tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26335175496481288782024-02-18T20:23:52.163-08:00Silent Ellipsis' DreamscapeEllipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-2577581792623688992015-03-07T14:12:00.000-08:002015-03-07T14:23:56.074-08:00Why I started calling "Lead" and "Follow" for contrasApparently there's been a recent explosion of conversation among contra callers about what terminology to use when calling, and an <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ND3fNe3MSgkI4eJtm6uRNVvL_Vxm0riBrNgLWOBMztk/viewform?c=0&w=1">online poll</a> on the topic. I haven't read all of the conversation yet myself, but I just helped launch a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/138986506219837/">new dance series</a> in Philly using the terms "lead" and "follow," and a number of people have asked why I made that decision. I thought it would be helpful to explain some of my thinking.<br />
<br />
Before I begin, I should note that the decision wasn't made in a vacuum - my housemates Patrick and Shane suggested it, and we had several conversations about it before our first dance. This post, however, is about my own personal reasoning. Also, this gets kind of academic, so if you want the short version it's this:<br />
<br />
(1) When starting a new dance, we had a rare opportunity to start our terminology from scratch without confusing new dancers or having to overcome the standard usage of the series, so we went for it. We didn't make an announcement about it or call the dance "gender free," we just did it.<br />
<br />
(2) "Lead" and "Follow" are at least somewhat descriptive of the roles, easy for me to remember as a caller, and intuitive to many dancers (especially those who dance other styles).<br />
<br />
The long version follows.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Goals of Word Choice</i></b><br />
<br />
There are a slew of different goals that callers have in mind when choosing which words to use. We want to communicate clearly and concisely. We want to make all dancers feel included, whatever their background or experience level. We want the calls to contribute to the atmosphere and make the dance fun. We also want to connect this dance to a greater tradition and larger community of folk musicians and dancers. We're performers, but also teachers and representatives of the community.<br />
<br />
The use of gender-prescriptive language can make some dancers feel less welcome, but can also affect the overall atmosphere of a dance. On the other hand, many callers feel that they are able to most effectively communicate and connect to the tradition of the dance by using the language of gender.<br />
<br />
I don't think that these various goals are necessarily competing with each other, but they all need to be considered.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Prescription and Translation</i></b><br />
<br />
So this brings us to my first main point, which may surprise some people - I don't think that using the terms "gent" and "lady" is problematic on its own. There are two different roles in contra dancing, and noting that one is the traditional "gents' role" and the other is the traditional "lady's role" doesn't enforce gender as long as it's clear that each role can in fact by danced by anyone. The word "gent" just becomes a code word for one of a roles, rather than prescribing who should dance the role. The dancers can translate the term "gent" in their head to mean "the person who ends swings on the left" or some other equivalent description.<br />
<br />
That said, I find the calling habits of many or most callers problematic, because that isn't the end of the influence of gender on their language. Many callers will use the words "gents," "men," and even "boys" interchangeably, and use "he" and "she" to describe individual hypothetical dancers dancing the roles. They will make coy references to the assumed gender of the dancers by saying things like "women are always right" or "I emphasize the 'gentle' in 'gentlemen'" or even "the women go to the center and the men start salivating."<br />
<br />
When we talk about the atmosphere of the dance and making dancers feel welcome, this is what we're really concerned about - language that prescribes a gender (and gender-specific behavior) for a dance role. I would strongly encourage callers who use any terminology for the roles to think about the impact of all the language they use when teaching and calling. The choice of terminology is neither the only nor the most important choice made by a caller when it comes to making dancers feel welcome and comfortable.<br />
<br />
That all said, the use of gender-neutral calling terms, all else being equal, seems like an advantage on its own. If I think of the terms "gents" and "ladies" as just code words for the roles, why not pick code words that lack a gender association? Or what if we could just skip the translation step altogether?<br />
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<b><i>"Lead or Follow?"</i></b><br />
<br />
So assuming we're going to use gender-neutral terms of some kind, the next question is: which ones? There are a lot of options that have been proposed, such as "elms and maples," or "jets and rubies." There are dances that distinguish on the basis of who wears an arm band. The basic reason I didn't want to use any of these is that they seem too arbitrary.<br />
<br />
"But Bryan, weren't arbitrary terms the point? We're trying to eliminate the gender associations of the traditional terms!" Fair point, straw-person, but remember what I said about translating code-words above? If the term has no relationship to the role at all, then what happens in dancer's heads is that they translate "jet" into "gent" (and then into something more descriptive, like "person typically on the left"), and the terminology starts to feel like an exercise in covering up gender associations, rather than a means of eliminating them.<br />
<br />
So like I said before, why not skip the translation step altogether? When I started thinking about gender neutral terms, there was one point that kept resurfacing in my head: No matter what terms were being used by the caller, if I wanted to ask another dancer which role they preferred, every time, at every dance, I would use these words: "Lead or follow?" I think most others who dance both roles in contra ask the same question. The same words appeared on the first generation of "I dance both roles" buttons worn by many dancers.<br />
<br />
The more I thought about it, the more I knew, in my heart of hearts, that the roles in contra dancing <i>are </i>"lead" and "follow," and that every other term used by callers is a translation. It's true that compared to most other social dances, the roles are more equal, and that many moves don't require a "lead" because they are choreographed and performed autonomously. However, the distinction between the roles, aside from happenstance starting positions, comes out when executing flourishes, which are typically initiated by the person in the gent/elm/left-default role. That's called a lead.<br />
<br />
There is no inherent gender association of the terms "lead" and "follow", and there's nothing demeaning about dancing the "follow" role (it's a real skill to be able to listen to another dancer's movements). I understand that some dancers specifically appreciate the relative equality of the roles in contra (I do, too), and want to distinguish the relationship of the roles in contra from the roles in couple dances such as swing or blues. By the same token, however, using the terms "lead" and "follow" in contra makes the dance more intuitive to those with couple-dancing experience. In Philadelphia, many of the young dancers who are interested in contra are also blues dancers, and to them it would seem strange for us to use any terms other than "lead" and "follow." Many of these same dancers dance both roles in blues.<br />
<br />
I am aware of arguments against the use of "lead" and "follow" in contra, and to play devil's advocate I tried to raise these arguments when discussing terminology with my fellow organizers. In the process of trying to make the point, the arguments all felt forced coming out of my mouth. So I decided to give "lead" and "follow" a shot.<br />
<br />
<b><i>The Result</i></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
This is the most important point, in my mind: using the terms "lead" and "follow" just worked. In our first dance, new dancers and experienced dancers all picked the terms up and danced without apparent confusion. As a caller, once I got used to it, the terms felt totally natural. The thing that really surprised me is that aside from one or two people saying "Hey, I appreciate the gender-neutral calling," we didn't even get feedback about it. There wasn't a big debate. There wasn't a divide between the progressive and conservative dancers. Everyone just danced.<br />
<br />
Many of the considerations above will vary from community to community. There are reasons why our dance in Center City Philadelphia was able to use the terms so smoothly, and anyone else having this discussion about their own dance series needs to consider their local culture. As far as Contradelphia is concerned, though, we are sticking with "lead" and "follow," and perfectly content with it.<br />
<br />
-Bryan SuchenskiEllipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-27494743903747977202015-01-19T14:44:00.000-08:002015-01-20T08:26:06.249-08:00Contradelphia! And New Dances!Time for an update in the life of Bryan-the-Caller. I've been calling more and more frequently, and just over a week ago my housemates and I launched a brand new dance series in downtown Philadelphia called Contradelphia, which was a success by every measure: there were 80+ dancers at our very first event and lots of energy in the hall, and the new dancers all seemed to get along fine and stay the whole evening.<br />
<br />
One thing that was interesting for me as the caller was our decision as a group to use gender-neutral calling. Traditionally, contra dances are called with a "gents" role and "ladies" role, but anyone can dance either role. Given the fact that not all gents-role-dancers are men, a lot of people in the community have discussed using gender-neutral terms, and for Contradelphia I went with "lead" and "follow," because those are the most common terms in other forms of social dancing. What ultimately surprised me was how easily the dancers accepted the new terms. I took Shane's advice and made no announcement about the terminology - I just started using the terms in the beginner's workshop as though they were standard, and then started calling that way when the dance began. I made it easier on myself by selecting dances early on that had very few gender-specific moves, so that most of the time I could rely on familiar terms like "neighbor" and "partner," and let myself ease into the words "lead" and "follow" over the course of the night.<br />
<br />
Another thing that was interesting for me was calling a relatively new dance I'd written in an audience made up largely of new dancers. Once again, it went more smoothly than I expected, and I have heard that a couple other callers have called my most recent dance, so I figure there's enough interest for me to post the choreography up here:<br />
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<b><br /></b>
<b>Winter is Coming</b>, by Bryan Suchenski<br />
Becket-R<br />
<br />
A1. Balance the ring, Gents roll neighbor away across the set*<br />
Balance the ring, Gents roll partner away along set<br />
A2. Balance the ring, Gents draw neighbor to their side and swing<br />
<br />
B1. Ladies chain across to Partner<br />
Promenade across the set and loop counter-clockwise to face new neighbors**<br />
B2. Ladies gypsy R<br />
Partner swing<br />
<br />
*At Contradelphia I called this as "Leads roll your neighbor away across," but I trust the reader to translate terms as appropriate for their calling situation.<br />
**This is the same progression as in Sharks in the Pond. I usually pause after the chain and ask dancers to look on their left diagonal to identify their next neighbor before doing the promenade-loop. The loop is to each dancer's left, but on at least one occasion dancers growled at me when I told them to "loop left," so now I say "counter-clockwise." This progression ends the dancers one space to the right of where they started, along the set (hence, it's a rightward-progressing becket).<br />
<br />
<br />
The name of the dance, of course, is a reference to Game of Thrones, and at least one person I encountered responded to the name, quite adorably, "I keep hearing people say that phrase, but it sounds so mean and ominous!" The original choreography for this dance I settled on six-months ago was much more complicated and included a promenade-into-revolving-doors progression. The concept there was to start with a dance that felt open and bouncy and gradually became intimate and partner-focused (the transition toward Winter, in my head). Some of that feeling was kept in the final version.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, prior to Contradelphia I had started thinking about gender-roles in contra dances by focusing on gender-specific moves, the most egregious of which is the ladies chain. Although there exists a move called the "gents chain," it is called very rarely because it begins with the opposite hand that the ladies chain does (the left-hand), and feels backward, which means that no one in the room knows how to do it properly and it feels awkward for 90% of the dancers. I decided it was silly to have a separate "gents chain" and "ladies chain," so I wrote two dances, in which two moves were separated from their gender roles, and renamed them the "left-hand chain" and "right-hand chain":<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Ambidexterity</b>, by Bryan Suchenski<br />
Becket<br />
<br />
A1. Long lines, roll away (gents in front of P)<br />
Ladies LH chain to N*<br />
A2. Circle L 1/2 and N swing<br />
B1. Ladies RH chain to P<br />
Pass through across, turn R and promenade single along set<br />
B2. P gypsy and swing**<br />
<br />
*This is the move often called "gents chain." It is identical to the typical ladies chain, except it begins by offering the left hand across to the other lady, and the courtesy turn ends with the lady on the left. For the courtesy turn, the rule remains: right hand to right hand, left to left, gents back up, ladies go forward. Let dancers practice the new chain a couple times.<br />
**To face their partner, ladies should turn over their right shoulder to begin the gypsy on the side of the set across from their new neighbors.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Equivalent Exchange</b>, by Bryan Suchenski<br />
Becket (starts in lines/4)<br />
<br />
A1. Down the hall, turn alone, back<br />
A2. Gents RH chain to N*<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Star L<br />
B1. New N balance & swing<br />
B2. Give and take to ladies side<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>P swing, end facing down<br />
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<div>
*The converse of Ambidexterity - here the gents are performing the move typically called the "ladies chain." It is identical to the ladies chain, in every way, except executed by gents, with the ladies courtesy-turning them. That means that gents end up on the right, and ladies on the left. Remind dancers not to "fix" this or they'll end up in the wrong place after the star!</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Of the two, Equivalent Exchange is my preferred dance to call, both because it's easier for dancers to pick up and, in my mind, more directly confronts the typical role restrictions. I've called it at Pinewoods Camp and elsewhere, and any reasonably open-minded audience should have no difficulty with it.</div>
Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-67442227375836454192014-04-10T14:14:00.002-07:002014-04-10T14:29:40.439-07:002048 and Marketing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Two things struck me about the latest game-nerd darling, <a href="http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/">2048</a>: the number of friends who have independently recommended it to me, and how quickly I got bored of it. Eventually I figured out why there's such a disparity in my reaction to the game and everyone else's, and I'll focus on that here because I think it's interesting. In a separate post I plan to talk about some of my own favorite mobile games of the last year.</div>
<br />
First, to clear the air - 2048 is a good game. I like puzzles, I like simplicity, and I like numbers. I like the smooth and intuitive mechanics. I like the fact that the game has a set endpoint - a goal established from the beginning. Given all of this, I was surprised by the fact that the game only appealed to me for about 20-30 minutes before I got tired of it.<br />
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The reason 2048 failed to hold my interest is simply that I've played this game before, and I'm not talking about the fact that the game is a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taylor-casti/2048-knockoff-threes-iphone-game_b_5064541.html">clone several times over</a>. That's its own entire topic. I didn't play 1024 or Threes, but I have played the same category of puzzle game, starting with <a href="http://spryfox.com/our-games/tripletown/">Triple Town</a> a few years ago, and manifesting in other games like <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tuesdayquest.puzzleforge">Puzzle Forge</a>. You see, the big secret of 2048 is that at its heart, the game is not about numbers - it's about spatial planning. The novice player will focus on matches they see and try to build up mid-size numbers only to discover that these midsize numbers are too far apart to be effectively combined, and they quickly run out of space. In order to get the largest numbers, you need to plan ahead and make sure that your mid-sized numbers end up next to each other, so that you can combine them into the really big numbers.<br />
<br />
With this kind of puzzle, the number theme is unnecessary. The key is that you have like tokens that combine into bigger (higher-value) tokens, and those bigger like tokens can combine, but only with each other, requiring exponentially more space to build each new token up the hierarchy. The size of the board then determines how far up this totem pole combination will become difficult for players, as the amount of space required for all the components of a big token outstrips the playing area. In Triple Town these tokens were bushes, that combined into trees and then into houses of various sizes, ultimately leading to a floating castle. In Puzzle Forge you combined metals into higher and higher quality smithing materials, and then could cash in your big tokens to produce items and sell them. You could just as easily have the tokens be single-celled organisms building into animals up an evolutionary chain, or coins combining into larger units of currency. The only requirement is that there is a clear sense of hierarchy, and that the game gives you limited space to work within.<br />
<br />
So what makes this iteration of the spatial-planning puzzle game so much more popular than its predecessors? The answer is the marketing and virality. I don't mean that they spent a bunch of money on ads, but that design decisions, and specifically the decision to represent its tokens as powers of 2, enable the game to appeal to new audiences and be more sharable than its predecessors. Even though the game, according to me, isn't about numbers, the decision to theme it on numbers is brilliant for a few reasons.<br />
<br />
First, the numbers make the hierarchy of tokens instantly intuitive, rather than requiring the player to learn that bushes make trees which make houses (which is totally arbitrary). This, combined with the simplicity of the confounding agent (the fact that new numbers appear randomly, rather than being placed, which serves the same chaos-inducing role that ninja bears did in Triple Town), means that the game's learning curve is so shallow that it needs no tutorial. You can literally hand your phone to a friend and just say "check out this game" and they will fairly quickly figure out how it is played (in fact, this is how the game was first introduced to me).<br />
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Second, the numbers theme makes the game extra appealing to math and science nerds, especially since powers of 2 are evocative of computer science (bits and bytes and all that jazz). The theme not only vindicates nerds, it gives the game an air of being pseudo-educational or at least more intellectual than a game that is visually about trees and ninja bears. The nerd appeal is particularly evidenced by an <a href="https://xkcd.com/1344/">xkcd comic</a> on the game (random side note: when plugging in that link I half-expected the comic's serial number in the url to itself be a good 2048 combination).<br />
<br />
Third, and perhaps least importantly, the use of a number for the title of the game makes it appear at or near the top of an alphabetized list. This doesn't matter too much for people playing the flash game on their browser, but if you download the game on an Android device, you may notice that it will be the first item to appear when you press that "apps" button. Moreover, the title is a good one because it is easy to remember and communicates the game's goal.<br />
<br />
Of course, much of the game's success is a matter of sheer luck (especially since it is a clone of other games that came out a month earlier to less fanfare), but luck only allows a game to get noticed - in order to sink in, it also needs the qualities that make it viral, and the difference in reception between Triple Town and 2048 is, in my mind, something to take note of. It is fair to reply to this entire post by noting differences in basic game mechanics between the two games, and there is an argument to be made that swiping the board is simply a more interesting mechanic than placing tokens. However, as someone who played Triple Town fairly thoroughly, I recognized the same area of my brain activated when planning in 2048. They are most certainly kindred spirits.Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-91698029042637530902014-03-28T14:47:00.002-07:002014-03-28T14:48:09.091-07:00Can Companies Patent Human Genes?<div style="text-align: left;">
Sometimes I write tech policy articles. This one is reposted from the <a href="http://riipl.rutgers.edu/can-companies-patent-human-genes-a-myriad-of-problems-with-the-courts-answer/">Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law.</a></div>
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<div align="CENTER">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Can Companies Patent Human Genes? A Myriad of Problems with the Court's Answer</b>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Last June was a <u><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/26/news/la-pn-doma-supreme-court-ruling-20130626">busy</a></u> <u><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html?pagewanted=all">time</a></u> for the Supreme Court, and amidst a flurry of
important decisions, it was easy to let opinions slide through the news cycle without a careful analysis. So when the Supreme Court announced its decision
in <i>Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics</i> (<i>Myriad</i>), unequivocal victory was declared for the public interest. The <u><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/us/supreme-court-rules-human-genes-may-not-be-patented.html?_r=0">New York Times</a></u> headline read
“Justices, 9-0, Bar Patenting Human Genes” and the <u><a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights-free-speech-technology-and-liberty/victory-supreme-court-decides-our-genes-belong">ACLU's blog</a></u>
nearly shouted, “VICTORY! Supreme Court Decides: Our Genes Belong to Us, Not Companies.”
