The Political Desk: Judges

So what's the big deal about the primary, you may ask? We winnow out most of the indy candidates, small parties, and protest candidates within a party and end up with a Democrat and a Republican for November, right? We're just going to get another shot at voting later on.

Well, no.

Here's how it works for our Judges in this state, who are elected as opposed to appointed. If any candidate gets more than 50% in the primary, they win. So our judge positions are determined by the smaller number of voters who show up for the primary (the state is calling it at about 35% of the voting population).

So, in a two-person race, it will be decided right now. In a three-person race, it may be decided now or in November, but the incumbent has some serious advantages.

Oh, and for most of the races, only one person is running. That incredible anti-incumbent throw-the-dastards out wave that is coming out of our heartland? Doesn't apply when it comes to judges.

So the only incumbent judges that are running with any opposition are for our two State Supreme Court positions, No. 1 and No. 6. I've been writing this blog for long enough that I have the entries from when these current incumbents ran the last time, and to be frank, I wasn't very impressed at the time. That judgment carries through to the present day.

At Position 1 we have incumbent Jim Johnson challenged by Stan Rumbaugh. Johnson was heavily funded by the BIAW (Building Industry Association of Washington, a regular player in our local elections), and it turns out that (surprise) he tends to rule in BIAW's favor on things (as opposed to, say, recusing himself). And, while speaking out against "Judicial Activism" when he was running, it turns out that (surprise again), he engages in that very activism and (hold on to your hats) is very conservative in that activism (I know, you're simply shocked).

Rumbaugh, for his part, is an attorney from Tacoma with experience before the Supreme court (about the same as Johnson had in 2004). Both men get good marks from the Municipal League and King County Bar Association. Johnson has the edge both in cash and in getting endorsements from the hinterland newspapers, where his conservatism plays well. I'm going to recommend Stan Rumbaugh for the office, since the BIAW doesn't really deserve their own private Supreme Court Judge.

Over in Position No. 6, we have a similar situation, though this one is more Libertarian in nature as opposed to corporate-owned conservative. Sanders pops up in the news every so often for actions off the bench (Like yelling "Tyrant" at a US Attorney General in regards to Bush policies). He faces a strong contender with Charlie Wiggins, who comes off a more mainstream conservative but has an impressive list of credentials and support from the Muni League and various legal groups. A third candidate, Bryan Cushcoff, Presiding Superior Court Judge for Pierce County, entered late and has spent no money, and may be present only to prevent Sanders from getting in on the primary and forcing it to a run-off.

Me? I'm a bit conflicted. I can point to Sanders making principled stands and I can point at decisions that just make me wince. In the end, I prefer sound judgment over stunts. Take a good look at Charlie Wiggins.

More later,

The Political Desk: Sources

So I'm going to make recommendations for the upcoming primary, but I'm not the only one. Other forces, large and small, are making their voices known. Here's a selection of them, and I always recommend checking out a number of sites and opinions when making your own decisions.

The Seattle Times, the sole surviving daily paper in Seattle, has been a bit conflicted since the demise of its more liberal sister, the Post-Intelligencer. Usually the Times can be trusted to weigh both sides of the issues fairly and carefully, and then select the one that fits the conservative corporate nature of its editorial page. It is usually very kind to local conservatives, and is a good launching point for that well-time hit job on an opponent. This year they are pitching a "reset government" platform, which translates into "Get rid of anyone who won't help us get rid of the Estate Tax". Their endorsements are summarized here Fortunately, their political blog gets more into the nuts and bolts of reporting and acts saner than their editorial page.

The Stranger was once a collection of young hipsters and skatepunks with unsupervised access to a printing facility, but the near-demise of its weekly rival, the Seattle Weekly, has actually transformed it into a paper that pays attention to politics. Unabashedly liberal and frequently obscene (the election board recommendation are NSFW, I'm just telling you right now), the Stranger actually puts together good political reporting, particularly on their blog. Their big problem is that they believe that King County runs from Belltown in the north to Georgetown in the south, and the rest of us in the exurbs couldn't be bothered with what they think. Pity, that.

The Seattle Weekly was once the haven of leftie politics and old hippies, but then got sold to a conservative franchise out of Arizona that figured that young people not only don't vote, but they shouldn't be encouraged to do so. Oddly, over the past year or so, their bottom-diving readership numbers have caused them to actually talk about Seattle politics in their pages. Their blog, the Daily Weekly, has increased its posting over the past year and actually has somethings worth saying.

Now let's go to the purely online options - Crosscut is where all the old hippies went when the Weekly cleaned house. You'd think this outtfit would be screaming lib, but this lot pretty much longs for the glory days when Boeing was going out of business and threatening to take Puget Sound with it. Interesting for frequent columns by Knute Berger saying how good things used to be and by Republican former chairman Chris Vance who usually points out that the only way for Democrats to succeed is to act more like Republicans. Don't know if they will endorse but I find their Lesser Seattle myopia intriguing.

Publicola is actually the more liberal operation among the blogs, and even that is a misnomer. It is probably more of a urban operation, strong on bikes and rapid transit issues. Still, they are wired in at a time when a lot of places are not. Their endorsements are grouped here, but would benefit from having a page to themselves. Really, Publicola, would it be that hard to pull off? The greybeards at the Times manage it, and they're still trying to figure out how html code works.

The late Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("It's in the PI") has not one but two successor states online. The official PI site is notable only for the fact that it still runs Dave Horsey cartoons, which means nudity about once every two weeks. Strange Bedfellows is their political blog. The Post-Globe consists of employees that the PI let go when they went online, and is more liberal. Neither has the throw-weight of even the Daily Weekly. Sadly. I don't know if either is going to do endorsements.

Moving over to non-partisan web sights, Vote For Judges is a good clearing house site for judicial elections. Yes, we elect our judges here, with the result that a lot of stealth politics creeps into these supposedly nonpartisan positions. They do not directly endorse, but collate other endorsements and provide information. Since judgeships are some of the most important positions voted on with the least amount of information, it is worth checking out.

And then there is the Municipal League. You'd think a goo-goo like myself would embrace the Muni League, and I will admit they do a good job weighing options. But they and I have had a falling out - they've supported some recent election measures, such making all the King County positions non-partisan, that actually make it HARDER for people to get a handle on voting. So the League is a good source, and I will continue to report them, but I don't take it as gospel nearly so much anymore.

And last but not least is the State itself. For the main elections, Washington State does voters' pamphlets, and there is some confusion right now as to whether they will show up for the primaries (apparently King County will do it out of their own pocket, but the rest of the counties won't - which means King will have an even bigger pool of informed voters (not a win for the rest of the state)). However, all the information is online, so if you can read this, you can read that.

Those are the usual (or unusual) suspects. I may add more as we get nearly to the main election, but that's a good place to start.

Commercial Interruption

So, of course, having set an open course for the seas of local politics, I have to double back mention a few other things going on in the world. This is the problem when you're not running a blog dedicated to a single goal. Let me plug a few of my friends:

First off, I should mention that Alliterate Dave Gross has a novel out as well - Prince of Wolves, set in the world of Pathfinder.

Second off, I should mention that Alliterate Lorelli Shannon has put her self-published and very excellent novel, Possum Kingdom, out on the Kindle. We have moved to the next level of self-publishing (but Amazon doesn't have the link from her dead tree edition to her Kindle version - get with the program, Amazon!).

Thirdly and finally off, I have an article on "My First GenCon" over at Wolf Baur's Kobold Quarterly, which has been allowing all us old grogs to wallow in our memories of the past. As a bonus, the article features the now-legendary "Jeff as Galactus" picture, suitable for photoshopping.

Back to politics later. Really.

More later,

(OK, one more - Pictures from an Exhibition: ArenaNet at SDCC, including a great shot of the back of my head)

The Political Desk: Manifesto

Most of you that have been hanging out here for a while know this already, but a lot of people have dropped in recently, what with all the talk about Marvel Super Heroes and Ghosts of Ascalon and Guild Wars 2, but this is first and foremost a personal blog, which means we get into such things as collectable quarters and restaurants and most of all political races, in particular local stuff in our neck of the woods in the state of Washington.

And yet another election season is upon us, as we prepare for a primary on 17 August. Actually, the ballots have already gone out, the yard signs have blossomed on public lands, and blogs and newspapers have made their recommendations. I'm starting this year behind the curve.

So let me lay my cards out on the table at the get-go.

Long-term readers know me to be a leftie, a progressive, a liberal. I plead guilty to all such accusations. I'll go further: I am also a goo-goo, a Chicago term for a Good Government type who wants competent people in office doing good things, regardless of party or faction. I'm willing to be pragmatic, and will support a capable conservative over a questionable liberal or libertarian. Long ago, Nixon broke my civic heart, and I tend to view the GOP with a suspicion that only gets confirmed at regular intervals.

