DShomshak

As for, "How many races?" I must again bring up Exalted. Yes, there are actual nonhumans, some of them even (technically) playable, but they are kind of niche and peripheral. Most notably, they cannot become Exalted as magical superhumans, and the game's name is, after all, Exalted. Only humans can become Exalted, and outnumber other mortal sapients by, at a guess, tens of thousands to one. But Exalted also has it both ways. From another POV the number of sapient "races" is arbitrarily large, because various magical phenomena can alter humans pretty drastically, in ways that breed true. In the past, the Exalted of the Old Realm engineered human subspecies to serve different functions and live in different environments; some of them are still around. The taint of Primal Chaos seeping in from the edge of the world can mutate people in diverse ways. The shapeshifting Lunar Exalted have bred many races of animalistic beastmen. But all these peoples remain theologically human: They can all Exalt... and they are all playable, fitting easily within the rules for character creation. Want to play a yeti who is also a fateweaving kung fu secret agent of Heaven? You can do it. Want to play an elementally powered Dragon-Blood who is also also one of the Horse-Legged Folk from the Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas? You can do that too. If your Storyteller can fit it into the campaign, the rules will support it. Dean Shomshak

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/01/1089990539/climate-change-politics A disturbing story from All Things Considered about the environmental movement's deep roots in white supremacist/nativist/far right/alt-right politics -- and there's still considerable overlap today. Dean Shomshak

BBC World Service discussed this just now. The situation may be, well, muddled. Ukraine's government neither confirms nor denies the strike in Belgorod. A Ukrainian MP opined it was more likely a Russian "False Flag" attack -- see, Ukraine is attacking Russia, we're just defending ourselves. For Ukrainian troops to cross the border and attack a target in Russia, he said, would play into Russian hands. But other observers suggest the Russian announcement seems unusually muted, compared to the usual hysterical bombast of Russian accusations. Whether Ukraine did it or Russia did it, where are the accusations of genocide? Possibly the ?Russian authorities are in shock that anyone actually managed to strike into Russia. He also suggested such an attack might be illegal. Or, someone suggested that oil depots have been known to catch fire by accident. It seems not totally implausible to me that a Russian depot manager might try to cover up an accoident by saying that Ukrainian helicopters did it. It's a downside -- for Russia as well as the wider world -- of Russia's policy of constant lying. No claim can be trusted. Dean Shomshak

Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil A good book for people who delve far too deeply into the minutiae of worldbuilding, and a sobering guide to exactly how modern industrial society is not sustainable. A quantitative history of human energy usage, from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to the present. Yes, people have actually worked out things like, how many calories in an antelope vs. how many calories to hunt the antelope? And every other mode and purpose of energy expenditure. For me, one of the biggest surprises was the degree to which, for quite a while, water power was humanity's most intensive source of industrial energy. A 19c water turbine was tremendously efficient at extracting useful work from flowing water... right in time to be unhooked from factory driveshafts and hooked up to electrical generators. Another oddity: Multi-person treadmills, used as a form of prison labor -- though one warden advocate also extolled the health and recreational benefits for the convicts. Much discussion of how many people can be fed per hectare of land farmed, using various methods. Agricultural productivity increased over the millennia, but each improvement relied on increasing energy inputs, whether the intensive human labor of Asian rice cultivation or the need for more and larger horses to pull plows and other farm machines, not to mention the extraordinary labor inputs to fertilize land or the time costs for crop rotation. The modern world didn't invent environmental degradation. Large areas of the ancient world, from Spain to Afghanistan, suffered deforestation even before the Iron Age, from making charcoal to smelt copper. Speaking of which... Smil discusses the eventual exhaustion of cost-effective fossil fuels (they will never be truly exhausted, but eventually extraction costs too much to make it worthwhile). What then? Well, if the US tried to maintain current iron and steel production using old-fashioned charcoal instead of coke made from coal, this would require an area of forested land twice the size of North America. Smil also discusses the important concept of Energy Return on Energy Investment. EG, given the energy in a ton of coal, how many tons of coal can you mine? Upper limit is 80; more often, about 20. The EROEI for a Sudi oilfield is in the hundreds. The EROEI for wind, however, maxes out at 20 but is difficult to push past 10; the EROEI for solar is currently 2. So switching from fossil fuels to renewables without crashing industrial civilization will be "challenging." Early chapters are more useful for Fantasy worldbuilders, or at least designing preindustrial societies. Later chapters deal with the modern world of fossil fuel usage. Final chapter puts it all together and gives at least a little discussion of the future. Also, not a book for people allergic to graphs and tables, of which there are many. Dean Shomshak

