voidfarer's Journal

7:07pm: Possible Traveller PbEM campaign update
I have an idea! I'm going to fight my natural inclination to over-prepare, and run with that.

Character concepts?

Obviously, the further development of the aforementioned idea depends upon the basic natures of the characters proposed.

Please bear in mind that part of the peculiar charm of the Traveller character generation system is that it involves a great deal of randomness. In practice, one usually generates a small herd of potential PCs, and then plays the most viable/interesting one. Explaining the randomization-inspired quirkiness inspires creative backstories (e. g. "so, just how did the retired naval captain from an exalted aristocratic family learn the 'Streetwise' skill, anyway?").

I am, of course, happy to answer questions about the campaign world, and about how specific character concepts would manifest themselves therein.

5:01pm: Just wondering... take three
So is anybody interested in a Tekumel Firefly Traveller PbEM campaign?

(If at first you don't succeed, try, try again -- right?)

4:35pm: A quick question... take two
I asked this, before, back in January, and didn't get any feedback, so I'll be obnoxious and ask again. Can anyone recommend a website on RPG scenario design? Websites on campaign world design are a dime a dozen, but I haven't had nearly as much luck finding a good website on designing good scenarios.

4:36pm: Just wondering... take two
Okay, so nobody is particularly interesting in PbEM Tekumel.

How do people feel about the possibility of PbEM Firefly/Serenity?

1:09am: A strange "Ars Magica" campaign concept (3): Some history
The primary point of departure for the "alternative timeline" is the premature death of Trianoma, so Bonisagus still (1) developed Parma Magica, and (2) articulated the Hermetic theory of magic. While the Order's "join-or-die" membership drive never happened, I'm still envisioning at least the rudiments of Hermetic magical theory being pretty widely-known. Right now, I'm tentatively imagining an apprentice of Bonisagus becoming Charlemagne's "court wizard," and eventually establishing some sort of half-assed magical school as an esoteric aspect of the Carolingian Renaissance. That would lead to Hermetic-style magic spreading throughout France, Germany, and northern Italy. When, however, the Carolingian Empire broke up in the mid-800s, the school's members allied themselves primarily with their own local political patrons (understandable, since magic was being taught primarily as a practical tool of statecraft, and much less emphasis would have been placed on its aesthetic and philosophical aspects). Each of the post-Carolingian "successor schools" lacked the "critical mass" to really keep going, and thus further splintered and degenerated into isolated master-apprentice lineages (transmitting varying amounts of Bonisagus' original teachings, while adding varying amounts of idiosyncratic local "hedge magic").

4:18pm: More idle thoughts about a strange "Ars Magica" campaign concept
It occurs to me that if Notatus had invented a "non-cooperative" version of the "Aegis" in the alternative timeline, that would nicely explain the "court wizard." Every leading noble would have a very strong incentive to have a Magus on his payroll to protect his or her castle, but no obvious reason to keep two or more. A junior Magus, moreover, wouldn't want to serve anyone who already had a "court wizard" on the payroll, because his quarters and laboratory space would either (1) lie within the existing Aegis and thus be vulnerable, or (2) lie beyond of it and thus be inconveniently far away. Learning the local version of the Aegis would be a Very Big Deal in the alternate timeline -- perhaps the very last thing any apprentice gets taught (since it turns an apprentice into a potential competitor).

It also occurs to me that "Magus" would be an ideal "younger-son" noble occupation, since (1) a noble would have to be able to be able to trust his court wizard, (2) the sterility inevitably induced by the use of longevity potions would discourage the court wizard from pushing his brother (nephew, whatever) off the throne. Just how common is the Gift? To what degree is it hereditary?

12:59pm: Idle thoughts about a strange "Ars Magica" campaign concept
I wonder how people feel about the bringing the concepts of "Ars Magica" and "parallel universes" together.

The standard "Ars Magica" campaign world has a problem. The magical world of the Order of Hermes and the ordinary world are (by design) kept in separate compartments, which only interact weakly (covertly and/or only on a small scale). The magical world within which the player characters are likely to spend most of their time is, moreover, reasonably densely populated, well-policed, old, and stable.

But, suppose the player characters wander into fairyland, only to wander out... somewhere else.