All that being said, let me lay out three laws of politics that I've picked up in my short blogging career - advice to offer candidates for office and incumbents alike. Here we go, in a nutshell:
1) For God's Sake, Don't Embarrass Us
2) All Politics Are Local
3) Be Well, Stay In Touch

Don't Embarrass Us: The ability to doll out firebombing soundbites may get you space on Fox and Friends, but it doesn't wash much out here in Seattle. We don't care much for personal scandal, but we absolutely HATE being made to seem like chumps for electing the malfeasing bozo in the first place. By the same token, we (as a state) are willing to forgive folk that are upfront about their failings as opposed to those that double-down on their errors.

All Politics Are Local: A pundocracy seems to dominate the media, old and new, where everything is cast in larger terms - sage heads declare that everything is a referendum on someone or something, usually something that is not currently being voted on. People who win suddenly have a mandate, unless you disagree with them, then the most vocal minority must be cozened and comforted. I remain dubious of national trends in local elections, and believe that at the end of the day people vote their own comfort level as opposed to the blaring of the political machines.

Stay in Touch: We are seeing the beginning of the deluge that will continue right into fall with ads, appearances, mailers, and calls. And in general, that's a good thing, as far as explaining what you've done and why. Seriously, the better equipped people are to explain the good things you've done, the better they are to resist the relentless assaults of the opposite side (like, you know, blogs). Communication? Good. Information? Even better.

My politics are that of the yard sign and the mailer (the Lovely Bride knows better than to recycle them before I see them). If I get push-polled I will pass that along. I look at political races as a consumer advocate, with the ultimate goal of getting a workable system. A system more progressive than otherwise, but then, I stated my bias a few paragraphs up. Your local paper should be as up-front about it.

I have been writing about politics on this blog since its first year in 2003, and, going back to the earlier entries, it seems that if anything I have mellowed over the years. I've been at this long enough that I can now do the "see, told ya" kinda entries when I warned against certain guys that got elected anyway.

So strap in for the next couple weeks, or take a vacation (I always get back to the little stuff in my life here after the craziness). I wouldn't say its going to be a bumpy rides - I've seen worse. But it is going to be a ride.

More later,

We Who Are About To Write Salute You!

Breaking away from all this self-promotion:

I have about a half-hour commute these days, thanks to back roads and the ongoing economic bumpiness. I sometimes drive in silence. I sometimes talk to myself (admit it, you do as well). And sometimes I listen to lectures on tape from The Learning Company. I've mentioned this before, as it fills in some of my classical education skimmed over in becoming a civil engineer, and gives me a springboard for fantasy.

In any event ...

I am listening to a lecture on the Roman Empire, subgroup Bread and Circuses, subgroup gladiators. And gladiatorial games are not always, or even usually, the productions of the imperial throne, but rather are put forth by prominent citizens, who show their wealth and open-handed nature by renting gladiators (the original temps) to fight to the death in the arena. But what caught me was the Roman name of these prominent citizens presenting these fights -

Editors.

Most dictionaries I've found only trace the word to the Late Latin period with real publishers, but I found a couple examples where it tracks the word to "Presenter", as in one you presents the work of others to the masses, under his imprint and seal, as being quality bloodshed and entertainment.

Sounds like a good a definition as any.

More later,

Going Live

Today is the official sale date for Ghosts of Ascalon by Matt Forbeck and myself. Early response and reviews have been wonderful, and I'm going to blurb a couple (links to the full article):

"With compelling characters and a great deal of background regarding what's gone down in the past two and a half centuries, Ghosts of Ascalon is a must-read for any player looking to get an early look at ArenaNet's next big MMO." - Kotaku

"It’s an easy read with good pacing. I’m a sucker for mythology, well developed worlds and adventure stories of daring-do if written well, and it was." - Carolyn Koh, MMORPG.com

"There should also be no question that the book is well-written. That shouldn't even be a concern. Through the combined forces of Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb, we get a perfect example of why they're at the top of their game." - Shawn Schuster Massively

"I highly recommend Ghosts of Ascalon. It was a great, fun read, and I am really excited with the two more novels coming to the Guild Wars world. " Ravious, Kill Ten Rats

I am delighted by the early response, and hope that everyone enjoys the book as much.

More later,

San Diego - Day 4

Alas, Day Four consists only of packing my knives and going. We have a noon flight out of here, so I won't even get down to the floor.

(Update from later in the day - we arrived at the airport far enough ahead of schedule that I got on an earlier flight, and was home before 1. Unfortunately, my luggage was on the other flight, which was horribly delayed, so I ended up driving out to the airport at 8 PM to get my stuff. Still, I got home and had time to run a lot of errands).

What struck me more about this convention, some 20 years after my last one, is the changing face of fandom. Twenty years back, I would have said that it was predominantly white, male, and middle-aged, and destined to go the way of model trains and other harmless hobbies. Now there is an incredible age, gender, and racial diversity. Part of it in the revolutions inside comics (the rise of manga and web comics, for example), but part of it is the expansion of the borders of Geek Culture, such that it encompasses not only old media, but new premeires. And this is way cool.

It IS a big convention, and the staff handles it amazingly well. I was disappointed to not be able to get into a few panels, but the queues ran very well and effectively. I think this is the biggest reason to keep SDCC in SD. The staff - heck, the entire city - has grown up with this madness and works to make it the best possible experience.

That said, the city fathers have GOT to put a bridge or five from the convention center to the city proper. All of the foot traffic is poured across buslanes, down some stairs, across a major road, across active trolley tracks, and then into the Gaslamp (where every card-snapper and freebie agent is laying in wait). There were some parts of the dealer room that were more crowded, but they were few and far between (and usually near steampunk corset shops, for some reason).

My only other gripe? Strollers. The bulkiest hall costume was an agile pixie in comparison to these land-tanks pushed by people using them as battering rams. Worse were the ones where the kid was carried (or walking) as his ride was transformed into a shopping cart.

But these were really minor things (and the strollers kept everyone on their toes, lest they get said toes run over). In general, the convention was a huge success, struggling with its titanic size, and is already spreading far beyond the bounds of the center itself. The staff and the city should be happy with its success - there are smaller venues that have much more difficulties pulling off a show.

And now, I'm going to soak my feet for a couple hours, and try to recover.

More later,

San Diego - Day 3

"You look a little tired".

Three different people said that to me today, which makes me a little nervous, as if I am losing my edge before even the third day of the convention is through. But it was a good third day, with three interviews (Massively, MMOSite, and PCGamer), a successful book signing (three books left, which were snurtched up by the staff), and a panel discussion that needed to be longer and in a bigger room.

I also had enough downtime to attend a panel on cartoon voiceover laden with heavyweight talent, including Gregg Berger and Fred Tatisciore, who are part of the GW2 team. Also ran into Neil Kaplan, another of our voices, in the hall (I was wearing a GW2 cap and therefore easily identifiable). I am reminded again that we have very, very good voice talent at our disposal.

After the panel, late in the day, the staff adjourned to Tabule, in the Gaslamp district. San Diego's Gaslamp district is what Seattle's Belltown wants to be when it grows up - a lot of venues, sidewalk dining, and very good food. Also a lot of people watching, since San Diego's mild temperatures make it the native habitation of the little black dress, and the women who wear them. Also: a of stylish zombies.

I was also surprised to finally run into old friends Warren and Caroline, who I was seeking out throughout the weekend - I knew only of one of Warren's panels, and it not overlapped my own panel but it was completely sold out. It made for a wonderful closed parenthesis on a collection of days that started with running into Maggie Thompson (The good and glorious).

We have a noonish flight tomorrow, so it is unlikely I will return to the floor. It has been a great convention for me, and for Guild Wars as well. I'll probably have a few more thoughts about it later, but for the moment, it is time to collapse.

More later,

San Diego - Day 2

There are people made out of bubble-foam flying over the convention center. There are women wearing flatscreen TVs on their backs. There is a comic book series about super-hero cows produced by Chik-Fil-A. Welcome to Friday at the Comic-Con.

One thing I have noticed is a tendency towards merchandising overkill, particularly in terms of manpower. Red Faction does not have a single tanned booth-babe in logo'ed tank top and hot pants - they have 20 of them. A horde of hula-skirted young women are promoting Hawaii 5-0. A mass of Dharma agents are all promoting something "Lost" related. They move through the crowds like alien gangs.

My own maneuverability is limited, since my feet are still throbbing hunks of meat. I have started relying on the pedcabs (nice in this weather) and the shuttle (slow but you get to sit down AND get air conditioning), and finding places to sit down. I'm doing a lot more video interviews today, which increases the chance that I will say something Joe-Biden worthy with every passing moment. Talked to Game Revolution and Ten Ton Hammer, and did a standup with The Daily Transcript. Not bad for a man who firmly believes that he has a face made for radio and a voice made for mime.

The signing went very well, will an almost-equal mix of number of books available, number of people interested, and amount of time. We had to turn a few away, but will be doing another signing tomorrow. These things can be a roll of the dice sometimes - you can just enough or too much or nothing at all. I was ably aided and abetted in the signing by Rich Anderson, who did the cover of the book.

