mindstalk | Entries tagged with rpgs

In shape, Westeros is basically Britain + upside down Ireland. https://i.imgur.com/1PBDC69.jpg

Somene had an amusing tale of playing a Jesus-inspired cleric in a D&D game. Sadly it cuts off at a cliffhanger.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/4ce2ux/jesus_plays_pathfinder_nongreentext_edition/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/4edhad/jesus_plays_pathfinder_part_15/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/4glsy6/jesus_plays_pathfinder_part_2/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/5k7dz2/jesus_plays_pathfinder_part_3/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/6652do/jesus_plays_pathfinder_part_4/

The Spanish word 'hueco' means "hollow". I first learned of the word from the anime Bleach, where Hueco Mundo is the Hollow World (world of Hollows, not a hollow world). Makes it easy to remember! Ironically I stopped watching Bleach before the end of the Soul Society Arc, so everything I know about Hollows is secondhand.

I take one overarching lesson from the History of Middle-earth: authors, if you scribble lots of notes about your work, *date them*.

Interesting essay on the wife of Feanor and fandom's fascination with her scant clues. http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/reference/references/pf/nerdanel.php

Things I learn from yuri manga:
* Japanese eat noodles with chopsticks but pasta with forks. A character asked why.
* A bright green mineral from an asteroid exists. It is not called kryptonite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldavite
* What those little kid backpacks are called. Also they cost a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randoseru

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/562810.html

An ancient Greek trireme (crew 200 plus some marines, so closest to an Expert Set Large Galley though meant for war) cost 6000-12,000 drachmae to build, and 6000 drachmae a month to pay crew. A drachma was 4.3 grams of silver and a good day's wage, so sort of like a silver piece except 1/10th the weight and maybe more valuable.

(Old D&D coins were 1/10th of a pound, or 45 grams. 3e went to 1/50th, or 9 grams. US quarters and nickels are about 5 grams.)

3e galleys cost 30,000 GP, plus 8,000 for a ram and castles. I'm not sure if ancient galleys had castles but they sure had rams. Ignoring the 8,000, and using 10,000 drachmae for a trireme for a round number, the D&D 3e galley takes 3x as many coins, which weigh twice as much, and are gold instead of silver. So 3e gold is 1/6 the value of Attic silver.

Older editions were even worse, but I don't know how many GP their galleys cost. Labyrinth Lord, which is a Basic/Expert clone, says 32,000 GP for a large galley with 180 rowers, and uses the 1/10 lb coins, so LL gold is 1/30th the value of Attic silver.

Granted the Expert set said of itself "like the Renaissance without printing press or gunpowder" and the Renaissance had seen a fair bit of inflation (I'm guessing new European mines in the 1300s, from price lists I've seen) and was about to see a lot more (American mines), but still...

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/512354.html

Fantasy flow charts, one female-biased: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/879zov/intro_to_femaleauthored_fantasy_flowchart/

Statistical tests for cause and effect. https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/cause-and-effect-the-revolutionary-new-statistical-test-that-can-tease-them-apart-ed84a988e
I'm told _Causality_ by Judea Pearl is also relevant.

Ancient walled cities, to crude scale. https://alexander.co.tz/experiments/walledcityscale/
And Kowloon. http://mapfrappe.com/?show=52710

From last year: how zoning laws cripple the US economy. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/opinion/housing-regulations-us-economy.html

Urbanists react to the Wakanda of Black Panther: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/the-real-life-possibilities-of-black-panthers-wakanda-according-to-urbanists-and-city-planners

RPGs: fantasy localism or microclimates: https://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2017/11/localism-adventure-as-microclimate.html

Aladdin's mother was Chinese in old pantomimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widow_Twankey

Guns and "self-defense": police are trained to run from attackers with knives within 21-30 feet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill
https://www.policeone.com/edged-weapons/articles/102828-Edged-Weapon-Defense-Is-or-was-the-21-foot-rule-valid-Part-1/

2015 article on early fountains. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/science/electricity-free-fountains.html

Rise and fall of the American SRO https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-sro/553946/

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/496590.html

Ari told me a trick he uses as a GM for naming NPCs: pick a language to be thematic, type words into Google Translate, use. So one NPC is Hungarian or something for "Betrayer", and is intended to backstab the PCs at some point, and the players have no clue.

