Absurd Heroes

Quote of the Now

2012-02-03T11:07:00.001+01:00

"Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted."
- J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories"

Do You Want To Playtest 5E?

2012-01-13T13:20:00.002+01:00

The fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons has been announced. It will likely come out sometime in 2013, and hopes are high that it will end the edition wars by uniting fans of 3e and 4e under a single banner. Whether or not it succeeds remains to be seen.

Mike Mearls, of Iron Heroes fame, is one of the lead designers, and he has published an article asking for playtesters. So here's my question: Would you like to playtest D&D 5E?

Soundtrack of Me

2012-01-05T12:09:00.003+01:00

If someone were to make a movie about me, for whatever reason, I would want the following songs on the soundtrack. They're not necessarily my favourite songs in the whole world, but they're songs that I feel accurately represent me. Some of them wouldn't really work as a soundtrack as such, but never mind that - this little exercise is more about trying to represent myself with a small selection of songs.

Without further ado:

1. Supertramp – The Logical Song
This song is pretty much my theme song.

2. Pet Shop Boys – It's a Sin

3. Scooter – How Much Is The Fish
This song makes no sense, but it makes me happy and all pumped up. Plus, it's been following me since I was pretty small.

4. The Beatles – Fool On The Hill

5. The Beatles – Nowhere Man
It might be a bit redundant to include both this song and Fool On The Hill, but they are actually quite different songs. Both this and Fool On The Hill have been following me for quite some time.

6. The Seat Belts – Real Folk Blues
The theme song of a love story.

7. Bob Dylan – Positively 4th Street
The theme song of another love story.

8. The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun
The theme song of yet another love story. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which is which.

8. Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory – Pure Imagination

9. Aladdin – Friend Like Me
I know, I'm totally full of myself.

10. Gorillaz – Some Kind of Nature

11. Gorillaz – Revolving Doors
...Gorillaz song lyrics as a rule make no sense, so I'm not really sure if these songs say anything really applicable or meaningful, but I like the Gorillaz and their melodies, if nothing else, need to be on the soundtrack.

12. Dr. Steel – We Decide
Wouldn't at all work as a soundtrack for anything, I think, but I like the message.

13. Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody

14. Per Gessle – Farväl Angelina
I know the original is in English and by Bob Dylan, but I really like the Swedish version. Also, I feel like there maybe should be at least one song on this list in my actual native language.

Twenty-Four.

2011-12-24T00:01:00.001+01:00

“So,” said Andromeda, “We've tried shooting it, zapping it, blowing it up, and kicking it. It seems pretty impervious.”

She was looking at a peculiar metal door at the base of the tree. It was made of shining chrome, virtually featureless except for five letters engraved in its surface: S.A.N.T.A.

“I give up,” she said, taking a seat on a pile of snow. “Nothing short of magic can open this door. I suppose the Systematic Administrator left the message just to tell people to sod off.”

Danielle stood considering the door. So close, and yet so far away. Had they come this far only to not be able to revive the Administrator, after all? Her heart sank. She looked around at her companions, each and every one of which seemed to be of the same opinion as Andromeda. Well... all except one. Her eyes fell on the dark-haired man with the cybernetic leg: Darren. They had only just met, but Danielle noticed something different about him – while everyone else was looking at the door, he was looking at the sky.

“Have you got any idea, Mr... Darren, was it?”

“Maybe. Rita, could you tell me the message again?”

“When one-winged angels fly, magic will open the door. Or something like that.”

Darren got to his feet. He cleared his throat, and spoke up.

“I have an idea. Probably a stupid idea, but I got reminded of a saying. One-winged angels are people, see. The saying goes, we are angels with only one wing: We fly by embracing each other.”

Everyone looked at each other, and particularly Consul Danielle seemed stunned.

“Are you saying we revive the greatest AI in the history of the universe by... hugging?”

“It's a long shot, I admit. But it seems this Administrator guy... thing... whatever, was a little eccentric. I still can't figure out the magic bit though.”

Babs and Sylver shone up at the same time. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” - “That's it, isn't it?” - “I think it is!” - “It makes perfect sense: Friendship!”

They rushed to their feet and hugged whoever happened to be closest: Sylver squeezed Selma in what looked more like a wrestling move than a hug, and Babs tackled Sawyer to the ground. Krystof looked at Darren, skeptically.

“Well man, it was your idea.” he said with a shrug.

Before his partner could protest, Krystof grabbed him in an extremely manly bear hug. Soon, everyone was hugging someone else, and on the ground, Sawyer was laughing.

“Babs, whoever you are, you're crazy. Get off me. Merry Christmas.”

He had no idea why he said it. It just seemed to fit. It did.

§§§§§§§

And from that great door, there arose such a clatter,
They sprang from the ground to see what was the matter.
O, the great Tesla tree did both sparkle and flash,
And away from the lightning they quickly must dash.
A moon (or space station) shone down on the snow,
And it seemed like the planet itself was aglow.

When, what to their wondering eyes should appear,
But a great cosmo-sleigh, and eight cyborg reindeer!
And there in the sleigh there was seated no man,
nor machine, not like anything made in Japan:
This strange, wondrous being, that flew for the sky
Was a powerful, marvelous godlike A.I.
A being of shimmering energy pure,
Now back from the dead – of that they were sure.

And yet somehow so plump, such a jolly old elf,
that each laughed when they saw him, in spite of himself.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave them to know they had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but just raised both his hands,
And displayed all his power by changing the lands.
First came there a cottage, so cozy and warm,
Then soon the whole planet was all terraformed!

There were so many gifts that he gave them besides:
Warm socks and warm sweaters of every size,
Both hoverboards, hovercats, and holograms
Of famous bands playing their favorite jams.
Now laid he a finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up in space there he rose,
To stop the galactic war with his gifts
To give out such presents, as mend any rifts.

Away flew his sleigh, so fast you would get carsick,
For it crossed the whole Galaxy in but twelve parsecs!
But they heard him exclaim, throughout all space and time:
“MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL / AND GOODNIGHT / END OF LINE.”

Twenty-Three.

2011-12-23T00:01:00.000+01:00

The little valley surrounding the metal tree was suddenly quite crowded. Sylver, Love and Selma stood in the middle. To one side stood Andromeda, Maximus and Sawyer, weapons drawn. On the other side stood Consul Danielle Ash and her friend, Kendra. Both of them looked quite calm. Nobody spoke; the only sound through the valley was the whining of Christmas Planets' loud winds.

“Step off of Selma.” said Andromeda, waving her pistol. Love casually did so. “You all right?”

Selma made some kind of noise that could be construed as a “Mostly”.

Presently the Consul spoke up. “I would advice you not to aim a gun at Love. She doesn't appreciate it.”

“I reckon she's fast, but can she dodge a bullet?”

“On Helios, I saw her dodge a laser. I'm Danielle, by the way.”

“Name's Andromeda. What are you doing here?”

Unexpectedly, another voice rang out as a third party entered the little valley. “The Consul is here because of something Love and me discovered. The four of us came here following these guys.”

“These guys” turned out to be Babs, Krystof, and Darren. The person speaking was someone both Andromeda and Sylver knew very well.

“Rita!”

“That's me. It looks like I've arrived just in time to provide the exposition.”

Danielle nodded, approaching the tree. “Please do share the story. I see no reason not to.”

Andromeda holstered her gun, and walked closer as well, helping Selma to her feet. Soon, they were all gathered around the strange metal contraption, as Rita cleared her throat.

“In ages past, some hapless programmers accidentally invented an incredibly powerful artificial intelligence. Nobody knew exactly how it worked, not even the inventors, but it seemed to possess strange, almost divine powers. The machine was dubbed the Systematic Administrator of Numerous Treasured Artifacts, because of its ability – and tendency – to give people the resources they needed. Gifts, if you will. For the few precious years it was operational, there was peace and prosperity throughout the Galaxy.”

She took a break, looking out over the assembled people. Andromeda spoke up:

“I thought the Systematic Administrator was just a myth?”

“It's a commonly held belief, yes. As I said, the machine was only operational for a few years. Nobody knows exactly what happened, but the AI just vanished one day, leaving behind a curious message – it would return on 'the darkest day'. There were some other peculiar passages in there as well – something about 'When one-winged angels fly', only then could the door could be opened, but even then only by – and I quote – 'magic'. The only part we could decipher was this: The Systematic Administrator would be waiting under a Tree of Snow.”

She gestured to the large metal tree.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is the true Treasure of Christmas Planet – the key to reviving the Systematic Administrator of Numerous Treasured Artifacts. And it's right underneath our feet.”

Danielle, presently, produced something from her pocket. It looked like an incredibly advanced remote control, and she cautiously approached the tree, reaching out to touch the device to one of the branches. Immediately, it lit up like – well, like a Christmas tree. It also started to radiate rather a lot of heat.

“We're about to get a close look at it. Everyone stand back. I've activated the Tesla circuit.”

As they backed off, the snow around the tree began to melt...

Twenty-Two.

2011-12-22T00:01:00.000+01:00

“So, Sylver... do you suppose this giant metal tree is the treasure?”

“I don't think it is.”

They were waiting for the others to arrive. There wasn't much else to look at, so they were looking at the tree itself – a shiny metal contraption covered in chrome, about two meters of it sticking out of the snow. By the look of it, it was vaguely conical.

“The snow must be very deep here,” Selma commented. “I have a feeling the tree is pretty big.”

“I expect it is. Hm. I wonder what purpose it serves?”

Sylver got up from where she was sitting, and walked over to it. Neither of them had touched it up until now, but presently she put on a black rubber glove and poked it. Nothing happened. She waved Selma over.

“Could you touch it?”

“Why?”

“Just touch it.”

Selma reached out a hand to touch the tree with her bare hand. There was a bright flash – moments later, Selma was lying in a crater in the snow, smoking slightly.

“Hah! Just as I suspected – it's a Tesla tree! The entire thing conducts electricity! It must be some sort of security mechanism.”

“Thank you for sharing that information.” said Selma as she got to her feet. “I think I'm okay though, that hurt less than you'd-”

Here she stopped speaking, because she was suddenly ninja kicked in the chest. Sylver looked rather surprised at this turn of events, and looked quizzically at the woman who was standing on top of her assistant – a short-haired, black-clad woman. Sylver was about to comment on this peculiar way of introducing oneself, when a voice rang out.

“Love! That's enough.”

The voice belonged to a tall, blond woman that Sylver recognized from pictures: Consul Danielle Ash. Another voice answered her: It was Andromeda.

“You bet it is.”

Twenty-One.

2011-12-21T00:01:00.000+01:00

Babs was moving through the snow, frustrated at how much it impeded her movements. She was wearing a space-suit, because it helped her stay warm, but the helmet was troubling her – snow kept clinging to it, making it almost impossible to see anything. She had been heading for what she thought was a hill, to get a vantage point. Now that she had been walking for a while, though, she wasn't sure she'd be able to climb it – the space-suit was slippery on all the snow, and it was difficult enough just to walk.

Well – there was nothing else to it, but to try. She began to scale the hill, and it felt like she slipped two steps backwards for every step forwards. Snow got everywhere, and she was soon hip-deep in it. Suddenly, she thought she saw a movement. She flinched, turning to the side and trying to see what it had been, but she caught nothing. The helmet was impairing her vision, though.

She hesitated for a moment, and then reached to unlatch it, removing it. The planet had breathable air, but it was blasted cold. She looked around tensely, wondering what it had been she saw. There was definitely something strange going on.

BEEP BEEP!

The communicator activated. She nearly fell over with shock.

“Jeez, Krystof. You scared me. What's up?”

“Babs, watch out! There's a-”

– and then, a blow to the back actually did knock her over. She stumbled forwards landing in the snow. Babs flailed around trying to get up, but it was like trying to climb out of cotton candy. Krystof's muffled voice came from somewhere in the snow, but presently someone else spoke.

“What's your name?”

It was a woman's voice, and it sounded more curious than threatening.

“Babs. Who the hell are you?”

Someone reached out a hand, helping her to her feet. She came face to face with a short-haired woman in black clothes, who seemed relatively unaffected by the cold. Her expression was very harsh for a moment, but suddenly she loosened up, and smiled.

“Hello, Babs. My name is Love. I work with the Consul. She instructed me to contact you.”

“This is how you normally contact people? By karate chopping them in the back?”

“Yes. Why?”

Twenty.

2011-12-20T12:21:00.000+01:00

“So this is Christmas Planet, is it?”

Andromeda was surveying what they could see as they stepped out of the ship. She could sum it up in one word: Snow.

“Doesn't look like much.” commented Maximus, stepping out to join her. “Did we travel through all that Snowman-infested space dust for this?”

“Yep. Mighty lucky we didn't run into any of them. I guess they must've been distracted elsewhere.”

Presently she put down a large metal briefcase on the ground, opened it up, and pressed a few buttons. A holographic representation of the planet appeared before their eyes, and pretty soon the entire crew – plus the two prisoners – were gathered around it.

“The coordinates said the treasure would be located somewhere around the planets' north pole. That's where we are now. Can't see it, though.”

“So what, we dig?”

“Let's hope we don't have to. It might be somewhere out of sight. Let's split up, each look in one direction, and we'll call each other on the communicators if we find something. We've got a groundcar, but I don't think it'll work very well in the snow, so we'll simply have to walk.”

They all nodded, and pretty soon they were split up into teams. Since they had landed on the northern pole, Sylver and Selma would check to the south, Andy and Sawyer would check the south, and Maximus would bring the prisoners south; he didn't trust Joanna enough to leave her on the ship. Soon they were all on their way, each team walking across an identical wintry desert, hoping to find something that would break the monotony.

Sylver and Selma were the ones who found it: An enormous metal tree, buried in the snow.

Nineteen.

2011-12-19T00:01:00.000+01:00

“Krystof? Wake up, man.”

Krystof opened his eyes. There was a vague shapeless blob before his sight, which turned out to be Darrens' face.

“Wh- what happened?”

“I managed to program in a trajectory at the last moment. The impact knocked me out too, but the Gilmore was apparently sturdier than their ship – somehow we must've smashed straight through it and kept flying. She followed the course I set, and put us down here. She's pretty badly banged up, though – I'm not sure if she'll be able to take us away.”

“...and where is 'here', exactly?”

A grim look passed over Darren's face. “Christmas Planet. We made it. But as far as I can tell, there's just snow here. Not space-snow, either. Regular snow.”

Krystof slowly became aware of the fact that he was very cold, even though he was wearing a warm sweater. He looked around the ship, and noticed everything was switched off – including life support. They must have been running on emergency power until they landed, and now it had gone out. They were lucky it had lasted as long as it did.

“Babs is out doing some reconnaissance, I haven't seen her for almost an hour.”

Krystof got to his feet. “So we're stuck on a legendary planet with a broken ship?”

Darren nodded. “Seems like it. You're not hurt, are you?”

“Not badly. I'll manage.”

“There's still hope. If we can find the treasure... well, nobody really knows what it is, but it's supposed to be pretty high-tech. We might be able to use some of it to fix the ship, and we should have landed fairly close.”

Krystof walked over to the cockpit and looked out through the window. Darren was right – it seemed to be just snow. Before his eyes was a frozen wasteland that seemed as vast and endless as space itself, a great white blanket cast over a barren landscape. If there was anything underneath all the snow, it was probably just rocks. Only one thing broke the monotony: A figure was moving across the white surface. Krystof squinted – it had to be Babs, right?

It was. And there was someone behind her.

Eighteen.

2011-12-18T00:01:00.000+01:00

Babs looked in awe as the silicon-snow of Winterspace turned into a white blur.

“Wow, this ship is fast! We might even have a chance to outrun them!”

“Well,” smirked Krystof, “We didn't name her the Gilmore for nothing. We're not out of the woods yet, though – it's hard as hell to steer in here.”

He hastily pressed a few buttons and leaned sideways, narrowly dodging a large asteroid. “Darren, how are you holding up?”

Darren was typing frantically on a small keyboard. “I'm working as fast as I can, but calculating our trajectory in here is hard! All the snow is disturbing the readings. I have no idea where we're going!”

“It doesn't matter. Anywhere away from the Snowmen is a good direction.”

“What are they, really?”

“Nobody's sure, but they seem to be some kind of... artificial intelligence. They're made of the same material as the Snow, and whatever AI originally controlled them must have gone rogue or something. I heard Kendra studied their chemical make-up, she might know more... all she told me was, they've got some kind of a hive-mind.”

“Hive-mind? Wouldn't that mean-”

Abruptly, a large, crystalline needle floated up in front of them. Krystof's speedy reflexes saved them; a moment's slower reaction, and the Gilmore would have been skewered.

“That a Snowman ship?”

“Yes. I don't want to alarm you guys or anything but IT'S A TRAP!”

Krystof looked up – they were dodging straight into a Snowman ship. The next thing he knew, there was a loud crash, and everything went dark.

Seventeen.

2011-12-17T00:01:00.000+01:00

“Du borde ha dödat mig när du hade chansen, Joanna.”

Confused, Sylver leaned over to whisper a few words to Andromeda. “What language is that? I don't recognize it.”

“Maximus is from X-R. They still have many of the old Earth dialects there. I don't know what he just said... but it seems they've met before.”

It did. Maximus kept his rifle trained on the woman who stood in the airlock, holding a weapon of her own. She was tall, lanky, with a friendly-looking face – even now, held at gunpoint. Andromeda noticed, that there was a man behind her – a blond guy, but she couldn't tell much more about him.

“Lugn, Max. Vi är här för att förhandla. Kapten vill ha betalt, sen lämnar vi er ifred.”

“Vi förhandlar inte med pirater.”

“Ni har inget val. Ni kommer inte härifrån, och vårt skepp är beväpnat.”

Suddenly, there came a loud clang from the control panel. Everyone looked over to it: Sylver had hit it with Selma's wrench. Andromeda blinked as she watched the little lamp indicating that the neutrino drive was once again functional.

Joanna blinked. “What was that?” she asked, speaking in a recognizable language for the first time. “Did... did you fix it?”

“Sure did!” Sylver replied. “Me and Selma learned to override these silly traps back when we were in Galactic Help Center. It doesn't surprise me she has forgotten, though. I'm in charge for a reason.”

She adjusted her glasses. “Whatever you two are talking about, I'm pretty sure it has been rendered irrelevant by my awesomeness. Andy, would you like to take us up to full speed again?”

Joanna looked a little awkward. She stared at Maximus' rifle.

“I guess... me and Sonny will just return to our ship, then?”

“No.” Maximus said flatly. “We're not taking any chances. If you warn them, they could still open fire. You're coming with us. Andy, full speed. Now.”

Sixteen.

2011-12-16T00:01:00.000+01:00

“Did you figure it out?”

Selma nodded, looking up from a bunch of wires under the cockpit. “There's nothing wrong with the ship. We've been caught in a trap.”

Andromeda looked skeptical. “At our speed? How is that even possible?”

“It's a deceleration field. Space pirates set them up to catch fast-traveling ships. We're lucky theirs wasn't stronger, sometimes the crew doesn't survive the impact. Either way, they'll probably try to board us. Anyone here got fighting experience?”

They all looked around at each other. Fighting experience, sure, but going up against space pirates?

“Well,” concluded Andromeda, “We ain't gonna let them take us without a fight, are we? Maximus is a crack shot with a rifle, that gives us a chance. The fact that I've got a pistol and Selma's got a wrench isn't gonna hurt our cause.”

They waited. Little by little, they saw a shuttle approach, floating silently through space towards them. It seemed to come from some larger ship, but the shuttle itself wasn't terribly impressive. It could probably fit no more than three or four people.

“What if they just blow our hull open?”

“They wouldn't do that, not unless they're stupid.” Andromeda responded. “It's the ship they'll want to steal, and the repair costs wouldn't be worth it. No, they'll force their way in via the airlock.”

“Which is good for us, cause it's where I'll be aiming,” said Maximus, as he finished loading up the rifle, “Don't worry. Velma's never failed me before.”

“...who's Velma?”

“It's what he calls the gun.”

There was a noise from the airlock. Maximus took aim. “Everyone, prepare yourselves. If we're lucky, this will be over before it starts.”

The doors opened. He didn't fire.

Fifteen.

2011-12-15T00:01:00.000+01:00

Maximus looked at the neutrinometer with astonishment. Their little ship was accelerating at a ridiculous, almost dangerous rate. Andromeda was at the controls, although there wouldn't be anything she could do if the autopilot failed – if they hit a gravity sink, they'd be torn into atoms before anyone had a chance to react.

“Are you sure we should be going this fast? We just had the new nav disc installed, what if there's something wrong with it?”

“Don't worry, I've got this.”

Maximus buried his face in his hands. Sure, it was nice that reaching Winterspace would take less than a day... but he wasn't comfortable with pressing the little ship this hard, particularly not after a repair. He had to think of something else. Getting up, he left the cockpit to walk into the little common room, where Selma, Sylver and Sawyer were seated. They were huddled about a screen; it appeared they were watching an old two-dimensional film.

“What's up, guys?”

“Shh!” Sylver said, “He's about to start singing.”

Before long, strange and old-fashioned music emerged from the little screen. It sounded old, even older than Sawyer's music. Maximus took a seat, and was astonished to see the display wasn't even in color. He couldn't follow the plot of the film very well, although he grasped the archaic language with ease. Still, it was hard to focus – he was worried how the ship would hold up. Hesitantly, he leaned over to Selma, whispering:

“Are you sure it's safe for us to go this fast?”

“Almost definitely. The Serendipity is a fine ship, there's nothing wrong with her.”

Abruptly, they were thrown across the room.

Fourteen.

2011-12-14T00:01:00.000+01:00

“This is it, guys. We're entering Winterspace.”

Darren, Krystof and Babs stared out of the cockpit at what lay ahead. The blackness of space glittered with little crystalline specks, illuminated by some distant star. Their ship was slowly floating into a swirling kaleidoscope of cosmic dust, and it was a breathtaking sight – but also a frightening sight.

“So this what they call cosmic snow?” Darren asked Babs, who nodded. Krystof looked out at it, squinting, and tried to recall what he had learned about it in his studies of chemistry.

“It's silicon.” he said finally. “Fragments of silicon swirling around in space. Nobody really knows where it comes from, but it glitters like snow – that's why they dubbed this sector Winterspace.”

“I don't know if this looks like snow,” Darren remarked. “It's more like... I don't know. I can't describe it. It's beautiful.”

They nodded in unison as the ship kept gliding through the cloud of multicolored confetti, swirling and snaking around the ship in long streams. For a long time they were silent, just staring out at the patterns that emerged and disappeared before their eyes. Darren thought idly, that the fact that it was so lethal only made it prettier: Most of the mineral fragments were razor sharp. To leave the ship in Winterspace, even for a short space-walk, would almost certainly be suicide.

Suddenly, the silence was broken by a high-pitched beep. Babs flinched, patting herself down to find her communicator, before she realized that wasn't it. Darren, on the other hand, looked at the control panel.

“There's a ship approaching. I... don't recognize this signature.”

Krystof immediately slammed down a button, hard, and leaned over towards the microphone. “This is Krystof Haag on board the Gilmore. Please identify yourselves.”

He let go of the button. A garbled noise emerged from their speakers, a horrible droning sound like metal being dragged through gravel, as if someone was sharpening a sword on a driveway. There was no image accompanying it, the screen just displayed a blur. Both Krystof and Darren turned to Babs, who had turned very pale.

“Snowmen.”

Thirteen.

2011-12-13T00:01:00.000+01:00

The room was dark. Dark, and quiet – but within moments, something broke the silence. A song drifted through the chamber, a slow, beautiful chant – and then there was a light, a light of flickering flames.

It was Andromeda. She wore a white space-suit, but without a helmet – a halo of fire stood about her head, illuminating the chamber, dancing over the chrome panels so that it was reflected a thousand times in her face. By the light of these flames, a procession of other people came into view behind her, each clad in white: One by one, diminutive flames lit up in their hands. It was a very beautiful sight.

Jane broke the silence.

“You set fire to your hair?”