Managed to actually take a nap in the afternoon before dinner, which had the added benefit of keeping me off my blistered feet. Then a long and pleasant dinner (with various strangenesses of reservation numbers and size of the table) with Stan! and Cindi and Hyrum and several cool artists and writers, the subject matter of which I shall not bore you with save to say that at one point we were talking about a penis museum in Iceland. A veritable Algonquin Round, that was.

And so to bed, as we have another signing on the morrow, and a panel and a couple more interviews. I am practically getting into the swing of things, here.

More later,

San Diego - Day 1

In which my feet are already rendered down to inoperative slabs of meat and muscle.

One thing I am struck by in my 20 year absence is how much the downtown has transformed itself. The Gaslamp District was a bit sketchy in places back in the day, but now is a line of eateries and pubs stretching halfway up the hill. Horton Center looks like it has seen better days, though, surviving best with its top floor eateries and movie theaters. And there is a lot more of a skyline, and those buildings closest to the Comic Con have full-size billboards painted over them for Red Faction and Skyline, which can literally be viewed by aircraft coming in on approach. Add to that mobile trucks with huge HD screens playing trailers. I almost expect to see blimps floating by, blaring how a new life awaits me in the off-world colonies.

The day itself started with a relaxed breakfast, an interview with MMORPG, and a panel with Stan and Hunter Freberg (for the younger folk, he made comedy albums back when vinyl was cool, was the voice of Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent, and brought the funny to commercials, including a Geno's pizza roll commercial which probably needs its own blog entry to unpack what it says about America in the 60s). My big disappointment was among the younger friends who say "Who?" when I said I was going to see Stan Freberg. I, on the other hand, was delighted, because like so many young creatives of my era (who are no longer so young), I grew up on Mad magazine and Stan Freberg.

I tried to remain paper-free for the day, since I didn't want to schlep around anything or have to take it back to my mile-away room. Unfortunately, I found the Source (out of Minnesota), which carried a huge amount of Call of Cthulhu material, including some German stuff I had never seen, Ken Hite's Dubious Shards, and a lot of bound monograms from Chaosium. So I ended up schlepping around some stuff.

Sat in on the 38 Studio/Big Huge reveal for Reckoning, in support for Bob Salvadore and Ken Rolston (both of whom I remember from the days back when). Went looking for the supposed protesters, but found only one guy holding up a sign saying "HAVE YOU SEEN MY KEYS?". Have a nice interview with Neoseeker and a surprise video interview with ngame.tv. Had I known I would be on video, I would have worn a louder shirt.

By this time my dogs were starting to go out, so I walked back to the hotel, which in my absence had been moved further uphill. Now they are in a little pain and I'm not sure the ankles work anymore. So I'm going to take it easy for the evening, have an early night, and read some of my swag.

Oh. and if you see the guy with the sign, tell him I found his keys.

More later,

San Diego - Day 0

I don't normally blog on the road, but hey, the wireless is complementary here at the hotel:

Getting down to San Diego went smoothly, even though I was not 100% sure I even had a seat on the plane until I got to the gate (each stage of the ticketing process assured me that the NEXT stage of the process would be the one to give me a seat assignment, but it all went smoothly). San Diego itself is not horribly hot (yet) and has been overcast, and the hotel is only a mile north of the convention center (this is, in Comic-Con terms, incredibly close).

As I mentioned, we're imposing on sharing booth space with the Aion and City of Heroes team, who will have demos running in the booth while we flit in and out like pixie-winged divas. I am used to putting in long booth hours, so I have chosen to embrace this cosmic oddity by actually exploring the hall.

This will, I am now convinced, be a multi-day quest, the hall is so large, urban legend says, that when empty you can see the curve of the earth. And I have revealed myself as being ancient beyond words, remembering aloud how small the hall was there the last time I was there (it was the first year they started selling Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles stuffed animals), by pointing at Petco Field and saying "When did THAT get built here?". I did have lunch with some of the team at a nice place in Little Italy (San Diego has a lot of good restaurants in close proximity).

After getting badges (again, kudos to the team for sparing me a huge but well-organized and swift-moving line), I went exploring, and managed to take a few pictures without the supposed horde of fans. I also ran into the good and glorious Maggie Thompson for the first time in years, which pretty much made the entire trip down worth it. Then I met up with Stan!(who, by the way, created some cool D&D Christmas wrapping paper for Game Paper) and discovered the attraction of the fried fish taco at Tin Fish (surprisingly good seating, despite the fact it was right across from the teeming convention). We wandered the floor, got Galactus hats from Hasbro (pictures of me in one that may appear on the net are lies. LIES I tell you!), saw Odin's throne, traded my Galactus hat for a notebook, got some things for my brother and the Lovely Bride (don't tell her - its a secret), met my editor from Simon & Schuster, re-engaged with Godland, found some nice gems in the Web comic/small press sections, picked up a few new t-shirts, and probably covered all of a quarter of the hall (but most of it having comics in it, so I was happy). Ran into people I know and people Stan knew and introductions were made all around and finally, about 9, we retired from the field.

And it is before the official first day of the con and my feet already hurt.

More later,

Podcasts and Personal Appearances

So, Facebook being what it is, it failed to rebroadcast my schedule for San Diego Comic-Con. Here it is, again.

Friday July 23, 2010 1:00 p.m.–1:45 p.m. NCsoft Booth #5345 - BookSigning and Giveaway - Stop by for a limited giveaway and booksigning by one of the authors of the first Guild Wars® novel: Ghosts ofAscalon. - Signing Staff: Jeff Grubb (Game Designer/Author), Rich Anderson(Concept Artist, Cover Artist)

Friday July 23, 2010 1:45 p.m.–2:30 p.m. NCsoft Booth #5345 - BookSigning and Giveaway - Stop by for a limited giveaway and booksigning of the Art of Guild Wars 2. - Signing Staff: Kekai Kotaki(Concept Art Lead), Rich Anderson (Concept Artist), Kristen Perry(Character Artist)

Saturday July 24, 2010 1:00 p.m.–1:45 p.m. NCsoft Booth #5345 - BookSigning and Giveaway - Stop by for a limited giveaway and booksigning by one of the authors of the first Guild Wars® novel: Ghosts ofAscalon. - Signing Staff: Jeff Grubb (Game Designer/Author), Rich Anderson(Concept Artist, Cover Artist)

Saturday July 24, 2010 1:45 p.m.–2:30 p.m. NCsoft Booth #5345 - BookSigning and Giveaway Stop by for a limited giveaway and book signing ofthe Art of Guild Wars 2. - Signing Staff: Kekai Kotaki (Concept ArtLead), Rich Anderson (Concept Artist), Kristen Perry (Character Artist)

Saturday July 24, 2010 5:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m. Room 4 - Speaking Session:Guild Wars 2: A New Type of Fantasy MMO - Learn how Guild Wars 2will set a new standard for what is possible in an MMO game! Keycreators examine with you how the lore, design, and gameplay of GuildWars 2 has grown from the original game into something revolutionary,and take questions from the audience. - Speakers: James Phinney (DesignDirector), Jeff Grubb (Game Designer), Kekai Kotaki (Concept Art Lead),Rich Anderson (Concept Artist), Kristen Perry, (Character Artist), ChrisLye (Global Brand Director)

We will be signing out of the NCSoft booth, which is in the far left corner of the exhibit hall, and probably the only location where there will be any space to move around (maybe). Drop by and take a look at us!

If you can't make it to the convention (nobody goes there, apparently - it's too crowded) I have a pair of podcasts that have just been released. One is on Guildcast with Shawn and Rubi from Massively and is all spoilery on Ghosts of Ascalon. And the other delves into the early days of the Marvel Super Heroes game with Andrew Collas on the Zenith Comics podcast. If you can't make it to San Diego, it's the next best thing (well, it's not, but it is a very nice thing anyway).

More later, possibly from SD itself.

A Bite Of Pinafore

So this past Sunday, I headed out to Seattle Center to catch this year's production by the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society - HMS Pinafore, with a performance of Cox and Box, which has music by Sullivan but is sans Gilbert. More on that in a moment, since the Center was also host for Bite of Seattle.

The Bite is a food-dominated fest, though there were a lot of booths ranging from corporate flag-wavers -  Comcast, Geico and Bicycle card decks, to the usual suspects of sunglasses, 1200-count linens, and tie-died wraps. I indulged in the Alley, where 10 dollars got a taste of seven very good restaurants, with part of the proceeds going to Food Lifeline, and the operation hosted by local chef Tom Douglas of the Dahlia Lounge (and was present, turning the whole ducks over the charcoal. Here's the lineup for Sunday noon.
 - Dahlia Lounge - Five-spice duck humbow - tasty grilled duckflesh tucked into a flat dumpling with hoisin and cilantro.
 - Seattle's Little Italy - Cold beet soup - a nice break - would have been more appreciated if it had been hotter.
 - Dragonfish - Green and yellow curry - I am not a curry person, but this was great. Saved it for right before desert since it had a strong kick.
 - Sport - listed as a chili but instead was a very pleasant salad with chicken and wontons - down side was that it ate up tray space so everything else had to fit around it.
 - Daily Grill - Carved steak sandwich - either barbeque sauce or horseradish. Melt in your mouth tender.
 - Volterra - Potato, spinach and goat cheese crostata - nice, a little wrapped package of delight.
 - Ten Mercer - Mini chocolate tower - perfect two-bite desert.

