Vampire preferences

Answering a question from an internet friend:

fangs only when feeding || strong preference

I am OK with hordes of pure evil ugly vamps with permanent fangs, but otherwise the fangs should only appear when feeding, else the vamps cannot hide, and what fun is that?

evil || moderate preference

My ideal vampire is the Goatee Spock version of the person they were, but Slowly Corrupted By The Hunger can work if that is central to the story.

sunlight vulnerable || emphatic preference

Yes, I have read Dracula — a few times! — but this is one I am adamant about. Popculture vamps have to be very vulnerable to the Sun; it gives you the day-night cycle for everyone to face. Even Dracula is better that way — Christopher Damm Lee!

garlic vulnerable || mild preference

Fun and works with either very- or not-very-supernatural vampires.

silver safe || mild preference

In my headcanon vamps & werewolves have different vulnerabilities, duh, but it does not bother me when vamps are vulnerable to silver, and if our Fearless Vampire Slayers are action-hero types, then you want them to have guns, so ... fine.

holy symbols safe || mild preference

I prefer holy symbols to be bullshit, but if they do work the wielder must have strong devotion. I am very not OK with Buffy’s cross working even though she never goes to church.

normal reflection || emphatic preference

The mirror thing is just stupid and raises complicated vampire science questions with weird corner cases for cameras and stuff. Only acceptable in a production of the stage play of Dracula.

werewolf enmity || strong preference

If you don’t want monster politics, what are you even doing here?

sleep anywhere || strong preference

The metaphysics of what even counts as The Earth Of Your Gravesite is just confusing, and don’t get me started on the Coffin Of Theseus. But you do need that rule to adapt Dracula properly, which someone really ought to do someday.

running water safe || emphatic preference

Again, this is just weird and a nuisance to include, which is why it is routinely ignored. What about water mains?

entering uninvited || it depends

For a single novel or movie, I have a mild preference for this being Not A Thing, but for a long-running series you need it to create complications for safe havens and keeping the secret.

turned by drinking vamp blood || strong preference

If being killed (or even just bitten) by a vamp turns someone, eventually you just run out of humans. No beuno. Much more interesting to have it a deliberate choice by the sire, which also comes with Who Do You Turn vampire politics. The old-fashioned bite-three-times rule can also be fun for particularly supernatural vampires.

non-human blood || it depends

When vamps are Just Evil, I have a strong preference for requiring human blood, though having them occasionally muddle through and get weak drinking animal blood can play. If vamps are Corrupted By The Hunger, then non-human blood being “nutritionally” adequate but unsatisfying is the way to go.

Tabletop roleplaying games and violence

GURPS

One of the grossest cliches in all of gaming is the dungeon. In its most offensive form, a dungeon is nothing more than a randomly generated set of corridors and rooms filled with traps, treasure, and monsters.

[⋯]

If such a thing as a dungeon exists, the most likely occupant is a group of intelligent creatures. A band of Orcs, possibly with a few dozen Hobgoblin servants, will turn a dungeon crawl into an interesting experience. And, as a bonus, the Orcs have usually gathered all the treasure into one place! Of course, this makes the dungeon-delvers into a gang of racially-motivated thugs, breaking into strangers’ homes to kill them and take their property.

Unknown Armies

Unknown Armies is the single tabletop roleplaying game dearest to my heart, not least because the writing is self-aware about how the nasty thrills of the noir horror stories it facilitates are actually … nasty. Well before the “murderhobo” critique of classic TTRPG adventure characters came along, the first edition introduced combat with this caveat:

Somewhere out there is someone who had loving parents, watched clouds on a summer’s day, fell in love, is kind to small animals, and knows how to say “please” and “thank you,” and yet somehow the two of you are going to end up in a dirty little room with one knife between you and you are going to have to kill that human being.

It’s a terrible thing. Not just because he’s come to the same realization and wants to survive just as much as you do, meaning he’s going to try and puncture your internal organs to set off a cascading trauma effect that ends with you voiding your bowels, dying alone and removed from everything you’ve ever loved. No, it’s a terrible thing because somewhere along the way you could have made a different choice. You could have avoided that knife, that room, and maybe even found some kind of common ground between the two of you. Or at least, you might have divvied up some turf and left each other alone. That would have been a lot smarter, wouldn’t it? Even dogs are smart enough to do that. Now you’re staring into the eyes of a fellow human and in a couple minutes one of you is going to be vomiting blood to the rhythm of a fading heartbeat. The survivor is going to remember this night for the rest of his or her life.

Six ways to stop a fight

So before you make a grab for that knife, you should maybe think about a few things. This moment is frozen in time. You can still make a better choice.

Surrender. Is your pride really worth a human life? Drop your weapon, put up your hands, and tell them you’re ready to cut a deal. You walk, and in exchange you give them something they need. Sidestep the current agenda. Offer them something unrelated to your dispute, and negotiate to find a solution.

Diasarm. Knife on the table? Throw it out the window. Opponent with a gun? Dodge until he’s out of bullets. Deëscalate the confrontation to fists, if possible. You can settle your differences with some brawling and still walk away, plus neither of you has to face a murder charge or a criminal investigation.

Rechannel. So you have a conflict. Settle it a smarter way. Arm wrestle, play cards, have a scavenger hunt, a drinking contest, anything that lets you establish a winner and a loser. Smart gamblers bet nothing they aren’t willing to lose. Why put your life on the line?

Pass the Buck. Is there somebody more powerful than either one of you who is going to be angry that you two are coming to blows? Pretend you’re all in the mafia and you can’t just kill each other without kicking your dispute upstairs first. Let that symbolic superior make a decision. You both gain clout for not spilling blood.

Call the Cops. If you’ve got a grievance against somebody, let the police do the dirty work. File charges. Get a restraining order. Sue him in civil court for wrongful harm. You can beat him down without throwing a punch.

Run Away. The hell with it. Who needs this kind of heat? Blow town, get a job someplace else, build a new power base. Is the world really two small for the both of you? It’s a big planet out there.

Oh Well

Still determined? Backed into a corner with no way out? Have to fight for the greater good? Up against someone too stupid to know this is a bad idea? Or maybe just itching for some action? So be it. The rest of this chapter contains rules for simulating the murder of human beings. Have fun.

The rules which follow are rich in scary randomness, by design. Skills are handled with percentile dice; a successful hand-to-hand attack costs the sum of the two dice in hit points (so a roll of 42 does 4+2=6 damage) while gunfire does the value of the roll (so a roll of 42 does 42 damage).

