I was replying in the context of the last 6 months.
To go further than that, I would have added Ars Magica 5th Edition, Paranoia, the New World of Darkness+Vampire+Werewolf+Mage, Legend of the 5 Rings 3rd Edition, Nobilis, Deadlands, the Mechanical Dream, the Riddle of Steel, Risus, Fudge, Fate, Dust Devils, Savage Worlds, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, Feng Shui, Tunnels & Trolls 5.5 and 7th edition, Unknown Armies, Godlike, HERO, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e, Talislanta....the list just goes on and on....
You make it sound like the only books coming out for pen-and-paper gaming are D&D and GURPS supplements. There's a lot more than that in the past 6 months.
Here's a few new releases that seem to have flown beneath/.'s radar:
"A good GM tells the story and lets you play the game."
I highly suggest checking out the state-of-the-art in RPG design, games like Dogs in the Vineyard, Weapons of the Gods, and the Burning Wheel.
All of these get away from the fairly antiquated idea of 'The GM tells the story and we play the main characters'.
Rather, by PLAYING the main characters, the players CREATE the story, and the GM's task is more supporting than guiding. These new games handle this in several ways.
The Burning Wheel is built with the structure of the game being directly driven by the goals and aspirations of the characters. If the GM doesn't follow the story that is built into the characters, the game falls apart.
Weapons of the Gods has several rules-side dynamics for the players to directly alter the outcome of events, and the overall structure of the story. The players can spend their 'destiny' point to purchase story-investment in various aspects of the setting. You want the game to be about this one legendary weapon (for example)? Spend some destiny, and now your character's story is directly intertwined with it. The GM is bound to include it at some point. Additionally, the secret arts system (magic) involves a few arts that 'discover' things. And by discover, I mean you roll, and if you roll well enough, suddenly it was always the way you said, and your character discovers the truth of it.
Dogs in the Vineyard is possibly one of the single best put-together RPGs ever. It revolves around the GM setting up ugly situations for the players to resolve, where there IS no right answer, just a lot of moral ambiguity and sacrifice, and then cranks up the tension until the PCs have to act. The trick is, the choice of how to resolve the situation is ENTIRELY up to the players. The GM's job is to simply make no choice an easy one.
There are more games than this, but those are good places to start.
"Microsoft is a horrible company. They screw their customers, produce crappy products, and control the market using illegal methods, then buy leniency from corrupt politicians. I'm glad they're such a good company, and I don't know what the world would do without them. The Xbox is a piece of crap that I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole, and I can't wait to buy one! And they were SO easy to get for christmas...I'll make sure to do business with them again!"
One of the ideas presented in there is that technology doesn't make us dumber...rather it expands our intellects beyond our physical bodies. If we stop defining intelligence as only what goes on in our biological brains, we can start considering our minds as the hub of a distributed network of computational apparatus.
Want to see something that would be MUCH scarier if it got hit? And, I might add, a target that would seriously hurt us that is OUTSIDE our borders? Try this:
J. No provision of this Final Judgment shall: 1. Require Microsoft to document, disclose or license to third parties: (a) portions of APIs or Documentation or portions or layers of Communications Protocols the disclosure of which would compromise the security of a particular installation or group of installations of anti-piracy, anti-virus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication systems, including without limitation, keys, authorization tokens or enforcement criteria; or (b) any API, interface or other information related to any Microsoft product if lawfully directed not to do so by a governmental agency of competent jurisdiction.
Sheesh....there had to be catch...
Any bets on how long it'll take microsoft to declare the whole OS a rights protection management system so they don't have to give up any of the API?
I'm wondering how long it's going to take before we see an article on/. about someone who has taken all of these games and gotten them to run on a GB Advance/Gamecube chop-job that has been crammed inside of an old C64 case, and which uses a vector-analysis routine combined with a laser projection system to display them on the bare midriff of a Natalie Portman poster.
Here's a link to an essay by noted RPG designer John Wick. It talks about how reviewers need to get a clue, and does it in a most entertaining manner. Enjoy.
Does this mean that software stores can no longer sell to children? Because if they do, and the kid goes home and opens the software, does that mean that the EULA doesn't apply?
Oh, crap! I bet one of Microsoft's first steps will be to shut down the work on Matrix mods for Quake and HL. And I was so looking forward to them! They're the very definition of Matrix based internet play, meaning that MS will probably loose the dogs of law on them.
Grrrrr.....if that happens, Interplay can kiss any future business from me goodbye. 'By Gamers, For Gamers' indeed....
