Rights Going Up in Smoke

Must like my last post, I am again tasked with defending the rights of those who I disagree with.  I am not a smoker.  I have never smoked a cigarette or cigar in my life.  For the most part, I find smoking irritating and disgusting.  Given the choice, I will avoid it at all costs.

The key word there is choice.  Everyone should have the choice to decide if they want to be around smoking.  Bans on smoking in true public places (schools, government buildings, etc) are valid because they are places people have no choice but to go to.  A child attending first grade shouldn’t be forced to deal with smoke every day.

On the other hand, I can not support banning smoking from “public” spaces like bars and restaurants, such as the law Michigan is looking to pass.  A restaurant is not a public space.  It is private property.  As such, it should be the owner of that property who decides if smoking is allowed, not the government.

But what about the children, you ask?  If you want to protect your children from second hand smoke, don’t take them to places where second hand smoking will be.  And if smoking is really so terrible that no one should smoke, ban it completely.  Not that I am in support of such a ban, but these halfway measures are a shame.

It is not anyone’s right to go into a bar and demand everyone stop smoking.  If a bar is too smoking for you, do not go there.  Take your business to places that do ban smoking.  If no one in your area bans smoking, refuse to go to any of them until someone will provide you a smoke-free environment.  Let your dollar speak for you.

I read that nearly 66 percent of Michigan residents support the ban.  If all those people refused to go to smoking restaurants, it would make a real impact.  Companies would shift their policies in order to maintain that market share.  And if existing places refused to change, new ones would spring up to fill that need.  The market would adjust to the demand.  But instead of working for it themselves, citizens are again imploring the government to take away someone’s rights for their own comfort.

I am Pro-Minarets

I am pro-minarets, in the same way I am pro-flying buttresses.  What is a minaret you ask?  (And for good measure, what is a flying buttress?)  A minaret is a large tower above a religious building for calling the faithful to prayer.  A flying buttresses is an exterior structural element designed to transfer horizontal vaulted ceiling load to exterior counterweights.  Both are architectural elements created for specific purposes.  As time as passed, the two elements were incorporated into the aesthetic makeup of their respective structures.

The major difference between the two?  The historical use of a flying buttresses was in Christian Gothic churches.  They allowed for walls of stained glass that became the trademark of Gothic structures.  Buttress became telltale signs of a church and got all the same architectural flourishes as the main building.  You can see a beautiful set of buttresses here, in this photo of Bath Abby, in England:

Minarets have an equally religious history.  They are used in Islamic mosques as a point from which to make the call to prayer five times a day.  Just as practical as the flying buttresses, they too soon took on an aesthetic style.  The towers are generally onion-shaped or conical.  They tend to rise up quite a bit around the surrounding structural, thus becoming beacons to surrounding Muslims. Here are two beautiful minarets on a mosque in Aswan, Egypt:

So why this architectural history lesson?  Switzerland has banned minarets.  This initiative was passed specifically to fight against a growing minority of Muslims in the country.  The goal was to make the country hostile, even in a relatively passive way, in order to discourage more immigration.

It is well known to those who read here regularly that I am not a fan of organized religion.  So you may be wondering why I am not supporting an initiative that is so obviously hostile to religion.  The story of buttresses above should give you a clue.

No such ban exists for flying buttresses.  Nor is there one for bell towers, or crosses, or any other Christian symbols.  This law is a blatant example of hate and discrimination influencing politics.  The minaret ban in Switzerland is a classic example of the tyranny of the majority attacking the rights and privileges of the minority.  A society can not truly be free and just when the rights of anyone can be taken away with a vote.  We must protect the rights of all people, even those who we do not agree with.  Because if we do not stand up when they take away someone else’s rights, who will stand up for us when they come for ours?

This was a Triumph: Portal and Gender

Portal is a puzzle/platformer developed and published by Valve in 2007.  So in video game news cycle, this is ancient.  But I felt this was important enough to talk about, if only because there are so few recent examples I could use (Metroid being one such other excellent example)

There are two characters in Portal.  The player-controlled protagonist is Chell, a human test-subject stuck in the Aperture Science facilities.  GLaDOS is the antagonist, a computer AI that directs and monitors the player.  Both are present as female (a computer program obviously has no gender).  Thus there are no male characters in the entire game.