Neat trick, but one not relevant to most of my PCs these days, where I expy some anime heroine and don't try to hide my work. (Latest: Kyouko the Dungeon Slayer, an adaptation of Sakura Kyouko.)

But someone was recruiting for an all-evil PbP game, which isn't my usual thing, but I got tempted to try to think of something anyway, It's D&D3.5, so I figured I'd start with a druid, for maximum mechanical cheese. Evil druid? Sure, he wields the power of nature for evil. Or he wields the power of nature, and is a selfish jerk. If you want philosophy, you can talk about predator/prey, nature red in tooth and claw, social darwinism.

Race? (Meaning species). I like elves as an idea, but have been avoiding them, because a 1st level 100 year old character just hurts my head. But for the character I was forming? The guy who can feel superior because he lives 10x longer than you is a perfect fit.

And even better, there's the gray elf subrace, with +2 Int. Literally smarter than you. (D&D swaps gray and high elves from Tolkien: "high elves" are like the Sindar default, gray elves the longer-lived and smarter and more arrogant 'Noldor'.)

Great, a racist gray elf druid! What to name him? I tried thinking of 'elvish' names on my own, but wasn't getting far. (I hate coming up with names.) Time to try the language trick! What are elvish languages? Tolkien was inspired by Welsh and Finnish, Order of the Stick uses pseudo-Latinate names. I started with Welsh. What's a word? Well, 'racist'. So I type that in... and get 'hiliol'.

Hiliol the elf. I dunno about you, but I figured I was done on the first try. Feels vaguely elvish, doesn't have an obvious gender. (I was figuring I'd go for androgyny, a la Vaarsuvius in Order, though he's since become male -- trying to improve the human stock by fathering lots of half-elves. But anyway.)

That was a stroke of luck, really; I've since tried some other words, and they translate to words that are so flagrantly Welsh as to be intrusive. Like 'twyllwr' for "deceiver" or 'celwyddog' for "liar". (Hiliol's Big Crime was fraud, trying to convince foolish humans that he could give them elven lifespan.)

Finnish could have worked, its 'racist' is "rasistinen", though I just realized it sounds like an import of 'racist', so maybe not.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/472059.html

If I ever GM an RPG of my own, I think I'll ask the players to give some indication of their parentage or how they were raised. Doesn't have to be detailed, maybe not even named, but something about where they're from and who raised them. Everyone has parents, or some substitute, after all, rather than springing out of the mists. And no amnesia card allowed.

(This is partially stimulated by Nanoha A's, my biggest gripe regarding which is the total lack of explanation of how Hayate is living alone as a 9 year old. If parents died recently they're never mentioned, if they died when she was a baby... who raised her and taught her stuff?)

But then I wonder, would I be being hypocritical? Have I done this for my own PCs? Answer seems to be "I didn't, but now I do." And I'll chronologically list my PC backgrounds. If you find that boring, which is understandable, you've been warned.

( Read more... )

So if you bother reading all that... the answer is yes, I do do it more, though the increase hasn't been monotonic. Kind of depends on my inspiration and the nature of the game: some inspire or require more effort than others. In particular I've gotten pretty pessimistic about the lifespan of a random play-by-post (PbP) game, and am not inclined to put too much effort into them. The Yona characters were earlier... though I also like adapting Yona to various settings. Might help that the original character is "medieval", unlike Hayate or Diane.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/470598.html

I'm tired and lazy. Here's some things I found interesting.

Nacreous clouds seen in UK.

