The crosslink of the day is an excellent article about protest in the world of today. It echoes my personal feelings about it, and one of the reasons why I've never been interested in that whole scene.

One word. Ineffectual.

I won't try to paraphrase the linked article above; I'll just state that I am in near-complete agreement with it, and let you read it. I say 'near,' however, because his conclusions are not necessarily mine. Taibbi closes with something perilously close to a call to direct action, which to me is a mirage, a myth of the counterculture just as insidious as (say) supply-side economics. Sounds good on paper, shite in practice.

I'm not sure that Taibbi's conclusion is warranted. Certainly his logic 'skips' like a scratched CD, right at that point in the essay. So let me assert that he may have allowed a legitimate train of arguments to end in a manufactured call - probably the result of prejudice internalized. I'd be interested to debate the author directly. Lacking an immediate opportunity for that, I'll ask it here.

Posit as true that "mass protest", in its present implementation, is worth the paper it's written on. That frankly the mobilization of police, the Miami model and all the rest of it, is a red herring, whose fishy bite is as likely to be felt by the Man as by its nominal victims. Even if the police sat back and did nothing - which in this day and age they won't - it would make no difference, because the protesters are simply performing an expected skit, a cute passion play for the viewing public after which they can return to their self-absorption.

Assuming this, what follows? What strategy, for those who would enact change? What tactical oeuvres d'main, for those who would steer between the rocks of direct action and the cliffs of inconsequence? Otherwise put, how do we argue smarter, not harder?

This is an open question to my readers. I have a couple of answers in mind, but I think I shall save them until I've seen some responses, if anybody has thoughts to offer. The tools which should be considered available are exactly the ones we're talking about setting up - an hour a week's effort, from 5-20 intelligent people.

Bones? This is a long post - Read the rest.

I have some other thoughts lined up waiting for me to finish this one, so I may as well get this out of the way. A pity, isn't it, that one's mind sometimes prioritizes order and structure over content?

The quest was a blast.

My summary to Rob Maa was that it gets a B+ for props and a solid A for plot. Surprising, given Adam's usual tendencies toward excellent prop quality, but those marks falsely imply criticism of the quest overall. Give it another A for interplayer roleplay and involvement, and while I'm at it an A- for loot.

Highlights would include the end scenes where two factions, working toward the same end, killed each other's principals out of distrust (but worked it out in the end); my personal subplot, a dark secret, coming off in the best possible way - almost blown, but not quite - and thereby Raven's character becoming falsely but widely known as a traitor; roleplay moments as two soldiers shooting the shit, with Ender; a tiny box with Jason Campbell's voice saying, "The Empire Must Be Preserved", worth killing for. The moving eyes and mouth of the sphinx prop, and the funky scene-changing dimensional-vortex-in-a-box.

Downlights would include poor use of the backfield, a "quadruple door" sequence which had to be narrated in and had no prop representation whatsoever, underpowering the rift hazards, hanging people up on a lengthy gauntlet with long wait times, and putting what I must assume was one of the best props into a position where well-informed players would simply choose to never see it, knowing full well that (a) it was invulnerable and (b) it wasn't really important, once the rift itself was dealt with. Player downlights would be Davyd's reading aloud a piece of information which constituted a breach of Imperial Security of the first water, and Jeff's insufficiently painstaking work on the coverup bombings.

Which again makes me sound critical, but it's not; it's just lessons learned.

This latter, because I seem to be earning a name as "Catalyst" for Sunfall. See, back after May 2004 (Faerie Quest), I posed a challenge to Adam: design a quest at Camp Encounter which makes use of the island, during the first night. It has become routine that the island is in some way opened up to players, as of the second day, simply because of the logistics involved in getting players to and from an island, guaranteed dry and safe, in the dark. But it IMO cripples the site, because the non-island portion is really kind of lame as sites go, so the first night ends up very constrained. Adam took up that challenge and (with Shannon et al) designed the early form of Dyscord... only to learn that Encounter wasn't available on the long weekend. Anyway, this led to Shannon saying to me that Dyscord was "all your [my] fault."

Now, during the afterparty of Dyscord, I seem to have sat down with Scott Messier and Cam Johnson, and helped design May or September of next year. And it'll be good, oh yes, if it lives up to what we've got right now it'll be very yummy.

