DShomshak

It's been mentioned before, but the presentation of religion is one of the best things I've seen so far in TA. For instance, the gods of the High Faith are bog-standard High Fantasy, but connecting them into three distinct but related pantheons is quite good -- especially the myth that Mordak was necessary to create the world, which and had to be placated into doing his part, which suggests he could be more than a theological cipher of motiveless Evil. Adding saints (the Esailes, Essailes and Demonhanded) to the theology also pushes it beyond the Generic Fantasy Warehouse. The priestly hierarchy is well presented. So's the theological schism of the Hargeshites: Most Fantasy religions don't have sects and schisms. But the best thing, IMO, is making the High Faith a multi-cultural, even multi-species religion. Yes, elves aqnd orcs worship the same gods! (Just different names.) It's an excellent rebuke to the D&D-ism of every race having its own pantheon... though the pantheons all look very much the same. OTOH, there are other faiths too, from the dire deities of Thun to the quirky gods of Vornakkia. TA takes religion seriously as a force in mortal society and motivation. Dean Shomshak

It's been mentioned before, but the presentation of religion is one of the best things I've seen so far in TA. For instance, the gods of the High Faith are bog-standard High Fantasy, but connecting them into three distinct but related pantheons is quite good -- especially the myth that Mordak was necessary to create the world, which and had to be placated into doing his part, which suggests he could be more than a theological cipher of motiveless Evil. Adding saints (the Esailes, Essailes and Demonhanded) to the theology also pushes it beyond the Generic Fantasy Warehouse. The priestly hierarchy is well presented. So's the theological schism of the Hargeshites: Most Fantasy religions don't have sects and schisms. But the best thing, IMO, is making the High Faith a multi-cultural, even multi-species religion. Yes, elves aqnd orcs worship the same gods! (Just different names.) It's an excellent rebuke to the D&D-ism of every race having its own pantheon... though the pantheons all look very much the same. OTOH, there are other faiths too, from the dire deities of Thun to the quirky gods of Vornakkia. TA takes religion seriously as a force in mortal society and motivation. Dean Shomshak

Which could be one option given in a "Deciding What Kal-Turak Wants" page or sidebar: Kal-Turak is only a legend, a sort of reverse Prester John. Somewhere in the world far away is the Kingdom of Evil full of hideous wonders, ruled by a sorcerer-tyrant servant of Mordak. Ambitious villains seek it in hopes of making alliances to their benefit; righteous folk tell fables about it to warn about the perils of wickedness; gullible folk see Kal-Turak's hand in everything that goes wrong; cunning folk use the legend to cover their own misdeeds. But it doesn't really exist. ... Unless sufficient belief accumulates to precipitate Kal-Turak out of the Netherworld and make the myth real. Oops. Dean Shomshak

Okay, more backlash than I thought (though it mentioned there was some). :-( Thus paragraph stood out to me in the linked article: "On a local level, two competing visions of Australia are essentially fighting for votes: the Australia longing for a nostalgic past, and the Australia trying to figure out the next phase of integration for a more globalized nation." That seems to be the issue in the US as well -- a lot of people angry that the real world and the future are stepping on their fantasy of how things were and ought to be. Tough patooties. People who tell the big wide world to go away are doomed to decline. The last several centuries of Chinese history shows this all too clearly, and it's not the only example. Dean Shomshak

The Nov. 16, 2019 issue oif The Economist has a very interesting special report on global migration. Economist Michael Clemens estimates that if everyone who wanted to move could, global GDP would double. That's $90 trillion per year. People who migrate from poor countries to rich ones instantly become 2 to 6 times more productive. That's a lot of money just waiting to be picked up by any government willing to open its doors and let them in. The usual arguments against immigration -- they drive down wages for the native born, they bring crime, they'll never assimilate -- don't stand up under close examination. And yet, governments throughout the developed world are going populist-nativist and erecting literal or regulatory walls to keep people out. This, The Economist argues, is deeply stupid and counterproductive. It is also, they suggest, immoral. Whatever difficulties immigration brings, they argue, are fairly easily dealt with through policy. Even nativist rage at seeing strangers enter is controllable: The articles cit Australia, which has double the percentage of foreign-born that the US has, with less backlash. Dean Shomshak