To an outsider, this might not seem special.  There are books and movies with few or no male characters.  But in video games, female characters are never the only characters.  In fact, they are few female characters at all, especially not as the player character.  When women are included, they are often highly sexualized, often to the point of just being a caricature of reality.   Portal’s Chell is not one of those caricatures:

Instead, Chell is a normal looking woman, with regular proportions.  Her outfit is practical and basic.  It even skips the nearly universal cleavage revealing low cut top.  It is perfectly appropriate for the situation, without any sexualization you see in other characters.

As for her personality, Chell is a silent-protagonist.  She is in a way an empty shell, something you as the player can project yourself into. This puts her in the company of Valve’s far more famous hero, Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman.

Female gamers are rarely given such an opportunity to such a character.  Too often, female protagonists are saddled with elaborate backstories, almost always including some sort of relationship problem.  Developers too often fall into the trap of never making a female character without some sort of male backup.  Chell is free of all that.  She is who you want her to be.

GLaDOS is presented as female through her voice, though this may only be just a reflection of the voice actress, Ellen McLain.  Nothing in game says one way or the other.  In interviews and press releases though Valve always referred to her as a she.  The AI is present throughout the entire game with her witty narration and instruction, watching through ever present video cameras.  She is given a complex personality, with motives as deep as any other villain.  When she finally makes a physical appearance, she too is not sexualized.  She is not even not an anthropomorphic character.  Instead, she is instead a very non-human, technological creation, as she should be:

The key to all this is that female characters do not have to be beautiful beings of infinite sexual appeal.  You can make a fine character who represents the normal female population and still succeed.   Hopefully, these kinds of things will become more the norm and won’t need special posts to highlight their presence.

Vignettes: A Role-Playing Tool

Last role-playing post, I discussed the idea of bottleneck adventure design.  One of the tools I use built these adventures are vignettes.  These are small, relatively self-contained, set pieces.  The idea is to create interest experiences that are not necessarily tied to a specific story progression.  These are items floating within the balloon, ready to shape the path as needed.

One bottleneck moment in the last adventure was an escape into the sewer system.  After an initial encounter to get the party familiar with the sewer layout and dangers, the quest began to balloon.  An encounter with a large, intelligent rat gave the party options on how to proceed (ignore, kill, interact, follow, etc).  Their choice to follow the rat lead to a peaceful encounter with “the rat king,” a fight with skeletons, and a showdown with a necromancer. They avoided fighting the rat king, negated a battle with animated plant-matter and completely avoided a squad of searching guards.

All of these vignettes were setup such that I could arrange them in any order.  This let me gauge player interest and react to their actions.  Killing the rat in the first encounter would have sparked an angry response from the rat king.  It also might have led to an offer of alliance from the necromancer, who would have then seen the party as an enemy of his enemy.  The adventure might have become a more frantic escape, with the two sides doing battle around the party.  It would have had a definitely different feel.

Similarly, the squad of guards vignette was not used because it didn’t fit the tone.  Once the party met the rat king, their interactions led to him being with them throughout this balloon section.   The guards would have been better served against a party using a stealth approach.  Or as a third party to battle against groups of rats and skeletons. Because it was unused, the prep simply goes back into my pile of options, to be pulled out again later.

So now that you have an idea of what a vignette is, let us get down to how to construct one.  There are several components that you need: participants, setting, and goals.  The first is simple, who is in the scene?  Work out everyone that is present or might arrive during the vignette.  In the first encounter with our rat king from above, it was the king himself and a dozen or so extra large rats. I had basic combat stats for everyone there and had worked out potential treasure the participants were carrying.