Add to that the fact that the wine tasting was right next door (5 tickets for 10 bucks). A double handful of local vinters, including Hoodsport, which is a favorite from when we go clamming (and does nice Rieslings, rhubarbs, and, I discovered, pear wines), and Stina's Cellars (who has a good Riesling). So I was fairly mellow by the time I waddled back to the Bagley Wright for Gilbert & Sullivan (with a slice of Sullivan, hold the Gilbert).


Cox & Box is, at heart, a trifle, something that in the modern age might equally belong in a sketch comedy show or as the pilot for half-hour comedy. Landlord Bouncer rents out the same room to Mr. Cox and Mr. Box, one who works the day shift and one who works the night, and they only meet on the stairs as one leaves and the other arrives. That in itself sets up the bit when one gets the day off and the two meet in the apartment that both think of as theirs. But then it goes into a surprising connection between the men that takes from confrontation to rivals to friends. It is a bit of fun and parts of it belong to that entire alternate-world-thinking that seems to belong to Light opera.

Pinafore is one of the old venerables of the G&S portfolio (stack it on top of Penzance and Mikado). Most people known the best songs, or at least portions of the best songs (Thank you, Sideshow Bob). The plot is pure Gilbertian logic twisted upon itself, with a couple plot holes you could send a dreadnought through. But before I get into that, let me talk about the performances:

Oliver Donaldson (lead tenor) and Jenny Shotwell (soprano) are amazing as the young lovers separated by class - their voices are strong and passionate and yes, playful. William J. Darkow provides the baritone gravitas as Corocoran, the Captain of the Pinafore, and I warmed to John Brookes as the Admiral. Of all the players, the one with the most difficult task was talk-show host, Dave Ross, whose villainous character had the unenviable task of singing counterpoint to the chorus (and being overwhelmed on occasion).

Ah, and the set itself was a wonder: the detailed foc'sle of the Pinafore turned into a maze of entrances and props. Oh, and the dancers that manifested in the closer of Act I were fantastic as well.

And the plot ... ah, the plot. I think Freud would go slightly mad if he dug too deeply into this (Spoiler warning, should something a hundred years old need a spoiler). Ralph (Donaldson) is in love with Josephine (Shotwell), who is the daughter of Captain Corcoran (Darkow). But the Captain wants her to wed the Admiral (Brookes), who comes aboard with a huge herd of female relatives (the female members of the chorus). Ralph seeks to sneak off with Josephine, but is caught, and Little Buttercup (Erin Wise, also very good) reveals that she was wet nurse to both Corcoran and Ralph, and swapped the babies accidentally, so that Ralph should be the Captain, Corcoran the lowborn seaman. Since Corcoron is now lowborn, daughter Josephine is unsuitable for the Admiral, so she can marry Ralph, and Corcoran can marry Buttercup.

Which of course creates some weirdnesses if you look at it too hard. If Ralph and Corcoran were both wet-nursed by the same woman, they are the same age, so Ralph is no ingenue, but is old enough to be Josephine's father. OK, we can deal with daddy issues there. But Buttercup wet-nursed Corcoran, so she had to be about 20 years (give or take) older than her new husband, who is marrying the woman who weaned him. Looking at that, the idea that the Admiral ends up marrying his First Cousin can pass without comment.

Of course, logic is never a strong point in Light Opera, and the presence of Cox and Box on the playbill underscores the idea that leaps of logic are not merely a Gilbertian indulgence, but rather part and parcel of the nature of comic opera. Pedants are asked to swallow entire camels, so that straining a gnats is considered  hardly appropriate.

One last this - the audience. Usually the Bagley-W is occupied by the sage, graying heads that are normally pointed at when theatre's imminent demise is anticipated. Yes, there were many of my generation and older present, but also a lot of families with children and teenagers. This is a good thing, and may lay more to the supposed imminent demise to the content as opposed to the building or the activity of theater itself.

HMS Pinafore/Cox& Box has but a single weekend of performance left. The entire performance is 3 hours plus, so it is a full afternoon or evening in the works, but a great deal of fun and definately worth it.

More later,

Retro-Who

RPGPundit, down in Uraguay, came up with a link to this:



And I will see him and raise him THIS



Busy now. More later,

ENnie Which Way But Loose

The ENnie voting is open, from now until 25 July, so if you're playing what is currently being shelved as "hobby games", this is a good place to declare what the best of the year is.

The ENnies are given out yearly at GenCon, and run off a two-step process. The first is the "Sage Advisor" stage where a panel of judges winnows down the nominees. Then comes the general on-line voting from all the rest of us. You can vote multiple times on a single ballot, voting "1" for your favorite, "2" for your second fave, etc. Its a nice little system, and no, you don't have to vote for everything.

The vote also allows you, the player, to hear about games that you might not otherwise have been aware of, in the overload that is the Internet. I've always said that the nominations of games are a better tool for bringing attention and rewarding good game design than the awards themselves. A nomination can bring attention to games you might otherwise pass on, and take you to game manufacturers who are otherwise off your radar. I have to check out more on Diaspora and Eclipse Phase, when I get a chance.

And there are some good candidates across the board. Rob Heinsoo is up for his delightful "Three Dragon Ante". Wolfgang Baur is up for a couple awards for Open Design and the Kobold Quarterly blog (but not the magazine - what's the deal with that?). One cool little game that might not get the attention it deserves in this field is Stan Brown's "Warriors" game, which was packaged in the YA novel series of the same name. Yes, it is a game about cats. Like Stan's work on the "Pokemon RPG", this is one of those games that, ten years from now, RPG players will be saying "Yeah, I played that game when I first started out."

Anyway, go check out the ballot and vote. And since they provide links to all the games in nomination, this is a great chance to broaden your horizons and check out games you may never have heard of before.

More later,

30 Days of Science

I'm always coming across stuff on the 'net that I think "Ooh, this would be interesting", but then I don't get around to posting it, or fifty-three other people post about it, and it gets forgotten.

But I want to make sure I mention THIS before I get carried away with other things. It is the chance to live in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for a month. IN the museum. This would be a dream opportunity for me. Heck, if I still worked for TSR up in Lake Geneva, I would see if I could arrange a leave of absence to pull this off.

If you ARE in the Chicago area, and are, as we say, "between gigs", I would strongly recommend applying. Go for it, guys!

More later,

Media Blitz

OK, I'll admit I've been a little busy lately, with a number of things. Among those things has been preparing for the release of Ghosts of Ascalon, our first Guild Wars book, by myself and Matt Forbeck, which will be available at your finer bookstores and electronic outlets on July 27.

To that end I have a blog post up on our game site about the book, along with a map of Tyria in the "modern" (as in "250 years after the original Guild Wars") age. And we have the first chapter of the book up as well, both on our site and on Simon & Schuster's page, for your perusal. AND for iBook readers, the first 30-some pages (along with map, timeline, and two and bit chapters) are available as well. I didn't even see that last one coming.

In addition, I've been talking to some top-flight web sites about the book. Massively has an interview, and a preview of the book (we sent out Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) to the sites, so they got the first look). There also is a podcast coming up (fingers crossed). I also talked to the fine folk at Kotaku (which my nephew reads regularly - I am "cool Uncle Jeff" again) and Ten Ton Hammer, and my joy and excitement about the book is, to be honest, a little bit contagious.

