DShomshak

Side note: In 5th edition D&D, the spell is now "Detect Evil and Good," which in fact detects neither. The name is a holdover, but it actually detects supernatural creatures: aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey [sic], fiends, and undead. Standard game defines celestials as good, fiends and undead as evil, but elementals tend to be neutral. Aberrations usually "evil," but the flumph is good. Same thing for "Protection from Evil and Good." It grants protection from all classes of supernatural creatures. Even D&D now moves beyond D&D. 😀 Dean Shomshak

"The races tend to act evil because evil gods made them to be that way" has been good enough for D&D for decades. It's good enough for an action/adventure game about characters becoming more powerful by killing monsters and taking their stuff. But: 1) Just because D&D does something, doesn't mean everyone else, or indeed anyone else, should do Fantasy that way. Or even Fantasy gaming. 2) I am no longer one of the young adult males who were D&D's original target audience. I am a late-middle-aged, effete pseudo-intellectual. I overthink. So even when I play D&D, I toss the metaphysics and do it my own way. But that would be very long to explain and likely of limited interest to anyone else. Suffice to say that if Tolkien can build a Fantasy world on the theological and moral frameworks of Catholicism, I can do it on Enlightenment humanism. I have no trouble finding a sufficient supply of villains the PCs feel happy to battle and kill. I am quite happy with the result, and my players seem to be, too. Dean Shomshak

A further point of Moral Foundations Theory is that people place different weights on each foundation. This gets into politics, which I will avoid, but it's worth noting. But it's also worth noting that just about everyone acknowledges the need for *compromise* between virtues. One way to create peoples whose motives are comprehensible but reprehensible is to pick one virtue and make it absolute, leaving no room for compromise. For one easy example, every member of a species might be totally loyal to each other, but regard all other sapient beings as enemies who must be eradicated to make more living space for themselves. Conversely, members of another species might be such libertarians that they refuse to give an inch to anyone else's will, even to respecting contracts or other free associations. (OK, we just re-invented Lawful and Chaotic Evil.) Or folk who are Purity/Defilement absolutists might fanatically seek to conquer everyone else to impose their dietary, religious, or other code. Even Care/Harm becomes supremely creepy in the classic SF short story "With Folded Hands," in which unstoppable robots invade Earth to keep humans safe and comfortable... whether we want it or not. They are all, by their own standards, righteous. But their absolutism also makes them implacably hostile to everyone else. They must be fought. Dean Shomshak

And by extension, a definition of good. I favor the anthropological/psychological approach of moral foundations theory, which seeks to study the moral reasoning of actual people to find the basis for their judgements. Here's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory In brief, though, the researchers have identified six moral foundations that seem widespread across cultures. (More may be possible. Research continues.) * Care/Harm may be the most straightforward, as it is individually observable and relatively non-contextual. The deliberate infliction of suffering on another is evil; the alleviation of suffering and active promotion of quality of life is usually considered good, all other things being equal. * Liberty/Oppression is also pretty straightforward. Most people want to do what they want to do, and object to someone else forcing them to act or not act as they choose. * Fairness/Unfairness: Humans are clearly born with an innate sense that it's wrong for some people to get more than others, or more than they've earned. (Though the definition of "earned" is of course subject to self-interest.) Any parent who has had one child complain that another child's slice of cake was a millimeter larger than their own knows what I'm talking about. Active cheating is, well, it's often dependent on who's cheating whom. But cheating your own group is almost always condemned. * Loyalty/Treachery is more group-dependent than the previous. Very few people actually admire betrayal of the group. But what group owns your loyalty? *Authority/Insubordination: Most people, in most societies, admire obedience to authority. But this gets even more conditional, as the authority must be accepted as legitimate, which gets into circular definitions. Also, this foundation is reciptocal: Whoever is in authority must do its duty in order to maintain legitimacy. Failure to do so makes rebellion righteous. It's not always good to be king! * Purity/Defilement: This one is the most abstract and culturally dependent, but people tend to have strong feelings in favor of what they conceive as pure, and against what they regard as soiled, corrupted, or adulterated -- anything from a white bigot feeling horror at "race mixing," to an environmentalist's exaltation at experiencing "unspoiled wilderness." People being complicated, moral judgements are rarely based on just one foundation. For instance, soldiers can fall into a competition of showing who's most loyal to the group and the leader by trying to outdo each other in harming the enemy. See: the Rape of Nanking and other mass atrocities. One game application of Moral Foundations Theory is that it offers a way to make different groups "evil" in diofferent ways. But I've gone on long enough; examples are left to the reader. Dean Shomshak

