Many writers – such as Dunsany – walk a thin line between these extremes, probably because they had little formal education in either school of thought. Others, such as Golden Dawn members, had extensive opinions, but their opinions often were lost over the course of many distorted re-imaginings.

The most destructive influence IMHO were the crusading atheists such as de Camp (and perhaps, if Joshi can be trusted, Lovecraft). The crusading scoffers were determined that anything paranormal must be buncombe.

The second-most destructive influence were the ignorant sentimentalizers. The modern Romantics who feel alienated by smoky factories often want to imagine fantasy pseudo-medieval worlds with no gunpowder but Renaissance-level technology in other fields. Of course, competent scholars such as Tolkien and Sir Walter Scott can hardly be accused of irresponsible anachronism, but most fantasy writers were not responsible scholars.

Gygax and Arneson started from wacky, no-holds-barred, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink melanges of every possible fantasy. Thus they had powered armor and sci-fi elements, but (to the best of my knowledge) very few examples of gunpowder.

In Gygax’s case, unscholarly sentimentalizing may have contributed to his quirky magic. Gygax may have been consciously imitating the very non-technological poetry of Clark Ashton Smith. But this blog is POSTGygaxian.

There is no reason why a tabletop fantasy campaign (or a computer-based Multi-User Dungeon) could not be set up with a psionic perspective.

Clearly, I need to ground myself in the fundamentals again. I suspect that there are many classic works, such as Andre Norton’s 1963 novel Witch world, that were written with a thoroughly non-Gygaxian approach to paranormal powers. Norton wrote an entire series of stories in that world, and the unusual gimmicks included sci-fi tropes such as technologically-armed alien invaders. However, the “witches” of the title had medieval attitudes without much discernable influence from 20th-century Theosophy. Norton refers to premonitions and telepathy, and to a sense of magical life-force, in ways that seem very typical of 20th century parapsychology to me – i.e., they are neither medieval nor Gygaxian.

The amateurish style is strangely charming.

By contrast, Erol Otus’ cloaker seems to be much more artistically mature, but I’m not sure that it’s from the Silver Princess module:

Finally, all sorceresses seem to throw one leg forward as a stock pose. I think the example magic-user in the Basic rules used exactly the same pose.

I myself was recently quite frustrated by the position of reason.com, which reads in part:

But the claim that “whites” will be a minority in America by 2050 implies an invidious view of the importance of ethnicity and race. “Whites,” by earlier definitions cherished by nativists, are already a minority in this country and have been for many decades. The successful amalgamation of previously scorned “races” is a testament to the ever-broadening inclusive tolerance of the American social project.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/21/white-majority-minority-2050

The conventional White Nationalist standpoint is to say, “Don’t argue about whether Irish people are white, it distracts us from politics.” My standpoint is to say, “I’m not concerned with politics, but I have only a layman’s grasp of genetics. I’m very interested in micro-races, and not just white ones. The issue of micro-races in East Asia is vitally important to the immediate and far future of this planet (in my opinion).”

Another point of contention is as follows: White Nationalists are usually eager to define race as a multi-dimensional gestalt of genes, culture, etc. They want grounds to exclude genetically White people who do unacceptable things. My standpoint is that race ought to be definable on inherited physical characteristics. Right now, haplogroups seem like a convenient criterion to me, but I’m just a layman — a real geneticist would have more information about what physical characteristics are really inherited.

So, I’m all fired up, but I need feedback.

GNXP.com has a contact form, but I’ll have to select a recipient.

There’s a neat little contact form at:

http://majorityrights.com

and I can hope whoever reads that email will see fit to comment here.

So let’s test the effectiveness of linkage:

I’d like to open a discussion with at least three bloggers about this:

http://hereticsway.gluontheferengi.com/

http://mindweaponsinragnarok.wordpress.com/

http://svigor.wordpress.com/

So I’ll go ahead and blog this. Anyone interested in genetic expression and micro-ethnicities is welcome to comment – but as usual, I screen comments, so if you just type something mindless like “;} lulz0r” it won’t appear on the page.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/08/od-psionic-limitations.html

There are many ways to theorize about psionics, most of which draw on fiction rather than the contentious and emotionally volatile field of parapsychology.

I realize that the game is supposed to be about exciting action and weird monsters jumping onto people, but I would like to propose a radically different approach.

Willpower appears to be a depletable resource. That is to say, modern research suggests that the brain has a limited physiological ability to focus attention, just like the muscles have a limited physiological ability to exert mechanical force by contracting muscle fibers. (I should really get on the stick and update this post with links to real scientific papers instead of expecting my readers to trust me.)

Willpower appears to be used by every kind of exertion – doing situps, doing math problems, etc.

Thus there should not just be psionic power points that exist only for psychics and get used only for psychic ability. There should be a representation of willpower, and it should get used for everything that requires effort – climbing mountains, avoiding a pleasant habit like cigarette smoking, levitating while in full lotus, taking the trouble to aim a gun instead of shooting from the hip – everything should use willpower.

And then an intellect devourer should jump onto someone’s face.

How many special powers can get thrown in before the story collapses under their weight?

In particular, for a D&D game, how many powers can the player character exercise before the player feels he’s had too much of a good thing?

Today I found this:

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/27940693/Compilation_of_Power_Point_Recharge_Methods

Which allows characters as low as 4th level to have immediate recharges of power points.

A key mechanic of D&D is that special effects like spells are supposed to be limited. However, the rules are so vague and the opinions of DMs and designers are so incoherent that D&D is not really one set of rules, it’s thousands of sets of mostly-compatible rules – and the incompatible points trigger flamewars.

Consider the Wilder.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/classes/wilder.htm

A fourth level Wilder could use “Bestow Power” to get 6 power points in 10 rounds (one minute). He would have to start with at least three power points. His maximum might be 17 power points (depending on ability bonuses).

Even if the DM allows this, is the class unbalanced? The character can go nova, burning all available power points in a few rounds, and then, as soon as combat is over, the character must spend a minute on regaining full power points. But even with this kind of recharge, the Wilder is considerably less powerful than a simple Arcanist from Iron Heroes. An Arcanist can start at level 1 with psychic darts – very similar to magic missile as an at-will power – and the Arcanist can keep using that power indefinitely without getting exhausted.

Even a fourth-level Wilder would probably only have a 1st-level offensive power. If these Wilders were using a 1d10 short-range attack (Mind Thrust) with only one power point, I suppose they might be pretty weak. However, a Wilder using 14 of 17 points on Mind Thrust would do 14d10 damage, and would still be able to regain power points after a round of “Bestow Power” on himself.

Obviously, if a 4th-level Wilder takes on a 1st-level Blue (a psionic goblin) there is no risk. Even a platoon of 40 1st-level Blues might have trouble taking down a single Wilder with effectively unlimited ammo.

But consider a single 4th-level human Wilder versus a 4th-level Wilder Blue goblin. They have the same powers. One will definitely die and one will probably survive – it’s a pure game of chance – who gets the initiative roll, who makes the saving throw?

So here’s a campaign idea: try running a campaign where the players start as 4th-level Wilders with 4d6 hit points, and all the monsters start with 4 levels of Wilder. Everyone can do Mind Thrust and Bestow Power. The players would need a lot of luck to survive, because if they lose initiative to a similar number of monsters, each player will be taking at least 7d10 damage.

The survivors will look down on the smoking crater littered with the bodies of the fallen.