I didn't mean to. It started out with me explaining a few private theories about questing. Stuff like avoiding gauntlets, or if you must have one, designing them so that the players are distracted from the lineup that will inevitably form. Or the taxonomy of encounter types, not just combat and in-character skill/lore encounters but also puzzle-type (player brains), kinesthetic (building things, doing stuff with your hands), and player-physical (the over/under/through obstacle course type of challenge), as well as "legwork" challenges (the part that drives you to tire yourself out chasing all over the field). Or the problems with relying on player-player antagonism (everybody ends up on one side, among others) and some possible solutions. But it all ended up with the quest itself emerging, kind of like a case study, from the midst of the analytical discussion. And looking verrrry nice.

[I'll give you a hint. It doesn't have a name yet, nor does it know whether to be May or September, but I can legitimately drop this teaser... those who do costume should plan to bring two versions of their costume: a living version, and an undead one. This will not be required for those without the imagination or means, but I strongly recommend at least thinking about it. This goes equally strongly for players playing primarily living or primarily undead characters.]

So. See last post for why I am not helping actually organize this one. Instant death for all involved. However, I plan to keep kicking ideas and help toward the fellows planning this, and updates will follow at this location as they exist.

Sunfall rocks. It's all about the endorphins, the exhaustion, and the cool props. Oh, and apparently (to quote Gil), the zombies. It's all about the zombies, too. Even at quests that don't have any. This is a long post - Read the rest.

I think Star and I are hitting the same wall from two different sides, right now. My version of it is that there are many, many things I would like to be devoting substantial time and effort to. Not "feel I ought to," though there are of course plenty of those. But "would like to," really like to.

I'm inspired to write this because of having flipped through the autumn publication of the Council of Canadians, and it's reviving my nascent desire to really get involved in kicking the government's collective ass on behalf of progressive policies that they ought to hold - according to the public and to the actual facts - but don't. The case in point, for me, is health care. Why is there a debate? Inasmuch as we have any data at all, the data says that private health care (a) costs the government more money, not less, and (b) delivers inferior quality of care. The US government pays about three times as much money, per capita, for their crappy health care, as we do for ours. Hmm, tough call, guess we'll have to hold a national debate over that one, Grover.

And so on. I'd like to see a Canadian version of a study I heard cited recently. The study looked back at voting records, and found that among those advances in the civilized world which we now take for granted (things like voter equality and so forth), the US Republican party voted against these things pretty much every time. Their historical track record is abysmal. Mind you, both US parties are pretty awful by our standards. But so's Alberta's provincial government, really.

Which is the point.

I see things being mishandled like this, and I know I'm not alone in being disgusted by it. But I end up with no forum to act, or to discuss, apart from brief interpersonal discussions with zero external impact. I also notice, on trying to look up the Council's local chapter, that there isn't one. Red Deer, Calgary, lord only knows where else in Alberta, but no Edmonton chapter at all. And man, would I love to change that. Chair a local chapter, discuss politics (and generally make friends with) intelligent people other than gamers, actually collect facts and take action, and so forth. That's something I could do.

But I began this post by speaking of a wall.

That wall is family, responsibility, commitments, and guilt. It's the knowledge that every added activity I even think about is one more weight I'm considering putting on my love's shoulders. And that's unthinkable; as it is, I feel like a chain around her neck more often than a support by her side. So this glorious thing that could be... will not. At least not now; which means never.

Same thing goes for Heresy. Same thing goes for High Trader. And another dozen or so lesser dreams as well, into that pot. Star would love to support me in all of these; but we don't have the collective strength for her to be supporting anyone, in anything, right now.

Which means never.

I expect that Star will read this and want to change this situation, make it all better. And maybe that'll actually work, because her side of the same wall is lack of desire, lack of dreams that actually seem worth pursuing. Maybe this post will make us both realize that we're stifling ourselves unnecessarily, that in fact we share a dream or two and the strength to pursue it. That would be cool. But cool is no longer sufficient...

Hmm. It seems my post can't decide whether to end on a depressed or hopeful note. I'm going to go meta on the whole thing instead, and leave it there.

If we do take up the activism gauntlet... who's with us? Diverse opinions and political stances desirable; willingness to commit real time (say an hour a week of real work, plus one evening a month in discussion) a must.
This is a long post - Read the rest.