A great many RPGs define character traits in a fair amount of detail. Just by looking at the character sheet (or with the game stats and a little work), you can determine a character’s capabilities: how much weight can he lift, how fast can he run, how far (and accurately) he can throw, perhaps even other things like IQ, various levels of knowledge, and so forth.

The question is: how much of this raw data provided by character design is actually needed in game play? That is, when do you need to know exactly how far a character can jump? The obvious rejoiner is, “Well, when the character needs to jump over or across something!” But does that challenge require you to know the character’s exact jumping distance, or just how relatively difficult the jump should be? Likewise, is it really a matter of knowing if a superhuman can lift 23 tons versus 26 tons or just knowing she can lift “a bus” but not, say, “a jumbo jet” (at least, not at all easily in the second case)?

After all, the vast majority of challenges in RPG play fall in the relative narrow spectrum beyond the character’s “routine” capabilities (things not even worth making into challenges) but not beyond the character’s “impossible” capabilities. So much so that the capabilities themselves are almost window dressing. Yes, a game system can tell you, for example, that a character can fly at exactly 1,200 MPH, but beyond the fact that the character flies faster than the speed of sound, does it matter much?

It often seems to me like quantified details in an RPG context often just bog things down in needless detail when all you really need to know is a simple plot-point, such as “the character can fly” or “the heroes have access to a jump-capable ship.” The process of defining all that detail is often a kind of game experience unto itself. I recall the lovingly-detailed Champions and GURPS NPCs with full character sheets—Knowledge Skills, Hobby Skills, Quirks, and all—where the vast majority of their game traits never came into play (well, the Quirks, sometimes).

At what point do detailed traits become a detriment to RPG play? Or do they ever?

• 15:40 [blog] My Writer's Confidence t-Shirt explained: bit.ly/G2qaK #
• 17:03 Damn. Adding things to my website, but the narrow column design means I can't fit in any of my banner ads, like: bit.ly/4zsRoe #
• 17:04 Added a load of pictures and questions to my website's FAQ section: bit.ly/PbYHT #
• 18:03 The geniuses at UK2.net appear to have nuked all my imap email. Nice. #totalsenseofhumourfailure #

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D&D on Sunday - Demon Queen's Enclave session 2

To Stone Gardens this morning with Peter. All top rope, mostly not very good on my part.

Back in the day, I was a better climber than Peter. Lately, though, I've been dogged with injuries -- the sprained ankle in June and now an injured finger -- and he's been pushing himself hard, and as a result he's climbing considerably better than I am. This is occasionally a bitter pill to swallow.

It's connected to a fundamental question I am asking about myself these days. Since March of 2006 I have been driven to climb, and driven by climbing. Climbing has defined me, more than my relationships or job or home or even writing. But I don't know any more. I lost some passion toward the beginning of the year: I had a bouldering fall in the gym which scared me for some reason, and then a bouldering fall outside which scared me a whole lot more. And then the sprained ankle. Over the same period, I've been unemployed, writing a bunch, teaching over the summer, up for some awards, traveling some. These have been pretty important, maybe (I whisper) more than the climbing.

I have thought the unthinkable thought: What if I stop climbing so hard? Who am I if I stop being the woman who climbs V-4s, who throws her heart at the wall, even through chronic pain, the knowledge that I will pay for this for the rest of my life? I always knew there was an expiration date to my climbing, but I assumed I would be stopped by injury, some catastrophic failure of a body that did not spend its youth becoming strong. I did not consider that it might be voluntary. And what if I do not stop climbing, but just climb softer: easier routes, more breaks, for fun? Can it even be fun for me to do so?

What is climbing if I do not throw my heart at it? And who am I if I do not do so? I am not willing to answer either of these questions yet, and I am glad I do not need to. For now, I will wait impatiently for my finger to heal, and I will pine to be climbing again as well as Peter. And hope my heart is still strong, whatever is next.

