Mantis on my hand
Emerald
So green and bright,
And confident:
She will not bite
But combs her hair,
Cocks her head and stares
With iridescent eyes -
Then spreads her wings
And flies.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
H is for Hnefatafl
Some time between 1987 and 1991, I was given a copy of an intriguing game for Christmas that had been marketed under the name "King's Table" [1]
This game was billed as an ancient Viking interpretation of chess, and to my teenage self that was enough: I swiftly enveigled a few family members to play with me. [2] Sadly, once the Christmas season was over, this game only rarely saw the light of day, which is a true shame. I didn't know very much about the game at the time, just the page of notes that preceded the rules.
This was before the explosion of information on just about any subject on the internet, and there was nothing about the game that I could find in encyclopedias or other books in the library. Of course, this was partly because the game I got didn't include any of the names of the real games on which it was based - it was an amalgam of the various guesses as to how the table games played throughout the germanic, norse and celtic world about a thousand years ago probably worked. The result was that I regarded the game as an interesting chess variant, but didn't really pursue it any further. [3]
A few years ago, I was reading about something [4] for some reason that now eludes me when I inadvertently stepped into a maze of tangent clicks.[5] The next thing I knew, I was reading an article on the question of whether or not dice were used in a game found in Viking graves, and comparison to a Welsh game called tawlbwrdd. As I read, I suddenly remembered the game from that Christmas long ago and realised that there had always been more to this game than just a chess variant.
To start, I realised that I had misinterpreted the rules [6] and play was actually more sophisticated than I had thought. To continue, the possible inclusion of dice in the game suggested that it was far more than merely a local variant of chess, and I had been missing an interesting dimension of the history of games in Europe despite its having been right under my nose.
Since then, I've read a bit more about the game, and my interest in exploring it has only increased. Sadly, malleable relatives are now far away in space and time, and it's more difficult to bully my current social circle into playing games.
Much as I'd love to play Hnefatafl a bit more, it doesn't seem likely I'll get a chance any time soon. [7] That won't stop me from reading more about it of course, but I can't help but chafe at the poor intersection of time and technology that led me to forget about it for so long.
###
1. I don't remember the exact variant of the game clearly, but it would have been a commercialized version of one of these.
2. For values of "a few" exactly equalling one.
3. Interestingly, though, when I think back my interest in the history, archaeology and anthropology of games basically dates back to this period - I don't clearly remember which came first, though, so I don't know whether my interest led to the purchase of the game, or receiving the game led to my interest in historical games.
4. I don't recall what.
5. As one does.
6. Or perhaps the reconstruction on which the commercial game was based had been simplified - to its detriment.
7. Though apparently you can play online!
This game was billed as an ancient Viking interpretation of chess, and to my teenage self that was enough: I swiftly enveigled a few family members to play with me. [2] Sadly, once the Christmas season was over, this game only rarely saw the light of day, which is a true shame. I didn't know very much about the game at the time, just the page of notes that preceded the rules.
This was before the explosion of information on just about any subject on the internet, and there was nothing about the game that I could find in encyclopedias or other books in the library. Of course, this was partly because the game I got didn't include any of the names of the real games on which it was based - it was an amalgam of the various guesses as to how the table games played throughout the germanic, norse and celtic world about a thousand years ago probably worked. The result was that I regarded the game as an interesting chess variant, but didn't really pursue it any further. [3]
A few years ago, I was reading about something [4] for some reason that now eludes me when I inadvertently stepped into a maze of tangent clicks.[5] The next thing I knew, I was reading an article on the question of whether or not dice were used in a game found in Viking graves, and comparison to a Welsh game called tawlbwrdd. As I read, I suddenly remembered the game from that Christmas long ago and realised that there had always been more to this game than just a chess variant.
To start, I realised that I had misinterpreted the rules [6] and play was actually more sophisticated than I had thought. To continue, the possible inclusion of dice in the game suggested that it was far more than merely a local variant of chess, and I had been missing an interesting dimension of the history of games in Europe despite its having been right under my nose.
Since then, I've read a bit more about the game, and my interest in exploring it has only increased. Sadly, malleable relatives are now far away in space and time, and it's more difficult to bully my current social circle into playing games.