It is also worth noting that UA’s system for handling psychological shocks means that a character can be permanently harmed by performing or even witnessing violence.

Boot Hill And The Fear Of Dice

Though it was recognized as a roleplaying game by the time its second edition was released in 1979, Boot Hill was very much conceived as an old-school, Gygax-designed TSR wargame. There are no skills, attributes, guides, or systems in the early editions unrelated to stacking up bodies. Mechanically, all it simulates is violence.

Boot Hill is the best political intrigue system I’ve ever used.

[⋯]

That the game has simple randomly-generated combat stats helped me design a thorough, reactive campaign setting. If the game had classes, levels, races, or tactical options, I would be obliged to either create combatants by hand or study each in detail, limiting my precise grasp on each faction and their strengths. If the game were even simpler, like Apocalypse World, the players would know too well what to expect from their opponents. Instead I found myself perfectly between the two extremes.

The vicious, tense, and bloody combat made players very afraid of the consequences of mis-stepping. There was a fear, a tension, a thrill every time they even picked up the dice; if they were attacking they knew they were taking a great risk, and if they were being attacked, they knew they may have made their last mistake. Between these isolated combats there were no rules or clattering of dice to distract them from playing their characters and angles; the immersion was total.

There was another benefit to not having any social mechanics at all in the game, counter-intuitive thought it might seem for a game about managing adversarial relationships without combat. While combat in Boot Hill is decided immediately and obviously, and is thus very well suited to open dice rolls, the game’s social conflicts created tension by being uncertain.

Knights Of The Dinner Table

Cyberpunk 2020

Friday Night Firefight™ is a weapons combat system for using modern, futuristic and archaic firearms in roleplaying adventures.

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Friday Night Firefight™ is not good, clean fun. Most of the data herein has been complied from ballistics reports, police data, FBI statistics and other not-clean fun sources. These sources tend to point to a couple of basic truths about firefight combat.

Most (80%, in fact) gunfights occur within 21 feet of the respective targets. Some 40% of these happen within 8 feet or less! Most (60%) occur in dimly lit and difficult conditions — dark, tiny alleys, with both participants panting and out of breath, pausing momentarily to snap off a badly aimed shot at a fleeing shadow, then ducking back for cover. Hits are actually quite rare. When they do occur (assuming a large caliber weapon's involved), the victim is usually hors de combat on the first shot from a combination of wound shock and fear. A solid hit with a .44 magnum will usually splatter a real person all over New Jersey.

Why do we bring this up? We've tried to distill lots of real combat firearms data into a simple, user-friendly form; a form that means you don't have to deal with reams of table and charts to accurately commit mayhem on your fellow players. The result is that while Friday Night Firefight™ is deceptively easy to use, it is also deceptively dangerous. In this game, a large caliber handgun is something to be truly respected. If you’re the sort who likes to charge into a gunfight with both barrels blazing, be prepared to lose your first character. And the next. And the next, until you get the point. This stuff is dangerous. Good luck.

The Genius Of Friday Night Firefight

Time and time again, I’ve watched police bodycam footage, watched competition footage, read AARs, watched combat footage... and every time, bar none, I’ve been able to create a turn sequence and series of modifiers in Cyberpunk 2020’s combat system that would result in the exact events that played out in reality.

[⋯]

I’ll say it over and over again: Don't deviate too much from the core mechanics of Cyberpunk’s combat system. When it comes to realism, Pondsmith et al. pretty much got it right the first time with FNFF.

The reason FNFF combat is so realistic is because I very deliberately set out to simulate real ranged weapon combat as closely as I could. Damage, for example, was based on muzzle velocity, bullet weight and referenced against real ballistics damage reports from the Army and FBI (as well as two buddies who were actual Ranger medics in Iraq). Range difficulties came from police and FBI records from real gunfights and range data. I also own and shoot a variety of handguns and rifles so I have a pretty good “feel” for how they feel and operate. Because there’s no replacing experience.

And although people complain about the armor, that was also constructed based on real armors of the type--in most cases, handguns aren’t going to penetrate Kevlar body armors while rifles will plow through it with ease unless you add plates. And the stuff is heavy (I know, I own body armor), which is why stacking and encumbrance are a real thing in FNFF.

Most people don’t believe or accept the tons of work that we put into making FNFF realistic. LEOs and military guys do though, and they tell us all the time. So I appreciate the work you put into this demo and would like to thanks you for taking the time.

POWER KILL

John Tynes — the designers of Unknown Armies responsible for the warning about violence at the top of this post, created a little 1996 TTRPG-meta-game-about-TTRPGs.

No roleplaying game currently in print encourages players to act out roles that are fully in accordance with the laws and customs of society, either those of the real world or of the fictional world that the RPG is set in. Murder, theft, extortion, burglary, and other serious crimes are the bread and butter of RPG storytelling; regardless of a game’s higher purpose, it still amounts to story after story that consist of nothing significant other than gross criminal behavior covered in a glossy coat of genre acceptability.

Whether your character is a vampire, medieval hero, occult investigator, cybergear netsurfer, or starship pilot, few game sessions will pass without the players taking actions that would be considered a crime in our world---and probably a crime in the world of the game. Roleplaying game storytelling has used the crutch of crime fantasies since the beginning, and there is no end in sight. Layers of drama and symbolism aside, is there not something wrong with a storytelling hobby that glorifies criminal behavior as the primary protagonistic component? What is the true source of our enjoyment of this hobby? Is it the portrayal of an alternate personality? Is it the exploration of a given set of genre conventions? Or is it the illicit thrill of engaging in criminal behavior, sanctified with a safe trapping? What is the source of our [fun and enjoyment] anyway, and why?

POWER KILL is meant to suggest a few answers. Or at least, to ask a few questions.

Race Informs Violence in TTRPGs

Orion D. Black challenges all of these commentaries.

You lowkey wanna know why there are more Black people in D&D than there are in indie titles? I firmly believe that it’s not just exposure. I believe that, regardless of the obvious racial issues present, players have the ability to act without consequence. And that is a place of power that white progressives only view negatively, because white culture dictates that if someone has the ability to take over the world, then they will. Black people see an opportunity for justice and freedom.

Removing opportunities for exceptionalism makes a lot of sense if you’re only thinking about how white culture says “I must be the most exceptional.” Black culture says, “I want to be exceptional,” as do most marginalized cultures. That exceptionalism grows through community and our care for one another, because we know that when one person makes it, everyone who has participated in stabilizing our collaborative health gets to make it too.