I know Fingerhut costs more thanks to their extending credit. But that’s why I’m buying a digital camera from them, they extended me credit. When you screw up your credit as I once did, you don’t get credit from many places.

So what did I use my credit to get? A Kodak Blue 10 mega pixel digital camera. Why did I buy it? To get me out of the house.

I have Clinical Depression, so I need to get out, meet people, and do things. I also have Aspergers, which means I need a reason to get out, meet people, and do things. But, merely needing to get out, meet people, and do things isn’t a good enough reason, I need to have something to do while I’m out, meeting people, and doing things. Something that requires getting out etc. etc. Photography is one of those things, and better yet, I can contact people on my terms, at my speed.

Don’t have the camera yet, I will inform you when I do. Expect photos on the site, and a gallery as well. For now I’m anxiously awaiting delivery, and tracking order status. I realize I’m being a bit premature when the fretting, but I have Aspergers, I’m supposed to be a worry wart.

That’s the post for today, hope you’re all having a good day.

Mirrored from Mythusmage.

Here is the third sword in a series of three.
It is a short Lunar Army scimitar with the Lunar rune at the base of the blade. This is smallest of the three.

...included such lines as:

"I'm going to create an illusion of a dining room table, and make it flicker in and out. Nothing works better to capture elementals than a periodic table."

(When faced with a choice of whether to stand and face a trio of demons or flee through a semi-animate forest) "I'd rather face the living trees. Their bark is worse than their bite."

"Mmm, magic sex. It's finger-Wiccan good."

Last night's game was weird... ;-)

(And no, not all of those lines were even mine, though two of them were.)

So I've been planning for a while to get a tattoo -- got the sketch worked out and everything with Nigel Sade, who has done a fabulous job in working with me on the art.

During this week's sojourn in Cleveland, innocent_man let me know he was wanting to get a tattoo as well (a gorgeous coral snake around his ankle) and offered to take me to his friend, who owns a tattoo shop in Wooster, OH. Moving Pictures Tattoo Studio is the place, and Laura was the artist who did the work.

( Pictures behind the cut. )

Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?

Debaters: Archbiishop John Oniaken, British MP Ann Witicomb, Christopher Hitchens, and Stephen Fry.

I've been a bit distracted lately, oddly enough by healthcare, or I'd have had more to say about the HCR process in the House. There's lots to say now, much of it complaint. What the hell ever did happen to single payer, given that the Dems negotiated that away all by themselves? Why was the dreadful, pathetic Stupak-Pitts amendment even allowed to enter the process? Is the Senate serious about the six-month waiting period for the Public Option, which protects insurance companies while (sometimes fatally) victimizing voters?

But you know what? A few years ago we were debating whether to privatize Social Security. Now we're complaining that the proposed Public Option is flawed.

Guess which argument I'd rather have. Victory in politics is ever transient, but I think, for now at least, that sanity, goodwill and reason have prevailed. A hell of a change after all those years of Republican governance.

Your Sunday moment of zen.



Jeff VanderMeer, photographed at the Portland Japanese garden. © 2009 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Mitchell Hooks’ Fabulous 50’s Paperback Covers — Very nice stuff linked through from this post on Drawn!

Little but fierce — Ah, Criggo, thy clippings make me laugh until my bladder threatens.

A Common Nomenclature for Lego Families — An interesting article about how children name things. (Via Language Log.)

You Sir, Have Offended My Honor — Ta-Nehisi Coates on bigotry, with sourcing from Brian Chase.

64 Democrats on the Wrong Side of Stupak-Pitts — I expect Republicans to vote in favor of forced pregnancy and government intrusion in private life. Those are among the most cherished conservative principles. But Democrats? I'm sure you guys are proud of yourselves, and that just makes me even more ashamed.

?otD: Who will stop the rain?

