RPGs Separate us from the Animals

Ethan Gilsdorf's Salon article starts out looking at D&D as simply generation X nostalgia, but then explores the important impact roleplaying has had on the character of that generation.

Then he wonders about generation Y:

But like so many people my age, I miss that Friday night realm of paper and pencil. That camaraderie, that connection to open-ended storytelling. D&D was an experience we made for ourselves, for each other. Was D&D then a "better" imaginative experience than "World of Warcraft" today? I like looking back on my primitive game and scoff at these younger generations of video gamers. All I needed to "immerse" myself in fantasy worlds were pencils and paper, not PlayStation consoles and pixels, I snort.

The RPG store in my hometown is filled with teenagers playing RPGs. I am the only generation X-er in my D&D group. Obviously young people have a flexible schedule and spend a lot of time hanging out with their friends, but I suspect that D&D is even more popular with generation Y than it was with generation X.

WoW - at best - is a gateway drug - like the Lord of the Rings movies (which I heard have been made into a series of books :-) WoW is essentially just a cheezily polygonned version of Mafia Wars - and it's not even integreated with Facebook. WoW borrows some tactics and thematic elements from D&D, but even the most sophisticated WoW clans don't approach the shared creative experience of a typical D&D group.

Roleplaying games teach you how to look at the world as a common experience, created by peers who embody various complementary virtues. This worldview is nearly absent from the baby boomer generation which sees the world in terms of utilitarian bottom-lines and kantian moral paradoxes.

People who lived through the austerity of the Great Depression or the generations before them know a little more about creativity and character than the baby boomers, but I think the worldview of the rising generation has more in common with the Renaissance or the ancient Greek philosophers, sharing with those thinkers an interest in how human virtues transform the world, but with a thousand times as many people participating.

The tabletop is the new studio and the new gymnasium, but without the nudity :-)

Squawk Campaign: Chapter 1

I am running a campaign of the Squawk RPG with my D&D group. Each player started out with one of the example characters:

• Gao Choy - a titan swordsman from Peleg
• Orgraff - a behemoth butcher from Peleg
• Foi Shin - an aeolyte alchemist from Peleg
• 992 - a skand clone mercenary from the Lower Worlds
• Hammerdrum - a myrmidon mutualist from Trydeen

After a nasty gunfight with space pirates that left their mobile space habitat badly damaged, Gao Choy and Orgraff rescued Foi Shin, 992, Hammerdrum and the myrmidon's students, then commandeered a captured pirate stealth fighter.

Gao Choy maneuvered the stealth fighter into a transfer orbit that brought the stealth fighter to Midgard's L5 lagrange point, where the binary dwarf planets Radix and Monopolis orbit each other. There they met the helpful but cagey stygian Captain Gabriel, who pilots a huge vessel crewed by insectoid golem servants. After dropping dark hints about the Monopolis Trading Company, Gabriel left our heroes with the suggestion that they visit his homeworld (asteroid CMX-5 near L4.)

At Ariel University

After descending to the surface of Radix via beanstalk (space elevator) the crew found themselves stranded at a train platform in the middle of a stampede of Triceratops and Edmontosaurus. One particularly nasty male Triceratops managed to knock the platform off it's foundation, crushing 992 who was using the platform for cover. Fortunately everyone managed to recover from their injuries with the help of Foi Shin's alchemy and Orgraff's unusual tribal healing techniques.

The passengers who were rescued by the team's brave defense of the train platform included the mysterious strix scholar Skreel and his myrmidon protege Chainstorm. Chainstorm recruited the party to help them provide security during Skreel's debate with the silver tongued gremian Commander Spriley at the university amphitheater. Commander Spriley presented a popular theory that each living species was created by intelligent machines, while Skreel defended the "tree of life" tradition which claims that all living things descended from a common ancestor.

At the end of the debate things got nasty as Commander Spriley's gun thugs converged on Skreel, but our heroes helped chainstorm fight off the commander and his minions. Skreel suggested that it would be expeditious to leave Radix and Monopolis before the commander's fellow Trouble Shooters decided to investigate the incident. Using his Symbiotic Order and Tomb Keeper connections, Skreel arranged for the entire crew to travel with him to Peleg and drop to the surface of that world in a disposable vehicle.

On the way to Peleg

In transit, 992 discussed the disturbing implications of Commander Spriley's theory with Skreel. As a clone, 992 is a product of technology, but if Spriley's theory is right, then all living things are just machines created by other machines. Complicating things, in spite of archeological evidence for technology that dates back thousands of years, there is no evidence for the common descent of species in the Abaddon system.

