Gencon Approaching

I'll be there the whole weekend. What to do?

Lurk about the Forge booth. See what's new, seeing as I'm totally out of touch with freakin' everything.

Lurk about the Spawn of Forge-shan booths, such as Play Collective and Das Äschkån-Frønt.

See if I can meet Ken St. Andre, elder trollgod of all gaming (to me anyway), again. And any other cool Flying Buffalos.

Head for McNiven's and eat haggis. When else am I going to get to eat haggis? Oh, I understand they have beer as well.

Buca di Beppo with my homeboys.

Maybe complete my Knights of the Dinner Table collection.

Collect the copy of Schock: Social Science Fiction I earned by reviewing it. Play it! With the Glyphmonkey himself if possible.

Find a pickup Burning Wheel game somewhere so I can see how it plays in real life with people who know the system.

Meet certain fine folk that I haven't seen in forever. I'm thinking particularly of Paul Czege, who I've been in some contact with despite not seeing him for a couple years, and Lxndr, who I last saw what, four years ago? At Gencon, for about 5 minutes?

I guess mostly just learn what I've been missing being out of touch for a long time. I've been busy at work and dealing with some personal stuff and so haven't been illustrating at all, so there's been no "I've been doing illos for this game, I can't wait to see it printed up for real!" like there was in past years.

So yeah. Day after tomorrow.

Nostalgiagasm

Somebody scanned in a 1980 TSR catalog.

Kickass Review of Shock

Sweet review linked from Joshua's own blog. Gotta read it, if for no other reason, for the description of how the various characters' stories played out.

I gotta play this game. But as the reviewer points out, and as has been pointed out many times, the game text has big holes that need filling. Not Ron Edwards "Dude, read the text or Sorcerer again, it's all there, you just can't see it" kind of holes, but actual glaring "wait, there's no rule for this" holes.

Luckily another edition is impending which will fix this. I want that one.

The reviewer himself didn't suffer from this problem, he explains, because he was taught the game by existing players who knew how it went.

Overall the review is an excellent example of the presentation of a heavily narrativist indie game in such a way that an average mainstream gamer will understand exactly what it's all about.

So I Married an RPG Designer

Egads! Accused murderer and Linux filesystem guru Hans Reiser used to be an RPG designer!

Says Wired --

I'm here because his defense lawyer thinks I will understand Reiser. The accused is a 43-year-old geek — he lives in his own world of computer code, videogames, and science fiction books. He spent his early twenties developing a role-playing game to compete with Dungeons & Dragons while writing a novel about aliens invading Earth. By age 30, he'd decided that his talents would be better applied to recrafting overlooked aspects of the Linux operating system.

I'm consumed with a desire to know more about that game.

Alexander 'Lxndr' 'Fastlane' Cherry treated for brain tumor -- contact info

I ran across this on a BBS where I first met Lxndr, author of Fastlane.

Thought I'd broadcast it, and encourage anyone reading this to take it further.

Some of you already know some of this, but I'm going to take it from the top.
I went to Spain this summer, through the study abroad program of Arizona State
University. I was supposed to be there from June 1 to July 22nd, gathering 8
credits in Spanish 201 and Spanish 202. Unfortunately, things did not go as
planned. The first weekend there (June 8th or so), I took a weekend
pleasure-trip to Morocco with 31 classmates (and 2 teachers) and, my final
night there, had a few convulsions (or seizures, or whatever you want to call
them). By June 13th I was arriving in LAX, to be remanded into the custody of
my family, who took me to the emergency room at UCI.

Turns out I have a mass in my head. Well, technically I have quite a few of
them (like a skull, a brain, etc.) but this particular mass isn't supposed to
be there. It's a tumor in my right frontal lobe, putting pressure on my brain.
Probably it's been there for years. As you might expect, this is bad. On
Monday, June 18th, I will be undergoing a 12 hour (or so) surgery to have it
taken out. After that comes recovery and rehabilitation, and who knows how
long that will take.

Well-wishes and other words can be sent to me at lxndr@asu.edu, or to my family
at justincaselaw@aol.com. Internet access at the hospital leaves much to be
desired - my being able to get online to send this myself is basically a fluke
that will probably not be repeated, so if you want your words to get to me
quicker, go the family route (but remember, my mother will read all those, so
try to be clean!). Otherwise I'll likely not be responding to anything until
after I'm released, as I won't be able to return to this terminal, but I will
be able to read the ones sent to the aol account pretty quickly.