- Throw Rock
- Hit other guy with stick
- Hit other guy with sharp stick
- Shoot stick at other guy with curved stick
- Hit other guy with sharp copper stick
- Hit other guy with sharp bronze stick
- Hit other guy with sharp iron stick
- Hit other guy with sharp steel stick
- Shoot stick at other guy with REALLY BIG curved stick.
- Shoot stick at other guy with stick with trigger.
- Shoot metal rock at other guy with rock with trigger.
- Drop exploding metal rocks on other guy
- Drop unstable atomic metal rocks on other guy
- Throw rock
Aside from talking w/ an IP lawyer, ASAP, I suggest going back and taking a REALLY close look at anything else you've signed. Make sure you didn't screw yourself over inadvertantly. Check and see if they've gotten you through some other loophole. Who knows what they might have managed to slip by, elsewhere.
Personally, I think that the Linux community should start using scorched-earth advertizing tactics. With M$ claiming that windows is open-source, we need to fight back. How about this one:
A full page ad in the NYTimes. Two pictures. One is of a disheveled corporate manager, tie askew, bags under the eyes, looking upward with a forlorn expression and holding a gun in his mouth. Caption: Windows. The other being a picture of the same manager, with a slinky red-headed secretary sitting on his lap, drinking a martini. Caption: Linux
Heck, if M$ is now targeting Linux with their propaganda machine, we might as well start fighting dirty.
Of course, this is just a matter of course. Everyone, of course, suspected that it would just be a matter of time before they chose this course.
ps. Now, of course, we're going to see more course posts by ACs on Beowulf Clusters. Yay. I, of course, am going to continue browsing at thresh 1 as a matter of course.
Let's not forget about the new Zork games. Grand Inquisitor is a more than a bit campy, but is classic Zork in feel. Zork Nemesis, however, was truly an inspired piece of work. Creepy as hell, the soundtrack rocked, and unlike the games made by Trilobyte (7th Guest, 11th Hour, Clandestiny), the puzzles actually fit in the environment and make sense. A friend and I spent an entire semester playing that game. When we got to the Air lab (the sanitarium), we actually had trouble playing the thing for long stretches because of the imagery getting to us. Even now, despite the fact that I know how to beat it, I still enjoy breaking it out and tearing through it, just for the experience.
Speaking of gaming crashes, apparently WOTC has gotten screwed over by corporate money grubbers, because their stock prices aren't doing so well. Check this out. Hasbro's won at least one gamer's emnity now.
"I think it should be inconceivable that the kind of person who writes one kind of software also writes another kind," Lanier says. "Basically, if you heard your brain surgeon also had a tattoo parlor, you'd probably demur. Right now we think of them as the same thing. We think it's perfectly all right for people to go back and forth. I don't think it is."
This isn't exactly an apt analogy when applied to the IT field. We're probably always going to need brain surgeons. Tattooing is thousands of years old and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. On the other hand, how many applications, programming languages, and other concepts have fallen by the wayside - Some over the course of a month or two? Programmers MUST be generalists, or they're likely to wind up flipping burgers or answering telephones all day long after having the system they've based their careers on become obsolete overnight.
The difficulty comes in when you consider that, to make a mouse brain, we can go in one of two directions. We can analyse the behavior of a mouse, how it functions, and create a system that is suitably mouseish in behavior. The problem here is that we're basing it how we PERCIEVE a mouse to act. Any human analysing the opposite gender knows that perception of thought and actuality of thought are two completely different things.
The other method is to crack the head of a mouse open and figure out how it works on that level. What structures exist within the neuron latice of a mouse's brain that make it think like a mouse? This, of course, is incredibly difficult, if not impossible.
Perhaps one use of neurotech is to finally get a good picture of the operation of a brain. Imagine nano-computers mounted on every neuron in a brain, not changing anything, merely monitoring the activity and transmitting it to some reciever. Once we have an accurate picture of exactly what's going on at any given time, and can actually map the flow of 'thought', perhaps THEN we can re-create it with a reasonable degree of accuracy. As it is, we're just guessing based on external behavior.
What would happen if, say, you were working part-time at a computer company, and working as a Grad Assistant. What would happen if you came up with some really cool app/tech/gizmo that relates to both your degree and your tech-job, and both have we-own-it clauses? Who has the rights?
Slashdot Mirror
I highly recommend reading this article: http://scalzi.com/whatever/002675.html
It's very apt.
Good grief...we're in the middle of an RPG Renaissance, and the best we can get is articles about the latest splatbook from WotC??
l
How about some of these highly acclaimed and cutting-edge RPGs?