Players might survive, if they focused on engaging only single monsters or smaller groups, and if they had the stealth and/or reconnaissance abilities to make sure that they would not get ambushed. Such a game would be somewhat like a fire-fight simulation: there would be massive damage in the first round, and most combat would end with total annihilation of one side.

One would definitely need multiple player-characters, because it would be very easy for any solo character to die.

It would be interesting to playtest such a scenario.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseclans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview_with_the_Vampire

I think Sterling Lanier picked up his post-apocalyptic telepathy themes from A. E. van Vogt, and possibly from some other sources such as E. E. “Doc” Smith.

What I wonder about is whether the “post-apocalyptic telepathic immortal” was well-established before Adams got to it. Certainly there were a lot of very powerful heroes about. I tend to think that Adams got the archetype of the immortal down before Rice did – but I don’t necessarily think that Rice read Adams. I think that fiction readers were willing to pay for fantasies of themselves as immortal telepaths who could remember their old civilizations but live on to see new ones.

Frank Herbert’s ancestral memories in Dune offered a version of this, and certainly Dune had lots of telepaths and internal dialogue, so its influence should not be understated. Other readers might point to Heinlein’s 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land as another god-man fantasy that had almost every psychic power one might care to name.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 (.pdf) requires the government to assess which sectors of critical infrastructure pose the greatest immediate risk and gives the Department of Homeland Security regulatory authority over the private companies that control designated critical infrastructure systems

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/cybersecurity-act-of-2012/

and also:

http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/18/internet-surveillance-bill/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29

SOPA author Lamar Smith is sponsoring a new bill named the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″ (H.R. 1981). The bill is not brand new, mind you, but with so many other oppressive attempts by the government to invade privacy and control the Internet lately, it has managed to slip by relatively unnoticed until now.

The bill (which can be read here) would alter U.S. code Chapter 18 section 2703 “Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records” so that all Internet service providers would need to store your IP address for at least 12 months, along with any highly sensitive personal information such as credit card data.

IP addresses are assigned to devices connected to the Internet and used to identify and locate that device. Most users are assigned a dynamic IP address, which is only temporary. Static IP addresses, which are permanent, are much less frequent. H.R. 1981 would require all IP addresses to be stored by Internet service providers.

Not only does that treat everyone who uses the Internet (slyly referred to in the bill as “unregistered sex offenders”) like a criminal under the transparent guise of stopping child pornography, but it also puts your personal information at risk, while legally protecting service providers. Previously this information could only be obtained with a subpoena; that would no longer be the case.

Recently, he’s blogged in favor of a high-protein diet:

I was a pescetarian… mainly vegan, actually, and I was in terrible shape. My skin looked crappy and dull, my body was starting to get oh-so-pudgy, and may weight was approaching 200 pounds! … The World Health Organization recommends consumption of about 50 grams of sugar a day… I… was having… I figure… oh… about 200-300 grams of sugar a day. … My vision was extra crappy, I had terrible mood and energy swings, and I was simply listless and unmotivated, more and more so, all the time. … I increased the grams of protein in my diet massively, concurrently obliterating the amount of sugar I took in, massively. Most days, I now have about 50-100 grams of protein in a day, and I hover between about 10-40 grams of sugar.

Is it easy? Hell no. Do I see results? Hell yes. Even without my glasses, my vision has improved, I’ve almost completely stopped getting atphous sores (what many call cankor sores) in my mouth and on my tongue, and my face looks more alert and alive.

http://thebookishhermitage.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/no-more-pop/

But more interestingly, he wrote about an unusual – and possible mystical – experience induced by a migraine:

I took a combination caffeine/ pain pill, put some Reiki music on on Spotify, and lay in the dark.

Here’s where shit got fun, though.

As my pain started to slowly subside, I started doing a brain drain, a mind-defrag, a bit of a purge of toxins from my thinking space. I do this every so often, especially when I have a room to myself. This time was a bit different, however, mainly because of the palpable nature of the visions I started having.

First, there was what I’ve come to think of as a “great severing” or “great banishing”. All this nastiness from my past, everything I’d ever regretted, felt ashamed of, felt stupid about, been afraid of, etc. would pop up, and then a voice would say “it’s gone”. As in “I fucked up that audition horribly that one time”… “yeah? well that’s gone.” And it would disappear, poof. And one by one, I’d cut and cut and cut away at shit from my past, leaving a cleaner slate in front of me.

Then, further, I began to cut away at sugary-sweet nostalgia. I began to think of all the memories of my past that I used as a crutch, as small mental dope fixes, former glories, highs, and “achievements” I’d pat myself on the back with when I was feeling pathetic, instead of willful. I made up my mind that I’d keep everything lovely from the past on reserve, for reference or in times of dire need, but that otherwise, the past was gone and good riddance. The beautiful parts of my past, just as the horrific ones, had to be purged and forgotten for me to have a truly clean slate ahead of me. How could I move forward willfully and effectively if I always either fretted over or reveled in the past?

When the Great Severing was finished, I then just began to let my mind wander and start doing its thing. I allowed my mind to start conjuring whatever visions it would, and I would “sit back and watch the show”, as it were, without judgement or hyper-analysis.

Once I gave my mind this permission, all sorts of facial patterns began to appear before me, projecting themselves on the screens of my eyelids as they lay closed for the receiving of the healing and calm I’d achieve from my respite. The faces ranged from demonic, to hyper-artistic, to cliche’s of what “this face” or “that face” should look like, to just very plain, ordinary faces. They would morph, one face into another, into another, in fairly smooth, but rapid sequence.

From there, the visions started to disassemble a bit, to come apart like molecules experiencing degeneration.

But along with all this came about 95% relief from the migraine, and a much clearer head about how to move forward with my life.

So… lesson?

Yeah, I should mediate more often.

http://thebookishhermitage.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/last-night-i-had-visions/

Someone reviewed this system:

MAGIC

The magic system is quite different than what we’re used to. All wizards (even neophyte 1st-level ones) can cast an unlimited number of fireballs, lightning bolts, and light spells. Fourth edition D&D didn’t make that up. Dave Arneson did back in 1970-71.

“But, but, but… No way! That would make wizards too powerful!”

Ah, but there are some serious restrictions in place. First, each time they cast one of these three spells, they have to make a saving throw or fall unconscious for 2d6 turns (with each turn lasting 10 minutes). Second, we must remember that the target gets TWO saving throws vs. the spell. He gets to make a saving throw to see if he dodges the spell. Then he gets to make an armor saving throw to see if his armor deflects the spell. He doesn’t need to make both saving throws. He only needs to make one. If he makes it, then he takes no HPV damage.

Then there is a list of 47 spells, divided into six levels. DaD makes it easy. A 3rd-level spell can be cast by a 3rd-level wizard. A 5th-level spell can be cast by a 5th-level wizard. Etc. Spells are NOT cast by waving your arms and chanting. Instead, to quote from the book, “spells are tied to physical things made of special ingredients, not magic energy or enchanted words. Spells are often found in the form of potions in bottles or vials, gasses trapped in delicate glass balls, powders in paper tubes, and the like, including spell scrolls written with magical ink made from distilled superberries.” This is yet another way that DaD is like Howard’s Conan stories. The wizards of the Hyborian Age typically cast spells in precisely that way. The Hyborian sorcerers were armed with powders, potions, vials, etc.

There is no limit to the number of spells a wizard can cast in a day. “Wha…?”

The catch is that spells are expensive and time-consuming to concoct. A spell costs 100 g.p. per level of the spell. Thus a 3rd-level spell will cost the wizard 300 g.p. for the ingredients to brew the spell. Second, it takes forever and a day to brew spells. First level spells take one week. Second level spells take a month. Third and higher level spells take a year! Sure you can summon an elemental. Just spend the next year in your laboratory making the spell.