<br />
<br />
One month later, Myriad, the same company that had lost its case before the Court,
<a href="http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2013/07/16/undeterred-by-the-supreme-court-myriad-starts-suing/#more-13000">
filed patent infringement suits
</a>
against two smaller companies concerning the same genes that were the subject of the June decision. How is that possible? A closer reading of <i>Myriad </i>reveals a problematic opinion that simply fails to address the core issues at stake in the gene patent debate.
<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The Decision</b>
<br />
<br />
What was this case about? Myriad Genetics owned <u><a href="http://www.google.com/patents/US5837492">patents</a></u> on “isolated DNA molecule[s]”,
including BRCA1 and BRCA2, which can indicate a predisposition to breast cancer. The company then built its business on offering an exclusive test on the
isolated gene, and suing anyone else who attempted to offer breast cancer screenings based on the same gene. This resulted in both a heightened price for
clinical tests, and a potential roadblock for other researchers, leading the Association for Molecular Pathology, several universities, and several patient
advocacy groups to go to court in order to have the Myriad patents invalidated.
<br />
<br />
The case made its way up to the Supreme Court, which rendered a <u><a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-398_1b7d.pdf">unanimous decision</a></u> on June 13<sup>th</sup>, 2013. The Court invalidated
Myriad's patents on isolated genes, on the basis of the fact that a DNA sequence found in humans “is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely
because it has been isolated.” However, there was a second variety of patent at issue in the case – patents on complementary DNA, or cDNA. A cDNA molecule
is made by copying all of the protein-coding portions of a particular gene, and thus contains the same code as the naturally occurring gene, except that
excess non-coding segments (called introns) have been removed. The Court held that cDNA, since it was prepared in a laboratory, could be patented.
<br />
<br />
This distinction drawn between cDNA and naturally-occuring DNA, or gDNA, is at the heart of the logic of the Court's opinion. What the opinion notably does
not rest on is the competing interests of those who invest in patents and the public at large.
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<b><br /></b>
<b>The Public Interest</b>
<br />
<br />
There is a great deal of popular interest in the question of patentability of human genes. Patents on genes can make not only tests, but potential
treatment options for many patients expensive or simply unavailable, while independent researchers may run into roadblocks in trying to progress knowledge
because making any use of a patented molecule is an infringement of a patent owner's intellectual property rights. On a more basic emotional level,
however, many individuals simply feel that it is wrong for a private company to “own” a DNA sequence that naturally occurs in human bodies.
<br />
<br />
At first glance, the Court's decision does seem like a victory for the public interest because it declares naturally occuring genes ineligible for patent
protection. However, isolating a gene is only the first step in most clinical or research applications of gDNA, and the second step in many of these
applications is to create a copy of the exons – cDNA. As a result, many important avenues of research that involve an isolated gene sequence are <u><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-decision-rules-cdna-patentable-means-research-130100069.html">still blocked by cDNA patents</a></u>. Even
the narrow situation presented in the <i>Myriad</i> case, diagnostic tests of BRCA1/2 to assess a woman's risk of breast cancer, expose clinicians to
potential lawsuits
<u>
<a href="http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2013/07/16/undeterred-by-the-supreme-court-myriad-starts-suing/#more-13000">
because of the surviving cDNA patents
</a>
</u>
.
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<br />
This is particularly troubling because as with gDNA, a company that patents a cDNA sequence does not invent the genetic sequence, which leads one to ask –
what is the patent office incentivizing by granting such patents? The patentee does not have to discover a new specific new use for the cDNA sequence, nor
a new method of creating it. The patent for a sequence can theoretically go to the first company that happens to produce cDNA in a lab even if the gene in
question is already understood, and the patent, once granted, prevents any and all use of that genetic sequence in cDNA.
<br />
<br />
One response is to point out that the Supreme Court only ruled on subject matter eligibility – a patent on cDNA can still be denied by the USPTO for other
reasons, namely lack of utility or obviousness. The utility requirement does place some barrier in the way of a research firm patenting huge swathes of DNA
without rhyme or reason, but it is a small barrier, because the existence of any single known use for a particular gene allows a patent holder to
monopolize all future uses, known and unknown (including uses that will be left undiscovered because of the effect the patent has on research).
<br />
<br />
The obviousness criterion could potentially be a very important tool for filtering out inappropriate patents, because the process of creating cDNA is “well
understood,” to use the Court's language, and it should be a obvious step to anyone studying a particular gene. However, technically the patent act only
invalidates a patent if it obvious relative to other patents or published discoveries and inventions (called “prior art,” see <u><a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/103">35 USC 103</a></u>). Even though human genes are “naturally occurring,” an invention based upon
them is not obvious unless that gene has been described in a patent or publication, and since the Supreme Court just invalidated patents on isolated genes,
it is now even less likely that any such publication will preempt future applications for patents on cDNA (though there are other ways to find a patent
application on a gene obvious – see <u><a href="http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions-orders/08-1184.pdf"><i>In re Kubin</i></a></u>). In
short, the patentability of cDNA provides research firms powerful patent tools nearly as extensive as they would have had if the Supreme Court came out
differently in <i>Myriad</i>.
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<b><br /></b>
<b>Patent Applicants</b>
<br />
<br />
So if the above is all correct, should patent applicants be happy about the <i>Myriad</i> opinion? The answer is still no, because the Court's logic is far
more broad than it admits. The distinction the Court relies upon, between substances that are “naturally occuring” and those that are not, buries a
century-old line of cases that defined when “extracts” or “purified” forms of naturally-occurring substances can be patent-eligible, starting with Learned
Hand's 1911 decision granting a <u><a href="http://www.pubpat.org/assets/files/brca/mats/Parke-Davis,%20189%20Fed%2095%20(1911).pdf">patent on extracted adrenaline</a></u>. Although the
Court claimed that it's holding was limited to isolated genes, it's emphasis on “naturally-occurring” substances, if taken seriously, could entirely
eliminate discovered compositions from patentability (in spite of the language of <u><a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/101">35 USC 101</a></u>, which provides that patents can be given to “anyone who invents or discovers
any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter”).
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<br />
The question of policy again rears its head. If the purpose of patent law is to incentivize new inventions and discoveries, then why does it matter that a
discovered substance is naturally occurring if it has never been available to public previously? Perfectly good answers could be given to this question –
perhaps the protection available from patents on particular uses of discovered substances are sufficient to incentivize discovery without unduly
restricting public access to the substance. The Court, however, fails to even raise that question, and provides no reason to believe that the line between
“naturally occurring” and artificial compositions is the line that actually promotes the most good.
<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The Point: Balance of Interests</b>
<br />
<br />
The point is that the Court's opinion in <i>Myriad</i> attempts to address an important issue by reference to an irrelevant distinction. Even if the
outcome – providing broader access to testing for breast cancer – seems good, in practice the Court has left the plaintiffs in nearly the same situation
they were in before, and potentially confused the debate about the proper scope of eligibility for patents on genes by focusing on the wrong issues. The
confusion surrounding the decision is made even more clear by Scalia's concurrence, in which he joins the entire opinion except “portions...going into fine
details of molecular biology.” By his own admission, he doesn't understand the science well enough to have a valid opinion on the matter.
<br />
What we need is an opinion that actually wrestles with the core issue in debate – the balance between the need to incentivize research and the need to
protect the public's access to their own genetic information. This is far from the last we'll hear on the issue.
Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-64693392614448694372013-08-07T15:35:00.004-07:002013-08-07T15:42:44.354-07:00Random Projects Ahoy: 3D Printed Totoro-TARDISSo I had access to a 3D printer this summer, and I had all kinds of ideas for it. However, after a failed experiment in which I attempted to print a bead for a bracelet I often wear (far too round a design), I realized I would have to think through anything I wanted to print. My friends insisted that I should print a TARDIS, and that I should print Totoro, so I did both (click images for biggen-ed versions):<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQp7u3woYG5IM9h3twb19pK0mJgDWm1jUGDJ7JIV_NNhqNDPzOQYDOnEEncyJOz8Pf3U_r0y8v64bFSsWOoB4VE_K8wPMjdZBf1BBF7kqV3OgDRujzoyBLAfmzml37KmydugV5lbhXWs/s1600/totoro_tardis_model.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQp7u3woYG5IM9h3twb19pK0mJgDWm1jUGDJ7JIV_NNhqNDPzOQYDOnEEncyJOz8Pf3U_r0y8v64bFSsWOoB4VE_K8wPMjdZBf1BBF7kqV3OgDRujzoyBLAfmzml37KmydugV5lbhXWs/s400/totoro_tardis_model.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The concept is that Totoro is dressed as the TARDIS for Halloween. I found several models to use as sources on <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>, and proceeded to chop them up and recombine them in <a href="https://tinkercad.com/">Tinkercad</a>. The result looked pretty cool, but then I realized that the "hat" part would be difficult to 3D print (since the printer puts layers down from the bottom up, unsupported floating sections in a design won't turn out well). So I redesigned it to make the hat removable, including ear-holes big enough to fit on Totoro's head:<br />
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I considered this something of a masterpiece. The real test, though, is "will it print?" So we heated up the ole makerbot. Unfortunately, we only had red plastic to work with, and it isn't the highest resolution printer around, but it did its duty:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvcjLprgZkiyLQ0DR4yaLQrGWJosR88blGUH2j7gdao89ahg5IdxQTr8jdLjvRpMhd8B_Hn2k6bNR-R_O2AAvh_86yhk0p3ekPDZTuhrR7d-Jcm5Zzu3Eaae_1PXTDV8mb63gYaLtCBfA/s1600/IMG_20130726_123951_129.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvcjLprgZkiyLQ0DR4yaLQrGWJosR88blGUH2j7gdao89ahg5IdxQTr8jdLjvRpMhd8B_Hn2k6bNR-R_O2AAvh_86yhk0p3ekPDZTuhrR7d-Jcm5Zzu3Eaae_1PXTDV8mb63gYaLtCBfA/s400/IMG_20130726_123951_129.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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And the result, after tearing off a bunch of excess plastic:</div>
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Unfortunately, the light on top of the TARDIS broke off (and the pics aren't great, I admit). I might also paint the whole thing a little if I find time, but it more or less worked, so I'm satisfied.<br />
<br />
3D printers have a long way to go before they bring about any kind of revolution, but it was really cool to see one in action and get a better sense for the technology. If you happen to have one and want to print this design, send me an email (bsuchenski at gmail) and I'll send you the file.<br />
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-Silent EllipsisEllipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-64739966667860769832013-03-15T13:06:00.001-07:002013-03-15T13:11:16.837-07:00Contra DancesWell this blog gave up on being about one topic a long time ago, and for those who don't know, I've been really active in the folk dancing scene for the last few years. In the last year I've also begun calling dances and writing them, including the two below. For those who don't contra dance this might be meaningless (aside from the pond story), but if you're curious about contra I encourage you to try it (there's probably a dance near you).<br />
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<b>Sharks in the Pond </b> – Becket-R by Bryan, Angela, Erika, Lynn*<br />
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A1: Pass the
ocean, balance wave of 4 (8)</div>
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Women allemande L
1 1/2 while men orbit 1/2 (8)
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A2: Balance and
swing partner (4, 12)</div>
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B1: Men cross
(passing L), gypsy & swing neighbor (2, 4, 10)</div>
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B2: Women cross
(passing R), 1/2 L shoulder gypsy partner (8)
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1/2 promenade
partner, loop to meet next (8)</div>
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*Authors are
Angela DeCarlis, Bryan Suchenski, Erika Rosenberg, and Lynn Ackerson as part of Rick Mohr's workshop at
Pinewoods</div>
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This dance was written at Pinewoods American Week in 2012. The workshop as a group came up with a list of interesting moves to base a dance off of, including the opening of this one, and then broke up into smaller groups to flesh the dances out. To our surprise, Lisa Greenleaf then called this dance on the last evening to the full dancing population of Pinewoods. So now that it had been baptized, we needed a name for the dance.</div>
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FLASHBACK...the night before, I was out in one of the lakes (or ponds as we called them) that flank the camp with a friend of mine. There's a floating dock in the middle of the water, and she was sitting on it while I treaded water nearby. We had been chatting until some unholy hour when I felt the sting of teeth sinking into my back. It didn't actually hurt terribly, but the when you're in dark water and something bites you, your instinct is not to objectively evaluate the degree of pain involved. I proceeded to freak out and flail about while trying to climb onto the dock. Once I did I immediately began pretending it was no big deal to keep my friend from panicking. We both turned and saw a fish, about 6 inches long, staring at us from the water. </div>
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"Well, he's not that big and scary looking," we said to each other. Then his friends started showing up. Soon there were a half-dozen fish all staring intently at us from the water, and we were fairly certain that we were going to die at Pinewoods American Week. My friend finally built up enough courage to stick her finger in the water, testing the intent and speed of these savage beasts. One of the fish took the bait, and began to slowly rise toward her finger. Very slowly. She started coaxing it, "Come on, little fish, just come get a nibble!" Approximately 30 seconds later, the fish achieved its nibble, and upon our realization that the pain (eventually) involved ranked somewhere near "cute", the fish seemed much less intimidating. Figuring that at worst they would only get one of us, we resolved to jump in at the same time and frantically swim to shore. </div>
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After surviving the ordeal, and noting that this new dance had an "orbit" figure that looked like circling sharks, I called it Sharks in the Pond.</div>
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<b>Welcome to the Neighborhood </b>– Improper by Bryan Suchenski</div>
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A1: Neighbor
balance and swing (16)</div>
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A2: Circle L 1/2
and pass through up and down (4, 4)</div>
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Neighbor 2 swing
(8)</div>
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B1: Gents Gypsy L
1 1/2 (8)</div>
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Partner swing (8)</div>
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B2: Long lines
forward and back (8)</div>
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Ladies chain (8)*</div>
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*After the chain,
turn away from this neighbor to face the next and begin the dance
again.</div>
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**This is a double
progression dance with two neighbor swings, so you swing everyone</div>
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This dance doesn't have quite as amusing a story behind it - I wanted to write a double progression dance in which you got to swing both of your neighbors, to avoid the situation where you join the set with the cool hip dancers, only to discover that it's a double-progression dance and the people you most wanted to swing are those even-numbered couples that you skip the entire time down and back. I was expecting to call it "Won't You Be My Neighbor", but apparently there's already a published dance with that name.<br />
<br />