The Mountain Witch - http://www.timfire.com/MountainWitch.html
Don't Rest Your Head - http://www.evilhat.com/?dryh
Dogs in the Vineyard - http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/dogs.htm
My Life with Master - http://www.halfmeme.com/master.html
The Burning Wheel - http://www.burningwheel.org/
Weapons of the Gods - http://www.eos-press.com/products-wotg.html
I was replying in the context of the last 6 months.
To go further than that, I would have added Ars Magica 5th Edition, Paranoia, the New World of Darkness+Vampire+Werewolf+Mage, Legend of the 5 Rings 3rd Edition, Nobilis, Deadlands, the Mechanical Dream, the Riddle of Steel, Risus, Fudge, Fate, Dust Devils, Savage Worlds, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, Feng Shui, Tunnels & Trolls 5.5 and 7th edition, Unknown Armies, Godlike, HERO, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e, Talislanta....the list just goes on and on....
Good grief....D&D...D&D...GURPS...D&D.....
/.'s radar:
You make it sound like the only books coming out for pen-and-paper gaming are D&D and GURPS supplements. There's a lot more than that in the past 6 months.
Here's a few new releases that seem to have flown beneath
- Exalted 2nd Edition - http://www.white-wolf.com/exalted/index.php
- Weapons of the Gods - http://www.eos-press.com/products-wotg.html
- True20 from Green Ronin - http://true20.com/
- Shadowrun 4th Edition - http://www.shadowrunrpg.com/
- Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition - http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/
All excellent books. I suggest taking a look.
"A good GM tells the story and lets you play the game."
I highly suggest checking out the state-of-the-art in RPG design, games like Dogs in the Vineyard, Weapons of the Gods, and the Burning Wheel.
All of these get away from the fairly antiquated idea of 'The GM tells the story and we play the main characters'.
Rather, by PLAYING the main characters, the players CREATE the story, and the GM's task is more supporting than guiding. These new games handle this in several ways.
The Burning Wheel is built with the structure of the game being directly driven by the goals and aspirations of the characters. If the GM doesn't follow the story that is built into the characters, the game falls apart.
Weapons of the Gods has several rules-side dynamics for the players to directly alter the outcome of events, and the overall structure of the story. The players can spend their 'destiny' point to purchase story-investment in various aspects of the setting. You want the game to be about this one legendary weapon (for example)? Spend some destiny, and now your character's story is directly intertwined with it. The GM is bound to include it at some point. Additionally, the secret arts system (magic) involves a few arts that 'discover' things. And by discover, I mean you roll, and if you roll well enough, suddenly it was always the way you said, and your character discovers the truth of it.
Dogs in the Vineyard is possibly one of the single best put-together RPGs ever. It revolves around the GM setting up ugly situations for the players to resolve, where there IS no right answer, just a lot of moral ambiguity and sacrifice, and then cranks up the tension until the PCs have to act. The trick is, the choice of how to resolve the situation is ENTIRELY up to the players. The GM's job is to simply make no choice an easy one.
There are more games than this, but those are good places to start.
"Microsoft is a horrible company. They screw their customers, produce crappy products, and control the market using illegal methods, then buy leniency from corrupt politicians. I'm glad they're such a good company, and I don't know what the world would do without them. The Xbox is a piece of crap that I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole, and I can't wait to buy one! And they were SO easy to get for christmas...I'll make sure to do business with them again!"
Okay, analyze THAT.
Something to keep in mind:
Generally, forced name changes in WoW only occur when someone reports you for having your name.
Meaning, somebody didn't like seeing CmdrTaco on their screen, and decided to whine about it to the GMs.
I highly recommend reading this book (for free online, btw):
http://www.accelerando.org/book/
One of the ideas presented in there is that technology doesn't make us dumber...rather it expands our intellects beyond our physical bodies. If we stop defining intelligence as only what goes on in our biological brains, we can start considering our minds as the hub of a distributed network of computational apparatus.
Fiber-optics as terrorist targets...blah....
Want to see something that would be MUCH scarier if it got hit? And, I might add, a target that would seriously hurt us that is OUTSIDE our borders? Try this:
http://armageddononline.tripod.com/tsunamis.htm
(I'm on the east coast btw...this is scary stuff)
J. No provision of this Final Judgment shall:
1. Require Microsoft to document, disclose or license to third parties: (a) portions of
APIs or Documentation or portions or layers of Communications Protocols the
disclosure of which would compromise the security of a particular installation or
group of installations of anti-piracy, anti-virus, software licensing, digital rights
management, encryption or authentication systems, including without limitation,
keys, authorization tokens or enforcement criteria; or (b) any API, interface or
other information related to any Microsoft product if lawfully directed not to do
so by a governmental agency of competent jurisdiction.