Much as I'd love to play Hnefatafl a bit more, it doesn't seem likely I'll get a chance any time soon. [7] That won't stop me from reading more about it of course, but I can't help but chafe at the poor intersection of time and technology that led me to forget about it for so long.
###
1. I don't remember the exact variant of the game clearly, but it would have been a commercialized version of one of these.
2. For values of "a few" exactly equalling one.
3. Interestingly, though, when I think back my interest in the history, archaeology and anthropology of games basically dates back to this period - I don't clearly remember which came first, though, so I don't know whether my interest led to the purchase of the game, or receiving the game led to my interest in historical games.
4. I don't recall what.
5. As one does.
6. Or perhaps the reconstruction on which the commercial game was based had been simplified - to its detriment.
7. Though apparently you can play online!
Friday, May 9, 2014
G is for Go
One of a series of articles on games I wish I'd played more of.
I've been fascinated with go ever since I first learned of it.
More properly known as igo in Japanese, this is a kind of ultimate distillation of the concept of games:
Fundamentally, the mechanics are simple, with only a truly minimal handful of rules governing what each player can do.
But this very simplicity leads to a universe of possibilities.
For those unfamiliar with the game, or familiar with it under its various other names [1] Japanese igo is really very, very simple.
You start with a board comprised of a 19x19 grid of lines. [2]
Each player takes turns placing a stone on the intersections. Stones cannot move once placed.
If a player's stone or group of stones is surrounded by the opponent's stones, with no adjacent intersections open, then they are removed from the board. [3]
When there are no more moves possible that won't result in a capture, you count the empty intersections completely controlled by each player - each is worth 1 point. The player with the most points wins.
The basics are, as I said, simple, but the sheer scope of options at each turn is such that the board quickly becomes very complex and strategy is very, very sophisticated.
In some ways, this is good: it means that the game can be played by people with a wide variety of skill levels.
In other ways, this is a serious problem, however.
I first started playing igo way back long before I ever moved to Japan. I had heard of the game and had read a bit about it [4] and one year I got a set as part of a game pack one Christmas. I read the rules, and played a handful of games with anyone who would sit down with me.
It was fascinating, exotic, and incredibly challenging. For such a simple game, the potential seemed incredible - I was hooked.
But like chess, it can be very hard to find people willing to actually sit and play igo, so for many years I didn't play at all - when I moved to Japan I assumed it would be easy to find partners and finally polish the rather rough game I had developed in the absence of serious players.
How wrong I was.
Like many parts of Asia, igo is played fairly widely in Japan, but the problem is that it's considered a very intellectual and difficult game. The result? Most people don't start playing until later in life, and when they do they start playing very seriously. [5] This means that for a beginner like me, random friends and acquaintances are unlikely to admit to knowing how to play, and attending an igo club means that the players are so far ahead that it can't possibly be fun for anyone.
When you play igo against a competent, experienced player who is (let's be honest) much, much better than you, they are supposed to give you a handicap in the form of an advantage of stones already on the board.
This handicap is calculated based on a system of grades and levels similar to what you see in martial arts - players are rated as having a kyu number until they reach a reasonable level of proficiency, and then they start working up the dan grades - dan grades are essentially equivalent to having a black belt in igo.
So here's my problem:
I have met any number of people who know about igo, are not particularly proficient, but basically profess not to play. I have also met a handful of people who tell me they play igo...but are at various dan levels.
The one igo club I've ever gone to where I was made to feel welcome (rather than a stone around the necks of the players who invited me, and therefore were obligated to hold my hand the whole time) the lowest ranked player was 3rd dan. The player who was most enthusiastic about helping me learn the game was 5th dan.
On the face of it, this is great! Who can complain about having enthusiastic, highly skilled players willing to teach you how it's done?
Well, clearly you've never tried this. The fact of the matter is that it's depressing, humiliating, and not at all fun for anyone involved.
No matter what I did, I couldn't make a single move that made me feel like I was making progress. Even with humiliatingly enormous handicaps I simply couldn't perform respectably, let alone win.
I don't mind losing while I'm losing a game, but let's face it - not being able to play people your own level makes it very difficult to really learn how to do things right, and is frustrating to boot.
So now I really wish I could meet a few people who, like me, are beginners but seriously interested in learning how to play. There don't seem to be any Japanese players like this, though, so I guess I may be doomed to play against computers forever.
