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Month: October 2003

WISH 68: There can be two

October 11, 2003
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WISH 68 wants to know about something I don’t have a lot of experience with:

Have you ever played in or GMed a game with more than one GM? What was your experience with it? What were the strengths and weaknesses of having multiple GMs? Was it positive or negative? Would you do it again? If you’ve never tried it as a GM or player, would you like to? Why or why not?

Answer: not really. A couple of sessions of From Light To Darkness and that’s it. It was good; Neil and Soula clearly agreed on how things were meant to work.

In the back of my brain I have a game design which requires multiple GMs. One GM sets background, and one GM plays all the NPCs. I wanted to make some kind of point about narrativist versus simulationist and how a game can satisfy multiple urges, but I forgot what the precise point was, so I’ll never actually write down the design.

Oh, and my game Into the Sunset is pretty much a multiple GM game, come to think of it.

Hightened tension

October 11, 2003
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The White Wolf Underworld lawsuit has involved Ken Hite. Fresh from his bi-weekly column comes the news:

Or, in my case, with a subpoena, subcompetently served on my wife while I was out running my GURPS game. I’d like to thank everyone involved in the White Wolf-Sony lawsuit for that. Having seen Underworld (and thoroughly enjoyed it, in a cheap and tawdry fashion), and keeping in mind that I’m not a lawyer, I don’t think it was worth pestering my wife over.

Shocking news. Who’d have guessed that he plays GURPS? (Yes, I know, GURPS Cabal.)

Addendum: Looks like Bruce Baugh got subpoenaed as well.

Bigger burger

October 11, 2003
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O’Sullivan’s Pub in Somerville has burgers that are two inches thick, made of ground sirloin, and if you want they’ll put garlic on it. Or roll ‘em in pepper. Or whatever. Also, the french fries are slabs of potato. The beer selection isn’t great, but they have Bass on draft, so that’s OK.

I’m feeling very content, food-wise, just now.

Do you belive?

October 9, 2003
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Ted Sarandis spent a while this afternoon explaining how good the Yankees starting pitching was, and how the Red Sox shouldn’t get too optimistic. Talked to a couple of Yankees fans. Went on about how the Sox were missing two starters, as if Mirabelli hasn’t caught for Wakefield all year long — and Wakefield was 2-0 in Yankee Stadium this year.

Gotta love Boston sports media. Or ignore them, which seems to be working for the Red Sox. Onward, brave cowboys.

The color why

October 9, 2003
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If I were part of any sort of political movement in California, I would pay close attention to this map. I would not waste time complaining about how foolish people were. I would figure out why the map looks like that, and take advantage of the reasons.

Talking about how it’s time to stop holding back counts as complaining, by the by.

Man of straw

October 9, 2003
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Since I think this piece may make the rounds, some deflating is in order.

John Lott purports to have proven that the media is biased in favor of black quarterbacks. He claims that his research means that Rush Limbaugh was right. However, his research (whether or not it’s sound) is completely irrelevant when judging what Limbaugh had to say about Donovan McNabb. Limbaugh made a very specific claim about one quarterback in particular. Straw man fallacy.

Above and beyond that, his research is kind of shaky. Problem one: he only considered newspaper data. Justification? “[T]his is measurable and it is not clear why newspapers would be so different from the rest of the media.” That’s assuming the conclusion. Good research tests assumptions like that.

Problem two: the data on which he bases his report is flawed.

“We also collected data by week for each of the first four weeks of the season on a host of other factors that help explain the rate at which a player is praised: the quarterback’s rating for each game; whether his team won; the points scored for and against the team; ESPN’s weekly rank for the quarterback’s team and the opponent; and whether it was a Monday night game. In addition, I accounted for average differences in media coverage both in the quarterback’s city and the opponent’s city as well as differences across weeks of the season.”

Points scored against a team generally aren’t seen as the quarterback’s fault. A better metric would be the points scored off a QB turnover. Why is it important that it’s a Monday night game? Why are all these elements weighted equally? Are they weighted equally? Lott’s not saying.

Not atypical of the man.

Declare and depose

October 8, 2003
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It’s document time in the ongoing White Wolf v. Sony saga. First off, here’s Mike Tinney’s deposition as described here. At no extra charge, we’ll include Andrew Zaffron’s declaration. It covers more or less the same ground as did Mike Tinney, with a little additional commentary. Paragraph 8 is amusing.

Moving on to new material, we have declarations from Len Wiseman and Kevin Grevioux, two of the three guys who wrote the screenplay. (And of course Wiseman directed it.) Both note explicitly that “I had never heard of any of the Plaintiffs’ works before early in 2003, after the movie Underworld had been shot.”

I should grab Danny McBride’s declaration — he’s the other screenwriter — and I will at some point, but I don’t expect it to much differ. Thanks to Chris S. for hosting these PDFs.

While you slept

October 8, 2003
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Couple of things you may have missed in the excitement of the recall:

Condoleezza Rice is now in charge of Iraq. The State Department couldn’t get it done, and the Pentagon couldn’t get it done, so it’s the White House’s turn. Somewhat surprisingly, nobody told Rumsfeld.

Judge Brinkema decided that since Zacarias Moussaoui can’t introduce the evidence that might exonerate him, prosecutors can’t introduce evidence that might convict him. The government considered putting Moussaoui before a military tribunal, but perhaps realized that it might look as though military tribunals and the enemy combatant label were just terms of convenience. It kind of bothers me that the government is blowing the case against an admitted Al Qaeda operative — get the damned evidence out there and let’s see what’s what already.

Oh, and Arnold won. Cross your fingers that he lets Warren Buffet run the California economy. I don’t think that’ll happen, but honestly? It might just barely be worth the rest of it if someone as financially savvy as Buffet is getting California out of its budget problems.