Specifically, I am in the neurological wing of the UCI medical Center, in
Orange, California if you want to try to reach me (probably after Tuesday,
since most of Tuesday will likely be spent sedated). There's a phone by my bed
and everything.

PLEASE forward this to anyone you know might want to know about this, or post
it on message boards, blogs, bbs'es, or whatever. Without my home computer and
the address book therein, I am relying on my somewhat spotty memory, and the
email addresses I happen to know by heart. Though all the names are bcc'd, you
all should know I'm spreading this pretty broad, including even some former
classmates and professors. If this is something that really doesn't concern
you, just hit delete and move on - I'm sorry to have bothered you, but at this
point I'd rather spread the news too broad than wind up missing out on anyone,
especially considering my limited internet resources.

If you read down this far, thank you.

-Alexander Cherry

Clyde

I find myself finally listening (at work) to some Theory from the Closet podcasts I downloaded long ago, and I hereby nominate Clyde Rhoer for the title of "The Terry Gross of Roleplaying."

Clyde, if I see you at GenCon I am going to buy you a beer.

Quote: Even in the 19th Century, Chicks Didn't Dig Gamers

Mr. Gardiner did not attempt to conceal these particulars from the Longbourn family. Jane heard them with horror. "A gamester!" she cried. "This is wholly unexpected. I had not an idea of it."

--Pride and Prejudice

Morrigan Press/Talislanta Status Update From Scott Agnew

Scott Agnew posted to the Talislanta list with his story:

Hey folks,
My extreme apologies for the lack of response from Morrigan these past few weeks but the stories of our death have been greatly exagerated.

The reason for the silence stems from the fact that one of the major Morrigan shareholders has opted to pull out of the company. Because of that, we have been asked to run silently while the lawyers work things out. NO, we have not gone out of business. In fact, we are doing everything possible to avoid that. All current orders have been shipped. To the fan who waited a long time for that Midnight Realm, my apologies. I was sent out within a few days of the order but mail from Canada can sometimes take unusually logn to cross the border. Subscription holders should now have everything upt to the Players Guide to Talislanta (5th) edition. We expect to ship The Menagerie out to subscription holders within the next two weeks.

The GM's Guide is all but done but because of the legal issue we're currently working out, it'll likely be late June before those start shipping. Also, because we are losing a major piece of capital in our shareholder loss, we now expect to only be able to get 2 or 3 more Tal books out over the coming year. Writers who have submitted manuscripts will be getting an email over the next month (once the lawyers give us the OK) regarding their works. If their work is not on the list that we hope to release in the next 12 months, we will be giving them the option to either leave it with us for later release (and payment) OR to have their work returned in which case they would be free to do with it as they please (jnclduing releasing it for free). Another option if the writer so chooses, is to self-publish under Morrigan. In other words, if a writer wants to actually do the work to layout their book, we will publish it for them under our label and return the lion's share of revenues to them. Anyone interested in this option should contact me ASAP.

Anyway, I've probably said more than our legal "team" would like me to but I just wanted to try and stop the rumor mill before it got out of control. So to recap, Morrigan has suffered a major setback but it is not the end of us. We're restructuring and rebuilding and will get the presses running again sooner than later.

Thanks for your patience folks,
Scott Agnew
Morrigan Press Inc.

I dunno, man. Sounds like tough times for Morrigan. I hope they pull through but this sounds a lot like putting the best face on a bad situation.

I can't say I'm impressed with the tactic of cutting off all communication with customers and artists/authors for weeks or months at a time, no matter what "restructuring" the company is going through.

Morrigan Press Rumor Update

[ UPDATE from Morrigan Press chief Scott Agnew available. ]

Another Talislanta list poster has dug up this notice, which lists Morrigan Press under the following heading:

Notice of decision to dissolve provincial corporations
Take notice that the Director under the Business Corporations Act has made a decision to dissolve the following corporations pursuant to paragraph 139(1)(c) of the Act, as the said corporations have been in default in sending to the Director fees, notices, and/or documents required by the Act. Please note that 60 days after the date of publication of this Notice in The Royal Gazette, the Director may dissolve the corporations.

The poster suggests that this is a standard governmental threat proceeding from delinquent paperwork rather than Scott Agnew absconding in the night. That would be nice, but it does leave open the question of why so many people are owed money or merchandise from Morrigan Press, with Scott incommunicado for a number of weeks now. Could just be a rough time for a guy running a side business. Or could it be... the curse of Talislanta?