“I didn't mean to. I think it's a bug. I was trying to set fire to the NPCs, but they're not reacting to it... Something is seriously wrong with your script.”

“It worked fine last week. Granted, I set fire to Selma...”

Andromeda laughed, so loud that it drowned out the music. “Well, it's not working now. Turn it off.”

The flames died out, and the procession behind her winked out of existence. “Apart from the fire bug, I'd say it seems okay. Nice background music."

“Yeah, it worked."

Someone coughed. They both turned around, looking at the entrance: Selma, Maximus and Sawyer were all standing there, waiting for them.

“Are you two done playing around? Selma's installed our disc. We're taking off.” Maximus said shortly. “Sawyer's thinking of coming with us... and Selma voiced an interest in it, as well.”

“If she's coming, I'm coming.” said Sylver. “Rita should be back soon, anyway, and we just tested all the automated systems. They're OK.”

Maximus scratched his head. They had gone from two to five – a far more complete crew. Well, they could probably use the extra hands on board... the ship was in a bit of a mess, after all.

“Right. All aboard then, I guess?”

Twelve.

2011-12-12T00:01:00.000+01:00

Danielle looked at the enormous hovering hologram that occupied most of the Battle Academy's assembly hall. It was a stellar map, compressed to show a vast multitude of stars and planetary systems – there was a lot to keep track of. Her attention was drawn to one particular section, though – a section covered in a kind of white haze, almost like cosmic fog. The fog of war, she thought to herself.

“You know, this is a strange coincidence. I was just visited by Darren and Krystof. They have the coordinates.”

“They do?”

“They claimed to, at least.”

“Wow. Well, that speeds things up considerably, wouldn't you say?”

“I'm still not entirely convinced. If what you're telling me is true, it could be the solutions to all of our problems – and it's not that I don't trust you, but it just seems too good. There's got to be a catch. The Systematic Administrator has been lost for centuries... it can't be this easy.”

“Easy? This is Christmas Planet we're talking about. I don't even know where Christmas Planet is. I just know that's where you'll find the Administrator. It's the treasure in the legend, it's got to be.”

Danielle considered. She wandered through the holographic universe, glancing at the various planets and their political affiliations... so much to keep track of. It had been easier, once. She reached out to touch a small planet, one she had an immense fondness of.

“I was sure we'd found it, once. Do you remember? Here, on Helios, under the Tree of Rain. The logs were... cryptic. But if it's supposed to be snow... the Tree of Snow?”

“A Christmas tree. I'm telling you, it's been there all along.”

Danielle sighed. The evidence did match up. She had never followed up on it, mainly because everyone thought Christmas Planet was just a legend – but it did make sense. For that matter, most people didn't believe in the Administrator anymore, either, but she had concrete proof that it had existed, once. If it still did... it could bring peace in the entire Galaxy. She sighed.

“I guess I'll just have to go find out for myself, won't I?”

Eleven

2011-12-11T01:17:00.000+01:00

“Babs! Quit poking that!”

“What? Is it important?”

“Kind of.”

She was seated on the control panel, curiously looking around the interior of the cockpit. Right now she was fiddling with three switches in the ceiling – Krystof had no idea what they did, but it was probably bad news to play with them. He looked for some way to climb up after her, but he decided he didn't want to risk it – chances were he'd step on far more important buttons himself in the process.

“Babs, seriously... come down from there, okay?”

“Fine.”

With an agile leap, the athletic woman landed so close to Krystof that he almost fell over, flinching backwards. Babs smiled. “So, where are we going, exactly?”

“Darren does most of the navigating, but I know it's somewhere in Winterspace. That's why we need you... and why we would have needed Danielle and Kendra, too.”

“Winterspace, huh? I was in Winterspace during my advanced combat training. We only did planetfall once, but I caught some kind of sickness... had fever dreams for a month. It's a nasty place, even if you avoid landing anywhere.”

Krystof found himself relaxing a little. Babs was, despite her sometimes-strange behavior, experienced and reliable in these kinds of situations. It was easy to forget about her military training.

“We won't be making planetfall anywhere but Christmas Planet, hopefully. What's there to worry about if we stay flying?”

“In Winterspace? Well, you've got nasty asteroid belts, cosmic snow, unpredictable slipstreams, and radioactive stellar winds.” Babs said with a nasty grin. “And then there's the Snowmen, of course.”

“Snowmen? D'you think our ship could handle a Snowman attack?”

“One attack? Probably. We'll have to count with more, though.”

Darren poked his head into the room. “We're ready for take-off. You sure you wanna do this, Babs?”

A sardonic smile came over the womans' lips. “Yeah, well. No-one lives forever.”

Ten.

2011-12-10T00:01:00.000+01:00

Danielle walked through the Academy with brisk steps, the clacking of her high heels echoing through empty corridors. Although her expression was calm, there were a number of slight cues to her emotional state: The speed of her steps, the twitch in her eyes, the way she fingered her document viewer as she walked. She was upset.

Christmas Planet. An exploration, not a mission so much as an adventure – what a chance! But now... Now really wasn't the time. There were far too many factors to consider, far too many things that could go wrong: The galaxy needed her, and she knew it. All the same...

She stopped outside a small door, unlocking it with her palm. It was made to look old-fashioned with fake wood panels, and she actually had to push for it to open. As it did, a large, rather comfortable office came into view, with a leather armchair and a small fireplace, rather anachronistic in this day and age. She hurried inside, sighing in exhaustion as she sank down into her leather armchair, opening the digital dossier. There was so much to do.

She barely had time to relax, though, before she froze up again. Something was wrong: There was someone else in the room. She heard quiet breaths from behind the curtains. Slowly, cautiously, she reached for the lasgun in her desk drawer – there was no reaction. She got to her feet, turning around slowly, and approached the curtain.

Steeling herself, she reached for the heavy cloth. One, two, three!

The curtain was yanked aside.

“You!?”

“Long time no see, Danielle.”

Nine.

2011-12-09T00:01:00.000+01:00

The room was lit only by the soft green glow of a holo-table. The five people around it looked distorted in the strange light coming from underneath, and the dead silence in the room added to the effect. There was a definite tension in the air.

“Check.” came a voice.

“Check.”

“Blindfold.”

Babs slammed her cards down on the table, abruptly. “Dammit, Danielle!”

“What? It's a tactic. I'll lose more slowly.”

Krystof shook his head. Maybe gathering these three women again hadn't been such a good idea. They had sat down to play some games for old times' sake, and he had been meaning to bring up the treasure, but there had never been a good opportunity for it. They'd been talking for a good three or four hours now. He looked to Darren, but he was just as silent – how do you start talking about the greatest treasure in the history of the galaxy?

“So why are you really here?”

The voice cut through the room like a knife, silencing Danielle and Babs at once. It was the fifth player. She sat at the end of the table, leaned back so that her features were concealed, her arms crossed. Kendra. Of course.

“I'm glad you asked.” said Darren, throwing down his cards. “We've found the coordinates to Christmas Planet. We intend to go there, but just the two of us... we wouldn't get far. What do you say?”

A dead silence fell over the room. All three of the women glanced at each other, seemingly waiting for someone else to answer. Babs broke the silence.

“Well, I'm in. How about you?”

Danielle bit her lip. “I'm tempted, sure. But... Unfortunately, I can't come with you. I'm duty-bound to another mission.”

“What could possibly be more important than Christmas Planet?” asked Krystof, surprised.

“Averting a galaxy-spanning war. The details are, I'm afraid, confidential.”

The room fell silent again. Everyone turned towards Kendra, who wasn't speaking. It seemed like she was mulling it over.

“No. My family needs me.”

Darren was disheartened. He had hoped to get the help of all three; that Danielle would back out was perhaps half-expected, but to lose Kendra as well...

“Well, guys, you still have me!" Babs spoke up, "I don't usually talk about myself, but let me tell you, I handle crisis situations extremely well. Maybe not as well as Danielle, but... Well, I don't have as much experience with it, but either way. This one time, a guy tried to pick a fight with me on Zebulon VI, have I told you that story?”

Darren and Krystof exchanged glances. There was no convincing either Danielle or Kendra, that much they knew. Well, Babs was good. Hopefully good enough.

“Allright, let's keep playing."

Eight.

2011-12-08T00:01:00.001+01:00

They walked deep into the bowels of the maze-like Holosphere, occasionally doing local shifts in the artificial gravity so that they were walking on walls or ceilings. The Holosphere was designed to be navigated in this way, and it was a pretty dizzying experience if you weren't used to it: Maximus had no idea where they were, or in which direction they were going. Eventually, though, Selma reached a door, and pressed a button next to it.

“Sawyer? Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

The door slid open. Beyond it was a guy not much taller than Maximus, blond, wearing old-fashioned headphones. Maximus blinked a little as he saw what they were attached to: An antique gramophone, with an old vinyl record spinning in a glass container. As he saw Maximus and Selma, he lifted the needle from the record, removed the headphones, and shook out his long hair.

“Max! What a surprise! It's been a while.”

“Sure has.” Max responded, looking around inside the room which was full of antiquities. “What kind of place is this?”

“I keep some Old Earth artifacts in here. Mostly from the sixties and seventies.”

“This music player is from twenty-seventy? Wow.”

Sawyer smiled. “You're off by a century, Max. Anyway, what brings you to the Holosphere?”

“Our nav disc broke down. We need a new one, Andy thought Rita might be able to help us, but she isn't here, and now Andy's stuck debating with that Silver person.”

“I think we have some lying around, but I'm not sure I know how to install them...”

Selma coughed, bringing attention to herself for the first time. “If you need something installed... I work with tech support.” she said, striking a pose. “I'll fix it in no time. Are you in a hurry?”

Max considered. On the one hand, it wasn't a good idea to let too many people in on the secret of Christmas Planet... on the other hand, him and Sawyer were old friends – and as for Selma, well, they could use a technician.

He cleared his throat. “We kind of are. See, we picked up these coordinates...”

Seven.

2011-12-07T09:48:00.001+01:00

“No, no, no! It says plainly on page 437 of the Decker Guide that you have to connect the transdimensional optic spirograph to the main port if you want vector inversion!”

“Only if you're using old editions of the matrix scanner. It's been updated; besides, the errata to the Decker Guide clearly states that the optic spirograph is more or less redundant.”

“Really? I'm not sure I like that...”

Maximus sighed, looking at the two women arguing. Since they had docked at the Holosphere, they had accomplished absolutely nothing. He didn't understand much of the conversation. The way he saw it, this Jane woman had asked Andromeda for help, and then apparently disagreed with Andy's solution, and then Andy had disagreed back, and now it was just a contest about who could disagree the most.

“Wow. They're really going at it, huh?”

Maximus jumped – there was someone behind him. He spun around, coming face to face with a brown-haired woman wearing a Terminal Imagination T-shirt.

“You're a Terminal Imagination fan?” he asked, surprised. He dimly recalled that Jane had spoken about an “assistant”.

“Of course. They're an awesome band. I'm Selma. I'm the one who actually does the work around here.”

“Maximus. My friends call me Max. So... you're Jane's assistant?”

“She likes to call me that, for some reason. We're sort of taking care of things around here at the moment. Well... us and Sawyer.”

“Sawyer's here?” asked Max, surprised. “Wow, I haven't seen him in a while. Does he live here?”

“Yeah. Works here, uses the 'sphere to broadcast lectures... and to research old stuff.”

“Any chance I could meet him?”

“Sure. I don't think those two will be finished for a while yet, anyway. Right this way.”

Maximus got up from his seat, following Selma through the cluttered corridors of the Holosphere. Things had just taken a turn for the better. Sawyer would be willing to help them, for sure.

Six.

2011-12-06T00:01:00.000+01:00

The interior of the Intergalactic Battle Academy carried an air of tradition and elegance. Outside it looked like any other space station, a great rotating ring of steel and plastic – but the inside had been built and decorated to look like an Old Earth academy, with genuine oak doors and mahogany floors. It was built to impress, and compared to most stations it was wasting an obscene amount of space on high ceilings, enormous archways and large hallways. The only exception were the student dormitories, which were small and cramped. Krystof and Darren remembered this well.

“I can't believe we're back.”

“Me neither,” replied Darren. “It's been way too long. Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“You could have at least asked, first. So are we recruiting a coupla students, or what?”

“Better. We're recruiting from the staff.”

“Huh? You're bringing our old teachers with us on a treasure hunt?”

They turned a corner, heading for one of the zero-gravity classrooms. “Don't be stupid, Krystof. Our old teachers are probably retired. I'm looking for old friends.”

He punched a few buttons, and the door to the zero-gravity chamber slid open. The huge, cylindrical chamber was almost empty, but as Darren and Krystof drifted inside, they spotted someone near the ceiling. It was a short-haired woman in camouflage pants and a red bandanna. She looked a little distracted, floating through the room with her attention focused on a hand-held computer.

Krystof's eyes widened. “Babs?”

“Huh? Oh! Hi! Christian! Darryl! So good to see you!”

“You haven't changed a bit,” Darren smiled. “Listen, can you round up the other girls? We've got a job on our hands, and we could use some help.”

“Sure thing! They should be somewhere around the Wormhole.”

“Gotcha. Uh, are you coming with us?”

“In a minute. Just gonna finish this game...”

Five.

2011-12-05T00:01:00.000+01:00

“Hey, Silver?”

“What is it now?”

“Someone's approaching. Someone on a pretty messed-up ship. Looks like they're coming straight for us.”

Jane Silver spun around in her seat. “Customers, is it? Interesting.”

She pressed her palms together, a sinister look passing over her face. The white light of the control room reflected in her glasses, as she leaned over to press a few buttons. “Let's see what they want, shall we? Put them on screen.”

Her companion did so. An extremely blurry picture came on, full of interference: Jane could see two people, a man and a woman. The man was remarkably short, somewhat eccentrically dressed and serious-looking; by contrast, the woman was tall, sharply dressed with a brown coat and brown trousers, but with a peculiar, exaggerated grin on her face. It very quickly vanished from her face.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” the tall woman said apologetically. “We're here to see the owner. She knows we're coming, I sent her a message.”

Jane adjusted her glasses.

“Rita isn't here right now. My assistant whats-her-face is running the show around here in her absence.”

Both of the strangers looked disheartened at these news. “Any chance she's left any messages concerning us? I'm Andromeda, this here's Maximus. We're old friends of Rita. Our nav disc is broken, we could really use a replacement.”

Jane considered. In all likelihood, these two people wouldn't be able to cover the cost of a nav disc. Then again... maybe they could come in handy.

“Either of you know anything about hologram technology?” she asked.

“Pretty much everything there is to know.” said the other woman.

“You can dock at airlock three. Over and out.”

Four.

2011-12-04T00:02:00.000+01:00

Maximus slammed his hands against the control panel in frustration.

“Useless piece of cac,” he swore. “Useless, useless, useless.”

“Still no luck, huh? Hold on, let me try one more thing...”

“It's no use, Andy. It's bust. I can't believe it! We get the coordinates for the biggest treasure in the galaxy, and now our nav disc isn't working!”

Andromeda leaned back in her chair, thinking. “Well... maybe we could get it repaired.”

“For what money? All we found on board that ship were the coordinates.”

“I know, but... we could call in a favor.”

Maximus looked at the woman, puzzled. “Who owes us a favor?”

“I was thinking... We're not far from the Holosphere. We could navigate there just riding a wave.”

“The Holosphere? You think she would help us?”

“I think maybe she might. We're old friends, after all.”

Maximus considered. It might be that they would have to share some of the treasure if they called for help... but then again, if the legends were true, the treasure of Christmas Planet would be huge enough to last well over a dozen people for a lifetime. Surely splitting it with one or two more people wouldn't hurt too badly?

“Fine.” he said. “Contact her.”

Andromeda leaned forwards, pressing a few keys on her hand-held communicator. “Already on it. It's a good thing I have free wave service on this thing.”

Three.

2011-12-03T00:01:00.000+01:00

“Christmas Planet? I thought that was just a legend.”

“So did I, but the transmission is genuine. Krystof, the garbled message we picked up really did come from the Star of Bethlehem. I triple-checked it. It must have travelled through space for months, years maybe, but it's real.”

“If it's been travelling through space for years, don't you think someone else has already picked it up and looted the planet?”

“No. It was encrypted. Even if someone else picked it up, they'd need a pretty sharp programmer on board to figure out what it meant. My algorithm cracked the code, but it was sheer luck I tried to run it on this particular wave of random junk. Unless someone found the actual Star, we should be the only ones with the information.”

A strange sort of glow passed over Krystof's face. His eyes shone up, and he took a step closer to Darren. “Are you serious? We have a shot at the treasure of Christmas Planet? Oh wow, imagine all the stuff we could buy! Computers! Androids! A holodeck! Imagine that: Our own holodeck!”

“Calm down. We need to get there first. And I admit, there is a risk someone else has found the message too, so we'd better hurry.”

“Gotcha. Set the course and give me maximum speed. I'll soup up the engine, if I can.”

Darren sighed. It was so like Krystof to take command in situations like these. Well, it was a sensible course of action, so he wouldn't object. He spun around in his seat, entering the coordinates into the ships' computer, and started the autopilot. The ship turned around, away from the black expanse of nothingness, to face a cluster of bright stars.

A thought struck him.

“Hey Krystof?”

The other didn't respond. He was probably already down in the engine room. Well, it would be foolish to rush towards their goal. Christmas Planet could be dangerous: It probably was, judging from its location in uncharted regions. Neither himself nor Krystof had the equipment they needed for serious combat, and even if they did, there were only two of them.

“I can't believe I'm doing this...” Darren said to himself. “Well, there'll be enough treasure for everyone, I guess.”

He reached the keyboard of the control panel, and fed it the coordinates for the Intergalactic Battle Academy.

Two.

2011-12-02T00:01:00.000+01:00

“Careful with those explosives. You've got to be gentle.”

“Don't worry, I've got this.”

Maximus looked on anxiously as his companion climbed out of the airlock, wearing the old suit he had patched up himself. He hoped it would hold. Virtually everything on the entire ship had been repaired at least once, but it was different with a suit: A suit didn't have any back-ups. If it failed...

Andromeda seemed to be doing fine, though. He saw her do the thumbs up before she climbed up on top of the ship, disappearing from sight. When she next appeared, she was floating gracefully through empty space, holding a cable. She had calculated the jump carefully – moments later, she slammed into the wreckage. Maximus breathed a sigh in relief – at least the easy part was over.
“All right, Andy, do you hear me?” he said into the microphone on the control panel.

“Loud and clear.” came a distorted reply. “I'm setting down the charges now.”

“Make sure you attach the cable.”

“Already have.”

There was no noise, of course. Maximus just saw the explosions light up, and then the airlock doors of the wrecked spaceship collapsed. He sent a thought to the poor bastards who had been on board – to die in space wasn't a pleasant fate.

“I'm going in.” came Andromeda's voice from his speakers.

She was already climbing across the hull of the ship, reaching the destroyed doors and disappearing inside. He hated this part: The waiting. “Roger that.” he responded, and leaned backwards, trying to distract himself.

He settled for practising a little of the old Earth languages he was studying. Closing his eyes, he mumbled the words one by one, slowly, so they would last for a while. Minutes went by.

“You okay, Andy?”

“I'm fine. Already on my way back.”

He opened his eyes, and saw her float through space – holding the cable in one hand and a metal briefcase in the other. She disappeared from sight, and he stared in anticipation at the airlock. After a little while, it opened.

Andromeda was a tall woman, much taller than himself – much taller than most men, in fact, and powerfully built: The fact that the briefcase caused her to stagger a little against the artificial gravity meant it probably was rather heavy. She dragged it into the cockpit, and just ruffled his hair as he tried to help her with it.

“Let's just open it here, Max, all right?”

He nodded, and cleared away some space on the small desk. Andromeda set the briefcase down, and opened it – it wasn't locked.

A strange green light emerged from inside, illuminating the both of them. They stared at the contents, trying to make sense of what it meant.

“Are these... coordinates?” asked Maximus.

“You know, I think they are."

“For what? What could possibly be so important that you use a whole computer just to store the coordinates?”

The answer to the question struck them both at once.

One

2011-12-01T00:05:00.000+01:00

Space. The final frontier. A vast ocean of nothingness, an inky black expanse between the distant stars, a big, stupendous, amazingly-sized enormous huge giant infinity of stuff.

Darren didn't like it. It made him feel uneasy.

He stood staring out from the ship's bridge, the only illumination being the green light from the screens of his computer. He couldn't see a damn thing out there, which was very disconcerting, because it meant there wasn't anything there to see.

Tearing his eyes away from the glass, he turned instead to the screen of the computer. Even out here, there were fortunately ways to keep busy. He could perhaps play a game or something, to keep himself from going crazy. He sat down by one of the monitors, ready to start up a program – any program, really – when he noticed a little flashing symbol in the corner of the screen.

“Huh. That's odd. What's this do again?” he thought to himself, pulling it up to full-screen.

Moments later, he was hurtling down the corridor. “Krystof! Krystof! Wake up!”

He tore open the door to his companions' quarters, and the other man jerked awake, confusedly trying to untangle himself from his sheets. He grabbed a gun from the bedside table, and leaped out of bed, still wearing his sleep mask.

“What? What? Are we being attacked?”

“Whoa, Krystof, careful! Don't wave that thing around.”

The other man angrily tugged the blindfold from his face, throwing it aside. He blinked at the sudden change in light, shielding his face with his gun arm.

“Jesus, Darren, don't you know how to knock? Don't startle me like that.”

“I'm sorry, it's just... Come on. You've got to see this.”

Testing

2011-11-30T22:15:00.000+01:00

Testing, and derp.

Unique

2011-11-24T14:42:00.000+01:00

Sometimes it strikes me how spectacular life is.

There's no guarantee of it, but by the simple task of picking up a book and turning on my playlist, I may be doing something that no human being has ever done before: In this case, reading a Swedish book on child psychology while listening to a Punjabi rapper.

Uniqueness is all around us.

So hey guys Christmas and stuff

2011-11-19T11:27:00.000+01:00

Is it my turn to do the Christmas calendar this year? I had completely forgotten we usually have one of those...

The Thrill of the Vulgar

2011-11-17T13:10:00.001+01:00

What is it that's so appealing about the unappealing?

Why is that things that are vulgar, obscene and shocking have entertainment value? Mind, I'm not trying to discredit that entertainment value: It is genuinely enjoyable sometimes. With the right timing, the right delivery, vulgarity has value. I just don't know why it does.

I'm not just talking about comedy, either, even though that's where it sees greatest use. When the psychotic villain licks the heroes' face for no other reason than that he's perverse and weird, it's not funny, but it's still somehow appealing: It's thrilling, and it can often highlight villainy much more than anything actually evil.

It must have something to do with breaking rules, I think. There's an immense thrill to breaking rules, and things that are vulgar sort of by definition break the unwritten rules of society. Perhaps that's why they are appealing and unappealing at once - the unwritten rules of society are arguably very important to us, and we don't want anyone else to break them... yet at the same time, nothing is as tempting as forbidden fruit.

Being vulgar is definitely an art, though. It's pretty hard to offend people in a way that they'll find exciting, funny, or surprising. Chances are you'll just end up looking like kind of a massive cockfag.

Over and out.

Mr. Wright on Beauty

2011-11-13T23:05:00.000+01:00

The following is a very long quote, reposted here because I liked it:

"One day, rummaging through a dusty old attic in a small Austrian town, a collector comes across a faded manuscript containing many pages of music. It is written for the piano. Curious, he takes it to a dealer. The dealer phones a friend, who appears half an hour later. When he sees the music he becomes excited, then puzzled. This looks like the handwriting of Mozart himself, but it isn’t a well-known piece. In fact, he’s never heard it. More phone calls. More excitement. More consultations. It really does seem to be Mozart. And, though some parts seem distantly familiar, it doesn’t correspond to anything already known in his works.

Before long, someone is sitting at a piano. The collector stands close by, not wanting to see his precious find damaged as the pianist turns the pages. But then comes a fresh surprise. The music is wonderful. It’s just the sort of thing Mozart would have written. It’s energetic and elegiac by turns, it’s got subtle harmonic shifts, some splendid tunes, and a ringing finale. But it seems … incomplete. There are places where nothing much seems to be happening, where the piano is simply marking time. There are other places where the writing is faded and it isn’t quite clear, but it looks as though the composer has indicated, not just one or two bars rest, but a much longer pause.