###
1. Igo is popular in China and Korea as well, with local variants where there are a few subtle details different from both the Japanese and international versions.
2. Actually, there are variants of various smaller sizes, but most are used only for teaching the basics to new players.
3. In practice, skilled players rarely capture stones because good adversaries won't allow the competition to go that far - they each recognise that a space has been captured and move on to a different part of the board.
4. This was pre-internet, so information was scanty and sketchy.
5. The Japanese take all hobbies seriously. In fact, it seems as though the Japanese are reluctant to admit they have a hobby at all unless they think they can perform creditably - which often means at a nearly professional level.
I've been fascinated with go ever since I first learned of it.
More properly known as igo in Japanese, this is a kind of ultimate distillation of the concept of games:
But this very simplicity leads to a universe of possibilities.
For those unfamiliar with the game, or familiar with it under its various other names [1] Japanese igo is really very, very simple.
You start with a board comprised of a 19x19 grid of lines. [2]
Each player takes turns placing a stone on the intersections. Stones cannot move once placed.
If a player's stone or group of stones is surrounded by the opponent's stones, with no adjacent intersections open, then they are removed from the board. [3]
When there are no more moves possible that won't result in a capture, you count the empty intersections completely controlled by each player - each is worth 1 point. The player with the most points wins.
The basics are, as I said, simple, but the sheer scope of options at each turn is such that the board quickly becomes very complex and strategy is very, very sophisticated.
In some ways, this is good: it means that the game can be played by people with a wide variety of skill levels.
In other ways, this is a serious problem, however.
I first started playing igo way back long before I ever moved to Japan. I had heard of the game and had read a bit about it [4] and one year I got a set as part of a game pack one Christmas. I read the rules, and played a handful of games with anyone who would sit down with me.
It was fascinating, exotic, and incredibly challenging. For such a simple game, the potential seemed incredible - I was hooked.
But like chess, it can be very hard to find people willing to actually sit and play igo, so for many years I didn't play at all - when I moved to Japan I assumed it would be easy to find partners and finally polish the rather rough game I had developed in the absence of serious players.
How wrong I was.
Like many parts of Asia, igo is played fairly widely in Japan, but the problem is that it's considered a very intellectual and difficult game. The result? Most people don't start playing until later in life, and when they do they start playing very seriously. [5] This means that for a beginner like me, random friends and acquaintances are unlikely to admit to knowing how to play, and attending an igo club means that the players are so far ahead that it can't possibly be fun for anyone.
When you play igo against a competent, experienced player who is (let's be honest) much, much better than you, they are supposed to give you a handicap in the form of an advantage of stones already on the board.
This handicap is calculated based on a system of grades and levels similar to what you see in martial arts - players are rated as having a kyu number until they reach a reasonable level of proficiency, and then they start working up the dan grades - dan grades are essentially equivalent to having a black belt in igo.
So here's my problem:
I have met any number of people who know about igo, are not particularly proficient, but basically profess not to play. I have also met a handful of people who tell me they play igo...but are at various dan levels.
The one igo club I've ever gone to where I was made to feel welcome (rather than a stone around the necks of the players who invited me, and therefore were obligated to hold my hand the whole time) the lowest ranked player was 3rd dan. The player who was most enthusiastic about helping me learn the game was 5th dan.
On the face of it, this is great! Who can complain about having enthusiastic, highly skilled players willing to teach you how it's done?
Well, clearly you've never tried this. The fact of the matter is that it's depressing, humiliating, and not at all fun for anyone involved.
No matter what I did, I couldn't make a single move that made me feel like I was making progress. Even with humiliatingly enormous handicaps I simply couldn't perform respectably, let alone win.
I don't mind losing while I'm losing a game, but let's face it - not being able to play people your own level makes it very difficult to really learn how to do things right, and is frustrating to boot.
So now I really wish I could meet a few people who, like me, are beginners but seriously interested in learning how to play. There don't seem to be any Japanese players like this, though, so I guess I may be doomed to play against computers forever.
###
1. Igo is popular in China and Korea as well, with local variants where there are a few subtle details different from both the Japanese and international versions.
