The Blog of Harald

I was asked for my title links plugin (See “wordpress filter”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/2006/06/10/wordpress-filter/), so here it is:

“title-links-1.0.zip”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/title-links-1-0.zip

Updated with a brute-force fix for a conflict with the “pretty quotes” functionality in Textile:

“title-links-1.1.zip”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/title-links-1-1.zip

This plugin will create links between WordPress posts whenever the title of the target post appears in the text of another.

You can specify alternate link keywords for a post by creating a Custom Field named ‘link_names’, containing a set of alternate phrases surrounded by square brackets. e.g. if the ‘link_names’ field for the post titled “Lady Danielle de Barbarac” contains

[Lady Danielle] [Danielle]

Than any occurence of the either phrase in another wordpress post will create a link to the Lady Danielle article.

You can see this plugin in action on “The Queen’s Guard”:http://www.the-gang.ca/roleplay/queensguard/ and “Five Rivers”:http://www.the-gang.ca/roleplay/fiverivers/ game log sites.

Bored?

“http://n.nfshost.com/”:http://n.nfshost.com/

They gradually get harder. This may eat up your day. Enjoy!

(via “Catspaw”:http://insanecats.com/cgi-bin/single.py?month=jul06&msg=14).

*Update:* I’m stuck going from 25 to 26.

“The Queen’s Guard”:http://www.cfrq.net/~rolemaster/queensguard/

Not much there yet, but knowing Rob, there will be real soon now…

It’s the “30th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons”:http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20040722x today. In honour of the date, we’re having a session over at Gerry’s house. The other hard core gamers were strongly typecast during their days at “watsfic”:http://www.watsfic.uwaterloo.ca/, and so the party ended up needing a mage (and a cleric) to complete the set. So I volunteered to be the mage. Oops…

It occured to me after we’d created a character that I’ve never actually played a D&D magic user before. We’ve always replaced the D&D magic system with Spell Law. It never made sense to me that you had to “memorize” spells to cast them (and if you wanted to cast them more than once, you had to “memorize” them more than once!. The most recent D20 explanation at least makes _some_ logical sense, although it still doesn’t mesh with my personal opinions on magic.

I started reading science fiction and fantasy in the early 1980s; a teacher handed me “A Fall of Moondust” by Arthur C. Clarke and I was hooked :-). I quickly formed my own mental model of magic, and it aligns fairly well with the Rolemaster magic system (then “Spell Law”:http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/RM1/RM1_1400_SpellLawBox.shtml, part of xLaw). You either know a spell or you don’t, and with practice you get better (and faster) at casting it. As you use magic you get tired, and as you get tired you start to make mistakes. You _can_ cast spells gagged and restrained, its just _really_ hard. And so on…

Spell Law made a lot more sense to me then (and still does :-), which is probably why I’m currently in two “Rolemaster”:http://www.ironcrown.com/RMintro.htm campaigns, playing mages in both. So it should be interesting to play D&D magic for a change…

Happy Anniversary!

Update: I had a lot of fun. We consumed vast quantities of pop and Doritos, told way too many puns, and it only took us two hours to get out of the inn! We even made it two rooms farther into the dungeon than the party Gerry ran the evening before…

On the other hand, I still dislike D&D mages, especially at low level; they’re wimps!

Just in case you ever wanted to know, “The Straight Dope”:http://www.straightdope.com/ brings us:

When the zombies take over, how long till the electricity fails?

bq. How long the power supply would last in the most critical zombie situation depends on two key factors %u2013 first, how long a given power plant can operate without human intervention, and second, how long before enough power plants fail to bring down the entire transmission grid. I’ll ignore the side issues of whether the zombies would want to try to run the power plant themselves, or if they would be a union or non-union shop.

(If you’re lazy, the answer appears to be that:

bq. within 4-6 hours there would be scattered blackouts and brownouts in numerous areas, within 12 hours much of the system would be unstable, and within 24 hours most portions of the United States and Canada, aside from a rare island of service in a rural area near a hydroelectric source, would be without power. Some installations served by wind farms and solar might continue, but they would be very small. By the end of a week, I’d be surprised if more than a few abandoned sites were still supplying power.

lumpley games: the Nighttime Animals Save the World

This looks like a fun, simple game to introduce kids to both role playing and strategy. Like all of the best methods, it is teaching, thoroughly disguised as play :)

We’ll have to try it sometime!