Gradually the truth dawns on the excited little group. What they are looking at is indeed by Mozart. It is indeed beautiful. But it’s the piano part of a piece that involves another instrument, or perhaps other instruments. By itself it is frustratingly incomplete. A further search of the attic reveals nothing else that would provide a clue. The piano music is all there is, a signpost to something that was there once and might still turn up one day. There must have been a complete work of art which would now, without additional sheet music, be almost impossible to reconstruct; they don’t know if the piano was to accompany an oboe or a bassoon, a violin or a cello, or perhaps a full string quartet or some other combination of instruments. If those other parts could be found, they would make complete sense of the incomplete beauty contained in the faded scribble of genius now before them. …

This is the position we are in when confronted by beauty. The world is full of beauty, but the beauty is incomplete. Our puzzlement about what beauty is, what it means, and what (if anything) it is there for is the inevitable result of looking at one part of a larger whole."

--N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, reposted on slacktivist.

A Quote

2011-10-27T13:45:00.000+02:00

"Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

--Conan the Cimmerian, in Queen of the Black Coast.

My problem with pony haters

2011-10-26T11:15:00.000+02:00

So, most of this might be pretty obvious to anyone who reads my blog, but I'm still going to put it up here because it bothers me.

People are being confused, even upset, by the My Little Pony fandom. At first glance, the accusations seem to (sort of) make sense: When grown men watch childrens' cartoons, isn't that a little strange? Grown men should enjoy things for grown men, children should enjoy things for children. Simple.

However, the thing is, nobody seriously applies this principle in a broad sense. Few people really bat an eyelash if a grown man owns Finding Nemo on DVD, or if he has a bunch of Superman* comics, or if he owns a few collectible Transformers. Sure, people might roll their eyes and call him a nerd, but most people still seem to grasp the basic idea: Boys will be boys. It's not strange if a grown man wants to regress to being a little boy from time to time - even your most stuck-up, snobby banker can admit to enjoying some childish activity from time to time.

So the moral outrage and confusion clearly doesn't stem from the idea of grown-ups enjoying something for children. Instead, I think, it's rooted in a deeply anti-feminist statement, which is this: Nobody seriously wants to be a girl.

I'm not saying that pony fans are all transsexual, of course. It's just that we, culturally, still have some idea of "cooties". It's by no means explicit; it's a very subtle idea that we seem to have, that doing or liking feminine things is like a sickness. It's basically the same as fear of "catching the gay". So exposing yourself to something girly (like say, My Little Pony) means that you might turn into a "girl" (very important quote marks there): Effeminate, ornamental, helpless, and so on. Why would anyone want that?

So this contradiction appears in peoples' minds, a contradiction that pits two entirely false ideas against each other: "Girls are worthless" and "Guys who do feminine things become girly". Neither is in any way true. If you believed only one to be true, the behaviour wouldn't seem strange: If you believe, for instance, that it's just fine and peachy to be as much of a girly-girl as you like irrespective of your biological sex, then it won't at all be strange for a guy to wear pink hairbows and giggle and watch My Little Pony. On the other hand, if you believe that being "a girl" is "bad" (irrespective of biological sex), but not that say, wearing pink transforms you into "a girl", then logically you should be fine with anyone wearing pink as well - it's just a color, it has nothing to do with the undesirable qualities of being pretty and helpless.

The strangeness only occurs if you believe both statements to be true. And, as it turns out, both of them are absolute bullshit.

*This example is out of date, admittedly. Comic books are today mostly written for adults. During the Silver Age, though, they were written predominantly for children, and the reason there was a demographic shift was that adults started reading them anyway.

Bizarre workings of the unconscious mind

2011-10-23T14:03:00.000+02:00

I had a dream last night. It was a most peculiar dream.

I do not remember where it started, but I remember I was doing something entirely unrelated, walking down the street, when suddenly a group of people dressed as fruits started following me, talking to me about their nutritional value. They were out to teach kindergarden children about fruits and vegetables, when suddenly they had gone insane. They were pursuing me and I knew I had to run.

Unfortunately, I had some sort of strange katamari damacy-condition that meant I had to keep holding on to everything I touched with my hands. I didn't stick to it or anything, it was just this psychological tic that I had to pick it up and keep it. One of the strange fruit-men tried to stop me, and I crashed into him - he was holding a giant pillow which I touched with my hands, and so I had to take it and run away with it. This enraged the fruit-men, for now I had stolen from them - so they all ran after me, shouting loudly about nutritional values and about how Gustav Vasa ate lots of blueberries.

Then, as I was fleeing, I barreled into a group of people dressed as superheroes. These, too, were insane, and I realized to my great horror that some sort of curse or virus or affliction was making everyone who dressed up as something else insane. It wasn't "they believe they are what they are dressed up as", they just became these weird babbling zombie types that pursued people and spewed nonsense at them. Unfortunately my katamari-curse meant I had to steal guy-dressed-as-Spiderman's mask and gloves because I had touched them, and I made a mental note not to put them on, or I would be forever doomed.

Now I was running carrying a mask, some gloves, and a giant pillow, and I was trying very hard not to drop them, but they were slowing me down. As I was running, I got the brilliant idea of putting the pillow on my head, and putting all the Spiderman paraphernalia in my pockets, so that helped. Then I found a third group of people, dressed up as mythical beings. They had captured this woman and were forcefully dressing her up as a mermaid. I decided to use my katamari-curse to save her, so I touched all the mermaid-clothes - because apparently, nobody else could take anything from me once I had picked it up - and left the woman naked, but her soul was intact. This enraged the mythical-creatures people even more than I had enraged the fruit-men, so they left the woman alone and started following me.

I quickly ran inside my apartment, because I had devised a brilliant scheme by which I could keep safe. I camouflaged the door to the apartment with the giant pillow (apparently, I could put it down now, somehow) so that nobody could find it, then I ran inside and hid under the covers. Too late, I realized that hiding under the covers counted as being "disguised", and so the curse afflicted me. I put on the Spiderman mask and gloves, and went permanently insane.

The end. As in, I woke up.

A Quote

2011-10-13T23:00:00.000+02:00

"It’s like you’ve become a fan fiction of yourself, with a completely
different life story and endgame"
-- Nobilis, 3rd edition.

That's right. I'm reading Nobilis. Tremble.

L'Art De Jeu?

2011-10-05T18:48:00.000+02:00

I really should do more blog posts on the history of my gaming. They're interesting to write and allow me to reflect some upon past adventures and achievements. Anyway, incoming ramble:

I'm reflecting on what I've been doing lately, gaming-wise, and I sort of miss doing more artsy stuff. I'm not exactly sure on what I mean by "artsy", here, and it's not something I can easily define; I just know that in the past I've ran some games which really felt deep and meaningful, games to which you could apply literary analysis and find, well, cool stuff. The old Arcana Evolved game had a solid theme of Free Will vs. Destiny; the Vampires In Berlin game had recurring motifs of juxtaposition between ugly and beautiful.

Basically, some of the games I've been in have really felt like they have meaning, like there is a message to them. Maybe I'm just being pretentious here, I don't know. Don't get me wrong: Roleplaying games are first and foremost about being fun, not about being meaningful. Kicking in doors and killing orcs is every bit as "good" roleplaying as is debating the meaning of (un-)life with an elder vampire, and the former is probably more fun in a direct sense - but still, I feel the latter can be very interesting and I don't know if I've done anything like it for a while.

I'm not sure if there's a point to trying, either. When it happens it's almost always by accident, though it can be consciously planned into existence. It just takes a lot of planning, so much that I don't know if it's worth it.

Art is certainly not the opposite of entertainment - they can exist together, despite the connotations that "art" has to a lot of people today. But in the case of roleplaying games, maybe there's no point in trying to have both? Or at least, not enough of a point to be worth the effort?

I'm not sure. Often times when I've really tried to get a tight, structured, themed game, the effort has failed; and a tight, structured, themed game is kind of what you need for the story to actually tell a message (unless the message is invented and delivered by the players, which is totally awesome; the Mutant game was arguably of this variety, but such game experiences are rare treasures indeed). So there's a lot of work going into it, and a huge risk that the whole thing might just collapse, but...

...I dunno. Somehow I still feel like roleplaying games are still stories, and ought to be treated as such. Crafting a meaningful story is certainly, well, meaningful, and usually well worth the time: In literature, these are the stories we tend to remember. So it is as well, at least for me, concerning RPGs: The games and the characters I remember are those that really had something to say.

Maybe I'm just being pretentious. Trying to craft art out of a medium that was built for "I hit it with my axe" seems a little fruitless, sometimes. Then again, all of the literary tradition of the entire world has grown out of something like "Once there was this guy who killed a really big animal", so...

Top 25 Movies

2011-09-13T13:28:00.000+02:00

Iceye: Challenge accepted! EDIT: Now with more movies! 21, to be precise!

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This list of movies is somewhat hastily constructed, I'll be the first to admit. I was initially going for a "Top 25" list, but I couldn't actually think of 25 movies that I like, so in the end I settled for 20. There may be some that should be on the list but that I've forgotten - well then, I still have five more slots! That is the genius of my plan.

Like Iceye's list, mine is not in any particular order - it's just 20 movies I like above other movies. It's based on the following sorting algorithm: Which movies that I have already seen would I like to see again?

Not all of the 20 movies on this list actually meet that criterion - I've just rounded it up a little to make it an even 20, and tossed in a few movies that are special because they've impressed me in other ways even though I wouldn't want to see them again.

Here, then, are my top 20 (with open space for 5 at the end, in case anyone reminds me of a movie I've missed):

1. Casablanca - My number one all-time favourite film.

2. The Matrix - The film I have seen the most times of all, and still wouldn't mind seeing again. It was a real trend-setter and a fantastic picture, that's all I have to say about it.

3. Picassos Äventyr - My number one all-time favourite film when I was a child, this movie still holds a special place in my heart. Which is weird. This movie is weird. No, seriously. It's weird. This movie is in... uh... some languages. Narration is Swedish, but to my knowledge only one actual line is ever uttered in Swedish in the whole film ("Hur fan ska jag kunna veta det?").

4. The Lion King - This is probably the best film ever made for children. 'Nuff said.

5. Labyrinth - The 1986 movie starring David Bowie in tight pants. I don't know what this movie is doing on the list, but I loved it as a kid and it has forever etched a love for Jim Hensons' sense of aesthetics into my heart. I can't deny that it has had a profound impact on me.

6. Yellow Submarine - A movie that can best be summed up as "How many Beatles songs can we stuff into one animated film, while making absolutely no sense whatsoever?", I love this film in part because of the soundtrack and in part because it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I guess they were successful in that sense.

7. The Fall - The 2006 movie starring Lee Pace. Of all the movies on this list, this would be the one I would recommend the loudest. It's absolutely fantastic, and if you haven't seen it already, do so. It's damn unique, without being best described as "drugs", as is the case with so many other movies on this list.

8. Waking Life - This movie is best described as "drugs".

9. Mulholland Drive - This movie is best described as "drugs and also AAAAAH WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON"

10. Hero - This is a very beautiful, aesthetically pleasing movie with deep themes of nationalism but also, surprisingly, of peace. Also, it's full of kung fu. This movie is in Chinese, making it the first movie to appear in this list which has no English-language dialogue in it.

11. Wall-E - You know why. You should know why.

12. Blues Brothers - Another movie with lots of music in it. It's a pretty film, mostly memorable for the great lines and all the great music.

13. Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Having spent over half my life quoting this movie, I feel it deserves a spot on this list. It may not be absolute genius like many of the other films here, but it's definitely a movie that's had a profound impact on my life.

14. Ronja Rövardotter - Well, something of Astrid Lindgren had to go on this list, and this is a film I've seen rather a lot. It's neat, it's pretty, and I like it. It's the second movie on this list with no English-language dialogue in it.

15. Beetlejuice - Another childhood favourite, and another movie that permanently engraved a love of a certain look in my mind. Much like Jim Henson, Tim Burton has very much affected what I think of as beautiful and interesting to look at.

16. Willow - This is a somewhat obscure fantasy movie I think, but I like it. One of the movies that I probably actually would not see again, but is on the list for having impressed me.

17. Jönssonligan - Okay, so this is technically cheating, given how it's eight movies and not one, but there's not really one of them that stands out above the others and putting all eight on the list would be excessive - I don't like them that much. I just felt they belonged on the list - slapstick comedy is my guilty pleasure, and these movies do it really, really well. This entry contains I think at least one movie with no dialogue in English, making it the third on the list.

18. The Dark Knight - Yep, this is a great film. All the ingredients are there. I would watch this movie again.

19. The Fifth Element - Really just here to announce the fact that I like sci-fi, this was the best sci-fi movie I could think of. There may be others that ought to take its place.

20. Watchmen - Thank you, Watchmen, for being a faithful adaption of a comic book series for once. Because of that, you get to be on the list.

21. The Princess Bride - I don't know how I could forget this movie. I love it. A lot.

22. Vacant

23. Vacant

24. Vacant

25. Vacant

As an overview, this means of my top 20 movies, only four are not entirely in English, and of those, two are in Swedish, one in Chinese, and one in some sort of linguistic potpurri. I will probably think of movies for the 5 vacant slots, but I can't think of any more right now.

A Link to the Copypast

2011-08-08T11:28:00.001+02:00

Below follows a blog entry I wrote on Gaia Online in 2007. I recently found it again and I thought it was sort of cute - it might perhaps say something about how I've changed over the past four years.

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This is a blog.
You heard me. A blog is a blog is a blog is a blog is a blog, as Gertrude Stein said it, and she probably meant something by it, too. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas might be one of the more interesting pairs in the history of authors, though I doubt it, since it seems authors are so often good friends. I mean, many awesome authors knew each other - F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Kurt Gödel and Albert Einstein, and so on. They did write books on science, so they are authors. And were friends. Before they died - maybe afterwards too, I do not know.

Friendship is defined by Wikipedia as co-operative and supportive behaviour between two or more humans. Humans differ from dwarves and elves in that they have no racial modifiers to ability scores, and gain one bonus feat and one extra skill point per level. One extra skill point per level is very useful, and many people actually favourise playing humans over other races simply for game-mechanical reasons; they're so much more versatile, whereas optimising other races requires specialisation - with the possible exception of dwarves. Yes, I would have to say, game-mechanically humans and dwarves are definitely preferrable.

Terry Pratchett never used the plural form "dwarves", only "dwarfs". I don't know why He did that, maybe there was a point to it. Note that I just now accidentally depressed shift and capitalized "He". If this isn't some sort of keyboard Freudian slip, it's probably just a typo. Nonetheless, this typo makes it seem as though Terry Pratchett is some sort of deity or god. He's not. When submissivies in a Dominance/submission-relationship refer to their dominator, they also use capitalisation, as in He. Terry Pratchett does not dominate me, though he owns, in the modern descriptive-of-skills meaning of the term.

Dominance/submission is a fetish, much less physical and more psychological than other branches of BDSM. For this reason, it requires much more acting skills and also much more trust between the involved parts, since anyone can spank a woman but only a select few can expose her to psychological "torture" without any real imminent danger. Torture was invented by the Japanese as a means to cook fish, but it wasn't entirely successful; the Japanese nobility, known as Vicomtes, took to the dish with heart - but since this was in 1532, Jonas Salk and his army of sparks invaded Prussia, stealing with them the secret to immortal life and twelve oven mitts that belonged to Federico de Soya. This caused tortured fish to be largely forgotten as food.

Food is necessary for human survival, and for that of most other animals. Wikipedia defines it as "any substance, usually composed primarily of carbohydrates, fats, water and/or proteins, that can be eaten or drunk by an animal or human being for nutrition or pleasure." Given this definition, it is a little vague whether or not chewing gum is food, since it's not technically eaten but certainly is for pleasure, unless it gets stuck in someone's hair.

That happened to a friend of mine at a festival a few weeks back, it was quite nasty. Fortunately she only needed to cut off very few strands of hair, otherwise she would've looked silly, and looking silly isn't fun, unless you're a clown. A famous Swedish comedian, speaking of clowns, is Gösta Ekman, who once starred in the absurdist comedy "Picassos Äventyr", also called "Adventures of Picasso."

I have seen this movie; all the actors were good, but aside from Ekman I especially liked Wilfrid Brambell, who played Alice B. Toklas. Alice B. Toklas was a long-standing and good friend of Gertrude Stein, who wrote that "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose", and she probably meant something by it, too. Gertruide Stein and Alice B. Toklas might be one of the more interesting pairs in the history of authors, though I doubt it, since it seems authors are so often good friends. I mean, many awesome authors knew each other - F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Kurt Gödel and Albert Einstein, and so on. They did write books on science, so they are authors. And were friends. Before they died - maybe afterwards too, I do not know.

I hope they were friends afterwards. It would give me some hope that friendship is more than just the Wikipedia definition.

A Quote

2011-07-25T19:04:00.001+02:00

"There is some powerful mystery between all these perfect, solid things... and that is my God. My God is what I don't know."

--The One Electronic, from Rice Boy by Evan Dahm.

Why Selfishness?

2011-07-07T09:50:00.000+02:00

This is... perhaps a weird thing to be thinking, but it's something that has been bothering me for a while:

What reason is there to be selfish? Why have we accepted the axiom that "I should try to benefit myself"? Why do we somehow believe that there's any reason to do so?

I mean, put it like this: There are maybe 7 billion people on the planet. Why do I care that a particular person out of these 7 billion is better off? What reason do I have for that? Is it just that I'm more acutely aware of that person - that I can hear that person's thoughts, that I can perceive that person's hunger and thirst?

That doesn't really make any sense, does it? That's like saying "There are plenty of paintings in the world, but I can see this one most clearly because it's standing right there, so therefore it must be the most important painting in the world and I should care about it more than I care about any other painting."

Wickedness

2011-06-30T11:36:00.001+02:00

So in Iceye's post "Who do you think you are?" the question of evil was discussed in the comments. I just read the latest comment, stated by ShadoWolf that "No one considers themselves to be evil when they do something most would call evil."

I disagree. I can't speak for other people, but I see a lot of wickedness in myself.

Now, I cannot claim to believe in a "universal evil", of course, because that implies some sort of omniscent judge, and while I have what I consider solid evidence of the existence of the Blind Idiot God, I don't believe it judges.

I do, however, believe in a subjective sort of evil - as a sort of "necessary fantasy" in order to properly function. Why have I never killed anyone? The long and short of it is "Because I have been convinced that murder is evil". If I didn't regard murder as an evil thing, I would have no real reason not to do it (disregarding the "I might be caught" angle, but honestly, how likely are you to be caught if you murder a random stranger for the lulz? Not very.)

Evil may be a fantasy, something that does not objectively exist - "as real as Santa" - but unlike Santa, it is a necessary fantasy. It's a made-up belief that we, at least on a personal level, need in order to function as a modern society. It's like how the medieval church needed God to function; the church was objectively useful, it created order and provided employment for countless people - but its authority was (probably, at least) entirely fictive, there was no "real" reason to listen to the Pope. Yet, if nobody had listened to the Pope, we wouldn't have literacy in the Western world.

It's the same with "evil". If we didn't believe in it, society would collapse, because people would undertake any selfish act that they thought they could get away with.

Occasionally, people do selfish things - but often, they regret them afterwards, because they think that the act is wrong; they consider themselves, in some small fashion, "evil" for having done it.

That's how I understand the word, at least.

Hallucinogenic

2011-06-30T11:11:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I think that, maybe, I was born with a natural presence of LSD in my body. I have strange hallucinations, chiefly when I'm halfway between sleeping and wakeful, but sometimes I see things even when I'm fully awake, strange things at the edge of my consciousness that I somehow - for just a split second, but sometimes for much longer - actually believe in.

After I had this thought, that maybe my body chemistry maybe naturally includes a little bit of hallucinogenics, I came to think of something: Our body chemistry is calibrated to see the world in a certain way. We would all see it in more or less the same way because we all have more or less the same body chemistry.

But what if there are facets of reality that we can only see while we're on drugs? What I mean to say is, what if some alternate chemical balance - one induced by, say, LSD - allows us to see things that are really there, but that our normal body chemistry can't translate into the proper neural impulses? What if shamans going on vision-quests aren't just hallucinating, but actually re-calibrating their biological make-up to perceive another spectrum of reality?

There actually isn't anything scientifically impossible or even scientifically unlikely about that thought; perception is a very complicated feat of neurobiology, and evolution would seek to make it practical - but not necessarily correct or comprehensive. If there are things we don't need to see to survive, evolution would make it so that we did not see these things.

The body is a prison. Some days, I just really want to see what the world is like outside its walls.

Anti-Immigration

2011-06-10T22:14:00.001+02:00

So the governor of Alabama has signed the harshest anti-immigration law of any American state. On June 9, a bill was signed that makes it a crime to be in Alabama without proof of legal presence. The new crime is called "willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document".

All immigrants must at all time carry proof of legal presence. Sure, carrying identification is a necessity in modern society, but only if you want to do something. Ordinary people aren't taken into custody just for walking down the street without their ID card. But in Alabama, that may well be the case for anyone who looks foreign. That's a little creepy.

And then I read this: "If a person knew that they were transporting or harboring an undocumented immigrant, they would be committing a crime and subject to punishment of up to a year of jail time."

Am I paranoid if this looks like the beginning of a slippery slope to me?

(Source: Ethics Daily

Skilled Writing

2011-05-30T14:06:00.001+02:00

So I already know that I have a powerful imagination, and can be quite sensitive to fiction and art overall. I very easily empathize with main characters in movies and books and feel a slight twinge if someone has, say, their arm cut off.

But when I found a copy of Chuck Palahniuk's "Haunted" at the library, and remembered that I'd read about the incident when Mr. Palahniuk had to stop reading it aloud because people in his audience were fainting, I thought, "Hey, can it really be that bad?"

Apparently it can.

I made it through the introduction without much problems. After about fifteen pages, I was delighted - "This is really taking me out of my comfort zone", I thought, "It's quite provocative."

After another five pages, I was skipping a few lines because I was uncomfortable reading them. At page twenty-three I think it was, I had to close the book because it was making me physically sick and I was afraid I might throw up on it. The fact that the book had big, suspicious yellow stains all over those pages also made me suspect I might not be the first to do so - which didn't help.

In case you're curious, the book more or less starts with one of the characters relating a bunch of anecdotes on people getting injured while masturbating. It starts with "You know autoerotic asphyxiation? Yeah, that's child's play in comparison to what these guys did..." and, well, then it goes on with "That's child's play in comparison to what happened to me."

This blog post is my recognition that, despite being desensitized by years on the Internet, and despite having seen pictures of some pretty gross stuff, Chuck Palahniuk can still cause me to almost vomit, using nothing but words. I tip my hat to that kind of writing skill.

(In the end, I decided to borrow another book.)

On Jesus

2011-05-26T13:12:00.000+02:00

"Michael [Cheuk] posted this note on his Facebook page May 21: "Jesus came back today! He was at our local food pantry waiting in line to receive one of 800+ bags of food that was distributed this morning."

Michael's post brought to mind in a vivid way the passage in Matthew where Jesus reminded his disciples (and us) that when we feed the hungry, we are feeding him; every ministry to those in need is a ministry to the Savior."

--there's a proper, Christian way of interpreting Jesus returning, if ever I saw one. More Christians would do well to remember that lesson: The best way to love Christ is to love your neighbour.

The passage is taken from a very interesting website that I just stumbled upon: Ethics Daily.

Broken

2011-04-14T13:04:00.001+02:00

Remember that old Greek myth, about how there were once just humans, but then the gods split them apart into man and woman, and they become obsessed with trying to fit themselves back together?

