Burrowowl

A recent thread on 4chan‘s /tg/ channel saw the emergence of a plethora of bad character names for use in RPGs. Please feel free to sprinkle these into your own campaigns:

• Dmitri Faganella
• Ted Vecna
• Uncle Touchy
• Featherhair Gayswallow the Elven Bard
• Hue Jass
• Sephiroth D’Urden (dual wields giant sized katanas)
• Elrond Hubbard
• Any combination of Dark, Raven, Blood, Wraith, and or “cool” first names
• Any name starting with “Richard”
• Leonard Michaelangelo
• Rick Hackstabber
• Anything with an apostrophe
• Rangers named Walker
• Big McLargehuge
• Spanks McGee
• Axebeard Beardaxe
• Yuu
• Mii
• Kha’k Mhonglaer
• Lon Ornemint, the Bardin’ Gnome
• Hank
• Flaggin Mcfloggin
• Rollo Crotchfinger the cleric
• Damme Strohng
• Big Daddy Cumbuckets
• Gilbert Michael “G.M.” sucksass
• Pun Pun
• Rik Ast’li
• HUGE
• Whatever the GM’s name is
• Blork the Unquestable
• Facepalm Jaypeg
• Fi-Tor
• Imoen
• Jimmy Changa
• Boleg the flatulent
• Backstab Mctraitor
• Stabbity Jones

Additional names that would likely be terribly disruptive are welcome!

I read The Register because they put an insightful and irreverent spin on tech news. Occasionally they break into the realm of insightful and biting political observations that should not go unnoticed. This past Friday Thomas Greene wrote a great piece on the news media reaction to recent bomb scares in England. Please excuse the odd spelling and use of quaint terms like “rubbish.” They can’t help it, they’re from the wrong side of the Atlantic:

Yes, the Bushies asked for the war, and yes, Congress authorised it, but the mainstream news industry enabled it. They literally sold it. The Iraq war could not have been undertaken if the American press had the spine to do their jobs, and had tried to verify what the Administration was claiming. The press would soon have discovered that the White House’s story could not be verified. If American reporters had simply done what they’re paid to do, the front page headlines of America’s newspapers would have read: “No Credible Evidence of Bush WMD Claims”, instead of “Shock and Awe”.

I generally don’t like it when journalists make each other the subjects of withering critique, but generally that comes up in regards to coverage of meaningless aspects of political races or whatever Hollywood scandal is wasting airtime that week. On matters of serious policy matters (as opposed to frivolous policy matters), I’m much more inclined to lend my ear.

The conclusion of his look at how the British press mishandled the recent “explosive” devices found in London and Glasgow, and how the American press has handled international events since 9/11/2001 is that the news media is every bit as responsible for the current mess we’re in as George Bush and Tony Blair are. Greene takes it a step further: the journalists, media outlets, and politicians that have capitalized on and encouraged the pervasive fear of Islamic extremists groups are themselves terrorists.

Clearly he meant organizations like Fox News, NBC, CBS, and ABC, all of whom enthusiastically ginned up the casus belli, but I think it goes further than that. On the other end of the political media spectrum, there are many that have latched on to a broad theme of “The West Under Siege” that has a similar effect and similar motivations. Leftie/progressive bloggers, radio hosts, and even former sportscasters have been vigorously proclaiming that our civil liberties and representative democracy are in mortal peril. It’s a shame, but fear sells.

The reason tigers jump through hoops is because their handlers have whips.

From time to time, I’ve harped on Morte’s blog, specifically the requirement that any commenter must have a TypeKey account. I have accounts on several web forums, my ISP account, my bank account, my Gravatar, my admin accounts for my personal gallery, my kid’s website, my kid’s website’s gallery, my sister’s website, my wiki, my office wiki, my office admin server, the ordering system for DSL circuits, the ticket system for DSL trouble reports, the list goes on and on. Do I want to sign up for Typekey to tell an old buddy that he’s on crack for reviewing a book he hasn’t read? No, not really.