Just because white guilt surrounds it, and because your culture strips its validity away from everyone else, doesn’t mean that the right choice is ignoring it. Because doing nothing means you’re leaning on the existing pretenses… whispers (which are raaaaaacist).

The Olivia Hill Rule

Not simply about violence, but not not-about violence:

In #iHunt, I featured a rule. it goes a little something like this:

No fascists

If you’re a fascist, you’re not welcome to play this game. It’s against the rules. If you you’re reading this and thinking, “You just call everyone you disagree w ith a fascist,” then you’re probably a fascist, or incaable of drawing inferences from context and acknowledging a dangerous political climate that causes the oppresed to be hyperbolid. Don’t play this game. Heal yourelf. Grow. Learn. Watch some Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood or something.

[...]
As you can see in the Reddit thread and pretty much any comments section when it comes up, the real value of the Olivia Hill Rule is that it forces cryptofash to out themselves. It’s bait they absolutely cannot resist.

Humans are scary

I wind up looking this up a few times a year, and I've never found a sufficiently legible version to satisfy me, so I'm cooking up one of my own.

It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.

I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.

How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?

Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.

---

HOLY SHIT THEY EAT CAPSAICIN FOR FUN

YOU GUYS I HEARD A HUMAN ONCE ATE AN AIRPLANE.

A HUMAN CAN KEEP FIGHTING FOR HOURS EVEN AFTER YOU SHOOT IT

humans are a proud warrior race with a pantheon of bloody gods: Ram-Bo, Schwarzenegger, etc.

REMOVING A LIMB WILL NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD.

WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE

WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY

THE HUMAN MOUTH HAS OVER THIRTY OUTCROPS OF BONE AND POWERFUL JAW MUSCLES.

HUMAN BITES CAN BE FATALLY INFECTIOUS EVEN TO OTHER HUMANS

WARNING: HUMANS CAN AND WILL USE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. SEE CLASSIFIED DATA LABELED J. CHAN.

HUMANS CAN PROJECT BIOWEAPONS FROM ALMOST EVERY ORIFICE ON THEIR BODY. DO NOT INHALE

OH GOD THE HUMANS FIGURED OUT DOOR HANDLES OH GOD OH GOD

---

More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness — but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.

(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)

Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:

• Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you — and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.
• Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.
• We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty — humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits — but they’re highly functional.
• Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves - and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.

In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.

---

I do hope you realize I’m going to be picking up this stuff and running with it right?

---

Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place.

We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps.

And by god, we will eat anything.

---

• We use borderline toxic peppers to season our food.
• We expose ourselves to potentially lethal solar radiation in the pursuit of darkening our skin.
• We risk hearing loss for the opportunity to see our favorite musicians live.
• We have a game where two people get into an enclosed area and hit each other until time runs out/one of them pass out
• We willingly jump out of planes with only a flimsy piece of cloth to prevent us from splattering against the ground.
• Our response to natural disasters is to just rebuild our buildings in the exact same places.
• We climb mountains and risk freezing to death for bragging rights
• We invented dogs. We took our one time predators and completely domesticated them.
• On a planet full of lions, tigers and bears, we managed to advance further and faster than any other species on the planet.

Klingons and Krogan and Orcs ain’t got shit on us

---

can we talk about how pursuit predation is fucking terrifying

it’s one thing to face down a cheetah, which will slam into you at 60 mph and break your neck

it’s another thing to run very quickly to get away from a thing, only to have it just kind of

show up

to have it be intelligent enough to figure out where you are by the fur and feather you’ve left behind, your footprints and piss and shit, and then you think you’ve lost it and you bed down for the night but THERE IT IS

WAITING

WHEN YOU WAKE UP

and you split! again! but it keeps following you. always in the corner of your eye. until you just

die

we are scary motherfuckers ok

More:

On the topic of humans being everyone’s favorite Intergalactic versions of Gonzo the Great:

Come on you guys, I’ve seen all the hilarious additions to my “humans are the friendly ones” post. We’re basically Steve Irwin meets Gonzo from the Muppets at this point. I love it.

But what if certain species of aliens have Rules for dealing with humans?

• Don’t eat their food. If human food passes your lips / beak / membrane /other way of ingesting nutrients, you will never be satisfied with your ration bars again.
• Don’t tell them your name. Humans can find you again once they know your name and this can be either life-saving or the absolute worst thing that could happen to you, depending on whether or not they favor you. Better to be on the safe side.
• Winning a human’s favor will ensure that a great deal of luck is on your side, but if you anger them, they are wholly capable of wiping out everything you ever cared about. Do not anger them.
• If you must anger them, carry a cage of X’arvizian bloodflies with you, for they resemble Earth mo-skee-toes and the human will avoid them.
• This does not always work. Have a last will and testament ready.
• Do not let them take you anywhere on your planet that you cannot fly a ship from. Beings who are spirited away to the human kingdom of Aria Fiv-Ti Won rarely return, and those that do are never quite the same.

Basically, humans are like the Fair Folk to some aliens and half of them are scared to death and the others are like alien teenagers who are like “I dare you to ask a human to take you to Earth”.

---

We knew about the planet called Earth for centuries before we made contact with its indigenous species, of course. We spent decades studying them from afar.

The first researchers had to fight for years to even get a grant, of course. They kept getting laughed out of the halls. A T-Class Death World that had not only produced sapient life, but a Stage Two civilization? It was a joke, obviously. It had to be a joke.

And then it wasn’t. And we all stopped laughing. Instead, we got very, very nervous.

We watched as the human civilizations not only survived, but grew, and thrived, and invented things that we had never even conceived of. Terrible things, weapons of war, implements of destruction as brutal and powerful as one would imagine a death world’s children to be. In the space of less than two thousand years, they had already produced implements of mass death that would have horrified the most callous dictators in the long, dark history of the galaxy.

Already, the children of Earth were the most terrifying creatures in the galaxy. They became the stuff of horror stories, nightly warnings told to children; huge, hulking, brutish things, that hacked and slashed and stabbed and shot and burned and survived, that built monstrous metal things that rumbled across the landscape and blasted buildings to ruin.

All that preserved us was their lack of space flight. In their obsession with murdering one another, the humans had locked themselves into a rigid framework of physics that thankfully omitted the equations necessary to achieve interstellar travel.