And even then the spell might not work. It might be a dud! (Just think of fireworks.) A 1st-level spell has a base 35% chance of being a dud, a 2nd-level spell has a 45% chance, a 3rd-level spell has a 55% chance, etc. This chance is reduced by 5% for each level of the wizard preparing the spell. And, just like fireworks, you don’t know if any given one is a dud or not until you light it. So your bad-ass 10th-level wizard who spent the last year brewing an elemental conjuration spell has to carry the thing (powder, potion, or whatnot) around. Careful you don’t drop it! Careful you don’t get it wet! You just got hit by a fireball spell? I wonder what that did to your precious spell? Anyway, our hypothetical wizard’s elemental spell has a 35% chance of being inert junk. There’s no way to test it. You just have to wait until your fat’s in the fire and you cast the spell. Cross your fingers! Hope that you didn’t spend an entire year making a spell that has all the powers of a Snickers bar.

“Hey, I know! I’ll kill an evil wizard and steal all his spells!” Think again. Each brewed spell has the alignment of its creator. If you try to cast a spell made by someone of a different alignment than yourself, it could kill you.

There is also another system of magic for priests (powers acquired as the priest rises in level, rather like a paladin), and another for elf mages (a spell point system). I’ll let someone else review those. I’m sure they are fine systems, but (since they are not what I’m looking for in a game right now) I’m not excited about them, and all parts of this game deserve an engaged review.

…

GAINING EXPERIENCE

Wizards gain experience points only from brewing spells. Priests gain experience points only from donating treasure to their religion. All other characters gain experience from spending treasure in accordance with their nature.

http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=dragonsatdawn&action=display&thread=3555

Hmm — would one want to spend 45 minutes preparing fireball, or one year? On the other hand, would one want to spend 13.5 hours preparing 54 copies of magic missile, or one year?

Gygax imposed spell-per-day restrictions, certainly. However, it seems that the spell effects were much like those in Adventures in Fantasy. I.e., it seems that Arneson was the one who invented the wizard as a stop-and-start superhero.

Superheroes typically do not prepare their mystical effects. (Tool-centered heroes like Batman prepare their gear, of course.) Fictional magicians are typically inspired, meditative, intuitive types. They might engage in a fast or a retreat or a ritual, but they are not Gygaxian spell-users.

Vance’s Dying Earth stories showed a world in which any literate person could memorize spells without much training, and with no restrictions on armor! Considering that Arneson apparently experimented with making wizards pass out, it would make sense that many players wanted armored wizards, and Gygax countered this with his glass cannon armor restrictions.

Many later rule systems, such as Harnmaster, omitted the armor restrictions, but included fatigue systems to guarantee that wizards will fall asleep after a few good spells. In Harn, one might start with a Mastery Level of 80% for casting spells, and then lose 5% of that chance with every spell that is cast! Thus, if a battle has one or two spells, they had better end the battle, because after six spells, the wizard is going to feel as if he had done vigorous calisthenics for half an hour! Of course, an hour of rest would eliminate that fatigue, so a party might conceivably have a one-hour rest after each battle or rout. Considering the leisurely pace of a dungeon crawl (as opposed to a shadow run), six battles and six prolonged rest periods would be an excellent adventuring day.

But what about if one does not want a spell-casting CRAWL, one wants a spell-casting RUN with consistent rules?

The solution is pretty simple, of course: one can pick a ruleset oriented towards superheroes, such as HERO, Villains & Vigilantes, etc., and make up wizards that resemble Doctor Strange, John Constantine, Doctor Fate, etc. One can even make wizards that resemble other superheroes, or one can make wizards that resemble psionic characters from science fiction. Alternatively, one can pick a rule system oriented toward high-speed action (e.g. Shadowrun) and learn to tolerate its quirks.

Some parts of his work are better than others.

I first noticed him due to Excel Saga, which was a hilarious tour de force.

Nerima Daikon Brothers impresses me less than Excel Saga did, but I’m glad I didn’t drop it as soon as I saw that it was goofy.

And I will try to rest up for a few hours today by watching the works of Watanabe Shinichi.

Glowing Face Man wrote:

You (and the supermajority of pundits) labor under the false assumption that everybody needs jobs, that a healthy economy involves 90%+ employment. This simply is not consistent with the reality of automation, it will become less and less consistent in coming decades. Immigration and outsourcing are small factors next to automation. Within a couple generations, almost everything is going to be automated, and a realistically healthy economy would have single-digit EMployment, rather than UNemployment. The proper fix is a completely unconditional universal guaranteed basic income.

Grey Swan replied:

The first and most obvious assumption is that the current trend towards automation will actually continue. If the business cycle is any indication, it is not only possible that the trend of automation ceases at some point in the future, it is likely. Just as innovations in papyrus production were superseded by paper production, which was then superseded by the various digital formats, so too is it possible that the current trend towards automation may be superseded by something else altogether.

A second assumption is that advances in technology won’t hit a serious point of diminishing returns. …

A third assumption is that technology will able to interface with humans in such a way as to handle the vagaries and nuances of human interaction. Which is to say, it is assumed that technology will be able to, say, address customer complaints (or, more broadly, customer emotions).

A fourth assumption, as it relates to the guaranteed minimum income, is that human ingenuity will not spread beyond its current state. …. Stated another way, the automation of production could enable people to simply open up new frontiers of innovation and production that are not directly based on automation (i.e. open up another level of goods).

A fifth assumption is that the economy will not collapse and undo any of the current technological advances we currently enjoy. Massive economic and cultural collapses usually correlate to technological collapses as well. See the collapse of the Roman Empire for an example. See also Neurodiversity for an in-depth look at the subject.

A sixth assumption is that status-seeking will no longer exist. Quite simply, automation should lead to decreasing prices in what were once luxury goods (see: the costs of silk stockings after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution). …

A seventh assumption is that human interaction won’t become an economic good. If prostitution is any indication, there is no substitute for another human being. …

An eighth assumption is that technology will develop to the point where only a few people are needed to manage it. … The cumulative effect of this will be an increase in demand for IT support while simultaneously enabling growth in the pool of potential labor candidates in this field.

I think I’ll be long dead before the situation is settled. I also think automation is less important than some disruptive new energy source. I’m looking forward to some highly powerful, highly cheap energy source – possibly something like a Rossi e-Cat.

Automation is awesome. But I am also open to the possibilities of cheap energy as the game-changing tech of the 21st century.

D&D characters are limited by hit points (and in some cases by other resources, such as memorized spells, lantern oil, etc.).

The protagonists of sword-and-sorcery fiction (Conan, Elric, Fafhrd, Harold Shea, etc.) are limited by vigor, morale, hope, willpower, etc.

Conan gets fatigued enough to fall unconscious at least once. He “resurrects” himself, but the narrative effect is much like a D&D character getting killed and resurrected by his party.

Frodo and Sam, pushing themselves to the limits of their endurance to get to Mount Doom, are very much like a D&D party struggling to get through the dungeon after they’ve run out of healing potions.

Harold Shea in “The Roaring Trumpet” spends most of the story being tired, hungry, and uncomfortable. He is much like a low-level character with injuries and just two or three hit points left.

Notably, Jack Vance’s important characters sometimes die, but those are often not really heroes. The major protagonists of Vance’s stories do not die.

Realistic characters are not willing to push themselves to the point of death in pursuit of their goals. If one treats hit points as a combination of vigor, morale, etc., then they begin to make sense, but most people treat hit points as a representation of physical health and resistance to injury.