I've browsed through TA off and on. The strongest part is certainly the sheer scope and detail. The weakest part, as others hve mentioned, is Kal-Turak himself. But I suspect that is an unavoidable consequence of including a world-menacing Dark Lord who is general enough to be useful to a wide range of gamers. Mordak, God of Evil, has the same problem. He's a cipher. But to make him and Kal-Turak not be ciphers, you have to define what evil is and, by extension, what good is. This risks alienating some readers who don't agree with your philosophical tenets. So you stick to the basics. When Kal-Turak wins, the world groans under his tyranny. Got it. Check. We don't define what he wants to rule the world for, unless it's sheer blind love of power and cruelty. (That Kal-Turak is literally born to evil as the progeny of a demon is part of the avoidance of definition.) I am not sure Steve could have, or even should have, done it any differently. I would have liked to see a page on "Deciding What Kal-Turak Wants," for GMs who want more than his generic, motiveless "Evil." It could have replaced the completely awkward, out-of-place page about the Multiverse copypasted from Champions Universe. Dean Shomshak

Oh, 5th edition D&D has a pretty light rule set. The chief objection to it is that it's still D&D, with classes and levels. If you don't mind that, it's quite playable. And unlike Pathfinder, you can get by just fine with only the corebooks: It's a finite ruleset. Dean Shomshak

I am not convinced that technology, law/government, religion, etc. all march in lockstep. They affect each other, yes, but the relationships are complex. If anyone's interested, I wrote an extensive essay on the subject (though the Fantasy examples are drawn from Exalted). It's archived here: http://nobilis.me/quotes:designing-cultures-the-shomshak-way I'd also cite China as an example of a society with gunpowder, printed books and a civil service bureaucracy that nevertheless looks nothing like the "modern" West. Just to show the range of possibilities. Dean Shomshak

Happy birthday! We may have briefly passed each other unknowing last weekend, as I went from bus to bus downtown on my to and from gaming. Seattle is indeed an excellent city. If you can get there in the proper week of springtime, see the Japanese cherries blooming in the Quad at the UW, surrounded by the old Collegiate Gothic buildings. While you're there, stop by Suzallo Library and see the Reading Room, which looks like a Medieval baronial hall only with study carrels. Unfortunately, the FLGS of the U District, called The Dreaming, closed a few months back, so you can't stop in to say "Hi" to Aaron and tell him I recommended it. 😢 But elsewhere in town is the Burke-Gilman Brewery, of which a gaming buddy of mine is one of the owners and operators. Ask for Corey to meet a fellow Herophile. Dean Shomshak

Happy birthday! We may have briefly passed each other unknowing last weekend, as I went from bus to bus downtown on my to and from gaming. Seattle is indeed an excellent city. If you can get there in the proper week of springtime, see the Japanese cherries blooming in the Quad at the UW, surrounded by the old Collegiate Gothic buildings. While you're there, stop by Suzallo Library and see the Reading Room, which looks like a Medieval baronial hall only with study carrels. Unfortunately, the FLGS of the U District, called The Dreaming, closed a few months back, so you can't stop in to say "Hi" to Aaron and tell him I recommended it. 😢 But elsewhere in town is the Burke-Gilman Brewery, of which a gaming buddy of mine is one of the owners and operators. Ask for Corey to meet a fellow Herophile. Dean Shomshak

Well, my brother has a friend who at least is completely clear in why he backs Trump: "His tax cut put another $80 a month in my pocket. For that, he can tell all the lies he wants." Or do anything else, really. Said friend is at least honest in being a small person with small concerns. He also has no children to live through the consequences of Trump's actions. Dean Shomshak

Drat. I can't find it anywhere. All I remember was Johathan Pryce as Demonologist, based on his performance as Mr. Dark in Something Wicked This Way Comes. He played a good bad guy in Tomorrow Never Dies, too, If not him, then Alan Rickman, projecting the same smooth, smarter-than-you menace he brought to Die Hard. But those choices were from at least 25 years ago, and I know that Alan Rickman is dead. Dean Shomshak

Many years ago, I came up with a cast list for the Devil's Advocates (as the team existed at the time). I'll try to dig it up. And yes, I did tell artist Greg Smith to make Lamplighter look like Patrick Stewart. Dean Shomshak