Note to callers, the hardest part of this dance by far is the A2. Dancers are used to circling 3/4, and if they circle too far, or think they are supposed to pass through across the set, the progression is thrown off. Fortunately, there's a partner swing not far after, so if you see couples that failed to progress, encourage everyone to simply find their partner and swing on the side of the set. Also, some communities are more down with gents gypsying each other than others, and if you suspect dancers might be uncomfortable with this move you can simply replace it with an allemande L. In my mind, though, more varied gent interactions in contra is a good thing.Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-7655782785793964782012-10-02T23:19:00.002-07:002012-10-02T23:28:41.284-07:00Crazy Ideas for Crazy Times: Guaranteed Income<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's been a while since I wrote a substantive blog post, but I just ran across <a href="http://silentellipsis.blogspot.com/2009/07/crazy-ideas-for-crazy-times-pre-pre.html">a post from 3 years ago</a> which effectively predicted the crowd funding craze we've seen in the last year in indie games (I referred to it as "pre-pre-ordering", which admittedly is not the catchiest phrase). So I have newfound confidence that things I post under the "crazy ideas for crazy times" label are more feasible than they might sound.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Which brings me to the topic of today's post: guaranteed income. Some of my friends have heard me talk about the idea in person, and I'd like to outline it more thoroughly. We'll start with some background concepts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Nature of Money</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Most people see money for its value to the individual - as a substitute for services and desirable articles. It seems natural, then, to treat money simply as a tool for facilitating bartering: instead of carrying my goat around so I can trade it on the spot for the chickens I want, I sell my cow for a small value-token which I can later exchange for those chickens. Lovely. However, as I discussed in more detail <a href="http://silentellipsis.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-is-bubble-philosophers-economics.html">here</a>, money serves a larger social purpose - it functions like a rapid and constant voting system, and is how the market determines the relative value of goods and services. If you don't have a planned economy, you need some way of determining what kind of goods get produced, which requires a method of measuring the value of goods. Money is a fabulously robust method of decentralized value judgment, especially because every single member of the society contributes to these value judgments whether or not they think of themselves as doing so.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are, of course, problems with money as the primary measure of value. Most importantly, since money also determines how many goods individuals get, we are extremely covetous of the resource, and often don't spend it in a way that's representative of our perceptions of value. There are also significant categories of goods and services that we simply don't think of as being commercial, even if we find them very valuable. For instance, we may think that a stay at home mother (or father) is creating an enormous amount of value by raising children, but that doesn't lead us to think we should pay parents for their efforts, much less that we should pay particularly skilled or dedicated parents more than lackadaisical parents.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nonetheless, money keeps a market running, at least as long as there is a constant flow of data - enough money is being spent to tell us where to dedicate our labor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What the World Needs Now...</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Is more people to buy things. That's not my typical answer to this question, but if our immediate goal is to pull the economy out of recession, all we need is for more money to be spent. That's because without spending, we don't have the value-voting data we need to determine what people should be doing with their time, and the result is unemployment. Since those who have the lowest income are most likely to spend every dollar they acquire (out of necessity), the way to increase spending is to get money into the hands of the unemployed, but since they're unemployed (or underemployed), they're not making enough money to spend. So to create jobs, the unemployed need money, and to get them money, they need jobs. That's the default state of things in a recession, and where we've been stuck for the last four years. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So here's the weird thing that Keynes figured out a while ago: it doesn't matter why you pay these underemployed citizens; you can hire one person to dig a hole and another to fill up the hole, and net effect for the economy would be positive. If you don't believe me, consider how we got out of the Great Depression - certainly new deal policies were helping, but the final push was World War II. Why would it be that having Americans spend their time building tanks that got shipped overseas and blown up would help the domestic economy? The answer is because paying those workers to do anything would have helped the economy, because it enabled them to spend, and get the great value-voting machine running again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is the theory behind stimulus spending, which certainly would help the economy if it were done on a larger scale (and has helped some even though the size of stimulus so far has been small). I want to propose something else, or if you prefer, a particular, relatively radical kind of stimulus.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Guaranteed Income</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The best solution to the economic crisis, on both economic and ethical grounds, is to simply stipulate that every citizen should have a certain minimum income. If employment were high, this might be accomplished by a robust minimum wage, but when there are not enough jobs to keep workers employed, you need an alternative way to pay citizens. This is the role the welfare system played in the Great Depression before the war created a sufficient mass of state-funded jobs to restart economy. There are a several important differences between a guaranteed income and welfare, which will become clear if I spell out the proposal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's how I envision guaranteed income:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(1) Every qualifying adult citizen gets a grant with no strings attached. The amount should be enough to provide basic needs in the absence of other income (above the poverty line), but not so much as to totally disincentive work. I imagine the amount here to be around $15,000 a year.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(2) In order to qualify, the citizen must, if capable, contribute to society in some way, either by working for pay (meaning everyone who has a job, even a part-time job if it provides enough hours/week, qualifies), by doing community service, or by working on registered unpaid projects (meaning artists, opensource programmers, etc. qualify on the basis of their projects). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(3) Any citizen can collect, but the grant is taxable income, meaning that those at a high marginal income rate effectively don't collect much (especially given the next point).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(4) In order to pay for the program, I would support a marginal tax rate up to 90% (or more). The marginal tax rate would only reach this level for those making massive incomes - more than, say, $500,000/yr. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are several things to note about this proposal. For one, guaranteed income is not a temporary replacement for income from work, like welfare payments are, but a supplement to income from working. This, together with (2), effectively eliminates the concern that welfare discourages citizens from working. The system doesn't focus on efforts of recipients to find work, but on what they can do immediately to have some positive impact on society as a whole. This means that the unemployed are still doing something useful, and that artists can choose to dedicate themselves to their craft if they don't mind living on a minimal income. If a citizen wants to live on more than a bare minimum, they will try to find paid work anyway, and the guaranteed income helps to ensure that they will be able to live off whatever income they do earn. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Point (4) clearly makes this a kind of wealth redistribution proposal, but I want to be clear that I'm not entirely against disparate income. I don't have any problem with those who pursue more commercially viable careers, or those who are most skilled in such careers making more money than the unlucky/idealistic. I think doctors, lawyers, and CEOs should make more money than academics or video game designers. That's how we encourage people to pursue practical careers. The problem is, after a certain point (say, a half-million dollar salary), increased income simply stops to be any significant motivator for high earners, and it has no effect on the quality of their lives. The difference between a very high and absurdly high income might motivate a person to choose one particular company or specialization over another, but at that point, we should be encouraging employers to come up with better motivators than salary (such as a rewarding working environment, intellectual/creative freedom and authority, or the ability to contribute to projects the employee cares about). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I've spent most of my life around wealthy people (and was at one point part of a reasonably wealthy family myself), and in my experience, the top few percent of income earners are primarily concerned with their relative, not absolute wealth. A person making more than a half-million dollars a year doesn't benefit from having that money around to spend on what they will, but it may be important to them to be recognized for earning as much money as they do. So even with a high marginal tax rate, if they can convince someone to pay them a $100 million salary, they get to be wealthier than (almost) everyone else around (but they still have to pay the majority of that money in taxes).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Also note that (4) might not be strictly necessary in a recession. If taxes were not raised to pay for the program, it would result in inflation, which in a healthy economy would act like an "invisible tax" - it disproportionately affects those with the more money in savings. In a recession, the stimulus effect could effectively allow the program to pay for itself. I would support (4) nonetheless to ensure the program remains sustainable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally, if you're wondering about the general feasibility of this kind of idea, note that I'm not the only person to propose something along these lines. <a href="http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/norway.php?aid=813">Norway</a> provides guaranteed income and grants to artists in the interest of promoting culture generally. <a href="http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html">BIEN</a> is an organization that advocates for basic income, which is essentially the same idea minus (2), the contribution requirement. Similar ideas have been endorsed by an assortment of Nobel laureates in economics (cue cite to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee#Advocates">wikipedia</a>).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The solution simultaneously solves two problems: it stimulates the economy and invigorates the existing market by increasing spending, while also allowing citizens a way to be supported for working on projects that are valuable but not well suited to market economics. If it were coupled with national healthcare and free college education, we really would have an America fit for the 21st century.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-68262500539185597532012-09-03T00:46:00.004-07:002012-09-03T00:47:49.963-07:00Duets!<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I spent most of the day hanging out with my friend Laura, and we ended up recording some songs. First we did a duet of my new song, Vines and Scaffolds, which came out way better than I expected (despite an out-of-tune piano):</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<a href="http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/VinesDuet.mp3">http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/VinesDuet.mp3</a>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I was on guitar and lead vocals, Laura on piano and harmonies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
Then we decided to lighten the mood a bit with an Ingrid Michaelson cover:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<a href="http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/YouandI.mp3">http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/YouandI.mp3</a>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We both played uke, and hopefully you can tell which voice is which at this point.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was a pretty great day, basically.</span>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-41845611618220179822012-09-01T19:14:00.001-07:002012-09-02T23:41:24.105-07:00New Song: Vines and Scaffolds<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So FAWM was a long time ago, but that doesn't mean I stopped making music. Here's a demo of a song I just wrote (and recorded on my cellphone - welcome to the future?):</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/VinesandScaffolds.mp3">http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/VinesandScaffolds.mp3</a>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">EDIT: And check out the duet version I just recorded with my friend Laura (admittedly with an out-of-tune piano):</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<a href="http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/VinesDuet.mp3"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.silentellipsis.com/music/VinesDuet.mp3</span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And since I know I'm not always intelligible, lyrics:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Vines and Scaffolds</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Build a scaffold in my mind</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And ask me where I learned to breathe</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Show me who I used to be</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then make me answer for his deeds</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I always knew you were a child</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because your soul still has its wings</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But I mistook your fear for wisdom</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And now your fear inside me sings</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You never had to make me whole</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You only had to make me weak</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I could shatter my own soul</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And teach the pieces how to speak</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I let your vines crawl up my wall</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And wreck it like the cruel sea</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And when we pushed that wall it crumbled</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But I'm the only one we freed</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now if you gave me seeds and stones</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'd build a garden for my sweet</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And if you didn't love your chains</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'd lay my freedom at your feet</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't want to make you whole</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I only want to make you sing</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So when you shatter your own soul</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You can build a scaffold for your wings</span>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-26803382585754085502012-04-11T11:23:00.006-07:002012-04-11T11:44:47.888-07:00The Other Otter: FAWM FalloutWell I should have made this post a month ago, probably, but February Album Writing Month resulted in me and my Philadelphia cohort (codenamed The Other Otter) completing (more or less) 5 songs, and writing several more that I intend to work on more once the semester is over. That's a bit shy of the 14-song theoretical goal of FAWM, but it was plenty of fun anyway. The songs are all available on our FAWM page: <a href="http://fawm.org/fawmers/theotherotter/">http://fawm.org/fawmers/theotherotter/</a><div><br /></div><div>More specifically, we recorded the following demos (all available from these links):</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://fawm.org/songs/23260/">Lorelai</a> - The first song we recorded, written by myself, includes the most instrumental variety (ukes, guitar, harmonica, glockenspiel, and vocals)</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://fawm.org/songs/28953/">Silverware</a> - The song was written and recorded by Angela. We intended to include accompaniment, but it didn't sound right when we first tried it, so the demo currently just includes one uke and voice.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://fawm.org/songs/28941/">A Song About Physics</a> - This got written when our Delaware friend Em visited. The lyrics were written via a poetry game - we wrote one line at a time on three pieces of paper and then handed them each to another person to write the next. The theme we picked beforehand was "science".</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://fawm.org/songs/29036/">Downtown</a> - A creation of Josh combined with a strange mood, this song is a masterpiece of incoherence, and feature 4 ukes and voices. In each take we did, Josh improvised lyrics on the fly.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://fawm.org/songs/30400/">City People</a> - A second song by me. Em's bass line was contributed via email.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, it turns out collaborative song-writing is pretty fun, so if anyone wants to visit Philly with an instrument and jam, let me know.</div>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-89026373582733481262012-02-09T15:18:00.000-08:002012-02-09T15:27:09.089-08:00LorelaiFor the hypothetical people who read my blog but don't follow me on other social media, I've been convinced to get involved in <a href="http://fawm.org">February Album Writing Month</a>. The goal is simple: write a song every other day for the month of February. That's 14 1/2 songs this year (since it's a leap year - the 1/2 song is usually interepreted as a collaboration). So my roommate, a friend, and I signed up as "The Other Otter" and started writing. I'm not sure we'll finish 14 1/2 by the end of the month, but we've got one down and recorded, and you can listen to it:<div><br /></div><div><a href="http://bryansuchenski.bandcamp.com/track/lorelai">On Bandcamp</a></div><div><br /></div><div>or</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.wix.com/aedecarlis/theotherotter#!lorelai">On our Wix Site</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>We have more songs in the works, so stay tuned!</div><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-87043313889026938622011-03-14T01:44:00.000-07:002012-11-26T14:02:46.385-08:00The Thoughtful Stone<i>This is a prose-i-fied summary of a Dungeons and Dragons one-shot I recently ran. The players are now insisting that I turn it into a full-fledged campaign. Either way, I clearly got carried away with the summary, so I figured I should go ahead and post it somewhere. This being my blog and all, it was a natural choice. Note that Arcturus was an NPC, while Artemisia, Nikita, Feomus, and Daria were all PCs.</i><br />
<div>
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<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Arcturus didn't know what he should expect to happen, or to have happened, as the case may be. Even to someone like him, who'd dedicated years to studying the metaphysical relationship between the planes and the flow of time, parsing the tense of events in a situation like this was a headache. It didn't really matter though, because he had plenty of rules of thumb to go by, among them "Don't do anything you can get others to do for you," "Never pet a burning dog," and "When you don't know what to expect, expect nothing."</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
He knew that just moments earlier there had been a great ruckus, as the continuum engineers ran about checking calculations and the Archmage stood watch over the ritual being peformed, but all of the commotion seemed far away to him now. He had plane shifted before, and he almost always compared the experience to falling through the floor, but this was different; he felt a strange sort of resistance, as if he were falling through the ceiling in spite of gravity pulling him downward. Then all at once, the feeling stopped, the sky looked blue, and gravity was winning again. He managed a startled yelp before the deep thump of his head hitting the ground.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
-</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