Gygax tried to rationalize his design after the horse had left the barn, by claiming in the AD&D DMG:

It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability
in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain
physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an
assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust
which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero
could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why
then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual
physical ability of the character to withstand damage – as indicated by
constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill
in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the “sixth sense” which
warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck,
and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine
protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand
physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas
which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).

Hit points started out as Arneson’s gamist solution to the problem of how to keep players engaged in the game. Gygax’s rationalization doesn’t explain anything – as usual, it seems to be designed to befuddle and to frustrate.

This is assessment of most RPG design – the mathematical models are bad because the designers try to avoid answering all meaningful questions, even when they ask themselves what a variable is supposed to represent.

Of course, hit points are very easy to track for a highly abstract game, such as D&D or Magic: the Gathering.  But anyone who wants detail, immersion, or verisimilitude will soon want many more details, and that tends to push gamers toward computerized systems that can track the tedious details of physical health.

But the empires that we imagine reflect what we believe about our too-familiar societies.

Moorcock was a British subject, firmly convinced of the decadence of the British Empire, when he wrote about the Melnibonean Empire.

Modern USA fantasies often include cariactures of USA militarism.

The recent game Fallout: New Vegas featured Kyle Edwards, a sympathetically presented victim of militarism.

The game is worthy of play for many reasons, but the interested reader might care to examine a few themes: 1) how military radiation created “ghouls”; 2) how human aggression (“war never changes,” as the tagline says) created the NCR; and 3) how the NCR and radiation worked together to form Kyle Edwards.

George Lucas obviously intended the cops in THX-1138 and the stormtroopers in Star Wars to criticize excessive government.

The image of a zombie in a Star Wars uniform suggests that the artist sees USA imperialism as a zombie- something doomed to rot, even though it is currently still dangerous. And yet, the military forces of the USA still retain amazing popularity. There is a gap between popular hatred for zombies and popular support for imperial military men. As recently as 2000, audiences flocked to a remake of the 1964 film, The Fall of the Roman Empire; the remake was titled Gladiator. That movie contained the line:

‘There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter.’

There is a perception gap. The man in the street wants to see himself as a nonviolent-but-heroic underdog like Kyle Edwards – stoic and ethical – or as a gladiator like Maximus – embattled, doomed, but fighting bravely for a higher purpose.

The term “zombie bank” neatly bridges this perception gap for those who believe banks to be central to imperialism.

People don’t rebel all at once. Rebellions start when people start dreaming of disobedience. Rebellions are born when people start planning disobedience.

By the time the police start kneeling on the necks of hippies in Guy Fawkes masks, the rebellions have been underway for a long time.

Which motivated me to assemble the following outline history of anti-Christian heterodoxy and libertinism:

1513 – A Medici became Pope Leo X.
1513 – Machiavelli circulated a manuscript of The Prince intended for a Medici.
1517 – Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses.

1528 – Castiglione completed The Book of the Courtier.
1532 – Rabelais published Pantagruel, which ridiculed Christian monasticism.

1614 – The Fama Fraternitatis was published in Kassel.
1616 – Robert Fludd defended the Rosicrucians with Apologia Compendiaria.
1656 – Spinoza’s Jewish community subjected him to “cherem” edict.
1658 – Gassendi’s anti-Fludd, pro-Christian materialist fideist skepticism was published.

1659 – John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester) became debauched at Wadham College, Oxford.
1674 – Knutzen distributed atheist pamphlets.
1689 – Locke published A Letter Concerning Toleration.
1729 – Jean Meslier’s atheist essay was discovered.

1746 – Sir Francis Dashwood started the Hellfire Club.
1761 – d’Holbach pseudonymously published anti-Christian atheist books.
1768 – Naigeon wrote most of Le militaire philosophe, an atheist materialist book.

1768 – The Marquis de Sade was recognized as an antisocial sex criminal.
1782 – Les Liaisons dangereuses depicted aristocrats as sex addicts.
1784 – Robespierre was decorated for defending the poor.
1793 – The Marquis de Sade denounced Robespierre’s Deistic statism.

1830 – Comte published The Course in Positive Philosophy.

Now, certainly a lot of female-oriented written porn and even some male-oriented visual porn is set in the late Renaissance and Enlightenment – it was a very hopeful era for libertinism. This corresponds to 1659 and onward. The Renaissance was not a great time to be a libertine. The Medicis were rich enough to manage it, but most people were not. The 16th and 17th centuries had some remarkable scientists, but few remarkable libertines. Rabelais was interested in hashish, mysticism, and finding God by slacking off – but he wasn’t an atheistic libertine like de Sade.

When I think of serious libertines, I think of folks who glorify the sensual, animal aspect of humanity, and denigrate the spiritual aspect. Thus libertines are generally anti-Christian – and much of the Renaissance was intensely Christian, even when it was heretical. The late 17th century is when atheism had a foothold, and libertinism started getting glorified in earnest. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a 17th century libertine; de Sade didn’t follow him until about a century later. The 18th century is when libertinism actually came into its own.

Some of the Medici popes certainly had orgies. But they represented the wealthiest fraction of Europe, and their excesses spurred the Protestant Reformation. Mere knights and physicians could not afford orgies at that time period. Two hundred years later, with the additional ideological pressures of Deism, atheism, and materialism, sensualist ideologies such as libertinism really began to fly the freak flag.

Gygax and Arneson were USA gamers during the 1970s. Vietnam was obviously known to them. The booby-traps famously used outdoors by Viet Cong were public knowledge.

I suppose that crude booby traps could indeed be observed by simple, attentive perception.

However, more elaborate booby-traps are simply impossible to spot with the unaided human eye. If the trap-maker is allowed to construct a special door with a booby-trap, for example, no amount of visual inspection will reveal that there are trap triggers beneath 2 mm of wood veneer, and tactile inspection might very well trigger the booby trap!

Tabletop role-playing games tend to make me think, not only about the physical impossibility of Gygaxian fantasy, but about the depressing nature of the real-world topics that inspire games.

“Checking for traps” is a Gygaxian sacred cow. But in fact it’s a stupid idea. The crudest traps, such as some Viet Cong booby-traps, can indeed be spotted by the human eye. Most real booby traps can only be found with metal-detectors, bomb-sniffing dogs, and ground-penetrating radar. Even then, the process is far from reliable.

Traps are sometimes deadly, and sometimes worse than deadly. A surviving amputee might well sap a nation’s will to fight more than a dead martyr for the cause.

That day has come and gone, and instead I look to the Cool of Rule, and the Cool of Many Rules.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CoolOfRule

Something cool is even more cool if it is accomplished within an understood set of rules. …
The “understood set of rules” is usually the rules of reality, but it can just as easily be some set of rules established within the work in question. Less props for explaining the rules after the fact.

Often one encounters demagogues who rant against the present evils, but propose no clear course of action. A useful point of debate is to ask that critical demagogue: “Very well, we see what you are AGAINST, but what are you FOR?”

I am against the most dysfunctional aspects of Gygax’s style, but I am for the Cool of Many Rules. This does not necessarily mean that I will put out a game for the tabletop – I might put out a computer game that has thousands of rules but keeps them hidden from casual observation. This is not anti-Gygaxian per se – it would be more accurate to say that it is post-Arnesonian, and some war-game designers have been rules-heavy since before Arneson was born.

Nobel-prize-winning physicist Brian D. Josephson has a different view.

