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Dropping the San Francisco Chronicle

Tadhg — Mon, 20 May 2013 06:54:23 +0000

I’ve been a subscriber to the San Francisco Chronicle for almost 13 years, the entire time I’ve lived in the city. I started that subscription because I was used to living in a household where newspapers were a daily staple, and because I wanted to support local journalism. I also felt that major cities should have newspapers and I should thus support the city paper.

And now I’m ending my subscription.

For a long time I read the Chronicle first thing in the morning. But I haven’t been doing that daily for several months. In part this is because they stopped delivering it to my apartment door every morning, leaving it at the front of the building instead. It’s not really much effort to go downstairs to get it, but while I did that at first, the habit slowly faded.

In a way, the delivery change mirrored how I gave up cable television: I just unplugged the table and waited a month to see whether or not I plugged it in again. That minor extra effort was enough to dissuade me from watching television, so I decided I didn’t really need it and halted the service, and have rarely regretted that since[1]. By making me go downstairs to get the paper, the Chronicle pushed me to figure out that I didn’t care enough to do so, which led me to question paying for it.

Another reason is that I’ve been slowly weaning myself off news for the last few years. I’ve stopped regularly reading most general news coverage. This recent article summarizes a number of the reasons for this: “News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier”. I’m not away from it entirely, and still get plenty of it from social media and from some of my narrow-interest sources—which I should perhaps also cut down on reading. That desire to cut down on consuming news generally pushed me to reconsider my fading morning newspaper habit.

I’m not sure my personal shift away from general news is all psychologically positive. I’m definitely reading a narrower range of sites, with the exceptions coming from friend recommendations—making me more subject to confirmation bias and, to a lesser extent, groupthink. However, it does seem healthy to stop consuming information about things entirely beyond your control—or at least to think more carefully about what state of mind those things should be addressed in.

I like some of the columnists for the Chronicle, particularly Jon Carroll, Mark Morford, and James Temple. But I don’t read their columns regularly anymore even when they’re in the paper right in front of me. This may be temporary, and I’d like to read them more often, but again, if I’m not reading my favorite columnists, why am I getting the paper?

Going in the other direction, I’ve long hated the work of C. W. Nevius, and could usually tell what side of a dispute I would be on simply by taking the opposite side from him. That was a mostly-low level annoyance, but it would occasionally rise into more than that—and for all the benefits of encountering views different to your own, I don’t need to be pushed into anger early in the morning. While my drift away from the Chronicle was probably inevitable, it was definitely helped along by seeing this opening line of his in the paper a few weeks ago (04 May 2013):

“Of all complaints about life in San Francisco, graffiti is near the top of the list.”

Given the problems this city has, that’s a ludicrous statement. If you’re not socially conscious of the homelessness and the inequality, then your list is much more likely to include complaints about parking, long lines for everything, insane rents, public transport—I have a hard time putting graffiti anywhere on the list, never mind near the top. The spike of incredulity followed by outrage I experienced upon seeing that prominently in the paper (I wouldn’t have read even that much of his column on purpose) helped prompt questions about what reading it might be doing for my mental state.

When I was reading the paper first thing, my habit was to start with the Daily Jumble anagram game, and then read the comics—some of which I’ve been reading for years—as my start-of-the-day ritual before going on to other things in the paper. Now, because I wasn’t doing that, I was instead just going online. So I would read social media feeds first, and then the shrinking list of sites that I follow daily—a majority of which seem to involve injustice, police brutality, and prosecutorial misconduct. The items coming from social media weren’t guaranteed to be any less depressing than those, but those habits were, again, putting me into an often negative state of mind soon after waking.

I wanted to do something about that, but still didn’t resume getting the physical paper. Instead, I started playing Jumble online [2], and reading the comics online[3], and in addition adding a search for a Roger Federer highlights video[4] as part of that routine because that almost always cheers me up.

This conscious thought about how I should start my day, and those decisions, reminded me that I wasn’t actually reading the paper, and that the issues were just piling up in my recycling.

I still care about journalism, but I don’t know what to do about that. I feel as if it’s happening more and more online anyway, and that trying to keep it alive within the current institutions is a losing effort. On top of that, many of those institutions are deeply compromised (and have been for years). I didn’t see a lot of evidence of hard-hitting, excellent journalism in the San Francisco Chronicle, and felt that with my subscription I was tacitly supporting conservative[5]/mainstream politics, which I wasn’t comfortable with at all.

I’ve been reading everything else online, and the Internet has been my primary news source for over a decade. The obsolescence of the newspaper is becoming more and more obvious. I don’t know how they’ll evolve or what the replacements—if any—will be. I don’t think they’ll simply die, but they will have to change a great deal, particularly as their readership gets older and there are more people for whom the notion of a physical paper isn’t natural at all.

It’s tough to do great work, particularly difficult journalism requiring research and time and effort, without financial backing, and it’s not clear how good journalism—particularly investigative journalism—is going to get that in the future. I hope some model can be found to support it.

I may change my mind, or compromise by resuming Sunday service—but I doubt it. For now, good-bye to the San Francisco Chronicle.

[1]	And when I haven’t it’s been for live sporting events lacking good online feeds, and those are both relatively rare and not necessarily on television channels I would have had access to anyway.

[2]	Which isn’t as challenging as the paper version, because I play the paper version without writing anything down. I suppose I should do the online version without typing, and only fill out the answers once I have all of them—but it’s harder to exercise that restraint online.

[3]	Meaning more or less exactly the comics I read in the paper—Doonesbury, The Knight Life, Candorville, Sherman’s Lagoon, Blondie, Mutts, Get Fuzzy, Peanuts, Liō, Non Sequitur, Pearls Before Swine, and Dilbert—and not any of the various webcomics that I follow, which I read at different times.

[4]	Such as “Roger Federer – Top 10 ridiculous Improvisations (HD)”, which you should watch regardless of your interest level in tennis, because the combination of artistry and athleticism on display is amazing.

[5]	By which I don’t really mean “right-wing” in the common sense so much as just “supportive of the status quo”.

Tags: consumerism, culture, journalism, media, news, personal, politics, psychology, reading, san-francisco, tech, television, writing

“The Distance”

Tadhg — Mon, 13 May 2013 03:17:12 +0000

It’s not that I don’t want to listen carefully. I do. I’m interested. I care about you. I’m trying to pay attention, to be present, to not have my mind wander, to not give in to distraction.

But I’m tired. I’m tired, and without my being fully aware of it, your words start to slide by. From being heavy splashes nearby in the water, they recede to mere ripples, ripples somewhere over there.

I see the ripples, but they’re no longer important. Nothing’s taken their place; it’s just that nothing seems important. Like your words, everything else has receded. There’s a fog on the water, chill and oppressive, and I want to be away from it, away, holed up someplace warm and safe, asleep. Asleep, or at least free to drowse, to not focus, to drift without intent. To surrender to the weight of fatigue that’s settled over me, instead of having to struggle to shake it off for brief periods in order to pay attention.

So your words pass around me, heard but not really perceived, except when I rouse myself enough to snag some of them and break them open, break them open to grasp their emotional content. Then I can pull closer to you, to myself, pull closer to feeling something apart from just being tired. I want to keep doing that, to keep pulling closer, but the tiredness pushes the other way. It forces us apart, makes you fade out.

It’s not predictable. Sometimes it’s there all day, but sometimes it’s absent, only to show up suddenly. We could be having a conversation and I might be fully present, engaged, and then the tendrils will start to crawl over the back of my head, numbing thought processes and pushing you away. A dull ache suffuses my mind and I’m not really there, you’re not really there, we’re talking over a ludicrously long table, and all I want to do is sleep.

It’s not the same as daydreaming. Daydreaming is a pleasant summer breeze that takes the present away and replaces it with comforting or exciting currents. There are no exciting currents in the fog, no comfort either, merely stagnation and the conviction that effort surely isn’t worth it.

Some things remain close most of the time. Systems, primarily. Systems that I can perceive as mostly self-contained, so that none of the parts are anything but close by. If every piece is close by, then it holds my interest and I can work with it, work on it. Working on it lets me draw the pieces even closer, and to create new pieces, and to be fascinated by the connections between them, by their intricacy.