Hm... also, it's been 84 days since that notice was published, giving 60 days' warning... I'm not actually a member of the talislanta-l list; I follow it via RSS, so I can't get to the file mentioned here. Maybe it clarifies things.

UPDATE:

I got ahold of that status document. All it says is that the status was changed to "Intent To Dissolve" on Feb. 5 and remained so as recently as the document was requested. There were no filing fees for 2007 or annual returns reported for 2007 or 2006. Nothing more than that. So it does seem possible that Scott's just not in communication with the government any more than anybody else, rather than having taken any specific action to dissolve the company. Still. Man.

Another Talislanta Publisher Disappears

[UPDATE from Morrigan Press head dude Scott Agnew available]

People on the Talislanta e-mail list have been making noises lately about the absence of Scott Agnew of Morrigan Press, current publishers of Talislanta. Nobody seems to be able to contact him. Including people who sent him money and are waiting for their copy of the brand new edition.

Tal groupies are understandably antsy, having been stung before, when David Bollack of Pharos Press had the rights to the title. A lot of money was sent to Pharos Press in pre-orders of the 10th anniversary edition of Talislanta (which had to have its name changed to the 4th Edition when the 10th anniversary of Tal's publication came and went), and no such edition of Talislanta ever emerged from Pharos Press, as time dragged on and on and on...

In the end some deft maneuvering by Tal's creator, Stephan-Michael Sechi, rescued Talislanta from Pharos. If my memory serves, and it may not, so don't quote me on this, Sechi quietly allowed Pharos's license to Talislanta to lapse, and then surprised them by refusing to renew it. During this time he had been working with the Shooting Iron web design company (John Harper & Jonathan Elliott) -- who hosted the Tal website -- to put together a new edition themselves. As soon as the rights reverted to Sechi, he and Shooting Iron published the new book, and there was much rejoicing.

John & Jon didn't want to be publishers forever, though, and so the rights were handed off to Morrigan Press, which has done a great job publishing & supporting the game, and which has just put together a really nice even *newer* edition of the rulebook, with a Burning-Wheel-esque character creation system.

I know this book exists; I have held one in my hands; Joe ordered it and received his copy already.

But it looks like Agnew's "low profile" was not without some unfortunate significance:

From the mailing list:

According to the province of New Brunswick, the status of Morrigan
Press changed on Feb 5th to "Intent to Dissolve"

See morriganStatus.GIF in the new area of the Files section for a copy
of the info I bought from the government for $3 or so.
(http://www.snb.ca/e/6000/6600e.asp)

Bummer.

-Kirk

I don't know what's gonna happen next but I don't think we're going to have web designers swoop in and save the day this time.

Anathema Sit

I don't know how I got to thinking about this.

Dogs and Firefly and Bishops
============================

A while back Vincent Baker wrote a bit on indie-rpgs.com about using the Dogs In the Vineyard rules to play a game set in the Firefly universe. To the question of "what happens to the Dogs' function of judging things as sinful?" he answered that the crew of the Firefly have to ultimately make the decision to participate in a (usually criminal) enterprise or not, and whose side to take if they do participate, and that is the same decision that the Dogs make when they make judgements of sin. "I will be a part of this. I countenance this" vs "I refuse to be a part of this. I do not countenance this" or even "I will stop this, at whatever cost."

I was just thinking, while washing dishes, that that equivalence between what seems to be an objective statement about morals or ethics, and an individual decision to take an individual stand with regard to someoene else's actions, shows up in other places.

I have a friend who was ordained a Bishop a year or three ago in an Independent Catholic line of succession, as part of her own personal endeavors to build a faith and perhaps a faith community that reflected religious truth as she understood it. Her own religious community, which was basically her and a few friends who agreed with her religiously to one degree or another, was an interweaving of Buddhist and Anglican rites and beliefs. She tried to make it fully orthodox Buddhist and fully orthodox Christian, in fact, with Mary understood as Kwan Yin. Anyway, the important bit is that some old friends of hers from way back, professors, husband and wife, who had been semi-parental figures to her in days gone by, refused to attend the ordination -- which was as important to my friend, as much a turning point in her life, as a marriage or a conversion and baptism! -- on the grounds that it was syncretistic and therefore *wrong*.