Investigating an exoplanet's atmosphere: https://www.nasa.gov/goddard/2023/webb-discovers-methane-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-of-k2-18b Dean Shomshak

I have never seen any such rule. It's always been twice the BODY to Transform anything. I haven't seen Scourges of the Galaxy, so I can't comment much on the specific example. But from my experience writing game supplements, I can say that writers do experience brain farts now and then, or one part of a text gets changed in revising a draft and other parts don't, creating contradictions or errors. Dean Shomshak

I checked through a few editions, and the qualifier that Universal Translator only enables one to speak or write a language "crudely" seems to appear in 5th edition. 4th edition version just says that, yeah, you can speak, read and write any language you encounter. (With a few qualifiers such as physical ability to "speak" in the mode presented). So one solution is just to use 4th edition. (I'm not checking previous editions.) OK, so you're stuck with a particular edition and you don't want to say the Rules As Written for that edition are pointlessly limiting. Steve Long gave another way out in 5e by deriving Talents from standard Powers and Skills. Officially, Universal Translator consists of two Detects: Detect Meaning of Speech [10 points] + Detect Meaning of Text [10 points]. Except thi9s is wrong. BY RAW, a basic Detect only registers the presence and intensity of some object or quality. Detect Meaning of Speech will only tell you that yup, that's speech and it has more or less meaning. You need Discriminatory, at the very least. And you would also need Transmit in order to speak back. So let's "correct" the derivation, while conserving the final cost, by treating it this way: Detect Meaning of Speech (3 points -- pretty specialized), Discriminatory (+5 points), Transmit (+2 points); + Detect Meaning of Text (3 points), Descriminatory (+5 points), Transmit (+2 points). Though by RAW you could reduce the cost to 15, because you can add a second class of entity to a Detect for a flat +5 points without needing to re-purchase all the added modifiers. To Detect and Transmit the finer shades of meaning implied by true mastery of a language, add Analyze. For the verion of UT that conserves existing point values that pushes the final cost to 30 points. Using the two-categories hack, the final cost drops back to 20 points. You'll still have to make a PER Roll to comprehend or communicate in the language, but getting a better roll for this single Enhanced Sense costs only 1 point per +1. Buy +3 and I think it's fair to say you'now effectively have 4 points of fluency in any language you enounter. If you're *really* persnickety, add +2 points for "Sense", so you can use it without needing a half-Phase action. But I think you can bring the whole thing in at 25 points. Dean Shomshak

Finally: Depending on how long you want the campaign to run, you can combine these three models. For instance, you might structure the treasure hunt as a Jigsaw Puzzle in which the PCs have to gather a limited number of plot coupons. Say, the six parts of the treasure map that were scattered, or the six objects that hold the computer chips carrying the plans for the ultrawarp space drive. Each puzzle-piece, though, can come at the end of a short Trail of Breadcrumbs. Then when the PCs put the puzzle together and find the prize, you can pull a Russian Doll plot twist and reveal the "treasure" leads to something even more important. Sequel campaign, maybe? Dean Shomshak

Third is the Jigsaw Puzzle. It's the least linear plan and offers the most freedom for both PCs and GMs. The clues to the McGuffin are scattered instead of in a neat sequence like the Trail of Breadcrumbs. The first clues might seem unrelated until the PCs gather enough to spot the connections between them. The storyline really gets going once the PCs realize there *is* a Jigsaw Puzzle and start searching for additional clues. Eventually they get enough to put the metaphorical (or literal!) picture together and learn the location of the prize. The scattering of the clues avoids the failure-point problem of the Trail of Breadcrumbs. If the PCs miss one clue, well, there are others to find. When they learn more, maybe they'll realize they missed something and go back to seek what they missed the first time around. Another benefit: Other searchers who are collecting their own pieces of the puzzle. These NPCs can be outright enemies, semi-friendly rivals, or potential allies. (and sources of replacement PCs if someone dies.) Create options for stealing each other's clue, information swaps, aliiances and betrayals. And of course defeating a rival searcher can reward the PCs with a big wodge of fresh clues. OTOH this places more plot responsibility on the players' shoulders. If they want something more structured, well, you'd better be sure to provide enough leads that they always know where they're going. Or at least that there's someplace to go. Dean Shomshak