People are not such systems. People are wonderfully complicated and demand a different mode of engagement. But too much of the time you’re too far away. Too far for me to hear your heartbeat. Too far for me to feel your heat. Your words are muted, failing to carry over the distance.

Tags: fiction, microfiction, writing

First Experience with the Oculus Rift

Tadhg — Mon, 06 May 2013 01:37:37 +0000

The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset, with one screen per eye and covering that blocks other vision.

It’s not available yet, but a co-worker has one of the development kits and brought that into the office this week for us to play with.

I don’t have a lot of experience with VR headsets—in fact I can’t remember when I last used one, although I think I have before—but the hardware itself looks familiar, thanks perhaps to plenty of Hollywood depictions of VR. It’s not too heavy, which seems important. There’s no audio, to keep the price down and to allow for personal headphone preferences, and while I was playing with it I wasn’t listening to any in-game audio—I’m not sure the demo had any.

The quality of the display wasn’t fantastic. Pixels were clearly visible and the resolution felt low—because it was: the development kit has a resolution of 1280×800. It felt lower than that, however, partly because it’s doing stereoscopic 3D and partly because the screens are physically close to the eyes. The initial effect of this was to make the game environment seem like something from the late 1990s.

While that impression never entirely went away, it was pushed aside by the rest of the experience. The head-tracking sensors are excellent, and there was no sense at all of drift or disconnection from head movement. You move your head, and the view shifts in a very natural fashion. The most impressive thing about that is that it didn’t seem impressive at all—only consciously thinking about it made me consider that aspect. Combined with the 3D effects, it comes across very much as viewing a “real” place. (A pixelated real place, but still.) It feels almost unmediated, which is different from all the many games I’ve played over the years: I’ve been entranced by them, and eliminated much of the sense of mediation as I’ve learned to navigate them[1], but while this has sometimes reduced my experience of the screen to a window “into” the game, it’s still a screen or at very best a window, and a small one. The Oculus Rift doesn’t feel like a window.

From Doom to Half-Life 2, I’ve played, and gone through periods of obsession with, many 3D-environment first-person perspective games. I learned their environments intimately, and my brain definitely stored their layouts in the same way it stores real places, except perhaps that I got to know the game environments better through vigorously testing many of their bounds. Put me in those maps now and I’ll swiftly remember how they’re laid out even after years of not playing them.

None of them gave me the same sense of “there-ness” as the several minutes I spent wandering around the Oculus Rift demo of a house in Tuscany. That house isn’t that interesting, and in many respects in unmemorable, and I don’t remember it better than e.g. cpm1a, but I had a sense of actually being there that’s unmatched by any other gaming experience.

There’s nothing to really do in the demo other than wander around the house and garden, at least not that I found. It might have helped that while I was wandering around it, my real-world location was in hot and sunny San Francisco, but that’s not a consideration I would normally consider when exploring a virtual environment. One of the most interesting aspects for me was that while I was using the Oculus Rift, and people spoke in the real room around me, I realized that I expected to be able to turn my head in their direction and see them in the virtual house. Even though I knew that wasn’t true. It wasn’t a simple impulse easily dismissed, like trying to look around a pillar in an FPS game by moving your head to look around it on your screen; it stayed with me even after I thought about it. Less persistent but still interesting was that after I took my hands off the keyboard while in the demo, I really wanted to look down to find the keyboard again.

“Immersive” is an apt description here, despite its overuse in video game PR. If the environment had had 3D audio components as well[2], that would have made it an even more powerful illusion.

I didn’t experience nausea, although some of my workmates did. I didn’t have any trouble taking the headset off and reorienting myself; there have been reports (with VR headsets in general, not just the Oculus Rift) of people having difficulty with this. I wasn’t using it for very long, and I also wasn’t engaged in any non-visual sense. There was no narrative to follow, no audio, no challenge. If you added those elements, and brought the level of engagement up to the point where I was struggling hard to accomplish some task rather than simply thinking, “I’m in an Oculus Rift demo”, it could get extremely interesting.

Afterwards, I had a strong desire to play games using it. Something like Half-Life 2 would be fantastic to go through again with the Oculus Rift, and I’d love to try it with Left 4 Dead (which I’ve never played). Despite a generally waning interest in computer games, and in particular with single-player non-competitive computer games, I would love to play games that supported it even if they were single-player.

I’m also quite interested in non-game use. I appreciate screen real estate greatly, but with devices like the Oculus Rift, maybe it’s not actually important anymore. If the subjective pixel density[3] were equivalent to that of current desktop monitors, and the focal area of the Rift had as much resolution as what I look at on a screen, why not ditch the monitor and instead have gigantic virtual monitors hanging in the VR space? How long before eye-tracking is as cheap as head-tracking, thus making it possible to simply glance from virtual screen to virtual screen within the simulation? That might be the next really significant step in user interfaces[4]. It doesn’t feel far away.

[1]	“Navigate” isn’t precisely the right verb: the interaction is deeper than that and is tightly linked with learning the controls of the game.

[2]	It’s possible it did have those but that we weren’t using them.

[3]	I.e. how many pixels are in a given area combined with how far away that area is.

[4]	I suspect, too, that there’ll be some demand for cameras mounted on or near the headsets, with the views from those cameras available inside the simulation.

Tags: culture, games, hardware, software, tech, virtual reality

Portland Pie Recommendation

Tadhg — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 05:51:54 +0000

Short post today since I’m on vacation, but I can recommend the pies at Random Order. Hope your weekend was a good one!

Tags: food, personal, Portland, travel

The Boston Marathon Bombings

Tadhg — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:28:20 +0000

The aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings made clear just how much the media—and apparently a substantial portion of the population—want to promote the notion that the “War on Terror” is a real war, that there’s a real and highly dangerous enemy, and that the US is engaged in a struggle where the nation itself is under threat.

Prior to the identification of the suspects, it seemed like many media figures were thinking, “please let it be Al Qaeda”—and that if if it had turned out to be some disgruntled middle-aged guy protesting IRS policies, they and a chunk of their audience would lose a lot of interest.

At this stage it certainly doesn’t appear that the suspects had anything to do with Al Qaeda, or any other organization. Their motives are unclear, and it’s hard to see how blowing up marathon runners aids the cause of a free and/or Islamic Chechnya[1]. While the bombings certainly qualify as a terrorist act, and were a horrific attack on obviously civilian targets, they don’t validate the notion of a “war”. They just demonstrate the continuing existence of individuals all too willing to kill others—unrelated others[2]—to the hope of furthering their political goals. That’s a terrible thing for a society to deal with, but it’s not new, it’s not part of a “war”, and there’s no “existential” threat to the nation.

In terms of danger, the bombings were overshadowed just this week by the explosion in West, Texas, which killed dozens and injured hundreds. There’s no hint thus far that anyone deliberately caused that explosion, but I doubt we’re going to see any major efforts to change the laws of the land in response to such a deadly accident. Apparently even the idea of imposing zoning restrictions so that dangerous plants aren’t in the middle of towns might be too much to hope for.

Whereas the Boston Marathon bombings have prompted calls to abandon various civil liberties, to “get used to this level of terror”, to accept ever-greater militarization, and so on.

In line with the rush to give up civil liberties, there have been calls to deny the suspect a normal trial and the normal rights accorded to suspects and the accused (including the right to be given a Miranda warning). None of these make much sense. There was little reason to deny Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda warning because it’s not like his statements were necessary to secure a conviction—indeed, it almost seemed as if it was done to push the point that because of the circumstances the government could simply ignore that right.

Similarly, what’s the point of not giving him a trial? Logically it only makes sense to deny trials in cases where the accused is clearly guilty—otherwise it’s obviously too big an increase in state power—but if they’re clearly guilty, there’s no good reason to not go through the trial process.

Not that I believe that the court system here works particularly well, but rushing to abandon it on the grounds that you really don’t like what someone apparently did is short-sighted and missing various points.