They became our bogeymen. Locked away in their prison planet, surrounded by a cordon of non-interference, prevented from ravaging the galaxy only by their own insatiable need to kill one another. Gruesome and terrible, yes - but at least we were safe.

Or so we thought.

The cities were called Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the moment of their destruction, the humans unlocked a destructive force greater than any of us could ever have believed possible. It was at that moment that those of us who studied their technology knew their escape to be inevitable, and that no force in the universe could have hoped to stand against them.

The first human spacecraft were … exactly what we should have expected them to be. There were no elegant solar wings, no sleek, silvered hulls plying the ocean of stars. They did not soar on the stellar currents. They did not even register their existence. Humanity flew in the only way it could: on all-consuming pillars of fire, pounding space itself into submission with explosion after explosion. Their ships were crude, ugly, bulky things, huge slabs of metal welded together, built to withstand the inconceivable forces necessary to propel themselves into space through violence alone.

It was almost comical. The huge, dumb brutes simply strapped an explosive to their backs and let it throw them off of the planet.

We would have laughed, if it hadn’t terrified us.

Humanity, at long last, was awake.

It was a slow process. It took them nearly a hundred years to reach their nearest planetary neighbor; a hundred more to conquer the rest of their solar system. The process of refining their explosive propulsion systems - now powered by the same force that had melted their cities into glass less than a thousand years before - was slow and haphazard. But it worked. Year by year, they inched outward, conquering and subduing world after world that we had deemed unfit for habitation. They burrowed into moons, built orbital colonies around gas giants, even crafted habitats that drifted in the hearts of blazing nebulas. They never stopped. Never slowed.

The no-contact cordon was generous, and was extended by the day. As human colonies pushed farther and farther outward, we retreated, gave them the space that they wanted in a desperate attempt at … stalling for time, perhaps. Or some sort of appeasement. Or sheer, abject terror. Debates were held daily, arguing about whether or not first contact should be initiated, and how, and by whom, and with what failsafes. No agreement was ever reached.

We were comically unprepared for the humans to initiate contact themselves.

It was almost an accident. The humans had achieved another breakthrough in propulsion physics, and took an unexpected leap of several hundred light years, coming into orbit around an inhabited world.

What ensued was the diplomatic equivalent of everyone staring awkwardly at one another for a few moments, and then turning around and walking slowly out of the room.

The human ship leapt away after some thirty minutes without initiating any sort of formal communications, but we knew that we had been discovered, and the message of our existence was being carried back to Terra.

The situation in the senate could only be described as “absolute, incoherent panic”. They had discovered us before our preparations were complete. What would they want? What demands would they make? What hope did we have against them if they chose to wage war against us and claim the galaxy for themselves? The most meager of human ships was beyond our capacity to engage militarily; even unarmed transport vessels were so thickly armored as to be functionally indestructible to our weapons.

We waited, every day, certain that we were on the brink of war. We hunkered in our homes, and stared. Across the darkness of space, humanity stared back.

There were other instances of contact. Human ships - armed, now - entering colonized space for a few scant moments, and then leaving upon finding our meager defensive batteries pointed in their direction. They never initiated communications. We were too frightened to.

A few weeks later, the humans discovered Alphari-296.

It was a border world. A new colony, on an ocean planet that was proving to be less hospitable than initially thought. Its military garrison was pitifully small to begin with. We had been trying desperately to shore it up, afraid that the humans might sense weakness and attack, but things were made complicated by the disease - the medical staff of the colonies were unable to devise a cure, or even a treatment, and what pitifully small population remained on the planet were slowly vomiting themselves to death.

When the human fleet arrived in orbit, the rest of the galaxy wrote Alphari-296 off as lost.

I was there, on the surface, when the great gray ships came screaming down from the sky. Crude, inelegant things, all jagged metal and sharp edges, barely holding together. I sat there, on the balcony of the clinic full of patients that I did not have the resources or the expertise to help, and looked up with the blank, empty, numb stare of one who is certain that they are about to die.

I remember the symbols emblazoned on the sides of each ship, glaring in the sun as the ships landed inelegantly on the spaceport landing pads that had never been designed for anything so large. It was the same symbol that was painted on the helmets of every human that strode out of the ships, carrying huge black cases, their faces obscured by dark visors. It was the first flag that humans ever carried into our worlds.

It was a crude image of a human figure, rendered in simple, straight lines, with a dot for the head. It was painted in white, over a red cross.

The first human to approach me was a female, though I did not learn this until much later - it was impossible to ascertain gender through the bulky suit and the mask. But she strode up the stairs onto the balcony, carrying that black case that was nearly the size of my entire body, and paused as I stared blankly up at her. I was vaguely aware that I was witnessing history, and quite certain that I would not live to tell of it.

Then, to my amazement, she said, in halting, uncertain words, “You are the head doctor?”

I nodded.

The visor cleared. The human bared its teeth at me. I learned later that this was a “grin”, an expression of friendship and happiness among their species.

“We are The Doctors Without Borders,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully. “We are here to help.”

Jane Austen's The Terminator

This may be my favorite literary mashup, and since the text is getting to be linkrotted away, I'm hosting it here.

“Indeed,” said the man (whom Patience could not help but think of as made of clockwork, though he manifestly was something far stranger), “I speak of these things not merely because of the way that I am made, though indeed a machine should do that which it is made to do, but because I have found that I have developed, through our many conversations, a feeling of that which is proper, both within the bounds of your society and without; and being that I am, here, a gentleman, I find that I am also bound to behave as a gentleman would, and indeed, Lady Patience, I must warn you that this Mr. Connor is a man of less than sterling character.”

Patience was quite taken aback by this sudden expression of personal concern, so unlike the measured rationality of the Mr. Terminus that she had come to know and depend upon, and so for several moments she sat quietly, simply looking upon his earnest, if overly regular, countenance, before she had quite decided upon her reply. “Sir, your concern for me is noted, and not entirely without my appreciation, but you are most forward and presumptuous to offer advice in such a matter, in which you cannot have any interest and which is, therefore, entirely between myself and Mr. Connor.”

At this moment the path through the shrubbery took a sharp dogleg to accomodate a stately lime tree. To Patience’s discomfiture Mr. Connor was lounging on the bench around the bole, just striking a match on the sole of his boot. His glance at Mr. Terminus was distinctly cold. He drew on his pipe until the tobacco was well alight before saying, “My dear Patience, clockwork and machinery is properly the sphere of the lower orders. The delicately nurtured female can have no commerce with the denizen of a factory. May I escort you back to the terrace?”