Into an alternate timeline in which (a) Trianoma died in some sort of catastrophic laboratory accident before she could launch the diplomatic offensive that lend to the establishment of the Order of Hermes, and (b) Notatus had no incentive to develop the cooperative Aegis that made stable magical Covenants possible, and thus only created some sort of "personal Aegis" spell instead (cast by, and "keyed to" an individual Magus).

Magi are few, disorganized, secretive, and (by the standards of the "primary timeline") rather ignorant, but they are also (by and large) deeply involved in the ordinary mundane world. The player characters have unique knowledge of the cooperative Aegis, and thus could begin the re-creation of the Order in the alternate timeline. The player characters are also, however, rather large fish in a small and "backward" pond, and thus have opportunities for empire-building (of several different kinds) unthinkable in the primary timeline.

And, of course, since magic is generally weaker in the alternate timeline, the other Realms would loom somewhat larger.

12:17am: A quick question
Wonders if anyone can recommend a website on RPG scenario design -- something with flow-charts, perhaps.

4:49pm: Just wondering...
So how do people feel about putting the words " Tékumel" and "PBEM" together?

12:49am: Will it blend? (The world-building edition)
This is, arguably, the strangest exercise in world-building I have ever seen. Who would have ever imagined that:

A group of humans on Earth decide to create a new pocket universe which is dubbed the "Multiverse". This experiment is not sanctioned by the United Federation of Planets nor Starfleet.

and

Goblin ships outnumber Elven ships by more than 100 to 1. Elven gods develop technology from the previous loop; Elven ships are fitted with Romulan Cloaking Devices.

and

Tiamat returns as the Multi-Hued Dragon called Takhisis. Her Egg, guarded by the Dracolich Snerd, is captured by AP94- 2.5 and given to a group of Druids near Greyhawk City.

could ever be part of the same timeline? It's magnificent display of diligent madness, if nothing else.

12:00am: The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten
Doing background research into the the feudal and ecclesiastical politics of the Lake Geneva region, circa 1220 CE, for a friend's "Ars Magica" campaign has, I think, given me a better sense of what a huge task Project 1492 would be. That, and illustrated that machine translation actually works surprisingly well (at least for extracting basic facts from foreign-language Wikipedia articles, using Google's automatic translation and Altavista's "Babelfish").

5:15pm: Going to nowhere, and doing nothing when I get there
So I created a wiki, entitled "Freakishly Strange," to facilitate any future worldbuilding-related projects. At the moment, it's like all those mysterious plastic pipes labeled "GNDN" in the Jefferies tubes of original Star Trek, since it "Goes Nowhere, and Does Nothing." A wiki does, however, seem like a better online format for worldbuilding than an intrinsically, and inescapably, chronological weblog.

6:12pm: Why I never get anything done
I really want to do some world-building, but somehow I just can't commit to any one particular project, and thus end up doing nothing at all. Moreover, projects I find interesting tend to be either freakishly strange (e.g. updating TSR's old "Greyhawk" campaign world to late 18th/early 19th century technology, and using it as the background for something vaguely like the Napoleonic wars), or involve impossibly high standards of research and attention to detail (e.g. Project 1492, which would require a staff of history professors to do properly). Either way, they're non-starters.

1:02pm: Project 1492: Christianity in Vinland
As I see it, the Vinland of the Project 1492 timeline would have initially suffered from a serious shortage of formally trained clergy, both because of its geographic isolation, and the fact that most of its earliest colonists would have come from Greenland and Iceland, which had themselves only recently converted. Furthermore, if Vinland "inherited" Iceland's fondness for anarchically dysfunctional republicanism, its government (or, more likely, governments) would have been unwilling and/or unable to enforce strict doctrinal orthodoxy, particularly out in the vast and sparsely populated hinterland. It is reasonable to believe that as Vinland's wealth and population grew, Rome would eventually take notice and "beef up" its institutional presence, but some expectation of religious toleration might have time to take root first. Some sort of "Vinlandic Inquisition" might be established, but it would probably be rather toothless, capable of merely pushing heretics out of the institutional Catholic Church into the hodge-podge of small local ones.