First, the rights that those accused of crimes have are not to make them feel better—they’re there to make sure the machinery of the state can’t imprison whomever it likes and call it “justice”[3].

Second, the rights accorded to the accused are not there specifically for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but are there for all of us, to protect us from state actors malevolent or mistaken. They’re most important when people are accused of the worst things, and if they can be taken away under those circumstances they’re not rights—or particularly useful.

Third, if you believe in the concept of law, if you think that the laws of this society are important, and if you believe in the importance of the US Constitution[4], then you should be ashamed of yourself for rushing to trample over them because you’re overcome with anger and/or fear in this particular situation. The entire point of laws[5] is supposed to be that they apply more or less universally and not that they should be cast aside when a different mood prevails.

The eagerness for the attackers to be part of Al Qaeda goes hand-in-hand with the desire to put aside civil liberties; it ties in with the notion that Al Qaeda is a powerful, omnipresent, and hugely dangerous organization rather than a loose amalgamation of desperate fanatics. Part of that is the statist agenda, which always wants a fearsome enemy in order to justify increasing state power, but part of it is also a desire for simple, comprehensive narratives: in some ways an evil organization out of a Bond movie being responsible for acts of terror is less scary than those acts being perpetrated by two idiots with pressure cookers and nails, because it’s less chaotic, less random, more comprehensible.

But it isn’t true.

Another thing that isn’t true: there’s never just one enemy. I’m not referring to e.g. North Korea or other “threats to America”—I mean that in the US, you’re threatened by the power of the state as much as or more than by terrorists. You’re more likely to be shot by cops—regardless of your having committed some crime or other—or executed legally, or imprisoned while innocent[6], than you are to be killed by terrorists. In a very real sense, the state is an enemy, and running to it saying, “save me, I’ll let you do anything you want” seems rather stupid[7].

[1]	Which doesn’t mean that wasn’t their purpose—they might just be idiots.

[2]

While it would have still been a terrorist act for them to have, for example, murdered the Chechen ambassador, or someone in the State Department, and it would obviously still have been wrong and very likely counter-productive for them to have done so, there’s a difference between trying to target those you think are opposing your cause and not bothering to do so but just killing people more or less at random.

[3]	In theory. In practice, that machinery is awfully difficult to fend off unless you have a great deal of money, and/or political connections.

[4]	Or other documents with similar provisions, for example the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

[5]	At least in theory—as an anarchist I obviously have grave misgivings about this notion.

[6]	And I’m not even counting the imprisonment of people who have done no harm, such as non-violent drug “offenders”.

[7]

There are arguments to be made for the state being a lesser evil, for the benefits of its monopoly on violence, etc. I might not agree with them, but they can certainly be made. However, they all rely on checks upon state power, and the more the better. Otherwise you’re just talking about tyranny—but maybe the tyrant will make you feel safer, and that’s enough for you.

Tags: anarchism, law, politics, power

Consumer Ephemera: SmartWool Men’s NTS Light 195 Zip T

Tadhg — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 06:29:58 +0000

As I’ve written previously, I tend to get frustrated when companies stop making products I like. On the other hand, presumably this turnover of products has a part to play when I find things that I like; perhaps my complaint is more that production should be halted on things that other people like, not things that I like.

A recent discovery is this top:

That’s the first SmartWool piece of clothing I’ve ever had, and I’ve been extremely happy with it. I bought it to use on my attempted hike of Mount Whitney last year, and it served fairly well—certainly, I can’t blame the garment for the fact that I didn’t make it to the top.

Since then, though, I’ve found that it might be the perfect San Francisco sweater.

It’s supposed to be a base layer, but I don’t use it that way. I wear a T-shirt under it, and pull it on when the city gets chilly. Since getting it, I haven’t needed much more than that plus a jacket.

It’s light and packs easily, making it very convenient to carry, but it’s warm enough that I don’t need to carry another layer. It’s proven to be fairly resilient since then, enduring almost daily wear (admittedly, I have more than one) without any signs of fraying. I’ve been extremely happy with it.

How it works as a base layer for colder weather, I have no idea, although I assume it would do fine. When I have worn it next to my skin it’s been comfortable.

I think it looks good as a sweater; the photo makes it look much tighter and shinier than it is[1]. In reality it looks rather more like a typical non-“performance” piece of clothing.

I also have the slightly heavier Men’s NTS Mid 250 Zip T, which is quite similar and which I like almost as much.

If you’re in San Francisco or a similar climate, I highly recommend it.

[1]	The photo gives the impression that it looks like this UnderArmour top that I do wear as a base layer when working out, and there’s very little similarity between how the two look in the real world.

Tags: clothes, consumerism, personal

Q’Rith Season 3 Intentions

Tadhg — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 03:35:20 +0000

The third season of my D&D campaign starts Monday, and I’m going to discuss some of what I’m trying to do in it—without, naturally, giving anything away to my players.

Season One and Season Two were good, and I really liked doing them, but the environment for the third season is where I had intended the whole thing to be set when I first came up with the idea for the world: a continent that had been cut off to everyone for a very long time, a place where I could do a kind of cross between Joe Abercrombie and Deadwood[1].

When I started working on it, I realized that starting on the new continent wouldn’t be as effective if the characters didn’t have a sense of their home environment, and so I dropped them into the middle of a complex, established nation at war and had them swim in its currents for a while. I didn’t force them to go to the new continent, but tried to provide a number of paths by which it would make sense for them to end up there. They could have arrived earlier or later, or even not at all, but the path they took meant it made sense for them to do it now.

They will arrive there as part of a colonization process, taking place during a war against the nation that had kept the continent interdicted for so long. They’re agents of their home nation’s military, with a remit encompassing scouting, exploring, and spying—and violence, because frankly nobody would hire this bunch if that wasn’t going to be part of the job[2].

I intend the season (and the campaign in general) to have the following hallmarks.

Political Realism

The world isn’t magically divided into “good” and “evil”—nor into a handy nine-segment table. The struggle for power is dominated by strategic and economic concerns, with morality limited in its influence over the powerful. Heroism and villainy are subjective descriptions applied after the fact, and differently by different parties. Political situations are complex enough that discerning who’s “right” is difficult, and at times even determining which side of a given conflict is pursuing what goals can be challenging. “Sides” are themselves merely groups, and within these groups are struggles that will often hinder the supposed goals of the containing entity. Large forces and trends are at work, and while individuals can influence them, it’s more likely that they will be swept along by them.

This is mostly achieved through background, rather than in-game, work: creating and filling out the setting, setting up the various plots and currents that affect the player characters, and determining the motivations and goals of interested parties.

Psychological Realism—NPCs

I try to make non-player characters into real people with their own motivations and dispositions. This is easier on the preparation side—during the game itself, it’s difficult to get across individual NPC personalities. The background work is like writing, but the performance aspect is quite challenging[3]. Character development isn’t necessarily a strength of my writing, but I feel confident about character setup, and that’s the critical part for roleplaying games since the character development focus should be on the PCs. By setup here I mean that the characters have backgrounds and ambitions integrated into the setting, and that the actions they make sense in terms of their surroundings[4].

This plays back into the political realism, in that I hope to have consequences for how the PCs treat NPCs—and the biggest challenge there might be simply getting the players to see that NPCs are distinguishable. This season I’m going to try to help them do this using art, mainly in the form of Paizo Face Cards, decks of fantasy-themed small portraits made just for this purpose.

As for the background side, I’ve done plenty of work on the goals and plans of the various NPCs the players will encounter, and I hope that’ll ensure they come across as realistic individuals

Psychological Realism—PCs

This is really under the control of the player characters, but the GM has plenty of influence. I gave each of the players a background that integrated them into the setting, and provided good starting points for the players to work from. I’ve also pushed my players to do character-related homework, often asking them to open a session with character details.

Prior to this season, I’ve done a lot of work on religion in the setting, and as part of that I’ve provided a religion for each of the players. I’m hoping that this will encourage good roleplaying—and I’m backing that up by tying some game mechanics to it, making it possible to gain divine favor if they act in certain ways[5].