Sibling, I too know the Codex. I envy those who get to see it for the first time. Dean Shomshak

Heard on the radio today: Hubble found a gravitational lens powerful enough (from a whole cluster of galaxies) and fortuitously placed to provide the image of a single star estimated 12.9 billion light-years away -- from less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Whole galaxies have been imaged at greater distance, but this is apparently the first image of a single star at such a range. Estimated 50x Sun's mass, so of course very bright. Astronomers plan to study it intensively with the James Webb, looking for differences from modern stars. Maybe the Webb will get lucky and find a gravitational lens powerful enough to image the hand holding a galaxy at the start of time... No, that's (probably) just the DC Universe. Dean Shomshak

I too never knew him personally, but his work helped make me want to write for Champions and showed me how to do it. Rest in peace. Dean Shomshak

Unfortunately, yes. One reason why I think NATO *should* be giving Ukraine tanks as fast as they can be delivered. For the safety of the rest of the world, this has to be an unmitigated debacle for Putin. I accept the arguments that NATO should not try imposing the no fly zone Ukraine wants, as presenting too great an escalation. (No way to do it without striking anti-aircraft systems inside Russia itself.) But international relations expert, former diplomat and public raedio talking head Ivo Daalder argues that Russia's invasion has largely been a ground war anyway, so keeping Russian planes out of Ukrainian airspace wouldn't do that much to help beleaguered cities. A few hundred tanks, though, might make a difference. (If they can be fueled, and don't get bogged down.) Maybe even enough to take back Donetsh and Luhansk. Dean Shomshak

Here are relevant paragraphs from Medieval Demographics Made Easy, by S. John Ross: ---------------------- Merchants and Services In a village of 400 people, just how many inns and taverns are realistic? Not very many. Maybe not even one. When traveling across the countryside, characters should not run into a convenient sign saying "Motel: Free Cable and Swimming Pool" every 3 leagues. For the most part, they will have to camp on their own or seek shelter in people's homes.Provided they are friendly, the latter option should be no trouble. A farmer can live in a single place all his life, and he will welcome news and stories of adventures, not to mention any money the heroes might offer! Each type of business is given a Support Value (SV). This is the number of people it takes to support a single business of that sort. For instance, the SV for shoemakers (by far the most common trade in towns) is 150. This means that there will be one shoemaker for every 150 people in an area. These numbers can vary by up to 60% in either direction, but provide a useful baseline for GMs. Think about the nature of the town or city to decide if the numbers need to be changed. A port, for instance, will have more fishmongers than the table indicates. To find the number of, say, inns in a city, divide the population of the city by the SV value for inns (2,000). For a village of 400 people, this reveals only 20% of an inn! This means that there is a 20% chance of there being one at all. And even if there is one, it will be smaller and less impressive than an urban inn. The SV for taverns is 400, so there will be a single tavern. Business SV Business SV Shoemakers 150 Butchers 1,200 Furriers 250 Fishmongers 1,200 Maidservants 250 Beer-Sellers 1,400 Tailors 250 Buckle Makers 1,400 Barbers 350 Plasterers 1,400 Jewelers 400 Spice Merchants 1,400 Taverns/Restaurants 400 Blacksmiths 1,500 Old-Clothes 400 Painters 1,500 Pastrycooks 500 Doctors 1,700* Masons 500 Roofers 1,800 Carpenters 550 Locksmiths 1,900 Weavers 600 Bathers 1,900 Chandlers 700 Ropemakers 1,900 Mercers 700 Inns 2,000 Coopers 700 Tanners 2,000 Bakers 800 Copyists 2,000 Watercarriers 850 Sculptors 2,000 Scabbardmakers 850 Rugmakers 2,000 Wine-Sellers 900 Harness-Makers 2,000 Hatmakers 950 Bleachers 2,100 Saddlers 1,000 Hay Merchants 2,300 Chicken Butchers 1,000 Cutlers 2,300 Pursemakers 1,100 Glovemakers 2,400 Woodsellers 2,400 Woodcarvers 2,400 Magic-Shops 2,800 Booksellers 6,300 Bookbinders 3,000 Illuminators 3,900 *These are licensed doctors. Total doctor SV is 350. Some other figures: There will be one noble household per 200 population, one lawyer ("advocate") per 650, one clergyman per 40 and one priest per 25-30 clergy. Businesses not listed here will most likely have an SV from 5,000 to 25,000! The "Magic Shop" means a shop where wizards can purchase spell ingredients, scroll paper and the like, not a place to buy magic swords off the shelf. -------------------- Dean Shomshak