The three traveling women weren't sure what to do about the be-robed man who had fallen out of the sky. Artemisia, in her collected fashion, was simply continuing to stare at him as though she hadn't decided what he was yet. Next to her, the lithe elf Daria was excitedly discussing aspects of his appearance, and speculating on topics of conversation once he awoke. Meanwhile, Nikita, who was already small and hard to see, had instinctively gone invisible at the sound of something unexpected, and was just started to lower her guard as it became clear that the fellow was both unconscious and unaccompanied. She was the first to suggest a course of action.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“Should we tie him up?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
The trio quickly agreed that this was a wise course of action, no matter what it was they intended to do with him later. Shortly after the tying was complete, the man awoke and, being startled himself by his immediate predicament, teleported himself 100' away and outside of the influence of the rope. Once he was sure that he wasn't about to be abducted, he approached the women again and introduced himself as Arcturus, the wizard, before asking the question on his mind that burned the most feverishly:</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“What year is it?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“Year?” replied Daria, “Why it's year 58 in the reign of King Obamus, of course.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“Then there's still...time.” It occurred to Arcturus that he'd been waiting his entire life to deliver that line. It's not every day that one's dream of becoming a time-traveler becomes reality, though it is at least two, nonconsecutive days if you're traveling any significant temporal distance.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“Time enough for what?” asked Artemisia, clearly suspicious of Arcturus.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“Time enough to save the future.” Arcturus had been practicing this speech. “I have come from a time several hundred years hence. It is a time of wondrous magics, but also of ghastly horrors. There is a being, whom we refer to as the Golem King, made entirely of stone but imbued with intelligence and magical ability. The Golem King is himself capable of creating animated constructs, and has built an army of resilient, mindless warriors with which he is wreaking havoc among the civilized races. The Golem King was born in this time, in this very week, and I have come to stop the ritual birthing the monstrosity from taking place. Will you help me to save us all from a terror we never knew was coming for us?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
The three adventurers stood dumbfounded for a moment, until Nikita, from a direction that wasn't immediately clear, spoke up, “This is bullshit, he's probably lying.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Arcturus seemed prepared for incredulity, “You can see the forge where the creature is being constructed yourselves. It is the forge of Lludwig, the gnome artisan, in the city of Cuthbert some 50 miles north of here. I can bring us there if you're willing to help me get inside.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“Why can't you just take care of it yourself?” asked Artemisia.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“Because there is a special ward on the forge,” Arcturus answered. “Lludwig's work is so well known that he has even been commissioned by being from other planes from time-to-time, but having drawn the attention of outsiders has made him particularly wary of their interference, so he has a magic barrier set up to prevent entrance from outsiders. It is a fortunate side effect for him that this barrier also prevents time-travelers from entering.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Artemisia still wasn't convinced. “But then why come to THIS time, when you could have come to a time when he wasn't so well protected?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“The workings of time are very...unintuitive. Explaining it in a way you would understand would take far longer than we have. Just...believe me, this is how it has to happen – it can't be any other way.” There was clearly something Arcturus wasn't explaining about the situation, but it wasn't going to be pried out of him easily.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“So what's in it for us?” piped up Daria. “I mean the future's great and all, I'm sure, but that sounds far away and we have stuff to do – I was hoping to do some shopping later.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Arcturus hesitated slightly. He hadn't anticipated that saving the future would be insufficient motivation for them. “You won't go unrewarded...the forge is full of valuable artifacts and rare minerals that I'm sure can help finance whatever other projects you're engaged in.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“I don't know.” Daria was beginning to look disinterested. “It sounds like a lot of work.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Arcturus wasn't ready to let the situation slip out of his control this easily. “You need to do this, you simply </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">must</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.” His eyes had focused on her, and then widened at that final word.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Daria felt a chill run down her spine, and then her mind felt tight, as though there was another person trying to fit in her head. This second person brought a powerful motivation with them – a quest to travel north and prevent the birth of the Golem King. Being a bard, she knew enough about arcane magic to recognize what was happening – it was a </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">geas </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">enchantment.</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> “You bastard...very well, we'll help, but as soon as we've taken care of this golem-wha-cha-ma-callit, we're done. You go back to the future and we get on with our lives.”</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“As long as there's enough money in it, let's go.” Nikita had apparently become visible again, but was now standing behind Arcturus.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
“But we could still use slightly more firepower,” said the wizard as he pulled out a bronze whistle. When he blew into it, however, it made no sound.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
-</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Far to the west, in the city of Calais, Feomus heard one of his least favorite sounds. It was a high-pitched whistle, of a kind that humans couldn't hear, but which he could. He snarled slightly, and considered resisting the compulsion to answer, which he knew he could. There were, however, no great opportunities for valor here, and it was valor he needed in order to join the elite ranks of Hound Archon Heroes. He focused on the image of the wizard that appeared with the sound, and after blinking his eyes, the wizard was before him.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
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<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Artemisia wasn't used to people teleporting into her presence, much less twice in the same day, much less when neither of them was native to their plane (and time). Yet before her, in a flash, appeared a humanoid with the head of a dog and plate armor, which visible contained a muscular figure.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Arcturus went on to explain to the hound archon, Feomus, that great glory could be won on their noble quest by saving the future. The wizard must have understood the way archons think, because he emphasized choice words, such as “chaos”, that caused the hound's eyes to fill with sudden passion. He whole-heartedly agreed to aid them, and the party proceeded to teleport near to the city of Cuthbert.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Once there, the party ran across elven outriders, apparently patrolling the highway, and managed to convince them that they had legitimate business in the area, even after Daria began a story about being on a “shopping trip.” It seemed that the party would have to do even more talking at the gates of the city, so most of its members decided to obviate the need for conversation by turning invisible, or, in Artemisia's case, by transforming into a common bird and flying over the city walls unharrassed. Feomus simply strolled up to the gate, however, and declared himself, apparently with enough conviction for the guards to let him pass.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Inside the city, the party split up to search for information about the forge. The city was populated primarily by dwarves and gnomes, most of whom worshipped St. Cuthbert, the patron deity of the city. They learned that Lludwig has an apprentice, Korloff, who is a deurgar. This fact by itself gains him notoriety among many of the townsfolk, who are distrustful of so-called dark dwarves. A cleric of St. Cuthbert even claimed to have once spotted an item with the markings of the evil god of forbidden knowledge, Vecna, on Korloff's person, and yet the dark dwarf had broken no laws in his time in the city, and had done nothing to explicitly prove the suspicions of the city he dwelt in. This did not prevent the populous from spreading various rumors about his plotting to murder and replace Lludwig, or to sabotage his forge.</div>
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Artemisia spent this time in rat form, acquainting herself with local rats and learning of the passages they take to enter the forge. After completing their information gathering, the party slept and prepared in the morning to enter the forge. Artemisia was to enter in her rat form and find a way to the room where the ward was maintained, while the rest of the party parlayed their way through the front gate. Unfortunately, Feomus would also be repelled by the ward against outsiders (being from the outer plane of lawful good, himself), but Arcturus insisted the archon would stand a better chance at being able to will himself across the barrier than he himself would. The wizard advised them on spells that would aid in fighting golems, and provided Nikita with a wand of <i>golem strike</i>, which she could use to deliver critical blows to constructs such as golems. He also gave the party several potions, including a potion that would dimensionally anchor Feomus, assisting him in entering the forge but preventing him from using his teleportation ability.</div>
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So prepared, the party set out. As they expected, there were guards present at the entrance to the forge that weren't prepared to let outsiders in. Feomus appeared in dog form, as Daria's pet, and Nikita was able to go unnoticed, but the bard was still conspicuous on her own. When the forge watch proved unmoved (and indeed, put on alert) by her requests to enter, she began fiddling a tune that each person present felt they could almost, but not quite, identify and recall. The guards became dumbfounded and stared in fascination. Having their attention, Daria gave the leader of the forge watch a <i>suggestion</i>, as bards are wont to do, to lead her into the forge. Feomus was, however, physically incapable of passing the threshold into the forge, and remained outside, in dog form, under watch from the guards.</div>
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Meanwhile, Artemisia had already entered the forge and reassumed her human form. She spoke directly to her staff, “Lead me to the focus of the ward,” and struck the ground with it authoritatively. A circle of druidic runes formed underneath the staff and then a glowing arrow appeared on the ground beneath her, leading her to a magic door. The staff then wrote out for her the password needed to open the magically locked door. Inside, she saw an obelisk surrounded by four small altars, each inscribed in a different language, each inscribed in a different language with seasonal words. She decided to try invoking the elements associated with each season, creating or drawing out sample of each element and placing them with the corresponding season.</div>
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Daria was led by her unwitting gnomish guide directly to Korloff's room, where the dark dwarf was perusing a large tome, which he quickly shut upon the arrival of his visitors.</div>
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“Why do you intrude upon my studies, Glim? And who is this?” Korloff did not seem to be in nearly as cheery a mood as Glim.</div>
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“Sorry to disturb you, sir, but this lady asked for a tour of the forge, so I'm walking her around now.”</div>
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Korloff glanced at Daria, then back at the gnome, and smirked slightly. “Very well, Glim, I'll take it from here, go return to your post.” As Daria's guide turned and left, Korloff turned his attention back to her. “Enchant much?”</div>
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Daria really wasn't hoping to end up here quite so immediately, accompanied only by an invisible halfling. “I'd heard so much about the amazing work you were doing here, I just had to come see it myself, whatever the means!”</div>
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“Unfortunately for you, unlike the ruly mob of guards you encountered at the front door, I am not a complete idiot.” Korloff snarled slightly as he spoke. Daria could tell immediately that he wasn't the type to throw wild parties. “So what is it you're actually doing here?”</div>
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“I'm here precisely because you're not an idiot, in fact.” Daria was thinking only slightly faster than she was speaking at this point, and the extra processing time was currently be spent trying to decide whether or not to adjust her clothing to reveal slightly more cleavage. “I know that Lludwig's not the real master in this forge. You're the one creating the real masterpieces behind the scenes and I wanted to...get closer to someone with so much skill.”</div>
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Korloff's expression revealed a hint of anger, but nothing else. “And from whom exactly have you heard this? It can't be from those idiot guards, they know nothing of the work I do. Who told you this?”</div>
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Well, deurgar weren't really Daria's type, and apparently the feeling was mutual. She was a little flabbergasted at this point. “Oh, you know...people...at the pub.”</div>
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Korloff's scowl deepened, which Daria hadn't previously thought possible. “I don't have time for this. Fortunately, this is perfect timing, because a new tour guide has arrived for you.”</div>
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Daria heard deep, thudding footsteps as a stone golem turned the corner and approached Korloff's room. <i>This is not my finest moment</i><i>, </i>she thought, as Korloff barked an order to the golem in a language she didn't understand. She was escorted by the massive creature directly to a small, dark cell, whose door locked itself when it shut.</div>
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Artemisia's solution seemed to be working, for the obelisk had opened and revealed a diamond pulsating with magical energy. The diamond was, however, surrounded by a small field of force, and slots accompanied by even more unreadable runes appeared on the obelisk beneath it. This was a bit much for her to solve entirely on her own, and she was getting worried by the fact that she hadn't yet seen any of her companions. She sent her snow owl, Jareth, to find Feomus and the others and lead them to her location.</div>
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The owl found a passage to the open easily enough in a forge that constantly billows smoke, and quickly found the hound archon on a leash near the entrance to the forge. Feomus understood the meaning of the owl's appearance, and decided that it was time for him to enter the forge, barrier or no. He morphed back into his more impressive humanoid form, and drank the potion Arcturus had given him to anchor him in the material plane.</div>
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“Whoa! The dog just became a man...dog. Halt!” The guards were confused and disturbed by this development.</div>
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“I am the archon Feomus, and I am bound to do the will of the Platinum Dragon within this forge. If you waylay me I will strike you down.” Feomus' voice boomed with authority and the very air around him seemed to be charged with his righteousness. Half of the forge watch faltered at the sight, and slowly stepped back, unwilling to take on such a creature. The other half ran toward him, weapons drawn.</div>
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Feomus drew his greatsword without hesitation, and with a word of celestial, it wreathed itself in flames. He charged into the midsts of the forge watch, unwary of being surrounded, and with one perfectly aimed swing drove his sword straight through one dwarvish fighter and into the next one beside him. The gnomes and dwarves rapidly counterattacked, but their blows tended to deflect off of his armor, and he waded through the remaining guards while suffering only bruises and minor cuts.</div>
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The guards who were already shaken by the sight of a hound archon all but fled entirely after seeing the demise of their peers, and Feomus approached the entrance to the forge with the owl Jareth leading him onward. He found himself now able to cross the threshold of the building, but doing so still filled him with a sense of nausea and weariness. He kept his pace, eager to lower the ward.</div>
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Daria was practicing her very best pouting face at the door to her cell when the lock popped open, almost as if in sympathy for her plight. She had a much better theory about the open door, however. “You were always good with locks, Nikita. Do you know where the others are?”</div>
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A disembodied voice next to her said, “Isn't that them, coming now?”</div>
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Daria turned to see a hound archon and snow owl heading down the corridor in their direction. “How wonderful for you to join us. Now, Jareth, which way is Artemisia?”</div>
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The owl lead them to a door inscribed with various runes, and hooted. As the party members approached it, Artemisia spoke the password from within and the door opened.</div>
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“Oh good, you all made it,” said Artemisia. “So far, I've managed to pass the first part of the puzzle protecting the ward, which has revealed a gem that I assume powers it, but I can't make sense of this second half of the puzzle.”</div>
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“Puzzles are overrated anyway,” responded Daria, who made a perfectly unnecessary gesture of rolling up her sleeves before casting <i>dispel magic</i>. The force field around the diamond dissipated, and Feomus reached in and pulled out the gem, causing the feeling of weariness in him to lift.</div>
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A few seconds later, Arcturus appeared amidst them in a flash of light. “Excellent,” began the wizard, “now we can proceed to-”</div>
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BAM. The door to their room crumpled under the fist of a stone golem. In the plane of meta-gaming, icosahedrons rolled across a table, determining the initiative of each party member.</div>