2. Actually, there are variants of various smaller sizes, but most are used only for teaching the basics to new players.
3. In practice, skilled players rarely capture stones because good adversaries won't allow the competition to go that far - they each recognise that a space has been captured and move on to a different part of the board.
4. This was pre-internet, so information was scanty and sketchy.
5. The Japanese take all hobbies seriously. In fact, it seems as though the Japanese are reluctant to admit they have a hobby at all unless they think they can perform creditably - which often means at a nearly professional level.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
F is for Fighting Fantasy
A series on games I
wish I’d played more of.
Pretty much anyone my age who was into fantasy and science fiction
back in the 70s and 80s will remember the Fighting Fantasy books.
Superficially, these seem to be pretty light entertainment
and a novelty that emerged briefly and then essentially disappeared, but few
people know that the idea of a branching path story was first pioneered by
Jorge Luis Borges[1] in the 40s in a pair of stories that featured fictional
books with branching paths in them. In
one, A survey of the works of Herbert
Quain, the main character is the author of a book split into three parts,
and has two branch points, and is thus able to tell a total of nine different
stories. The other story, The Garden of Forking Paths, [2] contains
an element that is much more like the adventure game books we know and love: this
story deals in part with a sinologist who has interpreted an ancient Chinese
work written by a man tasked to design a maze and to write a book, but in the
end produced only a riddle – a book that is a maze, with the reader needing to
determine the order in which the sections need to be read in order to navigate
the contents.
The “self-directed order of reading” concept manifested as a
real type of book in the 50s when it was used by Skinner and others to develop
learning materials – in these kinds of books, students selected a question’s
answer, and were directed to another page based on that answer. In some senses, these are the precursors of
the online training programmes that a lot of institutions use internally – you read
a text (say, the company labour dispute policy) and then have to answer
multiple choice questions on the content.
With each answer, you are either moved on to the next question (if you’re
right) or redirected to a more comprehensive explanation of the concept you got
wrong and offered another question to see if it stuck yet. [3] This aside
though, there were a series of “branching path” self-study books published
during the 50s and 60s that were used to present a variety of subjects, and in
fact these books were acknowledged by the creators of branching path fiction
and adventures as a strong influence. [4]
Following on from these directed learning books, branching
path fiction really came into its own in the 70s, when “choose your own
adventure” and similar types of adventure fiction books started to gain in
popularity – right up to the first Fighting Fantasy book published in 1982 by
Penguin: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
I had read choose your own adventure books of various kinds
in the past, but although they were interesting they never really seemed to
have much re-readability. The Jackson
and Livingstone conception took the idea to the next level though, and in the
early 80s I was a big fan of their Fighting Fantasy series of fantasy solitaire
adventure gamebooks. I think I actually
started with Island of the Lizard King, and I seem to remember my second
purchase being Deathtrap Dungeon [5], but in the end I had a shelf with about
10 of the books on it, and even started branching out into series like Lone
Wolf – I never really played many of the Lone Wolf books, but the art in that
series was gorgeous and it had the rather interesting twist that the books
constituted a coherent narrative. [6]
This was an interesting time for games, and one that I kind
of wish would come back. Computer and
console games are a sort of extension of the idea [7] but if we’re honest it’s
not the same thing – computerized RPGs are quite a different experience from
either tabletop playing or the gamebooks of yore. With the advent of tablets and smartphones,
there’s the potential for a comeback, [8] but as far as computer gaming goes,
the closest analog to the old gamebooks is probably text adventures like Zork.
[9]
By this point, you’ve probably gotten the impression that
actually I’ve already played gamebooks quite a lot, so may be wondering why
this is in a list of games I wish I’d played more of.
The answer is actually quite simple: I cheated.
Like many other youngsters playing these books, I looked
ahead to see what the consequences of different choices were and thus navigated
the books relatively easily. I wish I had played the books more honestly, or that
I had payed more attention to how they were organized. By cheating, I cheated myself of even more
fun (and they were plenty fun even cheating!) but I could at least have learned
something about game design while I was at it.
Oh, make no mistake, there were TV programmes and books and
magazine articles on how these books were designed and made [10] so I learned a
lot about their structure – but I was a callow youth, and I wasted the
opportunity when it was right in front of me, so I sometimes wish I had played
more of them – or at least played them more effectively.
But then, I can play
them now if I want to.
