilities. There are number of reasons. Djeryv offered this opinion on the Goblinoid Games forums, which is accurate within limits.

When people make tools like this…to help in their “own” gaming…they can’t lose. Sharing it with others is just a selfless gift on top of that. It is really cool when we make these tools/generators because they help with putting a game together so much quicker than the hours we spent in the 80’s. The main excuse of why people stop gaming is “no time”. These tools diminish that problem. Also, any printed generator also lets us keep the laptops away from the gaming tables.

However, I’ve got ulterior motives.

Permanence

If a game system is in use, the utility software can be useful forever. Essentially, they are traffic generators. If I was aiming toward monetizing this site (I’m not), every utility I write generates repeat traffic back to the site. Once written, debugged and present, utilities are a constant source of traffic. If they suck or don’t fill a need, they are as pointless as most of the random posts I write. Out of the dozen generators I’ve written in the last 20 years, only the system specific ones continue to result in repeated visitors. Still, those repeat visitors might find a new one useful.

Fun

Yep, I write them for the challenge of writing them. Not because they are difficult. Rather, I get to explore technologies I don’t interact with daily. In the last decade, I’ve never been asked to write a web application. Writing a generator forces me to embrace new technologies I wouldn’t normally use. Learning and using AJAX was cool. I’ve probably over used it but none the less I had fun figuring it out and the result were useful to gamers in general

Learning something new plus producing products useful to others is a lot of fun. I’ve stumbled more than once. The Treasure Book generator is chuck full of inefficient programming. I’ve indented to fix it but the number of people using it raises the priority.

In a strange sense, I’m providing a service to others while having fun doing it. Very similar to running a game for other players. I burn some energy doing the prep work and then they reap the benefits. I have fun. The consumers have fun. I’ll call it a win-win.

International Politics and Zombies – A Review

Daniel Drezner’s Theories of International Politics and Zombies covers the impact of an uprising of the undead on international politics in this short but well written book. The work is based around one question single question. “What would happen to international politics if the dead rose from the grave and started to feast upon the living?”

The first third of the book focuses on defining a zombie within the context of modern media and explaining how numerous different types of zombies are not significant factors to policy decisions. Next, Drezner covers how differing political ideologies may respond to a zombie uprising. He tackles the approaches of realism, liberalism, neo-conservatives and constructionist regimes. The final third discusses different national domestic policies, how the morass of government bureaucracy would be effected and the psychological impact of zombies on smaller social groups.

Within the first chapter, Drezner aptly demonstrates his knowledge and research on zombies. Both the breadth and depth of the cited sources are exhaustive ranging from the expected in George Romero’s Living Dead to the implausible such as Shaun of the Dead. Interspersed charts show a significant increase in the popularity of zombies in all forms of media since the turn of the century. Amid all mentions of books, films and comics, he deftly defines how a zombie outbreak would be a global issue.

Drezner also undertakes a literature review of zombie studies within a variety of fields including mathematics, zoology, biology and computer science. Surprisingly, a number of studies have been undertaken. Far more than a casual zombie enthusiast would suspect. As Drezner points out, many fields have yet to tackle the issue. He laments the lack of study by social scientists in general, noting

When compared to work in cognate disciplines, the social sciences in general — and international relations in particular — suffer from a zombie gap.

Wrapping up the introductory portion of the work, Drezner mitigates arguments regarding zombie origins and capabilities. Again, he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the genre. He aptly covers slow moving vs. fast zombies, slow infection vs. near instant conversion and the latitude of mental capabilities. In the end, he argues no matter the physiological, mental and infection basis, global policy will respond the same with the exception of minor deviations. Other responses would be more significantly changed based on the type of zombie uprising.

The core of the book covers the range of political ideologies and how as global actors each would be likely to respond to an outbreak. While quite interesting and detailed, I found myself less engaged than when reading the introductory sections. I acknowledge my general disdain of international politics was the basis for my lack of interest. Drezner pulls no punches throughout the section. Even with my interest wavering, I learned numerous concepts about global policy. My response may be exactly what the author intended even if I’m long removed from the academic world.