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Nikita reached for her wand of <i>golem strike</i> and Daria for her fiddle, beginning a familiar and inspiring tune. Arcturus and Artemisia each cast the spells they had specially prepared for the golem. Arcturus' spell was intended to cure an afflicted ally of petrification, but seemed to soften the stone the golem was constructed of, while Artemisia's spell would normally transmute unworked stone into mud, and here made the golem's joints thick, slowing its movement and making it clumsier. Feomus charged with the same ferocity as he had against the guards, placing himself between the golem and his allies and driving his blade into his foe. Unlike the dwarves' axes, however, the golem's fist struck the archon soundly, causing him to reel from the blow.</div>
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At this, Nikita became visible again, at the same moment as she unleashed the first in a small barrage of arrows that buried themselves in the golem's chest. Daria's melody shifted into tones that sounded too deep to come from the instrument she held, and the air around her began heating up. With one dramatic pull of her bow across the strings, flames burst forth from in front of her instrument, and seemed to dance around Feomus, barely singing him as they lit up the stone creature in front of him. The golem clambered further into the room to continue its assault in spite of its condition, and Artemisia stepped forward to finish it. She began running, and mid-stride assumed the form of a mighty charging bison, crashing into the weakened golem and breaking it clearly in half. The stone moved no further.</div>
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The party collected itself and Arcturus led them to the room where Lludwig was constructing his deadly masterpiece.</div>
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“How dare you interfere! This golem is the pinnacle of my career and you've corrupted the enchantments on the stone with Cuthbert only knows what rubbish!” Lludwig stood in the midst of an enormous inscribed circle cut into the stone floor as he chastised his apprentice.</div>
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“Corrupted?” Korloff stood between two flesh golems that he had brought into his master's chamber. “You couldn't have gotten this far with your own techniques, and now that they're inconvenient for you, you call mine a corruption of 'your' work. This is hypocrisy of the highest order.”</div>
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It was at this moment that a band of adventurer's entered the vast chamber. Before them stood two golem-crafters, and powerful spellcasters in their own right, bickering amongst spindling columns reaching 50 feet or more into the air. As their eyes adjusted to the lighting of the room, they started to register, one by one, the object behind the two artisans, towering over the room. It was a stone golem of incredible proportions and covered in intricately carved filigree, seated as if upon a throne. Even seated, it rose nearly twice as tall as the stone golem the party had just defeated, and the entire room was filled with its ominous presence.</div>
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“And just who are you all? Does no respect privacy in my workplace?” Lludwig had turned his attention to the party.</div>
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“We are here,” replied Arcturus, “to prevent you from making a colossal mistake. This creature that you intend to animate represents a greater threat than you know. I have seen a future where it brings down entire nations and spreads an unrelenting chaos everywhere it treads.”</div>
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“My creation isn't capable of such destructive behavior as you ascribe to it!” shrieked the master artisan. “If it's capable of any maliciousness, it could only be because of the interference of this traitorous deurgar!” Lludwig pointed an accusing finger at Korloff.</div>
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“This gnome before you is a fraud,” retorted Korloff. “This 'master artisan' can carve stone and make it move, but he has no will to create a truly great work, and now he seeks to take credit for a masterpiece he could not have created himself. This is not merely a weapon or tool, and it won't be infused with a banal mind. This creature that I am bringing into being will change the world forever.”</div>
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Feomus raised his voice. “Master Lludwig, if it really is the interference of Korloff that is corrupting your creation, then let us destroy the tainted creation, and you can begin anew on a masterpiece that you can truly call your own.”</div>
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“Begin anew?” Lludwig seemed disgusted by the idea. “This nascent creature before you represent decades of my life, my sweat, my very being. I won't let anyone touch it!”</div>
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With this, Lludwig waved his hand before him and a massive wall of stone appeared between him and the others, stretching from one end of the chamber to the other. Before Korloff had a chance to respond Daria targeted him with a spell of domination, commanding him to help them destroy the great stone golem. Korloff's face expressed horror at the thought of destroying the golem, but he turned to obey her nonetheless. Artemisia directed her magic at the stone of the wall, and opened a small passage in it just large enough for her to squeeze through, and she and several of her allies began heading toward the opening. Meanwhile, Feomus cried to the air “Come, Falcor!” and a young bronze dragon teleported into the room with him, allowing him to mount quickly before flying over the stone wall. Meanwhile, Nikita ran directly toward and then up the stone wall as if it were merely a slanted surface and not perfectly vertical.</div>
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Korloff was the first to make it through the passage Artemisia had opened, and on the other side of the wall began mindlessly swinging his flail against the great stone form towering over the room, to little effect. Lludwig was accompanied by an iron golem on this side of the wall, and when Feomus and his dragon steed drew within range of it, the bronze dragon opened its mouth and breathed out an arc of lightning that struck the iron golem solidly, causing it to jerk and twitch in place. Arcturus appeared on the other side of the wall in a flash, right next to Lludwig in the middle of the circle. The two spellcasters immediately turned to threaten each other with their rods. Artemisia crossed the wall and summoned entangling plants to burst from the ground and hold down the iron golem that Feomus's dragon had struck.</div>
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When Daria crossed over and saw how ineffective he was being trying to destroy the golem, she redirected him to “Take down Lludwig.” She wasn't sure what she'd expected him to do in response to this, but it clearly wasn't what he did, which was to turn and incant in an infernal language. Arcturus saw Lludwig's face contort as it faced him, his skin break out into boils, and his eyes fill with darkness. The gnome fell to the ground crying out in agony, and in desperation he spoke a command word to activate the magic circle he was still in. Nikita finally reached the top of the wall, and from there fired a single arrow directly into Lludwig's head as he writhed on the floor, stopping his commotion suddenly.</div>
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Yet the magic circle was already active, and the runes upon it glowed and then aligned themselves around the only living creature left in the circle – Arcturus. The time-traveler had an expression of terrible realization on his face as he lifted his gaze to the great stone figure before him. “What have I done?” he whispered, as the golem king's eyes lit up, and the massive form slowly lifted itself from its seat. All eyes turned to the newly born creature of stone.</div>
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Feomus flew his steed toward the great golem and swung his blade, but it scraped awkwardly off of the stone, leaving only a scratch on its huge shoulder. Daria was the next to act on the golem king's birth, saying, “Well, so much for saving the future. I think I saw a treasure chest over here, though.” She ran toward the chest and opened it, finding within a wondrous rod, which she could immediately tell was filled with chaotic energies.</div>
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The golem king raised its right hand slowly, as if beckoning, and the three other golems in the room instantly appeared at its side. At this, Daria pulled out the rod she had discovered and waved it at the golem king, shouting, “Go go magic whatever this does!” A beam of energy shot out and struck the golem king, causing it moments later to grow even larger. This is not what Daria was hoping for.</div>
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Then, the golem king incanted in a language only Arcturus understood, and the room filled with a bluish light encircled the four golems. Arcturus gasped and immediately began himself gesturing and incanting, in an apparent attempt to counteract the golem king's spell, but he was too late – the golem king and its new minions disappeared a moment later.</div>
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There was silence for a moment, and Arcturus' head dropped. “What exactly just happened?” asked Artemisia.</div>
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Arcturus replied solemnly, “You asked before why I didn't return to a time when Lludwig was more vulnerable, and the true answer is because I knew I couldn't stop the golem king from being born no matter what time I returned to.”</div>
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“What!? You're going to just give up now?” Artemisia was angry. “Then why are we even here?!”</div>
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“What has been done cannot be undone. It's not a question of will or power, it is simply the nature of time. My purpose in coming here wasn't to prevent the golem king's birth, but to understand it – to learn how it is that the golem king came to possess the magical powers that its creator, Lludwig, did not command himself. The answer, I know realize, is because it did not acquire Lludwig's intellect and magical abilities, as the gnome had originally intended – it acquired mine.”</div>
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“So it's like a huge, nearly invincible version of you?” chimed in Daria. “I hate this thing already.”</div>
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“But where did it go, and why were so distraught over it?” ask Feomus.</div>
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“It is capable of all the magic I'm capable of, including taking advantage of the temporary rift in space time that was created for me to travel here. It used my ticket home to travel to the future in my place, and now I'm trapped in this time.”</div>
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“Well, on the plus side, that means we don't have to worry about it for a few hundred years, right?” Daria seemed quite pleased by this news. “So we'll take care of it later. In the meantime, I still really want to get some shopping down while we're in this town.”</div>
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Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-15065740796115679392011-02-07T17:33:00.000-08:002011-02-07T17:41:50.905-08:00Rise of Magus Script AvailableI've decided to make the script to The Rise of Magus available after it was requested by some French fans who want to translate the game. It's a direct transcription of text from the game editor, which means that it contains pound signs (#) to represent line breaks in a dialogue box, and bits of text will be labeled things like "textline12"<textline12>, which is how I refer to lines of dialogue. I've formatted things and added a table of contents to make it a little more reader-friendly though, and I even put it in .doc format even though I put it together in Open Office. See how nice I am?<div><br /></div><div>You can get it here: <a href="http://silentellipsis.com/riseofmagus/RiseofMagusTranscript.doc">http://silentellipsis.com/riseofmagus/RiseofMagusTranscript.doc</a></div><div><br /></div><div>One more thing - the script contains spoilers (obviously), so if you want to uncover the secrets of the game on your own, don't read it. </div><div><br /></div><div>-Silent Ellipsis</div></textline12>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-6071885572577017732011-01-21T20:25:00.000-08:002011-01-21T20:38:21.727-08:00Choosing not to Parachain<div>This is a repost about the game Warlocks, and the spell paralysis in general, which I've <a href="http://silentellipsis.blogspot.com/2010/11/waving-hands-paralysis-and-broken.html">posted about before</a>.</div><div>---</div><div><br /></div><div>I was talking to a friend of mine recently about Warlocks and he asked me an interesting question: Do I think that the fact that I won the annual championship in spite of my decision to restrict my own use of paralysis is evidence that it's not a broken spell?</div><div><br /></div><div>I think a lot of warlocks are aware of my feelings on paralysis, and some probably noticed that on my profile I declare my "personal rules", which include the fact that I won't gesture F more than 5 times consecutively (meaning 3 paras). Not only does this prevent me from abusing paralysis, I know for a fact that some of my opponents are aware of the restriction, and play on the assumption I won't parachain, so it also limits my ability to threaten with F's. </div><div><br /></div><div>So am I providing evidence that parachains aren't needed to compete at a high level? Yes. Am I providing evidence that it's not an extremely imbalanced spell? I don't think so.</div><div><br /></div><div>In order to explain why, I'll start with why I self-imposed this rule in the first place. When I started out, around the time I first approached elo 1600, I started to realize how powerful paralysis was, and though I never thought of myself as a paramancer, there was a time when I found myself using paralysis extensively. What would invariably happen is that in the middle of a match I would cast paralysis at some point, and then think "alright, I'll break the chain and do something else now" just before noticing that my opponent had some kind of spell he was threatening in two turns, and that if I kept up the para just a little longer, I could stop it. After I stopped that threat, I'd say "oh, but now if I para just one more turn, I can also respond to a second threat", and this would continue ad infinitum. I would end up using massive parachains even though by this point I had already begun to feel that parachains made games less dynamic and interesting. I remember Succat (a self-declared "paraholic") once saying that he pleased to see that I had a nice "para trigger", or something to that effect.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, I felt like paralysis wasn't one of many useful strategies at my disposal, it felt like a crutch. I realized that if I left it up to how I happened to feel during a match I would always find an excuse to continue parachaining, so the only way to force myself to be more creative was to make a rule out of it, and by making it public I would feel pressure to keep at it. I was also hoping, I think, that other people would follow suite and I would see fewer long parachains coming at me, but that part never happened.</div><div><br /></div><div>After I stopped parachaining (and charming hands to "-", and opening "D/P"), I found I really did explore a lot of different options, and was pleased with this decision for a time. Then when I got to around elo 1800 for the first time, over a year ago, I started to realize that I was going to be playing more often against the very best players in the game, and that they all used parachains and parafod extensively (some of them more than others, but every single one of them used parafod to kill me at one time or another). I felt like my own refusal to use parachains might be an insurmountable barrier that would keep me from being able to compete with them, and I honestly got to a point where I started playing very few friendly and ladder matches, and mostly just played in the League because the monthly rules were one surefire source of continued variation in play, which is what I wanted. </div><div><br /></div><div>At some point I noticed that the players in the league, even ones who normally used parafod often, were less likely to use paralysis when a monthly rule was in play <i>even if the rule didn't have to do with paralysis</i>. In other words, the fact that we were playing in an unranked space where new strategies were encouraged made people drop their paraholic ways and try new things, and the results were sometimes brilliant. However, when they returned to ranked games, most players would stop thinking outside the box and play safe. </div><div><br /></div><div>This encouraged me to try more seriously to take on the good players head on with my personal rules in play, and I could almost tangibly feel myself gradually getting the hang of beating paralysis. It's also worth noting, when I say something like "beating paralysis", that I actually used paralysis a lot myself. In fact, when I went on the warlocks archives recently, I was surprised to find that I apparently cast paralysis, per game, more often than average. The difference is that I don't cast long chains - I'll cast paralysis once or twice (or maybe thrice) and then break off into something else, and then come back and cast paralysis again a little later. It's a good spell that I like using, but forbidding myself from relying on it made my weaves more dynamic and forced me to be more creative, so I felt like I was getting the best of both worlds. In fact, in my final match against Xade in the tournament, I opened with paralysis on my left hand.</div><div><br /></div><div>I really wasn't expecting to do as well as I did in the tournament, but if it's a sign of anything, I think it's a sign of how much I gained specifically by avoiding using paralysis as a crutch and trying to be just a little strange (Bio went so far as to call one of my moves in the final match "insane", which made me smile). That said, being the only player who doesn't use parachains has still been a serious restriction, and I've had a number of games where I believe I would have definitely won had I allowed myself to use a parachain. One of the other noteworthy aspects of the tournament was the appearance of a number of new players around the same time, some of whom experienced players found "shockingly good." The shock, I think, stems from the fact that these players haven't yet learned what the popular weaves are, and so make plays that are unexpected and hard to predict - experienced players would do well to try and learn a little from their games with these new players.</div><div><br /></div><div>So my general point is this - once you've played warlocks for a long time it can become very comfortable to fall into regular patterns - go for charms and ogres as often as possible, and then when you have enough initiative advantage go for parafod or bolt an opponent to death. However, any time that a strategy becomes common wisdom, it starts to get stale, and forcing yourself to play in ways that are less comfortable is the best possible way to continue learning new things. To return to my original question, paralysis is an extremely powerful spell, one that I think is imbalanced, which is precisely why it, more than anything else, prevents players from developing creative strategies. If paralysis weren't so strong, my decision not to use it wouldn't have had as big an effect on my playing style.</div><div><br /></div><div>In short, choosing not to parachain can be good for you.</div>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-53583126154157084202011-01-16T22:25:00.000-08:002011-01-16T22:36:10.740-08:00Rise of Magus - The Duel VideoI made a video showing one of the new sections of The Rise of Magus. Apologies for the quality, etc.