Apparently my building site is a white square

Hey,

Flood - major - non-tradeable:

If the primary victim has units on a flood plain, a maximum of 17 unit points are lost from the flood plain. Secondary victims on same flood plain lose 10 unit points. Cities on black city sites are safe. If not on any flood plains one coastal city is eliminated. Mitigated by Engineering.

Yeah so since apparently we're playing old school and there aren't enough civ advances for everyone (i.e. all the utility pumps in the state are sold out), I'm left with a small shop vac to try and get the water out (or at least down).

non-gamer speak: My basement has flooded. My understanding is that this house hasn't suffered from flooding in decades. So...hooray for me. Luckily we don't have too much down there and more of it is in plastic tubs/waterproof, but still. Not how I wanted to spend my day.

later
Tom

Apparently my building site is a white square

Hey,

Flood - major - non-tradeable:

If the primary victim has units on a flood plain, a maximum of 17 unit points are lost from the flood plain. Secondary victims on same flood plain lose 10 unit points. Cities on black city sites are safe. If not on any flood plains one coastal city is eliminated. Mitigated by Engineering.

Yeah so since apparently we're playing old school and there aren't enough civ advances for everyone (i.e. all the utility pumps in the state are sold out), I'm left with a small shop vac to try and get the water out (or at least down).

non-gamer speak: My basement has flooded. My understanding is that this house hasn't suffered from flooding in decades. So...hooray for me. Luckily we don't have too much down there and more of it is in plastic tubs/waterproof, but still. Not how I wanted to spend my day.

later
Tom

It wasn't horrible enough?

Hey,

So this weekend I was in a LARP about peace negotiations over the Darfur region in the Sudan. A game like that has a lot of potential to really explore a thorny issue. It also has the potential to go really, really badly.

The game was...problematic.

Here's the deal. I was the Chinese ambassador. In real life, the Chinese give money/weapons to the Sudanese government in exchange for lucrative oil deals and they generally support the status quo. They do this both to maintain their lucrative oil deals and because they've got their own human rights issues so they're touchy about the idea of a sovereign nation being "interfered" with by outsiders.

That right there is more than sufficient to be a base on which to portray a character and present a viewpoint. But apparently not enough for the author. So things got..."juiced up".

So now the Chinese are running a pair of top-secret projects in the Darfur region. The first is an autonomous robot drill that can dig a pipeline into neighboring Chad and steal their oil. The second is a mind-control device.

Yeah. A mind-control device. Which we're testing out in Darfur.

And this project is so top-secret that lots of people know about the mind control device and probably the robot drill. Oh, and the robot drill achieved singularity thanks to a virus piggy-backing on some porn downloaded by a research scientist and the robot made a cyberwar attack on China and...

Yeah. Problematic.

I haven't even mentioned the rebel leader who was hit by mind control and thought he was Klatuu from "The Day the Earth Stood Still", or the Janjaweed leader who was a psychotic cannibal or the Russian official who was a super-spy with a stealth jet pack and a space laser and....

Yeah. Problematic.

And then there's the thing I'm not even going to mention.

I do think there's a very good game to be had out of this. People game out all kinds of crisis situations and they can be useful in better understanding something that gets glossed over. This just wasn't that game.

later
Tom

It wasn't horrible enough?

Hey,

So this weekend I was in a LARP about peace negotiations over the Darfur region in the Sudan. A game like that has a lot of potential to really explore a thorny issue. It also has the potential to go really, really badly.

The game was...problematic.

Here's the deal. I was the Chinese ambassador. In real life, the Chinese give money/weapons to the Sudanese government in exchange for lucrative oil deals and they generally support the status quo. They do this both to maintain their lucrative oil deals and because they've got their own human rights issues so they're touchy about the idea of a sovereign nation being "interfered" with by outsiders.

That right there is more than sufficient to be a base on which to portray a character and present a viewpoint. But apparently not enough for the author. So things got..."juiced up".

So now the Chinese are running a pair of top-secret projects in the Darfur region. The first is an autonomous robot drill that can dig a pipeline into neighboring Chad and steal their oil. The second is a mind-control device.

Yeah. A mind-control device. Which we're testing out in Darfur.

And this project is so top-secret that lots of people know about the mind control device and probably the robot drill. Oh, and the robot drill achieved singularity thanks to a virus piggy-backing on some porn downloaded by a research scientist and the robot made a cyberwar attack on China and...

Yeah. Problematic.

I haven't even mentioned the rebel leader who was hit by mind control and thought he was Klatuu from "The Day the Earth Stood Still", or the Janjaweed leader who was a psychotic cannibal or the Russian official who was a super-spy with a stealth jet pack and a space laser and....

Yeah. Problematic.

And then there's the thing I'm not even going to mention.