PHYSICS AND THE NOBEL PRIZES
Brian Josephson, Physics Department, Cambridge University

(article included in a booklet accompanying the Royal Mail special stamps issued on October 2, 2001 to commemorate the centenary of the Nobel prizes)

Physicists attempt to reduce the complexity of nature to a single unifying theory, of which the most successful and universal, the quantum theory, has been associated with several Nobel prizes, for example those to Dirac and Heisenberg. Max Planck’s original attempts a hundred years ago to explain the precise amount of energy radiated by hot bodies began a process of capturing in mathematical form a mysterious, elusive world containing ‘spooky interactions at a distance’, real enough however to lead to inventions such as the laser and transistor.

Quantum theory is now being fruitfully combined with theories of information and computation. These developments may lead to an explanation of processes still not understood within conventional science such as telepathy, an area where Britain is at the forefront of research.

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/stamps/text.html

Of course, a Nobel prize in physics does not insulate a heretic from the fury of vastly less educated detractors.

The knee-jerk pseudosceptics engaged in their usual hoots and howls of fury, and Josephson issued the following reaction:

The ‘fury’ expressed by (some) scientists at the Royal Mail stamps booklet that mentioned telepathy: what implications?

The final sentence of my contribution to the booklet accompanying the Royal Mail collection of stamps celebrating the centenary of the Nobel prizes drew forth extraordinarily strong reactions from scientists interviewed by The Observer. It was suggested, for example, that I had ‘hoodwinked’ Royal Mail into including in its booklet something that was ‘absurd’, that I had ‘gone off the rails’, that my intellect had been damaged by my interest in the subject. These comments sit uneasily with the fact that recently a committee appointed by Trinity College, Cambridge, including five University professors, three of them Fellows of the Royal Society, organised a conference on the subject of ‘Rational Perspectives on the Paranormal’. During the conference, a very distinguished member of the university described family experiences that he felt provided definitive indications of telepathy being a reality. Physics World, the monthly magazine of the Institute of Physics, the professional organistion for physicists in the UK, thought the meeting of sufficient interest to send its deputy editor along to report the meeting in detail.

Clearly, what is rational and what is irrational is different for different people. Absolute certainty that an idea is wrong, as implicit in some of the comments regarding the booklet concerned, is an attitude that has no place in science and one that discredits the scientific enterprise. The radio interview following publication of the article in the Observer highlighted the superficial nature of the arguments typically used by critics, who often form themselves into groups dignifying themselves with names such as The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. It is worthy of note that a founder member of the latter organisation soon left it out of disgust at its unobjective ways of proceeding.

The critics of Royal Mail and its booklet would have been wise to maintain silence, or to have kept their comments within the scientific community. Now that they have disclosed their opinions to a wider audience and made the matter one for open debate, they may find that their days are numbered. Recognition may come about that it is in general these ‘sceptics’ who have been doing the hoodwinking, not those who express positive professional judgements regarding the paranormal.

(c) Brian Josephson, October 2001.

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/stamps/implications.html

The conference in question is reported at:
www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_16_4_carr.pdf

It is interesting to note that hostile pseudosceptics participated in the conference. Apparently the proponents of parapsychology are confident in their findings.

A month has not gone by in the last two years when I haven’t been interviewed by one or more newspaper writers or independent journalists who want to know all about D&D. I have likewise been interviewed by radio and TV news media, generally for the same reason.

Gygax is displaying his social status to justify his image of himself as an authority. In most cases, this would be suspect, but due to unusual circumstances, Gygax really was an authority for this topic.

At the risk of claiming too much for the game,

This is a good use of hedging language.

…I have lately taken to likening the whole to Aristotle’s POETICS, carrying the analogy to even more ridiculous heights by stating that each Dungeon Master uses the rules to become a playwrite (hopefully of Shakespearean stature), scripting only plot outlines however, and the players become the Thespians.

Gygax describes his image as ridiculous. Gygax was capable of many ridiculous and poetical images, but he never, to my knowledge, was capable of logic or of patient scholarship. And incidentally his grammatical errors cause me physical pain.

Before incredulity slackens so as to allow the interviewer to become hostile,

This is another hedge.

…I hasten to add that the analogy applies only to the basic parts of the whole pastime, not to the actual merits of D&D, its DMs, or players. If you consider the game, the analogy is actually quite apt.

This is typically Gygaxian language. At first glance, it seems to be full of evasions and obfuscations. The first sentence disavows the hubris of comparing his work to Aristotle, and the second avows that the comparison is worthwhile. It would have been simpler to have said, “Our game has some resemblance to Aristotle, but of course Aristotle was very wise and we much less wise.”

I don’t think he was trying to be evasive – I think he was trying to be nuanced, but he enjoyed using fancy verbiage in a kind of homage to Clark Ashton Smith. His meanings, I fear, often got lost in thickets of words.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is like none other in that it requires the game master to create part or all of a fantasy world.

Actually, wargames were creating fantasy worlds before electricity – just not on purpose. Premodern military drill manuals are often criticized for being mere intellectual exercises – i.e. they are fantasy wargames, far pre-dating D&D.

People are rallying in London to protest ACTA today. The protests are supposed to be international. I tried to talk about it in Taiwan, but it was slow going.

This is just one more day in a struggle that might well go on for years. But because today is supposed to be international, I’ll blog about it, thus sending the message across Taiwan’s borders and to the various countries of those who subscribe.

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/

In 1954, in eastern Oklahoma, two tribes of children nearly killed each other.

The neighboring tribes were unaware of each other’s existence. Separately, they lived among nature, played games, constructed shelters, prepared food – they knew peace. Each culture developed its own norms and rules of conduct. Each culture arrived at novel solutions to survival-critical problems. Each culture named the creeks and rocks and dangerous places, and those names were known to all. They helped each other and watched out for the well-being of the tribal members.

Scientists stood by, watchful, scribbling notes and whispering. Much nodding and squinting took place as the tribes granted to anthropology and psychology a wealth of data about how people build and maintain groups, how hierarchies are established and preserved. They wondered, the scientists, what would happen if these two groups were to meet.

These two tribes consisted of 22 boys, ages 11 and 12, whom psychologist Muzafer Sherif brought together at Oklahoma’s Robber’s Cave State Park. He and his team placed the two groups on separate buses and drove them to a Boy Scout Camp inside the park – the sort with cabins and caves and thick wilderness. At the park, the scientists put the boys into separate sides of the camp about a half-mile apart and kept secret the existence and location of the other group. The boys didn’t know each other beforehand, and Sherif believed putting them into a new environment away from their familiar cultures would encourage them to create a new culture from scratch.

He was right, but as those cultures formed and met something sinister presented itself. One of the behaviors which pushed and shoved its way to the top of the boys’ minds is also something you are fending off at this very moment, something which is making your life harder than it ought to be. We’ll get to all that it in a minute. First, let’s get back to one of the most telling and frightening experiments in the history of psychology.

Sherif and his colleagues pretended to be staff members at the camp so they could record, without interfering, the natural human drive to form tribes. Right away, social hierarchies began to emerge in which the boys established leaders and followers and special roles for everyone in between. Norms spontaneously generated. For instance, when one boy hurt his foot but didn’t tell anyone until bedtime, it became expected among the group that Rattlers didn’t complain. From then on members waited until the day’s work was finished to reveal injuries. When a boy cried, the others ignored him until he got over it. Regulations and rituals sprouted just as quickly. For instance, the high-status members, the natural leaders, in both groups came up with guidelines for saying grace during meals and correct rotations for the ritual. Within a few days their initially arbitrary suggestions became the way things were done, and no one had to be prompted or reprimanded. They made up games and settled on rules of play. They embarked on projects to clean up certain areas and established chains of command. Slackers were punished. Over achievers were praised. Flags were created. Signs erected.