I’m also hoping that the religions will cause a certain kind of cognitive discomfort: the characters should not simply have the same attitudes as the players, otherwise it’s a much shallower form of roleplaying and simply less interesting. Learning to make decisions consistent with an alien framework of reality is part of the challenge for the players.

This is tied to other kinds of realism: it’s much easier for PCs to act realistically towards NPCs if those NPCs seem real and if there are consequences for doing otherwise, and I’m hoping that those aspects of the setting all reinforce each other.

Detailed Setting

Without detail and complexity, not only is the setting probably unrealistic, but it’s probably not interesting. Much of the background work I’ve done is intended to provide a high level of detail and complexity that’s visible only when necessary. I don’t want to bury the players in history, or the details of governance, or currency, or legalities, but I want all of that to be there in case it becomes relevant. Having that in place goes a long way towards making the setting seem real (and, hopefully, interesting). One downside is that it’s not always possible to use it and the players never get exposed to it[6], but you have to accept that as a GM (and I don’t regard it as a waste because I enjoy the world-building anyway). So what I aim for here is for the world to be deep whenever the players scratch at its surface—or are forcibly submerged below it.

As part of this, I want the setting to convey a sense of “history”. This is a common aspect of fantasy settings, in which protagonists are pointedly reminded of their youth in comparison to various elder forces[7], and my world is no different. This season will deal with significantly more of that than either of the first two, and I’m curious to see if that has much effect on how the players perceive it.

A sense of consequences is also important here. Individuals and events need to be interconnected sufficiently for decisions to have effects that ripple through the setting rather than being isolated.

Evolution of Agency

Although political realism suggests that individuals are swept up by trends more often than directing them, the journey of the player characters—just like the journeys of most fictional protagonists—will involve a slow shift from lack of agency (and comprehension) over what’s controlling their lives to greater ability to affect what happens, to them and to others.

Agency and freedom of action are not quite the same in this context: the PCs have always had reasonable freedom of action in that they weren’t on tracks, but their understanding and abilities meant that this freedom wouldn’t necessarily result in achieving their goals, and that those goals were unclear. The first two seasons pushed the PCs around, and they only grasped snippets of what was going on around them.

They’ll start this season the same way, but I want there to be more opportunity for them to understand and to be the movers rather than the moved. They’re not suddenly going to become all-powerful, and they will still be shoved by greater forces, but I want to slowly increase their sense of being able to alter the world[8] to some extent—if they earn it, of course.

Moral Compromise

The PCs have already had to struggle with the morality of their actions, and to overcome internal conflict over them. Some of them are already uneasy about the ethics of what they’re doing. I want to push on that this season, and ideally match a development in their understanding of their characters’ motivations with realizations about what that means for achieving their goals. I want the slow increase in agency to be coupled with successes regarding those goals—but also with concerns about the prices paid, by them or others. The ends, the means, the right thing, and the expedient thing rarely line up together, and they won’t do so too often in this setting.

Heroism may still be possible, but very difficult, and not merely in the ways that it’s traditionally supposed to be difficult.

Importance

I originally had this as “senses of drama and wonder”, but that wasn’t quite right (although I want to convey those, too). Events and decisions should matter to the players. Their characters should matter to them, and they should make decisions on that basis; the world should matter to them, and they should also make decisions on that basis (this is clearly also connected to moral compromise). Like all storytellers, I want my world to matter to my audience, and I want that audience to care enough that even making a small difference to that world is important to them.

Interesting Combat

To be compelling, combat needs to be challenging, interesting, and important—but in a violent world, especially given the trouble players tend to get themselves into, violence is sometimes relatively meaningless, so the other two factors need to make up for this. It should also be stressful. There’s a tension between the enjoyment of playing the sub-game of combat and the stress that players are (hopefully) feeling at the prospect of their character dying, and it makes sense to add some stress factors. One that I’ve been very happy with is the “shot clock”, i.e. timing each player in a combat round and giving them a limited amount of time to make decisions[9].

I generally try to make the terrain interesting, but that’s not always going to be possible. We use a combat grid, and this season I’m departing from simply drawing on a plain grid. I’ve bought maps and tiles and am going to use those in addition to the grid, and I think this will make it easier to produce varied terrain quickly. I’m hoping it will also make setup easier.

I’ve been reasonably happy with the levels of challenge the players have faced so far. They have faced only combatants whose capabilities are broadly similar to their own—they’ve only faced intelligent humanoids, those being humans, orcs (in a practice scenario), and the equivalent of half-elves. These enemies have all been player-character classes, which has worked well, as the sheer variety of possible character builds means that they’re not at all uniform. It helps that the base ruleset we’re using, Iron Heroes, is designed to make combat full of interesting choices, and we’re all still learning its intricacies, so even basic combat in bland terrain would be too bad—there are still plenty of things to try.

[1]	Abercrombie arguably did this himself in Red Country, but that came out well after I’d had the idea for the setting, and covers only some of the same ground.

[2]	Which isn’t to say that they’re sociopaths in the typical RPG mold—they’re not, but they’ve escalated some situations quickly and they have a reputation.

[3]	The portrayal of NPCs in a tabletop roleplaying game is different enough from other kinds of performance, and difficult enough, that it’s worth a post of its own.

[4]

Psychological realism in any narrative is tightly coupled to the environment; I don’t think that the tirelessly noble and selfless authority figures toiling in any number of television shows are necessarily psychologically unrealistic because nobody is that good a person, but more often because their environment is politically unrealistic and doesn’t capture the pressures and incentives present in the real world.

[5]	While I came up with the deities, the specific ways in which their characters can gain favor is determined by negotiation between me and the player.

[6]	For example, the outline of the criminal justice system in Anaq’rest I wrote never became relevant in Season One.

[7]	It’s rarely a totally new evil that’s arising in distant lands, right? Perhaps this is primarily because describing the rise of a new evil raises all kinds of tricky political questions, but it’s also due to the “ancientness” of fantasy realms.

[8]	On purpose; things that they’ve done have already altered the world in some important ways, but the characters don’t really know that and they certainly didn’t do it intentionally.

[9]

I’m currently using 90 seconds plus 15 seconds for every point of Intelligence and/or Wisdom bonuses their character has. I might cut that base to 60 seconds at some point. This system works extremely well, and also helps keep the players engaged by not having an interminable time elapse between each of their rounds.

Tags: fantasy, games, personal, Q'Rith, roleplaying

“Rain Bridge”

Tadhg — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 05:55:45 +0000

The rhythm of the drive over the bridge was different. The tempo was similar to that of any slow day, but torrential rain an hour earlier had added a new beat.

Now each segment of the bridge imposed its full three dimensions on those crossing: road hiding the bay below and ceiling hiding the sky above, struts and emptiness and landscapes to the left and right, and curtains of water to the front and back.

Passing from one segment to another meant moving through artificial downpour, collected on the upper level and channelled to the outbound lanes. Every few hundred feet, staccato bursts peppered each car.

The weather provided grey light, the view made hazier by the spray from car wheels and gradated by the falling water between the bridge segments. The hues of cars were muted, reduced to dull blobs instead of the usual contrasts in color. A subdued red predominated, supplied by thousands of brake lights.

In the tunnel, there was less light but also less haze, and the cars were sharper, their colors overwhelmed by the orange from the lighting. Orange and red and black each staked a claim to the view.

Once through the tunnel, the demarcation between segments resumed, softer, a mild spatter rather than an angry beating. The journey shifted back to the routine, water yielding its claim on attention to lane markings, traffic patterns, and the question of time.

Then the bridge was past, the rain gone, and destination once more the focus.

Tags: driving, personal, san-francisco, weekly, writing

Political Writing Burnout

Tadhg — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:25:35 +0000

I’ve noticed over the last few months that I’ve had more and more difficulty writing about political subjects for my blog. This ranges from commentary on overly political matters such as legislative and judicial decisions to socio-political topics such as various forms of discrimination.

Much of this comes down to disillusionment, in two senses. The lesser sense is the erosion of belief that my writing can make any political difference at all. I never really did it because I thought I was making a difference, but the notion that I might was a factor that helped motivate me. I no longer have that motivation. I suspect that long-term exposure to the Internet is one of the reasons for this.