Couple pieces on "Bernie bros" and sexist attacks on Hillary.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/the-bernie-bros?utm_term=.ir8KRbEOo#.vl4DeMR27
http://www.vox.com/2016/2/4/10918710/berniebro-bernie-bro
And is Bernie ready for Republican attacks? For being asked unfair questions like why he wants to destroy the economy and turn us into Venezuela, or why he thought socialism was cool during the Cold War? http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10903404/gop-campaign-against-sanders
Speaking of Venezuela, the rationing is so bad even lines are being rationed. And the economy czar doesn't believe in inflation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/29/venezuela-is-on-the-brink-of-a-complete-collapse/?tid=pm_business_pop_b
But to be positive: Bernie's Fed agenda http://www.vox.com/2016/1/26/10829888/bernie-sanders-federal-reserve

Harry Reid saved the renewable energy revolution.

How Houston improved bus ridership "for free": sparser network of higher frequency buses, in a grid rather than radial pattern. http://www.vox.com/2016/1/28/10852884/houston-bus-ridership

How Likud won the 2015 election in Israel. http://www.vox.com/2016/1/28/10861560/israel-election-amit-channel-2

From last April, one article on how taxi medallions prices have dropped due to Lyft and Uber. http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2015/04/07/as-uber-lyft-hire-more-drivers-taxicab-medallion-values-tank.html

A trippy 9 minute history of Japan. The Reddit comments linked to by Vox are good glosses. http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10905274/japan-history-video

Purported evolution of fairy tales. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35358487

Memoization in Python https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1988804/what-is-memoization-and-how-can-i-use-it-in-python

Thread on previews of a new edition of the Blue Rose RPG http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?775100-Blue-Rose-previews

Obama's reform of federal solitary confinement http://www.vox.com/2016/1/26/10834770/obama-solitary-confinement-changes

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/443268.html

A riddle! Not mine:

We are little airy creatures,
All of different voice and features;
One of us in glass is set,
One of us you'll find in jet,
T'other you may see in tin,
And the fourth a box within;
If the fifth you should pursue,
It can never fly from you.

----

I've sometimes seen "lady/princess in the streets, hooker/slut/??? in the sheets". Today I saw "Senpai in the streets, Hentai in the sheets."

---

links:

Swiss fines wealth based fines
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8446545.stm
Finland fines day fines
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/
Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland also have
some sliding-scale fines

bike lanes don't hurt businesses bike lanes and businesses
http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/03/the-complete-business-case-for-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes/387595/?utm_source=SFFB

Thomas Piketty on Greece, eurozone monster
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/thomas-piketty-interview-about-the-european-financial-crisis-a-1022629.html

getting RPGs on the same page tool
https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/422414.html

Last night Meetup.com informed me that something called Jiffycon existed in the area. On looking it up, I found that it was a small RPG convention that happens 2-3 times a year, and in fact was happening today in Davis Square, for $10. "How remarkably convenient." Sign-up started at 8:30, but thanks to the cruise I'm actually somewhat synchronized with the normal world, so that wasn't unthinkably painful. Small turns out to mean *very* small, like 20-30 people, 5-6 gaming tables. The games, at least this time around, are indie "story games", like Lady Blackbird, Burning Wheel, InSpectres, and others I hadn't heard much of. I played in both the morning and afternoon.

Lady Blackbird

I think I've downloaded this -- it's free! -- but hadn't read it. It seems to be a set scenario, with high intended replay value in that a few details are pinned down, and the rest to be made up by the players, so the setting can vary a lot each time, not to mention the differences of play. Still, you could probably do the same to any scenario, like Keep on the Borderlands, though LB has lighter yet more comprehensive rules. The general setting is as if Spelljammer and Firefly had a baby: "solar system" with Imperial and Free worlds, and a smugger ship that looks remarkably like Serenity, but "space" is full of air, the scale is appropriate for aircraft, and the 'worlds' are probably more like medium size asteroids ranging down to Little Prince worldlets. Game comes with 5 PCs, a start point, and starting goals; complexity is high enough that it's probably a fine multi-session mini-campaign, and our game in fact ended at a nice mid-point, nowhere near to achieving an official end. Recommended.