To adapt a bit from Aleister Crowley's Book of Lies: "Good Fantasy must have elves, they're traditional." \ Let these two asses be set to grind corn. / "Good Fantasy mustn't have elves, they're cliche." Make a world to fit the story you want to tell. You have no external obligations. Dean Shomshak

Garrison Keillor once did a sketch about "Creeping International Canadianism." "Frostbacks comin' through the woods!" <sound effect of helicopter taking off> Portentious announcer voice: "A Canadian takeover of the United States: Could it happen? What might it be like?" Dean Shomshak

You are not alone in this thought. Game writer Ken Hite has explored this idea a bit, and I don't recall the name of the ufologist he said inspired him. But yes, there's plenty to work with. Strange abductions with gaps in time, crop circles as fairy rings, for a start. Hite prefers the term "ultraterrestrial" for all creatures from Beyond the Fields we Know, as not presuming where the entities come from. Are Greys fairies that have adopted modern, quasi-scientific guise? Or were fairies aliens, filtered through the interpretations of low-tech people? Or are both of these equally false and true -- attemots to classify and ascribe meaning to entities that are wholly Outside? Any option might be good for a game. Incidentally, Jim Butcher plays with the idea in the Dresden Files books as well: his version of svartalves look like Greys. Dean Shomshak

Based on the clip, this looks even more entrancingly bizarre than Eagle Shooting Heroes. Thank you, I will look for it. Dean Shomshak

This. So much this. I am sorry if this comes off as sharp, but... The initial question -- What can you do with elves, dwarves, and other D&D-ish multiple races, that hasn't been done to death -- is the wrong question. The correct question is: If you are not, in fact, playing D&D, why are you making everything just like D&D? As I have said before, I quite like 5th ed D&D. I find the rules, well, adequate for doing what they are supposed to do. Embedded setting elements that I don't like I find easy to alter or remove. (Like, my game has a completely different set of other planes -- which is a possibility the 5e books themselves suggest.) But I don't imagine that because D&D did something a particular way, any other Fantasy game must follow its lead. As has been noted here, folklore, myth and Fantasy fiction have portrayed many different versions of faerie-folk whom we might fairly describe as "elves." Other games have, too. Take Exalted, for instance. In Exalted, the "Fair Folk" -- also called raksha -- generally follow the familiar pattern of beautiful, pointy-eared humanoids. Though they don't have to. But they are creatures of primordial Chaos that have taken a semblance of form in order to enter the world and destroy it from the inside. They eat souls. They are masks without faces behind them, playing at being people, but not. Part of their survival and predation method is to play roles, and beguile mortals into playing along. As the emotional interaction gets more intense, the raksha feeds, untio the mortal is left an empty, mindless, soulless husk. And this version of elves has jumped from game to Fantasy fiction. Genevieve Cogman, who as a game writer did much to develop Exalted's Fair Folk, now writes a Fantasy fiction series starting with The Invisible Library. I've started that first book, and am amused to see that her faieries follow the Exalted model. "The forms and themes of poetry do not become outworn or exhausted. The exhaustion is in the individual poets." -- Clark Ashton Smith. One could say the same about the tropes of myth. It's only the particular executions that become cliche. Dig down into the raw ore of myth, and you can forge a new version. Dean Shomshak