The final portion of the book covers domestic politics, bureaucratic policies and the psychological responses of the living to the undead. Drezner explains how internal national policies impact the ability of the nation to interact with other states on the global stage. Each domestic policy has significant broader effects. If a nation determines how to contain the uprising, will that information be immediately shared or withheld due to ulterior motives? That question is intermingled with many others that are difficult to answer but easy to acknowledge might happen.

In the final chapter, he delves into the psychology of interacting with zombies. Like many works of fiction, the question of if the living have fallen to the level of the zombies arises. The zombies want to kill all the living and the living want to eradicate the undead and will do nearly anything to achieve that goal. Additionally, he touches on the interaction of the social groups with response to zombies. If a family member becomes infected, the living may well feel obligated to protect her from eradication.

What if the zombies cannot be eradicated entirely? The book covers the possibility of having to live with zombies within the land. Policies will need to be adapted to the new reality. As Drezner points out, even the simple may be changed.

After a zombie attack, a new component of any driver’s license exam might be a demonstration of evasion tactics–or how to perform a hit-and-run on a flesh-eating ghoul with minimal damage to the motor vehicle.

Conclusion

Overall, the book was a fun read for an academic text. Unlike most text books, this one has the obvious interesting and fun fact of being based on zombies. Some minor sections I found dry and slower to read but overall I highly recommend it. The ebook version is over-priced since it is from a major publishing house but in the context of traditional educational works, both the ebook and paperback version are inexpensive. If you like zombie materials and have even a slightest interest in politics, buy the book. You will not be disappointed.

On the hunt for graphic artists

I’ve been pondering logos for a few days. I have a good idea of what I want but I’m artistically challenged. The original logo was a quick hack to get the site up and working. The current one is a secondary hack but more in line with my vision. Both are amateur attempts.

Waffling through the weeds of random searching results in a sea of

1. Logo mills
2. Random links to artists conveniently ripped off by the logo mills
3. Sites discussing the millions of dollars tossed aside by mega corporations on log design.

I’m certain there are artists out there willing to work freelance. My concept is well established. I’m willing to pay fair market value for the work.

I just haven’t managed to find the artists for hire site to even propose the idea. If you have suggestions or are interested as an artist, you can either comment or hit the contact page.

Banishing the Sodastraw: Life as a Server

Once upon a time a server was born in a small office in the corner of an office in an old building on a university campus. At birth, all was well in the world and the little server chugged along doing its job quietly and happily. Life was enjoyable as bits and bytes flew up and down the connection to the sparsely populated wilderness known as the Internet. Aptly named gargoyle, the server was quite happy exchanging packets with other curiously entities. Until the rendering.

Rendering day was vile; even evil by most standards. Gargoyle was spooked the morning the friendly human Mark logged into the console and began copying files. It had happened before. The human called the process backups but this was different. Even Gargoyle’s inner essence was being copied to portable media including the very private configurations. Something was awry. Change was afoot but Gargoyle continued its job until the end of the day when the evil shutdown -H now was forced upon it. Gargoyle could do nothing but comply. He quietly term’d all process and went to sleep not knowing if he would awaken ever again.

A few weeks later, electrons once again woke Gargoyle from his rest. Everything was different. His limbs were constrained. The familiar eth0 was present but not talking to his prior friends. No matter how much he tried, he could not find them. His internal organ, named, kept saying the friends were not found. They couldn’t be resolved. Slowly, the evil Mark was giving him back his configurations. Life felt better but if he couldn’t communicate with the others life was not complete. One late afternoon, another configuration arrived for eth0 but changed nothing. Nothing was coming or going. Gargoyle thought it was a complete waste of time. Then Mark sent the evil shutdown yet again. Gargoyle’s last thought as he termed process after process was that this Mark guy was becoming a serious pain in the CPU.

