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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Greg Morrow's LiveJournal:
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| Friday, December 18th, 2009 | | 6:59 pm |
| | Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | | 2:09 pm |
The End of Baron Hawkwyrd
Last night, the party confronted and defeated the first of the campaign's major villains, the lich Andus Hawkwyrd, the original Baron Hawkwyrd, whose apparent death led to several members of the party inheriting his manor and discovering the vast dungeons beneath at the very start of the campaign. ( Big Gaming Nerd Stuff ) | | Sunday, December 13th, 2009 | | 9:17 pm |
On Xenarthran/Primate Similarity
There's a look that babies sometimes get (probably when full and sleepy); it is an empty expression, a look of complete unreaction -- the world is going by and they're just not bothering to process it at all. It is the no-one-home look. The only other species I've seen that look on is baby sloths. | | Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | | 2:48 pm |
An Admission of Pure Incompetence
From one of the WotC designer's blogs: [T]hese items [custom to a particular campaign] are more interesting and exciting than any others I see in D&D right now. The dragon orb especially has ramifications in our hands, and it's wonderful and - to me - magical. This is what I want: More magic items that feel magical, even if it means a character has fewer magic items overall.
What We Can Do About It: Nothing. Dear WotC: You suck. I'm going to [try very hard to] go away now. | | Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 | | 2:17 pm |
| | Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 | | 4:35 pm |
Are We Having Fun Yet?
Let me edit. When I asked about funnest, I was actually looking to test acceptance of fun as an adjective, not whether the inflectional grade was preferred over the periphrastic grade. To put it another way: I had a lot of fun at the carnival, but I hear that there's an even more fun carnival coming in the fall.Is that vile or unexceptional? Compare to I had a lot of fun at the carnival, but I hear that there's a carnival that's even more fun coming in the fall. The predicator is Y can accommodate either an adjective Y or a noun Y, and for fun for many speakers, the distinction has smeared and fun has spread into adjectiveland. | | 4:20 pm |
Snuckers*
sneaked or snuck? The latter is wholly standard in my lexicon to the point that the first one sounds odd. *The erstwhile athletic shoe/jam company, one presumes. | | 4:06 pm |
| | 2:11 pm |
| | Monday, November 30th, 2009 | | 2:24 pm |
You Have to Be Janus to Bite This Apple
This time, on the criminal justice parade of state weenises: Porter v. McCollum, in which:
- Porter pled guilty to killing his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend during a house raid.
- There is a statutory aggravating factor of being "previously convicted" of a violent felony.
- So the state of Florida argued to the jury that the murder of the boyfriend was a violent felony that Porter had been "previously convicted" of and was therefore an aggravating factor for the murder of the ex-girlfriend.
- And Florida argued to the same jury in the same case that the murder of the ex-girlfriend was a violent felony that Porter had been "previously convicted" of and was therefore an aggravating factor for the murder of the boyfriend.
- This shit goes on all the fucking time. Not just on Law & Order.
| | 1:15 pm |
Weirding Verbs
dreamed or dreamt? slided or slid? dived or dove? What's your preference? Regular/OE "weak" ending or irregular/OE "strong" ablaut*? *ablaut = vowel-changing. Aren't you glad you know this now? | | Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | | 4:56 pm |
| | Friday, November 20th, 2009 | | 11:48 am |
Dice Pool Mechanics
In a dice pool game, you can apply modifiers by: 1. Changing the target number that you have to roll on the dice. 2. Changing the number of dice you roll. 3. Changing the number of successes you need. Do you have any thoughts about which of these is preferable? | | Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | | 4:24 pm |
Your Pulp SF Character
Let's say I look at doing a pulp science fiction campaign, regardless of system. Think Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Star Wars, John Carter, Eric John Stark, Dan Dare: Planet to planet, evil dictators to overcome, scientists and other people to rescue, rocketships, jetpacks, blasters, and swords, strange monsters and mounts, flying ships, enemy alien races, ally alien races, honor, treason, betrayal, redemption. It would help me design the setting and campaign structure if I got some ideas about what sorts of characters you might be interested in. Human, alien? Profession? What are you good at, and what are you bad at? Why are you on the team, and what is your relationship to the people back home? What do you want your character to do, and what do you want to happen to you? I.e., the obvious sorts of things. Feel free to invent details of the setting in describing your character; I can incorporate or adapt them. | | Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | | 3:48 pm |
Ideas for My Next Campaign
1. Greco-Roman fantasy adventure. Near-European geography, with non-Tolkien races (ape men, cave men, aesimar, teuflings, niflings, dryads/naiads/oreads/etc). In the lands around the Middle Sea, the human empire of Athrace; in the northlands, the monotheistic empire of the aesimar, who rule over the teuflings and niflings. [Pathfinder plus further customization] 2. Cowboys & Dragons. Greenhorns on the frontier make themselves western legends. I hear the territory's offering $20 bounty apiece for kobold heads, and there's a warren of 'em not fer away. [Core D&D 3.5, plus extensions] 3. Thrilling Adventure Stories. Pulp heroes/low-powered golden age superheroes fight nazis and weird menaces in globetrotting adventures on the eve of World World II. [Hero 6th] 4. Something else. I could run that Shadowrun campaign where it turns out that Dunkelzahn faked his death. Gamma World post-apocalyptic furry mutants. D&D PCs v. the humanoids, in order from kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, bugbears, ogres, trolls, giants. Space Opera -- if I ever figure out what the stories are (also a problem with Cowboys & Dragons, admittedly). The secret war of the 60s super-spies. Our Tuesday night is large, with short sessions, and hence has gone strongly tactical. I have felt my character/story muscles weaken. Probably I need to rejuvenate with a small weekend group. | | 3:30 pm |
| | Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | | 1:49 pm |
| | Monday, November 9th, 2009 | | 9:44 am |
I'ma Tell You Something
If you accept I'll do something, and you do, and you accept I'm gonna do something, and you do, you should be willing to consider accepting I'mina do something and I'ma do something. There is an English modal auxiliary formed from going to, an old periphrastic future formulation (whose origin and evolution are well-understood). It is gonna. It is not going to, except in formal and semi-formal written language; no one says going to except in the most contrived circumstances. Everyone says gonna. Gonna is a modal with an interesting feature; it requires a be auxiliary for tense and subject agreement ( I'm gonna, you're gonna, and he was gonna), and for question inversion ( Are you gonna do something?) and negation ( I'm not gonna do something). This is a legacy of its origin and isn't particularly unusual for an auxiliary. Many auxiliaries contract with the subject: I'd, he's, you've, Fred'll, etc. This is well understood -- a predictable, unstressed grammatical element is reduced to the bare minimum necessary for the listener to be aware that it's there. In many cases, contraction is essentially mandatory. The be auxiliary associated with gonna is a profligate contractor. In a large part of the speech community, gonna is showing willingness to contract in concert with its be auxiliary. Since the auxiliary is most often used in the first person singular (because you can assert near-future intentions for yourself easily, but not so easily for other people), this is where the contraction is most evident, but it's not limited to the first person singular. Accordingly, you should interpret I'ma and I'mina as contractions nearly equivalent to I'll and I've. This contraction of gonna is just newer than the contraction of will and have, it's not any different. (See also coulda, woulda, shoulda, in which have has been contracted far enough that it's equivalent to, and is often reanalyzed as, of; for some members of the speech community, of is an auxiliary verb, found in a very restrictive environment. This is not unusual for auxiliary verbs; they have strange origins and weird restrictions as a matter of course.) | | Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | | 10:51 pm |
Non-Passive-Aggressive-Twice-Removed, I Swear
When you reach a conclusion sparked by a situation, if the conclusion, however artfully worded, could be construed as a passive-aggressive attempt at manipulating the situation e.g. by revisiting or reviving it, you're better off not reporting the conclusion, even if it's genuinely not passive-aggressive*. However, reporting the second-order conclusion about the conclusion, that's golden. You should definitely do that. Because it allows for third-order self-referential smugness. In this very paragraph. *But, per Morrow's Rule of Human Motivation, you have to be cautious about concluding that you're not being passive-aggressive. See previous post. This post, in addition to its genuine content, has a self-amusement rating of 6.2. | | Sunday, November 1st, 2009 | | 5:44 pm |
A Brief Example of Human Motivation
A while back, I coined the eponymous Morrow's Rule of Human Motivation, which is "No one ever does anything for one reason." An illustration. When I am at someone else's house, and it comes time for cleaning up, like after a party, I generally don't do much. There's some obvious -- dirty dishes to the sink, trash and disposables to the garbage can, etc. But I rarely do anything decluttery or leftover storagey or the like, which usually means that I don't contribute very much. There's a reason I don't do much. I live alone. Things in my house stay where I put them and they're there when I go look for them again. And I have a pretty solid memory (although it's getting worse!) for where I put things. When I have house guests, things move around, and this bothers me a bit. It's not meltdown-inducing, it's not angry-making, it's just the stress of unmet expectations, of the universe not conforming to my rules. So in other people's houses, I don't move things around, or at least not without repeatedly asking "Where's this go? Where's this go?" I don't know where your potato chip bowl is supposed to go, and I'm not going to irritate you by putting it somewhere that might not be where you want it to go. So that's a rational response, right? I have a reason for what I do, and it makes sense in an admittedly idiosyncratic context. Except, here's the thing: By not picking up, I get to be lazy. The very genuine dislike of object impermanence reinforces the very genuine desire to flumph down in a chair and not do anything. Add, I'm mildly grossed out by food residue, and I'm hugely grossed out by debris in cans, cups, bottles, and the like. So avoiding those, also a motive. Wanting to help my friends and participate socially, these are motives in the other direction, but they're outweighed. I maintain, this fuzzy universe of competing motives where action requires a consensus greater than some "activation potential" is exactly what you expect from the kind of massively-parallel brain that we have. Nobody does anything for one reason. If you think you do, you don't know yourself as well as you should. How do we use Morrow's Rule in practice? Well, have you ever heard anyone argue why we fought the Civil War? Why did George Bush invade Iraq? Why did Lance Armstrong try to dick over his teammate in the Tour de France this year? You will understand questions like these better if you try to understand the competing factors, because there's not one answer. Also, you get to dismiss out of hand grand psychological and sociological theories that say we can understand all of something just by looking at one factor (Asimov once claimed that wars could all be traced back to technological causes, for example), and dismissing grand theories out-of-hand is one of life's rare opportunities to feel really superior. Although that's not the only reason we do it. |
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