Note that while it's basically a module game, I think it's complete enough to make a light normal game of its own, with totally novel characters or scenarios. It's got more advancement possibilities than Spirit of the Century -- actually, it basically has the Secret and Key mechanics of Shadow Over Yesterday, right down to the xp numbers.

Forsooth!

This game is like a generator for lost Shakespearean plays, and *is* meant to finish in a few hours. You make up -- possibly randomly -- a setting and themes, and 2-3 characters per player. Each PC has a Soliloqy and Aside per game, combat is "you choose to die, take your attacker with you (competing for applause in your death scenes), or exit wounded". One PC for each player is a Protagonist, who wins non-lethal conflicts with non-Protagonists, and in the default mode the game ends when all Protagonists are married or dead. PCs have Motivations they seek to fulfill, or else are foiled, and Oaths, which may be Forsworn. PCs get Applause from players for being cool, and there are two 'winners', the Forsworn PC and non-Forsworn PC with highest Applause.

We rolled up a castle on the moors in Troy, with themes of Deceit and Power, and ended up with Trojan War 2: Electric Boogaloo. PCs included the Queen of Troy, actually a long-abducted Greek named Helene, whose husband had recently died and who was sworn to defend Troy; her daughter (my Protagonist) a scheming puritan who sought the crown and swore to never marry, her dullard puritan son, a lusty swordsman, scheming vizier, honorable knight, buffoon general, fool, and only two Greeks (a king, also the queen's *first* husband, played by the girl playing the son) and his brutish villain general Ajax (me again). The Greeks didn't get many scenes.

The queen and king ended up united in death; my Princess achieved her goal, and with a divine command and dramatic reveal, married what turned out to be her half-brother. Forsworn, then, but you'll note that she had to end up Forsworn, dead, or not a Protagonist -- which is possible, I could have had Ajax soliloquize himself into more importance. Even after death: a player can bring on one ghost. Since we never used the non-lethal conflict mechanic, I could have done that without losing anything other than dramatic integrity; a Protagonist ghost with the Motivation of looting Troy would have been odd.

Much fun was had, and I even bought a copy, $10 at the con vs. $14 online.

Other

I had lunch at Red Bones. I thought others would be there, but apparently there were vegans so they diverted to Snappy Sushi, and LB ran late thus I was uninformed. The BBQ beef sandwich was good.

Trader Joe's seems to be indefinitely out of stock of European style yogurt. NOOOOO. I bought their other kind, with pectin and all, and it seems so weird. Maybe I'll need to start making my own again.

Heard John Scalzi do readings at Harvard Co-op last night. I should actually read something by him. Probably starting with Redshirts.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/328642.html

Years ago I read Paul Ekman's Emotions Revealed on emotions and facial expressions. He identifies seven major emotions:

major emotions: my adaptive annotations

fear: don't eat me
anger: don't eat my child/food
sadness: someone ate my child
surprise: what's that?
disgust: that wasn't food!
contempt: you're beneath me
happiness: i ate/i had sex/my child done me proud/etc

Later he breaks happiness down:
16 possible positive emotions: 5 for pleasure from each of the 5 senses.
Amusement, excitement, contentment, ecstasy, wonderment, relief, fiero,
naches, elevation, gratitude, schadenfreude. He's not sure the last three are
emotions as opposed to other emotional states.

elevation -- feeling uplift from seeing surprising moral acts.
fiero -- From Italian. Pleasure-pride in a difficult accomplishment.
naches -- From Yiddish. Pleasure-pride in the accomplishment of your child or student.