Ah, thank you. But given how many things that people thought would never happen have then happened in the last several years, I am not so sure. Before this is over, there may indeed be foreign tanks in Moscow, or something equivalent. Some condition in which Russia has so unraveled, from military exhaustion, economic collapse, and whatever else an increasingly angry Western alliance can inflict, that it literally cannot resist any demands from the victors. I hope someone is encouraging the second-tier business and military leaders to think seriously about such possibilities, and the desirability of steering Russia onto a different and less dangerous path. Dean Shomshak

Indeed; I thought that was obvious. Putin has made clear for decades that his vision was Russia Against the West: The Western world (and a good deal of the rest) have woken up that Ukraine is merely the current battlefield, and is fighting back with a force and in modes that Putin didn't expect. That might change, if Putin expands his war by attacks on Poland, say, or by really damaging cyber attacks. In that case, NATO and others might take a more direct hand -- and gain direct grievances that must be satisfied. Plenty of military experts are saying that Russia is going to lose, as long as other keep backing Ukraine and sanctioning Russia. (And maybe even if they don't.) Even if Putin decides to just annihilate Ukraine, it will be such a Pyrrhic victory that Russia itself might collapse. From what I hear and read, the oligarchs will *not* break with Putin. They are entirely his creatures. That's how they became oligarchs. Likewise, the top tier of military leaders. But the second tiers might not be so dependent on his favor, and so might not be willing to go down with him. If so, I hope that Western agents and diplomats are cultivating them. Dean Shomshak

Well, I *hope* influential Russians are scheming how to kill or otherwise replace Putin. Though as the article mentions, and Beau argues, Lindsey Graham's "suggestion" was so not helpful. (Additional reason, besides the ones Beau gave: It would not be good for Russian oligarchs or other elites to imagine the US will solve their problem for them, in a way that lets whoever takes over next rally the Russian people behind "Revenge for Putin".) That said, I hope the allies' intelligence and diplomatic services *are* reaching out to those business, political and military elites with words of encouragement. A few times here, I've mentioned the lecture I heard from an old international relations professor about his time with the Roosevelt administration and its propaganda strategy against Japan. Part of the extremely focused propaganda effort directed at the few people in Imperial Japan's government that had real power was assurance that even if Japan offered unconditional surrender, the Emperor would be spared. Nowadays, I hope the message directed at Russia's elites is the opposite: So far, everyone accepts this is Putin's war. No one who isn't his hand-picked crony asked for it. No one outside him and his inner circle will be blamed. If Putin is removed now and Russia withdraws from Ukraine -- completely, to the 2013 status quo ante -- Russia can escape the sanctions and go back to business as usual. Not even any reparations to Ukraine: The allies will take care of that. Zelenskyy is canny enough to sell the Ukrainian people that membership in NATO and the EU, with consequent assured freedom from Russia, are reparations enough. But the longer this war goes on, the more complicit the elites become, and the greater the bitterness and demand for revenge after Russia finally admits it lost. There *will* be demands for reparations to Ukraine. To pay for them, perhaps the allies demand that Russia cede control of its oil and gas industry. There may be territorial demands -- Japan still wants the Kuril Islands back, for instance, and will Russia still be strong enough to hold them? Disarmament demands: No more hiding behind the nuclear shield while menacing other countries. Don't expect too much help from China, which can be bought off with a slice of Siberia (settlers already cross the Amur River, legally or not, into territory the PRC views -- like Tibet -- as a land without Han Chinese for Han Chinese without land. Or at least that's what I read several years ago.) So act soon. This offer will not be repeated. Dean Shomshak

Duke, you have my condolences. Down in my basement, I have gallons and gallons of paint my late father kept after, IIRC, he sold his interest in a marina. Oil-based paint with sane names like Sapphire Blue, Mandarin Orange, Magenta Red. I think I used some of it paint some shelves a few decades ago. It's probably all dried out by now despite the cans never being opened, or I'd offer it to you. (And still probably not enough for a real painting job.) I haven't been in a paint store within my memory. I see that I am lucky. Dean Shomshak

When I check my email on AOHell, I also get a page of news stories. One says a member of Russia's Duma, in a transparent bit of trolling, said that Russia should seek reparations for all the damage caused by sanctions. He also spoke of Russia reclaiming all its old possessions, including Alaska and this fort in California. Predictably, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and some other Alaskan legislator whose name I don't remember took the bait, blustering about "never, ever, ever" and how there are hundreds of thousands of armed Alaskans ready to repel any Russian invasion. Eyerolls all around, I think. Dean Shomshak