Soon, the two groups began to suspect they weren’t alone. They would find evidence of others. They found cups and other signs of civilization in places they didn’t remember visiting. This strengthened their resolve and encouraged the two groups to hold tighter to their new norms, values, rituals and all the other elements of the shared culture. At the end of the first week, the Rattlers discovered the others on the camp’s baseball diamond. From this point forward both groups spent most of their time thinking about how to deal with their new-found adversaries. The group with no name asked about the outsiders. When told the other group called themselves the Rattlers, they elected a baseball captain and asked the camp staff if they could face off in a game with the enemy. They named their baseball team the Eagles after an animal they thought ate snakes.

Sherif and his colleagues had already planned on pitting the groups against each other in competitive sports. They weren’t just researching how groups formed but also how they acted when in competition for resources. The fact the boys were already becoming incensed over the baseball field seemed to fall right in line with their research. So, the scientists proceeded with stage two. The two tribes were overjoyed to learn they would not only play baseball, but compete in tug-of-war, touch football, treasure hunts and other summer-camp-themed rivalry. The scientists revealed a finite number of prizes. Winners would receive one of a handful of medals or knives. When the boys won the knives, some would kiss them before rushing to hide the weapons from the other group.

Sherif noted the two groups spent a lot of time talking about how dumb and uncouth the other side was. They called them names, lots of names, and they seemed to be preoccupied every night with defining the essence of their enemies. Sherif was fascinated by this display. The two groups needed the other side to be inferior once the competition for limited resources became a factor, so they began defining them as such. It strengthened their identity to assume the identity of the enemy was a far cry from their own. Everything they learned about the other side became an example of how not to be, and if they did happen to see similarities they tended to be ignored.

The researchers collected data and discussed findings while planning the next series of activities, but the boys made other plans. The experiment was about to spiral out of control, and it started with the Eagles.

Some of the Eagles boys discovered the Rattlers’ flag standing unguarded on the baseball field. They discussed what to do and decided it should be ripped from the ground. Once they had it, a possession of the enemy, a symbol of their tribe, they decided to burn it. They then put its scorched remains back in place and sang Taps. Later, the Rattlers saw the atrocity and organized a raid in which they stole the Eagles’ flag and burned it as payback. When the Eagles discovered the revenge burning, the leader issued a challenge – a face off. The two leaders then met with their followers watching and prepared to fight, but the scientists intervened. That night, the Rattlers dressed in war paint and raided the Eagles’ cabins, turning over beds and tearing apart mosquito netting. The staff again intervened when the two groups started circling and gathering rocks. The next day, the Rattlers painted one of the Eagle boy’s stolen blue jeans with insults and paraded it in front of the enemy’s camp like a flag. The Eagles waited until the Rattlers were eating and conducted a retaliatory raid and then ran back to their cabin to set up defenses. They filled socks with rocks and waited. The camp staff, once again, intervened and convinced the Rattlers not to counterattack. The raids continued, and the interventions too, and eventually the Rattlers stole the Eagles knives and medals. The Eagles, determined to retrieve them, formed an organized war party with assigned roles and planned tactical maneuvers. The two groups finally fought in open combat. The scientists broke up the fights. Fearing the two tribes might murder someone, they moved the groups’ camps away from each other.

…
The two tribes of children in Oklahoma formed because groups are how human beings escaped the Serengeti and built pyramids and invented Laffy Taffy. All primates depend on groups to survive and thrive, and human groups thrive most of all. It is in your nature to form them. Sherif’s experiment with the boys at Robber’s Cave showed how quickly and easily you do so, how your innate drive to develop and observe norms and rituals will express itself even in a cultural vacuum, but there is a dark side to this behavior. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt says, our minds “unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth.” It’s that last part that keeps getting you into trouble. Just as you don a self, a persona, and believe it to be thicker and harder to see through than those of your friends, family and peers, you too believe the groups to which you belong are more complex, more diverse and granular than are groups of which you could never imagine yourself a member. When you feel the warm comfort of belonging to a team, a tribe, a group – to a party, an ideology, a religion or a nation – you instinctively turn others into members of outgroups, into outsiders. Just as soldiers come up with derogatory names for enemies, every culture and sub-culture has a collection of terms for outsiders so as to better see them as a single-minded collective. You are prone to forming and joining groups and then believing your groups are more diverse than outside groups.
In a political debate you feel like the other side just doesn’t get your point of view, and if they could only see things with your clarity, they would understand and fall naturally in line with what you believe. They must not understand, because if they did they wouldn’t think the things they think. By contrast, you believe you totally get their point of view and you reject it. You see it in all its detail and understand it for what it is – stupid. You don’t need to hear them elaborate. So, each side believes they understand the other side better than the other side understands both their opponents and themselves.

The research suggests you and rest of humanity will continue to churn into groups, banding and disbanding, and the beautiful collective species-wide macromonoculture imagined by the most Utopian of dreams might just be impossible unless alien warships lay siege to our cities. In Sherif’s study, he was able to somewhat reintegrate the boys of the Robber’s Cave experiment by telling them the water supply had been sabotaged by vandals. The two groups were able to come together and repair it as one. Later he staged a problem with one of the camp trucks and was able to get the boys to work together to pull it with a rope until it started. They never fully joined into one group, but the hostilities eased enough for both groups to ride the same bus together back home. It seems peace is possible when we face shared problems, but for now we need to be in our tribes. It just feels right.

So, you pick a team, and like the boys at Robber’s Cave, you spend a lot of time a lot of time talking about how dumb and uncouth the other side is. You too can become preoccupied with defining the essence of your enemies. You too need the other side to be inferior, so you define them as such. You start to believe your persona is actually your identity, and the identity of your enemy is actually their persona.

I actually don’t have much respect for the site “youarenotsosmart,” because I think whoever writes the content for that is not so smart. But in this case, the content has relevance for the tabletop gaming hobby. I would say “for the tabletop gaming community,” but in fact tabletop gaming does not have a community – it has many disunited subcultures.

I hope this is a joke.

Incendiary blogged some Ministry tracks that are covers.

And he said they were: “Courtesy of the cover band, Ministry”

…tell me that’s a joke, please.

Ministry is primarily known for its original compositions.

Calling Ministry a cover band is like saying Jonette Napolitano is that girl who did some vocals for No Talking, Just Head. It’s technically true, but it understates Napolitano’s original contributions to music.

Illusions probably gained prominence when the play-tester who ran the famous vampire “Count Fang” used vampire-style illusions to battle the good guys.

Gygax developed illusions, going so far as to have an Illusionist class and several types of monsters who specialized in illusions and misdirection. At Gygax’s table, there was always enough dialogue between players and DM to give players a fair chance to deduce that something was illusionary, and Gygax had enough personal restraint to avoid TPKs most of the time. Gygax’s players also tolerated Gygax rolling secretly to figure out whether they detected the illusion on the basis of Wisdom.

For most DMs, illusions are over-powered. A DM who tries to roll secretly for every illusion will slow down the game to an unacceptable pace and lose players. A DM who allows players to roll wisdom will tip them off to the presence of illusions, and then they will disbelieve everything.

Historical first-person accounts are full of experienced illusions, most of which seem to have been hypnosis of some kind. D&D does not model real-world hypnosis in any way.