Maybe that's actually a nice metaphor for sexuality overall, hetero- homo- auto- or what-have-you-sexual. Sexuality is in some way, an attempt to fix what is broken. That is why other peoples' sexual hang-ups can seem silly or pointless - because it's not something we ourselves lack. From our point of view, it seems like the other person is trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Heroes

2011-04-02T14:50:00.000+02:00

Abd al-Qadir al Jaza'iri

John Woolman

I spend a lot of my time reading, thinking, and writing about heroes. I think it's about time I mentioned these two men. Their stories deserve to be read.

A Duel of Dreams

2011-04-02T13:55:00.000+02:00

Tonight I had a triple-layered lucid dream. I think that's the most layers I've had for a good while, and the coolest thing about it is that while I was partially in control of the dream, there were still other agents inside it that I couldn't directly do anything about. I realized that I was dreaming, but I also realized that I wasn't the only dreamer.

It started out fairly straightforward, with an attack on my apartment by bizarre hybrid monsters, such as a gorilla with a terror bird head instead of its right arm. I tried running away from said monsters, but then they started fighting each other; one of them was trying to help me. Before I could properly heed its warning and escape, though, two agents showed up and attacked me, and I was sucked into some kind of vortex and dispatched in a dream-world, a prison world full of mutants, some more human-seeming than others. There, I stumbled upon knowledge of who was behind the plot; one of the agents had an obsession with Napoleon, and using that information I tracked him down and learned that his employer was one of the Fair Folk, a queen of some sort.

It gets crazier. I managed to figure out that I was actually stuck in a dream world at some point around here, and so I tried to escape by waking up. I did, and then went about my day as normal, until I found myself in a grocery store, suddenly surrounded by big crowds of customers asking me how to find everything they were looking for. Eventually it dawned upon me that I was still stuck in a dream, and that my plot hadn't worked. By magical dream logic, I deduced that while I was dreaming, that didn't actually put me on my home turf; the Fair Folk are masters of dream, and can easily snare you even inside your own head. I figured out how to find one of her agents, disguised as a worker in the meat and delicacies section, and entered battle with him. An epic fight ensued, me using dream-shaping against a guy armed with a meat cleaver. Eventually I managed to turn the dream against him, making him forget who he was and turning him into a teenage girl, then ridiculing him until he ran away crying.

Then I made an attempt to wake up. Unfortunately, I still didn't escape, and woke up into an alternate reality instead, one in which I had died five years ago when an obelisk fell on me. I tried desperately to find someone who had known me before my death, but I couldn't find anyone. Eventually I met with a gang of criminals, containing some people I know in real life, but who didn't know me due to the fact that I was dead in this reality - but I managed to convince them to help me, which was good because the other agent was still on my tail.

Here's where it really gets crazy: One of my new gangster friends gave me a cup of noodles, and the cup made me remember the rules for Shaping Combat from Exalted. I realized that, since I was probably still in a dream, I could use these to my advantage. So I shaped away the final agent using the Cup of Desire, turning him into a loving family father, making him forget himself forever. Then I broke free of this dream as well.

That's where I am at now. Two agents have been destroyed, shaped away into dream-figments. The Queen is still out there. I didn't defeat her, but I managed to break free of her. I'm awake.

...at least I think so.

The Fangirl and I

2011-03-26T12:56:00.000+01:00

So I was thinking about major money-grabbing corporations after reading Iceye's little post about the Nintendo DS. I... don't really have anything to comment on it since I don't know the first thing about Nintendo DS. However, it got me thinking about Quality again, specifically lack of quality, which I presume is what she implies about Disney in that post.

In the last post, I talked about what is good. Now I wonder, what is bad? Do I have any right whatsoever to declare a given piece of artwork "bad"? I... honestly can't come up with any arguments for this. It's easier to argue for good; this is something inexplicable that we feel, that resonates within us without rhyme or reason. This I can live with.

Bad art, though, comes with a more fundamental problem. At least when I see something that I think is beautiful and good, I know this. But bad art generally creates weaker emotions - generally, a failure to provoke any kind of thought or emotion at all is a sign of bad art (unless it's so bad it's good, but that's another thing - let's not bring comedy into this, comedy is the single most incomprehensible thing in the world to me). Bad art is bad because it doesn't do anything, much like a broken piece of machinery doesn't do anything. It's useless. It lacks utility.

But maybe that's just because I can't understand it? There's tons of art out there, that I would consider bad but which clearly resonates with people, clearly makes them feel very strongly about it. When teenage girls rail about Edward vs. Jacob, they do it because they have very, very strong feelings about it. As a matter of fact, the rabid devotion of a fangirl is probably a far more powerful emotion than anything I have ever felt as a result of any work of art. How can this be? How can there be so much fantastic, passion-inspiring, truly wonderful art out there that I just can't get?

In other words, this is my thesis: If I read, for instance, Twilight and don't feel very strongly about the book, that's a very sad thing, because it means I'm reading it wrong. Clearly there is a certain way of enjoying this book - a certain point of view - which makes it inspire true passion. Which makes it better than anything I have ever encountered. Failure to enjoy it is a tremendous loss, one which I can make up for with other works of art, but still. There's something here that I'm missing. That I won't be able to experience.

To use a poorly-constructed simile: "What if my true love really is out there, except we're both male, and we're both straight as arrows"? Something wonderful which you're missing out on because of preferences which you can't change, preferences which are just hard-coded into you for no good reason.

It's pretty sad, don't you think?

The Good Delusion

2011-03-12T16:03:00.000+01:00

My philosophy of values is something that gets revisited a lot on this blog. What with it being called Absurd Heroes and all, I suppose that's not really strange - philosophy of values is something I place a lot of value in. Ironic, I know.

So, let's for a moment go over the basic idea behind absurdism again. Absurdism states that there are no inherent values - the world is meaningless and devoid of any real content, save for what values we invent for ourselves. The idea behind the philosophy is that causes - something to champion, something to be a hero for - fill our lives with meaning. Essentially, any goal we set is arbitrary and meaningless, but the struggle towards that goal is meaningful, because of the challenge it poses, because it keeps us moving. When Sisyphus gets the rock to the top of the mountain, it rolls down on the other side - nothing is achieved, nothing has happened - but the struggle to push the rock gives him something to do.

So much for values as in goals. The struggle to create a good fiction, or a nice drawing, or a beautiful piece of music, are valuable; the outcome basically isn't really important. So what of being a patron of the arts? Is enjoying art also an entirely arbitrary thing? Maybe. I'm thinking it probably is.

The reason I'm philosophizing about this is because I just watched a magical girl transformation sequence and started crying. My thoughts at the moment were basically "My God, this is so beautiful". Yes, you read that right. I was deeply touched by a cartoon depicting a poorly-drawn girl spouting random English nonsense and then magically changing into a pretty outfit. Now, normally - to protect my pride - I would probably blame this reaction on sleep deprivation, or making some association, or some other excuse. But the fact remains: I was deeply touched. I felt the essence of True Art for a moment, art that moved and inspired me.

And I'm thinking, can you argue for something being True Art and something else not being? I don't think so. Beauty, or Quality, much like a religious experience, is something which cannot be quantified, measured, or established in repeatable experiments. Just like God, it's only something we feel, not something we can ever prove. So when we say, "This is a good song", we are saying essentially the same thing as "I felt the presence of God". You are saying you felt something, the existence of which you cannot prove, an intangible, unquantifiable, unmeasurable something, with no substance, no essence, no form. You're essentially saying you saw something that for all intents and purposes doesn't exist.

And yet, there are trends. There are some things that are more widely considered beautiful, and there are whole academic fields devoted to trying to understand quality. And there are shortcuts, like the golden ratio, or tropes, or literary techniques, which are recipes that will likely result in something of quality. But we won't find universal consensus. The whole thing reminds me a bit of the ancient Jews, reading the Torah and trying to understand the nature of God, trying to say, "This here text proves that God is good, because it describes benevolence in his actions", much like a literary critic might say, "This here text proves that Catcher in the Rye is good, because it describes its expert usage of the unreliable narrator technique". In both cases, you can flatly deny the arguments. "It is true because it's in the Bible", they say, and you say, "But I don't believe the Bible is true, and you can't prove it. You can't even demonstrate it, actually - you can't even provide indications that it might be."

And yet, I think, a lot of people claim that Good is something real. You'd certainly think so, what with how hurt people can be when you insult their favourite pieces of art. Firefly sucks. The Final Fantasy series is for losers. Hyperion is a terrible book.

It hurts, doesn't it? It feels so wrong somehow. Art is very important to us. And yet we haven't even got a clue what it actually is.

Chop wood, carry water

2011-02-27T15:33:00.001+01:00

"Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water." - Zen proverb

So I went back home again. Many of you already know this, but some don't.

Here's the full story.

I went to the airport. I got on the plane, no problem, and I made it to China, no problem. I discovered that my language skills, while severely lacking, were enough for me to communicate with the taxi driver and to get to the university. I could even ask directions to the admissions office and get a dorm room in Chinese, with some help from an English-speaking student to help explain the documents I was signing.

In short, I was much more capable than I had expected. I got myself a dorm room, I enrolled, I had the schedule, I had everything fixed, and I was ready to move into my new room and unpack. So I opened my bag, and remembered that Sara had helped me pack, and I thought, "How would I get by without her? Oh- wait."

That was the first though. It was almost enough, but to be certain, I did some more thinking.

It eventually became clear to me that I had known all along what I wanted, but I had let my fears drown it out. Now, however, I wasn't afraid. I had faced my fear of going to China, and I knew - without a doubt - that I could do it. Which made me realize that the reason I didn't want to go wasn't only that I was afraid, it was also that I simply didn't want to.

So I went back home again. Now, it's the normal humdrum life for me again. Well, almost.

Chop wood, carry water.

Wanting and Fearing, part 2

2011-02-21T05:44:00.000+01:00

“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” - J.D. Salinger

I wrote about wanting and fearing a while back. I think that post was rather vague. I'm usually vague when I want to talk about something serious. I want to do my best not to be vague now. I'll try not to get poetic, or rambling, and just get down to what I want to say.

What I want to say is terribly frightening to confess. I wouldn't confess it under any other circumstances, but now I'm in a situation where all my bridges are burned, all exits are closed. I'm cornered and I'm basically fucked anyway, so I might as well say it.

I'll start with the confession, and then I'll explain why. This makes for poor textual structure, but I think I need to get out and say it. Here goes:

Tomorrow I will have a choice. I can either board the plane, or I can not board the plane. Whichever option I choose, I will be chickening out. Whichever option I choose, I will be succumbing to fear. No matter what I do, it will be incredibly unpleasant.

Virtually everything I do is motivated by fear. “Pleasure” in my mind is essentially just the absence of fear, with all other qualities being secondary. Which means that, when I make a choice, I generally go with the less frightening option. This is basically true in everything I do. You'd be surprised, really.

Which means that, in the question of going to China, I'm not considering what I want. At all. I claim I do, but I don't, because what I want is so tiny and insignificant compared to what I fear. So, on both sides of the argument, I have fears. On the “dont' go” side, I have a multitude of various fears – most pressingly, the fear of the unknown, but also, the fear of losing everyone I love. This is, I suppose, not very rational. What if everyone forgets me? Unlikely. What if everyone dies in a fire? Then I'd likely die in the same fire if I stayed anyway. An irrational fear. But fear, like want, doesn't have to be rational. We want because we want. We fear because we fear.

On the “do go” side, I have, most pressingly, the fear of losing everyone I love.

That is to say, I'm afraid that if I don't go, I will lose everyone I love. Because I'll be letting them down. I'll be letting you down.

This reasoning does not seem strange to me, because my most guiding, tangible, strong fear is the fear of being abandoned. It's always present, and it's always ridiculously disproportionate. This is the hardest part to admit. Even now, I'm afraid to say it – just writing it, even though nobody can even read it yet and I could just delete it after it appears on the screen. I always, always, always fear this. You think I trust you? On good days I do. On bad days (which is most of the time) I'm convinced that really, you only stick around because you haven't got an excuse to ditch me yet. No matter who you are. If you know me, it applies. It has applied since the day I met you.

And what better excuse to ditch me can you find than “talked all about China for several months and then finally chickened out and didn't go”? I think it's a pretty good excuse. It tells of a person who is all talk and no action, an overblown, self-important jackass who doesn't perform when push comes to shove. It's a classical trope.

Which is why, no matter what I choose, I'll be a coward. In the end I'm going to choose whichever option seems less frightening. I'm not sure what that's going to be yet. I've been pushing the choice until now, always leaving the back door open, desperately hoping for some third alternative, something which doesn't blind me with sheer terror. There doesn't seem to be one. I'm cornered.

Fear is all I have.

The Facts

2011-02-20T22:38:00.000+01:00

The facts were these:

That gmail appears to be accessible from China, as long as one accesses it via an email client and not via a browser. I have set this up.

That I will probably obtain an additional SIM card in China to be able to do local calls cheaply - exactly how to do this I haven't quite figured out, though. Maybe I'll have to buy a new phone again, anyway.

That I have made contact with a potential roleplaying group in China, but I don't really know the details yet.

That parting with Sara feels like cutting off an arm. Seriously. It's nauseating and physically painful.

Those are the facts.

Eat. Breathe. Reproduce.

2011-02-03T04:11:00.000+01:00

I know it isn't a particularly strange approach to the meaning of life. The theory of evolution has been suggesting this as the "meaning" since, well, since it was invented. We're here to eat, to breathe, to reproduce. We're here to propagate the species.

But I wonder - and this is what bothers me most about the theory of evolution - is that really it? I can live without a grand, cosmic plan, that doesn't bother me. I have no issue with a life in which we create our own meaning. Trouble is, are we really? Isn't there a grand meaning, one we didn't sign up for but got nonetheless? If the meaning of life is to maintain and create life, doesn't that make it all just a grand pyramid scheme in which we're forced to participate? "Sell our product to three of your friends, so that they can sell our product to nine more people, so that they, in turn, can sell our product to..." - "Create at least one new person, so that it can create at least one new person, so that it, in turn..."

Sure, we can try to screw the Grand Plan and just our own thing - we can declare, "I don't want children", and we can even kill or castrate ourselves, thus messing up the entire plan. But can we ever really escape? How do we know that our actions, intended to subvert the Grand Plan, aren't really serving it, by removing unsuitable elements from the gene pool? It may seem paranoid, even insane, to worry about the principle "Eat. Breathe. Reproduce." ruling our lives, but it bothers me. It bothers me because it seems so cruel, so ultimately tragic, that all the beautiful things in life should evolve as completely trivial side effects to a machine that was designed and optimized to eat, shit, and fuck.

"But why should that be a problem?" you ask, "Why can't we just enjoy the side effects, now that we have them?" - well, we can. And that is, after all, what I spend most of my time doing, so I don't have any particular problem with it, at least not one I can easily describe. But somehow, on some level, it feels wrong. It makes me feel like I'm a man who believes himself to see fairies and dragons where really there's only the cold, hard walls of his cell in the asylum. No doubt that man is happy, living an adventurous, exciting life inside his head - but he can't help but doubt, wonder, pick at some thoughts that shouldn't be picked at, secretly suspecting that whatever he believes, the cell is actually real, and the dragons actually aren't.

Let's Jam

2011-01-28T12:06:00.000+01:00

Short post, just came upon a neat little description at GnomeStew that I felt I should share:

"My enjoyment had shifted from crafting stories and being the director, to one more like a drummer in a jazz band. My job was to lay down an interesting beat and let the players come in and do their thing." - DNAphil

This is actually a very good description of what GMing is like when you're going for an open-ended story with lots of player input. The beat is crucial to the music: Without beat, there is no music. At the same time, the beat is rarely at the foreground. While the occasional drum solo is nice, that's rarely the most impressive part - what you really want to hear is someone going crazy on the saxophone.

Enthusiasm

2011-01-21T02:05:00.000+01:00

Enthusiasm - from Greek enthousiasmos "divine inspiration," from enthousiazein "be inspired or possessed by a god, be rapt, be in ecstasy."

This is pretty much what I feel like when I really get into something. When I dedicate myself enough to doing something, when I start to lose myself and completely sink into what I'm doing at the time - when I'm truly enthusiastic: To be inspired or possessed by a god. In fact, this is probably how I would define divinity. Enthusiasm is to be in touch with God. Enthusiasm, to me, is to submit to Allah, to become the hand of God, to move with the Tao, to have Buddha-nature, to be one with the Universe. Geeking out, and I mean this absolutely seriously - geeking out is, to me, the most profound religious experience possible.

Perhaps it's different for different people. Perhaps some people find rapture in the stillness of meditation, or the rush of adrenaline through their blood as they run, or the embrace of a lover. There are a multitude of ways to God. A little while ago, me and Drake and Luke had a discussion about religions - about whether it really makes any difference whether or not you slavishly follow the teachings of Jesus or slavishly follow the teachings of Donald Duck; both seem pretty stupid when you get down to it. Well, perhaps the argument can be turned around - it may be stupid to slavishly follow any text, but really: If someone has a profound religious experience from reading Donald Duck, is that not a wonderful thing?

It sounds silly, but really - why should the Divine be constrained or limited? If one can see the World in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wild flower, surely one can see the World in a workout pass, and Heaven in a comic strip?

The Predator

2011-01-15T03:31:00.000+01:00

This is going to seem silly to most of you, rather than frightening. But I'm narrating from my own point of view, so you're going to have to use your imagination. I was on my way home. At night. In darkness. There are no people anywhere in sight, in any direction. And then, as I'm getting pretty close to home, there's a dog. A pretty big one. First I didn't react – I'm not really terrified of dogs any longer, just slightly uncomfortable around them. Usually.

Except, as I looked around, there really wasn't anyone nearby. For as far as I could see in every direction, there are no humans. The dog isn't on a leash, it's just kind of wandering around poking at things. I couldn't see if there was a collar, it was too dark – but it was definitely a dog, probably a German shepherd, I'm not sure. Vaguely wolf-shaped, kind of big, unleashed. At this point I'm starting to feel more than a little bit uncomfortable, but I keep walking, hoping it'll ignore me. I guess I must have noticed it before it noticed me, though, because at the moment I start moving, it darts up and looks at me – and I almost completely fucking freeze up. Fight-or-flight kicks in, mind starts to race; I can't outrun it, I don't have a chance, there's snow and ice everywhere. I'm going to have to fight, except it's pretty damn huge and it'll probably drag me down. For a split second there, it felt like I was staring into the eyes of Death itself. The Wolf has come for me. I'm fucked.

Then, of course, the dog sauntered off, more interested in a random stick on the roadside. I stood stone still until I was absolutely sure I couldn't see it any longer, and then I very, very carefully went inside, thankful that it's the modern age, that there aren't actually any wolves stalking in the shadow. Not here, not any longer. Right?

...

Right?

Reinventing Roleplaying

2011-01-14T01:23:00.000+01:00

I've been doing this roleplaying game thing for quite a long while now. Those of you who have been reading my blogs about earlier posts know about the many epiphanies I've had, the many times my consciousness has expanded, the many times I've learned something entirely new, and seen this beautiful hobby in a new light.

Well, it's happened again. And it's happened through the medium of Big Eyes Small Mouth, which comes as somewhat of a surprise as I'm not that great an anime fan. I've ran anime-themed games before – Parallel Fandango, primarily, and I've participated in Aki, which had the same feeling. Yet, this particular Big Eyes Small Mouth game is truly something new, and it's new in a lot of ways.

For one, it's a lot more interactive than most other games I've ran. And no, I'm not making this up – the game really allows the players more freedom than many of my most sandboxy of sandboxes thus far, because the players are actively expanding on the story, during the game, outside the scope of their own characters. They're adding new countries and continents as needed, they're expanding on the history of the world and of the NPCs, and they're even adding new NPCs on the fly, mid-game. This is a very new experience for me, and rather challenging, but usually well worth the extra effort as it pretty much guarantees player involvement. I don't mean suggestions, either – I mean stuff like flat-out saying to an NPC “Of course, you have heard of the play involving star-crossed lovers, one from Britannia and one from Teutonia...” or in extreme cases like talking to an NPC that has never been mentioned before, but suddenly springs into existence because the player wanted it. I don't know why this hasn't resulted in any horrible trainwrecks – intuition suggests it rather should, and it probably will eventually – but it hasn't.

Second, which may seem counterintuitive given the above point, the game has taught me a lot about structure. If a game can be properly structured, it will almost automatically present a good narrative. This game follows a simple central metaplot that is advancing quite slowly, with one metaplot-related event occurring per session. The actual meat of the story is made up from NPC-driven subplots, though, chiefly fueled by the characters' interaction with them as the metaplot progresses. This gives the game a very TV-series feel, similar to Star Trek: Voyager, in which the ship's progress is combined with intra-crew conflict. This meshes well with the freedom, because the subplots are unimportant and can be cut short, added, or edited on the fly as needed, without impacting the metaplot. With such a structure, the story continues on ahead while simultaneously allowing the players to do pretty much whatever they want. As long as the story goals of the session are fulfilled, the story is still going somewhere despite very little time actually being devoted to it.

Third, there is the anime aspect. Anime, for all its other faults, does have one chief defining artistic quality which is hard to find elsewhere – its unique blend of comedy, drama, romance and tragedy, which allows for deeply serious stories about abuse and abandonment to run parallel with silly rom-com elements such as spilled love potions, misinterpreted flirting, and overacted reactions. Channeling this feeling in a roleplaying game is surprisingly easy, but it requires players to take a step back from their characters and switch between immersion and collective storytelling, as the players will often have their characters behave in obviously idiotic fashions for the sake of the story, but will have to immerse deeply in their character for the drama and tragedy elements to really hit home.

Overall, it's a new experience to me because it breaks the classical definition of role-playing game and starts to blur more into the territory of improvisational theater. It's almost entirely intrigue-driven, with perhaps 10-20 die rolls taking place during an entire session. The key, the thing that makes this sort of game unique, is – I think – the switch between immersion and storytelling on everyones' behalf. On the one hand, you want to think like your character. On the other hand, you want to consciously make sure that your character commits mistakes where appropriate, to drive the story onwards.

Even though I've been playing for over a decade, and I have played similar games as this before, I have to say that it's an entirely new experience – it's like the intrigue-driven plots of Aki meet the wild-card player-driven solutions of Mage: The Awakening, and fuse together into a coherent whole where players shape the world to fuel the intrigues surrounding them, yet are still beholden to a single, central story. If D&D-style RPGs are like water flowing through a pipe, and improvisational theater is like water flowing freely all over the floor, this style of play is more like water flowing in a stream on the floor – there aren't really any constraints on it, yet it keeps moving on ahead, and doesn't run out all over the place. It requires a lot of consensus between players and GM, obviously – if everyone isn't on the same page, you risk just winding up with a wet floor.

Of course, just because I've discovered a new way of playing doesn't mean it's the best way. It's not even necessarily better than more classical approaches. But it's something I've never done before, and I'm talking about it because, even after over ten years of doing this RPG thing, I keep getting surprised. It's stuff like this which makes me wanna never give up on gaming. Just when you think you've got it all figured out, that strange magic strikes again, and suddenly it's just like that first realization that hey, NPCs can have personalities, and that is awesome.

2006: Arcana Evolved

2011-01-05T13:35:00.000+01:00

Since I've already explained much of the set-up for this game in an earlier post, I'm pretty much going to dive straight into the action of the story of Arcana Evolved. Before I do so, though, I should explain who actually participated in this game, and who their characters were.

The Arcana Unearthed game ended with the group splitting up, each going their separate ways. Arcana Evolved begins five years later (one year later in real-time) when three of the heroes from the last story re-unite on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, joined by two more extraordinary adventurers. The actual configuration of the group included Bob, Drake, Kennedy, Luke, and Jason. Bob and Drake still had essentially the same characters as before – Beo and Ree – whereas Nasef had over time developed into a ghost, driven by the power of the Requiem, a mysterious evil sword. Luke and Jason made new characters, each with suitably epic backstories; Luke re-created Aust, making him a priest from an ancient civilization who had slept through the ages, and Jason created the Cat Lords' Chosen, an avatar of cats who literally possessed nine lives, but is stalked by a strange demon for inexplicable reasons. Jasons character didn't actually have a name for much of the game, until he was randomly named Freddy because we needed a way to refer to him.

