One of my rules of thumb for evaluating RPG combat systems is the number of times you have to roll to resolve an attempt to hit, on average. For example, in D&D, you have to roll twice — once to hit, and once for damage. In Vampire, you roll at least three and often four times — once to hit, maybe once to dodge, once for damage, and once for soak. In Feng Shui, you roll once — the roll to hit is also the roll for damage. ...

First, read this post. OK. So, yeah, blogfight. I don’t really want to get into the question of who’s a Democrat and who’s not, since I’m not a Democrat — y’all can have your own arguments. I will say, tangentially, that I do not think Kevin’s comment regarding liberal qualifications is any more divisive or damaging than the belief that criticizing Bush is traitorous. And that’s all I wanna say about that. ...

I’ve mentioned before that the key to Dean’s success is redirecting the blog energy out into the real world. Here’s an example (original). The Internet is just a tool for communication. Using it as such works. No mystic special nature, no slogans needed, no marketing fluff. It’s just a way for people to talk more easily. I get value out of asking my friends about movies they’ve seen and reading newspaper reviews; thus, I get value out of using movie review aggregators. Presidential candidates get value out of recruiting get out the vote workers; thus, they get value out of doing the same damned thing online. ...

Your reading material for the morning: Zbigniew Brzezinski’s New American Strategies for Security and Peace speech. The second condition, troubling condition, which contributes in my view to the crisis of credibility and to the state of isolation in which the United States finds itself today is due in part because that skewed view of the world is intensified by a fear that periodically verges on panic that is in itself blind. ...

The significance of today’s casualties is not so much that it’s the worst attack so far, although it was a terrible thing. What worries me is that we knew it was going to be a bad weekend, and we still couldn’t stop the worst attack of the occupation.

Saith noted pacifist and anti-war activist E. E. “Doc” Smith: Why was all this necessary? This organization, this haste, this split-second timing, this city-wide exhibition of insane hippodrome riding? Why were not all these motorcycle-racers not stationed at their posts, so as to be ready for any emergency? Because America, being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait—wait in instant readiness—until she was actually attacked. — Triplanetary, 1948, page 90 of the Old Earth Books edition ...

This is a hopeful sign. New York City is considering outlawing the party primary; rather, they’ll have one big primary for everyone after which the top two vote-getters will face off in the general election. There are plenty of flaws with the idea, of course, and it’s not mathematically strong. Consider the following preference breakdown: Candidate A: 20% first choice but nobody’s last choice Candidate B: 45% first choice but 55% last choice ...

Let’s wrap this puppy up, shall we? In my frenzy of Gen Con recapping, I missed two purchases. First off was Mechanical Dream, a product of my lust for weird French RPGs. Alas, Steam Logic Editions is actually from Quebec. However, that minor flaw doesn’t seem to have kept them from producing the sort of surrealistic dream of a roleplaying game that I expect from the French. It’s a bizarre industrial fantasy world without any humans at all; the social structure of the world is predicated on a specific kind of fruit. If you don’t eat one every week, you die. I have not yet penetrated deeper into the system than that. ...

You don’t get to know who we arrested. The Justice Department might be correct; revealing the names of those detained post-9/11 could be helpful to Al-Qaeda. Assuming, that is, that Al-Qaeda is incapable of figuring out whether or not cell members were arrested on its own. Which is actually less snarky an assumption than it appears; the answer depends on the nature of the cell structure. On the other hand, with a properly defined cell structure, Al-Qaeda leadership wouldn’t necessarily know that a given detainee was an Al-Qaeda member either. ...

Advantage, moi. Well, more or less. Saith the Boston Dirt Dogs, with no cited source so it’s just a rumor: The real story behind the story: Manny asked the Red Sox put him on irrevocable waivers and insisted to Theo that the Yankees would claim up… so they called his bluff. Yes, that is only sort of close to my theory, but either way you’ve got the key element in place: the waiver was agreed upon by both the Sox and Manny beforehand. OK, what else we got? ...