But wait, the capacitors had barely drained and Gargoyle was again awakened from his slumber. Before he could gather his wits, eth0 said it was time to work again. Some new guy, Cisco, had told eth0 he had stuff to do and Gargoyle needed to get on it. Cisco was familiar. Maybe a 3rd cousin from the guy named Cisco Gargoyle had known previously. His MAC was different but he was confident he had more and better people to talk with. Cisco informed Gargoyle he was now living in the land called ‘coloc’. Strange as it was, Gargoyle was happy to be talking to people and exchanging packets once again. It was dark and cool in the new neighborhood. Dozens of people lived there but Gargoyle didn’t talk to them much since they didn’t request anything from him. Strangely, they came and went often. New neighbors arrived and others disappeared. Often. Far too often. Usually they would disappear after delivering bytes called Invoices.

Months went by without event. Mark would show up and offer some new options and configurations. All was well but Gargoyle kept hearing the screams from his neighbors: ‘Invoices are death. Do not deliver them.’ Gargoyle had no choice, when the invoices came him, he dutifully forwarded them onto Mark. Nothing seemed amiss until the day Mark showed up on the console. Crap. There it was again. Term all. Going down. Mark really needs to be electrocuted. Blank screen.

Hours later, Gargoyle once again awoke. Once again eth0 was different but told him there was a yet another new guy named Cisco. Except this Cisco was more of a cisco. There no neighbors nearby. Little c explained Gargoyle was now at the end of line. Something called DSL. It was not friendly and it was slow to handoff packets. The DSL entity claimed to be in the Qwest clan. Frankly stated, DSL was a bastard but he had connections. In fact, the Qwest connections were the only game in town. Gargoyle soon learned the vile Mark hated DSL. DSL was restarted over and over when it inexplicably failed to talk at random intervals.

Gargoyle learned Mark liked him to do cool stuff. The problem was the fricking DSL troll. Mark vented. Gargoyle retried. Mark vented. Then Mark showed up today and told Gargy, “We’re both old. We’re tired. That Qwest troll DSL isn’t worth the expense but its still the only clan in town.” He paused before continuing, “Time to lighten your load. I hired a new guy, mithril, to do the fancy stuff that heats you up and you cannot shove down the straw. The sodastraw. You can lighten your load but you are sticking around.”

Gargoyle was confused. He was still stuck with the troll but was going to do less far less often. Less time trying to tell DSL to send stuff he failed to send. That would be nice. Life is looking up. Wait

“Hey Mark, some guy in Russia wants to know if you’d like to buy some Viagra?”

Scrap-bin Pouches

“When in doubt, toss it out.” I should adopt that as my cleaning strategy but it won’t work. When I come across stuff I think about tossing, I start wondering how it could be used. As I was cleaning off my workbench from my prior leather projects, I found a bin of a bunch of small pieces of suede and garment leather. I had a plan for them once upon a time. I was almost ready to toss them but decided there had to be some use for the bits and pieces. My level of leather craft can be described as marginals. When things work out, I’m generally amazed.

So what do you do with scrap leather? I went with pouches and bags. Most of the scraps were quite small which limited the scope of the endeavour. A wonderful side effect is if you screw up and it doesn’t work, it was scrap to begin with. Nothing ventured nothing gained.
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Mace In The Mail: 7 months later

A few days ago, I got some new photo’s. The Mace In The Mail project started on July 1st, 2010. I’d mostly given up on it since the updates had stopped flowing in. Out of the blue, the original cucumber mace recipient sent me a few pictures about the same time the host situation hit the fan. As Kevin can attest, our collective luck with timing, and many other things, tends to run closer to getting keel hauled than enjoying a nice sailing trip.

The mace made the cross country trip from New England to the west coast of the U.S.

I suspect the picture below came from the original recipient but am not entirely sure. Updates are sporadic and slower than I envisioned. No shock on that front.

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