###
1. The influence of Jorge Luis Borges on modern fiction is
incredible, and he was a celebrated master of the short form – indeed, anyone
who aspires to write fantasy short stories needs to know his work, and his influence
can be seen in the works of other masters like Umberto Eco. http://www.egs.edu/library/jorge-luis-borges/biography/
2. Both of these stories are available in the collection The
Garden of Forking Paths which is unfortunately a bit expensive, but the
story The Garden of Forking Paths is
often available online as scanned copies, as it’s a popular text in Borges
courses. The story is also included in
the collection Labyrinths,
which is more reasonably priced and has the added bonus of an introduction by
William Gibson.
3. I’m not convinced this approach actually works, but it
certainly is popular.
4. Although I doubt the value of this sort of approach to
things like corporate training, I do wonder if the approach could be better
leveraged for online education programmes – surely the idea could be adapted
rather easily to create apps that are essentially primers to certain basic
subjects?
5. Which, incidentally, really was a deathtrap. I played it over and over, but only ever
managed to defeat the book without cheating once.
6. Actually, I think that was what prevented me from buying
more than a couple of them – you needed to play the books in order for them to
really make sense, so it made it hard to just pick up a book at a Motorway rest
stop or at an airport. The books were playable
as stand-alones, but not very satisfying because it was obvious you were expected
to know things that had happened in previous books. FF books on the other hand
were mostly stand-alones, though that didn’t stop me and my friends trying
things like making a character and trying to use the same one all through the
series.
7. Indeed, there were adaptations for a few of the early FF
books into games for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, though I only ever
played the Spectrum version of Warlock of Firetop Mountain and found it a bit
unsatisfying.
8. Actually, if only the Kindle e-ink platform allowed for
clearly defined pages, the fact that it supports HTML would make it dead easy
to run choose your own adventure type books – and I’m sure that the platform
could be made to do things like roll dice and keep track of your character for
you. Thinking about this sort of thing is always enough to make me bemoan the
fact I stopped keeping up with programming when I stopped using a Unix terminal
at university – if I had the time to do it, I’d teach myself and write kindle
or tablet based gamebooks with great enthusiasm!
9. Which, by the way, you can play online here. You
didn’t need to sleep tonight anyway.
10. If you’re wondering about the web pages, I can only
respond: “What! You egg!” and suggest
that you go entertain yourself while your elders compare arthritic pains and twinges from long-forgotten wounds.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Petty annoyance or serious problem? You decide.
On April 20, The Sunday Times published an article with the headline:
Grandmother, 71, tackles slave traffickers for the Pope
Really? A Grandmother? Amazing!
What's amazing is that this headline somehow manages to sweep away Lady Margaret Archer's professional achievements as irrelevant to her identity in comparison to her grandmotherliness, and simultaneously imply that we should be shocked that a grandmother could possibly be asked to "tackle slave traffickers".
To be brutally fair, the article does in fact briefly survey her career, but this one headline - and the second paragraph, which reads:
"Margaret Archer, a 71-year-old grandmother who has spent most of her academic career at Warwick University, has just been appointed head of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences by Pope Francis."
neatly excises facts like:
- Her PhD in sociology from the University of London
- Her reputation as one of the most influential theorists in the critical realism school.
- She was elected president of the International Sociological Association at their 12th World Congress of Sociology
- She was one of the founding members of both the Academy she now heads and the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences
- At the time of appointment she wasn't working at Warwick University (a respectable school) any more, but is actually a professor at l'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland (one of the world's most prestigious technology universities in the world (ranking 1st in Europe) and home to the Blue Brain Project.)
So, what's the big deal, you might ask - she is a grandmother, right? Other articles, like this news release from the Vatican give pretty straight-forward coverage of her qualifications, and this is after all the Sunday Times, so we might expect more of an interest story approach than hard-hitting investigative journalism.
I think it's fair to say that in such a piece it would be perfectly ordinary to mention the fact that a researcher is a father (for example) or is from some locale the readership might find interesting. But this information is normally considered secondary - it's just a little garnish to make the subject of the article seem more personable. The meat - the reason you're reading the article at all is the achievement being reported, and if these details aren't at all relevant you certainly don't expect them to be in the headline or to feature prominently in the initial paragraphs.
Unless you're a woman, I guess.
