My Geek Notes

Blizzard has given notice that they’re going to be making a big announcement this Saturday in Korea. If I had to choose I’d probably want it to be Diablo III, or some new world (very unlikely), but my money is on “World of Starcraft”. Starcraft is huge in South Korea, so right off the bat it seems unlikely to be a non-starcraft game (another RTS, i.e. Starcraft 2, would be the other possibility). Blizzard is in a class by itself, so I’ll definitely be picking it up whatever it is, and I personally know a hundred people just like me, so whatever it is, it should be a success. Recently they seem to be announcing closer to the actual release, so my other hope would be that whatever it is, it’s coming soon.

I’m not very good at waiting

Late Edit: Further research revealed that the countdown to “question mark” front back of Blizzard.com is mirrored on the site starcraft2.com. Too bad of all the possible game announcements that’s the one I’m the least excited about…

My initial plan was to wait a while before seeing Spider-Man 3 (in fact I think I may have even mentioned that here), but one of my co-workers talked me into taking off early and going to see it at the IMAX. So I’m guessing you want to know what I thought. Well the last time I checked Rotten Tomatoes Spider Man 3 stood at 61%, just barely fresh (the cut off is 60% for some reason), which is a pretty fair assessment I think. Going in my big worry was that they had tried to do too much, for one thing three villains seemed excessive. On that count they did pretty good, which is not to say that three villains wasn’t excessive just that it went about as well as it could. So as you can see I went in with fairly low expectations, and as a result was probably overall pleasantly surprised.

Other good things: The final fight was quite good; the actors who have just joined the franchise were excellent. As usual J. Jonah Jameson was hilarious (though I think the funniest scene was Bruce Campbell’s obligatory cameo). I was once again reminded that James Franco would have been 10 times better than Hayden Christiansen as Anakin (IMHO). Some of the scenes with Peter and Mary Jane were painfully realistic. On the negative side, there’s a section in the middle after Spiderman gets the black suit (not spoiling anything I hope) that is… well awful. If you’re like me and you drank too much soda pop, when Peter changes his hair style, that’s your cue to make a break for the restroom. Which bring up another point, it’s long… nearly 2 hours 20 minutes as I recall.

Oh one last thing, I noticed that “Gilwell Park” was the featured article on Wikipedia today. That probably doesn’t mean anything to most of you, but trust me it’s cool.

Bear your weekend with longanimity

Normally I alot about 15 minutes for my blog post, most of the time that’s sufficient, though obviously sometimes I go over that. Oftentimes when I select a topic I can tell it’s going to take longer than 15. This is one of those times, but the trouble is I really do only have 15 minutes, so we’ll have to see how far we get…

Earlier in the week someone submitted (or dugg) a story that contained the decryption code for Blu-ray and HD DVD disks. Well Digg.com was sent a cease and desist letter, and so they removed the link to the story. Well a revolt ensued and Digg users flooded the site with hundreds of stories and thousands of comments all containing the code. Someone even wrote a song with the code in it and posted it on YouTube. For a more complete look at what happened here’s the NYT article on it, and here’s an Information week story with a larger discussion of the DMCA.

Digg eventually gave into the pressure and stopped removing links to stories with the offending code. Here’s what the founder said:

After seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

So the quandry arises what was the right thing to do in this situation? Now IMHO the DMCA is a bad law, particularly in the area of cryptography. Also it’s clear that “The Code” got much, much more exposure in this ill-considered attempt to stifle it then it would have ever gotten otherwise. In other words even if they had the legal standing to send a Cease and Desist, it was a dumb thing to do. On the other hand respect for the rule of law is quite possibly the single greatest factor seperating a successful country from an unsuccessful country, and there is an element in this story that reminds me of a child throwing a tantrum.