PLUS, I'm going to be at San Diego Comics Convention, and cover artist Richard Anderson and I will be signing copies of the novel, plus the wonderful art book we put together back for last PAX. Here's the schedule for the Guild Wars team:

Friday July 23, 2010 1:00 p.m.–1:45 p.m. NCsoft Booth #5345 - BookSigning and Giveaway - Stop by for a limited giveaway and booksigning by one of the authors of the first Guild Wars® novel: Ghosts ofAscalon. - Signing Staff: Jeff Grubb (Game Designer/Author), Rich Anderson(Concept Artist, Cover Artist)

Friday July 23, 2010 1:45 p.m.–2:30 p.m. NCsoft Booth #5345 - BookSigning and Giveaway - Stop by for a limited giveaway and booksigning of the Art of Guild Wars 2. - Signing Staff: Kekai Kotaki(Concept Art Lead), Rich Anderson (Concept Artist), Kristen Perry(Character Artist)

Saturday July 24, 2010 1:00 p.m.–1:45 p.m. NCsoft Booth #5345 - BookSigning and Giveaway - Stop by for a limited giveaway and booksigning by one of the authors of the first Guild Wars® novel: Ghosts ofAscalon. - Signing Staff: Jeff Grubb (Game Designer/Author), Rich Anderson(Concept Artist, Cover Artist)

Saturday July 24, 2010 1:45 p.m.–2:30 p.m. NCsoft Booth #5345 - BookSigning and Giveaway Stop by for a limited giveaway and book signing ofthe Art of Guild Wars 2. - Signing Staff: Kekai Kotaki (Concept ArtLead), Rich Anderson (Concept Artist), Kristen Perry (Character Artist)

Saturday July 24, 2010 5:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m. Room 4 - Speaking Session:Guild Wars 2: A New Type of Fantasy MMO - Learn how Guild Wars 2will set a new standard for what is possible in an MMO game! Keycreators examine with you how the lore, design, and gameplay of GuildWars 2 has grown from the original game into something revolutionary,and take questions from the audience. - Speakers: James Phinney (DesignDirector), Jeff Grubb (Game Designer), Kekai Kotaki (Concept Art Lead),Rich Anderson (Concept Artist), Kristen Perry, (Character Artist), ChrisLye (Global Brand Director)

If you're there, drop by. We will be taking up sharing space with our sister companies, Paragon (City of Heroes) and NCWest (Aion).

So yeah, its been a busy week, and I think its going to get busier.

Convention Circuit

While by nature I am a reclusive homebody, I am going to be all over the joint in the next few months, promoting the Ghosts of Ascalon and Guild Wars 2.  Look for me here!

July 21-25  -  San Diego Comic-Con (we'll be sharing a booth with Paragon Studios(City of Heroes) and signing books).
August 18-22  -  Gamescom in Cologne (We will have the German translation of the novel out as well as debuting the hands-on demo of the game).
 September 3-5  -  PAX (Penny Arcade eXpo) in Seattle (US debut of the GW2 Demo).

See you there!

More later,

Ghosts, Chapter One

Simon & Schuster has put the first chapter of Ghosts of Ascalon, by Matt Forbeck and myself, up on their site. Go take a look!

More later,

Blatent Plug Department

Just got my hands on a hard copy/dead tree edition of The Kobold Guide to Game Design, Volume III, to which I contributed but a single sentence (the blurb on the front cover). However, it is a wonderful book, with essays by Monte Cook on Game Balance, Rob Heinsoo on Key Mechanics and Hooks, Ed Greenwood on Plots, Colin McComb on Combat Systems, and Wolfgang Baur on drums (and everything else). A great little book, and highly recommended.

More later,

Origins Awards

Sigh. It is a sign of how far out of the RPG orbit I have drifted in that I almost missed linking to the winners of the Origins Awards this year. But it is nice to see that Margaret Weis's company took an award for Big Damn Heroes Handbook for Serenity. No power in the 'Verse can stop them.

More later,

Solstice

This is a tough time of the year for me. My sleep patterns tend to be shaped by the sun, and while I can wake and function in darkness, I have a difficult time sleeping when it is light. In Seattle, the northernmost major city in the continental US, that makes for difficulties when the sky lightens a 5 AM and does not grow dark again until after 10.

You read that right. I am bagging on Seattle for having too much sunlight. Go figure.

However, the official start of summer has its nice points, one of the chiefmost being the Fremont Solstice Parade, a whacky local event that draws most of the city to this off-kilter territory.

Fremont, for those who are not in the know, is the self-declared center of the universe, and home to both the Fremont Troll and the Lenin Statue. It was for many years a haven for artists, and under the rules of modern gentrification has been upgraded a couple times, but still seeks to maintain its quirky and peculiar charm. In particular, the parade, which bans logos, printed words, or motorized vehicles.

Oh yeah, it has the naked bicyclists as well. The organizers resisted it for many years, but have finally embraced the idea of a massive tour de nude at the start of the parade to just get it out of the system. The challenge, though, is that the rest of the parade is more of a saunter than a march, with teams of salsa dancers, belly dancers,gymnasts, puppeteers, and other foot traffic, so there is a big gap between when the cyclists come through and when the parade proper arrives. Fortunately, the "Chalk Fairies" (members of the local teamsters) pass out chalk and the kids (and adults) draw on the parade route until the parade meanders down to your area. If you're in a hurry, you're in the wrong neighborhood.

And it was cool this year, both in temperature and temperament. Much less political and anti-corp than in previous years. Dick Cheney in prison stripes on a bike was present, but seemed almost a little passe, like the guys in the Dick Nixon masks. But there were things like a float powered by pedaling Elvises (Elvii), the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a giant white dog puppet name Dogody, a giant spider puppet with stuffed animals and cabbage-patch kids in its web, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a treant (with sapling) and a giant walking totem pole. Oh, a big Yellow Submarine as part of a multi-part effort that included Green Apple Bonkers, Blue Meanies, Snapping Turtle Turks, Sgt. Pepper, and a bunch of ersatz Beatles leading a sing-along from the crowd.

And yeah, its an interactive parade, which accounts for its leisurely nature. Everyone gets pictures. The dodgeball team is encouraging small kids to kick balls into the street. And you too can play in the Sea of Holes or help paint an art piece being created over the parade route.And you can lay down in front of a big twenty-foot beach ball rolls down the street.

What there weren't a lot of was visible police presence. Most of the people keeping folk back towards the curbs were local volunteers in orange jackets, and the cops only seemed to reveal themselves at the very end, once the parade had passed down to Gasworks Park and the streets had to be reclaimed for car traffic. And like a passing dream, the Midsummer Dream of Fremont passed on.

And now we go into Summer, and I hopefully can get a bit more sleep.

More later.

Slouching Towards Olympia

The season is upon us. The early invites to town halls, kick-off lunches, and pizza parties have arrived. The phone calls at inopportune times. The first push polls (so pushy they call back when hung up on). In the wake of Memorial Day, election season has begun.

And I, for one, just can't get into the spirit.

Part of it probably campaign fatigue left over from 2008. A large number of blogs I've followed haven't updated since Obama's election. Part of it is the difficulty of actually watching people govern in troubled times. But I think a big chunk of it is simply that I was in Pennsylvania right before its primary last month.

And the land was awash in political campaign ads. Every opponent was either a member of Pelosi's soviet legions or the most cold-hearted Republican in all of Bedford Falls. Arlen Specter covered the airwaves with accusations that his opponent underpaid his campaign staff while family members got paychecks (That's the best you could throw at him? He doesn't pay retail for his help?). "Just another politician" sniffed the ads, which supported re-electing the newly democratic Specter for his 75th term (Specter lost, in case you didn't know).

And so I had a vision of the future that yawns before Washington State - the broken wellhead of political bile that will issue into our state. Yet there are handfuls (handfuls, I say!) of readers who tune in for the politics, so here we go again.

The GOOD news is that, despite our wonky primary system in which you can't be a Democrat but instead can only "prefer Democratic Party", there was minimal high-jinx in the registering to run. Republicans are confident to run as Republicans, shedding even the fig-leaf of the GOP brand or qualifier like "Real Republican Party". And I think that's a good thing.

There are two big races in my part of Washington State - Senate and the 8th District House. Senate has incumbent Dem Patty Murray against both traditional GOP choice Dino Rossi and more conservative GOP favorite Clint Didier (there are others, but they have already been discounted by the media). Rossi entered the race the week after the Seattle Times obligingly printed a hatchet job accusing anti-government farmer Didier of (gasp) taking government subsidies. Normally the two big teams line up and choose their guy and that's the end of it, but Didier on the Further Right (he has since snagged an endorsement from Sarah Palin) may make this interesting.

In the House, we flip the situation - the incumbent is Republican David Reichert, former King County Sheriff with a tendency to reveal his political motivation a tad too often. Against him is another progressive technocrat, Suzan DelBene, of which I know little but will end up finding out more. This is supposed to be an anti-incumbent year, but it never seems to be that way for incumbents from the OTHER party.

In Olympia, Geoff Simpson, Pat Sullivan, and Claudia Kaufmann are all up for re-election in the State House races (all three come up at once). More on them and their competition later, but the push poll mentioned at the top of the article was sounding out various strategies against Pat Sullivan and seeing what would "message" best.

And finally we have our initiative process, intended to further democratize the system but in reality being yet another arm for money to enter the political process. This year we have the possibility of two different measures to privatize liquor sales, a measure to decriminalize pot, a tax-the-wealthy measure put forward by Bill Gates' dad, and the regular "Pull out the engine so we can complain that the car won't start" anti-government measure from Tim Eyeman.

Fun all around. So now I'm heading to the store to buy election-season decorations and send out my "Sorry to hear you have to vote" cards.

More later,

Mike Cook

The word went out earlier this week, by jungle drum, internet, and mojo wire, regarding the passing Mike Cook. Mike was (under various similar titles) the Vice President of TSR's creative departments under the Blume brothers, Gary Gygax, and Lorraine Williams. He was 60.

