http://www.thealexandrian.net Politics, creations, and philosophy. With the transition to a new website architecture, this RSS feed is dead. Please click the link to subscribe to the Alexandrian's new feed. http://thealexandrian.net/feed The Alexandrian, as it currently exists, is a glorious mess of amateur HTML and half-assed javascript. It's difficult to maintain and impossible to renovate. Plus, I can't actually schedule posts, which means that the site takes a vacation whenever I do and stands unnecessarily vacant on frequent occasions. Oddly, what's really prompting this post is the commenting system, which was originally built around HaloScan and has been completely borked ever since HaloScan got bought out (and then bought out again). Honestly, I'm not really clear on how it's still working at all. In any case, starting today the Alexandrian will be updating to a Wordpress installation. Here's what you need to know: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1163/site-news/this-is-not-really-the-end I'm re-posting a tale from the Caverns of Thracia which I've shared previously here on the site because it provides the context for my favorite character sheet of all time. (This was originally posted as part of ODnD in the Caverns of Thracia. You can just scroll down to the end for the new bit.) What's your favorite character sheet? Post it to your blog, link back to here, and throw a link up in my comments. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01c.html#20110124 The first four passes through this section of the dungeon had completely cleared out the anubian outposts on Level 1 and heavily decimated their forces on Level 2. I made the decision to allow this section of the dungeon to be temporarily cleared and dropped the chance of random encounters to one check per three turns... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01c.html#20110120 Last week I talked about the importance of a megadungeon in creating an open game table. Today I want to talk a little bit about how that works in practice. I'm going to be using my own experiences running the Caverns of Thracia as an example. Players currently playing in my campaign may wish to avoid reading this, but there's nothing here which I feel strongly about "forbidding" you from looking at... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01c.html#20110119 I wasn't planning on doing this, but almost immediately after writing about my first set of rulebook woes with Castle Ravenloft I ended up playing the solo scenario "Adventure: Impossible" and running headlong into two particularly egregious problems... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01c.html#20110117 When I first launched my Caverns of Thracia campaign I was actually planning for nothing more than an experimental one-shot using the original 1974 rules for Dungeons and Dragons. The framing device I chose was relatively straight-forward: The Caverns of Thracia are located beneath a cluster of surface ruins in the midst of a vine-encrusted jungle, so I simply based the PCs out of a small logging village near the edge of the jungle. I arbitrarily decided that the ruins would be located 1d6+2 days of travel into the dungeon and used a 1d8 roll to randomly determine the compass direction from which they would approach the ruins.... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01b.html#20110115 A couple days ago I posted my first thoughts on the Castle Ravenloft boardgame. One of the things I mentioned was the horrific quality of the rulebook. Today I want to expound upon that a little bit. But first, let me mention how the session we played last night went... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01b.html#20110114 When I first started playing roleplaying games, way back in elementary school, I used to play RPGs all the time. As I got older, of course, gaming became a bit scarcer. There were times when I didn't have anyone to play with at all. But even when I did, it became tougher to coordinate schedules; tougher to find the free time even in my own schedule... (read more) http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01b.html#20110113 As I mentioned a couple days ago, the fun I've been having with the Castle Ravenloft board game has recently inspired me to read (or re-read) I6 Ravenloft and Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. This has put me in the rather interesting position of comparing all three. And this has, in turn, forced me to ask a simple question: Are we really this stupid? Let me expand on that a little bit... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01b.html#20110110 As a roleplaying game, 4th Edition makes a great boardgame. ...Zing! But in all seriousness, I've been looking forward to getting my grubby paws on a copy of the new Castle Ravenloft game for awhile now... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01.html#20110107 I had a few idle moments today and decided to have some fun. (click-thru for video) http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01.html#20110104 NASA has recently announced the discovery of a bacteria in Mono Lake by Dr. Felise Wolfe-Simon which uses arsenic instead of phosphorous for its phosphorylation. This may not sound all that impressive at first glance, but what Wolfe-Simon has discovered is a little critter which uses a substance inherently poisonous to every other form of life on the planet as one of its most elementary building blocks. It's literally an entirely alternate path by which life could potentially evolve (and even thrive) in environments which would be completely hostile to (most) terrestial life. (I'm radically summarizing here. For a better summary, follow the link.) As a scientific discovery, this is interesting in its own right. And its potential application in science fiction (from alien lifeforms to the utterly transhumanic) is pretty obvious. But reading about this discovery also tickled my brain into thinking about the deeper substrates of fantasy. Here's a quick quote from the link... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01.html#20110103 I've recently been reading my way through I6 Ravenloft and Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Although I haven't finished the latter, I am so far impressed with the way in which it remains faithful to the original module while expanding the material in interesting ways. (It even includes functional notes for stripping out the extra material in order to return the module to something very close to its original form if a shorter adventure is desired.) I am less impressed with the textual bloat which has become endemic in most modern adventure modules. Much of this text seems to be included in the name of being useful (reminding the DM of basic rules like how trip attacks are adjudicated), but it has the practical effect of making it more difficult to rapidly gloss the truly necessary information at the game table. But I digress. What really inspired this little post is the Weird Happenings table on page 15 of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. It's a nice little table, the first entry of which reads... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01.html#20110102 How the hell did it get here so fast? December was a somewhat frustrating month for me creatively. My creative vision became completely focused on a 10-minute transhumanist science fiction play written in verse. Although I spent quite a bit of time researching it, toying with it, and eventually laying out the largest chunks of it, the play just refused to gel. And so, after having it consume all of my creative thoughts and energies for the better part of a month, I'm left with nothing to actually show for it. Ah, well. That happens upon occasion. And the month wasn't completely destitute.... (read more) http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2011-01.html#20110101 In the past 10 years or so the information-deluge of the Internet coupled with global access to catalogs of used books and small press collections have started to return many of these Lost Authors to the light. Among them is Clark Ashton Smith... http://WWW.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-11.html#20101108 Have you guys seen the BATMAN AND ROBIN 16? The ending really knocks your socks off... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-11.html#20101105 This is somewhat belated, but John and Abigail, the play I wrote starring John and Abigail Adams, is now available for the Kindle. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-11.html#20101104 One of my long-standing concerns with the D20 system was the skewed probabilities of opposed group checks. For example, consider the example of a PC making a Move Silently check opposed by an NPC's Listen check where both characters have the same skill modifier. In this scenario, a single PC attempting to sneak past a single NPC has a 50% chance of succeeding. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-11.html#20101103 The Elfish Gene is the story of a sad, pathetic, socially maladjusted boy who suffered from borderline delusions in an effort to escape his sad, pathetic existence. He fell in with a group of assholes and chose to continue hanging out with that group of assholes even when it meant becoming an asshole himself and pissing over the people who were actually his friends. In the process, he grew up to be a sad, pathetic, socially maladjusted adult. Between those two points on his lifeline, he played Dungeons and Dragons. Ergo, it's only natural for him to conclude that DnD retroactively caused him to be a sad, pathetic, and socially maladjusted person. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-11.html#20101102 I think I jinxed myself with my post about DRM on September 30th. In my comments, I mentioned how absolutely reliable my Windows 2000 machine had been. It naturally committed suicide a few days later by burning out a graphics card. I replaced the graphics card and 9 days later the computer crashed again. After many tribulations, I finally concluded that it must be "some damn thing on the motherboard". http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-11.html#20101101 Not that long ago I wrote about the Long Con of DRM. As a follow-up to those thoughts, I talked about the fact that Valve's Steam is often seen as an exception to the general vileness of DRM systems, largely because it (a) added value through instant delivery and by allowing you to access your Steam account from any computer in the world and (b) Steam is generally not as intrusive as it might be. Valve apparently decided I hadn't made my point about how goddamn awful DRM is strongly enough, so they decided to give me some compelling supportive evidence... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-09.html#20100930 Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock only survives in a well-thumbed manuscript. Literally well-thumbed: The edges of its pages, worn thin by apparently decades of use as a playhouse prompt script, are disintegrating. But that's not all: The manuscript's cover sheet has been lost, taking with it the original name of the play and the author's name. The last few pages are also missing, taking with them the end of the play. So I wrote a new one... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-09.html#20100929 I don't have much interest in 4th Edition (see DnD is Dead, Long Live 4th Edition), but when I heard about the new Starter Set I was hopeful that WotC was finally doing something that's about 20 years overdue... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-09.html#20100928 Things have been quiet around here lately. Partly because September has been a hell of a month for me (although I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now), and partly because there was an abortive effort behind the scenes to update the site to a Wordpress installation (which will probably happen at some point, but didn't work out this time). If you're starved for Alexandrian verbiage, you might be interested to know that I've been posting Shakespeare-related essays at the American Shakespeare Repertory. And we should also start seeing some fresh material around here in the next couple of days. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-09.html#20100922 COMBO PLATTER: Elevators that lead to underground rivers. Ladders that take you through imperceptible teleportation effects. Stairs that end in a sloping passage. Such combinations of multiple level connector types can be as complicated as you'd like: For example, an elevator shaft that has been blocked by the adamantine webs of a lavarach. This requires the PCs to climb down the shaft (like a chute), clear the webs (like a collapsed tunnel), and then reactivate the elevator mechanism (allowing it to be used as such in the future). http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-08.html#20100827 The Playstation Move and the Kinect will both fail. This isn't because they aren't worthy technology: The Kinect is potentially revolutionary and slagging the Move because it's dupiing the Wii's controller is like slagging the Sega Genesis because it duped the NES controller. It's obviously true. It's also irrelevant. But they will fail. Because add-on controllers for video games will always fail. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-08.html#20100819 Many of the Jaquays Techniques deal with elaborating, enumerating, or complicating the transitions between levels. So let's take a moment to consider the many different ways in which levels can be connected to each other. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-08.html#20100818 The Minnesota Fringe Festival is wrapping up this week. We'll be resuming more normal operations around these here parts next week, but I wanted to share with you my reviews for the three best shows I've seen at the Festival this year. All of them have performances remaining this weekend, and I heartily encourage you to seek them out if you can: Ballad of the Pale Fisherman, See You Next Tuesday, and Underneath the Lintel. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-08.html#20100813 The Minnesota Fringe Festival started last night and will be running through August 15th. I have an UltraPass this year, which means that over the 10 days of the festival I'll be seeing 40+ shows. So things are going to slow down a bit here at the Alexandrian for the duration. On the other hand, I'm planning to be an active Fringe reviewer. You'll be able to check out my reviews on the Fringe Festival website, and I may play around with reposting some of them here as well. Here are a few samples. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-08.html#20100806 An Oxford comma (or serial comma) refers to a comma placed before a conjunction (such as or, and, or but) in a list of three or more items. (This entry gets arguably more interesting if you click thru. Arguably.) http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-08.html#20100803 We started with a linear dungeon... But after Jaquaying the Keep, the result is this. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-08.html#20100802 This is the complete map of the Keep of the Shadowfell, taken from the adventure of the same name. (The red arrow indicates the dungeon's entrance. The black arrow indicates the connection between Level 1 and Level 2 of the dungeon.) At first glance, this dungeon may appear quite complex and interesting: There are lots of twisting corridors, and the PCs appear to be given an immediate and meaningful choice of three separate corridors upon entering the dungeon. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07c.html#20100730 You'll frequently hear authors and IP companies bitching and moaning about the fact that they don't see a penny when their copyrighted material is sold on the used market. Even otherwise fairly intelligent folks like Isaac Asimov have irrationally believed that people buying used paperbacks were sticking daggers in their backs. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07c.html#20100729 There is a temptation to think of the complexity arising from the Jaquays Techniques as being inherently chaotic -- a "funhouse dungeon" that doesn't make any logical sense. But while that certainly can be true, the reality is that these techniques actually result in more realistic designs. For example, consider the layout of my house. Ignoring windows (which effectively turn every room in the house into a potential point of entry), the Melan diagram looks like this... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07c.html#20100728 Let's start by taking a look at some of the basic techniques employed by Jaquays. Some of these techniques are designed to offer complex geographic relationships (out of which meaningful choices can naturally arise). Others are designed to confuse the mapping of the complex (or, even in a game dynamic without player mapping, to confound their general understanding of the complex). The point is not (necessarily) to create a maze-like environment, but rather to create an environment of sufficient complexity that the "hand of the author" and the underlying structure of the dungeon environment becomes obfuscated. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07c.html#20100726 Since we're going to be discussing the Caverns of Thracia extensively as part of the Jaquaying the Dungeon essays, I finally motivated myself to collect the campaign journal / exploration of ODnD that I wrote in early 2009 so that they could all be accessed through one handy link. Check it out. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07c.html#20100724 I believe that dungeons should always be heavily jaquayed. ... Okay, it's true. I'm just making words up now. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07c.html#20100723 I'm fairly certain that All-Star Superman is far too awesome to exist within the constraints of the universe as we know it. Which is why it was necessary for the unspeakably dreadful All-Star "Goddamn" Batman to exist in order to balance the cosmic scales. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07c.html#20100722 Pushing Ice is basically Alastair Reynolds' attempt to take the sequels to Rendezvous with Rama, scratch off the serial numbers, and rewrite them so that they don't suck as much. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07c.html#20100719 Back in 2009 I posted a series of essays on my work translating The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. This essay was written, but apparently I forgot to actually post it to the website. Whoops. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07b.html#20100716 Over the past few days quite a few people have sent me e-mails asking about Legends and Labyrinths, and it looks like my post from earlier today about working on a different project has prompted a fresh series of questions. I talked about this a little bit in the comments a few days ago, but I've decided to front page it for people to know what's going on. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07b.html#20100714b I'm looking for an experienced web designer who would be interested in designing a subscription-based website with a roleplaying focus. For the moment I'm going to be deliberately vague regarding the details of the project, but to give some indication of the scope... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07b.html#20100714 I was never really able to take the ENnie Awards seriously after they nominated the truly god-awful Pit of Loch-Durnan as Best Adventure in 2001: This early D20 product featured truly gorgeous cover art, but everything else about it -- the interior art, the layout, the cartography, the NPCs, the "plot" -- was atrocious. Imagine the opinion you'd have of a new film award that nominated Gigli for Best Picture in its first year of existence and you'd have a pretty accurate gauge for my opinion of the ENnies. Recently, however, I've found myself thinking that the ENnies have probably refurbished their reputation in my eyes. It took the better part of a decade, but the stink had definitely worn off. (You can see where this is going, right?) http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07b.html#20100713 I usually don't get heavy into personal biography around here, but I got married on Saturday. On the Wednesday before that, my brother and best man ran a session of ODnD for my small bachelor party. By means of celebrating my wedding, here are some highlights... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07b.html#20100712 Last year I began a series of posts regarding my reactions to the original 1974 edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Recently a post on Delta's DnD Hotspot tweaked me to comment on one of the issues I didn't discuss in the original series: The timekeeping and movement rules. Here's the most pertinent passage... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07b.html#20100709 I've been reading Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? This is a rather excellent piece of work by James Shapiro which explores the totality of the "authorship question" (the conspiracy theory which claims that Shaksepeare didn't write Shakespeare) from a refreshing angle: Instead of merely exploring the idea itself, Shapiro explores the history of that idea -- the ways in which literary criticism, Shakespeare studies, and the "anti-Stratfordians" have evolved over the past four centuries. The result is a compelling and intriguing narrative in which... http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07.html#20100707 Somebody's trying to rip you off and they've put my name on the title page. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07.html#20100705 Alice in Wonderland, Shrek Forever After, How to Train Your Dragon, and Toy Story 3. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07.html#20100703 Successful superhero film franchises have tended to follow the same pattern since Superman 2: The first movie is a tightly-focused origin story with a thematically cohesive script, strong arcs of character development, and a satisfying totality. Then the second movie, bred out of the success and excitement of the first film, throws it all away by trying to cram everything cool about the hero into a single film -- you end up with a smorgasboard of villains, a half dozen half-finished character arcs, and a completely unfocused grab-bag of special effects. http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07.html#20100701b Today's lycanthropic template actually comes about because my first idea for sample werewolves could be summed up in two words: "Giant Werewolves". http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07.html#20100701