Setting does not have to be an elaborately drawn map.   The style and feel of the space is far more important.  Note any important features and make sure you give them to your players.  You do not want to spring an attack out of door the party is unaware even excited.  For our example, the space was a large room caused by the collapsing of several tunnels.  The important note was open tunnels above the party, which allowed skeletons to attack in a later encounter.  Highlight the important and interesting, then leave the rest to the imagination.

Goals are the final piece.  Every participant in a vignette needs to have goals.  They need to be more than just “kill the PCs”.  Why are they trying to kill the players?  Robbery, food, revenge, etc. are good motivations for violence.  But violence doesn’t need to be the only goal.  It could be the a participant is merely caught in the cross fire, wanting only to escape.  In the case of our rat king, his goal was to get help fighting the necromancer.  He had no desire to fight the party, and only would if he was forced to.

After everything is in place, the key is to simply open the vignette to the players and see what happens.  Rarely will they do exactly what you expect.  But whatever they decide to do, you just play out the participants in whatever fashion best works toward fulfilling their goals.  The key is to keep vignettes light and flexible, making the best use of your prep time.  The final details will work themselves out in play.

De-listing from Google

AKA: How to Stop Being Relevant to the Internet

There is as story going around that News Corp might delist all of its websites from Google in particular, and all search engines in general.  This would prevent them from showing up when searching.  A user would need to type in the actual address of the website to visit it. Rupert Murdoch (founder, a major shareholder, chairman and managing director of News Corp) feels that this is the best way to maximize his financial gains on the internet, stating that “If they’re just search people… They don’t suddenly become loyal readers.”

There are practical considerations about that.  It is very easy to not know the correct website off the top of your head.  For example, Whitehouse.com was a porn site for a long time, gaining huge traffic by people not knowing the proper extension (Whitehouse.gov is the actual government website).  Without those websites showing up in an internet search, the average consumer will simply assume the website doesn’t exist.

Which is a really interesting thought.  If you can’t find something on Google, does it really exist?  In a practical sense, it does not.  Search engines are a vital pathway for many people to their internet destinations.  A quick Google search is much faster than attempting to guess your way to the correct URL.  It is actually dangerous to try and guess a website’s address, because porn and spam sites like to linger at addresses just off a bit from popular ones.  And because the internet is international, a domain name that is perfect for a company is often already taken up by another business.  Looking for our favorite digital distribution site at www.steam.com will disappoint you.  You need to head over to store.steampowered.com instead.

News Corp is well within its rights to ask to be de-listed from Google.  And Google has publicly said that they were abide by such a decision.  But there is no way that de-listing would increase the profits of News Corp.  It would simply create an additional barrier between most people and the News Corp content.  And without people being able to access that content, there is no way to make money.  So if money is what you are most concerned about Mr. Murdoch, I would suggest continue working with search engines.

Not Giving to the Red Kettle

Last week, I talked about a wonderful charity to give to this holiday.  Now I want to talk about a charity I will not support.  They are around all year round, but most prevalent in this holiday season with their red kettles.  Yes, I speak of the Salvation Army.

Before we dive into my reason against supporting them, let this be know first.  The Salvation Army is, as far as I know, a well run charity.  The money is well spent in making real differences in peoples lives.  So why not give money?

I will not support the Salvation Army because they stand in opposition to things I believe are fundamental rights.  For example, in their position statements, they state clearly an opposition to equal marriage rights for all, to a woman’s right to abortion, and the practice of homosexuality.  And because these viewpoints are not held for rational reasons, they are not likely to change negotiation or debate.  Attempting to change the Salvation Army, especially as an outsider, is slim to none.

Giving any money, even just the change from my pocket, is an endorsement for the Salvation Army’s negative worldview.  It empowers them to continue spreading their message along with the gifts and services they provide.  We need to change more minds, not encourage those who’s minds are set in stone.

The defense is that the Salvation Army does good work, so they should get a pass for their politics.  That’s like defending Mussolini because made the trains run on time. It simply falls apart on closer inspection.  It is far more productive to put your money toward charities that do good and support your worldview.  Or give to charities who have no outside agenda at all.

Don’t have the time to find such a charity?  Well, I did the work for you.  So please go donate.