The thing I remember best of Mike was what I called at the time "Wisconsin Management Style". This meant using beer as a resource in smoothing the relationship between management and employee (this IS Wisconsin I'm talking about). There were a number of occasions when a general discussion or employee concern adjourned to the Next Door Pub for further discussion, or the designers were scheduled for an after-hours conference there. It sounds strange, but moving a concern out of the office and into a more relaxed setting did a lot to get around the normal problems of worker and management. It is a management and communication style that I've used to great effect - "Lemme get a coffee with you" or "So, who wants sushi?" - out on the West Coast.

This summer, as members of the late, great, TSR fraternity gather at conventions, memories will be revived and beers will be lifted in Mike's memory. He will be missed.

Lockdown

So for most of the morning, the police kept me at my desk.

OK, let me unspool this for you. There was an "incident" at our office park. A man bashed in the front windows of a debt collection agency with an axe. Needless to say, the workers at that agency retreated to a back room, pushed filing cabinets in front of the door, and called the cops.

The police arrived and sealed off the office complex (there are only two roads into it, and it is surrounded by water). They asked all the workers to stay indoors and the management locked the accessible doors. So for about three hours, half the staff was locked inside and half the staff was stopped at the roadblock and turned back. Most went to work at home.

We on the inside were treated to Bellevue police moving through the parking lots and King County Troopers with heavy weapons and K9 Units beating the bushes, followed by police choppers, and later on news copters. They did a pretty thorough job (we were watching them from the windows), but after three hours did not find the culprit and lifted the lockdown.

And yeah, its not the NORMAL state of affairs in our office, but things like this do happen to liven up our lives.

More later,

Oath

I've mentioned before, here and elsewhere, that we're in a new golden age of Cthulhu, in particular as far as RPGs concerned. Once the domain of once-every-blue-moon releases, this particular niche has grown into a highly populated gaming environment, with new works from Chaosium, Miskatonic Press, Super Genius Games, Goodman Games, Pelgrane Press, Pagan Publishing, Cubicle 7 and others.

So it is with scant surprise (and no need to reach for the percentile dice for a SAN check) to discover that The Unspeakable Oath is returning from its shallow grave. The Unspeakable Oath was a revolutionary magazine as far as the CoC universe is concerned, so much that I consider it and Delta Green to be the initiation of its own Age of Cthulhu (though I have since broadened the definition of that age). Its sensibilities were much more psychological that previous incarnations, and its ultimate theme was "The stars have come right, and we are the monsters".

The first new issue is going to be out at the end of year, and they are taking submissions until 19 July. In addition, their editorial board reads like a Who's Who of Cthulhu's disturbed sleep of the past twenty years.

I thought very highly of the original UO, and really look forward to this new one.

More later,

Evolutionary Wars

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins, Free Press, Distributed by Simon & Schuster Digital Sales, 2009

How I Got This Book: Recommended by a coworker who name-checked a number of books he has been reading. Since I was looking for books to take on my Pittsburgh trip, I downloaded a couple of them onto my Kindle.

I've talked about my Kindle before, and find it to be an excellent travel book, but some volumes do not fair well on the device. This is one of them. Greatest Show makes copious use of annotations and footnoted sources (which it navigates well enough). It uses extensive black and white illos and tables (which reproduce badly) and color plates (which reproduce worse), and the bibliography and index sprawl over more Kindle pages than they really need to, since the multiple indents in their formatting do not come across easily.

And while it is tempting to think about this book's possible evolutionary success within the environmental niche of e-publishing, that would be pretty wrong. Because evolution by natural selection belongs to one particular science, and when you transport it to another field, things get dodgy fast (like the "Social Darwinism" of Herbert Spenser, which takes Darwin's biology and transfers it into a rationale of why Rich People need not feel sympathy for Poor People). While tempting (and I do it all the time), when you're talking about natural selection, the natural part of the concept is applicable.

In any event, the book was both a good summary of stuff I knew (speciation, continental drift, mutation) and things I needed updated on (protein folding, which is sort of organic origami). Dawkins is best known for his avowed opposition to the religious who reject Darwinism (and most of the post-15th century) out of hand. He fires more than a few high hard ones against the religious institutions and their minions, but over the course of the book, I find that I can understand where the religious-based evolution-deniers are coming from.

I mean, if evolution was a religion, it would make the Cthulhu Mythos look all warm and cuddly.

First off, it take an uncaring universe to its logical extreme. There is a pass-fail existence where the tests come continually and the price of failure is always death. Old-Testament Jehovah is more forgiving than this grim clockwork of action and reaction.

And it's about species, and not about you. Not only are you just another of the striver in the universe, success of your species means absolutely nothing about your personal needs. It is about a larger genetic grading, of which you are a very very small part.

And its not really about you species than about your genes, stupid. The entire purpose of natural selection is the guarantee that the most suitable genes survive. You survive only because your genetic package crafted a suitable housing to create more genes. In these terms, the childless are evolutionary failures (I can envision a conservative evolutionary distopia where children are mandated, and only tested and harvested before they can reproduce). Genetic duplication (with all of its additional mutations) is about as close to salvation as you can hope for.

And because it is about your genes, your fate is sealed at birth. Never mind the concept of "Grace" among us Protestants - this is worse. Your genetic makeup is sealed before you even attained sentience. And if that makeup is suitable for the current environment, or even if that makeup is outdone by the makeups of OTHER individuals whose mutations are better, well, it sucks to be you.

And in the face of all this, we have a strong strain of "human exceptionalism". Despite this supposedly uncaring universe, we are here, and thriving (mostly). We take care of our suboptimal mutations and, spitting in the face of nature, allow them to pass on genetic material. We also pass along a "soft" heritage in culture, art, and knowledge, which exists outside the hardwired chemistry and biology of our forms. You can make a case of both secular and religious thought as being in direct opposition to the uncaring clockwork of natural selection.

The big thing is, of course, that evolution is NOT a belief system, any more than gravity (also called "Intelligent Falling") is. It is a scientific tool that explains the natural world, and knowing where that tool can be applied (like a hammer to a nail) and when it shouldn't (like a hammer to a screw) is part of the process. To haul evolution into the court of beliefs is like hauling religion into the court of science. It is condemning those apples for making overly tart orange juice.

But if you consider science to be an alternate belief system (as opposed to, you know, science), the frightening nature of evolution is apparent. You can suddenly sense the palpable revulsion in the faithful to the threat of this line of thought, even though there should be no threat.

Lovecraft would, on the other hand, be delighted.

More later,

Begun, the Serial Comma Wars Have ...

Head writer Bobby Stein has posted a great article on the ArenaNet blog about setting up the writing style for Guild Wars 2. And while his tone is light (he is a word-nerd adrift in a sea of game-nerds), his purpose is completely serious. One of the goals of the game is create a regular and consistent look and feel in the game experience, which is reflected by gameplay, mechanics, art, and yeah, the writing.

It sounds obvious, but it is not. Even though most of us have some form of writing chops, there are a lot of personal and regional variations. Go back to the early days of the country, and you could describe our spelling and language as "freestyle", with whatever personal solutions to communications worked out on the fly (what is this "Purfuit of Happineff stuff, anyway?). In the age of Spellcheck and Grammarcheck that has eased off a bit, but still, there are enough variations to make a multi-creator project like a computer game a veritable minefield of conflicting styles.

So putting together a style guide is a challenge because we are all married to the way we've done things. I get personally insulted when the word processor underlines in green a perfectly good sentence and says "fragment (consider revising)". No, Mr. Microsoft, YOU consider revising. And convincing people that your methodology is the best can lead to some very nasty encounters.

Here's a story from the old days of TSR. Our manager (no names, here), put one of the editors in charge of creating a style guide. Said editor put one together, including that we would use serial commas (that is putting a comma before a conjunction, such as "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme"). However, said manager did not care for serial commas (it should be "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme"), and the two were soon butting heads. Soon salvos were fired off in the office mail, sides were taken, red pens were stockpiled, paragraphs were set ablaze,and everyone ended up feeling bad about it (and I don't think we ever solved that particular problem).

So style does stir up a lot of deep-seated feelings in people - how do we communicate? How much of my personal style much be sacrificed for the good of the project. Why the heck CAN'T I capitalize whatever I want (I blame Gary Gygax for this last one - he would begin his columns "Gentle Reader")? The passion behind such decisions, unseen by the ultimate consumer, is real and unwavering.

So I want the people supporting Strunk & White on the right hand side of the room, and those supporting Chicago Manual of Style over on the left. Dodgeballs will be passed out.

More later,

The Horrors

Arkham Horror designed by Richard Launius, Lynn Willis, Sandy Peterson, and Charlie Crank,1987, Chaosium Games
Arkham Horror designed by Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson, 2005, Fantasy Flight Games

Many years ago, I played the original Arkham Horror from Chaosium, and found it to be a fun game (though I don't remember if I finished it). Several years ago, I played the revised Arkham Horror from Fantasy Flight (and did not finish it). When I was in Pittsburgh recently, I had the chance to play the revised game (and did not finish it again), but resolved that I would eventually finish the game. And one evening, with my regular Call of Cthulhu crew, we DID finish the revised game (and there was much rejoicing). And then over the recent long weekend, I had the chance to play the original game (and did not finish it), but did regain enough knowledge and sanity to be able to compare the two.