Enter OpenID. What a lovely idea, a distributed identification system. I was going to reply to a comment on Wolfgang Baur’s livejournal and noticed that I needed to post anonymously, get a Livejournal account, or get an OpenID instead. The first option doesn’t really appeal to me, as I understand that the Internet isn’t really anonymous, so my comments may as well be associated with my online persona. The second option is basically the same as having to sign up for Typekey. Maybe it’ll let me commend on a couple of other Livejournal pages as well, but frankly that just doesn’t come up very often for me.

The OpenID option immediately struck me as a good idea, so I followed the “What is OpenID” link on Mr. Baur’s page. To be honest, I didn’t really want to know what OpenID was. I’d heard of the concept before, what I really wanted was an ID in that system, one that I could theoretically re-use in a variety of contexts and thus achieve some measure of efficiency in presenting myself on other people’s sites. What missing below?

That’s right, no “get an ID” option. Well, there’s a link to the OpenID site itself. Let’s give that a try.

This page is positively fertile with links. I count eight links in the main body of this page, and ten in the sidebar (not counting the Web100 image). The body links helpfully

• tell me what a URI is and what “authentication” means (color me insulted)
• refer me to the specifications for their authentication scheme
• links me to the definition of “strong authentication” because putting an obscure technical term like “strong” in front of the previously-defined “authentication” is bound to lead to confusion
• links me to the specifications
• refers me to some kind of bounty system meant to encourage adoption of the OpenID system
• links me to a Mailman mailing list
• refers to something to do with medieval identification systems.

Whew. Having skimmed through looking for something like “sign me up” or “get an ID” or “register” or “log in” or “I want to be a part of this thing you’ve got here,” I’m utterly disappointed. The presence of links to definitions of basic Intarweb terminology indicates that the authors of this page assume I’m an idiot, yet the functionality of the site doesn’t accommodate this assumption.

Apparently I’m expected to read through the “How it works” documentation on the OpenID site (something the referring page at Livejournal has thoroughly discouraged me from doing), install something on my own webpage, and then things will magically work themselves out. In short, it was tl;dr, I remain uninvolved in the OpenID system, and Mr. Baur is short a comment on his site. What about instant gratification don’t these folks get? Give me a shiny button that calls upon me to participate, then give me instructions. If I want to know how the nuts and bolts of it work, I’d appreciate an informative link or two, but don’t give me a pile of homework just so I may have the privilege of posting a possibly-witty retort to some dude’s online ramblings. It’s a barrier to entry, an unnecessary hurdle.

In the interest of practicing what I preach, the comment mechanisms of this site are intentionally minimal. The IP banning, Hashcash, and Akismet antispam systems are all transparent to the commenter, and the requested screen name, email address, and URL are more-or-less standard fare. Very little spam leaks through my filters, though attempts at comment spam massively outweigh the number of actual comments.

Humble suggestions:

• If you want visitors to comment on your site, let them
• If you want people to participate in your swizzy social networking mechanisms, guide people towards participation. You may notice that successful sites like Youtube, Flickr, and Myspace all have very clear mechanisms for letting newcomers join in on the fun.
• If you don’t want people to comment or participate, force them to wade through arcane procedures. This is why the clocks on VCRs were almost always flashing “12:00″ and why most DVD players and such don’t even have clocks on the face anymore.

One of the many problems facing the public these days is insidious: the misuse of language to obscure meaning. Let’s take a look at an example, two phrases used by people with opposing views on the United States’ involvement in the insurgency / civil war / emerging caliphate in Iraq:

Redeploy / Cut & Run

The current war / occupation / police action in Iraq has become deeply unpopular, with a dwindling supply of heady triumphs and a steady stream of dismal news. Reports of bombings against military and civilian targets have become a disheartening echo of the media drumbeat that lead up to the invasion back in 2003. Increasingly public debate has shifted to the discussion of how American soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen are going to be removed from the combat area. As the combat area can be loosely described as “Iraq in its entirety,” we see the repeated use of euphemisms to describe the various plans.

