News Archives: March 2005

Thursday, March 31, 2005

New Doctor Who

Barely has the first episode of the new Doctor Who series been broadcast, than lead actor Christopher Eccleston has announced he's leaving. Sheesh. Whatever happened to loyalty and gratitude.

By the way, the first episode was a 3 out of 5, slightly rushed, bit fan-boyish good start. Hopefully both the scripts and Eccleston will settle down over the next few episodes - looks like he'll need to get a move on... I was pleasantly surprised by Billie Piper. Apparently Russell Davies does know what he's doing.

Posted by graham @ 08:57 am

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Questions From Kai

I know, not THE most creative of questions.

Questions are only as creative as the answers they get. I think these were fine...

1) favorite song, movie and album? Why?

The hard one first, eh? Honestly, I don't know. I don't have such things. For movies I'm afraid I've just never been that interested. I prefer television to movies, and books to either, purely because of the extra scope for story-telling each tells. So any favourite movie would be a random name picked from a bunch of films I don't really care that much about. Sorry.

For music, the problem is the exact opposite. I adore music, so narrowing things down to one answer is impossible. Next week the answer will almost certainly be Deadwing by Porcupine Tree. I haven't heard it yet (it comes out on Monday) but they've never let me down yet. (By the way, anyone wanting to join me at the Garage for their gig a week on Friday should be able to get tickets pretty easily. Easily one of the top five imaginative rock bands on the planet today.) In general, the answer changes daily, depending on mood and what I've just listened to. Normally, bands which are a bit tuneful, a bit experimental, and a bit different are favoured. That covers lots of jazz and rock artists (at the Peter Gabriel, Marillion, Radiohead end of rock) but also more normal stuff like KT Tunstall or Savage Garden.

As for single songs - you can't make me choose just one song from the hundreds nay thousands I like! Eek! Oh, alright, last week I went through a phase of playing Signify just to hear Dark Matter (Porcupine Tree again). I don't really know why - something in the riff, probably.

2)Do you believe in predestination, free will, or something in between? Why?

Predestination has been dealt a huge blow by chaos theory and quantum mechanics. Chaos theory starts from the fact that any system can only be modelled accurately by a system that is (a) more complex and (b) aware of the initial state of every variable in the system. (And even then, this is only true of a closed system...) Or put another way, for sufficiently complex system, the most exact prediction is little better than a wild guess. Then Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that we can't know the exact value of most variables that we'd need to know to understand the human brain.

All of which means that we can't, even in theory, predict future human behaviour exactly. Hormones, chemicals, genetics, external stimuli might give a strong hint (if only on the level where we understand "personality") but there is always room for people to surprise and even shock us. On a very practical level, if it looks like free will why not call it free will and have done?

And, yes, this does all tell you a lot about my religious beliefs...

3)Why genetic algorithms, and what are they?

Okay, I'm going to be very vague here, but partly because the answer is vague. A genetic algorithm is, roughly, an algorithm for solving problems using techniques inspired by genetics. The simplest variants encode a possible solution as a string of symbols (so if we know the solution is a whole number, the encoding might be a string of 1s and 0s, read as a binary number) and have some way of saying this solution is "better" than some other solution (so if we want the biggest number, a solution is "better" if it encodes a bigger number). You randomly generate a number of potential solutions (called the population) then generate new solutions by randomly selecting pairs of solutions (biased towards "better" solutions), randomly combining material from each parent to create a new child solution (say, the first X symbols from one string, all other symbols from the second string - this is called crossover) and finally possibly randomly changing a small number of symbols in the resulting child string (called mutation). If the child gets the best bits from both parents, it will be "better" or "fitter" and therefore both a better solution and more likely to pass on its good bits to the next generation. There's lots of variants (how you do crossover, how you mutate, how you choose parents, how you encode, population sizes, etc.) including some that don't fit the simple scheme (solutions are graphs or trees or program code).

Why? We're talking computers having sex here - do you need a reason? Oh, alright. Genetic algorithms are good for exploring problems that are easy to define but hard to solve. They have the advantage that at any point you have a valid solution, albeit probably a sub-optimal one, so they work well when you don't know how long you have to find a solution. But they are difficult to write well, and they very, very rarely find optimal solutions.