So the question is: what is it about this game, a game where most of its sessions remain unfinished, that attracts one so?

Both games share the same framework - You're an investigator in Arkham, ground zero of the Cthulhu mythos. Gates are opening all over town to the Other Worldsh. And monsters are coming out. Your job is to close the gates. It is a cooperative game, which means that everyone wins (with a bonus to the one killing the most monsters), or everyone loses.

Now both versions skim the "eldritch horror in an uncaring universe" part of the Necronomicon, and bore more down on the "use everything and kitchen sink approach". All manner of mythos deities, minions, and locations make their head-nod, which leaves the games more of a primer to the mythos than a deep probing into the psyche of a hideous reality. But that doesn't really matter, since one of the joys of the game is explaining to others what a "shoggoth" is.

And both are "play to exhaustion" style games. The basic goal of the game is to close portals, which are springing up as fast (or faster) than you can shut them down. And with every new gate, the ending of the game comes closer, while every time you close a gate, that ending and the sweet, sweet release of completion moves further away. I think this is the reason that so many games end in everyone taking a deep breath and putting it all back into the box - you play until you decide to stop playing. Like hitting yourself with a board, the relief comes when you finally stop.

The first edition is ruled by tables - a table for where the gate appears, small tables for encounters in every location. Simple D6 rolls rule with all sorts of mods applied. High roll wins in combat. Fighting by magic is nigh-impossible, unless you got the Bind Monster, which is an auto door-closer as you throw you gug at the gate to the Abyss. All monsters are equal in chance to appear, so you have the same chance of hitting a maniac as finding Cthulhu wandering down the street.

The second edition has vastly improved physical components, but then uses them to create a bunch of different systems and tracking devices. You have three movable skill-pairs PLUS counters for your Sanity and Strength. The Candyland-like path-map of first edition is replaced with point-movement that does not give the same feeling of connectivity and sense of place. Instead of a high-role success combat shifts to a "number of successes" resolution, where you are looking for additional dice to increase your chances. And the "great powers" of Cthulhu are now moved to the endgame - instead of the game just ending after time, a particular pre-chosen Old-One (with particular universal effects during the game) shows up and everyone fights it (though they have the "classic game" solution if the baddie is Azathoth. He shows up at 13 gates and everyone dies automatically.

And while the second edition is incredibly popular (six or seven expansion), the sheer amount of fiddly bits included makes my head hurt. There is a lot more to the second game, and therefore a lot more to forget and get wrong (survival tip for the second edition - get multiple copies of the rule set (available in pdf from the Fantasy Flight site) before starting in). The ease-of-play of the original worked to its benefit, and the various modifications to add speed, depth, or variety just overloads the senses and capabilities.

Both games are rainy-day games for people in it for the long haul - not for folk starting something in late evening. It ranks with Talisman as one of those games you continue because you don't want to admit to be beaten by the game's sheer inertia. Yet my grognard heart goes out to the original as opposed to the later version.

More later,

Collaboration

So currently up at Booklife is a short interview with Matt Forbeck about the joys and pitfalls of collaboration, in regards to our upcoming Guild Wars 2 novel, Ghosts of Ascalon (which finally has the correct cover at Amazon).

More later,

DOW Breaks 10,000

Now how did THAT happen?

No, really, was it only a month and change ago that the DOW surged over 11k, and everyone was sure that whatever was wrong, it wasn't wrong anymore, and things were going to get better, at least for the masters of the universe and the social investment funds that propped up the stock market. And we could stop kvetching about how Wall Street was falling apart and go back to complaining about how Wall Street was recovering and leaving Main Street behind (again)?

And it doesn't seem that there IS any one villain here, according to the trades. Market correction. People are mad that the gummint is being mean to the bankers. People are mad that the gummint is being insufficiently mean to the bankers. Greece, Iceland, Spain, or your favorite floundering western economy of the week. The BP spill. The fact that the BP spill is still spilling. Government action, government inaction, or (shakes magic 8-ball) just a market correction after all.

Actually, I think one of the culprits is High Frequency Traders. These aren't real traders in the pits, but rather financial bots armed with primitive AI and very, very short attention spans. A lot of operations work off algorithm trading, making their choices based on computer models. The HFTs, however, work at blinding speed, buying into and then selling within fractions of a second, finding opportunities where mere mortal meatspace traders cannot follow. Indeed, they can see a large retirement fund lumbering towards a target, dance ahead of it to invest, and then, when the fund has purchased, quickly sell off from the resultant bump the purchase gives the stock value. Then do it again, at a speed that would impress The Flash.

Such HFTs also create a lot of churn in the market, and a lot of liquidity. And that seems to reflect in the fact that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. When stocks are trending up, they tend to follow that trend and help to perpetuate it beyond a supportable point. Similarly, when the market takes a short, sharp, shock, these same HFTs can be pulled quickly out of the system, drying up ready money and with it the liquidity that greases the wheels of modern capitalism. And that can make a sudden downturn a cliff for everyone still trading in Realtime.

This happened with the sudden precipitous drop a few weeks back when it seemed that the bottom fell out of the market (did I mention that these HFTs are not as regulated to the same degree as other investments? Ah, the joys of freedom of the marketplace). And now we see a general deflating as algorithms are rehoned and refined.

So there should be a lot of wild rides in the near future, and I would be unsure if we are moving upwards or downwards. But I am keeping my magic eight-ball handy.

More later, e

Comics: Blackest, Darkest, Night Siege

Major Star Trek flashback - there's an old episode of the original series, "I, Mudd", where the crew has to confuse a whole bunch of androids in order to burn out their circuits. So Spock goes up to a pair of beautiful androids (played by twins), and says to one. "I love you." and to the other "But I hate you". The second beautiful android says "But I am identical in every way to the other android." "And that is why I hate you," says Spock, and the beautiful androids burn out their circuits dealing with the contradiction.

So that's how I feel about the two major comic book company "events", which have recently resolved - the "Dark Reign/Seige" sequence from Marvel, and the "Blackest Night" event over at DC. I've been trying to figure out why I like the former when those same reasons also apply to the latter, which left me frustrated and cranky.

For those who don't follow comics on a weekly basis, here is the short form. Over in the Marvel Universe, at the end of the Skrull Invasion (don't ask), Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin) emerges as a hero, and is given Nick Fury's old job of defending the free world. He then proceeds to hire every other villain in creation with the intention of creating a "permanent super-powered majority" that lets them be villainous (within limits) and keep the heroes from making a comeback. Meanwhile, over in the DC universe, a dark cosmic entity, Nekron, raises the dead to confront the living heroes, allowing DC to literally resurrect old deceased characters.

And from these bases, they spool out pretty darn similar. There are titanic battles. There are a plethora of tie-ins, which vary from intriguing to lame. There are more titanic battles. There are forgotten villains which suddenly see a lot of screen time (I swear the Griffon, a minor-league Spidey villain, has gotten more work in the past year than in the previous thirty). There are heroes returning from the dead (Steve Rogers is back, Aquaman is back, Batman appears as a skull, but HE's coming back as well). There are heroes engaged in redemption (Hal Jordan blew up the Green Lantern corps, Tony Stark wandered deep into supervillain territory - both are back on the side of angels (Tony reloaded a back-up personality, which creates interesting legal problems). There are way too many superteams involved (Rainbow Lanterns for DC, all the flavors of Avengers in Marvel). The core books feel like a lot of "coming attraction" trailers for other books that spin off. And both end with a sense of redemption - a Brightest Day which leads to a Heroic Age.

And yet it works for me on the Marvel side, and not on the DC side. So much so that I am looking forward to the next step of the Marvel ongoing story (Heroic Age), but not the DC (Brightest Day)(Note that the DC Brightest Day already cheesed me off through the gratuitous slaying of a Next Generation Hero (the Ryan Choi version of the Atom) - but that's a rant for another day). And given all the similarities, that contradiction should burn out my circuits.

I guess what it all boils down to is this - I grokked the Marvel characters and enjoyed the stories more than the DC version. Given my own background in the MU, I recognized most of the D-listers that filled up the panels (Mandrill, anyone?) and felt the whole Dark Reign/Siege was an event that let all the characters react according to their natures (a Marvel strength). Blackest Night, on the other hand, sort of put all the heroes in the same box, with identical reactions to the threat du jour. In the end, the various heroic factions coming together made a lot more sense in the Marvel end than on the DC side.

Heck, Marvel even made its Sentry character, the latest in their sequence of Superman clones, interesting.

But I'm still trying to parse out the difference between the two - megaevents that sprawl through multiple books. Both were big events that should have had personal resolutions, yet only Marvel seems to have pulled that off.

Excuse me, I smell burning circuits. More later.