I used to comment more frequently on other sites, going back to SlashDot in the late 1990s, but no longer do so, in part because it seems every discussion will involve highly predictable responses. Many of these responses are awful to encounter. There’s the overt racism and misogyny that crops up all the time[1], and there’s crazy obsessive fandom[2], and there are certain ones that get to me in particular (see “Authority Sickness”, for example). And there’s the general resort to ad hominem that drives me crazy.

I’m not saying the Internet is bad; this isn’t going to end in a tirade about how we all need to go back to using the Encyclopedia Britannica as our main reference. The Internet is amazing. There are innumerable wonderful things on it, and I use the unparalleled access to information it grants me constantly. I’m extremely grateful to be living during the Internet Age.

But my personal sensitivity to the kinds of discourse I’m talking about is such that the Internet is wearing me down. I’m not just talking about argumentation that’s bad in the traditional sense—I’m also tired out by eloquence (rare as it is) in support of what I regard as insupportable (such as various forms of effectively unchecked authority). This is partly because I still think that I won the Magical Belief Lottery, but it’s also because of my appreciation of the Internet Age. In an era of unprecedented access to information, that information alone seems less effective; perhaps another way to put this is that it’s become ever more clear just how effective propaganda is (see “Any Justification Will Do”, or more or less any official statements regarding Bradley Manning).

The greater sense of disillusionment I refer to is tightly related: I used to believe that exposure of injustice (and worse) would more or less inevitably lead to the elimination of that injustice, at least in democratic societies[3]. As a corollary, it seemed highly worthwhile to expose and publicize injustice (and worse), because that would lead to positive change.

I never really thought it was that simple; political change takes tremendous work. Power clings to power and will not relinquish it freely but must be forced to give it up. State efforts to retain the right to act unjustly do not surprise me in the least. What I find so disillusioning is the fact that so much of the population seems to resist such change as well. That isn’t about “human nature”, but the power of culture and propaganda to serve the interests of the powerful.

It’s entirely possible that amidst all this things are actually getting better; for example, global violence has been dropping for quite some time and continues to do so. While heartening, I also find that deeply frustrating, because it emphasizes how much better things could be—the country I live in needlessly keeps that rate from dropping faster: the US is still “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”, now both external and internal[4].

Another facet of this burnout is the sense of repeating myself. I wrote a lot of political pieces from 2006–2008, and almost all of them feel applicable today. I keep coming across stories I think I want to write about, but then realize that it would be like a repost of something I’d written before. This is partly a failing on my part, as plenty of people manage to write about the same cause and make the same points, but do it well and continue to persevere with the same message. It might be easier for me to do that if this were a single-issue blog, but as it’s not, I’m generally inclined to find something else to write about that might be more novel.

That doesn’t get away from the core disillusionment: when I was younger, I believed that exposing injustice would make a big difference, and that once people were unable to hide from what was going on, things would simply have to change. Not without effort, not without struggle, but even so. Now, though, I lack that conviction. I lack that conviction and I haven’t found something else to take its place.

I’ve always had a weakness, politically, in that it’s been too easy for me to give in to fatalism, and to see minor progress as unacceptable compromise/concession[5], and to be too easily driven to despair by widespread capitulation to power[6]. This weakness is apparently exacerbated by exposure—I haven’t learned to cope, but instead am more and more vulnerable to it.

I’m trying to figure out what to do about this, but it’s the main reason why I’ve made only four serious political posts in the past year.

[1]	The Onion nails this quite well here: <http://www.theonion.com/articles/youtube-reaches-1-trillion-racist-comments,31766/>

[2]	Just as an example, there’s this response to The Dark Knight Rises reviews: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/9410634/Batman-death-threats-made-to-reviewers.html>. But it could be games, political candidates, political issues, Dr. Who release dates, almost anything.

[3]	This despite my tremendous cynicism about those societies and the nature of their democracies.

[4]

By which I mean the prison population; by pure numbers it’s possible that China is a contender, but per capita the US is number one by far. The US doesn’t really have a “criminal justice system” so much as a vast prison-industrial-judicial complex that hungers. But people still tend to think it’s the way it appears on Law & Order.

[5]	It doesn’t help that a lot of the time I’m right about this. But not always, and that’s more important than I generally allow.

[6]	Especially in a conceptual way—e.g. submitting so as to avoid being beaten by an agent of the state is one thing, and general agreement that everyone should accept this as part of the price paid for “safety” is entirely another.

Tags: Blog, personal, politics, power, writing

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Tadhg — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 06:31:53 +0000

No real post this week; I’m taking time off in honor of the “snakes”. Hope you had/are having a good one!

Tags: ireland

Tiger Cub Picture

Tadhg — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 04:09:09 +0000

No real post this week, thanks to the cold I can’t seem to shake off. Instead, have this picture of an adorable Bengalese/Siberian tiger cub:

This kitten grew up into “Mike VI”, the mascot of the LSU Tigers [1]. Note that I’m not an LSU supporter, and this post doesn’t constitute approval of domesticating tigers or using them as mascots.

[1]	http://musicmaven.wordpress.com/2007/09/15/just-what-is-a-blue-raider/

Tags: personal, photos, tigers

Spam Wave 2013: Adopting Akismet

Tadhg — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 04:07:16 +0000

Spam comments to my site have reached ridiculous levels over the last few weeks; in the last two weeks there were over 35,000 messages awaiting moderation and another 10,000 or so marked as spam.

I don’t have the ability to moderate that kind of volume, so I’ve taken a couple of steps to deal with it.

The first step was deleting all of the pending comments. I checked first to see if any of them were on posts written since the start of the year, but none were. If you made a comment on an older post in the last few weeks, it has now been deleted as part of the spam inundation; my apologies.

The second step was updating the Bad Behavior plugin, which I hadn’t done for a while.

The third step was deciding that I’d bow to reality and use Akismet, something I’d been reluctant to do for a while, as it felt like giving up control of a big part of my blog to a third party. And it still feels that way, but without doing that I don’t have much hope of fending off the spam.

If you comment and it never shows up, all I can ask is that you email me about it.

Finally, I want to vent: these spam messages were absolutely nothing but time-wasters. What I mean by that is that I hold all comments (except for those by already-approved commenters) for moderation. So of the hundreds of thousands of spam comments submitted to this site, zero ever made it to the public web. That’s been true for years. Whatever spam target list included this site on it did so purely to pad its numbers, and the awful economics of spamming (namely that it costs virtually nothing to add another target to the list) meant that the spammers suffered no consequences for wasting those efforts. All they achieved was to increase the amount of work that I had to do. Aiding yourself not at all while harming another is something that particularly bothers me, and the inanity of the spam comments themselves (deliberate nonsense, pathetic attempts to pass as real comments, abuse of the language, etc.) simply made that worse.

The most frequent categories they were trying to promote seemed to be various kinds of pricey fashion brands (particularly for handbags), a certain kind of sheepskin boot, and sports jerseys, with the more traditional pharmaceutical spam trailing far behind. For a while virtual MMORPG gold was a common theme, but that seems to have passed.

Even if Akismet accurately marks the comments as spam, the sheer numbers will be problematic for other reasons—I back up my WordPress database in git, and storage is already becoming a problem. If I keep getting over 30,000 spam comments per week, I will need to heavily modify the backup script (which is currently very simple) to not back up pending comments, otherwise the total repository size will become untenable.

It could be worse; I could be running a forum, or have made the foolish decision at some point to not hold comments in moderation before posting them. I’ve encountered many sites that have been overrun by spam comments, and it tends to be extremely sad: a decent blog post from a couple of years ago, followed by productive and helpful comments on some topic, and then all communication there is drowned out by hundreds or thousands of facile attempts to boost search engine rankings. And, of course, most of those spam comments are promoting sites that existed only for a brief time, so (again) they’re not even serving a useful purpose for their issuer, but they’re still doing damage.