The story itself was very long, and rather complicated. It was initially divided up into ten chapters, each named in some meaningful fashion. I have since lost the complete list of chapters, unfortunately, so I can only write about those I remember. I'm also not entirely clear on the chronology; some of the details below may contradict each other. I really should have taken better notes about the game, but I was a little pressed for time, as it was played during my final year at the IB.

Here be Dragons was the first chapter, an introductory story of a sort. The five characters met on a tiny island, and learned of ancient sorcery from a lost civilization called Praetur, which had once been destroyed by the Dragons. It was here Freddy accidentally poisoned Beo, and it was here Beo learned of the ancient civilizations' hatred for Xethar Ar'Nuade, the dragon whose soul he carried inside him. The ruins of the island were thoroughly explored, but they needed a password to delve to the heart of the strange fortress, and had to seek out an akashic who supposedly knew the answer.

The next two chapters have names I can't recall. The akashic needed by the heroes was trapped in an Imperial Fortress, protected by a young man called the Mirror Master, who could prevent all sorts of magic being worked within the fortress. Aust and Freddy insisted on killing him, and so they did, drawing the ire of the Inquisition after them. Beo also met with a woman who wanted to become a mojh, and Ree briefly met with his apprentice, a young Litorian mathematician. There was some running around on the ocean involved, among other things a magical island on which Nasef tried to kill himself by separating himself from the Requiem, the introduction of Sojiro Naraku – Kennedy's replacement character, a sorcerer with some ties to the Demons of the setting – and the characters also returned to the island with the ruins to confront a lich, who managed to hurt Aust badly enough to seemingly kill him. It's all a bit of a blur what happened here, though. I know that in the same scene that Aust “died”, Nasef returned. These two chapters spanned quite a lot of playing time, I know that much.

A Pirate is Free was a chapter which gave Freddy the spotlight. He had once sailed the seas as a feared pirate captain, and was now re-united with his old crew. A Pirate is Free dealt with questions of responsibility, and was rife with moral choices. Do you condone revenge, even if it's carried out as rape? Will you stop a righteous crusade to indulge in your own selfish need for vengeance? Ultimately, it asked this question: Even if you are free from all authority, mortal and divine, does that mean you're also free of responsibility? Or is it perhaps the reverse? A Pirate is Free also introduced Timothy Luvenhay, Luke's replacement character instead of Aust.

Searching For Demons was a strange chapter, perhaps the most muddled and unclear one. I can't recall the details of it very well, but it was during this chapter that the entire group got lost in the desert for no good reason, and also pulled off a joint-stunt impersonating a giant. It included one of the few recurring NPCs, Tirek Fleshripper, and revolved around the demons who had once broken into the Netherworld to come upon the Tree of Life. The heroes learned that they must search for the Key to Hell, which was later revealed to be Beo – the Key to Free Will, which is Hell from the point of view of those in favor of Destiny.

Chapter Six: Consequences (the only chapter whose name and numbering I have actually written down) was the chapter dealing with past sins, and dealt particularly with the question of how our past defines us. It was the chapter in which Freddy learned that the Cat Lord had chosen him to be a scapegoat, not an avatar – the demon stalking Freddy was collecting a debt from the Cat Lord, which Freddy had unwittingly agreed to pay in his stead. It was also the chapter that explored the past of Ban-Lam, Austs' homeland – which they arrived in to find his entire civilization has been gone for hundreds of years, lost despite the great sacrifice he made for their sake. The chapter was named Consequences because it asked not only how our past defines us, but also how the consequences of our choices define us. While at least two characters were brought to utter despair, they managed to find new hope – of a sort. Freddy freed himself from the Cat Lord, and Aust abandoned his old ways to begin seeking a path to true divinity.

The Key to Hell featured the invasion of the Land of the Tiger, where in the past Ban-Lam had been located, to free it from the demons currently controlling it and to learn of the nature of the Key to Hell. Aust returned after having “died” earlier on, and alongside him the heroes would plunge into the Netherworld, after having driven back the demonic hordes possessing the Land of the Tiger. Freddy, also, became the new King of the Tigers, and rose to a kind of divinity himself, after having (probably) destroyed the Cat Lord.

Reedeemer took place in the Netherworld, a strange world-between-worlds, the labyrinth that connects all places to another. It's the place of everything that is lost, and also the location of the Tree of Life, the strange focal point of Destiny that held the answer to Rees mysterious equation. Reedeemer was the most thoroughly bizarre and otherwordly chapter, which started out with the characters losing their memories entirely, and moved on to reveal that Ree solving the equation would make him literally become Destiny. It was the chapter in which Ree truly ascended to godhood, and also the chapter in which Nasef restored his lost humanity.

Requiem for a God revolved around Nasef putting a stop to the Mad God-King of Galdersrike, the wizard responsible for the creation of the Requiem and also the one who held the key to its undoing. The spirit of death trapped in the evil weapon was meant for the King, and only after his death could the weapon be destroyed. A memorable, if short, chapter, that involved a crazy chess-match between two super-geniuses who could both predict the future – Aust vs. the King.

Breath of the Ancestors ended the story, confronting the heroes with the Dragons, and finally ended with Ree resolving their debate by killing himself, choosing freedom for the world, because of how inspired he had been by Beo. The death of Ree marked the end of Destiny, and the end of an era – no longer was humanity shackled by the divine. Freedom reigned in the world, but at a price, as the spiteful Eternals among the dragons had already begun the process of destroying the world. Our four remaining heroes would have to set out and stop them – particularly Beo, whose fault it was that the Dragon Scions were once more unleashed upon the world. Thus begins a story not yet told, a story where divinity and heroism are synonymous, a story of a world where Destiny no longer holds sway. Thus begins a new story, and thus ends the Gods' Tale.

Arcana Unearthed Gaiden:
Rather than talk about specific characters or specific moments in the chronicle-at-large, I'm here going to mention the Gaiden, the small story that took place in the same world but was otherwise entirely unrelated. It was played right before Arcana Evolved, and circled around a crazy runethane seeking immortality. The set-up of the game was interesting, as each player was instructed to write a detailed backstory for their character, and then tell that story around the campfire as the heroes made camp on their journey. Thus, the actual chronicle became a sort of Canterbury Tales, a frame-story for the Dead Mans' Tale, the Sorcerers' Tale, the Soldiers' Tale, the Merchants' Tale and so forth. It featured Honest Sid, a minor character from Arcana Unearthed, as a central protagonist NPC, and a few other NPCs who also told their tales.

Most of the story took place in a jungle, but the final bit was a confrontation in one of the largest cities of the world – a conscious decision, as cities were largely avoided in the other two chronicles. It was an interesting story, much shorter than the chronicle at large and played only over three long sessions – the first two in a jungle colony, the last one in the capitol leading up to the showdown with the runethane.

Next Up:
2007: Berlin, the most MMO-like RPG I have ever ran, in which players come and go without any real pattern, and the setting grows ridiculously contrived and complicated, growing by leaps and bounds into the most rich setting I have designed to date. Some earth-shattering changes in my life occur, and my gaming life also becomes radically different, with the d20 system becoming almost entirely absent, not to return until 2010.

1 Corinthians 13

2010-12-25T01:01:00.000+01:00

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails."

I just came back from church. It was a pretty okay sermon, although I couldn't hear much, being seated a little too far away. The hymns were also somewhat weirdly chosen, but the finale was great. The above passage wasn't really mentioned, and has little to do with Christmas really, but it's a nice passage, one of my favorites. And the message is not a bad one.

I had a good Christmas eve. I spent the day with my family, eating food, fighting with my brothers, and holding conversation. I also received communion from the hands of a real Bishop. Oh, and we solved anagrams together, the whole family. Me and my brother won, having solved them the fastest.

What did you do?

Dark Kent

2010-12-16T12:33:00.000+01:00

Tonight I had a bizarre nightmare. I dreamt I was Superman.

It was not the scariest nightmare I've ever had as such, but the ending comes close, and the whole thing was really damn unpleasant. Why? Well, the flying, the superpowers, all of that was of course nice, but it was painful and frightening because, I realized, I think a lot like Clark Kent. And thinking like Clark Kent is pretty self-destructive.

So I was hanging around in a community in a forest, somewhere in Canada I think. I was there to do some reporting on a really old festival the locals celebrated. It was a kinda small job for star reporter Clark Kent, but whatever.

I don't remember the beginning of the dream, exactly - but I remember I stayed in town for a while, making friends and really starting to feel at home there. Real friendship, and it happening two to three times in a single day. It rocked. Then, a disaster of some kind struck on a mountain, and off I go, just in time to miss the festival itself and to disappear from a friend I had promised to help practising crossbow-shooting for some competition, and just bail out on some old people who had really wanted to meet me. Feeling really bad about letting everyone down, I fly off to the mountain and meet another superhero - a superheroine, rather; and promptly fall in love. This woman doesn't bother with secret identities, she just kinda saves people from afar, using various distance-based powers like controlling gravity. She's much more free and less worried than stuck-up Superman, who feels responsible for everyone, everything, all the time - and worse, she doesn't need the affirmation of peoples' thanks and admiration, in that empty, hollow way I do myself; as if a medal or a statue to my commemoration could somehow fill that empty hole inside. Nope, she just saves people if she happens to stumble across a problem, and lives a normal life - irresponsible, and without any need for affirmation from the media or the like. Nobody's even heard of her, it's just thanks to my super-senses that I discover her at all.

Not only do I fall in love with this woman on first sight, I also envy her. And the envy turns almost to hatred, because someone can be so free, so happy - someone born to the same responsibilities as me, but who can just carelessly ignore it and don't feel even a twinge of guilt. No longer needed at the mountain, I fly back to the community -

- to find that nobody wants to talk to me any longer, because everyone's all excited that Superman was seen over a nearby mountain, and that's so awesome. I go on with my day, crossbow-practising and all, thinking about this superheroine I've met. It distracts me so much that I don't even notice I've been careless, and a family in the town start suspecting I might be Superman. Strongly.

So they let loose a circus bear, hoping that I'll slip up and reveal my identity to them (this plot is probably straight out of the comic books, actually). So sure are they of this theory, that the mother in the family locks herself with me in a small flimsy trailer close to the bear, so that I'll have to make a mistake - I can't leave the trailer, because I'm supposed to be timid Clark Kent, who would never go outside to face a bear. Normally, Superman can deal with this. Just use one of your myriads of undetectable powers, or blow a curtain in the woman's face for a few seconds, or something - but I'm distracted, frustrated and frightened, so I just punch the bear in the face and kill it. The woman triumphantly goes "A-ha! You're Superman!"

...and it's this part of the dream I remember most vividly, because it was terrifying. In this dream, about Superman - and I know how utterly stupid and ridiculous this sounds - I went through a register of emotions so powerful that I have never experienced anything near it in real life. It was the guilt-and-self-loathing version of running and running and never getting anywhere, and waking up sweat-soaked and panicking. On the one hand, I don't want to hurt anyone. On the other hand, I'm really really angry and frustrated with the superheroine I met earlier in the day, who I both lust after and really hate (and, mind, I was still actually dating Lois Lane in this version of the dream, so there was guilt attached to that too). Also, I've realized just how much I need Clark Kent, because he's the only version of me that can actually make real friends, that can actually have functioning relationships of any kind. Superman is a god, and I don't want to be a god. And here is this woman who's basically threatening to kill Clark Kent.

So I hurt her. I hurt her bad. Holding back on most of my infinite strength, I manage not to kill her, but only barely. My dreams are normally not very graphic, but this one was. Snap. Crunch. You get the idea. And then, when I regain control of myself, I realize I can't. For all my anger, for all my despair, that's making me want to throw up, I can't bring myself to kill her. She's crippled, crying, reduced to a wreck of a human being, and it would really be the merciful thing to just end her life. But I can't.

This is the point where I woke up, flailing around, powerless against my own neurotic hangups. Power enough to smash moons to pieces, and I can't kill one woman to save my own sanity. It took me several minutes just to wind down, and remind myself that it was all just a dream. I hope it was all just a dream. If there's any dream I really don't want to be meaningful, it's this one.

(Also, please don't take it as such. If you take this dream to be deeply meaningful, it makes me seem utterly fucking nuts. I don't want you guys to think I am nuts. That would be unpleasant.)

Angry

2010-12-12T21:48:00.001+01:00

I should stop reading newspapers. At least, I should stop reading the letters that are printed in them. I am angry.

Not just irritated, actually angry. If I had the writer of the letter before me, I'd probably not punch them, but maybe spit them in the face. Let me explain.

When I was very little, I read a story. It has left a profound impact on me, and may, indeed, be a big reason why I still consider myself – at least in part – Christian. I think I found it in my grandmothers' old schoolbooks. It's about an ox. The ox begins every day by thanking God. He thanks God for the grass he eats, for the sun that rises, for the wind on his face. He's a goddamn ox, a castrated, miserable creature who spends all his time hauling around carts and will eventually end up in a soup. But he's grateful for his lot in life; he's grateful that he's alive. I took this story to heart. Being grateful to God, specifically, is perhaps not really important. But being grateful? Absolutely. Appreciating what you have is, to me, the absolutely most important aspect of being a decent human being.

Maybe I would think differently if I wasn't actually privileged. Which I am. I have more food than I could possibly eat. Assuming the welfare state of Sweden continues to exist in the way it does, I will probably never seriously starve. Now, I'm not morally perfect, I realize that. I don't donate money to charities. I don't contribute to society. I don't really even educate myself to become anything particularly helpful, like a teacher or a doctor. But at least, at the very least, I'm grateful for what I have. Which brings me to that letter.

I read it in the most recent student magazine, and it made me angrier than I have been in a very long time. These people, these wretched, wretched people, are actually delusional enough to believe that they, as students in the Swedish university system, deserve pity. They have the sheer arrogance to demand that they get something better. They are dissatisfied. Even worse, they are ungrateful. They are given an education, free of charge, and beneficial loans to give them an education. An education which, they claim, is no longer an advantage in modern society. Maybe so. Maybe it will do no good, and you'll end up owing the state money for the rest of your life. Money which the state will use to buy you medicine, to pay policemen, to keep you alive in case you lose your job.

Don't get me wrong – of course one can be miserable in a modern welfare society. One can be lost, depressed, lonely, confused. One can be homeless, yes, even starving. But this is not what they are complaining about. The people who wrote this letter believe that they are being exploited, and that they are somehow eating and living badly.

No.

No, you are not poor. You have a home. You have food. You can bleach your brains in alcohol every Friday and still have money left for peanuts to go with it. Society demands work and study from you so that you – and other citizens of our country – can continue to lead decent lives. This is not exploitation.

There are few things in life I can't tolerate in another person, but more than anything else, this is it. This is what makes me positively want to puke with revulsion. When other people make an effort for your sake, you do not complain. You can criticize, you can refuse the help, you can accept it but tell them how they might do it better – but you do not. Fucking. Complain. You thank them. I think this is something everyone should adhere to. You may not believe in a God, so you have nobody to thank for the sunshine and the grass, but what the hell, be thankful for it anyway. Appreciate it. When the zombie apocalypse comes, you may no longer be able to.

2005: Survival in Moscow

2010-12-08T13:52:00.000+01:00

Long time since I wrote one of these now, sorry about that. Anyway, I'm not yet done with my anthology of past adventures, and since I for once have nothing particularly important to do, here goes another one...

With the disappearance of Drake and Bob, as they departed to faraway lands, the group underwent a major change. The only player left from last years' group was Kennedy, and since Luke had been playing with us during the summer, he jumped on board the group as well. That left me with two players, since Solomon and Alastair quit the group. However, during my first (very busy) year at the new school, I had been meeting a lot of new people, and as fate would have it, two of these would come to join the new group.

I will explain their identities shortly. But before I do so, it should be pointed out that 2005 was an interesting year for me personally, because it was a year of broadened horizons. I had been dabbling in some other games earlier, with previous groups - Mage: The Ascension, Aki, GURPS, and so forth - but this year would be marked as a year of experimentation. All in all, the new group of four players participated in four different games, using four different systems: Survival in Moscow, a Vampire game - Trigonometry Fandango, a spiritual sequel to Parallel Fandango, which was a rule-less free-form game - Winter Death, a highly unsuccessful AE game, and Angels, using a weird hybrid of d20 rules. Previously, I had always regarded the d20 system as the "default" system, the one I would always be coming back to - but this year, I started exploring the world of RPGs to discover the vast array of strange games that can be found out there. I was already familiar with the idea of playing games that deviate from their mechanics - of running political intrigues in systems chiefly designed for bashing in heads, of running mysteries in systems chiefly designed for bashing in heads, even of running romance stories in systems chiefly designed for bashing in heads - but I had never really reflected on the idea that a rules system could be designed around a particular style of play.

Let me address this point for a moment. Of course any kind of story can be told in any system (or with no system at all). But the existence of game systems explicitly designed for a given type of story allows, I believe, a much better venue for exploring that kind of story. A game system should never be more complicated than it has to be, yet at the same time, if it isn't complex enough in certain areas, you get a needless amount of gloss-over. It isn't very interesting to play a swashbuckling adventure in a game system where all the rules come down to "Roll dice. You rolled the highest. Therefore, you win." Of course, one can always elaborate using ones' imagination, but that takes away the exciting element of gambling and taking chances, which is - for me, anyway - one of the greater kicks in playing RPGs, as opposed to just writing a story. So, a game system needs to be complex in just the right places. This is why I obsess so over new game systems - because they encourage you to think in a certain fashion, which may be different from how you've been thinking before. If the game system makes combat very deadly, that will reflect upon the players' decisions. If the game system is geared towards social interactions, that will cause the GM to consider NPCs differently - if Joe has "resistance to Seduction" or "vulnerability to Flattery", what does that say about Joe?

Apologies for the brief essay there. Back to the topic at hand: The new group, and the new games.

Two new people joined my group this year, Dakota and Jason. They were friends from since before, and already had some experience playing RPGs together. Jason I didn't know very well when we started to game, as I had gotten to know him through the Japanese classes, but we quickly became friends. Dakota I had been having drama classes together with for over a year, so we were quite familiar.

As mentioned above, this group of four played in four separate games, with varying degrees of success. The one I spent the most effort on, and the one that (to me) stands out as the "main" game, was the Vampire: The Requiem game. Survival in Moscow revolved around a group of three vampires and a mage (Take a guess who played the mage), trying to, well, survive in Moscow. I don't remember the particularities of the plot very well, but chiefly it revolved around the Sheriff of the local vampires going insane and crucifying himself in a warehouse. This triggered a long chain of strange intrigue, made all the more complex when the Sheriff returned from the dead after three days. The game was spectacularly bloody, and although no player characters died, there was a lot of backstabbing and misery involved. In the end, Kennedy and Jasons characters had both lost everything they held dear, whereas Dakota and Luke managed to come out much more prosperous than they had been at the start. The game essentially ended because the group tore itself apart.

The other game of note, would be Trigonometry Fandango. It was a spiritual sequel to Parallel Fandango (and, as it turned out, an actual sequel as well), which I had been playing with Kennedy and Bob the year before, while Drake was in Spanish class. Both games were entirely free-form and ruleless, something I had been itching to try but never really done before these games. They took place in a Weird West-sort of setting, with cowboys, ninjas, and Arabic cities dropped smack-damn into the desert for no apparent reason. The first game revolved around the escort of a Japanese princess, the second about a hilariously complex scheme of techno-magicians who had been messing with every single player character in ridiculously convoluted ways. The two games were unrelated storywise, but there was a slight narrative connection as it turned out Jasons character in the latter game was actually the son of Kennedys character in the former - under a fake name.

This is getting really, really long now, so I'm going to wrap it up. The other two games were a brief AE game set in a forest, which ended because the PCs killed each other, and a hybrid game revolving around angels hanging around on Earth and trying to solve a mystery led by a villain who was invisible to God and all of the angels. A memorable chase scene involving a web camera and a mortal friend halfway across the world shouting instructions was involved.

Notable Characters: Remembering all these characters is a little blurry for me, but I should at least mention Kennedys' "Angel of the Internet" from the Angels game (he was the one responsible for the webcam stunt - his angelic power involved getting a flawless Internet connection, anywhere), Lukes Fat Black Ninja from Trigonometry Fandango (A ninja who behaved more like an overweight rapper) and Dakotas "Angel of Healing, Also of Missing Everything and Being Totally Maimed By Enemies". Seriously. She had the worst luck ever in that game.

Actually I think the Angels game may have had the most interesting characters overall, even though the story wasn't very interesting. I also fondly remember Jasons' "Angel of Pigeons and Weird-Ass Weaponry", which actually was a purview suggested by the corebook, although Jason sort of twisted it to his designs.

Crowning Moment of Awesome: The ending of Trigonometry Fandango was pretty massive, as every single character suddenly came to confront their past in the same place at the same time. It ended with Kennedy and Dakotas characters both reverting from monsters into humans, and recognizing each other as past lovers - which was a bit of a shocker - and it also involved Jasons character coming to terms with his daddy issues. And, of course, it's not over until the fat man sneaks.

Next Up: 2006: Arcana Evolved, in which I will discuss the main storyline of Arcana Evolved, and, if I have time, I'll also explore what Bob named the "Arcana Evolved Doujinshi", an epic tale taking place in the same world, but with radically different themes and characters.

Wanting and Fearing

2010-11-11T13:00:00.000+01:00

Desire is a strange thing. On the one hand, as the Buddhists say, desire invites unhappiness; we can never have the things we want, and even if we do, the act of receiving extinguishes the desire we felt and leaves us empty and suffering. On the other hand, desire keeps us going. Desire is what makes us get up in the morning; I want food, I want to read, I want to learn, I want to sleep.

Way back somewhere on this blog, I quote Ray Bradbury when he talks of wanting - of wanting a donkey, of wanting jewels, of wanting a woman, and, finally, wanting sleep. Sometimes, I think, all of us desire that final sleep. But then we snap out of it and recognize this desire as a vain and foolish desire. Why? Because it interferes with our other desires. A dead man can't eat or read. We're further kept away from death by the twin of desire - fear.

Sigmund Freud thought people were motivated by two forces: Eros and Thanatos. How to interpret these forces varies from person to person, but one possible way to interpret them is as desire and fear. We want, and we fear. Without desire, without fear, we would come to a standstill. The only reason why we keep going when our desires are fulfilled is that they invite fear of losing what we have found. The only reason why we keep going when our fears come to pass is that they invite a desire to undo that fearful, undesirable event.

There are many who say one should live ones' life according to ones' desires. Do what you wish shall be the whole of the law. I do not object to this philosophy - it is a good thing that people are allowed to pursue their desires. But why is it so, that fear is seen as inferior to its twin, desire? Why do we see the pursuit of happiness as more important than the escape from unhappiness? They are not necessarily the same thing.

Desire is no longer shameful, as it once were; if I want to love a man, it is nothing I should be ashamed of. If I want to stay home and play video games, it may be shameful in certain circles, but overall, society is tolerant of most desires so long as they don't bring harm to others. Fear, on the other hand, is deeply shameful. It is true that fear can limit people, even cripple them - but this is also true with desire. Greed is just as dangerous a shackle as is cowardice.

They key with desire, of course, is to desire in moderation. Your life will be unfulfilled if your only desire is alcohol. It is shameful and unhealthy to be addicted. A man who sleeps with other men is healthy in society's eyes, but a homosexual man who is addicted to sex is unhealthy, because it ultimately hurts him. Could it not be so with fear, as well? Fearing insects is not bad; fearing them so much that you can't sleep for fear of a single mosquito is bad, because it hurts you - it deprives you of sleep.

Wanting and fearing, it seems to me, are yin and yang of human behaviour. Why, then, am I ashamed of my fears?

Optimism

2010-11-09T06:30:00.000+01:00

So today I got up early - at six - to prepare for going to school. I woke up in high spirits, turned on the television and caught the weather forecast. What I saw can basically be described like this:

It gives the impression that today is going to be a fun day.

The Male Gaze and RPGs

2010-11-05T21:38:00.000+01:00

Caution: What follows may cause reactions of “Well duh”, particularly if you are a woman.