History also includes disguise, camouflage, etc. D&D illusions are like super-powered camouflage more than hypnosis.

Most players cannot learn to verbally interrogate the DM as Gygax’s players did. Gygax’s rules are not clear enough to teach this skill. So the art of playing with illusions is slowly being lost as Gygax’s players die of old age.

The guy who blogs at the link wrote, in part:

Back when I was in college, when I was still basically a liberal (although even then I hated other liberals),
I joined my university’s Shakespearean acting troupe as a tech guy…. But I realized very quickly that I was not like most of the other people “doing the Rudes.” For me, it was instrumental: something I enjoyed and which was of material benefit to me. For them, it was like an end in itself. I also noticed that they were generally deviant in other ways. They were screechy, neurotic bisexuals with lip piercings and black clothes. They had sex with each other constantly … They wrote anime fanfiction (because apparently animes with romantic subplots always have desperately unsatisfactory endings) and dressed up like anime characters to go to anime conventions. They were anime kids.

I confess to having watched very little anime in the past,… I think what turned me off most was just the casual and unquestioned weirdness of it all. …

So I suppose it’s a good fit for people who are themselves casually weird, the kind who grow greasy, patchy beards and wear oversized coats with way too many pockets and chains and collars and all that crap. The awkward, out-group dweebs who populate the corner of every college bistro playing Magic: The Gathering. You know the type.
…

In college, I dated a relatively pretty girl with several friends in this group and every time I stood in their presence, I felt like the brutish jock in a chick flick who steals away the nerdy main character’s love interest. Me! At best, I had the build of a second-rate swimmer in college. But their group was so vacuously negative of masculinity that I slid almost by default into the role of alpha horse. I hated being hated by these mewling, oleaginous things.

Far from being sexually frustrated, as you might suspect,

in my experience they set up these strange sexual covens wherein the women (and certain men; sexual deviancy is not uncommon here) are passed around

more than their old pirated copies of Boondock Saints. Strangely, this produces very little drama, like it would in a group of normal people in which one woman slept with multiple men. I have no idea why; maybe an aggressive response is beyond people so totally empty of masculinity, or maybe their stunted souls were never capable of forming meaningful attachments to others in the first place.
…

I’ve got to wonder whether those anime fans really hated the Collapse Blogger, or whether the Collapse Blogger is just so self-absorbed that he imagined that they hated him. It seems likely that Collapse Blogger projects a lot now, and he might have been projecting just as much back then.

There are a lot of anime fans who are ugly. There are a lot of anime fans who are promiscuous because they are young and desperate and ugly.

Ugliness is not an excuse for promiscuity.

That being said, I think the blogger quoted above is unfairly tarring all U.S.A. anime fans with the promiscuity brush. It’s easier to sneer at ugly promiscuous people than it is to sneer at good-looking promiscuous people, and I think the blogger is taking a cheap shot, probably because he’s projecting about some inner emotional turmoil.

The blogger in question is a fairly recent convert to theism. When he was an atheistic liberal, he hated his fellow liberals, and all the emotional issues from his theater days, including how he “hated being hated,” are just bouncing back into a great big hatred of anime.

Here’s my standpoint on promiscuity:
I don’t condone promiscuity, and if it could be established that otaku are all promiscuous, I would censure them for that. But I don’t think that’s the case.

And here’s my standpoint on hate:
If you hate being hated, maybe you should try focusing on some emotion that ISN’T hate.

I would blog at length about this, but I have to go set up the microphones for a local chapter of the Underside of the Kitty Paw.

Arneson’s Anti-Twitcher Rule guarantees not just that the game world does not make sense right now, the game world is forbidden from ever being more than slightly predictable or consistent. Unless a skilled DM railroads the guidelines into something resembling a story, the D&D rules pull in different directions and the game world becomes incoherent.

D&D lost market share to other games for many reasons, but one reason was that other games had more consistent rules. Players preferred to spend their imagination-time in more consistent imaginary worlds. The sad part of that is that the wide-open potential of the OD&D rules flared briefly, then got lost, and a lot of new D&D players thought D&D could only produce rip-offs of Driz’zt fan fiction. D&D allowed considerable griefing from both sides of the DM screen.

Sadly, other game companies learned dysfunctional lessons from TSR. TSR originally looked down on its customers. TSR eventually despised and insulted its customers. After a few years of that, White Wolf games grabbed publicity, claiming that it would save the hobby – and rapidly White Wolf became even more condescending. At TSR, egotism started at the top and worked its way down the ladder as employees imitated bosses. At White Wolf, a minimum level of egotism was necessary to be hired, pernicious narcissism was necessary to be promoted, and megalomania was a prerequisite for any worker who aspired to management. At GenCon 1994, White Wolf staff wore lapel pins that read, “F— you mortal, I’m with White Wolf.” If D&D allowed a lot of griefing, White Wolf was made for dysfunctional gaming.

Eventually White Wolf progressed from destroying its writers to suing its fan groups. Meanwhile, tabletop griefing lost marketshare to more predictable games, such as card games and computer games, which offered fewer opportunities for griefing.

Recently, the comments at OEF alluded the Gygax’s supposed drug habits.

‘they say EGG was addicted to coke and, um, “ladies of the night” while he was in LA’

I certainly *hope* EGG was on coke. I can *forgive* coke abuse. Whether he used it or not, he had a penchant for raising topics relevant to parapsychology and then laughing off his intellectual responsibilities.

Gygax:

‘Most literate people grow up on a diet of fairy tales, Walt Disney, and comic book superheroes. We somehow relate to stories of young princes going out into the world to seek their fortune, of knights rescuing maidens in distress and slaying dragons, of dealings with wicked magicians and evil witches. The myth of all peoples contain great stocks of such fantasy lore. If nothing else, the desire to believe in such seems to be innate in humanity. Whether or not there are parallel worlds or places where fantastic creatures actually live and magic works is not germane, for most of us are familiar with the concepts as if they were actual, and we have a desire to become involved, if only vicariously, amongst such heroic epics of magic and monsters.’

In Gygax’s defense, he had no idea that he would be throwing a metaphorical spark into a metaphorical powder keg. I can forgive Gygax’s lack of intellectual responsibility. What no one should tolerate is that fact that the game designers and referees who remember Gygax fondly sometimes think that their sentiments excuse them from intellectual responsibility.

Here is the root of much of my alienation from Gygax: he steadfastly refused to examine any sources other than fiction, and he steadfastly refused to look at fiction from a scholarly standpoint.

Gygax started writing more than 100 years after the beginning of modern parapsychology. However, he never felt any degree of intellectual responsibility toward the findings of parapsychology. He refused to stand with the scoffers (such as James Randi) by saying that the paranormal does NOT exist; he refused to stand with the believers (such as Brian D. Josephson) by saying that the paranormal DOES exist. Gygax was interested in magic as it appeared in his favorite pulp stories and pop culture – anything less glamorous was not worthy of Gygax’s time.

Gygax claimed to be a Christian on various occasions; by the 1990s he claimed to have experienced telepathy. However, he never felt any need to make any serious reading of parapsychology evidence, with or without the guidance of Christian philosophy.

It starts out with a predictable red-haired “Lancer” rival; he’s tsun-tsun, but he’s definitely not one of the bad guys.

It introduces an evil lavender-haired sex goddess.

And then it motivates a character as follows:

I don’t expect the show to give an actual explicit depiction of those two characters having sex. But it would be nice if they dropped some kind of hint that the two of them were acting like real teenagers would act, rather than like precocious six-year-olds in seventeen-year-old bodies.