<div><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/e63Gb0VFrUE?hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/e63Gb0VFrUE?hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /></div>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-27245966199500765562011-01-16T16:56:00.000-08:002011-01-16T18:50:12.609-08:00The Rise of Magus Version 1.5<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.silentellipsis.com/riseofmagus/img/screenshot101bedit2.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 280px;" src="http://www.silentellipsis.com/riseofmagus/img/screenshot101bedit2.png" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Well it's been a while since I posted about the game, but <a href="http://silentellipsis.com/riseofmagus">The Rise of Magus</a> is back! The new version 1.5 of the game includes a huge number of fixes and improvements, as well as unlockable content that extends the game. The truth is, this is the game that I envisioned releasing when I first started working on the project, but after almost a year of work I decided to wrap things up and release The Rise of Magus at the conclusion of the main story arc. <div><br /></div><div>I included, however, a hidden item, the Hero's Medal, which when found displayed the following message: "You've found the Hero's Medal! This unlocks something the designer hasn't added yet, but will." I assumed no one would get quite into the game enough to ever find this thing. I was wrong. I got emails and saw forum discussions postulating theories about about what it was the item might unlock, and wondering when the update would be released. So I went and added "one more thing" that gets unlocked by the Hero's Medal. Then I added one more thing. Then another thing got added somehow. Before I knew it I was revamping the entire game and adding a second game on top of it. This process was disrupted for a long time by distractions from the real world, but now I've finally added all of the "one more" things I ever intended to, and I think the game is ready to be played. </div><div><br /></div><div>I feel like I should have a brief list of changes somewhere, and my blog is as good a place as any, so here's the short version:</div><div><br /></div><div><ul><li>The game is now built in Game Maker 8. The good news is that this means the game loads and runs much faster than before, even though there are more things to be loaded. It still takes up a fair amount of memory, though, and GM8 doesn't give me many options for reducing memory usage, aside from simply making the game smaller. The other downside with GM8 is that it broke all kinds of random things in the game, which took a while to fix. But I guess that was only a downside for me. </li><li>Nifty icon! It was always a little sad to have the game represented by a featureless red sphere, so now it shows a statue of Magus. You can take pride in having this on your desktop.</li><li>The menu now has music. This seems to have a bigger psychological effect than I expected.</li><li>There is now a level cap (30), with a nice extra health boost acquired when this level is reached. This provides something against which to balance to hardest, optional parts of the game.</li><li>Enemy behavior is improved. For instance, they are much better at walking up and down stairs and around obstacles. The new content also features whole new levels of enemy AI.</li><li>The attack collision system has been completely redone. This has eliminated a slew of (admittedly rare) glitches involving hitting enemies. Most notably, from time to time enemies used to take damage from an attack without getting "hit" by it, meaning they wouldn't stagger and could survive at negative health. This doesn't happen anymore.</li><li>Level layouts have been subtly altered, in particular to make jumping about more forgiving at the beginning of the game before players have any idea what they're doing.</li><li>The save system has been updated. Now all bosses offer a "retry" option on death, circumventing the need to reload from the last save point and helping avoid the "oh crap I forgot to save" problem. The downside is that save files from the original version aren't compatible with version 1.5, but you wanted to start from the beginning anyway, right? Actually, this downside was kind of intentional, because allowing players to load the previous version's save files would produce all manner of strange glitches.</li><li>An option to return to Bekkler's Castle has been added after the Bekkler fight, so that players have the opportunity to go back and purchase upgrades and prepare for the Epilogue battle.</li><li>Volume controls have been added, and are controlled with Page Up and Page Down. The volumes are High, Low, and Mute (High is the default volume). I guess this makes the game easier to play surreptitiously at work...hypothetically.</li><li>Hints have been added to a couple places where players often got confused. These hints take the form of a sparkly blue light that appears if the player passes the same room multiple times without finding the intended exit or is unable to figure out how to progress from a room for a long time. Experienced players might not ever run into them.</li><li>Pedants will be pleased to know that the Ruby Sword is now the only sword that any knight wields that appears red-colored. </li><li>It is no longer possible anywhere to jump out of the game through the ceiling unless the ceiling is an intended exit.</li><li>The Hero's Medal, rather than doing nothing, now unlocks new content called "The Duel" from the Extras menu. The picture at the top of this post offers a hint as to what "The Duel" is.</li><li>Completion of The Duel unlocks additional playable content, which in turn unlocks more, but I don't want to give away the surprise as to what this content consists of.</li><li>Many, many changes were made to make the controls smoother, sprites and text cleaner looking, glitches unglitched, and enemies and attacks more balanced. </li></ul><div>The short, short version is that the game is more epic and more immersive, and it's hard to put into words how I feel about it now, so you should really just go download it from here:</div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://silentellipsis.com/riseofmagus">http://silentellipsis.com/riseofmagus</a></div><div><br /></div><div>-Silent Ellipsis</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-2854566599218421492010-11-23T13:57:00.001-08:002010-11-23T17:54:03.229-08:00Elo and Trickle-Up EconomiesPreface: I realized after writing it that this post is pretty long and could use an abstract. It's an overview of the two scoring systems used in Warlocks viewed as economies. The objective is simply to note what kind of properties will emerge from having an economy with these particular constraints. What does emerge is that the resources in both systems are only acquired from other players, not independently generated, which results in a pyramid of sorts, where a large number of players lower down in the hierarchy provide a source of points for the higher ranked players. Larger economies will result in a higher peak, but otherwise do not effect the average player in these systems.<div><br /></div><div>---<br /><div><br /></div><div>As I've mentioned before, I'm an avid player of the game <a href="http://games.ravenblack.net/">Warlocks</a>, based on Waving Hands. This game uses two different ranking systems for competitive players, and they have some interesting differences between them. <div><br /></div><div>The first, and simpler ranking system is ladder points, and they work as follows: every time a player wins a ladder match, they gain one ladder point; every time a player loses a ladder match, they lose one ladder point; every time a player dies during a ladder match, their ladder points reduce to zero (note that in this game, most matches end with one player surrendering, not dying). Every player starts with a ladder score of zero, and you cannot have negative ladder points. This means that every time a player with no ladder points loses a match, a ladder point is created from the ether, and every time a player with ladder points loses a match, their point is effectively transferred to the winner. There's one more feature of ladder matches that's worth mentioning, and that is that you cannot challenge a player to a ladder match if your relative ladder scores are more than 5 points apart.</div><div><br /></div><div>The result of these features is that ladder scores rarely get very high. Since your ladder score will get reduced to zero by a single death it takes a lot of skill (or luck) in order to continually grow your score. Moreover, since you cannot challenge an opponent who is more than 5 points apart from you, the high possible ladder score for any player is 7 points higher than the second-highest score (assuming they began 5 points apart and that the higher-ranked player won). This means that in order for me to have a ladder score higher than 20, there need to be other players with a ladder score of at least 15 I can challenge. This means that the upper limit of ladder scores depends on the presence of a population of successful ladder players who collaboratively create ladder point (by playing those with 0 ladder points) and then transferring them up the ladder to the best players.</div><div><br /></div><div>We'll see a similar dynamic with the second ranking system: elo. Like in chess rankings, elo is a system in which the change in a player's score is weighted depending on their expected likelihood of winning (which is, in turn, based on the competing players' relative elo scores). Each player who registers begins with an elo score of 1500, which defines that score as the expected skill level of an average new player. Each match results in one player gaining a number of points and the other losing an equal number of points - in other words, once again, matches effectively cause a "transfer" of points from one player to another. If a player with a lower score beats a player with a higher score, they earn more points from the win, and if a player with a higher score wins, they earn fewer points. The difference in points earned corresponds to a player's expected likelihood of winning - meaning that if I'm expected to have a 75% chance of defeating an opponent, I will earn 1/3 as many point for winning as he will if he wins, so that over the course of many games, elo scores will stabilize if players tend to win as often as they are expected to given their elo score. Since all starting players start with 1500 points, they begin ranked as equals even though some may be stronger players than others. However, the differences in skill level will fairly rapidly be reflected in their score once they begin playing ranked games.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's look at an example. I register a new account and start with 1500 elo. If I play and beat another new player, I will gain 12 points, to have a score of 1512, and their score will go down to 1488. Now the difference in our scores is 24, so if I play that same player again and win, I will gain slightly fewer points than I did the first time. Once the elo difference is over 100 points, I will gain 8 points from a win and my opponent will gain 16 points if he wins - as long as I win approximately twice as often as I lose, the elo difference will remain stable, but if I win more often, it will continue to go up, and if I lose more often, it will go down.</div><div><br /></div><div>Notably, if the winning player is ahead by enough elo, they effectively gain no points from victory, so many high-ranked players will simply refuse to play ranked matches with much lower-ranked players (since they have nothing to gain and much to lose if they make a mistake). In practice, the maximum effective difference between players who can fairly compete in ranked matches is a little over 200 points. Any more of a difference and fluke wins by inexperienced players will unduly throw off the scores of high-ranked players.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of this together suggests some interesting features of the elo economy - since a winning player gains as much as their opponent loses from a match, the sum elo score of the player population cannot grow except by the addition of new players, and that the existence of players with more than 1500 elo requires the existence of players with less than 1500 elo. Moreover, a player can only effectively grow their elo by playing opponents with an elo score within 200 points of their own, which suggests that growing your elo depends on a population of players with elos near your own, so the highest possible elo in the system depends on the number of successful players, which is in turn limited by the number of total players. That is, a population of new players is needed in order to support the elo growth of players with elos between 1500-1700, and a population of players with elos of at least 1700 is needed to support the elo growth of players with elos between 1700-1900. </div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div>As of this writing, there are 1577 players who have registered to play Warlocks, about 200 of which never played a ranked duel. Of the players who have played ranked games, 281 have an elo higher than 1500, and 419 players have an elo lower than 1500. The lowest elo in the system is 1298 (202 points lower than the average) and the highest elo is 2106 (606 points higher than the average). This suggests that in practice, a large population of weak players is needed to support the heightened elo scores of a relative few. There are two reasons for this: first, players who repeatedly lose will likely stop competing at some point, and players who repeatedly lose will have their elos fall to the point where they no longer effectively feed the elo growth of stronger players. </div><div><br /></div><div>Since the value of a win is weighted by the likelihood of the win, players who perform as well as expected will have stable elos - if you are about twice as good as the average new player (meaning twice as likely to win), your elo should stabilize around elo 1600. However, once a player enters the higher echelons of play, the relative dirth of other high-ranked players makes it harder to play enough balanced games to maintain a representative elo. In a population of players with elos from 1400 to 1600, it is unlikely for me to grow my elo above 1800, no matter how good I become at the game.</div><div><br /></div><div>So the grand result is this: The total size of the elo economy of the game is determined by the number of players in the system, and the larger the total elo economy is, the higher the elo ratings of the best players can be, but that for the vast majority of players, the size of the elo economy will have no impact on their personal elo scores. That is, as a resource, the total quantity of elo in the system will only effect the players at the top.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now there are obvious disanalogies between the elo economy in Warlocks and market economies in the real world, but it nonetheless serves as an interesting model of a competition driven economy. This is also not meant in any way to be some kind of moral statement about how "just" the elo system is - the numbers simply represent the fact that some players win more often than others, and it is the explicit goal of the elo system to represent this. I simply believed that the unintended emergent features of the system are noteworthy, since they result from the interactions of thousands of players.</div></div></div></div>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-76042532435176147102010-11-01T10:28:00.000-07:002010-11-01T13:52:32.870-07:00Waving Hands: Paralysis and "Broken" MechanicsI recently had a request for another post on Waving Hands, and since we're in the midsts of the Warlocks 2010 championships (in which I'm well placed to make the finals right now, and on which Waving Hands is based), I decided to oblige. <div><br /></div><div>A lot of discussion about the game by avid players revolves around a single spell, paralysis, which is considered by many, including myself, to be unbalanced, and possibly even broken. Its abusability has even led to the formation of a guild, the Paramancers, who specialize in this one spell. One of the interesting questions to arise from this discussion, however, is what exactly it means for a spell to be "broken."</div><div><br /></div><div>When we talk about game balance, we generally assume that what we have in mind is a series of equally viable options. If one strategy is disproportionately represented or effective, then it is unbalanced. This, at first, seems like a fair criterion for a balanced game - if, in Starcraft, almost no one ever played Zerg, but 90% of players played Protoss, that would be a clera sign that something was amuck in the balance of the game. However, if we push the idea a little further, it starts to become murkier. Isn't the very idea of "strategy" supposed to be that some moves ARE better than others, and that finding the good moves is what makes the game fun? Rock, paper, scissors is a perfectly balanced game, because no move is better than any other, but for that reason it's impossible to strategize about anything other than player psychology, so the game is shallow.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the case of Warlocks, some spells are clearly more popular than others, but this creates a self-balancing factor: the more commonly a strategy is used, the more predictable it is, and in a game that relies on predicting your opponent's moves as much as Warlocks does, that can be a fatal weakness. This means that if you use less popular spells, you can take your opponent by surprise, and in doing so may be able to make up for the features of the spell that make it less popular.</div><div><br /></div><div>So in the case of paralysis, the fact that it is used much more often than most other spells is, in some sense, unbalanced, but that doesn't necessarily make the game worse. This is where we can draw a distinction between an unbalanced and broken spell, because a broken spell will interfere with the overall playability of the game. The problem, in this case, is that paralysis DOES interfere with the overall playability of the game. The criteria that can be used for a broken strategy might include: </div><div><br /></div><div>1. Whether or not predicting the strategy makes it possible to "punish" the player who is predictable.</div><div>2. Whether or not there exists effective counters to the strategy.</div><div>3. Whether or not there is a good motivation for a player to use a different strategy.</div><div><br /></div><div>As I mentioned before, there exists a guild called the Paramancers, who specialize in paralysis. In other words, just by being in this guild, they are effectively announcing to their opponents before the duel begins what strategy they will use, and yet they are still successful players. This simply wouldn't be the case with any other strategy - if I announced that every game I play, whenever possible, my right hand will constantly be casting antispell, I would lose every game I played (even though, in a given game, my right hand might end up making those gestures anyway).</div><div><br /></div><div>Discussing counters will require a more detailed discussion of the spell itself, which requires some background knowledge of Warlocks. So if you've been reading up to now simply because you liked the idea of distinguishing "unbalanced" and "broken" mechanics, here's your chance to escape.