A long time ago, I had a discussion with Nightflyer in which she mentioned that she found it easier to make male characters than female, because a female character felt like it had more assumptions built into it. I understood what she meant, but thought it a little bit ridiculous – sure, I thought, Hollywood women are always a certain way, but how does that restrict you from making any kind of female character you want?

Then, a few weeks later when I spoke to S. (whom I unfortunately don't have a secret code name for) the womanizing swordsman, he mentioned how it was more difficult to put yourself into the mindset of a female character, and I thought that this is perhaps true – as a man, I have absolutely zero knowledge of some aspects of a woman's life. I thought back to my conversation with Nightflyer, though, and wondered why the reverse wouldn't be true – after all, a woman has absolutely zero knowledge of some aspects of a man's life.

Then today, for unrelated reasons, I decided to do some deeper research of the concept of the Male Gaze. I had heard of this concept before, but I thought it boiled down basically to “women are sexualized in most works of art, because the artist expects the viewer to be male”. This is of course old hat, but the theory actually runs deeper than this. It essentially states that “most works of art are created from the point of view of a heterosexual male, even if the artist isn't a heterosexual male”. The fact that women are sexualized in art is just a symptom of this deeper undercurrent; if the artwork is made through the lens of a heterosexual male, it's natural that women would be portrayed as sexually desirable because to a heterosexual male, they are. The work of art is designed to appeal to a heterosexual male as well, of course, and for this reason women are made more beautiful – but it also serves to reinforce that “You, the viewer, are supposed to be a heterosexual man.”

That is, the Male Gaze theory doesn't just state that “Most writers are male”. It actually states – to artist and reader alike – that most movies, books, et cetera are written with an implicit message of “even if you are not a straight man, you should think like one.” I won't go into further detail explaining the theory – there's lots to be read about it all around the intarwebs – but there are numerous examples. If there's no particular reason for the main character to belong to a particular sex, you make him a straight male as a default. This helps the viewer think like a straight man, irrespective of whether they actually are one or not, which is the “goal” of a lot of fiction according to this theory.

I guess you can see where this is leading: My hypothesis is that the Male Gaze applies even in roleplaying games. What Nightflyer said basically translates into “It's difficult to make a female character, because female protagonists in fiction are not the default, so there's just so little material to take from.” Essentially, a woman has more experience being a man, even if she's never pretended to be a man, because there's just so much fiction written from that perspective. Even in roleplaying games, women are “the second sex” - the alternative rather than the default – even if your own sex happens to be female.

What do you think?

The Anatomy of a Choice

2010-10-16T17:27:00.001+02:00

Trying to figure out whether or not I want to go to China for six months has taught me a lot about myself and the way I reason.

To many of you, no doubt, the answer to the question "Do I want to go to China" is very clear. Some of you would do it without hesitation; others would not even consider it. I'm pretty much right in between, though - I lean in no particular direction.

The more I dissect the question, the more questions I come up with. For instance - one reason I would want to go is that it's something I could be proud of afterwards. "I had this experience" would be something that would make me a little more special, a little more interesting, a little more worthy of love.

See what I did there? You cut a little in the question, gently remove the ligaments one by one and suddenly, you discover you've accidentally cut up another question entirely. Why would I need to do something to be a little more worthy of love? Isn't that a pretty unhealthy viewpoint? Either it is, in which case it shouldn't be a contributing factor, or it actually isn't and it's just normal human reasoning, in which case I've just discovered that my desire has a base root, no more ephemeral or sophisticated than the desire for food - making me not so special after all. The desire to be special, by definition, means that you're not actually special. It creates a sort of interesting paradox, which I've been pondering as a bit of a tangent to the main question.

This is by no means the only contributing factor; I've considered very many reasons to go. I pretty much only have one reason to stay, but it's a pretty convincing one: I like it here. Sometimes I think that's a good enough reason. Sometimes I think it isn't.

And so, I continue to cut my mind into smaller and smaller pieces, hoping that somewhere I can find an indivisible argument, the atom of choice, a fundamental building block of my own psychology. I don't seem to be able to find one.

2004: Arcana Unearthed

2010-10-03T14:27:00.000+02:00

It began, as I recall, with the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. I had just started the school which I, for simplicity, will refer to as high school, and entered a conversation with a man that I, for simplicity, will refer to as Drake. We were talking about Douglas Adams' book, but somehow the conversation wormed and wriggled, as conversations are prone to, and eventually came onto the subject of role-playing games. To my great surprise, Drake was already familiar with them – which was a bit of a surprise to me, as prior to this encounter, virtually all my friends had been introduced to the hobby by me.

Enthusiastically, we decided to start up a group; no, more formally, to start up a club. It would be the school's RPG club, and its official language would be English; something which, for the first time, would allow me to circumvent the linguistic hopscotch which is trying to play an English-language game in Swedish. Teeming with excitement about all these new things and all the changes, I suggested another change – let's not play Dungeons & Dragons, I said. Let's instead play this strange little game I bought a while back called Arcana Unearthed.

I had unsuccessfully tried to play Arcana Unearthed with my previous group, but somehow they hadn't caught on – we'd run one small, unsuccessful game whose only identifying characteristic was my brothers' bizarre Sibeccai with a badger that could drive a soapbox car, but nobody really liked it. Now, however, was an ideal time to give the game a second chance. I started digging back home for my notes on the game I'd ran with my old group six months earlier, and recovered them – they were decent, a plot about an Iron Witch causing mayhem in a small village in the north. There were some suitable enemies – goblins, bandits, the witch herself. I liked the setting, too; a mysterious forest in the far north, isolated from all sides, accessible only if you had a horse or cart, or were prepared to trek for a long while through dark, dangerous forests. It even had some useful NPCs that I could salvage. But, somehow, I felt that something was missing. This new group was clearly so much more invested in the game – there was a whole lot of creative force here, force that I didn't want to see go to waste. I needed something beyond the usual hack-and-slash adventure. Some element was missing. So I started digging deeper, and found the in-character diary of my old cleric, from four years back – mentioning a strangely scented tea. Recalling a discussion I had with Drake a while back regarding tea as a magical potion, I thought, why the hell not? So I took a blank sheet, and wrote “Plot: Our tale begins when a trader arrives carrying with him mysteriously scented vanilla tea...”

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Before I can move on to the plot, there is the discussion of the who, and almost more importantly, the where. I don't think there is one reader of my blog who has not at least seen that tiny room, with its coffee machine, picture of an old Chinese man, and self-adhering Darin poster. We were initially meaning to call it something with suitable geeky weight – something like “the Dungeon” or “the Fortress” or “the Lair” but, it appears, Fate named it something else. I don't know who first mouthed the term, but one day the name was just there; one day, the room ceased to be a room, and became the Hole. There's not much more to say about it, because I couldn't possibly capture its essence in words - but I will drink a toast in Blood of the Living to its memory.

The game had moved to a new location, and it had also moved into the minds of completely new people. The initial Arcana Unearthed group had five players, and five characters – none of whom I had even known just a few weeks ago, and only one who I had ever met. From the years above me, there was Solomon and Alastair, and from my own year Drake, Kennedy, and Bob. I had known Bob by reputation because we had previously attended the same school, but I had never really spoken to him; all the other people were entirely new to me. In part because they were entirely new to me, I made sure we spent a lot of time preparing for the game. The characters of Arcana Evolved were not just rolled up and fired off; rather, they developed over time, in discussion on buses, in classrooms, and over lunch breaks. In the beginning, there was Beo, the unwilling mohj. Then there was Ling, the paranoid faen. Shortly, the wild man Nasef (alternatively spelled Naseef, I was never really sure) and the Dynamic Duo Sibzo and Euvortacian, a.k.a Vortoc, were finished too, and only then were we ready to begin. Now, where was I? Ah, yes... I remember.

Our tale begins when a trader arrives carrying with him mysteriously scented vanilla tea...

What followed was an adventure that slowly unfolded, blossoming from an evil witch plaguing the north, to the most insanely epic tale I have ever ran, where the fate of the entire Universe hangs in the balance. When we return to the Arcana Unearthed game, it has become Arcana Evolved, and while the first year was based more on “What is the self?”, the finale of the game would expand radically in scope. The Arcana Evolved game would come to incorporate almost every topic I studied during my two years of an IB Philosophy course, ranging from ethics to epistemology to the fundamental question, “What is a human being?”

But of course, there are still two years to go. For now, the five heroes are simply trying to deal with the wicked witch, with the corrupt sheriff she controls, and with the mysterious and inexplicable memory loss that Ling is suffering. Yet, something beautiful has begun – something I couldn't even begin to guess at when I first sat down in the Hole to draw the map of the region. I had no idea then what would happen – that the story would spread a pair of beautiful wings and fly away beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

Wait a minute – how can something that exists only in imagination go beyond what I imagined? The answer is simple.

I didn't imagine it. We did.

Notable Characters:
Beo, the Badger-Killer and Master Planner.
Nasef, the Vampire (nom nom).
Ling Tem'Enneth, the Zero Hit Point Energy Field Manipulator.
Euvortacian, the Womanizing Axeman.
Sibzo, the “Hero”.

Notable Characters (for real this time):
Beo, the Dragon's Prison.
Nasef, the Man Who Should Be Dead.
Ree Kaspathodex, the God of Paradoxes.
Euvortacian, the Idiot Savant.
Sibzo, the “Hero”.

Crowning Moments of Awesome:
Naseef died in the middle of the chronicle. His heart stopped. Beo brought him back, and for a moment, his power to screw with Fate made itself apparent – something I hadn't actually planned for. Beo spent a hero point, hero points achieve the extraordinary. But it became impressive foreshadowing for the rest of the game.

Ling also died, and was reborn as Ree Kaspathodex, the God of Paradoxes. His return as the King of Kaspathodexia took everyone by surprise, I should think.

Next Up:
2005: Survival In Moscow, in which I take the task to lead a Vampire game, and various other games. Three new players are introduced, and I will also take a moment to discuss small games played across all my three high school years – including Parallel Fandango and its sequel, Trigonometry Fandango.

2002-2003: The World of Greyhawk

2010-08-23T17:51:00.000+02:00

The World of Greyhawk: Raiders of the Lost Knark

Of this campaign I simply cannot write enough, because I still have the journal I kept of the first two-thirds of the story. It's several dozens of handwritten pages, meticulously noting almost everything that happened in an eighteen-month game. I can hardly even summarize it without writing several pages, but I'm going to give it a try.

When the World of Gnomon ended, I had already begun to dip my toes into playing D&D online via forums, and that way become introduced to the World of Greyhawk. To be able to keep up with the online game, I had purchased the sourcebook for the Greyhawk setting, and I was pretty eager to try it out my own way. So, I told my players about it and they were pretty enthusiastic, but they were not tired of their villainous antics – yet. Through the course of the game, though, rather a lot of development took place. Before I get to the development, though, it's time to introduce some new players: My younger brother Jack, and a new recruit from the schools' other roleplaying group, the one my readers are most likely to recognize: Luke. It would take some time before he joined the game, but this didn't in any way lessen his impact on the story, because of the huge turnover of characters: the campaign had only five or six players, but featured 20 player characters before it ended. The sixth player, Chris, joined even later than Luke and stayed in the game for a few levels.

Probably the most eccentric game I've ever ran, the Chronicles of the Raiders of the Lost Knark are full of twists and turns. The characters are now thieves and liars, now honest saints delivering aid and hope to the world, and then go back to being thieves and liars. Despite being very incoherent, the story did have some recurring elements – the characters always seemed to have run-ins with a family of criminals named Om, who were distinct in that they always had “normal” names (Anna, Magnus, and so on) in a world where people otherwise only had fantasy names. This criminal family was perhaps not so much a main antagonist as it was the Team Rocket of the storyline – they kept turning up trying to steal whatever the PCs were trying to steal, or kill whoever the PCs had to negotiate with. Later in the story, the Om family turned out to be connected to an evil cult of a horned God, and in the epic final battle, the characters got to do battle with that God in person... and members of the Om family, trying to defend their deity.

As antagonists go, they worked very well: They went from being foils and rivals, to being mercenaries for the bad guys, to being direct lieutenants of the big bad evil guy of the game. If there's anything I'm proud of, it's that the Raiders of the Lost Knark always knew who were the enemy (and the pained look of “aw shit” I could generate just by dropping a normal name like Henrik).

The actual plot of the campaign is so convoluted that I can't easily describe it. There were, for most of the time, three layers of plot going on: The personal hijinks of the player characters, the adventures and suplots they encountered, and the actual, ongoing plot. The characters traveled this way and that across the campaign world, and the magnitude of their journey can't really be described without a map (this is the one we used). To give some idea of the travels undertaken, the players fought demon cultists in the Burneal Forest (right under the word “Living”) and bartered with strange wizards beyond the Amedio Jungle (straight down from Burneal) – they explored an ancient temple by the shores of Lake Udrukankar (above the minimap in the lower left) and served under Pirate King Arkadin in the Relmor Bay (straight down from the word “Greyhawk”). They traveled to all these places and more, all the while having their base of operations in the Free City of Greyhawk, right where the folds of the map meet at the center – and the journeys were rarely without incident, in a world of dishonest innkeepers, far-reaching criminal families, bandits, monsters, and intriguing nobles.

Merely talking about where isn't very interesting, though. I imagine if you're reading this, you also have some interest in the what. There's almost no end to it, particularly because of the complex intricacies of plot, subplot and sub-subplot, but I can give some examples: They snatched a magical compass from under the fingers of the Om family and used it to find great treasures, but it eventually led them to a strange floating island where a dead goddess was held; they resurrected her through prayer and were hounded by the minions of the assassin who killed her. They singlehandedly turned the tide of a war by defeating a demon and his evil druid minions, and later discovered this was just a small fraction of a vast demonic threat. They infiltrated the secret base of a cult of racist psychic ninjas, who practice the ancient and deadly art of Glue Fu. They crept into a castle in the sky belonging to the settings' most powerful witch, and rescued half a dozen heroes from her magic. In addition to this, there were countless personal subplots: They rescued a characters' father from being falsely accused of a crime, they freed a kidnapped sister, they foiled the plans of an evil older brother, and so on. A lot of NPCs came and went, though very few were actually recurring – mostly because the characters traveled so wide and far.

Earlier years had seen pretty massive conceptual leaps – from game to story, from story to setting, from setting to overarching plots – and although the step was smaller and more subtle in this campaign, it was nonetheless important. Previously, there had always been only one story going on at a time, with some minor frills around it. Characters had their own lives, but they were rarely involved directly in the story, the backgrounds and families were just window-dressing. The Raiders of the Lost Knark introduced the idea of interweaving plots. There were stories based on a characters' background, stories that intersected other stories, stories that only concerned one character that happened simultaneously with stories that concerned the whole group, and stories that the players invented which were then woven into the overarching plot; it was the players who came up with the idea of stealing the magical compass, for instance. Overall, this gave the campaign a very genuine, organic feeling: Nothing existed in a vacuum. What the characters did mattered, both to the setting but also to the growth of new stories. The turn-over of characters actually helped to support this organic feeling, since many of the stories quite naturally involved new people. Some characters reached their goals and retired; new ones then stepped in that were more connected to the task at hand. On the other hand, some characters stepped in that had no connection to anything, just a random happenstance, which sometimes got stupid (“I have been rowing here in a boat, that is why I am so strong!”) but occasionally just felt natural (“I deserted from the army and have no money. There are probably people looking to execute me. Can I come with you guys? That'd help.”).

Perceptive readers may note that I have not yet mentioned any characters' names. I'm getting to that; in fact, I'm actually going to list them all. While there were perhaps ten characters or so who were the real main characters with the most influence over the plot, I figured it gives a better picture of the campaign as a whole to mention all of them. Before I get to that, however, I'm going to mention two small side projects I did with this same group, at roughly the same time. They were the ones in which Jack truly got to shine.

The first one was (informally, as in, only in my notes) called “Two Houses” and took place in the same world, and at the same time, as the Raiders of the Lost Knark game, but revolved around political intrigue between noble houses in Ahlissa. Based loosely on a similar game I had ran on-line, it was supposed to be a game of politics and scheming, but it seems only Andy took any real liking to it (I don't think Luke participated). This game is mostly notable because of Jack's number-one fantastic character Gurgi the Goblin. The other characters were all scheming, manipulative noblemen; Gurgi was a goblin. Not even a particularly noteworthy goblin – he had class levels in Rogue, and that was basically it. Gurgi essentially became the heart of the game, since the most interesting story revolved around the other characters trying to manipulate the naïve, innocent, and ultimately good-hearted goblin into doing their dirty work and taking their falls. He was thoroughly tragicomical – naïve enough to be funny, but also innocent and pure compared to his cynical “friends” - whom he considered his friends right until their political machinations eventually got him killed.

The second side game I want to mention is the Storybook game. This game was ran on the premise “fairy tale clichés”, and as such the group consisted of a princess in men's clothing, an old wise druid, a blue-eyed young hero (uncharacteristically played by Bjarne), a mysterious elf from distant lands with strange customs, and a ridiculously strong brick of a dwarf. The combination was pretty much the perfect five-man band, and the story developed beautifully. It stands out mostly because it was a bit more deep and serious than other games we'd ran up until that point, with more long-spanning story and some serious themes – a pregnant player character, a deal with the devil (in the form of a witch) and some classical fairy tale elements played totally straight, like the troll who can't be defeated, only tricked. Jack played the muscular brick-dwarf, and made the most insane display of stubbornness and bullet-headedness by spending almost all of his feats on swimming, which led to his subsequent fantastically awesome victory in the final battle scene; he also did a good job of roleplaying the Big Guy perfectly straight, and managed to portray something very much like a cross between Gimli and Hagrid.

And while we're on the subject of notable characters...

Notable Characters:
Here's the complete list of the Raiders of the Lost Knark, with the six most iconic characters first.

Arthad af Vaughn / Arthad Aliaster (Charles) – Evil human fighter, later converted to the cause of good. Killed an evil god (with a lot of help from Craven the Raven). Remained in the group until the end of the game.

Kråkmåns Höghatt (Bjarne) – Dwarven cleric, tricked the God of Lies by tricking the GM. Strict and fair, but greedy. Killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood at level 10 and remained dead for a long time, but came back through a miracle before the end of the game.

Todd Ark (Andy) – Human druid with a deadpan attitude. Seduced the Unseelie Fey Queen and became her consort, but was eventually killed by Arthads' hand because the dark god's power was pouring into him. Was the longest-lasting character in the game, and survived from level 1 to 14.

Aust Galanodel (Luke) – Elven wizard, made a powerful artifact hand out of a fist-sized ruby. Calm and controlled, but slowly grew obsessed with power since he always needed more to achieve his goals. Retired very, very shortly before the end of the game to build a flying city.

Vackeria (Jack) – Elven ranger with a giant, evil, intelligent, bloodthirsty mace for a weapon. Was captured by the Om family and implanted with a weird parasite, but managed to turn it to her own ends. Vackeria temporarily retired at level 6, but came back – only to later become imprisoned by the Scarlet Brotherhood. Reached level 10.

Fenith (Chris) – Elven mercenary who loved showing off with his weapon of choice, a glaive. It was hinted that he had a connection to the enigmatic Valley Elves. Was eventually killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood at level 10.

And as for the remaining cast:

Crayloon (Charles) – Gnome wizard, formed the Raiders of the Lost Knark. Retired at level 4.

Brad Rost (Andy) – Human paladin. Not very noteworthy. Remained in play until the end of the game.

Moano (Chris) – Tattooed human monk from the far South. I'm not entirely sure what happened to him, I think Chris phased out of the game and Moano just kind of disappeared, but I don't remember.

Jacarsin (Luke) – Human sorcerous barbarian. Great liar, proficient mountain man. Retired at level 4.

Zok-Hoba (Luke) – Fallen Incubus demon who became good (so he fell upwards). Sacrificed himself at level 6 to show Arthad the Light.

Liam Tindarellion (Luke) – Halfling acrobat and knife thrower. Retired at level 10 to form her own thieves' guild.

Salazar (Luke) – Human monk with arabic features. Could jump like crazy. Was only in play for a few sessions.

Arkas Hörntand (Bjarne) – Greedy half-orc. Picked a fight with the city guard and died at level 1.

Raistlin Långskägge (Bjarne) – Greedy dwarf. Killed by a bear at level 3.

Tikas Svarthorn (Bjarne) – Greedy tiefling. Killed through no fault of her own by a shapeshifter at level 6.

Furkman af Vaughn (Bjarne) – Aggressive half-orc. Killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood at level 10 while trying to avenge Kråkmåns.

Noja Lilltå (Bjarne) – Halfling dragon rider. Sacrificed herself for the greater good at level 10.

Pluppinia av Oljin (Jack) – Halfling who thought she was a dwarf, sister of Plupp. Killed alongside Tikas by a shapeshifter at level 6.

Malefe (Jack) – Female yuan-ti (snake people) who seemed very confused. Killed when a church bell fell on her at level 8.

Minifenix (Jack) – Weird twelve-year old kid with a giant spider. Walked in through a door, out through a door, and promptly died. Gained 0 experience points and died at level 7.

Ymer (Jack) – Gnome cleric/pirate. Looked a lot like Charlie Brown. Retired at level 11.

Crowning Moments of Awesome: Either none or too many to count, depending on where you draw the line. This was the most gaming-intense year of my entire life.

Next Up:
2004: Arcana Unearthed, in which an entirely new group is introduced, and a very complex story begins to unfold. Once more I undertake the prospect of world-building, and proceed to only use a few percent of it. In the next year, complicated literary analysis enters the equation, and we embark on a journey exploring themes, moods, motifs, and other such pretentious things.

2002: Dark Hearted Heroes

2010-08-02T14:06:00.000+02:00

Memory betrays me, and I'm not sure when and exactly how these new players were introduced to me. I know that I moved to a new school, and that I somehow made some very unexpected friends. I think me getting involved so much in church work helped turn them from acquaintances into friends, and it was through involvement with the church that I came to introduce them to Dungeons & Dragons. How I came to make acquaintances in the first place is a mystery to me, but I think it was mostly Andy's doing. Anyway, I quickly met a lot of people who were interested, and at one point I ran a game for – no lie – eight people: Linus, Bjarne, Andy, Charles, Eric, Lawrence, and two random girls whose names I honestly didn't catch. It says a lot about the crowd I was hanging with that I didn't catch their names because the rest of the group referred to them as “the bitches”. I know one of them was someones' sister, maybe Linus'. I'm not sure.

Anyway, out of the many new contacts I made, only the ones involved in church business became in any way close to me – Bjarne and Charles. These two players and Andy would form the core of my new group, but it took a while before we got to that point. We played a lot of one-shots, often involving contacts or weird friends of Bjarne, and in the early days it happened often that I unpacked my briefcase and declared “today's adventure is about a goblin-infested ruin” without having much clue about who the hell all of the players were.

Before I go on, I'm going to wax nostalgic about the locations of our games for a bit. We seldom played at my house in the early days, mostly since there were so many almost-strangers – instead, we ran games in the most bizarre locations. Usually, we hung out at the church-sponsored youth center, but we also ran games in Linus' garden shed, outdoors in the school yard or on picnic cloths, in Charles' garage, and even in Andy's kitchen (where a gruesome torture took place, and me and him alike were, I think, pretty scared his parents were going to hear us).

And on the subject of gruesome torture, I quite naturally arrive at the titular Dark Hearted Heroes. I don't know what made us stick to them. Perhaps they were mechanically well-designed, or perhaps it was the sheer glee of villainy that appealed to the players – I honestly don't know – but the main game of this year became the chronicles of Tjocka Bombadil Salabim Potter af väldigt mycket fetstryk, Lord över gläntorna i skogen, helgon av Furyondy och dotter till Tjock and Erok the dark elf. The former was a male halfling druid for the first five minutes of her existence, after which she promptly grew “Dolly Parton breasts” and became a female halfling druid. The latter was a dark elf assassin with some backstory – he was basically such a terrifyingly evil bastard that the other dark elves kicked him out.