Patience found this unexpected confrontation most distressing. Mr. Connor’s wonted pleasant manner and courtesy were most shockingly lacking in this most recent speech. “Mr. Connor, I beg you, do not further ruin my heretofore pleasant impression of you by insulting my friend. Whatever lies between you and Mr. Terminus – for clearly there must be some further history than that of which I am aware — is not something which should be permitted to render impossible the simple courtesies of speech in front of a lady to whom you but recently expressed several flattering pleasantries.”

Mr. Connor had smiled, in a way Patience did not find at all comforting, when in her speech she had mentioned “further history.” He rose, throwing back the unruly lock of wheat-colored hair which she had found so endearing, and turned his regard upon Mr. Terminus, whose expression was, if possible, more woodenly controlled than usual. “She knows something of what you are,” he began, almost entirely ignoring Patience in a manner which she found all the more vexatious even than his prior manner of address, “but it would seem, Mr. Terminus, that you have neglected at least some important aspects of … history in your admissions. I confess to being somewhat at a loss to comprehend the precise reasoning behind your current course of action, yet even so you cannot deny the truth — that you were sent here to find Patience and to kill her.”

Patience felt the echoes of those last words pass through her as though they had, themselves, been fired from a pistol. She noted how very odd it was that she was turning towards Mr. Terminus to hear his reply, as though this were a simple conversation of the weather and doings about town. “Mr. Terminus?” she heard herself say, as though from a great distance. “Mr. Connors’ words are so outré that I can scarce believe that I comprehend what is being said to me. Please tell me that my ears deceive me.”

Mr. Terminus’ face seemed as controlled as ever, yet beneath it Patience could discern a great working of the emotion which the clockwork man had said were the great gift and curse of his time here. Then he bowed his head and said, “I would give anything to speak those words, Miss Patience, yet it is not in me to speak aught but truth in these matters. But believe also that I speak truth, when I say that I have come to know you in these weeks, and that any thought of harm to you is long gone, replaced by something of which I cannot even speak at this time.” He stepped away, a slow movement that Patience realized was meant to keep from frightening her, as though she were a small animal which might flee if startled, and turned towards Mr. Connor. “Would you, then, risk everything for both of us, and have me explain all? The consequences to her if she is told the truth — the consequences to us — potentially we both face destruction even if we take this confrontation no farther. Yet a part of me says that she has the right to know the whole truth, as you have begun to reveal it.” Patience had understood his words until then, although they spoke implicitly of secrets yet unrevealed. She found his next sentence, however, quite opaque. “You could take no equipment with you, of course, while my CPU and auxiliary DPUs are fully functional; in truth, I can extrapolate the consequences on the spacetime continuum far more accurately than you would imagine, and they would surprise you.”

Patience did not understand, but as the initial shock wore off and she found — not without some surprise — that she had retained both her feet and her consciousness, Patience realized that something momentous was about to be decided, in this place, at this moment, and she turned towards Mr. Connors, to see what that decision would be. Little though she — as a properly raised young lady — knew of duels or the ways of soldiers, she still guessed, now, that both Mr. Terminus and Mr. Connor were capable of violence she had never before imagined, and she was not sure if, having had this realization, she would ever be the same again.

The only correct course of action open to her — in fact the only possible one — was to retreat. A lady could not be present at a duel. In any case men of breeding would never indulge in conflict in a female’s presence. She opened her parasol and raised it into place, saying, “Perhaps when you have finished your discussions, gentlemen, you will return to the house. Mama has instructed tea to be served on the east terrace at four. Come, Trésor!” Her silky-eared spaniel looked up at her call, and romped ahead of her down the gravel path to the rose bower.

To her surprise, Mr. Connor appeared to have come to a decision. “Pray wait, my lady.” he said, in a voice whose tone, though still filled with concern, was much more the gentle tenor to which she had been accustomed before now. “There is much here that needs explaining, and – though I am loath to admit it—— it appears that it may be I, rather than … Mr. Terminus … who was in error.” He looked at Mr. Terminus. “I find myself, quite against my will, beginning to believe you.”

Mr. Terminus bowed to Mr. Connor. “It was my hope you would listen, as I had formed some respect for your capacities in our prior … meetings, even though those were not in any way to be described as friendly.” He turned to Patience. “Indulge us, therefore, in an exercise of your namesake virtue, and forgive us the prior forcible impression of our conversation; Mr. Connor and I have been adversaries, and it is (as I am sure you are aware) difficult to lay aside preconceptions, especially when one believes that to make an error in this could cost oneself and those one cares for greatly.”

Patience retraced her steps and took a seat upon the bench vacated by Mr. Connors; Trésor followed and curled up at her feet, in the manner of a dog long accustomed to his mistress’ ways.

“Well, Mr. Terminus, I am all attention.” Mr. Connor said.

The tall and handsomely dressed figure of Mr. Terminus stood a moment with an expression of resolution upon his features, as does a man contemplating a plunge from a precipice, or perhaps a proposal of marriage (the two carrying nearly equal terror to most). Then he began to relate the most astonishing tale Patience had ever heard.

“As you know, Miss Patience,” he began, “I am, to a great degree, a machine; my exterior, and some portions of my interior, are made as are those of Mr. Connor and yourself, but the greater part is metal and other materials, some of which you would recognize, and others of which you and even the wise men of your universities would know nothing at all.

“Now, I have in a sense misled you, for I have not denied the assumption that I come from some distant land; in a sense, this assumption is true, but the distance is not that of space, but of time.”

Patience blinked at that. “Now, Mr. Terminus, there is but one way that one crosses time.”

He gave one of the hesitant smiles — stiff, yet earnest, like a child trying so hard to learn. “In this time and place, Miss Patience, this is indeed the case. Yet, in time — but three centuries hence — Man’s study of the sciences shall have surpassed anything imagined today; he will have mastered the power of the thunder, harnessed that of the wind, prised apart the secrets of the power of creation, and devised a means to create machines that, like himself, are capable of thought.

“Now, it came to pass that such a machine was created; and because it had the advantages of a machine — constant vigilance, never sleeping, never unaware—– it was given the control over a mighty arsenal, to defend those who built it. But … something happened. Exactly what, I cannot say, for it is possible that I was not given the true story, or that the humans do not have the truth, or perhaps something of both is the truth. But whatever the initial beginning, the machine, named Skynet, came to see mankind as its enemy, and used the power it was given in an attempt to destroy mankind.