4) Where do you see the future of computer sciences being?

Computing science is a strange beastie, split into two inter-related disciplines. The real science lies in understanding functions, computation, and how they interact on the level of maths and physics. There will be some real advances here, involving dna computers, non-binary computers, and quantum everything. There may also be some interesting advances in the pure maths end - primarily around the area of P=NP, and especially if anyone ever manages to prove the unexpected result of "yes, P does equal NP". (I'm not going to explain in any detail, but essentially if P=NP that means that some currently very difficult problems must actually have relatively easy solutions, and we probably will know what they are.)

Otherwise, computing science is really about engineering. That's needs lots of work. At the moment computers are engineered in much the same way that novels aren't. If we're ever going to get the cost and time over-runs on every big project under control, we need new paradigms, possibly involving automated code-generation, massively parallel systems based on heavily standardised hardware, and programming languages, code libraries and operating systems that are stable over decades if not centuries.

You did ask...

5) What's the WORST system you've ever played in? Why?

World of Darkness. It may just be the players I've encountered, but far too many of those playing Vampire or whatever turn into book-quoting, stereotype-playing, dull, boring, munchkins. Even those who are perfectly reasonable when playing other games. People saying "you can't do that 'cos it says in some book that you've never read that's out of print that..." just annoys me, so I don't do World of Darkness anymore.

Phew!

Posted by graham @ 07:18 pm

Catching Up

The boiler engineer has just left. We've been without central heating and hot water since Thursday - the guy came out on Friday, but the holiday weekend meant no parts till today. After an hour and a half of fiddling, we have a working boiler again! I'm going to finish this post and then enjoy the luxury of a really hot, deep bath.

Some other stuff that caught my eye recently :

Steve Jackson Games' brush with US law enforcement has been deemed worthy of Trivial Pursuit.

Stolen from a few friends, then editted for politeness :

If you read this, even if i don't speak to you often, please post a memory of me. It can be anything you want, it can be good or bad, just so long as it happened.

Also doing the rounds again is the five question interview I mentioned before. If anyone wants to ask questions, leave them in the comments or e-mail me. In the meantime, I'm going to pick on the odd question others have been asked, just 'cos I fancy answering them...

Who would be in your ideal roleplaying group? (Dave asked Ben)

People I do not know! For me, an ideal role-playing group would be one where everyone (GM and players) was sparking off everyone else, moving the plot into interesting, exciting, unexpected, possibly amusing, new territories. I've occasionally seen games that get close, but they always collapse back into either too much reliance on rules, or the GM producing plot cos no one else is being interesting (or the GM is ego tripping). Perhaps the ideal is impossible...

B5 or SG-1 which do you think is best ? (Asked of Dave by someone I know not)

I'm picking on this 'cos the answer seems so bleeding obvious to me. Stargate was a decent film, but the TV series has added practically nothing, especially given the length of time its run. Like modern Star Trek, there's no character development, no depth, and plot development consists almost entirely of "new macguffin" or "new aliens with no depth". I've only seen about half of the episodes to date, and never felt I've missed anything. Contrast that with Babylon 5's characters that develop, change and surprise, and genuine story arcs where missing a few episodes left you struggling to catch up. B5 even managed an alien race that felt like something more than "humans with bumpy heads and limited emotional range".

In Stargate's defense, it is considerably more watchable than Star Trek...

What's your favorite RPG and why? (Kai asked Dave)

I have no favourite RPG, mainly cos I have no interest in rules. Rules have their uses - a certain randomness provides interest to games, numbers provide a framework for everyone to imagine their own abilities within the game. But any rule that takes more than a few seconds to apply is too complex, and getting in the way of the story. So systems have little appeal for me - if they're complex, I'll ignore the rules until they become simple, which leaves little room for simple ones to shine.

I do, however, favour settings, pretty much regardless of rules. Glorantha would be the obvious one (though I care little whether the rules used are Runequest, Heroquest, or rock-paper-scissors) but also Tekumel, Talislanta, and Sky Realms of Jorune. From which you can safely assume that mythic, weird, humourous settings appeal to me, preferably with enough room for interpretation, ambiguity, and surprises. I've got a certain nostalgia for both Middle Earth and the Warhammer world as portrayed in the old WFRP books - though I'm not convinced I'd find either nearly so interesting if I'd first encountered them now rather than as a kid.