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Paralysis - FFF</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>In Warlocks, you submit gestures on your left and right hands that add up, over several turns, to spells, that take effect when the gestures of that spell are completed. The gestures needed to cast the spell paralysis are FFF, and it causes one of your opponent's hands to be "paralyzed" into the same gesture on the next turn (well, except that W is paralyzed into P and S into D). The important thing is that since the gestures of paralysis are so symmetrical, gesturing another "F" on the next turn allows you to cast it again immediately (because now your last three gestures were, once again, "FFF"), resulting in "parachains" where one hand gestures "FFFFFFF..." ad infinitum. There is one restriction on parachains built into the basic rules, however - on consecutive turns, you can only paralyze the hand you already were paralyzing. </div><div><br /></div><div>At first, this doesn't seem terribly abusive. If I use an endless parachain, I can keep one of my opponent's hands tied up, and effectively make us both play one-handed. This makes the spell useful on its own, in case you have some other advantage you want to hold onto, or force your opponent to respond to you and a summoned monster with only one hand available. It also grants a small initiative advantage, because as soon as the paralyzer decides to end his parachain, he can immediately begin casting a new spell, whereas the paralyzed player must suffer the effect of the final turn of paralysis before he can move his hand freely again, leaving him one turn behind on one hand. This is a significant advantage by itself.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, the real problem with paralysis occurs when you start changing targets. Since it counts as a mind-affecting enchantment, it cancels with other mind-affecting enchantments, which means that you can cast paralysis on yourself to counter an opponent's interrupt, and then go back to paralyzing them on the next turn. What's more, when you stop paralyzing your opponent for one turn, and then start again, you can switch which hand you're affecting, allowing you to alternate and restrict your opponent's use of both his hands. Finally, paralysis cast on a monster stops the monster from attacking that turn, which means that a parachain can be used, on any given turn, to disrupt either of your opponent's hands, hold his monster at bay, or counter one of his interrupts on your (including his own paralysis). This versatility in a spell that can be cast every single turn is incredibly powerful.</div><div><br /></div><div>There already exists, however, a standard variant that helps to make paralysis easier to disrupt, called "parafc". It means that when paralysis is used on an F gestures, the F is paralyzed into a C gesture. The significance of this is that it makes paralysis targeted at yourself (to counter another enchantment) into a risky move, because if your opponent was bluffing, and doesn't complete their own enchantment, you've paralyzed yourself, and either cannot continue your parachain (because now you've gestured FFFc), or must disrupt your other hand. The effect of this rule is that many situations in which a parachain could not be countered are now situations in which your opponent can generate "50/50" opportunities to disrupt you.</div><div><br /></div><div>The problem with this solution seems, to me, fairly straightforward. While it's better to have a 50% chance to disrupt a parachain than a 0% chance, if I really know, before my opponent has made a single move, what he's going to do, I should have a 100% chance of countering him. Paralysis can still be cast every turn, can restrict both of your opponent's hands, and can be used defensively - now it's simply that you have run a 50% risk of disrupting yourself when using it defensively (which is the case with every other mind-affecting enchantment, anyway). The fact remains that even playing parafc, Paramancers can play effectively even when their opponents know what strategy they are using, and this simply shouldn't be the case.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think there are two ways to balance out paralysis as it stands, and they each essentially involve removing one of the spell's advantages - either it shouldn't be cast every turn, or it shouldn't be able to target either of an opponent's hands. I, in fact, already play with the former restriction self-imposed: I do not allow myself to cast paralysis more than three times consecutively, and this is a restriction that is public, and which my opponents know about and take advantage of. The reason I play with this restriction is simple - because playing without extended parachains makes the game more dynamic and interesting, and if I didn't have an explicit rule, I would end up using them simply because they are so advantageous. However, a fiat "do not cast paralysis more than three times" rule is not a very elegant solution, so this restriction, were it generally enforced, would best take the form of a chance in the gestures of paralysis such that it was impossible to cast every turn. </div><div><br /></div><div>And restricting which hand can be paralyzed would also balance out the spell effectively. My preferred way of handling this would be to say that whichever hand I cast paralysis with is the hand that gets paralyzed (if I gesture "FFF" with my right hand, I can paralyze your right hand). This is significant for a reason that goes beyond the ability of a parachain to alternate hands every other turn - even though only one hand can be paralyzed, as long as the caster gets to choose which hand it is that is affected, and the choice is made after the spell is successfully cast, the target of paralysis has to restrict which gestures he makes on BOTH of his hands, in order to avoid having a gesture on either hand that will become particularly unusable once paralysis takes effect. In fact, it might be a downside of the parafc variant that any spell featuring an F can be so disastrously disrupted by paralysis (given how few spells use the C gesture). The result of this is that on a turn in which I expect to be targeted by paralysis, I will try to gesture either a W (paralyzed into WPP - counterspell) or PS (paralyzed into PSDD - charm monster) on each hand to prevent my opponent from being able to totally disrupt my spellflow. However, since my opponent can alternate the paralyzed hand every other turn, that means that in theory I have to be prepared to make one of those restricted gestures on each hand every other turn. If I knew ahead of time which hand would be paralyzed, this would not be an issue. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's plenty more to say on the topic, but this is plenty for one post. I like to hope that some of my idealistic self-imposed restrictions gain traction in the community at large, or that at some point a further evolved version of the game will address some of these issues, but in the meantime paralysis is a legitimately broken aspect of an otherwise unbelievably well-crafted game that we must live with.</div>Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-59285429846817836152010-05-16T20:08:00.000-07:002012-11-26T14:27:36.248-08:00A Bold Experiment43:60, Year 8572, LV-Timeline:<br />
<br />
I hate politics. It's like putting on a circus show for an audience of baboons. At this rate I'll have spent as much time as I spent growing the Mk IV getting permission to use it. I know it's a bold proposal, but since I wasn't laughed out of the council chamber, they're bound to approve it sooner or later.<br />
<br />
If it was anyone else standing at that podium, they probably would have been laughed out of the chamber. I'm sure they're repeating that very sentence to each other right now. I'm sure that fool Tiresias is also going on about the redundancy of the whole proposal, given the accuracy of his simulations. He has no respect for real science - if he did he would be advocating for this stronger than anyone, for someone to prove his evolutionary simulations.<br />
<br />
Why don't they see what I see - not just a model, but a complete history of an entire planet! I can trace the longterm effects of controlled environmental pressures, watch whole species emerge, adapt, and die off. What greater work of art could there be than an entire world presented in 4 dimensions? Besides, it would give us some solid data on the effects of exposing primitive creatures to LV-radiation.<br />
<br />
And at the end of the experiment, the cultures are to be wiped - it's in the proposal! I don't see how there's any risk of timeline contamination. I suppose I simply need to be patient, but patience was never a strong suit of mine.<br />
<br />
45:30, Year 8572, LV-Timeline:<br />
<br />
Dear diary, this is an auspicious day. The final bit of bureaucratic nonsense has been dealth with, and I now am officially approved to carry out the most ambitious ecological experiment in history. I've picked out a planet in the Syrma system which was life-sustaining in the very recent past (astronomically speaking), but is not currently known to bear life.<br />
<br />
The plan is to create a vast time-warping field to touchdown on the planet as it was approximately 65 million years ago, bury the Mk IV some miles below the surface, and have it collect data constantly while I remain in suspension. I'll be pre-programming a series of environmental stimuli, including an influx of LV-radiation in the final 3 million years of the experiment. I don't know if that will be enough time to observe its full effects, but I'd rather play safe in this case and wake myself up before it produces an army of intelligent spiders with gatline guns. Not that gatling guns would do much good against the Mk IV. Just to play things safe, I'm equipping it with a kill-switch that will plasmatize the entire biomass of the planet's surface. Even better, I'll be able to reabsorb the plasma and may have a net energy gain through this process. I'm so brilliant.<br />
<br />
In any case, I should be ready to begin the experiment in a few weeks. Then it'll be a quick nap for me and a return trip with 65 million years of data!<br />
<br />
45:47, Year 8572, LV-Timeline:<br />
<br />
Dear diary, I AM PSYCHED.<br />
<br />
0:0, Year 0, LV'-Timeline:<br />
<br />
This marks the start time of the experiment. I have arrived in the Syrma system and will be touching down in approximately 3 hours. Unfortunately, the time warp used even more energy than I'd expected (and I'm working on the budget of a small nation here). It's possible that the inefficiency points to a flaw in the temporal drive, but I should still have enough reserve energy for a return trip (at least, after plasmatization), and since there's no chance of field interference from other time machines on the planet, the field should be stable enough.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
Wow, I don't think I'm ever going to get sick of freefall touchdowns. That impact was incredible (and yet my Mk IV is unscathed!). I'm sure there are animals on the surface that didn't fair quite so well, but sacrifices do need to be made in the name of science. I'm just glad those sacrifices don't include me, HA. Since everything seems to be in order, I'm going to set my first anchor point now, run one more system check, and activate suspension for the initial time frame. See you on the flip side!<br />
<br />
Yours truly,<br />
Greatest Scientist Ever<br />
<br />
0:0, Year 50,000, LV'-Timeline:<br />
<br />
I have strange dreams in suspension. There was this guy on my street trying to sell pretzels to people, and then when I tried to buy one he told me he only accepted payment in moons. What a fucker.<br />
<br />
Anyway, aside from that, everything is going great! The first checkpoint has gone perfectly, although it's interesting to note that just in the first 50,000 year period, I've seen one of the planets dominant species go extinct. It seems likely that the impact of my landing was involved, since no other clear extinction events have been picked up in the history. I'll probably have to exclude this period for most of my analysis, but the surface seems to have already returned to a fairly normal state, and I think it's time for a real data-gathering session.<br />
<br />
0:0, Year 30M, LV'-Timeline:<br />
<br />
This is incredible! We're just under halfway through the experiment timeline and already I have enough data to spend a lifetime analyzing. And in case anyone thought it was all redundant, I have already found three genus-level inconsistencies with Tiresias' simulation. They're going to be rewriting ALL the textbooks.<br />
<br />
0:0, Year 62M, LV'-Timeline:<br />
<br />
It's time for the final phase of the experiment to begin, which involves the effects of LV-radiation. I'll be a litte disappointed if nothing interesting happens, but that seems unlikely. When I next wake up it should be time to clear the cultures and prepare for the return trip.<br />
<br />
37:36, Year Y-14,142, LV'-Timeline:<br />
<br />
I never would have believed it, but LV-radiation has even more dramatic effects than anyone predicted. I wasn't planning on waking up for another 14,000 years, but the system is on alert because of a power drain, of all things. It seems that a relatively unremarkable species that came in contact with the stimulus probe has become sentient and developed civilization in just the last 3 million years. They've even managed to build a device that can draw power from the Mk IV - I wonder if they even realize where they're getting this energy from.<br />
<br />
Even more surprisingly, there are faint readings of temporal fluctuations in what appears to be the capital building of this civilization. Is it really possible that they've managed to develop timewarping technology in this time? It seems more likely that an accidental technology of theirs is causing some kind of resonance with the Mk IV's temporal drive. In any case, this represents a nontrivial threat (much worse that spiders with gatling guns, which was my previous worst-case scenario).<br />
<br />
I really don't want to have to engage a planet-wide culture wipe without the last 14,000 years of data (and I can only imagine how interesting this data will be). I suppose some of my colleagues would also take issue on "moral grounds" with wiping a culture of sentient creatures, but the potential threat of timeline contamination is a much worse outcome.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, I will need to make another anchor point here, regardless of what I decide to do.<br />
<br />
22:04, Year Y-14,134, LV'-Timeline:<br />
<br />
The audacity of these creatures! They actually built an underwater facility to get more direct access to their energy source - ME. I can't afford to allow my energy reserves to fall below the point needed for a surface culture wipe, so I had no choice but to destroy the facility, and all of the technology that was used to develop it. I discovered the source of the temporal fluctuations - it was coming from a piece of jewelry worn by a female of the species, which seems to be linked to the device that was draining power from the Mk IV. When it came into immediate contact with the Mk IV, it caused a series of significant temporal rifts. I destroyed the facility as quickly as possible in order to minimize potential timeline contamination. I never thought this expedition was going to prove so dangerous.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, there are no lingering fluctuation signatures, and I'm disseminating an airborne agent that should deactivate some of the more dangerous genes in the present population. I'll have to keep an eye on the development of the situation, but hopefully the experiment can continue - and I suppose it will have to, as my energy reserves are running dangerously low. I'm going to switch into geothermal mode for the remainder of the experiment timeline and I should be able to build up enough energy for a culture wipe at the anticipated end date of the experiment.<br />
<br />
12:53, Year Y-1,399, LV'-Timeline:<br />
<br />
This is perhaps more bizarre than my last entry - I think I was intentionally brought out of suspension by a creature on the surface. What I don't understand is how an LV-irradiated creature with fairly sophisticated technology survived the last 12,000 years. The other members of the species seem to be working at a much lower technology level. Is it possible that he was moved to this time period by one of the temporal rifts I observed? I can only hope this process does not repeat itself. In any case, he's been dealt with, and I've set another anchor point. Maybe later I can examine this period more carefully and try to figure out where that guy came from.<br />
<br />
39:20, Year Y-999, LV'-Timeline:<br />
<br />
The system picked up another temporal fluctuation. It seems to have been located at some kind of celebration or carnival, but there's no remaining signatures. I'm going to be scanning for tech, but if nothing comes up I'll ignore it.<br />
<br />
0:0, Year Y-0, LV'-Timeline:<br />
<br />
At long last, the final day of the experiment has arrived. I've regained enough power to plasmatize the surface biomass, but after the unexpected strain the Mk IV's been put through, I'm beginning to think that it'd be safer to grow a fresh vessel for my return trip, which I should be able to do with the energy boost from plasmatization. After 65M years in suspension, what's another 300-400 years?<br />
<br />
Anyway, I have to admit that I've come to kind of admire the tenacity of the creatures that have evolved on this planet, and it's a shame to wipe them all, but I have to return with my findings.<br />
<br />
0:0, Year Y-0, LV''-Timeline:<br />
<br />
The readings on my instruments suggest that an additional timeline has formed somehow! This should be impossible! Clearly this experiment has proven much more dangerous than I expected, and I need to proceed with an immediate culture wipe.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
What. The. Fuck. A temporal rift has opened up and a miniature horde of LV-irradiated creatures has poured out of it. These are pretty much the mutant spiders with gatling guns I was afraid of, except one of them is wielding a sword. A SWORD. And he's actually damaging the hull of the Mk IV with it! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SWORD MADE OUT OF?! If they penetrate the hull, I'll have to activate emergency security measures. It better not come to worst case scenarios, but if it does, the Mk IV's core module has my entire genetic code and memory bank backed up, so it can recreate me at will. These punks clearly don't know who they're messing with. In case you weren't sure, I'll remind you:<br />
<br />
THE GREATEST SCIENTIST OF ALL TIME.<br />
<br />
<br />
---<br />
This was the last journal entry of Professor Icarius Lavos. Following are some discussion questions about the reading:<br />
<br />
1) Professor Lavos brought up the concept of "timeline contamination" several times in his journal? Why is it that time travel, especially to the distant past, might be considered dangerous?<br />
<br />
2) Professor Lavos' experiment is often blamed for rise of humans as a competitive time-traveling species. What are some steps he could have taken to insure this hadn't happened?<br />
<br />
3) The sword Professor Lavos refers to in his last entry was made of Dreamstone, a previously unknown material which is now in wide use. What properties of Dreamstone might have made it particularly effective when used against the Mk IV?<br />
<br />