The “official”:http://homepages.cquest.utoronto.ca/~cks/whitewolf.complaint.pdf “complaint”:http://www.mataglap.com/whitewolf.complaint.pdf is available on the Internet (what a surprise :-). Warining: it contains movie spoilers. “Bryant writes”:http://popone.innocence.com/archives/001145.html:

bq. There’s an extensive list of similarities between Underworld and various White Wolf titles. I have no doubt the similarities exist, but I think they’re on the same level as the similarities between L.A. Story and When Sally Met Harry. “Hey, the protagonists fell in love! And they live in major American cities!”

[…]

bq. There are more specific correspondences, but nothing that doesn’t exist in prior art. White Wolf just doesn’t have the copyright on “tall and lithe” vampire assassins. Even female ones with “a dusky, classical tone to her skin and black hair.”

After reading the complaint, I’m not so sure. Many of the claims _are_ ridiculous (“In The World of Darkness, wood does not kill vampires. In _Underworld_, the werewolves do not use wood to kill vampires, nor mention it as an option”. That’s stretching correspondences a bit…)

On the other hand, some of the complaints are about very specific events or parts of mythology shared between The World of Darkness and _Underworld_. Some of them I’ve seen before, but I haven’t seen them all together in two places like this. I guess a jury is going to have to decide whether this crosses the line between free expression of ideas (which cannot be copyright) and plagiarism of specific expression of those ideas. I don’t envy them…

The most interesting one for me is the impending release of two derived video games: “Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines” and “Underworld: Bloodlines”, both using Valve Software engines (although different ones). This isn’t the first time a gothic punk vampire movie has been released; could the video game issue be driving the lawsuit?

(via “Population: One”:http://popone.innocence.com/archives/001145.html).

“White Wolf is suing Sony Pictures”:http://www.white-wolf.com/News/underworldrelease.html, claiming that “Underworld”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320691/ infringes on their intellectual property.

I haven’t read Nancy A. Collins’ story; I stopped reading her books when White Wolf started publishing them, although I’m pretty sure that’s just a coincidence. However, it’ll be hard to prove that the story isn’t just Romeo and Juliet retold in a vampires & werewolves mythos.

I suspect that this is going to end up like the current SCO vs. Linux suit. Specifically: the movie and white wolf’s products are both based on the same (public) mythology. After all, ideas cannot be protected by copyright (although many people would like it otherwise); only the specific expression of the idea.

On the one hand, I think they’re going to have a hard time proving their case. On the other hand, since White Wolf fans are also the most likely fans of this movie, Sony might settle the case to avoid a fan boycott of the movie…

On the gripping hand, I will go see it because of “Kate Beckinsale”:http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000295/.

(via “Population: One”:http://popone.innocence.com/archives/001140.html).

This was a good weekend.

Saturday was GeoffCon, part of a weekend of gaming celebrating Geoff’s 30th birthday. (His actual birthday was back in March, but he decided he wanted the actual party later in the year).

Geoff (and Rob) played both “Titan CE”:http://www.mit.edu/activities/sgs/cetitan.txt and “Nippon Rails”:http://www.coolgames.com/mfg-cat/traingames/1450-00.htm at the same time; I was only in the Nippon Rails game. I won, I think partly because they weren’t paying as much attention with two games going simultaneously. It also helped that I lucked out on all of my cards…

The Nippon Rails crowd then tried “Unexploded Cow”:http://www.cheapass.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=CAG&Product_Code=CAG032, but we were all too brain-dead to appreciate its strategy, so switched to the mindless Uno Boomo. The guys downstairs apparently had a fabulous time with “U.S. Patent #1”:http://www.cheapass.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=CAG&Product_Code=CAG034, so I’ll have to find an excuse to play it sometime. As always, there were several games of “Settlers of Catan”:http://www.coolgames.com/mfg-cat/soc/0483-00.htm and its variants throughout the day.