Depressing. I don’t have any large-scale answers; as long as the incentives are right, this kind of thing will continue.

Tags: Blog, web-development, WordPress

“Leavetaking”

Tadhg — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:40:10 +0000

There had been rumors of war, fears that the conflict raging to the south and east would reach out for us, but we didn’t expect anything to happen soon. As I went to bed that night, I felt a mild unease, a concern about what the next months would bring.

I dreamt that night. I dreamt of my parents, both long dead. They were in the Nightless City, and I was in their home there. They were trying to speak to me, but as they started to talk the room seemed to shake, and I could hear nothing. They started to try gestures, but the top of the house disappeared and I looked up to see a swirling vortex of strange colors. When I looked down again I saw that my parents were being pulled into it, their forms stretched painfully so that they were taller than the house itself, and then I could hear again. What I heard was screams, not just those of my parents, but screams from all around, and then the walls of the house, and everything in the city, were rent apart as they were pulled up into the sky.

I woke sweating, with a thundering heart. I knew I had to leave. It was not yet light, but I gathered what I thought I might need, pulling my money out of its hidden places. I was lucky enough to have a horse, and I saddled it and set out before dawn.

As I made my way through the city, I heard wailing and some commotions, and thought that others had had dreams like mine. These subsided, but as people began to prepare for their day I heard screams and shouts. I felt fear, wondering if somehow an enemy was already in the city and I was hearing them butchering the citizens.

Then I heard the shouts coming from the gathering crowds. They were around the temples, and the clamor was that all of the exalted ones were dead. The crowds were shocked, but I felt no surprise, just a confirmation of the hollowness inside.

My journey to the city gate slowed as the panic increased. Guards rushed from place to place, but their purpose was unclear and they seemed as panicked as the people. It was still early enough that carts did not clog the streets, or I would likely have been stuck. I reached the gate, and a lone guard barred egress. I cannot remember what lies I told him, or how large the bribe was, but he let me out.

The gate shut behind me and I did not look back.

On the road, when those going the other way asked me for news, I simply shook my head. I rode all day, stopping only briefly, and reached the mountains in the evening. The winding roads and switchbacks brought the city into view, but I averted my gaze.

Shortly before sunset, I heard a noise I cannot describe from behind me. I looked back, turning my horse on the road.

A gigantic pillar of flame impaled my city, looking higher than the mountain I was on. The city seemed to sag around the column, and flame rushed out from the center, followed by a flash that blinded me. As I covered my eyes, there was silence, then a low rumbling, and then a bang that knocked me from my horse and deafened me.

I could not hear anything for three days, but my sight returned within a few minutes.

My city was gone. A shallow crater was in its place, covered in rubble and dirt and fires. The ruin extended far beyond where the walls had been. The nearby farmland was blackened, the nearby forests flattened a burned. Black ash swirled in the air.

Tags: fantasy, fiction, games, Q'Rith, roleplaying, weekly, writing

“Morodin and the Thorn of Nothing”

Tadhg — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 07:54:46 +0000

The shovels made steady progress. Sern and Jerym, the two locals I’d hired to dig, grumbled at my not helping, but digging is what I was paying them coin for. I needed to be free to keep an eye on them both, as they wouldn’t have been there with me if they’d been trustworthy. The lanterns I’d brought provided enough light, and the pile of dirt to one side grew until there was a solid noise, wood struck by metal.

I stood. They looked back at me, and I told them to clear off all the dirt first. More grumbling, but they did it, and when I nodded they levered the wood apart, ripping it up and revealing the body inside.

Her name was Itora, although few nearby knew that. I’d had to discover it in order to find her grave. She was more commonly known as the “war widow”—or, from those less inclined towards her, the “war witch”. I strongly suspected the latter name was more accurate, although perhaps the story that she’d been crazed by the loss of her husband was true as well. The locals owed her more gratitude than they’d shown, given that she likely saved many of them from death, but witches are rarely popular. Poisoners even less so, and that was her tool.

She’d had enough, at some point, around the wars and the troubled times after, of the roving bandits, and the bandits calling themselves “soldiers”. She didn’t care much what side they were on, and perhaps that was why the neighbors, stalwart Torinthian patriots all, didn’t celebrate her deeds.

She’d get wind of when they were coming, and through means cunning and clever would connive to provide them with food or water. Maybe out in the open, or maybe she’d make sure they stopped at a certain well, or drank from a given stream, or hunted the right game. Whatever her methods, none of them caught her at it. The locals didn’t talk much about it until after, fearing reprisal, and many of the armed bands came from far away. They came from far away, stopped nearby to eat or drink, and died.

Then the troubles died down, at least for a time, and Itora had no cause to poison anyone. She lived out her days and, as a follower of Habirta, was buried. They wouldn’t have her in the village graveyard, though, which ended up more convenient for me.

I told them to pull all the wood away. There wasn’t much left of her, small rotten bones and what had been a dark shift. She wore jewels, as expected; rings and bands and pendants. On her right side, a staff. On her left side—a sword.

It was hard to see, but it looked to be an unadorned black hilt, the pommel a plain disk, crossguard inclined towards the blade. I grinned, but that didn’t last as Sern bent to pick it up. I’d warned them not to touch anything, and shouted, “No!”, but he wasn’t listening. Jerym was climbing out on the other side, pulling out a dagger as he reached the top.

As I turned my attention back to Sern, still in the grave, something hit me hard on the side and back. The breath went out of me as the impact knocked me to my right.

During a low point for Torinth, a squad of Torinthian soldiers rode away from the front. Whether they were deserters or not wasn’t clear, and never would be. They got as far as accepting Itora’s hospitality, or so I surmised, and were never heard from again.

Torinthian perhaps, but of all of the poisonings the locals should have been most grateful for this one. They were veterans of the worst kind, desensitized by battle and led by a man they called “the Cannibal Colonel”, Sloric Verkara. Verkara was vicious, bloodthirsty, and apparently fearless in battle, and soldiers were equally afraid of him and the blade he wielded.

He wasn’t known to eat human flesh, at least not according to my researches, and my guess was that the name came from unease about the sword. It might have come from the expedition where he apparently found it, a mission into the Grimteeth mountains from which he alone returned. Of over 150 Torinthian soldiers, he was the one who came down from the snows, almost a year later. Only after that was there any note made of the sword he carried.

As I fell right I rolled, trying to put more distance between me and the accomplice I’d been foolish enough to not notice. Jerym started to run towards me with his dagger as I got to one knee.

Clear-headed despite the pain in my ribs, I focused. I said the words, felt the power, sensed the world bend around it as pillars of light left my hand to strike Jerym in the chest, sending him moaning into a heap on the ground.

I saw the sword, out of its sheath, next to the grave, as Sern clambered out, holding it in his right hand. I stood up, but couldn’t avoid the accomplice, who ran and wrapped his arms around me. He couldn’t quite knock me over, and we struggled for solid footing around the headstones. He squeezed, but while that was very unpleasant thanks to my ribs, he wasn’t quite strong enough to make it truly effective.

I got a hand inside his jerkin, against his flesh, and watched Sern approach Jerym. Despite my own struggle, I had a sudden lurching feeling as Sern casually put the point of the sword on Jerym’s chest and leaned on it.

I had enough breath for words, and now I struggled to keep hold of the accomplice as I sent the essence of lightning from my hand into him. His muscles spasmed, and he lost his grip on me, and after a moment I let him go as Sern pulled the sword free.

Before the Q’Resti Empire, when Nalend and Torinth were still part of Issilath, Orcish incursions from the north were at their worst in centuries. Most of the Nalendish forces gave the mountains, or at least the Grimteeth, up to the Orcs. But one mountain lord refused, destroying Orcish forces much larger than his and earning his sword the nickname of “Reaper”. He was celebrated, but not too much, for it was claimed that he’d made alliances with dark forces, and that vile undead tormented the Orcs in the mountains and accounted for many of his victories.

Eventually the Orcs concentrated their efforts on him, and their shamans took part in the final destruction of his fortress. They failed to capture him, and the tales were that he escaped into a snowstorm and disappeared.