The Russian Doll plan is similar but operates on a longer rhythm. In it the protagonists start out investigating one mystery or McGuffin. When they reach is, though, they find that it is only the surface layer of some other mystery or clue to some greater prize. The "Russian Doll" name is a little misleading, because typically each new layer is bigger than the one before. Example: The PCs seek a lost ore freighter loaded with valuable rare earth metals. When they find it, they learn from the ship's log that it wasn't lost in an accident: It was attacked by space pirates whose ships are of an unusual design. When they find the space pirates (who are responsible for other mysterious losses to shipping), they find that the pirate leader is an android operated by an alien of a hitherto-unknown species. Seeking information about the alien, they find that other alien-operated androids have infiltrated government and megacorporations. It's a secret invasion! But the aliens also have advanced technology for a greater prize... The advantage of the Russian Doll plan is that it gives players a greater feeling of making significant discoveries as the puzzles and prizes get begger. Just be careful not to string it out too long. And though a big reveal that the true situation is not what the players thought can be cool, goo many twists can make the storyline seem silly. You also have to make each new layer sufficiently compelling that players want to pursue it. Like, if the PCs are just out for the money and won't give a rat's ass if aliens are secretly conquering the Galaxy, tempt them with ever-greater treasures and profits. Dean Shomshak

"Treasure Hunt" and similar "Search for the McGuffin" campaigns typically follow three possible storylines: the Trail of Breadcrumbs, the Russian Doll, and the Jigsaw Puzzle. I'll discuss each of them in turn in separate posts. Trail of Breadcrumbs: This is the simplest and most straightforward search storyline. The protagonists start with a clue to the McGuffin. Following the clue leads them to another clue, which leads to a third clue, and so on until they reach wherever the McGuffin is hidden. Like, an unusual object and a code-key owned by a murdered man leads to a treasure map in an obscure language, which leads to a scholar who can translate the language, which leads to another location where the next clue is found, et cetera. As a campaign, the Trail of Breadcrumbs has the advantage that players don't need to think very much. They just need the gumption to follow each clue to receive the next plot coupon. Though sometimes players can be amazingly obtuse in walking right by clues no matter how blatantly you place them. OTOH it's all a bit railroady and some players don't like that, no matter how much they actually need it. The movie National Treasure illustrates a few basic issues with the Trail of Breadcrumbs. First, why would someone set up such an elaborate series of clues? If you want to hide the treasure for good, don't set up the Trail of Breadcrumbs in the first place. If you want to make sure the treasure can be found but only by the right people, don't hide the clues in a series of unique objects, any of which could be lost. (The Da Vinci Code is another example with the same problems.) All in all, a bad model for such a campaign. Dean Shomshak

This relates to a book I just finished and which I will recommend: The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction, by Mark Lilla. He argues that reaction is just as important a political force as revolution, though much less studied. They are in a sense mirrors of each other: The revolutionary hates the world as it is because it isn't the Golden Age to come; the reactionary hates the world as it is because it isn't the Golden Age that was lost. But while the revolutionary is driven by hope, the reactionary is driven by despair. Despite the subtitle, not much of Lilla's book is about politics directly. He's a Humanities professor, not PoliSci, so he looks at philosophers, novelists, and other scribblers, not polirticians and activists; the people who provide the intellectual underpinnings and express cultural moods. One chapter is, "From Mao to Saint Paul." Apparently the "apostle of the heretics" (early Church father Tertullian) has become rather popular with disappointed Marxists who sigh for the lost Golden Age of revolution. I won't even try to summarize the argument, but the Epistle to the Romans provides much to attract both Christian fanatics and secular revolutionaries: One of St Paul's biggest recent fans is an unapologetic French Maoist who argues that the megadeath massacres of Stalin, Mao and other revolutionaries, Marxist and otherwise, are okay because revolutionary enthusiasm places a society "beyond good and evil," and "each revolution justifies the ones that came before" in a chain going all the way back to Moses. Though Judaism, he thinks, has become reactionary and so something must be done about the Jews. Other topics include the perennial "Decline of the West" genre, Jihadists, French novelists, Jewish philosophers, Neocon fustian, and TradCaths sighing for the supposed "harmony and coherence" of the Medieval Catholic world. All in all, an interesting tour of people whose heads are in places I find very strange. Good inspiration for supervillains, too. Dean Shomshak