Well, one of my friends is a hospital pharmacist. One of his Job Horror Stories was about the time a nurse phoned down to the pharmacy to ask, "This disinfectant says it's to be sprayed in a patient's ears for ear infections. Can I also use it in a patients' eyes for eye infections?" My friend: "DEAR GOD NO! Only use it as instructed, for the listed purpose! DO NOT SPRAY IT IN ANYONE'S EYES!" Five minutes later, the nurse called down again: "Okay, I sprayed it in the patient's eyes, and he won't stop screaming. What do I do?" I was not there, of course, so decide for yourself if you think this story is true. CLARIFICATION: This is something my friend said happened to him, personally, so not an urban legend. Dean Shomshak

Well, I do sorta give my elves "subraces" in that there are different ethnic groups with distinct appearances, they tend to live in different regions, and one template tends to predominate -- but the "subrace" templates represent early interest and training. So, the pale Taishomanae live in the coastal mountain ranges of this particular part of the world, and they are big on studying magic so most of them become "high elves." (They like the term. Other folk often prefer to call them "mountain elves," but the whole "high elf" term comes from Taishomanae living at high altitudes.) The copper-skinned, dark-haired Rhovistae live in small forest kingdoms such as Fracasta, Lyrnais, Tegyria and Zyrrhene; they are trained early in woodcraft, and so other folk often call them "wood elves." But a young Rhovist who's interested in magic might become a "high elf," and a Taishoman who practices woodcraft can become a "wood elf." (And since the famous Rhovistae elf mage Treon, last surviving hero of Panopticon's War, became ruler of Tegyria, magic has become prestigious and quite a few young Tegyrians are becoming high elves.) The desert-dwelling Usmantae also tend to become high elves, for they are nearly as arcane and even more reclusive than the Taishomanae; but while the Mountain Elves are haughty, the Desert Elves are full of cryptic maxims and significant silences. The jungle-dwelling Chulangkorae tend to be wood elves, for fairly obvious reasons. The Drow, of course, are mythical and so not an issue. But if there were actually Dark Elves whom I claimed were mythical in order that their appearance come as something close to a surprise, any young elf raised in the equally mythical Underdark could become a Dark Elf, and a young Drow raised anywhere else could become a high elf or wood elf. All very tidy, and then WotC published official Sea Elves. <Grit teeth, ponder.> Okay, the Shelansae and Assushtae are overwhelmingly likely to "breed true" as sea elves because they flipping live underwater and so young elves don't have much choice but to bend their magic in that direction. But if they didn't... Oh, and in the multi-species Plenary Empire where the campaign is set, some elves now live in cities among other folk and have less cultural reason to follow any of the established paths. This results in a new template, Street Elves, who resemble Wood Elves but are attuned to the urban environment the way Wood Elves are attuned to forests. There seem to be several dialects of "Elvish," but this is not strictly true. Elvish is a complex language with several grammatical modes optimized for various purposes and classified by environment: Mountain Mode is precise, analytical, and well suited for both law and wizardry. Forest Mode is exuberant, expressive, and well suited for emotion and vivid description of the natural world. (Yes, I'm inspired by Jack Vance's The Languages of Pao.) And so on for Desert Mode, Prairie Mode, Swamp Mode, Shore/Ocean Mode, and Cavern Mode.The full subtleties can take decades to master, and other folk rarely manage to do so. Well, one must make allowances. Dean Shomshak