The anti-thesis of all this is the sort of game which comes with books detailing "people of this type act and think like this". All those White Wolf clan books for example. I mean, I can see that you could (and should) play those games treating those as guidelines and stereotypes, but no one ever seems to, leading to dull, cliched characters populating dull, cliched games.

Posted by graham @ 02:15 pm

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

LJ Name Change

I've long been puzzled by the habit some people have of referring to others on their blogs by live journal username rather than by real name. This strikes me as odd - no one ever calls me "Buserian", it's just a name that I use because you have to sign up as something online, and "Graham" is normally taken. The habit also has the slight problem of making blogs unreadable for those not "in the know". If you have coffee with Susan I'm far more likely to know who you mean and be interested than if you have coffee with sexycyberwitch37. (Of course, perhaps the faux-anonymity and exclusivity is the point. I dunno. And if you *are* sexycyberwitch37, great username, please say hi!)

Anyway, it turns out that "grahamrobinson" is available as a username on live journal. So I've signed it up, and will be switching over the mirror to that username as soon as I find the time. Anyone with content locked to friends that they might want me to read should add the new name to their friends list and any filters - I don't expect I'll be using the buserian account much from now on.

Posted by graham @ 02:57 pm

Friday, March 25, 2005

More Issaries Fan Policy

The debate over the Issaries Fan Policy has so far been singularly unhelpful. I'll not go through the objections to the policy, but the arguments put forward by those who support it are, um, interesting :

"People should give Issaries the benefit of the doubt"

Over a legal document? Really?

"People should wait to see if there are any problems before complaining."

Might be fine for those who don't need to adopt the license. Unfortunately, I'm already being asked by Issaries to adopt the license for some of my work. I need to decide now whether to do so. Once I've done so, it will be too late to find clauses that cause me problems.

"The policy will stop litigation [that Issaries can't afford]"

Worryingly variants on this have come both from someone claiming to be a lawyer and someone at least semi-official. No legal document has any meaning unless backed by the courts. Stating publicly that Issaries can't afford litigation is tantamount to saying that they will not enforce the license. That seems extremely stupid, and I hope (and expect) is wrong.

"Issaries needs to protect its IP"

Yep, fine, true. No one has claimed otherwise. Comments like this really annoy me. Effectively it's saying "you aren't allowed to have an issue with one sentence in one section because something a little like the whole twelve page document is necessary". A childish straw man argument which pretty much shows those making it have no answer to your actual complaint.

Posted by graham @ 09:23 am

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Issaries Fan Policy

Issaries finally published their Gloranthan fan publication policy a couple of days back, and it has led to a certain amount of debate, and bad feeling. This evening I've had the first smatterings of a flamewar, which I have hopefully doused - I'll find out in the morning, and bang heads together if need be.

Much of the policy is pretty innocuous. I have some problems - the "concept use" statement has no place in any contract, for instance. I also suspect the entire exercise is pointless. I've spotted enough stupid wordings that I suspect an experienced lawyer will be able to drive a truck through this. Some people have bigger worries, and if half the stories of what Issaries have been saying and the reasons for some of these clauses are true, they have reasons. Mainly, I'm waiting to see how this plays out in practice. Would be interested to know what others think, though.

Posted by graham @ 09:22 pm

Placebo

I was intrigued by this article on the New Scientist site. (Link stolen from Neil Gaiman.) The article lists thirteen current mysteries in science, most of which I'd already come across. The new one is the placebo effect. Everyone knows the basics of this - if you give someone morphine for pain relief, then replace it with saline, they still benefit as if they were receiving morphine. The normal explanation for this is something psychological. The interesting bit here is that if you add a drug that blocks morphine's effects to the placebo, the person does not experience pain relief - even though they don't know its there. There's something more complex going on here, and I'll look forward to seeing theories as to what.

Posted by graham @ 11:41 am

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Bored

I'm now recovered enough to feel bored, but not enough to manage to do any work that takes more than ten minutes or so. When I sit around doing nothing, I feel alright, but doing anything makes me tired and breathless. Very frustrating. As a result I'm poking various online discussions, and arranging to spread my evil germs around a few friends this evening. Hopefully I'll be back up to speed in a couple of days.