To cut and run is literally when the crew of an entangled ship cuts loose any moorings or anchors that hold it fast in order to get clear of some imminent danger. Those who advocate remaining actively engaged in combat in Iraq have frequently labeled any opposition as a “cut and run” strategy. This plays upon the prideful view most Americans hold of our military. The image of our soldiers fleeing the battlefield is a strong motivating factor for many who lived through the turmoil of the Vietnam War, as well as those simply raised in a patriotic tradition that props up America’s general tendency to prevail in arms. We seem to place less value on soldiers that die on the losing side of a conflict, and fear consigning our recent war losses to such a status.

To redeploy is a pretty straightforward concept. We deployed our armed forced into Iraq (which is to say we invaded), and now many in the public arena would like to re-deploy them back out of Iraq (which is to say they’d like to un-invade it). Traditionally this would involve retreating, surrendering, and acknowledging the victory of the enemy. To acknowledge the victory of the enemy is to acknowledge defeat. Defeat doesn’t play well, so opponents to the continuation of the Iraq War like to call retreat redeployment.

In fairness, most plans that bear the label “redeployment” involve swapping out American men and women with guns with Iraqi men with guns, so that the Iraqi men can win or lose for themselves (spoiler: their victory isn’t really part of the redeployment plan). This will let the Iraqi national government lose without America having to lose. This is similar to what large companies do when they outsource profits for tax purposes or outsource liabilities for their shareholder reports.

Please call it what it is: retreat. We can retreat and let Iraqi national forces take up our positions, or we can retreat and let tribal or insurgent or Al Qaeda forces take up our positions, but we’re talking about retreat here. Learn to swallow the pill, folks; we don’t have the political will to win this fight, so we’re talking about losing it.

Presumably-competent commanders like David Petraeus say it will probably take 9-10 years to properly stomp out the insurgency in Iraq. We can spend a decade pulling this band-aid off, or we can get it over with quickly. The decision is ours, and we shouldn’t delude ourselves about it one way or the other.

Definitions: civil war, insurgency, occupation, police action, redeploy, retreat, surrender, denial

If you’ve got any favorite terms that are being misused or twisted sideways, I’d like to hear about it.

Wolfgang Baur is at it again. Previously known for his work on the Planescape setting, various articles in Dragon Magazine and the Wizards of the Coast website, and independent titles like Five Fingers: Port of Deceit (from Privateer Press), Mr. Baur has been hard at work doing something a little different lately: Open Design. His brainchild, which involves creating RPG content for groups of private patrons instead of trying to mass-market to a rather small market niche, appears to be working well for him, and has spun off into a small but fierce independent magazine, Kobold Quarterly.

The premiere issue arrived as a PDF in my inbox Thursday morning, weighing in at 8.03MB, with 34 pages of insight and entertainment. Wolfgang calls upon the talents of a handful of fellow RPG industry freelancers for prose, art, an interview, and D&D-centric rules. I’ve been straying from Dungeons and Dragons recently, having used the system extensively and almost continuously since the d20 system was released, but Kobold Quarterly doesn’t lay it on too thick. The article on alternate rewards for adventurers was insightful and appropriate in length. The piece on Titivillus, the Scribe of Hell, is a promising opening salvo in a series on the various princes of hell. The Ecology of the Derro article did far more to pique my interest in this odd little Underdark race than any previous works have.

The tail end of issue 1 was significantly more crunchy than the beginning. I don’t need new d20 character classes for the Far Darrig if I’ll be incorporating them into a future game. Heck, any game I play in the near future that may incorporate material from this or other magazines will probably use the FATE game mechanics. I suppose it’s too much to expect a start-up like Kobold Quarterly to stray too far from the mainstays of d20 publishing fare: new feats, new classes, new spells, new races…

Kobold Quarterly is available by subscription for $16.00 for PDF-only, or $36.00 for both PDF and paper. As the name indicates, it is currently intended for four releases per year. Upcoming issues will feature content from such luminaries as Ed Greenwood (of the Forgotten Realms) and Nicholas Logue (of Eberron fame).