As a couple people have alluded to, it's important to distinguish whether you're talking about super-science, which is advanced beyond everyday science and technology but still "works" (even if most scientists don't understand why) and mad science, which explicitly wouldn't work if anyone else tried it. It sounds like Professor Mallory deals in super-science. For my super-science NPCs (and the PC Csongor Kovacs in my Avant Guard campaign), I largely stick to "ordinary" scie-tech skills with high ratings. Analyze: Technology to figure out what something does. Inventor to build another one. Electronics and Mechanics for the more conventional aspec ts of a device. Weaponsmith if a device is a weapon. Science Skills for everything else. "Conventional" SS for straightforward things such as SS: Nuclear Physics for a fusion reactor, or SS: Genetics for an alien disease. LL gave some of the more ordinary weirder alternatives (pardon the oxymoron) such as SS: Dimensional Physics for a teleport device; that sounds suitable for Professor Mallory's space-time resonance, too. But remember that a SS of greater generality can stand in for such exotic specialties: You just assign a progressively greater penalty to the Skill Roll. Even if Mallory just has SS: Physics, he can try using that to generate a space-time resonance as a way to analyze the alien reactor: If his rating is high enough, he still has a chance that it'll work. Or, as the example goes, almost work! Particularly for a PC, if someone spends the points on a highly specialized skill such as Dimensional Engineering, they should get better results on a success than sopmeone who relies on the general skill, no matter how high the rating. PCs should never feel like they wasted points for the sake of style. Dean Shomshak

Steven Pinker was right: Every movement of mass atrocity gets ideas from some academic scribbler. I've read bits of The Dark Enlightenment. Only bits, though: Life is short, and I won't waste much of it on Nick Land's bombastic nonsense. I am not surprised to find his halfwit ravings tied in to current violence. Dean Shomshak

All Things Considered interviewed a former Marine officer who now teaches the laws of war. He thinks it sets a *terrible* precedent. Military personnel will be readier to act on their worst impulses and less ready to report abuses; civilians in areas where the US military operates will be less trusting; officers tasked with enforcing military codes and lawful conduct will do so with an eye out for covering their ass, unsure that the commader-in-chief -- or a higher-up who wants to please the commander-in-chief -- will not reverse them, or even punish them for a judgment that is legally correct but unpopular with the party base. I am reminded of Aral Vorkosigan's speech in Shards of Honor about the "scum of the service" and the pernicious effect of bad officers on young soldiers who look to them as models of conduct. Dean Shomshak

Likewise. When I began my first Champions campaign back in college, I didn't have sourcebooks and didn't think I needed them: I knew the Marvel and DC Universes, and figured I could write my own villains, NPC heroes, and organizations based on that inspiration. (And did, and by and large it workedout really well.) Of course I had a HYDRA homage, though (not wanting to go snakey with VIPER) I called it Terror, Incorporated -- not knowing the CU (such as it was back then) had a villain team of that name. But 4e VIPER showed I could do so much more with my International Semi-Fascist Evil Agent Group than I had been. I still rate it one of the best Champions supplements. Dean Shomshak

Figured that out. Dean Shomshak

Not as "out there" as you might think! Converting letters to numbers is part of gematria, an important part of kabbalism. 10-15-5 just approaches it a little differently. Dean Shomshak