Decades ago, Scientific American published an article on temperatures that were below absolute zero. Well, kind of. By another way of measuring, this particular pattern of energy distributions had a temperature greater than infinite. Apparently measuring temperature gets wonky if the spread of energies among atoms isn't the normal bell curve of thermal equlibrium. I didn't understand a bit of it then, and I don't understand a bit of it now, but that was the article title and subtitle. Dean Shomshak

In the tribalistic contest for power, there is no such thing as irony, paradox, or even basic logical coherence. Dean Shomshak

This shouldn't be political -- but it touches on immigration, both historical and modern, about which many Americans hold, hm, strong political opinions. So I'm posting the link here. English is the most frequently spoken language in the US, followed by Spanish. But what's the #3 language in each state? Fascinating map shows most-spoken language in each state after English and Spanish - with some VERY surprising results (msn.com) Dean Shomshak

The undead are a major factor in the game Exalted, though I don't recall the term being used much if at all. In this setting, humans have two souls: the rational higher soul, and the animalistic lower soul. The more-than-godlike Primordials who created the world ordained that higher souls would reincarnate, while lower souls would grow with the body, then die and rot with it. In cases of traumatic death, however, the lower soul may rise as a rampaging hungry ghost. This can be stopped by proper rites, especially salting the body. Hungry ghosts are also unable to cross a line of salt, so salt is an important commodity. When the Exalted defeated the Primordials, however, they broke the world. The Primordials whom they slew were not subject to their own law of reincarnation, but were also too powerful to cease existing. The paradox created an Underworld where both higher and lower souls can lodge indefinitely. At the center of this shadoed reflection of Creation is an immense pit that goes down to Oblivion -- another new thing. Hovering just short of the event horizon of Oblivion are the immense temple-tombs of the Neverborn, the god-ghosts of the slain Neverborn, asleep but dreaming of Oblivion, and sending whispers of mad revelation through the Labyrinth of caves that form a sort of Under-Underworld. These are undead of cosmological p[roportion. You deal with them by staying away and out of the Labyrinth. At the height of their power and arrogance, some few Exalted broke into the tombs of five Neverborn and came away with the secrets of necromancy. This had dire consequences -- including that those five Neverborn are a bit more wakeful than the rest. Higher souls can develop various magic powers. Very old ghosts can become very powerful. Some of them have the power to enter Creation. Some mortals even invite this -- or are convinced to do so -- resulting in ancestor cults. Such "undead" can be helpful to their living descendants. Or they can be horribly exploitative. If you don't want your ancestors showing up and making demands, there are magical arts of exorcism that even unExalted mortals can use. Necromancy can raise corpses as zombies or skeletons. Nastier necromancy, combined with surgery, can create undead horrors of greater power. One of the more basic is the spine choin: Take a bunch of zombies, cut off the legs, and stitch them together with head inside abdomen like a series of plugs and sockets. Spine chains move quickly on dozens of arms. Mundane weapons can hack them apart, as with the zombie starter material, but it can take a lot of soldiers to do so. Necrosurgeons have created far more powerful and grotesque mosters, including necrotic analogues of mecha and gundams. After the Neverborn, the most powerful "undead" are the Deathlords. These 13 mighty ghosts are the result of a terrible betrayal. When the Sideral and Terrestrial Exalted murdered all the Solar Exalted, 13 ghosts sought revenge. The Neverborn whispered to them, and they listened. The Neverborn gave them power beyond all other ghosts. They have declared themselves now in Creation, conquering kingdoms where the living now serve the dead. Mortals, and even gods, cannot deal with the Deathlords. That challenge belongs to the Exalted... if they can develop their own power sufficiently before the Deathlords complete their revenge, and that of the Neverborn, by destroying the world. Dean Shomshak