The Bottleneck Adventure

I recently started a new monthly Dungeon and Dragon campaign.  In in, I have been attempting a variety of new methods in order to improve my game (included the before mentioned questionnaires). I feel that it is time to attempt to really grow as a game master.

One primary goal has been to be more free-form with my adventures.  In the past, I have stayed relatively straightforward in my structure.  While there have been areas with options, there have always been relatively strong rails pushing the game forward.  Rarely did the players really get a huge amount of freedom.

As an inexperienced GM, I was very much dependent on my prep.  Whatever encounters I wanted to run, I had mapped out well in advance.  This meant that I could do a great job of running those events, but anything else outside of that suffered.

For this campaign, I have attempted to build adventures that follow a bottleneck approach, rather than straight rails.  The adventure starts out at a bottleneck: an encounter that the party must pass through to continue.  Ideally, this is an encounter with multiple possible exit paths.  Depending on the exit strategy, the party can proceed through the next part in a variety of methods. Each of the next few encounters offers more options, broadening the scope.  This expansion of options is what I call the balloon.  And much like a balloon, after a point all avenues of advancement begin to narrow, pulling the adventure back toward another bottleneck event (the knot of the balloon so to speak).

For example, the last adventure started with guards raiding the party’s safehouse.  They had no choice but to react to this, but they had several options: surrender, fighting, and escape.  Being stubborn players, they managed to choose all three options, leading to fun developments.  There was a pitched battle, a negotiated surrender, a desperate scamper down the side of a building, and an epic rescue attempt in the streets.  All of these events eventually lead to the second bottle neck: escaping down into the sewers.  This narrowed the path for a bit, before again opening up again with options.

This method gives the players real options to shape the adventure.  It is quite possible for paths to be taken that are completely unexpected.  In fact, the party may go off in such a way that negates your next bottleneck.  Feel free to abandon it.  Either build a new one on the spot or shift to working toward a bottleneck further down the line.  In my example above, refusal to enter the sewers would have led me to build a new bottleneck event around whatever alternative escape plan the party came up with.  The key is to keep things flexible.

Why continually work toward bottleneck moments?  These should be your crescendo events, moments that shift the playing field and change the options available.  Moving from the streets to the sewers creates whole new gameplay elements and options.  You want those kinds of shifts to be noticeable and felt by the players, so that they adjust their thinking accordingly.  These are also great vehicles for major plot moments.  The final bottleneck moment of my last adventure revealed a new reoccurring villain, one with ties to one character’s past.

Note that using bottleneck adventure requires very module planning.  The key is building good prep that is flexible.  Often, you are required to quickly adjust existing prep (such as filing off serial numbers).   In my next role-playing post, I will be discussing the idea of “vignettes.” These self-contained set-pieces are my new favorite adventure building tool, and key component of bottleneck adventures.

Steam: A Shining Light in the PC Gaming Darkness

Steam is the digital distrubution service run by video game developer Valve.  As noted in the past, Valve is one of my favorite developers.  As more and more gamers shift exclusively to consoles, Steam stands strong as the go-to options of buying and playing games on the PC.   While the numbers are not published, it has been suggested that Steam holds 70% of the digital PC market.  It has succeed where others struggle and fail.  Why?  Because it is simply better.

The first great strength of Steam is how it protects developers and publishers.  The number one current bane for video game companies is piracy.  Steam has very effective digital rights management (DRM).  While not foolproof, games on Steam are generally harder to pirate than from other sources.  More important, Steam is very successful at selling this DRM to their customers.  They do this by being upfront on how their system works, and by making a system that generally does not interfere with the rest of a computer’s operations.

In exchange for this DRM system, Steam also offers features above and beyond that of a simple disc release.  For example, once a game is purchased from Steam, it can be downloaded and installed on as many computers as you want.  And with the exception of online games, they can even be played on multiple computers at the same time.  Updates are automatically download and installed without hassle.  No worrying about scratched disks or lost CD-keys anymore.

