The Book Shelf: City of the Chasch by Jack Vance

The City of the Chasch is the first novel in the Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure tetralogy and it's also the first novel I've ever read by the author. Having hear of Vance's reputation for years before picking up this story I had high hopes for what was to come, but the first 16 pages almost did me in. Vance begins writing the conversation his introductory characters are having in what I recognize as a Robert Heinlein style only he clearly doesn't have Heinlein's ability for delivering a quick paced and witty dialogue. Thankfully Vance quickly abandons the style for ground where he's clearly more comfortable. 

The lead character of the Planet of Adventure series is Adam Reith - a quasi-combination of scientist, engineer, and Green Beret - who crash lands on the newly discovered planet of Tschai and is promptly captured by a bunch of savage humans who mysteriously live on the planet. It's here that we meet one of his two long time companions in Traz Onmale. Traz is the leader of the tribe Reith has been captured by and the two slowly but surely develop a report. Soon, however, events transpire to make their report Traz's downfall and the two are forced to flee from the tribe and make their escape across the wilds of Tschai. It's in their escape across Tschai that the adventure really begins in earnest as Reith meets his third companion, Ankhe at afram Ancho (simply referred to as Ancho by Reith and Traz), and then encounters a wide variety of aliens deadly wildlife. 

Vance's writing really shines in the scenes where Reith, Traz, and Ancho are making their way through the wilds and encountering the early dangers of Taschai. Every new encounter feels familiar and yet alien enough to remind the reader that Reith isn't on just another version of earth but on a whole new world. It's a clear sign of a master working at his craft. Which leads me to the other thing that I really love about this book, and about the series as a whole, and that is how Vance skillfully blends the use of futuristic technology with medieval weaponry. In the same scene where you'll see aliens flying about in sky cars he'll also have sword wielding human beings and gun totting bandits. It's a juxtaposition that serves him well and that makes these wild moments where Reith is racing to save himself or one of his companions all the more exciting. His exploration of the Chasch city and his revenge on the bandits who control the city of Pera exemplify why this juxtaposition works so well. 

Overall the City of the Chasch was an excellent introduction to Vance and a very enjoyable book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I do have some advice to offer if you plan on picking it up; though, instead of purchasing the four individual books in the series save some money and buy the omnibus like I did. 

Also, check out this bitching cover without the text on it. Not at all how I pictured the Blue Chasch but it's pretty fucking awesome all the same. 

Well, Shit.

I'm writing this on my phone right now because our modem just bit the dust. Should have a new one Wednesday. So until then I'm sorry that I can't respond or anything but thems the breaks.

Anyway, I have a post scheduled for tomorrow morning and I'll be responding to everyone soon as the new modem gets going. This post is shit.

Also, the fucking Braves, man. The fucking Braves.

A Healthy Disregard for Religion Could Do All Our Games Some Good.

One of the things that I have always liked about the older version of the world of Greyhawk is that there was always a pronounced bit of disregard when it came to religion in the game world. You could openly worship H.P. Lovecraft's Elder Gods in Greyhawk City and so long as you kept your sacrifices to animals you purchased and to people who were down for getting offered up to the Elders no one gave two shits about what you were doing. Unfortunately that all changed in the game world as TSR moved away from that disregard of religion and instead made the decision that the choice of your religion could color your character in a more pronounced way. As a result you couldn't be an open worshiper of of an "evil" god, such as Nerull, or else some self-righteous paladin from one of the "good" religions was going to make it their life's goal to plant your character's ass into the ground and see if you could grow a better person from your bones.  

This decision to make religions matter in this fashion drove a lot of choices that players could have made into these underground and secretive places where a division within the players was built not on who got the most loot but on who was worshiping the wrong, imaginary deity. It infected every aspect of the game as cults always worshiped evil gods bent on doing harm to the whole world and a worshiper of Nerull or Vecna was always up to no good. In a lot of ways it simplified the world into this trite, little thing that mattered less. 

Don't get me wrong: there should absolutely be unifying forces in the world, and religion is a powerful unifier; but there is no reason to make the choice of a religion dictate whether a character is a good or evil actor in the game. We have lot of other reasons to kill the latest non-player character (NPC) we come across without dropping an imaginary religion into things as a moral panacea for our actions. 

More later. 

Lawfully Stupid While Walking into the Dungeon

The inclusion and use of alignments in defining how our characters are supposed to act is one of those great issues in the role-playing enthusiasts community. There are countless posts on blogs and forums where people are vehemently arguing about how to properly play a given alignment and how others are doing it wrong. More often than not it seems like most of these discussions are really just people arguing against things they don't like in their home games and have projected onto these alignments as a result.