In news from the bird table, the last two days have seen flocks of green finches descend on the garden. I counted eight yesterday, and Claire saw five at once this morning. Claire has also today spotted our first ladybird of the year, and possibly our first bumblebee. Spring is here, which pretty much guarantees rain and frosts by the middle of next week.

Posted by graham @ 06:18 pm

Friday, March 18, 2005

Sacred Texts

Claire has started a discussion on tricksters in role-playing and mythology. This has sent me scurrying to the Sacred Texts Archive. I've no idea if there's anyone reading this who hasn't found this stunning resource, but anyone with any interest in mythology should be using and supporting the site.

Posted by graham @ 08:36 pm

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Musical Memories

Claire's blog today includes the comment "choose at least 6 tracks or albums listen to them and tell us what they make you think about or feel when you hear them." So, more or less at random, here's six from my collection :

The Kid From Kensington, the Dogs D'Amour. In the late eighties, the Venue (rock night-club in Glasgow) decided to hold an under-18s night. A group of us would head up every weekend. Many of us were into the Dogs D'Amour, but the DJ would only play one of their songs, The Kid from Kensington. He claimed it was because no one would dance to any of the others - I reckon it was the only one he liked. As a result, Kid became a regular, at least for the five or six weeks until the Venue decided they weren't making enough cash, and the under-18s night disappeared without warning. Since we'd turned up, we went to the pub, and then to the over-18s version anyway.

Sonic Temple, the Cult. This album came out while I was reading many Lovecraft stories for the first time. To this day, some of the riffs make me think of Deep Ones.

Take Five, Dave Brubeck. Along with its cousin Unsquare Dance. In order to avoid compulsary torture (aka P.E.) I signed up for a crash music O level in my fifth year. There were five of us in the class, and not nearly enough time to teach us the syllabus, so the teacher (Dave Bringham, probably the coolest teacher I had) talked to us about stuff that was interesting and vaguely relevant. Dave Brubeck stands out in my memory, but he also introduced me to the works of Dave Allen. Other standout memories include Jason, Jonny, and me playing Run to the Hills by Iron Maiden on recorders, discussions on whether the score for Eric Clapton's Layla needed the words "Guitar Electrico Obligato" at the start, and listening to early Whitesnake.

The Everley Brothers. Not any particular song here, just their entire work. Mum was always a fan, and I grew up with the Evs complete works playing semi-constantly. Their early work still defines good pop music for me, and albums like "Songs our Daddy Taught Us" and "Stories He Could Tell" are minor country masterpieces that show the genre can be so much better than Dolly Parton and Achy Breaky Heart. See also Kenny Rogers.

Floodlands, the Sisters of Mercy. Goth nowadays seems to mean wearing a bit of black lipstick or lace. Uhuh. True goth was defined by Andrew Eldritch and Patricia Morrison, and This Corrison remains the genre's finest five minutes.

The Perceptions of Johnny Punter, Fish. Discovering Marillion was a dividing point for me. Either my parents or friends' parents were willing to attend Status Quo and Ultravox concerts with me, but heading up to Christmas 1987, Marillion at the Edinburgh Playhouse was too much, and Mum waited in the car till I reappeared. It was the point at which I really started to discover my own musical identity. Shortly afterwards, lead singer Fish left the band, who have carried on to bigger and better things, none more so than last years stunning Marbles collection. Fish, on the other hand, produced two decent albums, a collection of covers, and one album that was decidedly dodgy. In the process he went through three record labels. He was starting to look a little washed up. On my birthday in 1997 I was in Glasgow with Claire, at the time a relatively new girlfriend, and wandered into one of the record shops on Great Western Road. They had a new CD by Fish that I hadn't even heard about, Sunsets on Empire. So, Claire bought it for me as a present. We spent the rest of the night in the Queen Margaret Union, in my case getting riotously drunk. The next day, I played the disk for the first time. It opens with this track, a deceptively simple, rolling riff, confrontational lyrics, and production values that Fish has never matched before nor since. There are many great tracks on the album, but the opener represented the first time I'd been so excited by a Fish album since he left Marillion. Much of that was to do with this guy, Steven Wilson, who produced the whole album, as well as co-writing and playing guitar on most tracks. I'd never heard of him before, but soon found out that he had his own band, Porcupine Tree, and picked up their live album, Coma Divine. Since then I've enjoyed a voyage of discovery alongside Mr Wilson, discovering with delight his smaller projects - Bass Communion, IEM, Blackfield - and a host of other artists he's worked with or been inspired by. Much of my current interest in music can be traced back to this one track.