This is the problem with a lot of cartoons; because they are presenting teenage heroes as good role models for small kids, they present unrealistically asexual teenagers. Then again, a realistically sexual teenager might just be a frustrated virgin with a heavy masturbation habit, which does not make for good plot development. Masturbation is under-represented in story-telling because it doesn’t do a darn thing to advance the plot.

I don’t want to see anime turn into hentai and fan service. I *do* want to see characters whose emotions make sense. Shows like Ergo Proxy take the high road of making believable characters; shows like Mirai Nikki take the low road of anvilicious melodrama. Both are watchable, but I wouldn’t buy Mirai Nikki on DVD, much less give it as a present. Conversely, I might give someone Ergo Proxy on DVD to show them how good anime can be.

Delta has pointed out that the second Conan story ever published, “The Scarlet Citadel,” published in 1933, featured wizards throwing small balls of fire that could thrown as hand-held weapons. I know of no reason to think that Howard read Fort’s books, but Howard might well have been responding to public awareness of strange fires.

In C. A. Smith’s 1935 story The Flower Women, wizards called bolts of livid flame from the air.

But there seems to have been a gap between Howard and Smith and the mainstream media. I think it was bridged by 1940, and I think Doctor Fate was the key character that bridged the gap.

From the table, it can be seen that the Superman brand was a market strategy. In the 1930s, hard-boiled heroes often used hypnosis to mind-control their opponents. Siegel and Shuster’s first version of Superman was the villain of a prose story, depicted as having a shaved head and using telepathic hypnosis to subdue all who opposed him.

The Shadow’s powers of hypnosis were exaggerated, but based on plausible techniques. The 1932 film White Zombie advanced a similarly exaggerated story of mind-control. The prose-story “Regin of the Superman” bad-guy pushed this to the extreme by exercising super-exaggerated telepathic mind control, much like the mesmeric charm of Trilby.

Just six months after Siegel’s telepathic “Reign of the Superman” mind-controller, E. E. “Doc” Smith was publishing stories of Lensmen with psionic powers tied to alien-gifted artifacts. The Lensmen were secret agents of a sort, so they captured some readers who wanted to be G-men when they grew up.

Mandrake the Magician had virtually unlimited miraculous powers. Mandrake could cause useful things to appear at will. Thus if someone was injured, Mandrake conjured a first aid kit out of nowhere, violating the law of conservation of matter-energy. Siegel and Shuster wrote Dr. Occult as a competitor to Mandrake; Dr. Occult’s powers included plausible astral projection, and implausible, super-exaggerated teleportation. A casual observer might mistake Dr. Occult’s powers for actual occult beliefs, since both astral projection and apportation are advanced as legitimate claims by parapsychologists. (One must presume Siegel had some vague notions of earlier fictionalizations of real-life occultists by Maugham, and perhaps by Fortune.) The Superman comics, however, clearly distanced themselves from any kind of recognizable occultism. Superman’s powers were thinly justified by pseudo-scientific explanations, but the Superman universe and its various colors of Kryptonite were considerably more arbitrary than the worst excesses of Mandrake.

In 1940, there were many magical competitors to Mandrake. Siegel advanced The Spectre, whose powers were even more grandiose and unlimited than Mandrake’s. Several writers explained away occult powers with some obvious but non-analyzable artifact that granted magic powers: Doctor Fate’s powers were granted by a helmet; Zanzibar’s powers were granted by a wand, and Sargon’s powers were granted by a ruby. All of these were magical, dating back to ancient human civilizations such as Egypt or Mesopotamia; later superheroes like the Green Lantern had Lensman-style artifacts given to them by contemporary space aliens. The Green Lantern was originally an homage to The Arabian Nights and its story of Aladdin and his magic lamp.

It makes sense to reward players for taking risks. Tabletop RPGs are not tactical training exercises that are meant to inculcate optimized tactics. Conversely, if I were designing training exercises for serious customers such as military forces, I would punish players who took stupid risks and reward players for minimizing risks while accomplishing the objective.

Who has the most contempt for “farming”? Individuals who see themselves as predators.

Humans have predatory instincts. Humans are evolved from omnivores who hunted for meat when it was available.

Tabletop RPGs offer a simulation of cooperative hunting. As in hunting, the rewards are unreliable. Sometimes the quarry escapes; sometimes the hunters are injured by wild animals.

Various computer game critics have used evolutionary psychology to explain why typical human males love first-person shooters. Human males have an evolutionarily ingrained tendency to throw rocks – throwing bullets appeals to this. I suspect the simulated teamwork of a tabletop RPG appeals to ingrained instincts of cooperative hunting.

And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.” (1Ki 18:36-39)

But Elijah answered the captain of fifty, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.” Then fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty. (2Ki 1:10)

However, this was a problem in the Christian era:

And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. (Luke 9:54-55)

There are remarkably few historical reports of pyrokinesis. One might dismiss the story of Elijah as any number of things – allegory, fraud, hallucination, etc.

However, there are a few isolated and unconfirmed claims such as the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.W._Underwood

A. William Underwood (born c. 1855) was a young African American man from Paw Paw, Michigan purported in his time to have pyrokinetic abilities.[1][2]

In January 1882, a Dr. L.C. Woodman of Paw Paw wrote in the Michigan Medical News[1] of Underwood, whose purported abilities had made him a local celebrity:

I have a singular phenomenon in the shape of a young man living here, that I have studied with much interest, and I am satisfied that his peculiar power demonstrates that electricity is the nerve force beyond dispute. His name is Wm. Underwood, aged 27 years, and his gift is that of generating fire through the medium of his breath, assisted by manipulations with his hands. He will take anybody’s handkerchief, and hold it to his mouth, and rub it vigorously with his hands while breathing on it, and immediately it bursts into flames and burns until consumed.

Dr. Woodman claimed to have performed comprehensive scientific testing on Mr. Underwood’s abilities, proclaiming them a genuine phenomenon. His story became a topic of discussion in many medical and scientific journals of the day, including Scientific American. Skeptics later suggested that Underwood would hide a small piece of phosphorus in his mouth, then spit it out into a handkerchief. The heat from his breath and rubbing his hands together would ignite the phosphorus, which burns in air at about 30 °C (86 °F).

Starting in 1919, such unusual events were discussed by Charles Hoy Fort, and thus are known as Forteana.

The first major fictional figure to imitate Elijah may have been Doctor Fate, some time in the 1940s. (Or perhaps Doctor Fate was imitating Tesla.) Doctor Fate threw lightning blasts, and Superman’s heat vision may have been an imitation of Doctor Fate.

The final word, then, is the game. Read how and why the system is as it is, follow the parameters, and then cut portions as needed to maintain excitement.

Gary Gygax wrote:

Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself the ultimate power. To become the final arbiter, rather than the interpreter of the rules, can be a difficult and demanding task, and it cannot be undertaken lightly, for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot. By the same token, they are playing the game the way you, their DM, imagines and creates it.

This game is unlike chess in that the rules are not cut and dried. In many places they are guidelines and suggested methods only. This is part of the attraction of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and it is integral to the game. Rules not understood should have appropriate questions directed to the publisher; disputes with the Dungeon Master are another matter entirely. THE REFEREE IS THE FINAL ARBITER OF ALL AFFAIRS OF HIS OR HER CAMPAIGN.

Gygax’s fans were angry when the original D&D rules were so vague that they produced thousands of mutually incompatible games when interpreted by various DMs.

Gygax thought that his AD&D game would be consistent and recognizable, even when interpreted by incompatible DMs. He was wrong.