Some won't really understand what I'm getting at, so as an illustration, here are some other articles with their headlines rewritten in the same style:
Welshman finds new beetle in Brazil
Small-town man appointed to national association
Husband of Ojibway woman appointed to Great Lakes Science Advisory Board
Fact: nationality, where you grew up, who you are married to - all irrelevant to the actual news.
Interesting details about the individuals? Sure - and actually I think it would be great to get more personalization of prominent researchers in the media to help get people more interested in science.
But it doesn't belong in the headline, and it doesn't deserve pride of place in any article purporting to report an individual's professional achievement.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
E is for Exalted
A series on games I wish I had played more of.
In 2001, a friend of mine bought a copy of the Exalted role-playing game by White Wolf Publishing, and was incredibly enthusiastic about trying it.
This was a bit of a departure from our usual fare - to start with, we were pretty deeply invested in Dungeons & Dragons of various flavours, and although we had played a number of other games (Rifts, TMNT, Battletech, Call of Cthulu (the old Chaosium version), ICE's MERP, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Gamma World, Amber, Battletech, and even a homebrew) we always drifted back to the old standard.
To make the sell even more difficult, some of us were - ah - unenthusiastic about gaming in the World of Darkness. We just found the whole angst-ridden vampire trope Anne Rice started left us with a bit of a bad taste in our mouths. [1]
However, our friend's enthusiasm was infectious, and once we'd had a chance to read through some of the background material and the mechanics we agreed to give it a shot because, frankly, we were finding it as interesting as he did by that point.
The WW Storytelling System mechanics were unfamiliar to us, so character creation was a bit tricky, and it also took a bit of a mental stretch to wrap ourselves around the basic concept: that the player characters are all chosen and imbued with power by various deities, thus becoming demigods - thus the name Exalted. The scope for high-powered play (with plenty of role-playing and political intrigue) seemed wide, and things started to get interesting when we started role-playing through bits of character background. [2]
I don't recall what happened, but sadly our intentions got derailed soon after the first real session, and as intriguing as the game seemed we never tried again.
I suspect this is a game that would demand a fair bit of my time, unfortunately, so I doubt I will ever really get another chance - something I regret.
###
1. An example of play:
Player: "I ponder despondently the fate of my long-ago bartered human soul."
GM: "OK, roll...uh-oh - Your mournful yet classically beautiful demeanor has attracted the attention of a self-destructed goth teen who is now stalking you and dangerously close to revealing your true identity."
Player: "I evade!"
GM: "Ethical dilemma! You have discovered she is writing suicide-themed poetry inspired by your mysterious persona! Roll to resist befriending her and offering her dark immortality."
Player: "Arg! I failed!"
OK, I admit - the game doesn't really go like this and in fact has both an interesting mechanical foundation and an intriguing setting. Our scepticism was founded more on a reaction to the increasingly annoying trope that was displacing more interesting vampire variants in popular media than on the gaming community's interpretations, most of which were actually quite well thought out. Added to this: one of the ubiquitous "asshole but we tolerate him because he's actually an OK guy most of the time" sort of hangers on was so incredibly enthusiastic about WW's Werewolf game that it was very nearly a kneejerk reaction to be sceptical.
2. Not required by the game, but we did it both so we could practice using the mechanics (and tweak our characters prior to play as we learned what worked and what didn't) and so that our characters would enter play as fully developed as possible, since one aspect of the Storytelling System is that characters typically don't progress much in comparison to other games - they enter play fully formed and progress relatively slowly.
In 2001, a friend of mine bought a copy of the Exalted role-playing game by White Wolf Publishing, and was incredibly enthusiastic about trying it.
This was a bit of a departure from our usual fare - to start with, we were pretty deeply invested in Dungeons & Dragons of various flavours, and although we had played a number of other games (Rifts, TMNT, Battletech, Call of Cthulu (the old Chaosium version), ICE's MERP, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Gamma World, Amber, Battletech, and even a homebrew) we always drifted back to the old standard.
To make the sell even more difficult, some of us were - ah - unenthusiastic about gaming in the World of Darkness. We just found the whole angst-ridden vampire trope Anne Rice started left us with a bit of a bad taste in our mouths. [1]
However, our friend's enthusiasm was infectious, and once we'd had a chance to read through some of the background material and the mechanics we agreed to give it a shot because, frankly, we were finding it as interesting as he did by that point.
