links: war, D&D, drugs, creationists, homophobia

[mindstalk]

* Sahara Mart has sun-dried strawberries in the bulk section. They're pretty good.
** ETA: though given their gumminess and color, I suspect sugar and sulfur dioxide additives. Pure dried (e.g. freeze-dried) strawberries should be darker red. No brand, but some stuff online has strawberry flavor added as well.
* Domo seems to have turned into Ami, long AWOL from Fourth Street. Rumor is that Domo lives, somewhere... don't know where. Gain a Japanese restaurant, lose a Japanese restaurant?
* Is Leela the most useful Doctor Who companion ever? Discuss.
* Anti-noise earmuffs: useful again.
* Did Darwin Get it Right?, John Maynard Smith. Nice collection of essays, somewhat dated. A bit amusing to read old thoughts on sex, before parasite theory or the handicap principle. He has a nice paean to Dawkins's reason and clarity that I should type in.

Link dump.
* War Before Civilization
* Someone's thoughts on D&D 4e
* Planescape Society of Sensation. I thought it was cute.
* Steampunk theme for Firefox
* transgender bank commercial in Argentina
* Dealing with bugs from Mars
* DEA: better to live in agony than risk taking too many opiates.

* The prime minister of Japan has problems with kanji. So do many Japanese, apparently. I say this not to make fun of them but to say "maybe your system is too frigging complicated".
* History and growing abuse of the filibuster
* Won't let me expand my business? Have a sex shop
* Krugman on rent control and how the more economists actually agree on something, the less the world listens to them.
* 2007 letter on land tax
* Med schools and Pharm money

* The Mormons, not having violated the apolitical conditions of their tax-exempt status enough in California, are opposing civil unions in Illinois
* More homophobia in North Carolina
* Creationist War on the Brain

Comments

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I thought the point of that essay was that you don't need more than 5th or 6th level to emulate most fantasy protagonists. The system goes to 20th-epic, but most authors don't. So yeah, Gandalf and Aragorn are 5th level.

I have to admit that the only time I've *played* D&D is anima_mechanique's 4e-Spelljammer one-shot, so my opinions are largely theoretical. I know Basic/Expert and 3.0 from reading reasonably well, though. I've also seen a lot of opinions from a friend of Gygax's on RPG.net, who still plays Original, and various "old school" essays.

I guess, seems to me that in the early days, characters weren't particularly well defined, even in combat. Fighters had hit points and armor, thieves had skills, magic-users had spells, anything else was your imagination. Combat would be boring rolls, or freeform tactics ("gee, we havve 5hp, let's ambush" "sounds good! you get initiative and an attack bonus") but could easily go into puzzles or social stuff. The system didn't support it, but the system didn't suggest you shouldn't.

Third has a lot more definition -- real skills, feats, prestige classes, so you can actually define characters good at investigation or talky stuff (though you might run out of skill points if you try to build Roy Greenhilt). And it broke down a lot fo the arbitrary restrictions, made things make more sense. Combat was detailed and tactical, yeah, no one likes grappling or Attack of Opportunity rules, but your bard wasn't necessarily defined by her combat ability. It felt like a half-decent open game, like D&D crossed with GURPS, especially with alternate rules in the SRD. But yeah, never played it, though I read part of a high-level Actual Play that had combat but not hugely so.

Though I did note that lots of the spells are combat or weird, and a lot of them have been nerfed from earlier editions.

4e... classes are defined primarily by their combat type and power source. The customization choices are about your combat powers, or utility powers that look mostly useful... in combat. The skill system is simplified -- friends like it, but I look askance. Challenges I only know of second hand, e.g. Alexanders critique. The ritual system is probably nice (I assume it's like the 3.0 SRD one). And there's the whole squares thing, and wonky powers and Alexander's critique of mapping the powers to in-world terms.

So I guess it's
* old: not much definition
* 3rd: lots of definition
* 4e: lots of combat definition

To which I say... meh. For comparison, the games I've actually played longest have been Mage, Ars Magica, and Exalted.