She was musing about this in her blog the other day and brought up just how hurtful and a betrayal that seemed to her, and wondered if she should still consider them friends.

Why? If they were simply informing her of what they saw as the moral and ethical facts of the matter, and behaving in what they saw as a morally correct manner, wasn't that something she should praise, while regretting their difference of opinion on the facts? Why did it hurt her personally, when it was about objective statements?

Because it was also an interpersonal act. It was "I do not countenance this. I will not be a part of this."

I wonder if that sort of thing is *ever* merely a statement of beliefs about impersonal metaphysical facts.

"This is sin."

Anathema Sit and Speech Acts
============================

My mind moved back to the first centuries of Christianity, and the unfortunate business of condemning heretics and defining and enforcing dogmatic orthodoxy. The usual formula was: "If anyone says ___, let him be anathema." "Anathema sit" is the formula used in Latin, borrowing the Greek word to emphasize the connection with the Greek phrase "anathema esto" as found in Galatians 1:6-9:

"I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:
Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed [anathema esto].
As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed [anathema esto]."

And also 1 Cor 16:22: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha." (What "Maranatha" is doing there and what it means is a matter about which there has been some interesting misunderstandings over the centuries, which are only relevant here in that it was for a very long time believed that calling someone "Anathema Maranatha" was an especially terrible curse, and it was used as a formula of excommunication.)

Returning from digressions and searches of Greek New Testaments online -- the interesting thing about the Latin formula is that it's in the jussive subjunctive (Latin equivalent to the Greek 3rd person imperative "esto").

The jussive subjunctive is always used in direct "speech acts" or "performative utterances" which were written about by philosopher John L. Austin in his book "How To Do Things With Words." A "speech act" is an utterance which not only says something, but does something. Like agreeing, commanding, cursing, blessing, labeling, greeting, protesting, requesting. Speech acts do not merely state facts; when they do they state facts which come into existence only because of the speech act: "Do you take this man/woman as your lawful wedded wife/husband?" "I do." Performative utterances in English, in traditional, formal contexts, often contain the marker "hereby" -- "I hereby pronounce you man and wife."

That's why it's so interesting that the formula was "anathema *sit*/*esto*" and not "anathema *est*/*esti*". "Est" or "esti" would have been a statement of fact: "he is accursed." It would have had at least the superficial appearance of impersonality, of objective statement of facts in which the speaker has no direct involvement. "Oh, looks like it's going to rain today. Oh, and anyone who denies the Trinity is accursed."

"LET HIM BE ACCURSED!" That is an outright speech act, something the speaker is doing, something the speaker is involving himself with; an utterance which establishes the facts, not merely states the facts.

Those early Christians, following Paul's lead, had no illusions about their personal involvement in matters of judgement of sin.

NVC
===

For the past few years I've been interested in a school of thought about communication and personal interaction called "Nonviolent Communication" or "NVC." One of the basic procedures of NVC is reinterpretation of supposedly objective statements, which cause conflict and division, in terms of the personal involvement of the individuals involved.

In NVC, if you heard someone say something like "that is a sin!" you would work towards an acceptable reinterpretation of the statement in terms of the individual person's feelings and needs, hopes, wishes, and fears, and the choices they had made and wished to make with regards to other people. The idea is that these personal factors are always there, and you can choose to use language which exposes them, or language which ignores them, and the language which exposes them, so that they can be understood and respected and addressed, is more conducive to speaking peace in a world of conflict.

And it all comes together...

How do you translate Dogs to Firefly?

You just pay attention to the implicit, which remains the same, though it is implicit in *different things* in the two different settings.

That is all.

300

I haven't seen the film. I've checked out the comic. This is the problem I have with it (I mean, the basic gut problem I have with it, not the intellectual-critical problems I might have with it if I thought about it too hard.)

You know in Men In Black, where Will Smith is sitting next to a bunch of other potential Men In Black, all of them super hardcore military badasses, "THE BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST SIR!" and he can't help laughing at them all?

The Spartans, in 300, are those guys. A whole city full of them. And the author thinks they're really really cool.

That's the basic problem I have with 300.

People who have seen the movie tend to love it so much that it's gotta be pretty sweet in a turn-your-brain-off-and-enjoy-the-violence, hey-did-Mel-Gibson-make-this-film kinda way. So I might still enjoy it if I saw it. But that's the impression I got from the comic.