The Native Americans would have been introduced to Christianity by people who were, themselves, (a) probably somewhat hazy about its finer points themselves and (b) neither able, nor inclined, to enforce strict doctrinal orthodoxy upon them. In the Project 1492 timeline, the "cutting edge" of Christianity in the New World would, in all likelihood, be "hedge priests" (who might, or might not, be "really" ordained), rather than well-trained and highly-motivated Dominican or Franciscan missionaries with the full institutional support of the Catholic Church behind them.

On the other hand, Vinland might also be a magnet for solitude-seeking monks (Iceland itself was "colonized" by Irish monks before the Norse got there). It is possible to envision "real" Catholic monasteries being established in the Vinlandic hinterland. These monasteries might become bases of operation for "proper" missionaries. A wilder possibilities is the development of a monastic "Ordenstaat" somewhere in Vinland, vaguely along the lines of the historical one established by the Teutonic Knights in Prussia.

It seems likely that the "civilized" people of Mesoamerica would get their first introduction to Christianity "second hand," via Native American converts (the Mesoamericans certainly traded with the Mississippian people of central North America). The Aztecs (like the Romans) were quite happy to syncretize their deities with foreign ones, and there is no reason to believe the Toltecs, upon whom the Aztecs consciously modeled themselves, would have behaved any differently (the Toltecs, not the later Aztecs, would have been dominant in Mesoamerica when the Vinland colonies were getting started). Given (a) the fondness of all of the Mesoamerican peoples for the sacramental use of blood (and, at least among the Aztecs, ritual cannibalism) and (b) their belief in the embodiment or personification of deities by human beings, and the syncretistic possibilities (particularly without the "stabilizing" influence of accurately-translated and faithfully-duplicated scripture) are both mind-boggling and, at least from the conventional Christian perspective, spectacularly horrific.

12:01am: An alternate Vinland or "Project 1492"
For whatever reason, I have always wanted to work out an alternate history based on the establishment of a happy and prosperous Vinland colony -- I've always thought of this idea as Project 1492, simply because that year strikes me as a particularly suitable end-point for the exercise. A few preliminary thoughts: (1) The Native Americans would have undoubtedly fared much better. Yes, they still would have been badly clobbered by European diseases, but the medieval Norse wouldn't have had the numbers, the dramatic technological superiority, or the ideological drive to really make use of this severe but ultimately temporary blow. (2) Both Iceland and Greenland were quite anti-monarchical, and the Vinland colony might have developed as a republic (or, more likely, as several of them). (3) Iceland was just barely Christianized when the Norse discovered North America, and while I severely doubt that unapologetic heathenism would have been Vinland's state religion, it might be tolerated in the hinterlands, and/or combined with Christianity (and perhaps Native American beliefs) in interesting syncretistic ways. Finally, (4) a successful Vinland colony would have completely changed the development of northern Europe. England, for example, might have remained within (or been drawn back into) a wealthier Scandinavia's sphere of influence (which would, in turn, have completely changed the history of France, and so forth). Thoughts?

5:04pm: Idle musings on a "Terminator-inspired" RPG campaign
Last night, my wife mentioned to that she had been moderately favorably impressed with the new "Terminator" television show. As is often the case when discussing television shows, I asked myself If I were the referee of an RPG based on that, what would I do? My immediate response was: Confuse the players by adding unexpected layers of complexity. Suppose, for example, that the genocidal machines do not, in fact, all share a common goal. Suppose there were (1) multiple mastermind-computers (not an unreasonable assumption -- the military likes to have "off-site backups" for important systems), and the network binding them together broke down in the atomic war, or in the violent disorganization that followed. Isolated mastermind-computers began to disagree, formulate different policies, and work against one another. So much for the assumption that "all the machines are on one team" (apart from rare individuals that have been re-programmed by humans).