Of course respect for the rule of law is greatly facilitated when the rules are just and wise, which as I mention is probably not the case with the DMCA (though I hardly think it’s the end of all creativity in the universe that it’s more vocal detractors make it out to be.) Perhaps the more intersting statement is what this incident reflects about the architecture of Web 2.0. This ABC News article said it best:

But the biggest problem with Digg is not the business itself, which is an impressive creation, but its community. One of the things we’re learning about the Web 2.0 world is that all communities aren’t alike; when you let millions of anonymous users design your product, you also let them determine your fate. And Digg has put itself in the hands of an army of postadolescents with too much education and too much free time, the age cohort that gets its news from “The Colbert Report” and holds the anarchistic view that all information should be, in fact, “wants to be,” free.

Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, been there, done that. But now, in my gray-haired middle-age I’ve come to realize that if you are going to create a venue for children to play, someone has to be the grown-up. And that is where Digg blew it.

Don’t look at me I’m not the grown-up

Well we had the “Family Campaign” on Saturday, and it went pretty well. D&D (and role-playing games in general) take a long time to play. If you consider taking characters from levels 1-20 to be a single game, then you have something that could last years. Which means that its important to keep “things” moving. “Things” have been going slow for the last little while, mostly because we haven’t been playing that often (the holidays slowed everything down) but I came up with a few ideas to speed things up (on top of meeting more often):

1- When the players end up in a complex situation (like choosing how best to infiltrate a castle or defend a village), rather than just saying “What do you want to do?” I will give them a set of choices (bluff the guard, climb the wall, sneak in through the sewers, or none of the above). They can always choose to do something other than one of options I’ve offered, but hopefully it will reduce the time it takes to discuss the problem.

2- Supply the monster’s Armor Class and Hit Points when they’re in combat. That way they don’t have to wait for me to tell them if they hit, or whether the monster is dead they have that information right in front of them, thus speeding up combat.

3- Don’t roll for damage any more. All weapons, and spells, etc. would just do average damage. Obviously eliminating half of the die rolls would speed things up as well.

In the end they opted to only do option 1, and only after making sure that there was a none of the above option. In essence each of the options traded some of the D&D-ness of the experience for speed of play. So for them to choose only option 1, means that they really do like the D&D-ness, enough so that even though it’s going slow they would rather continue that way then sacrifice any of the experience. To be honest I’m kind of proud of them. Plus I think I must have scared them because we really tore through things that night. I think we ended up getting in 6 combats, which I believe is a record …

Also, if anyone has any ideas on speeding things up with minimal impact on the D&D-ness of the experience let me know.

8 months down, 3 and a half years to go

No not Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon and Dragon.

In 1975, TSR, Inc. began publishing The Strategic Review. At the time, roleplaying games were still seen as a sub-genre of the wargaming industry, and the magazine was designed not only to support Dungeons & Dragons and TSR’s other games, but also to cover wargaming in general. In short order, however, the popularity and growth of Dungeons & Dragons made it clear that the game had not only separated itself from its wargaming origins, but had launched an entirely new industry unto itself. The following year, after only seven issues, TSR canceled The Strategic Review and replaced it with The Dragon which later became Dragon Magazine and then Dragon.

I took that paragraph from the Wikipedia on Dragon (the magazine). Well that’s all over. Yesterday it was announced that Wizards of the Coast is not going to renew Paizo’s license to publish Dragon (or Dungeon) magazine. WotC is going to move it all online. In general I’m not a Luddite (or neo-luddite, or post-neo-anarcho-primitive.) I’ll read something off of the computer without any problem, but there’s something about a book or a magazine, that still makes them pretty good vectors for information. They’re durable, portable, tactilely satisfying, pretty, nice-smelling, arousing … okay I better stop, but the point is that electronic distribution is not the same.

Even more than Dragon I’m going to miss Dungeon (first published in 1986). My relationship with that magazine is complicated. My own little company, currently in a coma, DireKobold, was initially set up as a direct competitor to Dungeon, later when I realized that wasn’t going to work, I made a valiant attempt to get them to use my software with their adventures, there’s still a little flicker of hope there so I won’t go into enormous detail, suffice it to say, that I could not imagine anything cooler in the world than picking up a Dungeon magazine and finding a paragraph instructing people on how to order an enhanced PDF version of the adventure (wired up with my software). And it wasn’t just that they’d be using my software the magazine itself was that amazing, just about all by itself.