There's an odd pleasure I experience a lot, which I don't know a name for. I guess it's closest to fiero, though sometimes secondhand or like elevation (pleasure from someone else's difficult accomplishment.) It's like solving puzzles, but these aren't deliberate puzzles, more like using a set of tools someone else provided in a surprising way, or making sense out of nonsense. I guess it's related to hacking, like building an operating system out of elisp, or a one-line program that generates cool graphical patterns. I should just give examples:

Firefly: eventually we realize that the show isn't just being coy about FTL or not, that there is no FTL, and that there's dozens of habitable and terraformed worlds in one system. At first this seems like bullshit, even with the humility proper to current planetary science. Then they say "multiple" stars and you're still skeptical. But then you learn that Castor is a real sextuple system in like the orbit of Pluto (two binary stars, themselves in a binary setup, and with another binary star revolving around the other four), and that there's another known sextuple (two triple stars), and you go huh. And gas giants can hold lots of large moons in a small space. And then you read some semi-canon explanation with artificial gravity and sent-ahead terraforming probes, and moons and dwarf planets being compressed for a more Earthlike surface gravity, and you remember Paul Birch's ideas for mass stream momentum transfer to change orbits and rotations with tech we could do today, and you go "huh. Unlikely, but more possible than FTL."

Or (lots of RPG examples now), you known Dungeons and Dragons, and the magical spells and items and item creation rules provided, all meant to model vaguely medieval fantasy, but someone figures out how to make a post-scarcity society with wall of iron spells and decanters of endless water and you feel proud of them for building something surprising. (But if they notice that a ladder costs less than two ten foot poles, that's just exploiting an obvious bug and stupid.)

Or there's D&D's Great Wheel cosmology, based on a two axis moral alignment system that has never made sense, with planes of existence that have their intrinsic cool elements, and someone preserves most of those elements while using order/violence axes that make a lot more sense, and in fact making many of the elements even more sensible and attractive as variant afterlives, and you vow to use it should you ever run Great Wheel D&D.

Or there's Exalted, with a semi-standard fantasy trope of gods powered by prayer and worship built in, but later someone publishes a goddess who's found a niche as a voice mail service, taking messages in the form of prayer and passing them on in dreams, and you go "cool, yeah, that makes sense", and then you remember that the gods are in a Celestial Bureaucracy, and imagine underlings who run the equivalent of mailing lists...

Or looking at the Blue Rose magic system, and realizing that if I dropped the Shaping Arcana, the rest could emulate a lot of Tolkien magic, including the corrupting sorcery, pretty well, even to building the Rings of Power. But Blue Rose was designed for romantic fantasy, not epic! Go me!

Or again in Exalted, my combining some obscure Charms and rituals to create a society of enlightened mortals with a Sidereal patron and integrated afterlife and Wyld polders, and I'm proud of having built this out of the provided elements, even if I haven't properly written it up yet... but if I try to imagine a fantasy society on my own, free of any constraints or strong influences, my mind blanks out at the sheer openness of it all. Magic can do anything, until you pick constraints, but picking my own? Feels artificial, I should go do something useful...

So yeah, partly it's hacking RPGs. But also married to that "making sense out of incoherence" a la Firefly and the Great Wheel, which also applied to reading Mere Christianity and seeing Lewis give a metaphor for the Holy Trinity that almost made sense. Doesn't quite seem like hacking. A joy in rationalization? Mystery-solving? I don't know. Maybe it's entirely unrelated emotions that I happen to associate because RPGs are often both hackable and nonsensical, whereas computer programs and (theology or sloppy SF) tend to be separate.

A friend calls it lateral thinking, which certainly applies to some of the 'hacking' "make it do something unexpected" stuff.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/325804.html

Romney: I have great friends who are NASCAR team owners.

GOP fears it's 2012 or never, as demographics moves conservatives toward permanent minority?

Matt Taibbi views GOP primaries as their worst tendencies come to roost.

"The place where Canada figures most prominently into US history is as the ultimate destination of the Underground Railroad. Why does 1812 feature more prominently than that in Canadian patriotism?" http://www.filibustercartoons.com/index.php/2012/02/21/justins-least-favourite-pm/#comment-163151

Krugman latest reference post for the euro crisis.