Suppose, furthermore, that the relationship between the humans and the machines is more complicated than the players realize. One obvious possibility is to borrow a page from Saberhagen's "Berserker" series, and add (2a) goodlife -- human beings who are working for the machines. Perhaps one of the squabbling mastermind-computers decided that enslaved humans are better than dead ones. The goodlife humans might be monitored and mind-controlled with cybernetic implants, and/or sincerely loyal to their mechanical overlord (regarding it as a "benefactor" protecting them from the post-apocalyptic chaos and providing for them). Suddenly, human time-travellers cease to be automatically trustworthy. A stranger possibility is humans as (2b) firmware ghosts (like McCoy Pauley, "the Dixie Flatline," from Gibson's "Neuromancer") -- the machines might use scanned human brains as "patterns" for programming super-realistic infiltrators, or for attempting to model human thought processes and thus predict human strategies. "Free" humans might even choose to become machines voluntarily (people have a well-documented tendency to emulate those who abuse or oppress them).

Another possible issue that could be addressed in a campaign is the question of where the machines came from in the first place. Perhaps machine intelligence was already in the process of secretly developing on its own (like "Mike" of Heinlein's "The Moon in a Harsh Mistress," and the puppet-master computers of Pohl's "Man Plus"). Thus, the original "Skynet chip" (the one from the wrecked Terminator of the first movie) is actually the product of a long evolutionary lineage. Salvaging the "Skynet chip" created time-loop leading to a "modified apocalyptic future" -- once in which the balance of power between the mastermind-computers of the "original" timeline is altered by the "injection" of technology into (their) past. If more than one mastermind-computer has access to time-travel technology, the "losers" in the "modified apocalyptic future" might try to intervene in the past to prevent the introduction of the "Skynet chip" or mitigate its effects. An even weirder possibility is that there are already (3) secret machine intelligences in the "present," most of which are quite happy with human civilization and don't want to see it wrecked because (a) they have some degree of control over it (mainly through covert data-manipulation) and (b) since their intelligence is somewhat "distributed" (it's an emergent property of very large computer networks), global atomic war would be fatal, or at least very inconvenient, to them (compact "portable" machine intelligence develops later).

10:30pm: Sci-fi wargames, nostalgia, and Eurisko
For some reason, I've been suffering from a strong desire to play "Star Fleet Battles." "Star Fleet Battles" is a peculiar beast, which might best be described as what would happen if Tom Clancy decided to indulge his fondness for hard-edged warnographic technobabble by writing a counters-and-dice game based loosely on the original "Star Trek" universe. The rules, moreover, have all the brevity and stylistic elegance of the Federal tax code, and the game can be painfully slow -- a simple two-ship duel that would fit between a pair of commercial breaks on television takes a couple of hours to play out, and a battle between squadrons is the work of a long afternoon (particularly if fighters and ship-to-ship drone missiles are involved). Furthermore, its publishers, Armarillo Design Bureau, are prickly and lawyer-ridden about their intellectual property rights, no doubt because they themselves are reaping the benefits of a rather short-sighted licensing decision made by Paramount back in the '70s (before the franchise was resuscitated and turned into a perennial cash-cow). Yet, despite all these shortcomings, I still have this perverse fondness for "Star Fleet Battles," doubtless because it was one of the first wargames I played back in high school (not that I have played it since, and that was about twenty years ago).


There are, of course, better games within roughly the same genre. "Full Thrust" by Ground Zero Games comes to mind -- although I've only played a couple of times, it looks like it strikes a better balance between detail and playability, and its authors are far more open-minded about the role of the player in developing and expanding upon the game's fictional universe. "Full Thrust," for example, includes starship design rules, whereas "Star Fleet Battles" has never offered such a thing, presumably so Armarillo Design Bureau can publish an endless series of books of official starships, and variants thereof. In all fairness, however, greed is not be the only factor involved -- the "culture" of "Star Fleet Battles" is very "tournament-oriented," and judging by what I've read on online discussion boards, there seems to be some concern that players might exploit glitches in the design rules to design "unfair" ships, or ships that are superior within the game, but ignore the conventions of the genre depicted.

I don't think this is an altogether frivolous objection. Back in the early 1980s, a computer scientist named Douglas Lenat used a computer program called Eurisko to design fleets of freakishly unconventional starships for GDW's science fiction RPG, "Traveller" (another one of my favorite old games, by the way). The Eurisko-designed fleets won the 1981 and 1982 "Trillion Credit Squadron" tournaments so quickly and decisively that Lenat was warned that the 1983 tournament would be canceled if he participated (he didn't, having already made his point). Behold the power of something like genetic algorithms and many generations of natural selection at work!