At least one account of his early exploits used a different name for the sword, calling it “the Thorn of Nothing”.

I moved back as Sern approached. I could not risk the bite of that sword. He grinned but said nothing. I decided it was too great a risk to try to keep him alive.

Focusing, I began an incantation, one that would leave him mostly ashes, sword or no sword. But before I could finish, there was a white flash and I could see nothing. The spell fell from my mind, and I staggered backwards, putting my arm over my eyes but seeing no change.

In a Khodanthene temple catalog of weapons to be used only in dire circumstance, there was a sword called “Nothing-Thorn”. It was said to cause bloodlust in the wielder, to steal the essence of enemies, to have necromantic powers, and to have come “from across the ocean long ago”.

I lost my footing and fell back, my shoulder blade landing painfully on something sharp. Desperate, blind, I cast a spell to surround myself with a sphere of force. I was sure it succeeded, although I still could not see. I listened intently, but could hear little. Had I cast it too late? Was he inside the sphere with me? No sounds came to my ears.

Gradually I was able to make out shapes again, and blobs of light came into being where the lanterns were hanging. There was no movement apart from my own shaking.

I saw the accomplice, blood seeping from a gash in his neck.

Sern was gone, the sword with him, and I was alone.

Before leaving, I burned the bodies.

Tags: fantasy, fiction, games, Q'Rith, roleplaying, weekly, writing

“How Afuegan Lost his Eye”

Tadhg — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 07:32:54 +0000

In the pantheon of old Athrai, still one of the dominant Q’Resti faiths, Afuegan, brother to the god of war Atargan, is the god of archers. Afuegan is also the god of accuracy, the pursuit of excellence for its own sake, and monomania.

His singularity of focus, and his occasional blindness to larger concerns, are both represented by the fact that he is missing an eye. This is one account of how he lost it.

Secretly wandering Athrai in defiance of Waskaru’s ban on gods mingling with mortals, Afuegan was observed by Feorla, goddess of beauty, artifice, foresight, and deception. Not long before, Afuegan had angered Feorla by dismissing her works and those of her followers as trivial and unworthy of divine effort or attention, and she sought to revenge herself upon him.

Feorla had a follower, Arlana, to whom she had promised a god’s child. When Afuegan came to Arlana’s town, Feorla told her who he was and secured Arlana’s agreement that his would be suitable seed. They knew that Afuegan would not lie with her in utter defiance of Waskaru’s edict, but were not deterred.

Arlana disguised herself as a man and entered the tavern where Afuegan was staying. She was boastful and arrogant, proclaimed herself a better shot than any other on the continent, pretended to drink heavily, and told outrageous tales of arrow, sling, and stone shots that rivalled the deeds of Afuegan himself. She further angered him by refusing to enter into any contest with him, no matter how small, on the grounds that he was unworthy of that honor.

After much drinking, boasting and belittling, she finally suggested a wager over which of them could ejaculate accurately into tankards placed across the room. Afuegan, eager to demonstrate his superiority to this braggart, agreed at once. The tankards were placed, and the rest of the customers watched as Arlana, using a sausage she and Feorla had painted earlier, pretended drunken impotence while Afuegan spilled no drop outside his target.

Feigning shame and anger, Arlana paid her side of the wager and stormed out, pausing only to apparently smash Afuegan’s tankard against a wall—but actually smashing her own and making away with Afuegan’s seed. She and Feorla then impregnated her with it, while the god was none the wiser.

Arlana bore a son, Mikitas, and raised him with Feorla’s help. Mikitas was a great archer from an early age, and won many contests throughout the kingdom. As he grew to manhood, his feats became legendary, and Feorla made sure that word of them reached Afuegan.

Feorla arranged for Mikitas to fall in love with a sacred virgin of Larynn, goddess of beauty, chastity, honesty, and honor. With Feorla’s help, Mikitas was able to seduce the girl, incurring Larynn’s wrath. Descending to her acolyte’s bed, Larynn immediately saw Mikitas’ divine blood, and dragged him before Waskaru demanding a reckoning.

Insisting that only Mikitas’ divine parentage enabled him to seduce her acolyte, Larynn argued that this meant Afuegan was responsible for the insult to her and the loss of her acolyte, that both Mikitas and Afuegan should be punished, and that Afuegan must be further punished for violating Waskaru’s ban on mingling with mortals.

Waskaru summoned Afuegan to answer, and the other gods to witness. After repeating Larynn’s charges, Waskaru had Afuegan step forward to answer, and to meet his son for the first time—but before he could, Feorla implored Waskaru to show mercy to Mikitas, first because the boy had not chosen his divine blood and should thus not be punished for it, second because he showed such promise and was already renowned throughout the land as an archer without peer whose deeds could match or even outstrip his father’s.

Afuegan’s first words to his son were: “You claim to be a better archer than I am?” Larynn forestalled any answer, saying that his skill was irrelevant and his transgression against her honor was what demanded punishment. She demanded that Mikitas be put to death, and that Afuegan be forced to do the deed. Waskaru looked set to agree, but Feorla spoke out, lamenting again the loss of the boy’s potential, and stating again that Afuegan bore at least as much responsibility. She demanded that Mikitas be at least given some chance, and proposed an archery duel, one shot each at three hundred paces. When Larynn objected, Feorla began berating and provoking her, and the ensuing argument pushed Waskaru to put an end to it by agreeing to Feorla’s proposal, with the amendment that the archers could not move once they notched their arrows.

Mikitas and Afuegan walked out to their places, Afuegan alone, Mikitas accompanied by Feorla, who told him his only hope was to shoot true and win the admiration of his father.

Waskaru signalled the start, and they notched their arrows. Mikitas let fly first, and Afuegan could see at once that the shot was good. Afuegan considered missing, or stepping aside, but recalled the tales of Mikitas’ fame that he had heard. He considered shooting Mikitas’ arrow from the sky, but recalled that all the gods were watching a contest between him and an archer reputed to be his equal. He could not countenance anything but victory under such conditions, and released.

His son was doomed once he made that decision, and the arrow of Afuegan pierced his skull and ended his life. Mikitas’ arrow hit Afuegan in the right eye, which did not kill him but did make him pass out from the pain.

Larynn declared justice done and left. Feorla revealed that Mikitas was the son of one of her followers, and that hence she would extract payment from Afuegan. Walking over to him, she yanked out Mikitas’ arrow, with Afuegan’s eye on its tip. Turning it into a ruby, she put it on a chain around her neck, and it is the same gem she has worn since, the gem that allows her to see what may come to pass.

Once recovered, Afuegan practiced until he could shoot as well with one eye as he had with two, if not better.

Tags: fantasy, fiction, games, Q'Rith, roleplaying, weekly, writing

Heartbreaker in New Orleans

Tadhg — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 07:38:48 +0000

When I moved to Ireland from the US as a kid, I had never gone to a football game. I don’t really remember watching any football on television either, and was mostly aware of the sport via playing it—the two-hand touch version—on the street[1]. As a result of this, I had no defined pro football allegiance[2].

I was still attracted to the game as a spectator, and was able to see short snippets of it on Channel Four, a British television station that did a weekly hour-long highlight show covering the NFL. In the absence of regional holds on my loyalty, I gravitated towards teams for stylistic reasons. This was the Montana–Rice era, and I completely fell for the precision passing attack of the San Francisco 49ers. They’ve been my favorite football team since.

It wasn’t hard to be a 49ers fan at that time. Being a football fan at all was tougher, since access to games was so limited, but the 49ers were powerhouses, on target for an unprecedented three Super Bowl titles in a row before Leonard Marshall took Joe Montana out of the NFC Championship[3]. They weren’t quite as dominant in the 1990s, but were still perennial contenders.

That was true until I moved to the Bay Area. After I arrived, there were some brief periods of life when Steve Mariucci coached them, but after he left they were terrible. Terrible for a long time, and I had given up on their returning to relevance for years, as the organization seemed to need a massive overhaul.

Then they hired Jim Harbaugh, who has apparently performed miracles, bringing them incredibly close to a Super Bowl in his first year and to a Super Bowl this year. He may well be the most valuable coach in the league.

