Tales of the Blue Dolphin

I'm always thinking of new RPG systems, and ... well, it's a stupid thing to focus on. It's like having great new ideas for fax machines. No one needs them, there's no demand, no money, no purpose. Shut up and play with Bitcoin or something.

Anyway ... It's a fantasy system, but designed for heroic myth, not post-Tolkien fantasy. A bit like D&D -- I want it to look familiar -- but with a different focus. Abilities are Strength, Dexterity, Spirit, Wisdom and Charisma. Strength indicates damage and resistance to it; Dexterity often you hit, and how hard you are to hit; Spirit how often you can use special abilities; Wisdom how many skills and special abilities you have; and Charisma ... well, Charisma is complicated.

I think Gygax confused matters when he made Charisma a proxy for charm and social skill. For most of its history, Charisma meant "favor," divine favor in particular. This was Weber meant when he talked about "charismatic authority": It meant you were given the right, by God, to throw out tradition and establish a new order. In our secular age this was translated into presence and personal magnetism ... but if you're going for an archaic atmosphere, Charisma's old meaning makes more sense.

Now D&D's clerics had a "prime requisite," Wisdom, and that score can indicate "divine favor" when combined with cleric (or druid or paladin) level. For me, though, that's part of the problem, the fact that it's only something clerics and their ilk have to worry about. However, just about every character in heroic myths -- from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Journey to the West -- is effected by their standing with the gods. Sure, they defy the gods from time to time, and sometimes they get away with it, but it isn't something they can ignore.

So in my game, I'm using "charisma" in this old-fashioned sense. How would it affect play? That's something I'll write about in another post.

The other night moonlightalice and wellgull were telling me about playing Settler of Catan marathons until the wee hours of the morning. Naturally I thought of Minecraft because ... well, that's what I've been doing since Spring 2011, but also because both games are about resource extraction, and I would love to see trading arise in a competitive, multiplayer game of Minecraft.

Anyway, here's a first draft outline of how it might be set up:

• The game map uses the new "large biomes" feature. All cattle and sheep would be killed off in advance.
  
• There are a series of designated "intersections," placed at equal-size intervals around the map.
  
• In half of the intersections (or so) there will be ruins of villages and the ruins of a special building (a library, cathedral, a pyramid, whatever). Monster spawners will be placed in both.
  
• In order to "control" an intersection, the player would have to have a contiguous, powered railroad connecting it to her starting position or to other controlled intersections. (My guess is players would be given some or all of the materials needed to build it.)
  
• In order to "control" a village, she would have to control the intersection, destroy the monster spawners, and repopulate the village to a certain level. Two villager eggs would be placed in a chest in the ruined village, along with two animal eggs, either cattle or sheep.
  
• In order to "control" a special building, one would have to control the nearby village and rebuild the structure, based on specifications given in a book in the ruins. Some materials that are not available locally would be required.
  
• Players would start the game on opposite corners of the map, with a starter chest of adequate personal provisions (food, sticks, maybe iron, a bow and some arrows).
  
• PvP would be prohibited, although some chests may include deadly monster spawners (creepers, blazes, what have you) which could be placed at will.
  
• Players would get 1 point per controlled village, 1 per special building, and 2 points for longest (rail)road. First player with 10 points wins.
  

Any thoughts?

In March I fantasized about "a real God-game." Recently, I decided to whip up a paper & pencil RPG with the same theme. Tentatively called Titanomachy (literally "War of the Titans") you can see a 6-page draft here at Google Docs. While there have been a number of RPGs for the American Gods-style Deities-at-the-Disco settings (such as Scion and Nobilis) I don't know of many that start in the age of mythology, so maybe there's a demand for this sort of thing.

Hoo-boy, two months since my last entry. There's been a lot of stuff to blog about, both personal and non-, so much so that it's prevented me from blogging about anything. "Do I write about the honeymoon ... or the new job ... or the health care decision ... or the comic-book cheesecake debate ... or game ideas... or...?"

Well to hell with it, here's a series of bullet-point summaries.