Latest global warming data: 1998 is still warmest individual year, but otherwise the coldest year in the 2000s in on the order of the warmest years of the previous 20.

Huh, I don't remember when my mother told me Chicago had had a 70 degree December, to my shock. But it was while in San Francisco. 1999 could be a good candidate, and reflecting the 1998 heat. Not that local variations mean much.

Jayne Austen book and gun club. That's not a typo.

The failed attempt to wean D&D covers off of white males.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/312012.html

RPGers may be interested in this http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1292093911/eldritch-skies
Largely by John Snead, of Blue Rose and other fame.

Apparently you're not allowed to lie on Canadian news
http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/2712758.html

women's empowerment means more smoking
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/women-smoking_n_830281.html

3/170 of bottled water makers tell you where it's from
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/health/The-Transparency-of-Water-Bottle-Manufacturers--116578518.html

Goodnight Dune
http://goodnightdune.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios
"In Homer, Apollo is clearly identified as a different god, a
plague-dealer with a silver (not golden) bow and no solar features."

effect of Libya on US gas prices
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp

Chavez and Libya. WTF Chavez
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-04/chavez-summons-venezuela-s-regional-allies-to-back-mediation-bid-for-libya.html

Scott Walker attacking Wisconsin public schools, mandating local cuts
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-schweber/scott-walkers-war-on-equa_b_830239.html

Tritium is produced in nuclear reactors by neutron activation of
lithium-6. This is possible with neutrons of any energy, and is an
exothermic reaction yielding 4.8 MeV. In comparison, the fusion of
deuterium with tritium releases about 17.6 MeV of energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Occurrence says 230 billion tonnes
in seawater. Assuming fissing 10 kg a second, that's 1e13 seconds of
global power. 100,000+ years.
20 mg per kg of crust, 1e14 m2* 1e3 m = 3e17 ton = 3e20 kg = 60e20 mg Li
= 6e21 mg = 6e18 g = 6e15 kg. Vs. 2.3e14 in seawater.
20 million tons in reserves, 2e10 kg, 2e9 seconds.

How come I don't hear about this more as a power source?

first 'libertarian'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_D%C3%A9jacque

homes still overvalued
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Paper-Economy/2011/0303/Home-prices-falling-to-level-of-1890s

awesome Solar Exaltation story
http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=13608556&postcount=48
Sidereal Exaltation
http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=13608827&postcount=49

ongoing torture of Bradley Manning
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/05/manning

Republicans against poison control centers
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/opinion/04fri4.html?_r=2

Well, maybe.
4e D&D turns the usual wood elf/high elf split into elves vs. eladrin, and gives eladrin eyes that are a single color, no white or pupil. This seemed weird and creepy, which has its virtues. Seemed like a weird idea, too. anima-mecanique tells me it's common these days in WoW and such, due to being easier to animate... and she's offline now so I can't annoy her by saying "4e really is WoW!"

But anyway, I've just read Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions and am reading The Broken Sword, and in both of them elves -- immortal, highly magical, and rather capricious -- have solid color eyes with no whites and "no visible pupils". Poul tries to be scientific with his magical beings -- the elves have funky alloys to avoid iron, and 3H3L has a magnesium "dagger of burniing" -- so I infer he wanted to avoid stating or having his scientific protagonist conclude that the elves actually lacked the usual aperture for light.

Given WoW I'm not sure anymore if 4e was harking back to this, but it might have been. Eladrin do seem a fair bit like Poul's elves, minus the immortality but with extra teleportation.

Poul's elves explicitly do have long, pointed, and movable ears -- Imric "cocks" his. A human likens them to ears of a beast. They're also sort of more androgynous -- the usual slender stuff, and the males are less lustful than human males, the females more lustful than human females. If you're a lusty human female, just accept the stereotype he's working with.