And then there are the sales.  Steam runs regular sales, marking games down sometimes ridiculous amounts.  This past Thanksgiving weekend included games that were 50-75% off.  Gamers love a deal, and these were fantastic deals.  Almost every single weekend has something on sale.  It is a great way to get something you want, but not for full retail price.

There are debates about whether or not Steam is becoming a monopoly.  This is not true, in that there are plenty of other services like Impluse and Direct2Drive.  And I regularly look at these services before purchases a new title.  But without fail, Steam has had better service, better prices and better support.  And as such, I continue to let them be my service of choice.

Child’s Play

Gamers get a bad rap.  Its is rare to go more than a few weeks without someone attempting to demonize the industry and its participants.  That is why I am happy to talk about something that is entirely positive about geek culture.

Child’s Play is a charity founded in 2003 by the team at Penny Arcade.  For those who are not familiar, Penny Arcade is a webcomic created by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik.  The comic is about topical video game news, often focusing on the two author avatars, Tycho and Gabe.

Child’s Play organizes toy drives at children’s hospitals worldwide. With the help of hospital staff, Child’s Play volunteers create Amazon.com wishlists.  Items are a collection of video games, movies, and toys.  These wishlists are then linked to from a map on the Child’s Play website.  This allows one to select the hospital of choice, and then select individual gifts to buy.  Everything ships directly from Amazon to hospitals.  Amazon itself also pays Child’s Play a small commission on each purchase, which 100% of which goes to the hospitals.  Users can also donate money directly through Paypal or a check.  Like the Amazon commission, 100% of this money goes directly to the hospitals. Similarly, Child’s Play runs auctions, dinners, and other fundraisers with all profit going to hospitals.

Notice a theme here?   This is not a charity with a giant bureaucracy that eats up your money.  All your donated money is going toward actually helping people.  You even can take control and pick exactly what items you want to buy.  This is the best charity that I have ever seen.

And I am not alone in that thought.  Over 100,000 individuals have donated. Over $5 million worth of toys, games and movies have been donated to 70 hospitals worldwide.  This year alone, over $700,000 and counting has been donated.

As such, I recommend everyone who is able to go and donate.  You can select a hospital or merely donate money.  All of this can be done straight from the Child’s Play website. Please help as best you can.  Thank you.

No Sympathy for Reviewers

I have written about review scores in the past.  I think that they are useful, but also can be harmful.  It all depends on both the context of their use by the reviewer and the approach the reader takes to using the score.

With that in mind, I recently read an article on Bitmob.com from Michael Black about review scores.  In particular, he wrote about how fans over react to video game scores, to the point of being hysterical:

GameSpy Reviews Editor Anthony Gallegos recently wrote a review for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and awarded it a 4.5 out of 5. Naturally, a few particularly rage-intoxicated gamers called for him to be raped and killed, in part because score aggregator Metacritic, which converts scores to its own percentage scale to calculate an aggregate score, considered that 4.5 as a 90%. And far too many gamers see anything below a 95% as utter shit.

The key issue here is not the score itself, but the emphasis so many people put on the score. Screw the words and to hell with the context of the article and the written opinion of the author: All that matters is the score.

The article goes on to take a similar tone as I have used in the past: there needs to be more focus on the review itself and less on the score.  There was also an undertone of sympathy toward game reviewers, that they are unjustly attacked for the score they put on games.  While I often feel bad for those who come under fire from the internet, in this case its not warranted.  In fact, it is totally justified to complain about a score.  Just as you are free to argue against any other part of the review.

If reviewers really didn’t want their readers to fixate on review scores, they can solve this in an instant.  Get rid of the score.  Without that score, the gamer would have nothing to argue about.  Nor would they be able to directly compare one site’s review to an another.  Suddenly, that whole controversy would disappear.

But this doesn’t happen.  The reason?  The controversy over review scores increase a website’s traffic, even if the visitors are only coming to complain.  That increased traffic is as good as gold.  Thus review scores will continue into the future.

So feel no sympathy for the video game websites, the reviewers and their scores.  They will be laughing about internet rage straight to the bank.