Skreel then explained that his study of the ancient scriptures and archeology of the Middle Worlds suggest that life in the Abaddon system came from distant stars, and millions of years of fossil evidence may be scattered around the universe. Skreel also quoted an ancient cosmological text which claims that all carbon and other heavy elements that make up both machines and living things was produced by the stars themselves going through cycles of life, death and birth that last for millions of years.

Save the Frances Haddon Morgan Center

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/feb/08/power-moves-at-play-in-frances-haddon-morgan/

The Frances Haddon Morgan Center (FHMC) takes care of 54 severely autistic people. The parents of those autistic people are upset because governor of Washington and DSHS are threatening the lives of their children.

Governor Christine Gregoire wants the FHMC shut down, and instead of trying to make her case to the legislature when they vote on her proposed budget, she had friends at DSHS try to scare the parents into transferring their children to other facilities. They misled the parents by presenting the threat as if the legislature had already decided to shut down the center.

The FHMC is a pioneering facility specializing in severe autism. Washington state used to have 6 residential rehabilitation centers for 4000 people with various mental health problems. Now it has 5 facilities serving only 900 people, and none of the other facilities specialize in autism. In other words the system is already lean and efficient, housing only the people who need it most, where they can be helped the best.

More information about the five facilities that are still open:

• Fircrest School Shoreline, Washington
• Frances Haddon Morgan Center, Bremerton, Washington
• Lakeland Village, Medical Lake, Washington
• Rainier School, Buckley, Washington
• Yakima Valley School, Selah, Washington

The pages for Fircrest School, Lakeland Village and Rainier School show us pictures of trees. They are located on low-value properties out in the woods where growth management policies limit new development (two of these facilities were built before WWII.)

The FHMC is the newest facility. It's page tells you more information about the services it provides AND the relationship between the center and the community. It is an important source of employment for people in the city of Bremerton - especially those who are not afraid of dirty, hard work (and sometimes risk of injury.)

The FHMC is located within city limits and uses land efficiently. Unfortunately there are people who would like to use that land to build a park that will raise property values. The Frances Haddon Morgan Center is already adjacent a large park. Some people see all government property as their personal piggy bank - not to mention all the private property that is affected by these projects.

Bremerton already has empty luxury condos downtown and a massive low-income housing project that has been evacuated and scheduled for demolition even though nobody wants to develop that land. The last thing we need is to kill 54 autistic people so we can plant some trees where people used to be employed doing something useful.

The families and employees of the FHMC are holding a rally to protest this abuse will be held on Saturday from 9 AM to 3 PM at Arnold's Home Furnishings Center, 3520 Kitsap Way, Bremerton.

Squawk Role-Playing Game

The Squawk Role-Playing Game that we have been working since the mid-90's is finally available as a book from CreateSpace and Amazon.com or as a PDF from RPGNow and DriveThruRPG.

See the Game Arts Guild Press Release for details.

Conversation with Spiced Ham

Once in a while I just can't resist the urge to reply to one of these e-mails that grandmas like to circulate around teh internets. There is no point in replying directly to the arguments of a chain letter, but always a surfeit of subliminal content to play with. This time the subject is the US health care reform bill. While I think the critics of the bill might have some good points, they are generating more heat than light - and mostly lulz. The chain letter in question uses the abbreviation HC for health care (because your time is precious!)

Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of all employers that self-insure!!

What do these employers have to hide, that they don't want their books audited?

Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill: THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.

I am so enraged about this interference with my right to have my treatments selected by some bean counters at the HMO.

Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!

There goes the all-you-can-eat health care I have grown accustomed to.

Page 42 of HC Bill: The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC benefits for you. You have no choice!

Wait, so instead of the current system where I "choose" whether to wait in line at the clinic with my day laborer buddies in the alley behind the market in Seattle where I live on weekdays or with the meth heads across the street from Walmart in Bremerton where I live on weekends, the HC Bill will have both a Commissioner and a Committee competing for this privilege?

Page 50 Section 152 in HC bill: HC will be provided to ALL non-US citizens, illegal or otherwise.

It's just not right to treat our guest workers to that kind of abuse.

Read the Rest on Google Docs!

Views of Lagos

This is a presentation I produced for an Urban Studies class at the University of Washington Tacoma. I present Lagos as a megacity of the global periphery and outline the geography of the city, showing conventional development statistics and current issues facing the city. I have embedded a preview for the documentary Nollywood Babylon which shows a different perspective on the development of Lagos, generated by the people who live in the city for their own consumption. This presentation was also influenced by Jonathan Haynes' paper Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nollywood Films Africa Today 54:2 [Winter 2007] p.130-150.

Green Shoots

The furniture store next to this McDonald's across the street from my parents' house burnt down last night/early this morning. I tried to convince my dad to don a suit, put a hot dog on a stick and wander around asking: "Can you spare a dime for a brother just lost a furniture store?" The economic recovery is nigh!