Also on the odd or interesting notes found in recent books, some Liaden stuff, for the appreciation of who knows.
"Lord of the Dance": Liadens do called line dances, like contra or country dance. I am amused.
Fledgling totally had a DDR machine.
Saltation refers to "maize buttons", which are vague but may be cornbread muffins. There's mention of "Trantor's docks". Also "LaDemeter miniguns", which sounds like a name in its own right -- the Demeter? -- but is probably rooted in Doc Smith's DeLameters. In Mouse and Dragon, the mob boss of Liad's Low Port had had a gay marriage before they broke up.

* Judge strikes down DOMA

* Movie popcorn ,a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/popcorn/">really fatty. Exercise and fat loss. Your brain on exercise

NYTimes:
* Conservative unemployment and recession. Smart squirrels with deceptive caching. The biggest defaulters on mortgages are the rich. (Remember, shame about bankruptcy is middle class -- businesses and the rich know it's just a financial decision.) Guide to social networking sites for that person under a rock. The more noble Israel. Colleges spending more on recreation, and the US spending $19,000 per post-secondary student, vs. $8,400 across other developed countries.

* Jury compensation by state. In only one case does it rise to the level of minimum wage.

* D&D 3.5 art galleries

* Guide to being lazy GM (RPGs, not the company)

* What if copyright were only 20 years? Genre works that would be public now. Calculating optimal copyright (PDF)

* Hawaii GOP governor, divorced twice, vetoes civil unions bill. Google further expands gay employee benefits.

* Sociology and porn, sociology as parallel universe. Chomsky on postmodernism

* Why are modern movies all teal and orange?

anima just ran an Unhallowed Metropolis. Went well, but she said we were all experienced RPGers. I objected that I'd had maybe a couple dozen sessions in my life, though compared to Gencon newbies that's probably good. But it got me actually counting, so as not to speak nonsense.

Endril's Exalted game -- maybe half a dozen sessions?
Z's Exalted -- at least 10 sessions, not hugely more
fergusop's Ars Magica -- ditto
Guild one-shots
* anima: Unhallowed Metropolis, D&D 4e (3 sessions), Spirit of the Century, Adventure!, 7th Sea, D&D Tomb of Horrors (very partial, stepped in)
* Josh's Candlewick Manor (partial, stepped in)
* anima/Prime's Qin
* someone's Aeon/Trinity
* multi-G nWoD (two sessions, streamlined combat my ass)
(36+2/2)

Caltech: Shadowrun, then Vamp/Werewolf, probably at least 10 sessions between the two.

LARPS: mystery LARP at Caltech that Fanw and I don't remember well; <6 Changeling sessions initially; 2 Changeling one-shots; 5 widescreen oWoD multi-splat sessions as a Void Engineer.

Adds up to... about 60 sessions, not counting a few rounds of Amber PBEM and lots of LARP or Ars e-mails; majority at Guild. So, quite a bit more that I thought, something over a year-equivalent of weekly sessions. Mind you, spread out over several years and in many games, and not much at all compared to people who've gamed regularly for multiple years, sometimes at multiple games per week (so much time...) I've never had a long game; I bailed out of the Changeling LARP and all the other potentially long games bailed out on me.

I just had some of this, from Kroger -- "homemade marinara". This is the first jarred or restaurant red sauce I've had that approaches the family recipe in addictiveness. And there isn't even any cayenne in it! Has wine, though.

More links since my last post:
* Chimps trade meat for sex. Not old news in that it's long-term relationships, even when female isn't in estrus, not just "meat now for sex now".
* Effects of drug decriminalization in Portugal. Though since I'd be skeptical of Cato if they were claiming something I didn't like, I should note that it's Cato even when they claim something I do.
* Stargate cakes
* 538 regression model on gay marriage support
* Wizards of the Coast has apparently frozen all PDF sales of their products -- and downloads of products already purchased, which sounds contractually dodgy. White Wolf gleefully takes advantage. WW has crap editing and other problems, but I've admired how they make nearly all their material available online. Exalted 1e? Mage 2e or Revised? Yep. (Mage 1e, no, that I can tell.) -- Steve Jackson Games twitters humorously.