4) If you could do any kind of time-travel enabled experiment, what would you do?Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-29554066288119471282010-04-21T10:58:00.000-07:002010-04-21T12:06:26.267-07:00Luck and Twitch-SkillsPerko just put up a <a href="http://projectperko.blogspot.com/2010/04/gambling-and-colored-spinny-things.html">post</a> justifying his claim that skill (or at least twitch-skill) and luck-based challenges generally amount to the same thing from a game design perspective.<br /><br /><blockquote>What I've come to realize is that a mechanic based on luck and a mechanic based on skill both serve the same purpose in this final framework. They both act as a "scattering" agent: they push the player in somewhat unexpected vectors, allowing them to explore the gameplay "terrain" with a quick and interesting feedback loop.</blockquote><br />Generally, I agree with him, but his language is abstract enough that I think it could really do with some more concrete examples. Let's consider three turn-based games with units on a grid: Chess, Civilization, and Archon. In each case, if one unit attempts to move into a space occupied by an enemy unit, this creates a conflict, which needs to be resolved somehow. In Chess, a consistent rule is applied - the piece that's moving wins the encounter every time. In Civilization games, resolution depends on a combination of the units' stats and random luck (if the units are of similar strength, considering any modifiers, you've got about a 50/50 chance of winning), and in Archon when two pieces overlap it causes a dueling mini-game to start, where the pieces, controlled by the two opposing players, duke it out. The point is that in each case the overall strategy of moving pieces on the game board will be similar, but the difference between Chess and the other two, in terms of strategy, is that you can't afford to be quite as precise and pre-planned in Civilization or Archon because an enemy unit could unexpectedly break through your front line if your opponent is lucky or good at the minigame, respectively.<br /><br />Avid players of pen-and-paper games might be more willing to accept the interchangeability of twitch-challenges and random chance since their games so often rely on random elements to resolve situations that theoretically rely on the character's skill. A d20 roll in D&D could be replaced by rock, paper, scissors (which is still mostly luck-based), or even by a quick game of table-tennis while retaining the overall structure of the role-playing game. Video gamers may be less likely to accept this interchangeability because they're more likely to experience the twitch-skill end of the spectrum and value the skills they've developed. But from the game designer's perspective, the range of skill-levels of the players represents a predictable curve of possible outcomes, just like the die-roll does.<br /><br />This isn't to denigrate twitch-skills as being no better than luck, but simply to suggest that in any game where a the result of tactical decision isn't guaranteed, the designer can choose to add a twitch-skill element or an element of luck, and expect it to produce a similar "scattering" effect on the results. Generally speaking, the advantage of using skill is that it gives the player a greater sense of ownership over their victory, but it also makes it possible for a player skilled at the twitch-challenge to skew the results of tactical decisions more consistently then they could with a luck-challenge, whereas the luck-challenge preserves, over time, the relationship between strategy and expected success rate. Allowing a twitch-skilled player to surpass expectations may be fine in a single player game (I was really good at the lock-picking mini-game in Oblivion), because it's only that single player who's fun we need to worry about in the first place, but in a cooperative game such as D&D, a single player outshining everyone else in his party as a result of being a good table-tennis player could produce ill will, and I imagine this is part of the reason twitch-challenges are more likely to appear in video games than tabletop games (that, and the fact that twitch-challenges are easy to introduce in the medium of video games).<br /><br />-Silent EllipsisEllipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-49238855056034168952010-03-21T21:33:00.000-07:002010-03-21T23:12:02.666-07:00Dating Profile ClichésWow, it's been quite a while since I posted to my blog, which I'm sure I could blame on something, but I'll skip that part. Incidentally, commenting on how long it's been since one's last blog post is a high-visibility cliche, which just happens to be the topic of today's post! More specifically, I'm going to ramble about cliched phrases I continually run across in online dating profiles (yes, I'm on dating sites, see if you can use your powers of inference to guess what my username is). This has absolutely nothing to do with my usual topics, but I felt like writing about this somewhere, and it is my blog afterall.<br /><br />So on to the list! These are a selection of phrases that I've run across dozens of times, when browsing profiles either on OKCupid or Plentyoffish (both free sites, so they have large populations of uncommitted users). Some of these phrases have come to seem so unoriginal to me that when I see them, I immediately stop reading the person's profile.<br /><br />It is worth noting that I have read many more profiles written by women than by men, which I'm sure biases the phrases I'm running across.<br /><br />1. "I don't bite (unless you're into that sort of thing)"<br /><br />I don't know why this is as popular as it is. If I'd only seen this once or twice, I might have thought "Oh, heh, I get it," and moved on. As it is, this phrase is so inexplicably popular that I can feel my blood start to boil when I see it, but maybe that's a defense mechanism my body has to ward off vampires.<br /><br />2. "I want someone who can sing to me/play [x] instrument"<br /><br />As someone with mild musical ability, this probably shouldn't bother me, but it does. The problem I have with this phrase is that it's a clear manifestation of the profile-as-venue-for-fantasies complex. Of course you'd like to date a rock star. Everyone would. Telling us so is not the point of your profile - you should be trying to convince readers you're interesting or cue them about what your interests are. Instead, profiles that include this phrase often read like dating fanfiction.<br /><br />3. "If you want to know [x], just ask me!"<br /><br />In the time it took you to write that sentence, you could have simply told your reader the fascinating fact you're obscuring from us. To make matters worse, the user that includes this phrase usually doesn't respond well to you asking about it, because everyone who messages them asks about it and now they're tired of repeating the answer hundreds of times. Of course, the solution to that is to just include it in your profile to begin with.<br /><br />4. "I want someone who won't lie to me/cheat on me/make me cry for a change!"<br /><br />Rule number one of online profiles: never focus on negativity. When you see the above sentence in a profile, it's often part of a greater paragraph, or in some cases a manifesto, about how much they really hate it when people are mean to them. This usually makes me run away.<br /><br />5. "I'm not your typical girl/boy!"<br /><br />Yes, you probably are.<br /><br />6. Listing "travel" as a primary hobby<br /><br />This is one of those lines in a profile that seems like it would add an air of sophistication, except that traveling any significant distance costs money. So unless you're completely loaded (in which case what you say in your profile doesn't matter that much), traveling is something you only get the chance to do from time to time. In other words, this user is claiming that one of their main hobbies is something that they spend 99% of their time not doing.<br /><br />More importantly, this is most likely completely irrelevant to someone you're considering dating. Unless you're going to invite them to come with you on a trip to another continent right away, it's not going to have much impact on whether or not they're going to want to grab a coffee with you next week.<br /><br />Note that this is different from "I traveled to [x] place and really loved it," which suggests you have stories to tell. Instead, the cliche suggests a negative story space that sucks interesting stories out of a date (again, profile-as-venue-for-fantasizing complex).<br /><br />7. "I'm preparing for the zombie apocalypse."<br /><br />I can't dig on this one too much, because it clearly does tell me something about the user's personality. However, this user would, in all cases, die instantly in a zombie apocalypse. So would I, probably, but at least I didn't waste any time preparing for it.<br /><br />8. (In response to "I'm Really Good At") "Everything, especially being modest."<br /><br />This is the one cliche that I'm guilty of perpetrating myself (or was guilty of). There's nothing inherently wrong with the phrase, until you start to realize how unoriginal it is.<br /><br />9. (In response to "The Most Private Thing I'm Willing to Admit") "I'm on a dating site."<br /><br />No. Crap.<br /><br />Furthermore, this carries the connotation that the user is trepid about online dating and therefore less likely to respond to messages, which doesn't usually help their case.<br /><br />10. (In response to "You Should Message Me If") "You're bored."<br /><br />Way to maintain your standards, there.<br /><br />-Silent EllipsisEllipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-43327429737232914872009-10-19T20:13:00.000-07:002009-10-19T21:36:46.760-07:00Crazy Ideas for Crazy Times: Centralized Digital DistributionAlright, I'll get right to it: amongst the many things that are being revolutionized in the world around us, distribution is a rather important one. There has been a lot of attention in particular to itunes, a music-player/mp3-store that has been the first successful attempt to capitalize on mp3 distribution, and on Steam, a game-server/game-store that sells Valve's products, as well as those of third-party companies. Amazon also recently entered the picture with the Kindle, to digitally distribute books.<br /><br />So it seems like we're making a lot of progress on the digital distribution front, right? Unfortunately, there's a problem: each of these services is so much more successful than any competition in the same genre (itunes for music, Steam for games, Kindle for books) that they pretty much hold a monopoly of their respective markets.<br /><br />Now certainly there are smaller distributors of digital goods, and in many cases individual developers of media can distribute their own files, but it's very hard to be a small distributor. In particular, smaller distributors have difficulty integrating effective DRM that users won't find overly intrusive (and in most cases, the overly intrusive DRM isn't effective anyway). Wizards of the Coast, for instance, has had so many problems with piracy that they've pulled all D&D .pdfs from their store (not necessarily a smart move, but then they just got $120k in a settlement with one particular pirate, so maybe they know better than I do, and in any case it shows that they at least perceive piracy to be a very dangerous problem). Steam and Kindle, however, are able to convince their users to put up with DRM by offering in exchange the convenience of a centralized library users can access from anywhere (something Wizards of the Coast can't offer, since they only have their own products available for download, and no advanced management software).<br /><br />This suggests that digital distribution relies on centralization, to some extent, in order to gain traction, but since the companies that are capable of generating that kind of centralization are large and few, digital markets seemed to be destined for monopolization, and we're already starting to see some of the side effects, such as Amazon retroactively removing purchased documents from users' Kindles (would not go over well with consumers if there were an alternative product for them to defect to).<br /><br />What could possibly be done about this? In my mind, what we need is to take the "hard" part out of the hands of for-profit organizations. If it were up to me, I'd create an international organization tasked simply with maintaining a database of users and which digital files they have access to. This organization isn't responsible for actually distributing the files - just keeping track of who owns what.<br /><br />Once this is in place, private companies can gets permits to access the database and even modify entries for users for which they have the proper credentials. The companies offer services for connecting the user to files they own and to offerings for new things they can buy - basically what things like Steam do now. The difference is, now any other company that wants to can offer a competing Steam-like storefront that's capable of offering the same games Steam does. In fact, if you switched, in our scenario, from Steam to a competitor, you would still be able to access all of the games you bought on Steam from the competitor's application (because they're both accessing the same database).<br /><br />In other words, the idea is that companies like Valve, Apple, and Amazon would be offering browsers - interfaces whose principal value is their user-friendliness, but users wouldn't be completely beholden to these companies for access to the items they purchased. What's more, the creation of a digital ownership database could speed up the shift toward digital distribution for things that aren't already available and possibly result in other advantages down the road...<br /><br />There are a few more things that could be pointed out here, but that's the basic idea, so I'll stop there for now.Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-45042747028460860832009-09-30T15:42:00.000-07:002009-09-30T17:55:02.981-07:00A Word If You Can SpareHer eyes dart. There's me, left, below, and sometimes nothing. She's juggling, but doesn't think to catch her parts. They simply wait to hit the ground. Her face is focus, and wonder underneath. If you peel you find quiet fears with loud reasons. Her answers aren't clear but they are transparent. When enough words swell and battle to describe her, she fades, and in her absence, her emptiness speaks to me:<br /><br />Newborn memory<br />You stand before me<br />And taunt me with<br />The arms at your side<br /><br />Your blood makes me move<br />Your bones keep me still<br />I need your skin to keep me<br />Clothed<br /><br />But when I see through you<br />I do not see you<br />When I speak to you<br />My words do not travel<br /><br />Where do they go, the things we hold in our hands?<br />How do we find them, the things we never lost?<br />When will we remember the things we never learned?<br />Why I do not love you<br /><br />So I answer with my fleeing words and sounds, and all the things that emerge from my fingers, eyes, and sores. I answer with my unseen stares, my unwashed heart, and unwanted needs. In whispers to the world, and notes sacrificed before so many altars I say:<br /><br />You cannot tickle your own foot<br />Though you might feel its scratch<br /><br />You cannot frighten your own hand<br />Though it bows in its submission<br /><br />You cannot yearn for things for you have<br />But might miss what you've misplaced<br /><br />You cannot see yourself<br />Except before a mirror<br /><br />I know no metaphor or trickery<br />I can only tell you what you are<br />A filled cup desperate to pour<br />A defiant falling<br />Juice<br /><br />I have no solution, but am thoroughly immersed<br />I mistake double meanings for twice the words<br />Curiosities for desires<br />Wisdoms for truths<br /><br />Love is not a thing you wait for<br />Come to<br />Or bring<br /><br />Passion is not a paper trick<br />Of many-fold wonders<br />Hung by a string<br /><br />And alone is not a number<br /><br />They are the bubbling parts of your mind<br />The transformable parts of a world<br />And the means of my meaning<br /><br />They are words<br /><br />I'm writing them now, but may come back to hack off parts. What she has is still a mystery to me, but I know I have both longing and love. Freshly plucked with no jar to keep them. Her eyes no longer dart, but remain, and in her stillness her absence wanes. The earth is quiet again beneath me, but remembrances below me still flood with meaning.<br /><br />I may be here for a while.Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-17333183832176148872009-09-29T13:14:00.000-07:002009-09-29T19:05:02.199-07:00Categories: Gameplay Instance and SequenceWhen trying to categorize and describe gameplay experiences, there's one huge difference in experience that I've been thinking about lately, which is the difference between an isolated and repeatable gameplay experience and between the long-term experience of progressing a game.<br /><br />The former experience I think I'll refer to as a gameplay instance. Note that I'm making up these terms as I go along, so if someone has better ones for me to use, let me know. A gameplay instance includes the decisions involved in completing a specific task, usually in a single gameplay session - like "take the opponent's king" or "roll up the largest ball possible." As I'm describing it, gameplay instances are layered on top of each other - completing the task usually involves completing minor objectives along the way ("lure the opponent out of his defensive position" or "get onto that hill so I can pick up the stuff on top of it").<br /><br />So with a definition of an "instance" that broad, what is left? The unspecific goal - "progress the game." Usually progressing the game involves completing specific tasks, but there's a separate experience that emerges out of these specific tasks that is more than their sum. In a Final Fantasy game, each battle is a gameplay instance, and navigating a dungeon is a gameplay instance, but then there's the motivation to see what happens next driving you even when you're tired of killing your 300th zombie dragon. That's the gameplay sequence at work.<br /><br />So while most games these days include both kinds of gameplay experiences, they emphasize each to different degrees. Games far on the instance side include almost all board games, and games like Left 4 Dead that emphasize repeatable mutiplayer experiences. On the sequence-heavy side of things we have adventure games and interactive fiction. Between the extremes we have most modern games, which include overcoming challenges as part of an ongoing progress toward an uncertain final goal.<br /><br />So I intended to say more, but I think I'll just stick to this for now and come back to it. Generally speaking, the point is that figuring out early on what kind of experience you want to provide and focusing on elements to provide that is important, and among other things you should figure out to what extent you want to emphasize a instanced or sequential experience.Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-8908184799386226302009-09-22T11:55:00.000-07:002009-09-22T12:25:36.934-07:00Chess and Resource ManagementMy local Starbucks has a chess board sitting around, so I decided to play against myself. Since this gives me perfect predictive power about what my opponent is going to do, it obviously removes some of the standard elements of Chess, but there was one thing I realized when playing it: Chess is first and foremost about mobilization. That is, you begin with all pieces in play, but since most of them are behind a wall of pawns to start with, they don't immediately threaten your opponent. The way you gain options is by moving them into positions where they can form threats.<br /><br />On reflection, this is more similar than I'd thought to modern strategy games and their treatment of resource management. Think of Magic, where I've chosen cards to place into my deck - the cards are there, but they're not in a usable state, they're not active threats, until I draw them (and have enough mana available to use them). Even if I play an RTS game, say Starcraft, I have a potential army that becomes realized when I gather enough resources to build it, and the question I constantly have to balance is how long I should spend mustering threats before I try to use them - if I'm playing well, I should attack as soon as I think I have a force my opponent won't be able to defend against. This is the same kind of strategy I'm using in Chess - I'm trying to move my units into a position from which they can simultaneously threaten my opponent, and as soon as I think I can launch an attack my opponent can't defend against, I will.<br /><br />So revelation of the day: mobilizing units and building them are, from the perspective of their impact on strategy, extremely similar (as long as it takes a similar amount of effort). The big difference, of course, is that my units can still be used to defend in many situations before I've moved them at all. If you like, however, you can imagine these situations as my opponent bringing the units into play (like if my opponent plays a card that results in me drawing new cards, or allows me to respond by playing one). It also suggests a certain consistency between the way classic and modern games conceive of strategy.<br /><br />Just thought that was interesting.Ellipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com0