Every once in a while I miss being able to play games until 3AM every night; then I shake my head in disbelief :)

Sunday was a nice relaxing day. Breakfast in bed (well, ok, I had to go _back_ to bed for it), an eye test, a bunch of shopping (including my kids buying me a bicycle), and a nice quiet dinner.

I didn’t get any housework done, though…

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 44: Picking Games

I’ve been reading PAM (and its predecessor) Since about WISH 27. This week’s question prompted me to finally answer one. At some point I’ll go back and fill in other interesting ones.

bq. How do you choose games to join or to run? What factors influence you: timing, people, system, genre, etc.? Do you weigh different factors for different kinds of games, e.g., online vs. tabletop vs. LARP? Is it a group decision or a decision you make on your own?

The overwhelming factor in my life is time, althought this manifests in several ways.

I’ve been gaming for about 17 years now. I’ve only played in a few ongoing games, because I can barely find the time for one campaign at a time; I’m forced to be selective. They’ve always been tabletop games; I’d love to try a PBeM game sometime, but I haven’t found one I think I’d like enough to commit regular (weekly or better) time to. LARP isn’t for me; I’m a technician, not an actor.

My current Rolemaster campaign has been running for 5 years, and the 2300AD campaign before that was longer. I like long running campaigns. If I’m going to commit the time to develop a character and explore a world, I want it to be a going concern, not a simple dungeon crawl or two (those are fun, but I prefer single day, tournament style for those). It takes a long time for me to develop and then flesh out a character, and I do that best inside a campaign, interacting with the world and my fellow characters.

I like games that meet regularly, but not too often. Both of my campaigns tried meeting weekly, but ended up with longer monthly sessions instead. My fellow gamers (and our spouses) are willing to commit _one_ day per month to gaming, and schedule other things around Game Day. With a weekly meeting, we’d always have someone away, making continuity difficult.

I don’t have a strong preference for any particular system. I’ve played AD&D, Champions, Traveller, 2300, GuRPS, and now Rolemaster. There are two exceptions though; I like the magic system in Rolemaster much better than in any other system I’ve tried, and I love the simple task resolution system in MegaTraveller and 2300AD.

What this really means is that I’ll play whatever game system (and genre/setting) that the GM wants to play. That’s how I got into all of the games listed above; the GM wanted to run a particular game, and asked for players…

I’ve played several genres, but I like classic low-tech, fantasy realms with magic the best. When I play SF or superheros, I tend to play myself in a spacesuit (or in a cape) In fantasy worlds I can dtop into a character more easily.

People are the second most important factor for me. I strongly prefer gaming with people I know, and preferably people I know well. That limits my options, even though about half of the Gang are roleplayers. There are just too many opportunities for strife and discord in gaming environments; getting to know a new group of people is risky given my time restrictions.

In short, roleplaying done right is a large time commitment, and as I don’t have a lot of free time, I’m forced to be selective. A good GM and a good bunch of players (usually my friends) are the biggest consideration for me. After that, whatever the GM wants to run is fine by me!

Str: 7
Int: 11
Wis: 14
Dex: 13
Con: 8
Chr: 13

Go “try the quiz”:http://blanchard.virtualave.net/war/dndstats.html for yourself. Via “PAM”:http://www.whiterose.org/pam/.

Imagine a world where elves weren’t a vanishing race whose glories were well behind them. Imagine that the lands of men are growing stronger. Since a battle between fleets would be suicide, mankind must resort to piracy…

Quick halfling sailors climb through the riggings of human and elvish ships alike, cutting the seas in great sailing ships armed with dwarven cannon. It’s rumored that some gnomish inventors are fast at work at an engine powered by steam that could revolutionize sea travel. Muskets sound and steel clashes in the final years before the long-promised upheaval, the war of mastery between man and elf, finally begins.

The Elvish Main Sounds like a fabulous environment to play in; I can’t wait to hear more :-)

According to Greg Costikyan, Snood is the 9th most played game in the world.

Which begs the question, why doesn’t it get the level of awe and respect assigned to th Big Games?

Interesting read. via /.