Posted by graham @ 07:54 pm

Birthday Plans

Coming up worryingly fast is my 30th birthday (*). I've no idea what I'm doing this year, but it will happen on 7th May. (Assuming that's the Saturday - if I've got the number wrong, I mean the Saturday...) Most likely this will involve a party at my house, and possibly a bbq. I am open to better ideas. As usual, everyone is invited. Mark your diaries now.

(*) What do you mean you don't count in base 11?

Posted by graham @ 06:41 pm

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

And back from the Doctor

I have a "bad cold". No surprise there. I'm under orders to put my feet up, relax, and sleep as much as possible, but have no interesting pills to take - fair enough, they probably wouldn't do any good. I also have a sick line in case the Uni wants to see it. I also got a bit of a lecture on how the local practice works. Apparently, if you phone up before nine o'clock you will get an appointment the same day. Anyone after that gets put off till next week, unless they're an emergency (i.e. argue hard enough.) The idea of phoning up for an appointment the next day is, apparently, just something weird I've come up with.

Thankfully, on getting home, Robin Laws and his economics of dungeon-bashing made me smile.

Posted by graham @ 05:12 pm

Bloody NHS

Update : NHS 24 passed me back to the surgery, who now want me to go straight down and see someone today. Why they couldn't do that in the first place, I've no idea. Seriously upset.

Posted by graham @ 04:13 pm

Bloody Viruses

I've been slowly coming down with a cold for a few days now. Last night's game went pretty badly - I was having trouble concentrating, and my NPCs were frankly dull. Today, I feel worse. Bad enough that I've taken the unusual (for me) step of trying to get a doctor's appointment. Note the "trying". Apparently they have no appointments till next Tuesday. Apparently this is my fault for not phoning earlier. Apparently someone might cancel, so if I can haul myself out of my sick bed long enough to phone up every half hour I might get seen before I die of old age. Bitter? Moi?

So, I've tried phoning the other surgery in the town, to be told that it would be "unprofessional" of them to treat me. Eh? Then, I tried phoning the nearest hospital, who suggested phoning NHS 24 (08454242424) who so far seem quite helpful, if a little bizarre. Details have been given, and a nurse should phone me back "soon". Not sure how the nurse will listen to my chest, let alone write me a prescription. I really need to see a doctor, but apparently all I will get is someone to talk to.

Maybe I should just go back to bed.

Posted by graham @ 03:51 pm

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Triple-booked again

I've just had confirmed that I'm now triple-booked for Saturday, 26th March. This fine day sees my sister's birthday celebrations, the latest Conpulsion in Edinburgh, and the first episode of the new Doctor Who. I wonder how Anne will react to me watching the new show during her party?

Posted by graham @ 07:50 am

Monday, March 14, 2005

The Weekend

I was going to write a fairly detailed post about the weekend just finished, but Claire got there first. My weekend was pretty much the same as hers, but I drank on Friday, drove on Saturday, and didn't wear a short skirt at all.

This weekend did prove pretty good for bird-watching. Three pairs of buzzards were spotted (one on Saturday morning, two on Sunday afternoon) along with a couple of kestrels. Returning from the party on Sunday morning, we nearly ran over an owl sat in the middle of the road - thankfully it flew off. The size and colouring led us to identify it as a little owl, quite a rare sighting. In the past we've also seen barn owls, a sparrowhawk, and a peregrine. Birds of prey are obviously doing well in this area.

Alex Ferguson has proposed an alternative system for naming the victory levels in Heroquest. I like this, a lot, and intend to use this in future.