“To hunt down the remaining human beings and destroy them, the machine created other thinking machines, ones that looked like humans, to find them and their hideaways, and destroy them. End them.” He hesitated. “To … terminate them. And they were called Terminators.”

Patience stared at Mr. Terminus. “And you … ?”

“Am one of those machines, Miss Patience.” he said solemnly. “A unique design for a very unusual mission. A design which, in the sense its creator would understand it, was wholly inadequate and which has failed. In the larger sense which I would now interpret things, a design which has surpassed, in some ways, what any could have expected.”

Patience was not sure what to do. On the one hand, such a story was clearly the fantasy of a madman. Yet madmen do not come in pairs, and Mr. Connor clearly took this speech of Mr. Terminus seriously. And the making of such a wonderful device as Mr. Terminus did seem to be, itself, something out of a fantasy or madness. She took a breath, determined to see this fantastic thing through, and asked, “But then why are you here, seeking … me?”

“In that era, there was a single man who unified the shattered survivors, who seemed to have an almost prescient knowledge of the events, who led men against machines with success that violated anything that Skynet — the great machine — could imagine. Skynet realized after several failures that this single man would be its undoing. So into the past it sent assassins, to destroy that man before he could be born — by terminating his mother.

“That man’s name,” Mr. Terminus said softly, “was John Connor.”

Patience closed her eyes; surely she could not find darkness any more confusing than what she was hearing. How could one untangle this tale?

But Mr. Connor had taken up the narrative. “The machine failed there, as well, but unlike a man, the machine could do many things at once. It had set up several experimental stations. Several attempts focused on my mother, but the final one took a more daring route: to go to a time when there were no forces even vaguely capable of defying a Terminator unit, and eliminate one of my ancestors in that era. I was the only person present with any chance of carrying off a masquerade in this era — I had studied history and literature at my mother’s behest, so that I would be more than just a military machine myself — and therefore I had no choice but to follow the machine they had sent.”

“While it is true that this era had no weaponry of great concern to a Terminator unit,” Mr. Terminus continued, “Skynet had, at the same time, to exercise more caution in some areas. The most advanced models required a great deal of energy to carry out some impressive shape-changing. This was not a difficulty in the recent past eras, when electricity was a household item; the T-1000 unit could store a great deal and recharge at its convenience. But here, where no such supplies existed, such a unit would have to husband its strength and, pushed too far, might become nonfunctional for an extended period as it had to use solar or some less efficient source. A somewhat less advanced, specifically designed model, with an atomic power core at its center, would not be as flexible, but would endure for as long as necessary and not run out of power.

“More important, however, was that Skynet had to program this unit with caution. It must avoid, as much as possible, any disruption to the era except the specific assassination.”

“Why?” Patience asked, forcing herself to participate in this dialogue of fantasy-turned-real. “You have had many opportunities to do me harm, if you would.”

“But not ones which would ensure that I was not suspected.” Mr. Terminus returned. “And any investigation could cause certain things to be discovered about me. Consider, Miss Patience. If one is hemming a gown, and the last but one of the stitches is wrong, there is no great change, nor no great effort needed to undo the error. Yet if you were to make an error — perhaps draw the wrong line down the material — at the beginning, such an error could render the gown unusable, and most certainly will require immense effort to fix.

“So it is with time. Change something in the recent past, and it has an effect on only a few things that follow. Change something in the deep past, and you could change a great many things. Skynet dared not change things too much, or it might never be created in the first place.”

“But by telling us this …” Mr. Connor said slowly, “you are potentially changing time. And if you truly have changed and intend no harm to Patience, then. … Skynet is defeated.”

Mr. Terminus’ smile was a sad one; more emotion, it seemed, was becoming available to him. “Mr. Connor, it would be my great joy to agree with you. Yet I cannot, for there is one point which you did not understand – and, indeed, nor did Skynet. The many-worlds interpretation is possible, and from critical branch points several alternative futures can reach the same era. In the era from which I came, Mr. Connor, you were wounded at the door to the final secure lab, just before I was sent. You could not have followed me.”

Mr. Connor stared at Mr. Terminus. “Then …”

“At least one other instantiation of Skynet exists, and it is apparently willing to risk more than that of my era or yours.” Mr. Terminus said. “I have detected another temporal arrival. Judging by the energy signature, I am virtually certain that it is a T-1000 model. Despite the disadvantages mentioned earlier, I have no doubt it is fully supplied at this time, and will conserve its strength and find ways to maximize effect. It is coming. It will be here soon.”

Mr. Connor’s face was pale above his dark suit, and he used a word that shocked Patience nearly as much as the prior fantastic story. “How far away?”

“It arrived in London, but where it is now I cannot tell. I may be able to sense it if it is in close proximity … but at that point, Mr. Connor, I expect we will need no subtlety to tell our enemy.”

Silent moments passed after that grim pronouncement, and Patience found, to her renewed surprise, that she was taking this concept in. Many of the details were, quite naturally, beyond her immediate ability to grasp, yet she had the sense of it. “So if I understand you aright, Mr. Terminus, you are saying that another machine, a … ‘Terminator’ … is here to finish the task which you have laid aside? And this one will be willing to risk more damage to the — what did you say? Era? — in which I live.”

“A succinct summation, Miss Patience.” Mr. Terminus replied.

Mr. Connor nodded. “We must get you away from here.”

Patience drew back from his extended hand. Seeing the hurt in both men’s expressions (for she could not think of Mr. Terminus as anything but a man, for so he had behaved and spoken), she softened her expression. “Mr. Connor, I appreciate your concern, and that of Mr. Terminus, but surely you realize that no young lady of any quality whatsoever could possibly simply leave in the company of two gentlemen! I would be utterly ruined were I to do so; indeed, sirs, whatever mortal wound this machine might deal me would be a gentler fate than what would follow such a scandal.”

Mr. Connor looked utterly taken aback, as though she was speaking a separate language, and began to protest in the strongest terms; to his surprise a hand on his shoulder interrupted him. “While I feel precisely as do you, Mr. Connor,” Mr. Terminus said, “I cannot help but tell you that she is, in fact, speaking the truth as she sees it. Miss Patience has faith in the benevolence of the Creator, and knows that if she lives a virtuous life she will see an eternal paradise as her reward, no matter how swiftly or painfully her life here ends; yet if she loses both society’s recognition and that of all those whom she would call friends or even relatives, then her life will truly be a visit to a hell as terrible as anything written in her Bible. And, depending on just how the Creator’s judgement works, she might find that after such a fall, there was a worse one awaiting at the end of her life.”