I recently ran across this very phenomenon when I went over to the Lifetime Loser Lounge. A friend of mine had invited three teenage players into his game. The three players decided to play characters with different alignments. The first decides to play Lawful Evil, the second elects to become Lawful Neutral, and the third chooses to become Lawful Good. The trio then send their characters into the dungeon where the Good and Evil player begin to push themselves to the extremes of their alignments which soon sends them into exasperated fits with each other. Their bickering gets so bad that the Neutral player finally shouts, "God, I'm so tired of playing with the Lawful Stupid!" Now, none of them are talking to each other but they're telling anyone who will listen about why the other players' alignment choice is the reason why the game fell apart. As one of the young ladies playing told me, "Playing my alignment correctly is what broke the game and it's why I fucking hate alignments to begin with!"

After listening to her describe what happened in the game I'm fairly certain that the actual problem isn't that she was playing her alignment correctly, or that anyone else was playing it incorrectly, but rather that the Good and Evil players were pushing their characters to act in a way that their mental caricatures of how those alignments would act. To put it another way, they wanted the "Good" or "Evil" descriptor of their alignment to stand out so they pushed their characters to act in a way that left no room for question about where they stood on that spectrum. They left themselves no room for common ground because they allowed themselves to be fooled into believing that their alignments dictated their actions.

That isn't how role-playing games are supposed to work.

Alignments aren't supposed to be the thing that dictates how you play; rather they're supposed to inform how you play. That's a complicated way of saying that an alignment is there to help you pick which choice you want your character to make and not to force you to make that choice. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of players treat their alignments as this constrictive thing that will force their character to make a set choice every time and it causes them to forget that role-playing games aren't choose-your-own-adventures. We have the freedom to chose what our characters care about and what gets under their skin and what the repercussions for such things have for our characters.

Unless we're playing Cavilers. Then we must fight, and fight, and fight until we die.

Larry Elmore, title unknown

2016 Year in Review (Blog Statistics and Notes)

Last year I allowed my production on the blog to significantly diminish. For the first two years of the blog I made a real effort to publish something daily with the idea being that it would make me a better writer. In a lot of ways that effort paid off. My writing did improve greatly; however, in my effort to keep up with the aggressive schedule I had set for myself I started reading a lot of other blogs in our little community and I discovered that 2016 brought out the worst in many of us. So many "role-playing" blogs concerned themselves with poisonous backbiting that they never touched on their main topic: role-playing games. Now I'm not saying that if you have a role-playing blog that you should focus exclusively on role-playing games - God knows that I don't - but that sort of cancerous talk just sucked the will right out of me. We're in a new year now so I'm going to try pushing this blog back out into the role-playing community and see if we can't get a bit more of the conversation going in the right direction. Who knows?

Not me.

Anyway, I read recently that if you want to succeed at a project that you're putting effort into then you need to discuss it publicly. So as part of this process I want to kind of take a note of where my blog is sitting right now and where my goals for the blog are being set for 2017. 

Dyvers as of 12/30/2016 (when I'm writing this)

• Currently Dyvers has a total of 770,256 page views
• Each post has an average of 743 views.
• The most viewed post is The Great Blog Roll Call with 55,651 page views
• No top ten post has less than 1,000 page views.
• No Quarterly Reports posted throughout 2016 so progress throughout the year is murky
• Posts throughout 2016: 22 (lowest production level in history of the blog).
• Reader engagement: Has remained solid despite the reduced posting rate with comments and +1s reaching regular levels.
• Blog Earnings through Advertising on Blog: $5.27 (two lotto tickets in my future kids!)

Dyvers Goals for 2017

• Break 1,000,000 views on the blog.
• Expand reader engagement by being quicker to respond to comments both on Google+ and Blogger.
• Use correct tags throughout 2017 and correct erroneous tagging in 2013 posts to allow for easier exploration of the blog.
• Complete Artisan Toolkits series (14 parts remaining).
• Complete Prelacy of Almor series (5 parts total - planned).
• Complete 2017 Great Blog Roll Call
• Complete 2017 Best Reads of the Week run throughout the year.
• Make it through the year with an average of one post daily.
• Post Quarterly Reports.
• Complete every project I begin this year.
• Post regular campaign write-ups throughout the year.
• Further explorations of Greyhawk.
• Read, and create a teaching series on, Burning Wheel.
• Read, and create a teaching series on, Rifts.
• Double my earnings through the Advertising on the blog (yeah, gonna buy me three lotto tickets).

In closing I just want to say that 2017 has the potential to be an exceptional year not only for my silly, little blog but for our hobby as a whole. Wizards of the Coast has been putting out fantastic adventure modules throughout the last two years and I don't see any reason why this would stop in 2017 (and for me that fills a big part of my role-playing budget). The indie press revolution in role-playing games continues to become stronger as we're seeing a diverse field of games that are capable of producing fun and exciting experiences. Here's hoping that all of us find new favorites in the coming year.

