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WISH 42: the morning after

April 7, 2003
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Isn’t the morning after sort of the definition of incoherency? Anyhow. WISH 41 asks:

How coherent do you expect a game world to be? Is a game world merely a stage for the characters, or does it have a life of its own? How deep does it need to be to satisfy you? How do you contribute as a player or GM to making the game world more coherent, if you do?

This is kind of a hard question to answer, given that my primary GM for the last five or so years is the kind of guy who has every NPC in his cities statted out. So I think I don’t care so much about coherency, but perhaps I am spoiled and I would hate it if the world wasn’t coherent.

However, I think that what I really want is not so much coherency but depth. I like being able to go in any direction and find something there. Maybe the GM is ad libbing it, or maybe s/he’s just thorough. I don’t much care as long as I can’t tell the difference.

The classic GM trick, of course, is to simply listen to the players theorizing and choose one of the theories to be accurate. That works OK for me.

Depth is different than coherence. Let’s say one NPC says he used to work with another NPC; I’m not gonna think much about whether or not they were actually in the same place at the same time in the game world. I’m big on suspension of disbelief, and am happy to paper over small cracks in the world.

Housekeeping and plagarism

April 7, 2003
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I pulled the Agonist from my war blogroll and added Stratfor; this won’t do anyone without a subscription much good, alas. Sorry about that. I’m pretty sure I had good reason, though.

When Sean-Paul Kelley admitted he was pulling stuff from Stratfor without attribution cause of “time constraints” I chalked it up to newbie enthusiasm. It’s one reason I decided to get the Stratfor account — I’d been reading their reports for free over on the Agonist, which made me feel a touch guilty. However, it now seems that he misattributed several Stratfor bits in order to gain credibility. In other words, he wanted people to think he had insider connections so he copied some Stratfor pieces and claimed they came from secret sources.

Thanks for doing the image of the Internet all kinds of good, Sean-Paul.

Panopticon continues

April 5, 2003
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CBS has a live Baghdad webcam running. I’m sure everyone else in the world but me knows this. So surreal. Stratfor pointed out recently that all this embedded exposure is a great way to pull attention from units without embedded reporting, which is utterly true.

Right now, on CBS’ webcam, someone’s talking in Arabic from off-screen. I can see a tripod to the right of the picture, and that might be the talker just barely visible next to it. I hear the other Baghdad webcams are also set up on top of this building, whatever it is.

Strange times.

Reasons and whyfores

April 5, 2003
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Condoleezza Rice says the coalition gets the leading role in rebuilding Iraq:

“It would only be natural to expect that … having given life and blood to liberate Iraq, the coalition would have the leading role. I don’t think anybody is surprised by that,” President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told reporters.

Well, sure, if we were doing for the reward. I was under the impression we were doing it a) to protect the West from terrorism and b) to give the Iraqis a better government. Rice makes it sound like we should get to rebuild Iraq… as a reward. Shouldn’t we be selecting the rebuilders with an eye towards who will best help reach those two goals?

I mean, hell. Let’s say (it’s a hypothetical, breathe easy) that France is the country which can do the best job of keeping Iraq from turning into a haven for terrorists. Wouldn’t it in fact be utterly wrong of Bush to do anything other than hand it to France? I think he’s obliged to continue planning with our established and public reasons for invading Iraq at the forefront of his selection criteria. Reward should be at best a distant third.

Machiavelli had this great trick for conquering nations. You put a harsh ruler in to really piss everyone off; then you bring in a nice guy and they’re so grateful they forget they were conquered. Through no real fault of our own other than being there, we’re doing a solid job of pissing people off. It’s unavoidable in a war. I’m thinking we should give the Arab world something they can perceive as a victory by reluctantly handing over the post-war reconstruction to the UN.

Genre of wishes

April 3, 2003
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I am slow as molasses in January, but here’s my thoughts on WISH 40: Preferred Style. The question:

What style of game do you prefer to play in? Style here does not mean genre, although certain styles work better under some genres than others. Style is more about the elements that predominate in a game: combat, politics, mysteries/puzzles, romance/interpersonal relations, etc. What three adjectives best describe your favorite game style? Does this style lend itself to particular genres or games?

I like games with lots of mysteries in them. When I’m GMing, I find I always think in terms of mysteries, which is one reason I don’t consider myself a great GM — lots of people want more straightforward stuff, and focusing on the mystery/puzzle can shortchange the roleplay. But I really like figuring things out, particularly within the context of a particular PC’s mindset. You can see this in my Unknown USA character Reese Beulay, who has a pretty odd take on the occult.

I like horror. Is that a genre? From experience, I don’t think so. I’ve probably never run a game without some horror creeping in — squicky stuff, tension, that kind of thing. It’s my favored means of achieving immersion. I find that the horrific tends to focus people marvelously.

I like roleplayed interaction. I’d rather do a scene where I don’t get information out of a well-realized NPC than a scene where I get information out of an NPC who might as well be named “Information Dispenser.” Story is less of a concern for me than roleplay and a fully realized world; I’m of the camp that believes that story arises inevitably from the right setting.

So, three adjectives? Horrific, immersive, and personality-driven.

Can't blame them, then

April 3, 2003
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Bush approved use of tear gas in Iraq today. This pretty much validates the possession of chem warfare suits by the Iraqis. Turns out that when the Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention way back when, they added language permitting battlefield use of riot-control agents with presidental approval.

The CWC defines toxic chemicals as “Any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals.” So tear gas definitely qualifies. It also mentions (in the same article) that domestic riot control is not prohibited. Iraq’s hardly domestic, of course.

And, just to round things out, these two quotes — “Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never under any circumstances… To use chemical weapons,” and “Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare.” There you go.

The Pentagon is arguing that the CWC doesn’t prohibit using the agents for defensive purposes, but that’s fairly obviously untrue. Well, no; it’s true given the way in which we modified it. A while back I was arguing about the legal validity of treaties, such as the UN Charter, and I mentioned that if Congress had an obligation to take treaties seriously; this kind of modification is what I was talking about. We’re clear on this from a legal point of view. How our allies will react, I dunno. Britain isn’t going to use them, and won’t even allow troops to be in operations where they’re used.

The reason the un-modified CWC prohibits riot control chemical weapons is pretty simple, by the by. The four previous major uses of chemical weapons on the battlefield in the past (including the Iraq/Iran war) all started with non-lethal agents. It’s not namby-pambyness, it’s practicality and an awareness of history.

Thanks to gwen for the news.