In a twist that has generated staggering amounts of media coverage, the opposing coach in today’s Super Bowl was his older brother, John Harbaugh, who is also highly respected. The Baltimore Ravens weren’t as good as the 49ers during the regular season, but peaked at the right time, and squeaked past the Denver Broncos[4] before dominating the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship. Nevertheless, The 49ers entered the Super Bowl as favorites.

They got the ball first, and now, in the aftermath, their first series, indeed their first play, feels emblematic of the whole game: they got 15 yards on a great pass play, but had it called back because they lined up in an illegal formation. One of the best-coached teams in the league starting the Super Bowl in an illegal formation seemed like a bad omen. They couldn’t do anything else on that possession. The Ravens, on the other hand, took the ball and scored a touchdown. Then they did it again. And again, while San Francisco stuttered whenever they seemed to get rolling, and mustered nothing but two field goals, entering halftime trailing 6–21.

Baltimore received to start the second half, and Jacoby Jones returned the kickoff 109 yards[5] to put the Baltimore Ravens up 28–6. The greatest deficit any team had ever come back from in a Super Bowl was 10, and the 49ers were down 22 and were clearly reeling. Their young quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, seemed skittish and daunted by the occasion; their offensive line, considered by many to be the best in the league, couldn’t open anything up for the running game; and their defense, also considered very strong, couldn’t seem to either corral Joe Flacco or prevent the Ravens receivers from catching deep balls.

Then the lights went out.

That’s not a metaphor. I mean that literally. The stadium lighting in the Superdome went out, and the game was stopped. They didn’t resume play for 34 minutes.

When they did, at first it seemed nothing had changed. The 49ers couldn’t convert on 3rd-and-13, and punted. But the defense held, and San Francisco got the ball back. Kaepernick hit Michael Crabtree, and two Ravens bounced off him before he ran into the end zone for the first 49er touchdown of the game. 28–13.

The defense held again, forcing a 3-and-out from the Ravens, and then the 49er offense drove down the field and Frank Gore ran it in from six yards. 28–20. With 4:59 left in the third quarter.

After a Ray Rice fumble, the Baltimore defense reappeared, holding the 49ers to a field goal. 28–23. With 3:10 left in the third quarter.

Baltimore’s offense showed up again at this point, driving down the field and threatening, but the 49er defense forced them to settle for a field goal, making it 31–23 with 12:54 remaining.

The 49ers replied right away, with Kaepernick making a 15-yard scramble into the end zone to cap off the drive. The two-point conversion failed, however, so it was 31–29 with 9:57 remaining.

Baltimore ate plenty of clock on their next drive but again settled for a field goal to make it 34–29 with 4:19 left in the game.

At this point, it looked like San Francisco would come all the way back. They moved rapidly down the field, with a Frank Gore 33-yard run bringing them 1st-and-goal at the Baltimore 7-yard line.

But they couldn’t close the deal. From there, they got two yards on a run, then threw three straight incomplete passes. The last one involved a highly questionable non-call, with the Ravens defender impeding Crabtree in the end zone, but in any case, they couldn’t move the ball at all from there, and that was their best chance at the game.

Because of a wasted timeout much earlier in the second half, used when Kaepernick was unclear on the play call, they couldn’t stop the clock the one more time that would have given them at least a shot at the end zone, and the Ravens did the clever thing, taking as much time as possible and then letting the 49ers push their punter out of the end zone for a safety, making the score 34–31 but leaving San Francisco too little time on the clock to do anything.

As a longtime 49ers fan watching their first Super Bowl appearance since my arrival in the Bay Area, this was rather painful. The first half was horrendous, but while it was upsetting to see them seemingly fail to show up at all, it ended up being much worse to have my hopes raised and then dashed. I still can’t really believe that they didn’t score from the five. That wouldn’t have guaranteed a win, but it would have been crushing for the Ravens. They were so close to an amazing comeback, and being that close and failing hurts.

I walked along Mission after the game, and the streets were quiet. There was a heavy police presence, out to stop the mayhem that followed the two recent Giants World Series victories, but they didn’t seem necessary. The other people on the streets were subdued, morose like me, probably still wondering how that Gore run wasn’t followed quickly thereafter by a touchdown. Wild jubilation had been gathering, building, during that last drive, but then it dissipated, replaced by letdown and failure, twin spirits that walked Mission Street with me and the other hollow-eyed fans.

As with every sporting event of this kind, the question is obvious: if I am going to be so affected by striving and failure, should that striving and failure not at least be my own, rather than that of strangers? The rational response to that is clear, but the emotional calculus required to answer it remains unknown to me.

[1]	In contrast, I distinctly remember Italy winning the World Cup and the resultant loud celebrations in my neighborhood.

[2]	Unlike my baseball allegiance. Also, I don’t really have any college football allegiance, which makes the ongoing ridiculousness of the NCAA/BCS system slightly less painful to witness.

[3]	I remember that as the turning point in the game, rather than the later Roger Craig fumble—perhaps out of Joe Montana fandom, but also perhaps because I was awake for the Marshall hit but not for the Craig fumble, as the time difference made watching the whole game rather challenging.

[4]	Because the Broncos didn’t seem to consider covering a deep pass when that was more or less the only way the Ravens could keep the game alive.

[5]	A Super Bowl and NFL record, and one that realistically cannot be broken, given that there was hardly any room left in the end zone when Jones caught the ball.

Tags: football, personal, san-francisco, sports

Novak Djokovic Wins 3rd Consecutive Australian Open

Tadhg — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 06:42:22 +0000

Today Novak Djovokic won his sixth Grand Slam title, defeating Andy Murray 6–7 (2), 7–6 (3), 6–3, 6–2 in the Australian Open men’s final. In doing so he became the only male player in the Open era to win three consecutive Australian Opens.

The first two sets of the final were grueling, very physical affairs, and exemplified the modern men’s game: phenomenal court coverage and defense, and extremely aggressive winners or near-winners coming from any position on the court. Djokovic was the more aggressive of the two, coming to net far more often, while Murray was probably better in baseline rallies, which is remarkable in itself. The obvious turning point in the match was at 3–3 in the third, when Murray played a weak service game and Djokovic broke—it was all Djokovic after that. The real turning point might have been at the start of the second set, Djokovic serving a set down and 0–1, 15–40, when he pushed a sot forehand down the middle of the court, and Murray, who had been clinical and lethal to that point, barely put wide an attempt at a backhand winner. Murray’s failure to take that opportunity seemed to perk Djokovic up, and while it was a very tight set through to the tiebreak, it seemed as if Djokovic were slowly asserting control. He was helped in this by Murray suffering from blisters on his feet, which seemed to hamper his movement later in the match.

Murray’s blisters, and Djokovic’s resulting advantage, were connected to the absence of Rafael Nadal from the draw. The “Big Four” are simply far better than the rest of the field, and Nadal’s absence meant that two of them would meet in the semifinals, while the third would face some other guy before advancing. I hate to refer that way to David Ferrer, whom I greatly respect, but he’s no threat to the top four, and Djokovic made that clear with a resounding 6–2, 6–2, 6–2 beating. Ferrer, now ranked number four in the world, simply couldn’t do anything at all to hurt Djokovic in their semifinal. Meanwhile Federer and Murray faced off in the other, and Murray came through that in five difficult sets, sets that doubtless contributed to his blister problems.

Apart from making for lopsided tournament draws, Nadal’s absence raises questions about the clay court season: will he be fit for it, or will this be the first year that his reign as King of Clay is truly challenged? Djokovic and Murray both look awfully strong, and I think they could challenge Nadal even at Roland Garros. Federer still has the terrible matchup problems with Nadal that he’s always had, but if one of the others were to knock Nadal out, Federer would certainly look like a contender for another French Open title.

The dominance of the top four seems set to continue; the only plausible threat at the moment seems to be Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who took Federer to five sets in the quarterfinals; he’s certainly capable of having brilliant days in which he can trouble them, which doesn’t seem likely to be true of Ferrer.

Tags: sports, tennis

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