In any case I’m going to miss them. Count me among those that are not ready just yet to damn WotC’s online versions, but they’re going to have to do something pretty cool to capture that magic that was those two venerable magazines…

The end of the third era…

So I played the Order of the Stick Adventure Game (hereafter referred to as OotS:AG) last Saturday. In preparation for playing I spent quite a bit of time on the GiantITP.com forums reading up on the game. The general consensus was that it’s long… To this I can attest, I even took some preemptive measures to shorten it and it still was after 1 am when we finished (we started slightly after 6:00 pm). Still it was a lot of fun, but at 6+ hours in length a lot of people have asked me if I would play it again. And the answer to that is….

Definitely. In fact experiencing the flaws of OotS:AG has made me even more eager to play it. A great game is merely enjoyable to play, a good game is only slightly less enjoyable to play with the added enjoyment of triggering my inner game designer. “There’s a great game inside OotS:AG waiting to be let out, and I’m the one to do it.” In particular I like the idea of shticks (a great play on words). Shticks represent the basic abilities, weapons, and special qualities of each character. They also represent the characters leveling up. So you might have a shtick for a sword, or for diplomacy, or for armor, or one that allows you to do special things with the loot (Haley in particular.)

Shticks are so cool in fact that it makes me want to create an actual RPG system based on shticks. I don’t think I will have too much else to do, but my experience, particularly playing in the family campaign is that the world could use a really simple RPG system and yes I know there are some out there, (and if anyone says Amber:Diceless I’ll rip out your spleen) the point I’m trying to make is that it’s rare to come across a simple system that is really compelling, mostly you focus on the features you’ve given up for the sake of simplicity, but that wasn’t how I felt about OotS:AG.

In any case I will be playing again, though obviously with some modifications. I already made the modification of starting characters out with more shticks (4) and loot (6). In addition I think I might fool around with the number of rooms in a level, and the number of levels. Also I think having a big enough surface to lay out everything all at once will really help (we ended up playing from a table while constructing the dungeon on the floor.) As my house rules develop I’ll keep you posted.

Also if you haven’t checked out the webcomic the game is based on I urge you to do so ASAP. If you have any happy memories of playing D&D this comic will make you laugh until your spleen ruptures, which will possibly be fatal, but trust me it’s worth it.

The Order of the Stick

In a life or death situation never trust a raven

I have a problem. I’m not sure if you would call it ADD, or excessive curiousity, or recurring ennui, or just Ross-ness (I just watched Me, You and Dupree you’d have to have seen it to get that joke.) It’s this condition, whatever you choose to call it, that causes my problem. The concise way of putting would be, “Everything interests me but nothing interests me for long.” Obviously the length of time I remain interested varies quite a bit, with particularly interesting and enjoyable things holding my attention for quite awhile, but even my interest in something as interesting and enjoyable as D&D goes through a sin wave of passion to apathy.

Part of the problem is the opportunity cost, or the competition for my time. If D&D was the only thing around to do with my buddies on a Saturday night then I doubt my recurring ennui would manifest with anywhere near the frequency and severity, but there are so many cool and interesting things to do. To just give you a partial list of games I would really like to play:

Midnight D20
Order of the Stick Adventure Game
Illuminati CCG
Shadows Over Camelot
Savage Tide Adventure Path
Dreamblade
Puerto Rico
Shadowrun 4E
Samurai Swords (Shogun)
Go

These are just the games I own. So as you can well imagine if “the gang” only gets together once a month that it’s going to take quite awhile to get around to all those games, particularly since any kind of RPG (of which there are three on that list) takes years to play from start to finish.

At the moment I’m the DM for two different D&D campaigns, after reflecting on the points I just made (I didn’t just reflect on them, this happened over the course of the last few weeks) I’ve basically decided that one ought to be enough, so I’m going to turn the other one into a general game night where I can play the other seven things on my list (and probably a lot more).

Recurring, excessive, attentively deficit, curiously ennui-esque disorder