I do think there's a very good game to be had out of this. People game out all kinds of crisis situations and they can be useful in better understanding something that gets glossed over. This just wasn't that game.

later
Tom

The Folding Revenusia

Hey,

So this weekend I finished up a couple of books.

The first was The Folding Knife by K J Parker. The writing in this book was really good, but I had a tough time reading through it for some reason. I think because it's a "rise and fall" kind of book and I'm less interested in reading about the fall.

Bassianus Severus is given a folding knife by his mother when he turns 10. His mom got the knife off of a thief who was trying to rob her when she was pregnant with Bassianus (or Basso as he's known throughout the book). Basso keeps the knife with him as he becomes a powerful businessman and then First Citizen of the Vesani Republic. Basso is a bit like Scrooge McDuck in that he has an uncanny knack of turning disasters into lucrative triumphs.

But eventually his good fortune runs out and his many accomplishments all come undone at a stroke. I've heard rumblings that there might be a sequel for this and Basso does escape a harsher fate so it's possible, but I doubt that there will be any return for Basso.

Like I say, the writing is strong, but it's not what I want from a story so it was tough going.

On the other hand, Venusia by Mark von Schlegell was fairly easy to read through and also quite well-written. It's definitely a more "arty" sort of sci-fi book. I was put in mind of the fever-dream narrative of Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. The colony of Venusia on Venus is a wonderful place. Twice a day, everyone goes down for the Feed -- a sort of group orgy/drug trip mediated by these native flowers you eat. Not partaking in the Feed can have serious psychological consequences, mostly in the form of vivid hallucinations.

Rogers Collectibles has been off the Feed for several days now. He's got a business to run and a valuable book to sell. But the hallucinations are getting worst and he winds up at Dr. Sylvia Yang's office to have his mind examined by n-scope. But Roger's appointment is broadcast by Martha Dobbs, reality TV personality. This alerts Niftus Norrington that Roger should come in for re-education and Dr. Yang should be arrested for not doing the re-education. This starts a chain reaction where all of them go off the feed.

And things get rapidly trippy from there. The book delves deeply into stoner logic land where "what if we're the only reality there is?" kind of stuff happens. As befits hallucinations, the stuff that should be specific is vague and the stuff that's vague is rich with detail. It's not trying to answer those questions so much as it wants to paint a psychedelic landscape.

It ventures deep into artistic, stylized sci-fi and that's not usually where I hang out, but it was well put together and I feel if you like Delany or Mieville you might like this as well.

later
Tom

The Folding Revenusia

Hey,

So this weekend I finished up a couple of books.

The first was The Folding Knife by K J Parker. The writing in this book was really good, but I had a tough time reading through it for some reason. I think because it's a "rise and fall" kind of book and I'm less interested in reading about the fall.

Bassianus Severus is given a folding knife by his mother when he turns 10. His mom got the knife off of a thief who was trying to rob her when she was pregnant with Bassianus (or Basso as he's known throughout the book). Basso keeps the knife with him as he becomes a powerful businessman and then First Citizen of the Vesani Republic. Basso is a bit like Scrooge McDuck in that he has an uncanny knack of turning disasters into lucrative triumphs.

But eventually his good fortune runs out and his many accomplishments all come undone at a stroke. I've heard rumblings that there might be a sequel for this and Basso does escape a harsher fate so it's possible, but I doubt that there will be any return for Basso.

Like I say, the writing is strong, but it's not what I want from a story so it was tough going.

On the other hand, Venusia by Mark von Schlegell was fairly easy to read through and also quite well-written. It's definitely a more "arty" sort of sci-fi book. I was put in mind of the fever-dream narrative of Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. The colony of Venusia on Venus is a wonderful place. Twice a day, everyone goes down for the Feed -- a sort of group orgy/drug trip mediated by these native flowers you eat. Not partaking in the Feed can have serious psychological consequences, mostly in the form of vivid hallucinations.

Rogers Collectibles has been off the Feed for several days now. He's got a business to run and a valuable book to sell. But the hallucinations are getting worst and he winds up at Dr. Sylvia Yang's office to have his mind examined by n-scope. But Roger's appointment is broadcast by Martha Dobbs, reality TV personality. This alerts Niftus Norrington that Roger should come in for re-education and Dr. Yang should be arrested for not doing the re-education. This starts a chain reaction where all of them go off the feed.

And things get rapidly trippy from there. The book delves deeply into stoner logic land where "what if we're the only reality there is?" kind of stuff happens. As befits hallucinations, the stuff that should be specific is vague and the stuff that's vague is rich with detail. It's not trying to answer those questions so much as it wants to paint a psychedelic landscape.

It ventures deep into artistic, stylized sci-fi and that's not usually where I hang out, but it was well put together and I feel if you like Delany or Mieville you might like this as well.

later
Tom