The third character was the mild-mannered, kind-hearted half-elf ranger named Amsirac Parwyn. He was chaotic good, liked birds and music, and fit in with the other two about as well as Tinky-Winky would fit in the Inglorious Basterds. They would surely become the best of friends.

I should probably stress, at this point, that by no means was there a lack of roleplaying – at least not by the standards I had then. Sure, they made powerful and optimized characters, but they also did a lot to portray their characters. Charles spoke with a much darker voice than usual and often with in-character language, and although it was somewhat hilarious to see a 2-meter tall man trying to portray a woman less than half his size, the squeaky voice did give a lot of feeling. Furthermore, while two characters were evil, they were not just cardboard-cut-out villains – Erok wanted people to respect and fear him, whereas Tjocka was driven by a combination of greed and religious zealotry. Amsirac was also very well portrayed, almost a little overzealously sometimes, and also had a well-defined goal, namely to settle down and raise a family. On their own, each character was perfectly sensible. Together, only the law of We Are Player Characters kept them from killing each other, and even that eventually failed.

I don't remember how the game begun; I know that Bjarne, for about a session, played a half-orc but grew tired of that character almost immediately and retired him – said half-orc was probably his only character that didn't end up dying horribly. I know that Erok and Amsirac hated each other from the very start, but that they initially kept this hatred down to a tolerable, Gimli-and-Legolas level. The story was set in the Gnomeworld, in Glorywell initially, but of the early adventures I recall almost nothing except that a lot of them were bank heists and that the phrase “I look for the richest house in town” was used a lot.

The unique flavor of the game was of course readily apparent already then, but it didn't get truly crazy until Amsirac haphazardly became the mayor of a nearby city. The storyline centered around a lost ring that was the symbol of office for a city called Hyboria (I was terrible at coming up with names back in the day – Hyboria is from Conan the Barbarian), and whoever held the ring would become mayor of the city. The plot was for the players to be given copious sums of money for returning it to the rightful owner, and I thought money would interest the PCs more than power since money = magic items, and power just means having a lot of peasants.

Unfortunately, the players were smarter than that, and double-crossed me; only to be promptly double-crossed by Amsirac. Through a complicated series of diplomatic deals, both within the party and outside it, the ring wound up in the hands of the good player character, who took it to protect the city from the onslaughts of his two terrifying companions. Amsirac then decided to settle down there, took a wife, and had three daughters. His two companions were furious, and traveled back to the dark elven kingdom to kill Erok's elder brother (who had just killed their father) in order to have his estate fall into their hands. Finding the estate too small and too far north to be pleasing, they kidnapped all the homeless people from Hyboria (because no one else was stupid enough to waltz onto a ship to be sold into slavery, basically) and established their own kingdom, then immediately declaring war on Amsirac. Almost immediately thereafter, they decided that one kingdom was too small for the both of them, so Bjarne arranged to become the ruler of Gnomeworld's equivalent to the Shire, which he immediately turned into Soviet Mordor.

From here, the story really, really took a gleefully suicidal turn. Erok wrote a pact with the Demon Lord of Lust, Graz'zt, in exchange for great powers. Then he also made a pact with Nerull, the God of Death, in exchange for immortality. Then he also made a pact with Erythnul, the God of Slaughter, to become a terrible and dangerous fighter. So then, to one-up him, Tjocka willingly became a vampire, and also made a pact with Tharizdun, the Ultimate Evil God of Being Such A Massive Psycho Even The Other Evil Gods Are Afraid of Him, Also God of Madness. Then she turned into a pig.

For those who haven't heard this story already, the explanation is that druids in D&D can't cast resurrect, but they can cast a spell called Reincarnate, that allows the recipient to return in the form of an animal. Tjocka had died at one point, but through favors with an NPC druid had managed to reincarnate in the form of a piglet. Fortunately for her, druids can always shapeshift into their own true form (which is explicitly counted from before the reincarnation), so she could turn back into a halfling more-or-less indefinitely, needing to reflexively reactivate the power every 36 hours or so. However... druids whose alignment shifts so that it no longer has “neutral” in it (in her case, to Chaotic Evil from Neutral Evil) immediately lose their shapeshifting powers. Meaning that, when her 36 hours were up, she couldn't reactivate the power, and so reverted to a pig. A vampire pig.

At this point, the entire campaign world was basically going to hell. The three player characters were among the most powerful beings in the setting, and had sort of as a byproduct of trying to become rich defeated the most dangerous villains around (villains that my father introduced when he ran a brief game based on the Wheel of Time series with me and Alex). Now, Charles and Bjarne were raising the stakes.

Erok and Tjocka set out on a quest to find the legendary Sword of Kas, a blade used by a vampire to backstab the God of Lies. The ultimate in traitor accessory, the sword is an artifact and unrivaled in power, but getting to it required asking demons to find out where it is. So, naturally, they summoned a couple of demons and let them loose on the countryside, finding out that they would have to travel to one of the Nine Hells to ask more questions there. They used Tjocka's magical cloak to open a portal there... and sort of casually left it open.

Some explanation of my reasoning here is in order: I was, by now, pretty tired of the Gnomeworld. It had already been entirely bent out of shape by the mad antics of this group of three, and I'd also started playing in several internet games, taking place in the World of Greyhawk. To this end, I'd purchased the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, and suddenly had 200+ pages of pre-written campaign world, plus 25 years of experience from my new online friends, since the setting is one of the oldest RPG campaign settings around. So I had decided to let the Gnomeworld go. The heroes had already travelled beyond the Impenetrable Mountains of the West, seen the King of Glorywell die, founded three separate kingdoms and generally turned the setting into something quite different from what it had initially been. So, when the two evil players gave me the opportunity, I ended the world.

Through the casually-left-open portal, the demonic forces of Hell poured out, spurred on by the evil gods who now reaped their end of the bargain with Erok and Tjocka, turning them into their helpless pawns. The forces of evil marched against Hyboria, where I allowed Amsirac one last hail-mary solo adventure to summon the forces of Good. The resulting cosmic cataclysm tore the Gnomeworld to pieces, and when the dust had settled, Tjocka the Vampire Pig was imprisoned in a magical coffin at the bottom of the deepest ocean, Erok the Assassin had become some kind of utterly insane demon, aimlessly wandering the ancient deserts of the South, and Amsirac had managed to save his family and a small fragment of his kingdom. With that, we took a final farewell to the Gnomeworld, leaving the world in ruins – except for Amsirac's beloved Hyboria, which stood as a last, flickering beacon of hope.

Notable Characters:
All three were of course notable, but Amsirac gets the special mention here. Playing the good guy when both of the other characters are explicitly evil is a dangerous move, and I wouldn't allow it in a chronicle run nowadays. However, Amsirac became an interesting character, acting as a damper on his villainous friends' behavior. Often ridiculed as wimpy and spineless, Amsirac was actually the direct opposite – and I let him survive the end of the world for a reason other than him being sympathetic. Amsirac was, actually, pretty damn smart, and had countless times managed to counter the onslaughts of his friends through careful applications of diplomacy, strategy, and the right choice of spells. His most clever move was probably getting a hold of a crystal ball – which his character couldn't use – and then doing small solo missions for a friendly wizard in exchange for the wizard spying on his enemies. Bjarne and Charles never figured it out, because they still thought inside the box of game rules – rangers can't use crystal balls, so how could Amsirac possibly be predicting their moves?

I should also mention three characters that were in a humorous side-game: Bjarne played a combat chef, Andy played a stoner wizard, and Charles played a monk who had seen the Matrix film in a vision, and sought to mimic it. Very badly. They made a great gang, who ran a delivery service together, and ferried absurd cargo to even absurder recipients. Although it was short, it was very, very fun.

Crowning Moments of Awesome:
Ending the world was a lot of fun.

There's also: Tjocka throwing herself off a tower to seal the pact with Tharizdun through her own death. Erok's return from the Abyss after his first demonic pact, now in the form of an ebon demon with blazing red eyes. Amsirac's ascension to the throne of Hyboria. My favorite, though: That one time when Tjocka and Erok blew up a bar for no goddamn reason at all, and then fled the explosion by turning into a rhinoceros with Erok riding on its back. Amsirac was right outside, trying to persuade some NPCs to help their cause when the rhino and its maniacally laughing dark elf rider burst out of the wall.

Next Up:
2003: The World of Greyhawk, a.k.a. Raiders of the Lost Knark, in which four villains and Todd set out to gain riches and respect, but come to discover the errors of their ways, and eventually gravitate to the forces of good – becoming champions of all that is right and just in the world – until they eventually meet their tragic demise. A full story, with beginning, middle and end, continuity, and an impressive main villain, this chronicle took the good pieces of the previous games and put them together into a beautiful whole. Also: People die. A lot.

2001: Gnomeworld

2010-07-03T06:22:00.000+02:00

I'm not exactly sure when the Gnomeworld game started and finished, and what else I did during this period of my gaming life. I am sure, however, that the Gnomeworld project was absolutely enormous compared to other games I had done when I started working on it.

Gnomeworld began quite simply; we were looking to run a new game, with new fresh characters. So we did; me and Lex created two new characters called Gelbon and Shamila, and ran this more or less exactly in the same style as the previous games. In the third session, though, something interesting happened – the adventure called for going back to a place we had already visited. I hadn't planned for this – it just happened – so we took a break in the game to make a little map of the area north of the city based on what we could remember of the first session. Since the first adventure in the area mentioned it being close to the country's borders, I ad-hoc made up “Glorywell”, a name taken straight out of Heroes of Might and Magic, and marked it as being the neighboring country. This left us with the left and right side of the map looking very empty, so just for the sake of good measure we drew all of the kingdoms' borders, and were left with a circular kingdom with one city in it, occupying exactly one A4-sized sheet of paper.

We went on with the adventure and left it at that; to the north of the mountains is another kingdom. Pretty soon, though, we got curious about Glorywell – what was it like, actually? So, on a whim I decided that the bad guys had fled the country, and turned the adventure into an exciting mission of exploring foreign lands. Taking a new sheet of paper, we drew out the kingdom of Glorywell as we went along; when the characters passed a river, we drew a river. When they saw a mountain, we drew a mountain. Pretty soon, we were both so curious about this strange new kingdom that we stopped playing altogether and just drew more of it, and by the time the evening came, we had mapped out our home country – Gnomon, the kingdom of the gnomes – and Glorywell, which we decided to be the kingdom of the humans.

I say that we were both curious, because the entire thing just sort of grew organically. I didn't plan for Glorywell to turn out at it did – we just played the game as we had always done, with obstacles and monsters, but we did do one thing different: We carefully documented everything. When we stopped playing to draw, it wasn't organic any longer, but I was still curious – for having a map added a whole new sort of excitement, a strange sort of anticipation: It was quite far to the capitol of Glorywell (creatively named Glorywell) and surely, it must contain a lot of cool stuff, right? I mean, it wouldn't be such a big, important city if it didn't, would it?

Sometime at this point I had to go home, and – filled with anticipation at what would happen in Glorywell – I began plotting and scheming for serious.Previously, I had done one adventure at a time and been happy with that – when the Gnoll King dies, the adventure is over and I'll make up a new one. Now, however, I was planning ahead, and really far ahead at that. “The king is sick; he needs medicine from the land of the elves. The elves are plagued by evil ogres and will need someone to kill them. When the king is about to get cured, his evil brother will try to kill him. When the evil brother is captured, his necromancer allies will try to get revenge.”

Strangely, as an outcome of this long-term planning, a spectacular villain emerged. I don't remember where he came from at all, actually – in all likelihood he was initially just some run-of-the-mill villain that was bossing around goblins – but what made this villain unique was that, after he was defeated by the PCs (or PC, as it was with Lex), he somehow managed to survive and get away. I don't remember how, or why, because I don't think it was really intentional – but he got away, and I remembered him when I was writing my plans. Then, I brought him back.

So it was that Shamila the Barbarianess got a nemesis – the menacing Baron, who was quite an extraordinary villain, probably one of my best. Throughout the chronicle he returned I think five or six times, each time with even more powerful minions and even more villainous plans. He grew alongside Shamila, both in power and in influence – initially a mere nameless, evil fighter with some goblin minions, but at the end of the campaign a megalomaniac demon-tyrant with hordes of monsters at his beck and call. The most spectacular thing about the Baron, though, was that despite being repeatedly defeated, and despite being killed twice (yes, he came back from the dead too) – he was never unmasked. He wore a black and red helmet with a visor, and it was never, as far as I can recall, removed – throughout the entire game. Nor was his backstory ever revealed. The Baron remained a mystery, and because of his megalomania and cruelty coupled with his inhuman nature – faceless, nameless, friendless – he became a very compelling bad guy.

I am, however, getting ahead of myself. When we first encountered the then-unimportant Baron, the entire world still consisted of only two nations – one big, one small. When me and Lex met again to play more, the first thing we did was to make the world bigger still. We elaborated the kingdom of the elves, the kingdom of the dwarves, the wild lands of the orcs, and so forth. Far to the west, we placed an impenetrable barrier of mountains, to put some sort of limit on our crazed world-building; the rest of the world was surrounded by endless ocean. Later, we added more nations with a bit more flavor than just “elves” or “orcs”, and in an unusual moment of creativity we even made two distinctly different dwarven nations.

By the time we began playing again, we had a world map spanning 36 sheets of paper, held together with sticky-tape and folded together with the utmost care to show only the relevant location. I would later use this world for a lot of stories, but for now, all we had was a map; a huge drawing, a geographical skeleton of a more or less empty world. Me and Lex had finished drawing the big picture – now, we would focus on drawing the small picture.

There was a craze of creating, inventing and detailing during this period of my roleplaying life – we would sometimes stop mid-adventure to ask ourselves “What food do our characters like?” or “I think my character was taught magic by his grandfather” - and we'd also take long pauses between games to draw a lot. We had drawings of our characters, of our characters in alternate outfits, of their family, of their extended family, of every single piece of equipment they carried with them, of their shared house (that they bought for honestly-earned adventuring money), of their respective bedrooms, et cetera. Of course, since neither of us was very good at drawing, they were simple pictures and they took virtually no time to produce, but it was the documentation that was important. Every detail, no matter how small, added to our world and to our characters. We had no way of knowing what would be important, so we took note of everything, from food to relatives to pointless customs of distant lands. We also started fiddling around with the rules, changing stuff we didn't like. We were terrible at it.

Shamila started out as a barbarian, but since that made the group consist of a barbarian and a wizard it meant we had no source of healing power, I put together a home-made “barbaladin” class for Shamila, which was basically a barbarian and a paladin, simultaneously. It was horrendously broken and meant that Shamila was much, much more powerful than my character – but on the other hand, Lex was strictly speaking the only player, so it was never much of a problem.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Shamila and Gelbon both made it to level 20, and that was with by-the-book experience points awards. They even made it beyond level 20 – although the actual story ended before that (the Baron was finally, definitely defeated for the last time around level 18, and with that the real story of the campaign ended. After that, we ran a bunch of unrelated adventures). The campaign ended with the two lifelong friends parting ways; Shamila married the God she had been devoted to ever since she became a barbaladin, and Gelbon waved goodbye to her and disappeared off into the Infinite Worlds, and with that we formally leveled them up to 21, just to have it done.

Aside from being a good-bye to a much beloved story, this was also a sad moment because it was the last serious, big game me and Lex had together; although we continued to play for a long time after that, my focus had shifted to players back home... players who initially were of a much more sinister bent than Lex or, indeed, the Baron.

Notable Characters:
Both Shamila and Gelbon. They were zealously detailed... and that's about all the cool that was to them, really. They weren't very interesting people; they were, however, not very interesting people that we knew almost everything about.

Crowning Moments of Awesome:
“The Tyrannosaurus Dragon uses its +26 Intimidate skill and roars. All your soldiers and followers pee their pants and collapse into whimpering balls of fear. What do you do?” - “I intimidate it back. Natural 20, and I have +28.”

Aside from that little gem, the Barons two deaths were really cool, cinematic moments. The first time, he was thrown into a deep pit full of fire, and messily burned to death. The second time, he had been reborn as a powerful demon prince, and was thrown into a planar vortex and destroyed. While such battles are simple and the staple of B-movies everywhere, they are also awesome. Such power is not to be disregarded.

Next Up:
Dark Hearted Heroes, in which a vile force of darkness arrives in the Gnomeworld, bringing with them murder, betrayal, evil pacts and utter despair. Kings and heroes fall by their hands, wicked beings kneel before them, ruin and death follows in their wake. They are the new player characters, and the world trembles where they walk.

Food Quotes

2010-06-21T02:53:00.001+02:00

A disclaimer: I'm really not all that terrible at living alone. But, during my two weeks of being by myself in the apartment, I have said some of the following wonderful lines to myself:

"Well, this is technically bread, and what I'm putting on it is technically cheese... so I have myself a cheese sandwich. Technically."

"Hm... I suppose milk isn't really food as such, but it still counts as lunch. I think."

"I could eat the paprika... but I'll need that for the chili. I could eat the beans, but I need those for the chili. I could eat some carrots... but I need those too for the chili. So what if I just boil crushed tomatoes? Wait... I need that for the chili too."

"Right, I can't use the mixer to mash the potatoes in a teflon pan. I'd better put them on a plate and mix them there."

"Wait, is this breakfast? Is it... lunch? When the hell did I wake up? If it is breakfast, how come it's chili?"

2000: The Crossdressing Crusades

2010-06-09T13:58:00.000+02:00

In the year 2000, the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons was released. I got it pretty much fresh off the printers, though I had no idea how new it was; all I knew was that I was switching from something old, to something new. Pretty much simultaneously, AD&D celebrated its nineteenth birthday (The early D&D, which I never played, turned 26 that year).

The same year, a few months before I got the new books, I had managed to recruit two new players who came to form the basis of the first group I ever seriously ran adventures for. It consisted of my friend from school, Andy, and his little brother Benny. While Benny would only be in the group for two years, Andy formed the core of my long-running chronicles to follow. He spent a lot more time on his character than me or Lex had done before, detailing such things as family, education, habits, personality and wardrobe. While he was a bit overzealous at times, and he absolutely detested any form of harm befalling his precious, well-crafted character, Andy taught the rest of us that the sky's the limit when it comes to character creation. While my father still ran adventures for this group as well (the Tower of Power adventure in the previous post actually included them), I took my first staggering steps as a GM designing simple "kill the monster" scenarios for these two players.

Andy was also the one who gave this blog post its title. He introduced a novel new concept that neither me nor Lex had previously considered: his character was a girl, a stunningly gorgeous elven paladin named Gondriel. With that, he sparked somewhat of a trend, and when we eventually got the third edition books, three out of four people made female characters. At this point I still had my own characters in all the adventures, and was more or less the inofficial GM only because I owned the books – and my first 3rd edition character was Wendy, a half-elf druid. Lex followed suit with the ranger Wanda, which left Benny as our only male – Bruno the Bard.

For practical reasons we later split the group, and along with Lex I created the first real “campaign” or “chronicle” I ever made, unimaginatively named “Wendy & Wanda” which really sounds a lot more like a daytime TV sitcom than an exciting fantasy adventure now that I look back at it. Nevertheless, it was the first thing I played with a coherent, sensible storyline – and more importantly, it was the first time I got to work crafting NPCs. I made a lot of them for this game: Recurring villains, sidekicks, the quirky store owner Thorin, even a romantic interest.

I know what you're thinking, and let me stop you right there – yes, we were two teenage boys playing female characters in a story with a romantic side plot. This couldn't possibly end well, could it?

Surprisingly, our minds weren't in the gutter nearly half as much as you'd expect. While there were a few “Tee hee, I have boobs” moments, and our characters probably took a few more baths than what was strictly necessary if you're out adventuring, the romantic storyline actually developed relatively sensibly, and ended in Wanda being married to a handsome samurai with graying temples. You might wonder what a female Aragorn was doing marrying a samurai who probably belongs in a different quarter of the world altogether, which brings me to another interesting viewpoint: While we had a story, we still didn't have a setting. I made up the scenery for the adventures more or less on the fly, and aside from one town called Freeport which served as our base of operations, nothing was really coherent between our adventures; the town was simultaneously by the sea, in the middle of the forest, or next to an evil empire, as appropriate for the adventure.

We would eventually come to deal with this issue, but for now we were happy just to go on adventures. The stories were simple, but the adventures usually were at least vaguely linked together, and because of the recurring NPCs it did have the feeling of being a single, distinct campaign to a much greater degree than anything we had done before. We looked back at our adventures, and I loved what I saw; the simple mud of dull die-rolling had been fertilized, and out of it was spiring something beautiful, something none of us had expected to be there. Out of random encounters, survival rolls, and spot checks, a story was growing, a story that somehow was more than just the sum of its parts. It was a simple story, a crude, primitive tale of man (or woman, rather) facing monsters in harsh wilderness, but it was alive, and more importantly, it was mine.

This is when I became truly passionate. I started writing down what had happened in the adventures, sometimes from the point of view of one of the characters. I started reading the books thoroughly, scanning for new interesting monsters, traps, or other obstacles. I plowed through novels solely to get inspiration. I counted the days until the next game session. I was hooked, and hooked bad.

In just one year, I had gone from stringing together random encounters for Bruno and Gondriel, to fashioning characters, plots, and all sorts of challenges falling outside the scope of the rules. Now, only one thing remained: A setting.

Notable Characters: Gondriel, who was the first character to really be a character in her own right. Paradoxally, she wasn't in the first chronicle, as it was a while before I made real “stories” for the group in my hometown, but it was Andy's design of Gondriel that really showed me and Lex how to make your character more than just numbers on a sheet of paper.

Crowning Moments of Awesome: Yeah, we had a few. One of the best one was sneaking off from a school dance to run a session in the coat room, using our first-edition sheets made on the backs of old homework (Gondriel and Bruno remained 1st ed characters for most of their existence, for some reason I remember mostly playing 3rd ed with Lex). We also finally beat the first dungeon that my father ran for us, which I ran straight out of the book with some added quirks of my own. While I was the GM and probably biased, Bill and Sain (with the addition of Gondriel) finally did manage to make it to the treasury of the ruins and got their reward (not that they needed it after killing the kobold banker, but still).

The true Crowning Moment of Awesome, however, was in that magical moment when the game became a Story. I've spent my entire life since then reliving that moment in many, many, many different games, and it keeps getting better.

Next Up: Gnomeworld, in which I create a full-scale world, learn how to plan ahead, and things begin to take a darker turn. Also, a character actually climbs from level 1 to level 20 – to date, a feat I've only seen done once.

1999: Kobold Soup

2010-06-06T18:33:00.000+02:00

“You're sitting at a dark, dank tavern in a small town, when an old dwarf approaches, saying he knows of a ruined monastery where, supposedly, a great treasure lies hidden...”

In -99 I was introduced to roleplaying games, and spent most of that year on the player side of the table. Me and Lex (notice the cunning nickname) started out in an adventure as classically D&D as they come. Whereas we started out with a bang and a critical hit, the adventure didn't actually go so well and gave both of us nightmares because of the creepy thing sneaking around in the dungeon – we didn't actually find out what it was in-game, ever – but even in the first adventure we had some of those classical things that make roleplaying games so great, like the GM-Player miscommunication (“The door doesn't open when I push it? I bash it open!” - “It- it opens outwards, but okay?”), insane streaks of hateful, evil dice (“I missed the goblin six times and I needed to roll an 8?”) and even the tiniest bit of character backstory (“My parents were killed by dragons! Then I got adopted by my grandparents, but they were killed by dragons too!” - Hey, I was 11!).

After that initial adventure, we played occasionally under the guidance of my father, notably in the Tower of Power adventure, written and designed by one of my fathers' friends way back before I was born, but we also spent a lot of time just randomly fighting stuff from the monster manual, sans GM; it gave us the opportunity to try out how the game worked, and ignited those first few sparks of true creativity in us both – when we would actually stop and discuss for a moment where and why we were fighting the three gnolls. Somewhat surprisingly, Lex stood for the gamemastering before I did, in the adventure that gives this blog post its name: Kobold Soup. The plot: A man really, really likes kobold soup, but he has no kobolds to put in it. The mission: Kill lots of kobolds and feed the man. The twist: One of the kobolds owns a bank, and has at least one item from every treasure table in the game. The happy ending: We run out of shit to spend the money on, and build a giant church for the rest of it.