When I looked at the D&D 3e elf template, my fist thought was that it packed in a lot of picayune powers that really weren't that interesting. Immune to magical sleep? Small bonus on Listen, Search and Spot checks? Somewhat useful, I suppose, but not what makes me think of a nigh-immortal creature of myth. My rewrite played up elven esthetics and perfectionism. When you live 700 years, you have time to do things right -- and you won't want to put up with slapdash squalor for that long. My elves were prone to turn anything that held their attention into a work of art, which they strove to perfect. (I borrowed a bit from the Aurorans in the Ruby radio serials.) When faced with surprises, elves were prone to withdraw and ponder their response. But when they had time, they could do just about anything well. 3e had something called "taking 20": If a character could take all the time they wanted on a task, the player could assume a 20 on the die roll for the task. When an elf took 20, though, they got an automatic +4 bonus. In a sense, they embodied crystallized intelligence: the skill that comes from experience, of knowing what to do because you've done it all before. In Hero terms, this would be a skill level for all skills, applied only if you took extra time. Given the 3d6 bell curve, even a +1 ain't nothing, and +2 gets seriously impressive. D&D 5e doesn't have "taking 20," and for various reasons I also resolved not to rewrite everything I found dull, so the elves in my current campaign stick to the published template. I still try to play up the esthetics, though, and the patience. (And the "subraces" are cultural, the result of early training, rather than biological/supernatural, as I find the subrace concept actively irritating. Or more than irritating, but I would like to avoid politics.) Dean Shomshak

I heard on the radio yesterday that NASA successfully completed focusing the mirrors of the JWST. Dean Shomshak

Anyway... Since elves (and others) usually appear in a setting where humans numerically dominate, one might als0o ask, "What are humans like?" Assuming you mean your elves to be more than just pretty humans with pointy ears. Back when I ran my 3rd ed D&D campaign, I thought the text in the "racial template" for humans was dull, so of course I wrote my own. For your amusement, here are the sections in which I tried to describe what I see as the most essential features of human mentality and society. ------------------ HUMAN ... Personality: Status drives many human endeavors. Humans are the most political race in the Magozoic Age, which probably accounts for their continued dominance: No other race can organize into vast, structured hierarchies the way humans do. Only humans build empires. Humans invent many ways to symbolically assert power over each other: aristocratic lineages, rules of precedence, money, religious taboos, gossip, law courts, potlatches, elections, ethnic jokes, professional guilds and dozens of other methods. Humans also feel the biological drives for sex, sustenance and survival, of course, but even the most basic desires tend to get mixed up with issues of pride and prestige. Beyond that general concern with status, human personalities vary widely. Humans range between smart and stupid, brutal and kindly, fanatical and feckless, or any other polarity you can imagine. Many humans combine wildly incongruous mental traits -- the psychopathic killer who loves children; the brilliant savant who’s a fool for a pretty face; the liar who thinks he’s an honest man. Humans follow every moral code imaginable — sometimes two or three at once, depending on the subject or the company. Individuals manage the contradictions in their own souls by ignoring them, and may grow angry if anyone else points out their inconsistency. ... Relations: Humans fight a great deal against their traditional enemies, other humans, or anyone else available. Strangely, they also get along with all the other sapient races better than most of those races get along with each other. Human attitudes are, as usual, diverse, ranging from genocidal hatred to idolization -- but are rarely consistent even within a society. A line often heard in human societies is that "Some of my best friends are [insert name of marginalized group]." ... Human Lands: Humans occupy most of Pangea Ultima, from the vast interior deserts to the south polar mountains. They organize in a wide variety of social structures, from nomadic bands to vast empires. Some regions change quickly, with new ideas and customs appearing and disappearing in decades; others remain stable for centuries. Politically, however, the boundaries of human societies shift constantly as one culture presses against another. Humans sometimes amaze other races by re-inventing their societies in a single generation, as the ignored nomadic tribe suddenly explodes to conquer an empire, or the brutal despot gives way to an enlightened reformer. Human societies often tolerate nonhuman minorities better than nonhuman societies tolerate other racial minorities. Humans seldom want to exterminate or expel their minorities (human or nonhuman). Most of the time, the dominant group simply wants to rank the minorities, assigning them their own ghettos, villages or provinces, with their own small privileges to compensate for a second-class status overall. ... Quote: “Yeah, last year I was for Law, too, but this year Chaos is paying better. Hey, I got kids to feed, y’know?” ------------------- Dean Shomshak

I also consider it shockingly inaccurate. Encyclopedia of the Animal World says bull giraffes "may reach a height of 18 feet (5.5 m) and the cows 16 feet (5 m)." So a 10-foot asteroid is actually 56% of a bull giraffe. Or maybe the asteroid was only 9 feet wide? I can understand that the astronomers might not have had time to make a precise measurement of its size. But in that case, "half a giraffe" suggest an unwarranted degree of precision and certainty! Dean the Deranged Pedant