Sheesh....there had to be catch...
Any bets on how long it'll take microsoft to declare the whole OS a rights protection management system so they don't have to give up any of the API?
I'm wondering how long it's going to take before we see an article on /. about someone who has taken all of these games and gotten them to run on a GB Advance/Gamecube chop-job that has been crammed inside of an old C64 case, and which uses a vector-analysis routine combined with a laser projection system to display them on the bare midriff of a Natalie Portman poster.
Here's a link to an essay by noted RPG designer John Wick. It talks about how reviewers need to get a clue, and does it in a most entertaining manner. Enjoy.
Does this mean that software stores can no longer sell to children? Because if they do, and the kid goes home and opens the software, does that mean that the EULA doesn't apply?
Grrrrr.....if that happens, Interplay can kiss any future business from me goodbye. 'By Gamers, For Gamers' indeed....
The evolution of human warfare:
- Throw Rock
- Hit other guy with stick
- Hit other guy with sharp stick
- Shoot stick at other guy with curved stick
- Hit other guy with sharp copper stick
- Hit other guy with sharp bronze stick
- Hit other guy with sharp iron stick
- Hit other guy with sharp steel stick
- Shoot stick at other guy with REALLY BIG curved stick.
- Shoot stick at other guy with stick with trigger.
- Shoot metal rock at other guy with rock with trigger.
- Drop exploding metal rocks on other guy
- Drop unstable atomic metal rocks on other guy
- Throw rock
Wow! Isn't human progress impressive?
Aside from talking w/ an IP lawyer, ASAP, I suggest going back and taking a REALLY close look at anything else you've signed. Make sure you didn't screw yourself over inadvertantly. Check and see if they've gotten you through some other loophole. Who knows what they might have managed to slip by, elsewhere.
A full page ad in the NYTimes. Two pictures. One is of a disheveled corporate manager, tie askew, bags under the eyes, looking upward with a forlorn expression and holding a gun in his mouth. Caption: Windows. The other being a picture of the same manager, with a slinky red-headed secretary sitting on his lap, drinking a martini. Caption: Linux
Heck, if M$ is now targeting Linux with their propaganda machine, we might as well start fighting dirty.
ps. Now, of course, we're going to see more course posts by ACs on Beowulf Clusters. Yay. I, of course, am going to continue browsing at thresh 1 as a matter of course.
Just go to Ad Critic.
Try this one: www.emux.com
Let's not forget about the new Zork games. Grand Inquisitor is a more than a bit campy, but is classic Zork in feel. Zork Nemesis, however, was truly an inspired piece of work. Creepy as hell, the soundtrack rocked, and unlike the games made by Trilobyte (7th Guest, 11th Hour, Clandestiny), the puzzles actually fit in the environment and make sense. A friend and I spent an entire semester playing that game. When we got to the Air lab (the sanitarium), we actually had trouble playing the thing for long stretches because of the imagery getting to us. Even now, despite the fact that I know how to beat it, I still enjoy breaking it out and tearing through it, just for the experience.
Speaking of gaming crashes, apparently WOTC has gotten screwed over by corporate money grubbers, because their stock prices aren't doing so well. Check this out. Hasbro's won at least one gamer's emnity now.
This isn't exactly an apt analogy when applied to the IT field. We're probably always going to need brain surgeons. Tattooing is thousands of years old and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. On the other hand, how many applications, programming languages, and other concepts have fallen by the wayside - Some over the course of a month or two? Programmers MUST be generalists, or they're likely to wind up flipping burgers or answering telephones all day long after having the system they've based their careers on become obsolete overnight.
The other method is to crack the head of a mouse open and figure out how it works on that level. What structures exist within the neuron latice of a mouse's brain that make it think like a mouse? This, of course, is incredibly difficult, if not impossible.
Perhaps one use of neurotech is to finally get a good picture of the operation of a brain. Imagine nano-computers mounted on every neuron in a brain, not changing anything, merely monitoring the activity and transmitting it to some reciever. Once we have an accurate picture of exactly what's going on at any given time, and can actually map the flow of 'thought', perhaps THEN we can re-create it with a reasonable degree of accuracy. As it is, we're just guessing based on external behavior.
What would happen if, say, you were working part-time at a computer company, and working as a Grad Assistant. What would happen if you came up with some really cool app/tech/gizmo that relates to both your degree and your tech-job, and both have we-own-it clauses? Who has the rights?