---

11/8/2009
Body movement: 2 hour, 30 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.0
This morning's weigh-in: 232.4
Currently reading: The Jade Man's Skin by Daniel Fox

Howdy all -

Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes is in final layout as we get ready to send it to the printer this week. My word, this book is beautiful! Approximately 400 pages long, this is the best looking and most distinctive Gloranthan book since the original Trollpak. So many pictures, so many maps. Here's a taste:


This page has a wonderful piece by Jed Dougherty, depicting the Orlanthi Pantheon at the High Table of the Gods (and reminiscent of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper).


I love the Mike O'Connor boxed art with stylized depiction of common Sartarite occupations. I'm a huge fan of Mike's distinctive art. He depicts the Orlanthi as I imagine they would depict themselves.



Finally we have plenty of fantastic pieces from French artist Regis Moulin. And much much more.

These are just a taste of what the final book will look like. Art by a wide variety of professional artists helps provide a distinctive look to Glorantha.

Jeff

• 08:33 Morning world! Today is Thing 4's second birthday. Woot! #
• 11:52 @robert_emerson Have you seen our Pathfinder Shaman? :) tinyurl.com/ydboxhz #
• 12:16 @robert_emerson Check your email. :) #
• 12:37 @robert_emerson :D #
• 12:59 Working on some new Pathfinder projects. A new template, a new spell, and a couple of prestige classes. #notthesecretPathfinderProject #
• 15:39 To Rep. Brian P. Bilbray: Please vote for health insurance reform. bit.ly/1xhcYF #hc09 #CA #92027 #

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Another enjoyable weekend that was really somewhat overbusy - like most of my other weekends recently. I wasn't able to do anything with the "Weekend in the Realms" D&D event. I managed to completely forget it was on, and I was busy with my other gaming anyway. I think Mick may have run a session this afternoon, but perhaps not.

• 07:15 @TheCreide It's the gov't? Explain. #
• 07:18 This weekend's docket includes last game of #Pathfinder 2-10 today and tomorrow #DnD from 1-6. Not much time for #DragonAge or #WoW. #
• 09:15 Goodness: A return of the blustery weather. Super-heavy rain drops and wind rattling the windows. Creepy since it's morning! #
• 10:44 Downloading the latest episode of The Guild while @Unicorness gets dressed. Soon there will be luncheon times! :) #
• 10:49 @slowdumbshow Keyless entry is fast becoming the norm. Still, yeah, what the what. Can you imagine
  having 2 key unlock a stick shift car? ;) #
• 11:46 Have successfully navigated the road network through torrential rains to secure right and proper place at luncheon establishment. #
• 11:48 Also, waitron has begun serving us before other couple in next booth, shortly after commenting on our being regulars. Kinda weird. #
• 11:50 @Sernett Half year? I prolly only get shoes once every three years or something. Crazy. #
• 14:17 About to start last session of #Pathfinder. I had to move the MasterMaze of the final boss fight for the Monday #DnD group out of the way. #<
  /li>
• 14:49 Waiting on final player for final session of #Pathfinder. /sigh #
• 15:02 Not waiting for late player. Proceeding! #
• 15:33 First combat. #Pathfinder twitpic.com/ooig6 #
• 16:05 Second fight! #Pathfinder twitpic.com/oonz5 #
• 17:09 Second #Pathfinder fight still going on—might be a TPK... My character has 35 hp left until #DragonAge. ;) #
• 17:22 Remember thelate player to #Pathfinder? He arrived and was promptly panicked. He's going to spend the Entire Combat doing nothing at table. #
• 17:29 I cont. to abhor things that keep people at table frm doing things. The player is reading a novel. Because that's what he came over to do. #
• 17:32 Killed! My character killed! That was not entirely a surprise, given how things were going. ;) I've come downstairs to play #DragonAge :) #
• 18:51 My character was revived! #DragonAge put aside, #Pathfinder begun anew! #
• 19:29 Third fight! #Pathfinder twitpic.com/oplzb #
• 19:54 Giants! #Pathfinder twitpic.com/oppv9 #
• 20:03 @julianjrossi D'oh! #
• 21:17 Final battle of the campaign! #Pathfinder twitpic.com/oq1h6 #
• 23:07 #Pathfinder concluded! My character died in the final battle, along with half the party, but we saved the day in the end! #
• 23:38 @Unicorness and I are both watching Fringe on our computers at the same rune via Hulu. :) #
• 23:43 Er, time #
• 00:21 Ah, that was a good episode actually. Had some background on one of the c
  hrs that was much appreciated. Also: Creepy monster. #Fringe #