I may have brought this up before, but... As a point of pedantry, the Antichrist does not appear in Revelations. In the RSV at least, the term only appears in the first letter of John: "Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour." (2:18) "Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son." (2:22) "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already." (4:1-3) IANAT* but Donald Trump probably qualifies as *an* antichrist, in that he gives onbly the most cursory statements of Christian faith while bragging constantly of his own divine power and gifts. He certainly qualifies as a false prophet. Dean Shomshak * I Am Not A Theologian

Disgusted, but not surprised at all. But then, public libraries are evil. All that information made available to impressionable young people, with no concern for making them loyal, righteous, and obedient to their parents and their parents' God? EVIL. Dean Shomshak

Princess Moonray had her first adventure as part of the Avant Guard super-team. There hasn't been more because that's now a fill-in campaign if it's not possible to run either of two D&D campaigns. (Though I hope we can promote AG back to a running campaign once one of the D&D campaigns wraps up.) The other PCs heard her story but I didn't hit them with the full weirdness of the Magical Moon Realm just yet -- I'll bring that in next adventure. Princess Moonray played well and was effective, which is no surprise because the player is hands down our best design mechanic. Of the other PCs, Night Train was boggled but Anunit, Daughter of Tiamat, accepted it with equanimity. When your mother is the Queen of Chaos, very little seems unbelievable. Dean Shomshak

Geopolitical implications and speculations should perhaps go in the Politics thread. Though they certainly exist! An Indian scientist interviewed about the landing declined to "Ha ha" at Russia's failure, which shows he's probably a better person than I am. <sigh> He's right, of course. Whatever one thinks of Russia's government right now (violating my own suggestion, sorry), it was an attempt to increase human knowledge and presence in space. It's failure is nothing to gloat about or mock. A NASA member interviewed on ATC suggested that soft landings on the Moon are actually more difficult than soft landings on Mars. On the Moon, you can't use parachutes to reduce velocity: It all has to be done with rocketry. So mad props to India's space agency! Dean Shomshak

If anyone says temporal physics won't allow <fill in the blank>, just raise your eyebrow and say, "Not if you apply a sliding Mobius loop matrix to the para-temporal manifold." Or, you know, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. Meet nonsense with nonsense. 😜 Dean Shomshak

Well, the idea actually does have a history. I encountered it in one of Harry Turtledove's Videssos books (first series, about the Roman legiuon shifted over to the quasi-Byzantine fantasy world). The character there attributed it to a RL Greek author. (Plastp? Not sure, it's been decades and I'm not rummaging through books to look it up.) That a gay soldier would rather die than show cowardice before his lover, so they'd be the bravest. So the Russians might not be pulling this from nowhere. I doubt there is any social science to verify the claim. But given the official homophobia of Putin's regime, I suspect the very idea of gay soldiers on the front lines (whether entire units or not) makes their brains short out. How can NATO top this? Maybe units trained to fight in drag? Dean Shomshak

Heh. The last time I looked at Traveller (almost 40 years ago, ye gods) the Tech Level table was a lot simpler. I see they also moved beyond the obsession with fitting everything into a hexadecimal scale. Naturally, I could not resist designing societies that broke their crude scales of what must associate with what, such as my steam-tech belters, or nomads that carried universal-assembler microfactories on the backs of their camels. (Though these were cases where interstellar colonists started out with a full suite of technology but couldn't, or didn't want to, maintain all of it.) My only comment on the posted scale is: Decimal points? Dean Shomshak

Stay as safe as you can, Mr R. After all, you need to finish your work on Aerelious. I dare say many of us will learn the "fun" of wildfire evacuations in the coming years. ☹️ Dean Shomshak

To be fair, turning people into dinosaurs is pretty cool. The Internet suggests he could even find volunteers. Dean Shomshak (Pedantry note: Sauron is a humanoid pterosaur, and pterosaurs were not dinosurs. I assume he's keeping it simple on the assumption that Spider-Man is not up on his paleontology.)