The Ultimate Table, for the Ultimate Fan? I Think Not.

So over on AWE me they decided to build what they're calling "The Ultimate D&D Gaming Table." Watch the video below and then we'll talk some more

 

Back?

Okay. So I wasn't very impressed with the table. I mean the 50" TV and tablets are really nice but the there are just a lot of little things that I don't like. Here's the run-down.

Pros

• Sculpting on the legs is way cool.
• 50" TV display is a good choice.
• Tablets are a thoughtful addition.
• The size of the table is just about right for your average group. 
• Glass tabletop was a good choice.
• Nice to have pull out trays for keeping books/tablets/junk off the top of the table.

Cons

• I hate the stain
• Don't like the choice of birch for the wood
• Hate the laser cut ampersands; they look cheap.
• The design on the chairs wasn't interesting and they didn't look comfortable.
• Spray painting the really interesting sculpted legs black is a baffling choice as those things should have been fully colored to make their details pop.
• Rolling box is very small.

What about you guys? What did you think?

Seems like a Fight's Brewing.

Wonder what this is all about?

It's A False Argument but Batman Running Through the Streets Should Make Up for It.

Last night I was catching up on some of the Black Gate archives I've missed when I ran across an article by Bob Byrne, Why I Went Old School - or Swords & Wizardry vs Pathfinder, that kind of got my attention. In the article Byrne discusses the reasons why he went with Swords & Wizardry over Pathfinder by trotting out many of the same arguments that you'll see time, and time again, whenever the discussion gets brought up online. But the one that got my attention was this one:

". . . I used this when explaining S&W to one of my new players. Now, in Baldur’s Gate, he would click on the ‘Find Traps’ skill and if a trap was nearby, it would be outlined on screen in a red box if detected. And he is aware that in a modern game (like Pathfinder), you would roll a 20-sided dice against your Find Trap skill. 

But I explained it won’t work that way in S&W. After I described the environment, he would have to tell me how he goes about looking for traps. Does he examine the ceiling? Does he roll a round stone across the floor? Does he put his fingers in the mouth of the idol (always a dangerous move!)?  

To try and bluff your way past the guard at the city gate, you don’t simply roll against your Bluff skill. You have to tell the same story to the Referee that your character is telling to the guard. With appropriate gestures . . .  

The Referee may simply determine whether it worked or not. Or if the try was plausible, they may roll a dice against the character’s Charisma score, with a bonus or penalty, depending on how good the story was. So, even though there is a version of a skill check involved, it’s driven by the player action, not the character sheet . . ." (Byrne)

Since I first became aware of the Old School movement I have always been bothered by the argument that rule heavy systems, like Dungeons & Dragons 3e and its kin, force the players to play the game through their die rolls and character sheets rather than to take control of the action through the use of their own creativity and narrative choices. At its core this argument is one that would have you believe that providing players who might not be as creative with a way to accomplish their goals and to participate in the game in a meaningful way, such as through the use of skill checks, eliminates the possibility for them to play in any other way - which is bullshit. 

Players did not suddenly cede their right to make a meaningful narrative choice, or use their creativity to deal with a problem in the game, simply because they elected to play a game that provided them with a skill check to accomplish the task without having to detail every action they might make in the attempt. Things like skill checks were not designed to eliminate the player's ability to think outside the box but rather to allow them the opportunity to accomplish actions which they might not have the natural skill or knowledge to otherwise attempt. They are an aide to play; not a hindrance binding play behind a massive block of rules. 

Now back to my book.

Works Cited
Byrne, Bob. "Why I Went Old School - or Swords & Wizardry vs Pathfinder" Black Gate. https://www.blackgate.com/2016/09/08/why-i-went-old-school-or-swords-wizardry-vs-pathfinder/ Accessed December 15, 2016

Tagless and Purposeless.

I've been looking over the way that I tag my blog now, as compared to when I started, and I have to say that I wish I had been more thorough when I first started. Like now when I begin posting an article my goal is to make it easily index-able for myself so that I can find the things that I've talked about in the past without having to wonder if I'm treading over the same ground that I've passed before. I mean, fuck, I've been writing this blog now for four years and in that time I've written over a thousand posts. And don't get me wrong; I've talked a lot of shit in those thousand posts, but it would be nice to know what I've said in the past without trying to remember what I said four years ago. 

Ah, fuck it. 

I'll fix that some day when I've got time and nothing else to do. #NeverBitch

That Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 Trailer Though . . .

When the first Guardians of the Galaxy trailer released a few years ago I found myself stupidly excited for the movie. Here was an opportunity for me to finally see one of the great, weird comics that I grew up loving and that I always had trouble finding on a regular basis. I hoped that the movie would be a fun ride, and I wasn't disappointed.

Now the second trailer has released and I'm so damned excited that I can't wait for the movie to finally release!