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I spent most of the day in the GamesU room listening to presentations on Breaking into the Industry, Marketing, The Future of Tabletop Gaming, World Development, and Pitching to the Pros. It's been a long time since I've had the luxury of spending so much time in seminars at a game convention ... and I'm LOVING it. Although the Internet connection turned out not to be fast enough to allow video streaming of the seminars, I believe the audio is going out live ... and all the talks are being video taped for later uploading to YouTube.

I also got to have meals with Erik Mona, Josh Frost, and Ed Healy (just to name a few) ... including an amazing steak dinner at the Golden Steer.

Plus, I managed to squeeze out time to finalize the notes for my panel tomorrow morning on Running A Small Game Company. Hopefully I'll get a decent sized audience because I'm kinda counting on questions to help carry me through the whole hour.

Tune in and see how I do.

What: The "Days of Future Past" storyline from issues 141 and 142 of The Uncanny X-Men, from January-February 1981.


Why: I have extremely high standards for a time travel story. Internal logic matters more than anything. It can't involve Sandra Bullock watching a tree grow like mad or a prisoner seeing Ashton Kutcher spontaneously stigmatize or any encounter between the Fonz and a brontosaur. But X-Men writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne took temporal continuity seriously when they envisioned comics' scariest future. In 2013, North America is ground under the metal heels of the robot Sentinels, who have killed most of the superpowered beings and enslaved the humans. The rest of the world plans to nuke North America, which seven remaining superbeings—Sprite, her husband Colossus, Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Franklin Richards, and Rachel, daughter of the deceased Cyclops and Jean Grey—hatch a desperate plan to deter. The psychic Rachel sends Sprite's mind back through time to stop the event that unleashed the Sentinels: the assassination of mutant-hating Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants on October 31, 1980. Sprite awakens inside her youthful body, and leads the X-Men in battle against the Brotherhood on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, in the future, the surviving mutants attack the Sentinels in their Baxter Building headquarters. One by one... okay, there might be a clue of what happens on issue #142's cover. Is it enough to change the future? Only time will tell.

Impact: This riveting storyline jammed a stake in the earth and said, "Take comics seriously." At that time, it wasn't common for good guys to die in Marvel's comics. But just three issues earlier, Claremont and Byrne killed off Jean Grey in the most shocking comics death since Gwen Stacy. With "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past," the two laid a strong claim to the greatest writer-artist run on an ongoing mainstream comic. This run was commemorated some years later when the first X-Men film was based on "Days of Future Past" (minus the time travel), the third was based on "The Dark Phoenix Saga," and the second... well, that's a column for another day.

Personal Connection: "Days of Future Past" was the first X-Men comic I bought. Until then, I was solely a DC reader, amassing quite a collection of Batman titles. But the cover of X-Men #141 leapt off the rack at Golden Age Comics and told the 13-year-old me, "Kid, you're an X-Men fan." How could it not? Now widely acclaimed as the one of the greatest covers ever, the startling image of Wolverine and Kate Pryde spotlit in front of a superheroic body-count poster has been revised and parodied multiple times since. But you never forget your first genocide of mutantkind.