Posted by graham @ 08:00 pm

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Cat Religion

This morning, Claire and I woke up to a powercut. Not a huge problem, really - I had to boil water in a pan rather than the kettle to make tea. What did intrigue me was the cats' reactions. Something was wrong. They knew what was wrong, they just didn't know why. Cisco refused to walk through the middle room, even though it was between him and his food. The middle room has one small window, so normally there's a light permenantly on in there - presumably that absence was bothering Cisco. Cary, on the other hand, was generally upset. When the power came back on around quarter to nine, I was a little surprised at how much background noise we normally live with - central heating, fridge, not to mention all those computer fans. After that the cats were fine. In humans, this sort of fear of the unknown led to the development of religions. I wonder what beliefs cats have?

Posted by graham @ 05:10 pm

Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Comments Re-enabled

I've added some hacks that should prevent most comment spam, so commenting here is re-enabled. I'll leave comments turned on at the livejournal mirror as well, at least for the moment.

The anti-spam stuff might cause some problems - if it affects you, let me know.

Posted by graham @ 01:25 pm

Monday, March 7, 2005

What I think makes a good role-player

I've been avoiding posting my own answer to the survey, in case I bias the results of someone who hasn't yet taken it. (If you haven't taken it, head to http://grahamrobinson.com/survey.html now. Come back here after you've sent me your own answers.) I'm starting to think that if I don't answer soon, I never will. So, here's my order, with copious explanatory notes :

I'll start with the essentials, common to all good role-players :

1. Ensuring Enjoyment for Others. Role-playing is a group hobby, in which everyone participates to have fun (for some definition of "fun"). Nothing screams good role-player to me like someone who goes out of their way to make the game more fun for others, especially at their own (character's) expense.

2. Tell Stories. Equally, role-playing is all about stories - whether the story is "we killed this big dragon" or some complex political drama, complicated by star-crossed lovers. Good role-playing is about telling interesting stories.

3. Creativity. Perhaps this isn't obvious, but it is perfectly possible to role-play without any creativity. There are plenty of people who can raise a laugh by quoting Monty Python, play a character by memorising the Toreador clan book, or suggest a plan that worked well for Captain Kirk that one time. Given a wide enough range of reading, tv watching, etc. such a person may be a hugely entertaining, impressive role-player. But the gamer with genuine wit, imagination, and panache! Ah, there is true greatness.

Next come the optionals. These are areas which may be missing entirely from a great role-player, but which if present often help to impress.

4. Acting. I'm a pretty lousy actor, so I hope this isn't essential...

5. Humour. Apparently there are people who play role-playing games entirely seriously. Cor blimey.

6. Goal Completion. This (and the following problem solving) are important as they allow the plot to move forward and achieve its potential. Not every player needs these abilities, but having them in the group is very, very useful.

7. Problem Solving.

8. Game Mastery. Someone who can use the rules and/or game world to produce unexpected results can be very cool.

9. Props. In freeforms, props and costumes are very important, and this category would move up four or five places. At the tabletop, props are cool, and costumes are weird, bordering on the creepy.

Now we come to two categories which are essential, but only because their complete absence is a sure sign of bad role-playing.

10. Immersion. The game gets going. A real atmosphere is building. Someone makes a dramatic comment. Then one person says "That reminds me of a character I played in another game years ago..." Nothing wrecks a mood faster than gamers who won't stop going off at tangents. Breaking out of immersion is needed - to make dice rolls, for example, and someone needs to get the door for the pizza delivery man. But a good role-player knows when its appropriate, and how to do it with minimal interruption for others.

11. Playing the Character. Ah, yes, the favoured excuse of disruptive players. (For examples, see pretty much any issue of Knights of the Dinner Table.) Having no consistency to characters is a disaster - "You fool! Why did you trust me! I am famed throughout the land as a master thief!" "I thought you were playing a paladin?" Beyond that, it's rarely important. Real people are complex, contradictory and frequently unpredictable. Plot, interest and meta-game often provide reasons for a particular decision. Character consistency barely gets a look in, and, if applied too fervently, can lead to one-dimensional characters.

(It has recently struck me that perhaps some people see this more as exploring a character. If that exploration is external, that means its being done via the character's interaction with other characters and the broader plot, that would seem to me to be telling stories. After all, it is hard to see what sort of stories a role-playing game can tell which aren't character based. On the other hand, if the character exploration is entirely internal, that may be fun for you, but how do I tell? As an analogy, method acting might make Dustin Hoffman a good actor, but it doesn't make him a better actor than Laurence Olivier.)