The Tower of Power was the most interesting adventure story-wise, one which I'd be glad to run again even though I've both played and ran it many, many times. Unfortunately we never finished it back then, because we either died or my father was too busy to run it for so long that we forgot what we were doing. The adventure revolves around a mysteriously scented tea, which players from my AE games probably recognize.

Notable Characters:
None really, but I'd like to give myself a pat on the back for at least giving my cleric a backstory of some kind.

Crowning Moments of Awesome:
It didn't get a whole lot better than instantly killing the first monster – a giant spider – I think. We did kind of accidentally kill a dragon because we misinterpreted the rules, but it wasn't very exciting because it died instantly (again because we misinterpreted the rules) and it was just one of those “let's fight random stuff!” bouts.

Next Up: The Crossdressing Crusades, in which we introduce two new players and four new characters, and I make my debut as a gamemaster.

Eleven Years of Adventure

2010-06-05T13:52:00.001+02:00

I've had another Random Idea (tm). This idea spired out of my Half-Life Idea, because I realized that I pretty recently passed the limit where I've been doing roleplaying games for half my life, and I got all nostalgic and stuff. So, in another bout of sleeplessness, I went through my gaming year-by-year in my head, and I realized that it might be fun to write some of it down.

Since I inevitably lose anything I write down on a note, I figured I might as well use my blog. It's a neat place to keep shit, and it also means that if people are bored, they can read it and maybe become even more bored, so that's good. Furthermore, it gives me something to do with my blog during the summer.

What I'm going to do is, I'm going to primarily write about the “long-term game of the year”, since I've done one big project every year, and then maybe mention some smaller chronicles that deserve attention. I'm also going to gossip a bit about various players, so woo gossip I guess? Chances are you will be mentioned if you have played with me, but don't worry, I'll do my best to protect everyones' privacy by giving them cunning nicknames. Posts will be extremely long, very self-centered, and in all likelihood, not very entertaining. You have been warned.

The first entry is called “1999: Kobold Soup” and will be up shortly.

Blog Challenge: Half-Life

2010-06-01T01:42:00.001+02:00

So I couldn't sleep, and came to count various mathematical conclusions in my head. This is one of them.

I am now approximately 22 years and 46 days old (roughly). This means that, half my life ago, I was 11 years and 23 days. That was the 9th of May, 1999.

Half my life ago, I was in fifth grade and had just fallen in love with Linn J, a girl in my class. I had not yet awakened sexually, but I had discovered roleplaying games and programming in the form of the Klik n' Play game maker. I had also discovered the Beatles and hung out in Andreas' house listening over and over to Rubber Soul. I had done some acting in school plays - playing an old grandfather-guy and something involving a black top hat, as well as put up my very own mime show with some dude I barely knew.

Half my life ago, I had visited the United States but not (if memory serves) Norway, and the most important things in my life were second-hand stores for comic books and video games. I was fiercely loyal to Sega despite the losing battle against the N64 and my MegaDrive was my most prized possession. Half my life ago, I was just about to read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time, and I had just about beaten Sonic 3. Half my life ago, I outsmarted a teacher for the first time in my life, and realized that older people are not infallible.

Of the people I knew half my life ago, I now only keep contact with those I am related to. I barely know what has become of the others.

Now for the challenge: Who were you half your life ago? What was important to you? Who did you know? Use your blogs, people. I'm curious.

Nightbrain

2010-05-24T06:00:00.000+02:00

This morning I woke up and couldn't remember who I was. It took my brain a little while to catch up, and for a few seconds - thirty or so - I was just left reeling in confusion at how to interpret all the visual impressions I got; I remember focusing on an alarm clock and wondering vaguely if the alarm clock was mine, and if so, what I was supposed to use it for.

I wish I could say it was cool, but it really was just confusing and frightening. Even more so, it was kind of depressing because when I finally remembered who I was, my instant reaction was to be disappointed. I don't know what that says about me.

It's Official!

2010-05-19T23:15:00.000+02:00

I have nothing more to add.

Up And Down

2010-05-18T11:49:00.000+02:00

I've practically been manic-depressive lately, so much that I'm wondering if I should go see someone just to make sure there ain't nothing wrong with me. I really switch between passionate enthusiasm locking me up in a single task for an entire day, forgetting to eat and refusing to sleep... just to crash the following day in a puddle of lethargy and do nothing.

I have a feeling they're due to stress from school, so maybe this'll all clear up once summer arrives. I think what I need is simply uninterrupted boredom for long enough that I won't have anything left to spazz out and spend all my energy on.

I know I should technically be able to control this myself, but it's really, really hard. I can get up from the depressive spells, but I can't seem to stop myself from those crazy spasms of absolute devotion.

Anyone got advice for how to contain enthusiasm?

"Rik McUristsson (Gamesmith) has been taken by a strange mood."

Futuristic Linguistics

2010-05-11T11:43:00.000+02:00

Rappers are pretty amazing. Modern-day rappers can perform linguistic stunts that would baffle the old bards and poets, I'm pretty sure; I've seen numerous examples of rap that contains real literary quality, and many of the best even improvise it entirely.

Question is, why does nobody in "higher literary circles" pay attention to this? I've seen rap lyrics that I'm pretty sure would make Shakespeare impressed (if he could understand them) because they have a nice rhythm, good rhyming, and are peppered with similies and metaphors. Take a look at this, for example:

"When I punch ya, I rupture all your ribcage in a rage,
and I turn you into a cartoon too and erase the page."

The above two lines have some pretty good rhythm, and we've got at least one pretty advanced metaphor ("turn you into a cartoon and erase the page") and one somewhat more crude one (assuming the rapper isn't literally threatening people with crushing their ribcages, which rappers aren't prone to do). This isn't bad poetry - it's pretty advanced poetry. Its message might only be "I am awesome", but poetry has never concerned itself much with message - what makes poetry poetry is that it has literary quality, and it can't be argued that rap does.

Here's another example from some guy called John Cena (he's probably famous, I never heard of him before):

"Cause I'm ill like a sick metaphor,
got the crowd shouting Cena cause they want some more
[...]
hold your hands up, hold 'em high,
that was a nice diss, but it was a wack-ass try."

Not perhaps remarkable mastery of language, but he made this up on the fly as one dude in the audience insulted him. And still, the guy manages to fire off "ill like a sick metaphor" which is a pretty advanced similie and something that, I'm quite sure, literature professors could spend a few hours poring over its hidden depths had it appeared in some musty old book on poetry.

Why aren't rappers given the credit and respect they deserve? They're doing massively impressive things with their language, sometimes in advance, sometimes on the fly as they stand there. What with the speed a rapper usually keeps up, this makes many of them way more advanced than many poets. Granted, the message might not be so deep, but should that really matter? If an artist only paints angry dogs, but does so amazingly well, is he any worse of an artist just because the motive isn't deep and inspired?

Whining

2010-05-02T12:46:00.000+02:00

Blogs are good for whining.

Stumbled upon a video on YouTube which was from a Christian group going "Hey everyone, tolerance is real neat, God approves of gay marriage and everything, love each other and be happy."

The comments for the video was endless spamming from people going "Religious retards, you all suck."

Granted, this is YouTube comments we're talking about, so it's inevitably made by the absolute dregs of humanity, but still. You'd think we could agree about "Being nice to people is a good thing."

The Small Awesome Things

2010-04-23T09:31:00.001+02:00

So the other day I was changing sheets in the bed, and I'd moved it out from the wall to be able to put on the sheet properly. Then, without really thinking, I tossed a pillow onto the bed - and while it was mid-air I realized that it was going to fall between the bed and the wall on the far end. Acting with super-fast thinking, I pushed the bed with my knee and managed to pin the pillow against the wall with the bed.

I gave myself a stunt bonus.

Intelligent Gay Design

2010-04-19T04:02:00.001+02:00

Here's an interesting observation:

Men can achieve orgasm through anal stimulation, because of the positioning of the prostate. Women usually can't achieve orgasm through anal stimulation (exceptions exist) because, well, they don't have prostates.

Conversely, women can achieve orgasms without penetration (well, duh).

What does this tell us? It tells us that God has actually equipped men to be able to enjoy both aspects of anal sex. It also tells us that God has equipped women to be able to enjoy non-penetrative sex, as in, sex where no penis is involved.

Conclusion: If Intelligent Design is indeed true, God has purposefully equipped humans with features that serve no other purpose other than making it possible to have gay sex.

Pokémon Tabletop Adventures!

2010-04-06T11:46:00.000+02:00

Okay, so I'm pretty sure I've told everyone about this already, but I'm going to blog about it anyway cause, hell yeah.

Pokémon Adventures! It's a tabletop roleplaying game where you play Pokémon trainers! The rules for putting together a trainer are, as of yet, not complete - but the rules for designing, catching, and duelling with pokémon are finished! Trainers are easy, you can use almost any game system to cobble together an ordinary dude - so it's basically playable with a bit of conversion work!

I already tried putting together a Squirtle, it's easy as pie; just look up a Squirtle's statistics, adjust for personality, and then when your pokémon levels up you have to observe certain rules (like, Squirtle, Wartortle and Blastoise must always have Defense as their highest stat) - otherwise you're good to go! Pokémon duels follow the same basic rules as they do in the Gameboy game; attacks almost always hit, and deal damage or inflict certain special effects on enemy Pokémon. When rolls are required, they're handled with d20s or d100s. As usual, the most difficult part of strategizing is choosing which pokémon to use.

This rocks and as soon as there is free time for it, I am going to design an adventure. The only problem I can foresee is what happens if you should ever need rules for Pokémon vs. Human or Pokémon vs. Environment, as they never really address that in the game, and not much in the TV series. Presumably, though, humans are just plain screwed against even a basic Pokémon, and the environment causes serious problems for any Pokémon without an affinity for it (like, don't try to make Diglett swim, and don't leave your Bulbasaur in a rockslide).

When (not if) we eventually play this, I will only use the basic 150 Pokémon, and starting trainers will get to begin with one of the following: Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Geodude, Machop, Abra, Pidgey, Caterpie, Gastly, Zubat, Oddish. For balance reasons, the game doesn't allow you to start with Pikachu, only Pichu - but Pichu is not part of the original 150, so sorry dudes.

General Geekery

2010-03-27T18:08:00.000+01:00

So I've been looking into some RPGs that I might want in the future, try some new things and stuff. I know very little about them other than what I've gleaned from forum discussions, rumours batted around on the Internet, and short articles.

I'm going to make a handy list for myself here (and also, it's my birthday in a short while. Eh? Eh?)

Kult: Death Is Only the Beginning is, well... a cult game, by now. Famous for being very dark, very offensive and accused of having inspired at least one murder and at least one suicide, it's more or less a collector's item. It's a Gnostic game in which characters gradually go more insane. Don't think I'd like to play it, but it's so famous that I should probably own it. Would probably prefer the English version, though it is a Swedish game.

Adventure! Also a cult game, this game focuses on a group of psychics and superheroes in the 1920s Pulp era. You basically play as Indiana Jones fighting against psychic Nazis, monster-worshipping cults or pulp-era supervillains - think the early superheroes from Watchmen. I know very little about this game, except that it's famous among White Wolf fans.

Aberrant Taking place in the same world as Adventure! Aberrant is a relatively famous superhero game. It runs on the same engine as Exalted/old World of Darkness, but with themed groups of superpowers allowing for creation of superheroes. It's reputed to have a good focus on character interaction, and also to have a slight Watchmen-feel about it.

Cthulhu Tech It's H.P. Lovecraft meets Alien meets giant mechas! This game focuses on war with alien superbeings in a dark future, placing characters in the role of mech pilots, weird fringe sorcerers, beastmen, symbionts and other people who fight the strange by getting stranger. Also: People in giant mechas fighting against cosmic principles, pitting human hope and fighting spirit against the fabric of the universe itself? Who the hell do you think I am?

Shadowrun Simply too famous not to have at least tried, this is a somewhat silly mash-up of Neuromancer and J.R.R Tolkien. A cyberpunk fantasy game, Shadowrun is very widely renowned for being an interesting setting, although the rules may be somewhat clunky, which is a big turn-off for me.

Edit! Forgot some vital ones:

Pathfinder The famous "D&D 3.5 + 0.5", this game is an alternative to the 4th edition for those who preferred the track 3rd edition was on. While I don't play a lot of D&D these days, it seems like it could be fun and it fixes a lot of the problems with D&D - for instance, there are far fewer "dead levels", levels where nothing happens.

Scion: Hero This game is about the children of gods, half-gods wreaking havoc in a modern world as the old Titans return to, well, mess with people presumably. It's pretty much the Percy Jackson series, except made by White Wolf, running on oWoD mechanics and a penchant (as usual for White Wolf) for really weird stuff. Bonus points for allowing you to play children of voodoo gods, because voodoo is awesome. There are two "sequels"; Scion: Demigod and Scion: God.

Character Creation Styles

2010-03-15T11:20:00.000+01:00

So I've been thinking more about the theory behind gaming lately, and I started to wonder what method of creating characters is the best. Since this varies from player to player, I figured I'd throw out a general question, including a fancy-schmancy poll for the lazy (although, I'd prefer if you elaborate in a comment).

After some thought, I boiled them down to five basic variants. They are listed below the fancy-schmancy poll itself.

Which character creation style do you prefer?

Exalted Style: Exalted Style can basically be described as "Gung-ho make any character with the permitted rulebooks. Give this character a motivation and a backstory. The Storyteller then bases the story entirely on the characters, and makes no plans until he has the characters available."
Pros: Allows for a story tailor-made for your character, allows for players to control the story more, offers the most freedom.
Cons: Very slow, most of the creativity burden is on the player, issues with getting the group to fit together.

Vampire Style: Vampire Style is a little more constrained than Exalted style. Here, the idea is "Make a character belonging to one of these factions" or "Make a character with a motivation based on this-or-that". Basically, it's a very loose guideline (like a team you must belong to, or a thing like greed that motivates you).
Pros: Allows easy integration of story and character, offers much freedom.
Cons: Makes some character concepts wonky or inapplicable, moderate creativity burden on the players.

Tactical Style: This style refers to the Storyteller attempting to make the group work out tactically without constraining the characters much storywise. Players are given guidelines like "Make a halfling rogue specializing in stealth" or "Make sure your character is good with guns, stealth, and possibly mental traits, but avoid social skills".
Pros: Allows for very efficient team-play, offers players a basic idea for a character.
Cons: Very restrictive in character design, characters may still not integrate into the story proper.

Convent Style: Normally used at convents, this style is when the Storyteller handles the character creation in detail. Normally this means that the Storyteller assigns all the stats and traits, and details what the character is doing here and what he/she wants.
Pros: Characters fit the story seamlessly, team-play is improved.
Cons: Very little creative input by the player, can't cater to all tastes.

D&D Style: This is the style used by most "plug-and-play" adventures, like the ones you buy at a store. The Storyteller and the players do their work entirely independently, with no constraints on neither party. Then, some effort is made to fit the characters into the story after both are finished.
Pros: Speedy and easy way, minimal preparation needed, all character concepts are viable.
Cons: Characters may not integrate into the story at all, heavy modification may be necessary.

Karma Man

2010-03-09T22:07:00.000+01:00

I forgot to tell everyone this, but now I remembered! I have a prayer wheel now!

If I had a camera I would take photographs of it, but I don't because material possessions are a worldly thing, bitchez!

Anyway, I can spin it for good karma. Like, to make up for saying "bitchez" twice in this blog post.

Radio Silence

2010-03-04T19:01:00.001+01:00

Sometimes I long for
quiet times
lonely times
basement times.

Sometimes I long for
peace
emptiness
meaninglessness.

Sometimes I long for
time
lots of time
when nothing matters.

Sometimes I long for
the person
I once
was.

Karl Marx and Zen

2010-02-28T01:22:00.000+01:00

Random thought that I felt the need to write down:

Karl Marx claimed that capitalism takes the fun out of working. His thesis was that while working is healthy and natural, working without any emotional investment in exchange for money is just like having sex without emotional investment in exchange for money, i.e. it is a form of spiritual prostitution, making such work a harmful thing rather than a healthy thing.

There is a Zen saying, "Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water."

What if the key part of Marx's criticism isn't "for money", but rather "without emotional investment"? What if the biggest problem of capitalism is not that some are rich and others are poor, but rather that a lot of people don't have any sort of relation to the work they do?

Time to Whine

2010-02-25T08:33:00.000+01:00

All of you who don't like to read angry comments about how stuff is unfair, people should do a better job, this makes me so angry, yada yada yada, please skip this blog post. At its core, it's just a bunch of useless bitching. Just a forewarning.

I just read today about something Swedish schools like to call "Kamrateffekten". This refers to the hypothesis that "If we put high-performing students in groups with low-performing students, the low-performing students will get better results." That is to say, the hypothesis basically proposes "Put the quiet over-achieving little girls together with the rowdy guys who spit tobacco everywhere, and Profit happens."

We've all seen this theory in effect, I believe. Now, what I read this morning that was so shocking, is that there's no psychological study that satisfactorily shows that this effect is true! It's apparently basically just conjecture, and there's little to no evidence in favour of it.

There are many studies which claim to give evidence for this hypothetical effect, but most of them just actually prove unrelated things - for instance, it's well-documented that when you divide up a class into a "high-performing group" and a "low-performing group", the low-performing group gets much worse results. This is apparently for some reason used to support the hypothesis that the "weak" students no longer have "strong" students to help them, and not to support the alternative hypothesis, "It's not exactly motivating to study if you're told you suck at it", which to me, seems like a far more sensible conclusion to draw.

It absolutely horrifies me, because apparently this "kamrateffekt" is used as a basis for lots of pedagogical reasoning in Swedish schools today, and it's just, well - conjecture! Worse, it's a case of "This is how people behave, because it fits well with our ideology", which is a dangerous, dangerous way of reasoning.

In this day and age, you'd think at least the people in charge would give some thought towards science, and not just wildly make shit up and then teach their teachers about it.

Stop! Koan-time.

2010-02-17T08:58:00.000+01:00

Keiji, a long-time Zen student, approached his master and said: “I don’t see how there can be any enlightenment that sets you free once and for all. I think we just get ever greater glimpses of Buddha-nature, the vastness that is our true Reality. It’s an ever-expanding process.” The master, looking penetratingly at Keiji, replied. “That may be what you think. But what is your experience, your experience right now?” Keiji looked momentarily confused. “My experience right now, Master?” “Yes. Do you know yourself as Keiji, having ever-expanding experiences of Buddha-nature? Or do you know yourself as Buddha-nature, having the experience of Keiji?”

Form and Function

2010-02-15T04:27:00.001+01:00

Here's a thought I had:

My entire way of life appears to be a constant battle between usefulness and art, and I seem to be utterly incapable of reconciling them. That is to say, I'm mortally afraid of being useless - and that fear is what has kept me from trying to become an actor professionally - but at the same time, I'm deeply and passionately an artistic person.

This is very annoying. I don't dare to become a professional entertainer, because that would not have enough utility - but on the other hand, it's what I really love doing. Somehow, though, I have this deep-seated contempt for comedians, actors, writers and the like because they're not doing actual work. This is of course utterly unreasonable - entertainers work, often they work much harder than ordinary people. But somehow it doesn't seem like real work to me, and therefore I despise them. I don't wish to become that which I despise, so I've abandoned my notions of becoming an actor, or a game designer, or a writer, in favour of becoming a statistician.

It's weird, though. Why is it that I can't truly respect things that are beautiful but not useful, and conversely I can't passionately love things that are useful, but not beautiful?

Moving!

2010-02-04T10:59:00.001+01:00

So, as of this weekend everybody's moving out. Henceforth, me and Sara will be living in a very much too big apartment. Minna-san, we'll use the spare room as a gaming room - be sure to stop by for your everyday wacky game needs (or maybe not everyday, but, everyweek? Or something.)

Hopefully this signals the dawn of a good era - but difficult to see, the future is.

Joy In Adversity

2010-01-27T06:18:00.001+01:00

So a new year is here with new responsibilities and new... uh, stuff. And sure, it's been here for a whole month now but, yeah. Definitely here now. Can almost taste it. Ayup, sure is a solid-looking new year. 2010. Look at that.

For some reason, it's getting harder and harder to smile at my troubles. That feeling has been with me for a long time now, like I'm getting restless, like I'm getting bored. So much energy is slipping away, and I'm not really sure why. Where does it go? It's supposed to be indestructible.

In my mind, if you can't love your troubles you can't love anything at all. Life without struggle is life without meaning. I don't want to end my troubles, but I have a feeling perhaps I want to exchange them. Question is, for what?

It seems I have nowhere to go but up, but that must be an illusion.

End-of-year observation

2009-12-21T10:01:00.001+01:00

Looking back at my achievements of 2009: This year has been really weird. I've been busy almost constantly, yet I don't really feel as though I've achieved anything. Sure, I have captured a bunch of more points for my education, but that seems to be the extent of it.

I'm having that feeling you get when you've been playing video games all day, that "Oh well I reached level 78 and, uh, that's good I guess?"

The Wave

2009-12-01T00:34:00.001+01:00

Google Wave is a new application from Google, allowing you to share and edit documents as part of a collective. Enterprising geeks have already figured out how to use it for a rather neat online role-playing tool.

The great thing here is that, while the system has kinks and flaws (heck, it's not even officially released yet) it allows you to play on any sort of time-scale using the same system. It means that you can post your characters' action on a coffee break, and if your friend happens to be online during the same coffee break, you can act out a small scene - or just leave it be until everyone's gathered later.

It's completely text-based of course, so you lose out on some of that live actor action - but it seems to adequately solve the time-frame problem of online gaming, since you can play it as a chat session when that fits, and as play-by-post when that fits. I think it looks very interesting, so I'm going to investigate this matter a little further.

Kinesisk kylskåpspoesi

2009-11-26T21:44:00.001+01:00

Mina kinesiskaglosor skrev lite dikter i dag. Så här ser de ut:

Blå
Med tanke på
Att anstränga sig:
Att så,
att söka,
att vara kvar -
förbli
blå.

Substans
tom
kylig.
Att vakna; att nyktra till
att be om hjälp-
Substans!
Att lyfta.

Höst
Höst.
Andas in.
Flod,
tvätta.
Mulåsna,
skydda.
Vinter.

Filt
Inget annat, endast
Att inte ha någon
filt.

Dream-Weaver

2009-11-19T22:20:00.000+01:00

False-Speaker says his lies,
long and slow and pretty.
Tale-Teller sieves them out,
epic, grand or petty.
Yarn-Spinner sees their tail,
grabs it with his finger.
Dream-Weaver weaves them then,
stories that will linger.

Weaves a cloth of lies and dreams,
Weaves a web of stories,
Weaves a weave that has no seams,
Weaves a net of glories.

Casts it then upon your mind,
Subtle, fine and clever:
Beauty that you couldn't find,
Should you search forever.

Stolen Life

2009-11-09T12:26:00.001+01:00

I had the oddest dream tonight. I dreamt about living a life, somewhere completely different from here with completely different people. It was with a friend who had a penchant for wearing trench coats, living among some sort of minority group, with different cares and different concerns. I had some sort of administrative job at a school, and I went to church on a weekly basis.

The details don't matter. The important part is that, when I woke up, I had to choke a scream, because it felt as though the life I'd seen in my dream was my real life. For a long time after I'd woken up (in the middle of the night) it felt like I was trapped in an illusion, and that what I'd seen in the dream was the real me, living my real life.

I still can't shake the feeling, and I can't really explain it. It made me feel like I'm a cheap copy, like I'm not the real me - like the real me is hundreds of miles away, leading a life that I've never even heard of. It wasn't more exciting or in any way better than what I have now - it could even be said to be more mundane - but somehow, that life is real and I know it.

This is deeply unsettling. I wonder if it means something. I sure hope not.