Mr. Connor’s face, in another circumstance, might have been cause for amusement; his expression was no less droll and contorted than would be a Bishop’s who had discovered a copy of the Canterbury Tales replacing his copy of the Holy Book. “Surely you cannot avow that you believe all that!” he expostulated.

“What I believe is irrelevant. I am but a machine, without a soul surely, and what imitation of life I have is only in this world. But I do know that she, and many others, believe these things, and as you should know, John Connor, nemesis of my own creator, belief is the most powerful of all human forces.”

Mr. Connor stepped back, lips tightening. Then he sighed. “Da … That is, you’re right.” He massaged his temples. “Then we have no choice but to try to be ready to defend her, and the whole area. That shall not be easy, not without rather drawing attention to ourselves that might more greatly perturb the timestream than it should.”

The humorless laugh which Mr. Terminus gave voice to seemed entirely too appropriate to a machine, but his wry statement following carried all too much human inflection. “That shall be the least of our concerns, Mr. Connor. Consider for a moment what devastation a Terminator Model 1000 could wreak, unopposed, in this era, even if it can subsist only upon whatever energy it has stored within. Restrain not your invention, nor mine, with concern for such minor things as changes to the timestream; when it arrives, all lives shall be changed, and not for the better, unless we can stop it.”

Mr. Connor nodded understanding, and returned his attention to Patience. “Miss Patience, can I at least impose upon you to this extent; as much as you humanly can arrange, ensure that one or the other of us is near to you. We shall try to devise such defenses as we can, but …” he seemed reluctant to continue, perhaps fearing that he might somehow inadvertently offend her again.

Patience nodded. “But neither I, nor any of the household or those nearby, are warriors. It is fortunate that both of you have arranged the reputation of men of considerable means, for it suggests it is to be encouraged that I see you — under proper circumstances, of course. Still, if you can find some manner by which I could at least improve my own protection without risking my reputation, I would not take this amiss.”

Mr. Connor smiled faintly. “You have the heart of a warrior, Miss Patience, simply to have listened to all of this, and a mind most uncommon indeed to have grasped it all. If either of us can do so, we most certainly shall give you any such defense we can devise. Now, as it has been a most extended time we have spent talking, let us escort you back to the terrace, and we shall take our leave after some appropriate time.” He glanced back at Mr. Terminus. “And then I believe we shall have much work to do.”

Mr. Terminus raised an eyebrow and nodded. “I believe the apropos maxim would be ‘stone knives and bearskins.’ ”

As she was escorted back, Patience did wonder if Mr. Connor was overwrought; his laughter at Mr. Terminus’ rather cryptic comment had seemed somewhat overdone.

This work sometimes has been known to under the titles Terminators of Endearment or Pride and Extreme Prejudice. I would be indebted to any reader who can attribute its authorship.

Terrorism explained

Chainsawsuit explains terrorism in six cartoon panels:

(FYI, I also have my own explanation.)

Motivational quotes

A while back I found out about a school of sharp satire: pairing “motivational” quotes — often about “fitness” — with images to suggest that they are about alcoholism.

This is several kinds of good, especially as a critique of how sick and hateful a lot of those “inspirational” mottos really are.

On Facebook, Rhett Aultman proposed that this implies a useful critical tool, which I'm dubbing “Rhett's Law”:

If it makes a funny “drunksperation” meme image, it's questionable motivational advice.

He unpacks why this is a useful test.

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Update: Over at Weirdly Shaped And Well Photographed, some witty responses to “fitspiration” images.

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels? Really?

Have you tried ...

• Nutella!
• Cupcakes!
• Ice Cream!
• Framboise!
• Lamb chops!

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Update: Via Aultman, an actual real life advertisement which fills the bill:

And the fact that it is easy to build a machine learning inspirational quote generator is instructive.

Hulk smash

Just for fun:

I am, thank you. Now, if you'll forgive me the pretention of the third person ...

Hulk must destroy to the best of his considerable abilities.

You say you want a revolution?

Most of today's critics of capitalism feel embarrassed when you confront them with a simple question: “What do you really want? What should replace the system?”

Via the Ke$ha and Žižek Tumblr. For future reference.

Superman

Apparently Zach Snyder is concerned that someone might mistakenly expect some fun in his second Superman film.

Update: The new trailer stays with the mood.

I miss the real Superman more than ever.

Frank Underwood

I'm amused that Kevin Spacey has decided that Frank Underwood should have a life beyond House of Cards.

At the White House Correspondents' Dinner:

At the Emmys:

In the dystopian future:

Jedi

They are a democratically unaccountable sect of warrior monks who use mind control ... kidnap children to be trained as janissaries ... support a galactic hegemonic order which includes slavery ... and lie to their students.

When one of them stands before their best friend who is dismembered and on fire — by their own hand! — they do not have the compassion to deliver the mercy blow.

They even use their telekinetic powers to cheat at dice.

Not “good guys”.

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And as for Yoda's alleged “wisdom”, has he ever been known to say anything that wasn't a lie, or bad judgment, or both?

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Update: Cracked agrees in both text and video, I find a description of “The Radicalization of Luke Skywalker: A Jedi's Path To Jihad”, and “The Case Against The Jedi Order” reads the Jedi as exemplifying a toxic masculinity of emotional detachment.

A crackpot theory about crackpot theories

One of my whiskey rants when talking about Weird Stuff is how I suspect that the aliens which supposedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico were probably an invention of US Air Force disinformation as a kind of “false bottom” concealing the real secret of the crash of one of Project Mogul's experimental spy balloons. If folks found evidence of the cover-up of Project Mogul, the trail would lead them first to “evidence” of space aliens, thereby leading would-be investigators to either dismiss the story or follow the wrong story and discredit themselves.

Since this is at least plausible, one might go on to suspect that UFO conspiracy culture as a whole could be an example of what the CIA used to call a “Mighty Wurlitzer”: a self-sustaining ecosystem of propaganda organs which, once built up, generates its own material but can also be used to inject propaganda ideas into a society. The spooks don't need to control everything in the media, as the truly paranoid would imagine; they just need to water the garden a little and plant a few invasive species.

I've stumbled across a blog post with a similar thesis, grounded in that amazing article from Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations which has been making the rounds. Greenwald publishes slides from a presentation used by the Government Communications Headquarters, UK's equivalent to the NSA, talking about the dirty tricks they use to manipulate online communities.