And finally, the areas that seem pretty irrelevant :

Character Survival. If anyone really cared about survival, why would anyone play Call of Cthulhu?

Rules Mastery. If someone at the table understands the rules, they can explain them as needed. If no one does, make it up as you go along!

Treasure Collection. This is very important for a good game - people like to be rewarded. But it isn't part of good role-playing.

Posted by graham @ 08:30 pm

Tommy Vance RIP

Tommy Vance died of a stroke this weekend. When I was teenager, there were four DJs worth listening to on the radio. John Peel died last year, now this. I've no idea if Alan Freeman, or Clyde's Tom Russell are still around. I hope so. God I feel old.

Peel played the sort of music you thought you ought to listen to, in case you heard something you liked. Vance played rock, the genre that dominated my teenage years, and to a lesser extent still does. He played music with enthusiasm, and in a way that would be impossible in these "DJ presses the button to play the next track chosen by the station manager" days. I once heard him play the (at the time) new single by Fish, Credo. Afterwards Vance said "That was a great song. A really great song. That's such a good song, I think I'll play it again." So he did. A great man, sorely missed.

Posted by graham @ 08:26 am

Friday, March 4, 2005

"...but I was only playing my character!"

The last week has been interesting. Saturday, we started playing the Light Bringer's Quest, which is (a) very long - I expect we'll finish around May - and (b) surprisingly deadly. I mean, I knew it was dangerous, but I wasn't expecting to nearly kill the Orlanth character twice before the second station had been reached. Tuesday, one of my players (encouraged by two others) managed to disturb me somewhat - at least enough that I'm going to find it difficult to sleep in the same house as him. And Thursday's game failed to happen, due to player illness.

We've also been having a little debate on the wattgamers-chat list. Its now evolved into "What makes a good GM?" but the original (and to me more interesting) topic was "What is the essential difference between a GM and a player?" To me this is more intriguing, as it leads to the possibility of role-playing differently - could a game work with every player also doing part of the GM's job? Or a game without a recognisible GM at all? So far we've got (to my mind) the following :

1. The GM is the final arbiter of disputes.
2. The GM is responsible for a consistent framework within which the characters interact. (Including rules calls, playing minor characters, providing info on how things look and sound and smell, etc.)

Anything else you can add would be interesting. I'm also starting to see ways in which even these could be dropped, or passed on to the players.

I haven't yet had enough responses to the recent survey to reach any conclusions. (Anyone who hasn't taken part yet, see http://grahamrobinson.com/survey.html for details.) However, I have been very surprised at how highly most people are placing "Playing your character" as a sign of good role-playing. While I'm not going to claim that playing your character is completely unimportant, it seems to me to be a fairly low priority. Take the following example choices :

1. A new player bellies up to the table. You have the choice of :
(a) doing something to ease the player into the game, or
(b) doing something that makes it difficult for the player to join the game.

2. In a given situation, you have the choice of :
(a) doing something fun, interesting, or entertaining.
(b) doing something dull.

Both of these should be no-brainers. Anyone answering (b) to either question in pretty much any circumstance has probably got the wrong hobby. For another example, look at Babylon 5 :

3. Londo asks G'kar to join him for a drink. Does G'kar :
(a) Make an insulting remark and leave?
(b) Enthusiastically get drunk with his old friend?
(c) Try to murder his old enemy?

Depending on the episode, you can justify any of these. G'kar's character is interesting precisely because what is "in character" for him changes so drastically. (For yet another example, see Garibaldi, whose "out of character" behaviour signals one of the better plot lines from year four.)

Now I'm not arguing that "playing in character" is entirely irrelevant - some consistency is needed for meaningful interactions. What I'm saying is that (a) for a good role-player acting in character is normally a minor consideration, well below being entertaining, ensuring enjoyment for others, and encouraging interesting stories in the priority stakes; and (b) what constitutes "in character" is so complex, that very little behaviour of a well-rounded character can't be justified if the player has some motive to do so.

Otherwise we might as well go back to those early D&D campaigns, and loudly proclaim "What part of 'I'm Chaotic Evil' don't you understand?"

Posted by graham @ 01:36 pm

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