• Kimberly and I took a cruise to Turkey and the Greek Islands. Both of us have posted pictures, and I'd be happy to share impressions with anyone interested.
  
• While I'm still working for the State Senate, off-and-on, I also got a statistician/mapper job for the Nassau Legislature Democrats. It's been frustrating, largely (I've heard) because the county executive (a Republican) has blocked the supplies we need. So after a month I still don't have a key to my office or my mapping software, and I've spent far too long with nothing to do.
  
• Naturally I'm happy with the Supreme Court decision on the ACA, but alarmed at the closeness of it. Thinking about the Supremes fueled my whole idea of a "Rational Republic," but since that isn't on the agenda, I think there should at least be a supermajority requirement for striking down acts of Congress. Great decisions like Brown were unanimous, and while I wouldn't demand unanimity I think a 6-3 (or even 7-2) majority should be necessary.
  
• On comic-book cheesecake, it may surprise some people but I fall on the anti-cheesecake side. I do so with reservations, though: I find some of the anti- arguments unconvincing, or inconsistently applied, and my general skepticism of politicized cultural criticism kicks in from time to time. I do think more women should be recruited into the industry. Maybe Wonder Woman could be reserved as a comic for female writers and artists? I think the ghost of William Moulton Marston would approve.
  

I could say more about the last bullet point, and comment on game ideas and so forth, but this is long enough for now.

Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times reports on the fate of Anders Breivik:

If the court finds him insane, Mr. Breivik will be kept under forced psychiatric care “for as long as his illness persists” (possibly the rest of his life). Otherwise, Mr. Breivik’s maximum sentence will be 21 years, although a judge can extend his incarceration after that point if he’s still considered dangerous.

By American standards that’s a shockingly lenient punishment. Comparing one high-profile case with another—if a Florida jury finds George Zimmerman guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, he’ll face a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a minimum penalty of 25 years.

The American system, oriented around punishment (vengeance) and containment (keeping dangerous people off the streets), is arguably more satisfying for a crime like Mr. Breivik’s. But outside of worst-of-the-worst type cases, it’s Norway, with its focus on rehabilitation, that has the more rational and effective prison policy.

Norway locks up only one-tenth as many people as the US. The sentences (as noted) are much lighter, and conditions in prison much cushier, with each cell having a flat-screen TV, an unbarred window and a private bathroom. Nevertheless they have a far lower recidivism rate: Only 20% of their inmates return to jail after 2 years, while 60% of ours do. Their system clearly works better than ours.

In comments you hear a standard response, one that comes up a lot with crime and punishment: You can't compare Norway with the US because Norway is a "homogeneous society." It's never explicit why "homogeneity" leads to low crime rates, and I wonder if its a euphemistic way of saying "they have less crime because they have fewer n*****s." I doubt they're saying America's history of exploitation and racism is responsible, because while that might explain the US approach to crime, it spectacularly fails in justifying it.

I think there is something to the latter, in fact. When you look at homicide rates around the world you find the highest rates are found in Russia, Latin America from Mexico to Brazil, and South Africa. If we put Putin's Russia aside for a moment, we see a history of race-based slavery and segregation is something they all have in common. It's telling that the highest US crime rates are in the South and Southwest, as well, with slavery and Jim Crow in the former and the Mexican underclass in the latter.

In these countries the police are -- or were for far too long -- an occupying, alien army, deployed against an underclass that "only understood force." Arbitrary violence -- and thus imprecise and unjust violence -- was deployed against them, while they were denied any opportunity to improve themselves. In an environment like that the law has no legitimacy; it's something to be avoided, not cooperated with, no better or worse than the gangsters down the street ... and the gangsters know the community and can keep closer tabs on you.

So crime is high, and it stays high long after slavery is abolished, Apartheid ends and the lynch mobs go home. People hate and fear criminals, and there's nothing wrong with that, as long as they don't let hatred and fear overwhelm their better instincts. Unfortunately it's easy to be overwhelmed when criminals don't look or talk like them; it's easy to fall back on old assumptions, that you're dealing with subhumans who "only understand force." Even when it's clear that treating criminals decently, as the Norwegians seem to do, actually makes the streets safer.