Other Contenders: that X-Men storyline's spiritual godchildren, the first and second films in the Terminator franchise; Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut Jr's novel about a man who becomes unstuck in time, but doesn't mind much; "The City on the Edge of Forever" and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, showing the range of Star Trek's greatness; the spine-tingling Doctor Who episode "Blink", which will forever change your opinion about looking at statues of angels; Donnie Darko, a glimpse through the lookingglass; Groundhog Day, a holiday in Hell, Pennsylvania; 12 Monkeys, in which science isn't an exact science; Peabody's Improbable History, the historic adventures of a dog and his boy.

So I ease toward the surgery date. Plans are being made, logistics being logisted, visitors and loved ones to be accommodated, and I can already see my life narrowing in those things I now have to refuse or reconsider. Really, it's been a great day, but the truth of what comes next hangs over me like a 900 pound parakeet. The Fear is gone, but man, are there a lot of pieces.

And this is the calm before the storm.

(Thanks also to jaborwhalky for the icon.)

the_child and I visited the Portland Japanese Garden today in the pouring rain with jeffvandermeer. ( She and I both took a few photos )

As usual, more at the Flickr set.

The similarities, sadly, are uncanny:

In my defense, I'm more likely to go to Jon Hassel (kind of a jazz-electronica combo) for inspiration than any long-haired 70s guys.

Spotted today - an honest-to-got Sinclair station. (apologies to Melinda, who's heard this story a million times) When I was a kid, my dad did a lot of traveling, and one of the things he brought back for me from his work travels were these dinosaur-themed booklets that Sinclair put out. Until Melinda and I started dating, I'd never seen a real Sinclair station, and thought they'd gone as extinct as their bronto-logo. Here, I've spotted three within a mile of the hotel - and there's a sign at the nearby state park warning people not to pick up fossils. Dinosaur themed bliss!

Hung out with today - The inimitable Jeff Tidball and the mighty Chris Simms, both of whom are a real pleasure to hang out with. Somehow Mr. Tidball and I had never crossed paths before, but it's nice to rectify the error. Chris and I wandered the local state park for a while before the con started, then followed it up with an amble through the main downtown strip (and a stop in the local bookstore, where I picked up a book of South Dakota ghost stories. Yes, I am an addict. No, I make no apologies.)

We kicked off the con with a three-headed panel/presentation smorgasbord, with some good Q&A afterwards. I think it went well, but I never have any sense of how my presentations go. On the other hand, nobody's said "Why did we bring this guy out here," so hopefully my spiel on game writing and narrative design, why they need to work together, and using all elements of game presentation in conjunction with narrative design to create a complete player experience made some sense to somebody.

After dinner, Jeff headed off to do some writing. Chris and I wandered back to the con for an experiment in impromptu game design (and a lengthy explanation to one gent that we are game designer types because we like designing games, in the same way that zombies like braaaains). So far, so good, though I'm not sure anyone will look at the DSU campus map the same way again.

And if they do, that's kind of frightening.

the_child and I are leaving shortly to spend the middle of the day with jeffvandermeer. I think the Japanese Garden may be in the offing, which would be splendid. After his reading tonight, I have a dinner with ginastonge. All in all, a grand day out in some glorious weather.

The rest of you get out, too.

Photographed by me near Taos Ski Valley, NM. © 2006, 2009 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

A reader reacts to Escapement [ Powell's | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Borders ]

RULES OF SEDUCTION: writing the opposite sex — Justine Musk on character.

English, Jack — A blog for you really high end grammar geeks.

Articulated Railroad Car: 1935 — Another quite cool patent drawing.

The Fairey Rotodyne — This looks to me like some crazed Soviet project. Would you fly in it?

APOD with an image of Stickney Crater on Phobos

The Gravitational Lens and Communications — Some serious Big Idea science from Centauri Dreams.

?otD: What age is this the dawning of, anyway?

---

11/7/2009
Body movement: 2 hour, 15 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 5.5
This morning's weigh-in: 231.2
Currently reading: The Jade Man's Skin by Daniel Fox