It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
The Ultimate California Gubernatorial Recall Candidate List is a nice overview of who’s who, with annotations. “This candidate failed the Turing test in 1999.” Heh. And I didn’t know Bill Walton’s son was running.
Although I think he was too kind to Gallagher and Gary Coleman. They belong in the publicity seeker category.
I said something flippant early this week about West Wing setting unreasonable expectations for a Presidency. Stephen Kaye (nice new blog location and layout) noted that some people do ask why President Bartlett couldn’t be president, which actually doesn’t surprise me.
All this in preamble to today’s California recall news: Schwarzenegger asked Rob Lowe to join his campaign. Lowe is in fact a Democrat, and of course was a regular on West Wing. George Schultz and Warren Buffett are already on board the campaign.
This suddenly strikes me as a really well-financed and well-thought out attempt to nail down the middle of the political spectrum and take it away from both the Democrats and the Republicans. Schwarzenegger is running as a Republican, but that’s so pro forma it’s not even funny. Buffett has been criticizing Bush recently.
If Schwarzenegger stays Republican, it’s a good thing. It could help stop the party’s drift to the right. If he goes third party — which I’m starting to think could happen — it’s an interesting thing. The Reform Party is probably too damaged to serve as a useful vehicle, but it’s not as if Buffett couldn’t fund a serious third party effort.
If, of course, he’s putting together a vehicle for personal power, that’s a bad thing. Gonna be an interesting fall.
WISH 60 asks:
How do you use different frames of reference or mindsets in your games? In what ways do your characters or NPCs in games you GM think differently from the people around you? What sorts of things make them different (societal, mental, physical, etc.)? Do you feel that you’re successful in incorporating and showing the differences?
I was actually kind of taken aback by this question for a moment. Shifting mindsets is a really basic, low-level component of my gaming. I am, to borrow the r.g.frp.advocacy jargon, an immersive player. I don’t forget who I am — that path is not deeply healthy for me — but I like the experience of mentally filtering reactions through a different mindset.
My ideal roleplaying experience is for me, Bryant, to take in the descriptions of the GM and other players; to then filter that through a sort of perceptual level and translate it into what my character sees; and then to express the reaction in the character’s voice. I’m the one who defines the perceptions, and I construct the mental map from the perceptions to the character, which allows me to figure out the character’s responses without “being” the character.
Maybe that’s not immersive after all. It is in that the effect is the same, but the process doesn’t match what I hear people who call themselves immersive talking about.
In a way, come to think of it, it’s the flip side of the classic GM technique of describing with the characters in mind. When describing a threatening situation to a cowardly PC, you quietly play up the menace: “there are, I don’t know, you can’t count how many orcs.” When you’re describing the same thing to a paladin, you downplay it: “there are perhaps seven orcs, poorly equipped.” Same situation, no dictating what the players are feeling — but what they pick up on depends on who they are.
I do that for my PCs. I filter the descriptions of the world to match what I think their perceptions would be. In Rob’s UA game, if an NPC is talking about occult weirdness, Reese hears the stuff about ley lines and patterns because it fits into his worldview; I mentally screen out discussions of entropomancy because Reese really doesn’t get how it works.
Or, put a third way:
“blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah…”
This is my favorite picture so far from the blackout. New York by night. That’s not a picture you’re going to see very often. I like the grainy effect produced by the cell phone camera; it’s very post-apocalyptic. Mad Max was here.
LiveJournal from the streets of Baghdad. Yeah, no kidding; rebelcoyote is a National Guardsman who’s serving a tour of duty over there. He’s got some interesting stories to tell. (Thanks to rollick for the pointer.)
Of the other LiveJournallers who list their location as Baghdad, slownewsday, notquitejesus, and giantlaser are the only ones who seem to actually be in Baghdad. Or at least are making a good effort to fake it.
The directory of people listing their location as Iraq has 161 people in it, so perhaps I will not sort through them just now. Best guess: “not many of ‘em.”
Oh, OK. solidkz seems bonafide, so there’s one.
By way of Warren Ellis, we have open phonecam NYC blackout coverage. News moves at the speed of people.
When I read about Bush dissing Schwarzenegger, I can’t help but think of Dana Carvey’s voice. And I know that’s wrong of me.
“It is the biggest political story in the country? That’s interesting. That says a lot. That speaks volumes. Oh, I think there’s maybe other political stories. Isn’t there, like a presidential race coming up? Maybe that says something.”
He can’t possibly have said that as snippily as I’m imagining, right?
Either way, it’s more of the right wing separating itself from Schwarzenegger. Interesting trend.
Daily Kos asks how best to protest the 2004 GOP convention. Gee, I dunno — how do you best protest a legitimate, legal gathering that’s part of the normal flow of American politics when you yourself rest firmly within the political mainstream?
It’s not the protesting itself that strikes me as wrong. I’m all for protesting at political events. But Kos is someone who participates quite actively in the two party system; he really doesn’t have any business arguing that the Republican side of the process shouldn’t happen. If he just wants to protest the timing of the convention, he ought to be a touch more explicit in his wording. “What do you guys think would be the best way to protest the timing of the convention,” perhaps.
And yeah, I do kind of think it’s a Freudian slip. The Democrats are rolling along with an underdog mentality at the moment, which tends to encourage protesting as a primary means of political expression, which is not so healthy even from a practical standpoint. Gotta stand for something, not just against it.
A fair number of the commenters pointed out the flaws inherent in the question, and I don’t think all of them were right-wingers, so there’s perhaps hope yet.
“Couple of days of light posting there, huh?”
Yeah, a lot of my creative energies got sidetracked over here. It’s a wiki for the Unknown Armies game I’m in. I kind of blame John for reminding me what a cool medium wikis can be. They’re basically Web notebooks — anyone can edit a page, and it’s very easy to create a new page. Active wikis grow like ivy, twining in odd and unexpected directions, creating a hedge maze of hypertext.
Wikis make an absolutely great medium for talking about roleplaying campaigns that have conspiratorial elements, or secret history, or mysteries. Our UA wiki has shed light on quite a few previously unsuspected connections. Very useful and rewarding. I think it’d also be interesting to use a wiki to design a world.
Other gaming wikis I’ve found, in no particular order:
What can I say? I thought everyone had read the Narnia books.
OK, another Mashup. Rules are here. Your media item of the day is Neuromancer: think ever-speeding pace of change, think future shock, think new types of intelligence. Go.