The WW Storytelling System mechanics were unfamiliar to us, so character creation was a bit tricky, and it also took a bit of a mental stretch to wrap ourselves around the basic concept: that the player characters are all chosen and imbued with power by various deities, thus becoming demigods - thus the name Exalted. The scope for high-powered play (with plenty of role-playing and political intrigue) seemed wide, and things started to get interesting when we started role-playing through bits of character background. [2]
I don't recall what happened, but sadly our intentions got derailed soon after the first real session, and as intriguing as the game seemed we never tried again.
I suspect this is a game that would demand a fair bit of my time, unfortunately, so I doubt I will ever really get another chance - something I regret.
###
1. An example of play:
Player: "I ponder despondently the fate of my long-ago bartered human soul."
GM: "OK, roll...uh-oh - Your mournful yet classically beautiful demeanor has attracted the attention of a self-destructed goth teen who is now stalking you and dangerously close to revealing your true identity."
Player: "I evade!"
GM: "Ethical dilemma! You have discovered she is writing suicide-themed poetry inspired by your mysterious persona! Roll to resist befriending her and offering her dark immortality."
Player: "Arg! I failed!"
OK, I admit - the game doesn't really go like this and in fact has both an interesting mechanical foundation and an intriguing setting. Our scepticism was founded more on a reaction to the increasingly annoying trope that was displacing more interesting vampire variants in popular media than on the gaming community's interpretations, most of which were actually quite well thought out. Added to this: one of the ubiquitous "asshole but we tolerate him because he's actually an OK guy most of the time" sort of hangers on was so incredibly enthusiastic about WW's Werewolf game that it was very nearly a kneejerk reaction to be sceptical.
2. Not required by the game, but we did it both so we could practice using the mechanics (and tweak our characters prior to play as we learned what worked and what didn't) and so that our characters would enter play as fully developed as possible, since one aspect of the Storytelling System is that characters typically don't progress much in comparison to other games - they enter play fully formed and progress relatively slowly.
There are bees, and then there are BEES!
Today, my boy informed me in no uncertain terms that I couldn't go to work BECAUSE OF THE BEES and instead should stay home and play.
Good advice, though I doubt my boss would buy what he's selling.
In any case, he's been a bit obsessed with bees lately because we took him strawberry picking a couple of weeks ago, and the lady who took our group to the assigned greenhouse made a big point of telling us that the cardboard box in the middle [1] was FULL OF BEES [2] and that if we disturbed it or swatted away any bees we might see we would be horribly stung [3], and probably die.[4]
Seriously, rather than pointing out that the bees had to be there to ensure we had strawberries to pick and warning us that bees can sting if frightened so we shouldn't bother the hive or molest any bees we see, she chose to make it into a horror story.
I've done my best to undo the damage (bees help make strawberries, they make honey, they won't hurt you unless they think you're trying to hurt them, etc) but I confess my feelings are conflicted:
You see, I live in Japan where not only are there bees, but there are OH BY THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY - BEES!
OK, so they're hornets. But still, the point is that they're actually dangerous[5]. Not only are they big, stinging insects (legitimately off-putting to any rational human being) but they're actively aggressive and known to not only attack but also kill people. Look at what a slightly smaller relative sub-species in China did last fall.
Vespa mandarina japonica is, I believe, the largest of the bunch, and they are the target of quite intense public safety efforts when they're found in inhabited areas, particularly if those areas are near schools or other places where children play outside. All through the warm months they forage voraciously, and when new queens reach maturity they set off to find places to nest, and little cracks and holes in the eaves of houses are notoriously popular. Any area with a number of uninhabited houses will make local authorities nervous - with no one to notice when these monsters are taking an interest, there's no telling how big a nest might get before it's detected - and eliminating a nest of hundreds is a major undertaking requiring serious equipment.
Anyway, thus my conflicted feelings.
On the one hand, I would like him to see videos like this one and say "cool!" rather than have nightmares.
On the other hand, he's too young to really understand that some bees are OK to watch and others demand a quick retreat to safety.
To make things even more tricky? A history of bee sting allergy in the family.