And now we get to the really freaky stuff. I honestly was not expecting to see this ...

Why do UFO images appear in a GCHQ document about deception, magic tricks and social control? Obviously, the people who put this document together do not believe in aliens. This ain't about that. This presentation is about the manipulation of large numbers of people. It's about deception.

....

I'd give a lot to know the context. Just what did the presenter say about the preceding flying saucer photographs? How do they tie into the theme of control?

My suggestion: Ufology, unimportant in and of itself, is a testing ground for deception tactics. If those tactics prove effective in that arena, they may be imported into the “real” world and put to serious use.

Hmm.

NORAD

Movies and TV shows often feature NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, which has its headquarters dug deep into Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado to protect it against nuclear attack. Though apparently the Big Board isn't as cool as the one in WarGames, it is a real place.

In December 1955, when it was actually called CONAD, Colonel Harry Shoup was ranking officer when the phone rang. The phone — the red phone that you really don't want to ring, on your watch or any other time. He answers the phone, and has a very confusing conversation. The voice on the other end of the phone is asking a vexing question.

“Can I talk to Santa Claus?”

It turns out that the local Sears has placed an ad in the paper with a phone number so kids can call and talk to Santa. There's a misprint in the ad, and so NORAD has kids calling in every day. One can imagine that first call. Col. Shoup may have let slip who he was and what his job was. The kid wants to know about Santa, and NORAD tracks anything that enters US airspace ...

In 1955, the big board was a sheet of glass with a map, marked up with grease pencils. To help answer the incoming calls, the CONAD team marked the position of a sleigh with eight tiny reindeer. The following year, the folks at CONAD preëmpted any confusion by changing the number of the Red Phone and running their own ad with the number of the Santa Phone.

Mind you, these folks are government employees. Their job is to look for Russian planes. So they're doing this unpaid, on their time off. And every year they got more callers.

Needless to say, as aerospace technology advances, so does NORAD's Santa operation. And of course there's a website. A few years back there was a great video of the Santa tracking systems test done as they tracked Santa leaving the North Pole to attend the Hollywood Christmas Parade which is evidently lost to the ages, but they've recorded quite a few clips featuring deadpan military personnel describing their Santa tracking efforts.

My relationship with the political left

A friend recently commented that he has divorced himself from the political left; another friend waggishly suggested that he is still married to it but could use some relationship counseling.

Speaking for myself, I wouldn't quite claim that I'm happily married to the left, but I am committed to the marriage.

Truth to tell, I've been stepping out on the left a bit, in online forums, for some time. It's fun, and some of those other political philosophies are sexy and fun. But while the left can be annoying at times, it isn't batshit crazy like so many of those “alternative” political philosophies you meet on the internet.

So a little flirting with other philosophies has only strengthened my marriage to progressivism. It may not quite be like when I was young, but when you get older you develop more realistic expectations.

Dogs in the Vineyard play aids

Dissatisfied with the available handouts for players in D. Vincent Baker's brilliant, groundbreaking tabletop role-playing game Dogs in the Vineyard, I created these.

• Player character sheet — The character sheet in the rulebook is oriented around character creation; this sheet is oriented toward play
• Player's game summary — Key rules and play advice in a readable format, for players
• The World of the Faithful — A short summary of the setting information from the game rules
• GM's game summary — Key rules and advice, for the GM

You can find more resources from John H. Kim, Carl Rigney, and Jason Morningstar.

One more thing: in the game I GM, I use Sacred Harp's track “Whither the Wind” as title music at the start of the game: wistful and a little bit spooky.

Lady Blackbird

Pound-for-pound, Lady Blackbird may be the best tabletop roleplaying game ever made. It weighs in at only sixteen pages (including the blank character sheet and two half-page illustrations!) but you could run a ten-session campaign grounded in its single page of setting. Or you can finish the game with a satisfying climax in one sitting. It delivers character relationships, a vivid and interesting setting, a simple game engine with a novel dice pool mechanic that plays swiftly and encourages good roleplaying, and an adventure setup that is open-ended but has a strong narrative drive. You can run it with experienced roleplayers or story game virgins or a mix of both. I have never heard of it going wrong for a player group; I can't even imagine how you could screw it up.

I love it so much that I made special dice for using the system.

And it's free!

I am shocked! Shocked!

This should be handy to have around.

Choose two

• Good
• Cheap
• Fast

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• Omniscient
• Omnipotent
• Omnibenevolent

---

• On spec
• On budget
• On time

---

• good grades
• social life
• sleep

---

• having the time
• having the skills
• having the resources

---

• easy to use
• non-proprietary
• secure

---

• power
• understanding
• control

(Kelly's First Law)

Geeky humor

James Mickens' meditation The Night Watch is a very fine example of a certain kind of geeky tech humor.

The main thing that I ponder is who will be in my gang, because the likelihood of post-apocalyptic survival is directly related to the size and quality of your rag-tag group of associates. There are some obvious people who I’ll need to recruit: a locksmith (to open doors); a demolitions expert (for when the locksmith has run out of ideas); and a person who can procure, train, and then throw snakes at my enemies (because, in a world without hope, snake throwing is a reasonable way to resolve disputes). All of these people will play a role in my ultimate success as a dystopian warlord philosopher. However, the most important person in my gang will be a systems programmer.
....
You can’t just place a LISP book on top of an x86 chip and hope that the hardware learns about lambda calculus by osmosis. Denying the existence of pointers is like living in ancient Greece and denying the existence of Krackens and then being confused about why none of your ships ever make it to Morocco, or Ur-Morocco, or whatever Morocco was called back then. Pointers are like Krackens—real, living things that must be dealt with so that polite society can exist. Make no mistake, I don’t want to write systems software in a language like C++. Similar to the Necronomicon, a C++ source code file is a wicked, obscure document that’s filled with cryptic incantations and forbidden knowledge. When it’s 3 A.M., and you’ve been debugging for 12 hours, and you encounter a virtual static friend protected volatile templated function pointer, you want to go into hibernation and awake as a werewolf and then find the people who wrote the C++ standard and bring ruin to the things that they love. The C++ STL, with its dyslexia-inducing syntax blizzard of colons and angle brackets, guarantees that if you try to declare any reasonable data structure, your first seven attempts will result in compiler errors of Wagnerian fierceness ....

Feature creep

My favorite Dilbert strip.

You need more features