Terror

This past Saturday, the Lovely Bride had a Tai Chi class in the morning, and a Tai Chi demo in the afternoon at the Seattle Center, which left a four-hour block of time in Seattle. So we went to the MOHAI.

The MOHAI is the Museum of History and Industry, tucked into a thin wedge of land between 420 and the Montlake Cut (don't sweat about it, they are moving soon). It is a nice history and tech exhibit, heavy on the settlers and salmon and Fisher Communications, surprisingly light on Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon. It is the final resting place of the Toe Truck, the Rainier R, and the cougar Eddie Baur shot. Boosterish but at the same time recognizing the racial challenges of the city (removing the Native Americans, Interning Nisei and Issei). Even Madame Damnable gets a passing nod.

But we were there for the Terror in America: The Enemy Within exhibit, a traveling show that will be running until 20 June. Sub-sub-titled 1776 to Today, it more accurately a history of the 20th Century of Terrorism, though it casts its net broadly. It name-checks the Boston Tea Party (which I would put down as vandalism as opposed to terrorism) and the burning of Washington (Done by an invading military force), but despite a large timeline to show the endemic nature of violence in American History, it really gets started with WWI sabotage and rolls forward from there.

And the general feel you get from the exhibits is that, while there were reasons for action (Union violence, Japanese spies, Communist agents), as much damage, if not more, was done through overreaction (Palmer Raids, internment camps, Red scares). In fact, we tend to seek sweeping results when dealing with the Other, and tend to bore down to individual crimes when dealing with groups that wrap themselves in the flag and faith (the Klan and the Militia movements). In the latter, we see the individual leaders being arrested and prosecuted, while entire families and classes of peoples where targeted when those responsible were members of minority groups.

It is pretty dour stuff, that reinforces the idea that we are still wrestling with the problem of balancing protection and basic rights, and all its takes is one action to crystallize the fears into action. Of particular amusement is a Jack Webb-narrated Red Scare film where Joe America wakes up to find the Commies in charge ("We tried to warn you, Dad! Sunday school has been closed by the State"). Interestingly, the film could be almost-effortlessly redubbed to represent our current right-wing radicals as the threat ("We tried to warn you, Dad! Sunday school has been closed for teaching about social justice").

The exhibit runs until June 20, and is worth catching, as is strolling through the rest of the mazelike exhibits (because we don't know what will be where when they move into their new digs). Check it out.

More later,

Thirty Years Ago

The Seattle Times did a good job on the current ecosystems here.

More later,

Someplace Special

Yes, I've been off the grid for the past ten days, on vacation, visiting family and friends in Pittsburgh.

No, I don't feel particularly responsible to tell anyone I was doing this in a public forum. In fact, all those continual posts I see from people saying "Hey, I'm at the beach this week" or "Hey, I'm at the local Starbucks!" is sort like saying "Hey, my house is empty and I won't be home for a while!"

Of course, when I DO leave for an extended period, I leave the lights on a timer, and my personal bodyguard, Steve "The Crusher" Miller comes in to make sure the dobermans (Hannibal and Lector) are properly fed and any stray trespassers are given proper rites and their scant remains buried in the back yard behind the shed.

But anyway, Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh itself was beautiful in May, ranging between heavy lightning-sparked downpours and warm cloudless blue days (and yeah, I have a little sunburn for a long walk without a proper hat). The trees have unfurled in a cascade of green shades, and the city's age works to its advantage - many of the trees planted decades ago now grace the area with the thick verdant cover. It remains a very green city.

The city itself (was in Downtown (correct pronunciation - Dahn-TAHN) picking up a nephew to take him to lunch) is pretty much pedestrian-based, and all they really have to do is shut down the side streets to all by delivery vans and it would be an effective walker's utopia. Part of that is the nature of 'Burghers themselves - if your vehicle is not physically in the crosswalk AT THAT SECOND, they feel they have right of way. It makes for an interesting experience.

As I mentioned I spent the week visiting family and friends. My nuclear family still all lives in the Greater Pittsburgh area, along with people I've known since high school. My parents are both, in the parlance, "getting up there" in years, but my father can still bid (and make) a three no trump bid at bridge. Yes, we played cards and the Lovely Bride and I did a little planting and we got the entire extended clan (including a married niece now living in Baltimore) got together on the Sunday before we came back.

And there were more sobering parts. My brother-in-law's brother-in-law passed on. As did the Lovely Bride's best friend's husband. And a lot of things I remember just aren't there anymore. At least I can say I caught a movie at the Galleria (we saw Iron Man 2) before they shut that down.

On the other hand, I managed to get back together with two of my groomsmen from my wedding for a gaming evening, and found another interesting new game - Draken, which is worth playing.

And now I'm back in the Seattle area, and recovering from the transit (Air Tran, by the way - Formerly Valujet - not a bad operation. The planes were not stuffed, and the gate crew seems to have their act together (if not the front desk)). So we may pick this up again and have a few more things to say.

More later,

Caveat Lector

Those who come here seeking clues about what we’re up to regarding Guild Wars or other projects I am currently involved in tend to leave bitterly disappointed. I don’t talk much about what I’m working on, particularly in the office. I prefer to tell you when something is done, out, and available. But this time I relent in service to a greater cause.

In front of me sits the final galleys for Ghosts of Ascalon, by Matt Forbeck and myself. Four drafts, three galleys, a set of proofreading notes and all. And it is done. Checked, cross-checked, updated, revised and finally to the printer. It should be in your hands by the end of July. And I have to say that it is correct and complete, based on where the world and the game as it stands right this moment.

And that is an important set of weasel words - “right this moment”. Guild Wars 2 is still in development, and we will continue to grow the world and its stories as we move forward. We are a creatively fearless company, and we iterate and re-iterate a LOT. So if tomorrow we discover that hat color is a major component of the game, we will see charr wearing crimson sombreros by the end next week. But not in the novel. That boat, as they say, has sailed.

This would not be the first time I’ve seen the world change beneath my feet. Many years ago, I wrote The Last Guardian, for Warcraft. This was set in Azeroth, but in the Azeroth from before WoW, and the map I used was not the map that most people are now familiar with. Imagine my surprise when I started playing WoW and found that Stormhaven had been moved, and that Dalaran (then on an island, and known for its purple-tiled roofs) was now under a big dome (and now has been moved somewhere else entirely).

I’ve never written anything that was at Splinter of the Mind’s Eye level of disavowal (Luke and Leia have a love affair, which left everyone who saw Empire Strikes Back shuddering in revulsion), but I have seen that when you work with a living license, it will continue to evolve and grow and get better. What is here is a snapshot, beautiful, well-crafted, deep and meaningful, but a snapshot of a creative locomotive hurtling along the track, draped with asura all making additions and changes as it goes.

And one of those asura will be me, stressing my allusion-generator into the redline.

More later,

More Plugs

As if all the pluggage below were not enough, I've done a podcast with Ethan Parker over at Gamer's Haven, where I ramble on about Marvel Super Heroes, Call of Cthulhu and other bits of madness. The site is here, or you can download it directly here.

More later,

Forty Years Ago

Allison B. Krause
Jeffrey Glenn Miller
Sandra Lee Scheuer
William Knox Schroder

More later,

Naptha

My morning commute smells like mothballs, and to understand why you have to understand how houses are built in the Pacific Northwest.

Let's start off with roofs. Roof pitch is heavily influenced by snow load. You go up into the mountains, and the roofs get steeper, because you want to be able to shift that load to the supports. But with less-steep roofs, you also have less space underneath. No snow load tends to mean no attics.

Lets go down to the deeper levels of the houses, and here we see a time thing. Older houses tend to have basements, while newer ones not so much. Indeed, most basements have an ongoing fight about keeping dry, so sometime in the last 50 years they decided to drop them entirely. Particularly for the split level or tri-level houses, where the lowest floor was a quasi-basement, but a finished one.

So we don't have basements and we don't have attics. Where do we put our extra stuff? You know, holiday decorations and old books and stuff that we should throw out but may yet need? Well, we put them in our garage.

At Grubb Street, we have a house built in the sixties, without a basement or an attic, and with a one-car garage, pretty typical for the era. And since we have two cars and a lot of tools and stuff in the garage, we part out in the driveway, But I see larger, newer places with two and three car garages (I love the phrase used for them - Garage Mahals, and their owners are ALSO parking on the driveway. Why? Their garage is full of stuff.

OK, so everyone parks outside, but that makes for another problem - vehicles are more vulnerable to elements (including moss) and creatures. We know (from little cat prints on the hood and the alarm going off in the middle of the night) that feral felines often nap on the cooling hood in the night. But the greater peril is when mice get in under the hood. We've had friends with gnawed wires and found a dead mouse under our oil cap recently.

Hence the mothballs, slipped into some old hosiery (not mine) and tied to the undercarriage. And it seems to keep the hordes at nature at bay.

But it makes for a bracing morning drive of dichlorobenzene and camphor, at least until the smell clears out.

More later,