Though honestly, after getting injected with a cocktail of haemolytic and neurotoxic venom by a hornet this size allergies are not an issue. Single stings have been known to kill, and the best case scenario is that the sting will feel like a hot nail being driven into your flesh. [6]
Yeah, I'm happy to class the risk of occasional bee-stings as part of growing up, but the risk of having a hot nail driven into you and then dying is not really something kids should have on their already-busy injury schedule.
So, now to think of ways to explain bees in a bee-friendly way while still instilling a healthyterror of respect for giant hornets.
###
1. a portable hive for pollination. Most Japanese fruit growers don't have the luxury of keeping large numbers of bees, and natural pollination isn't sufficient. Those with greenhouse operations (strawberries and other berries) often use these portable hives to introduce a captive population into a closed area. Outdoor operations (apples, pears) typically use collected pollen and do it by hand. Yes, every year Japanese farmers hire armies of middle-aged women to have sex with trees. And yet GMOs are banned.
2. Her emphasis.
3. Her words.
4. This exaggeration is all mine.
5. Remember the movie Swarm? Yeah, these badboys girls make "africanized honey bees" look kind of tame in comparison.
6. No, really, scientific eye-witness account: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1025_021025_GiantHornets.html
Good advice, though I doubt my boss would buy what he's selling.
In any case, he's been a bit obsessed with bees lately because we took him strawberry picking a couple of weeks ago, and the lady who took our group to the assigned greenhouse made a big point of telling us that the cardboard box in the middle [1] was FULL OF BEES [2] and that if we disturbed it or swatted away any bees we might see we would be horribly stung [3], and probably die.[4]
Seriously, rather than pointing out that the bees had to be there to ensure we had strawberries to pick and warning us that bees can sting if frightened so we shouldn't bother the hive or molest any bees we see, she chose to make it into a horror story.
I've done my best to undo the damage (bees help make strawberries, they make honey, they won't hurt you unless they think you're trying to hurt them, etc) but I confess my feelings are conflicted:
You see, I live in Japan where not only are there bees, but there are OH BY THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY - BEES!
OK, so they're hornets. But still, the point is that they're actually dangerous[5]. Not only are they big, stinging insects (legitimately off-putting to any rational human being) but they're actively aggressive and known to not only attack but also kill people. Look at what a slightly smaller relative sub-species in China did last fall.
Vespa mandarina japonica is, I believe, the largest of the bunch, and they are the target of quite intense public safety efforts when they're found in inhabited areas, particularly if those areas are near schools or other places where children play outside. All through the warm months they forage voraciously, and when new queens reach maturity they set off to find places to nest, and little cracks and holes in the eaves of houses are notoriously popular. Any area with a number of uninhabited houses will make local authorities nervous - with no one to notice when these monsters are taking an interest, there's no telling how big a nest might get before it's detected - and eliminating a nest of hundreds is a major undertaking requiring serious equipment.
Anyway, thus my conflicted feelings.
On the one hand, I would like him to see videos like this one and say "cool!" rather than have nightmares.
On the other hand, he's too young to really understand that some bees are OK to watch and others demand a quick retreat to safety.
To make things even more tricky? A history of bee sting allergy in the family.
Though honestly, after getting injected with a cocktail of haemolytic and neurotoxic venom by a hornet this size allergies are not an issue. Single stings have been known to kill, and the best case scenario is that the sting will feel like a hot nail being driven into your flesh. [6]
Yeah, I'm happy to class the risk of occasional bee-stings as part of growing up, but the risk of having a hot nail driven into you and then dying is not really something kids should have on their already-busy injury schedule.
So, now to think of ways to explain bees in a bee-friendly way while still instilling a healthy
###
1. a portable hive for pollination. Most Japanese fruit growers don't have the luxury of keeping large numbers of bees, and natural pollination isn't sufficient. Those with greenhouse operations (strawberries and other berries) often use these portable hives to introduce a captive population into a closed area. Outdoor operations (apples, pears) typically use collected pollen and do it by hand. Yes, every year Japanese farmers hire armies of middle-aged women to have sex with trees. And yet GMOs are banned.
2. Her emphasis.
3. Her words.
4. This exaggeration is all mine.
5. Remember the movie Swarm? Yeah, these bad
6. No, really, scientific eye-witness account: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1025_021025_GiantHornets.html
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