The Devil's Advocates are intrinsically unstable, since members have motives (and Psych Lims) pulling them in different directions. Some of them are also pretty fragile beneath their magical defenses. So my guess would be that the line up has changed a lot over the decades as members die or go off to do other things, and Demonologist recruits new members. Demonologist himself is still around: He's smart, slippery, and relies on ritual magic that is less dependent on high mana. (He is also the writer's pet. 😉) As ostinsibly more powerful mystic villains such as Dark Seraph and Shadow Destroyer have faded or died, he's in many ways the last man standing -- the "gray eminence" of mystic villainy. If ambient magic has faded, he knows even better how to use it. (There were a few times when the world thought he was dead, such as the year in which Dark Seraph seemed to have killed him and took over the Devil's Advocates. He had of course snookered Dark Seraph. See the next paragraph for what he did on his return.) The first couple decades after 2020, he tried to engineer a resurgence of mana in between attempts to end the reign of technology. Some of these schemes actually contributed to magic's decline as Demonologist cannibalized artifacts and beings of power: as for instance his attemmpt to use the Crowns of Krim to power a mana-restoration spell. That was the end of the Crowns of Krim: the wearers dead, and the artifacts de-powered (apart from being indestructible) with a thousand-year recharge. In 2050, Big D is trying to channel magic in from other planes or create artifacts that can prevent further loss of magic. His methods are... unpleasant. Variant option: Demonologist is the Archmage. He takes it seriously: No invader from beyond is going to conquer the Earth. But he's still a villain -- the last mystic villain who can cast powerful spells virtually at will, though still far less powerful than Takofanes or Shadow Destroyer were. Heroes do not want to face him head-on. Fortunately, his schemes for restoring magic still require long preparation that give heroes chances to foil them. Sub-variant: Demonologist was extraordinarily pissed when he tried using the Archmage's power to repeat the Walpurgisnacht Working of 1938... and figured out why he couldn't. See, the mystic origin of the Superheroic Age was a two-step process. The Working had the results it did because Earth's mana was already supercharged and deeply unstable from the murder of the then-Archmage in 1908, by the Circle of the Scarlet Moon! As long as someone holds the Archmage's mantle, Earth's ambient magic is stabilized and far less likely to flow in strange channels such as turning toxic waste exposure into origin events. Demonologist himself is now the blockage to the return of super-magery and a Dark Renaissance -- but he can't bear to give up the power. As for the others, Golem is most likely dead. At least, Upton Frogge is dead. The Golem might still exist as a spirit moving from statue to statue. Possibly he can only animate his host statues for short periods, and not often, but he may well outlive all the other members. (I'll stick to the 5e/6e membership for this.) Gyre pursued the lure of ultimate knowledge into the Upper Planes and perhaps beyond. If she returns, it is not as anything still human. Kapilasa is dead, or transformed into a spirit with obligations to Shiva and subject to the Ban. Tartarus is dead, or at least he suffered mortal death. He still exists as a minor demon lord finding his place in the Descending Hierarchy. Vilsimbra force her way back into the Onyx Kingdom and is busy there. As for potential new members? There could be a Sylvestri and/or a Vandaleur in the 2050 team. For instance, Cornelius Liefeld would give the Devil's Advocates a powerful alchemist. A Vandaleur member might not even have been born yet in 2020. "Legacy" versions of mystic villains are another possibility, such as an Astralle II, Chatoyant II or Cairngorm II. Or for another alchmist option, Harpy II: Edwina Baldwin's daughter was adopted by Zarrindokht after Harpy's death. She's grown up now and come to Earth from Faerie to seek revenge, or something. She's not as powerful a brick as her mother was, but she has alchemical gimmicks to compensate. And, no doubt, some villains who have no connection to any contemporary characters. Dean Shomshak

Did anyone see the transit of Mercury? I missed it. (Though I might not have been able to see it anyway, here on the West Coast -- and IIRC the morning was cloudy.) Dean Shomshak

So you noticed that. When I wrote that, I wondered if I was too heavy-handed in planting the clue that Bethany and Pamela were Archmage candidates from birth. Then I wondered if maybe I was too subtle. (Or if maybe Herodom just doesn't have the habit I saw on White Wolf boards of parsing and over-interpreting every sentence of a text.) Anyway, well done. Of all mystic organizations, the Circle of the Scarlet Moon and the Trismegistus Council would be affected the least by the decline of magic -- because they grew in a time of low magic and developed their methods accordingly. The Trismegistans might suffer more by embracing heroic super-mages, but it's still largely a group of scholars. The two groups just go back to their long, slow war of maneuver, using ritual magic and whatever social advantage they can leverage from it. Dean Shomshak

How Internet Trolls And Online Extremists Are 'Hijacking ... www.npr.org/2019/11/12/778502116 Andrew Marantz is the author of the new book "Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, And The Hijacking Of The American Conversation." Andrew Marantz, welcome to FRESH AIR. Your book is... I hope this attempt to copy and paste a link works. If not, Google Fresh Air Antisocial Marantz. Summary: NPR program Fresh Air interviews New Yorker reporter Andrew Marantz about his new book Antisocial: Internet Extremists, echno-Utopians and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. Marantz spent a year closely observing the alt-right and seeing how they, to use their own words, "memed Donald Trump into the White House." He describes the ease with which white supremacists use social media to manipulate mass media. Case study: the "Is Hillary Sick?" story. A group comes up with the speculation that Hillary Clinton has Parkinson's based on, what, how she blinks in a snippet of video? They retweet it back and forth. Twitter dutifully reports this as trending, even though it's all within a small echo chamber. This brings it to the notice of Breitbart or the Drudge Report, which spreads the story. So Fox News picks it up. So everybody picks it up -- and even if a "mainstream" media outlet concludes there's nothing there, the story nevertheless gets repeated. Presto: A thousand people plant an idea in hundreds of millions of minds. Marantz particularly takes Mark Zuckerberg to task for his refusal to take any responsibility for how Facebook is exploited, though Zuckerberg is emblematic of a wider attitude. He notes that when Zuckerberg talks about the importance of free speech, don't censor anyone for any reason, he keeps his arguments completely abstract and divorced from real events and the real choices they bring. (Anyone seriously interested in these issues should read "Areopagitica," by John Milton -- yes, that John Milton. He wrote his argument at a time when Europe's wars of religion still raged. Books were genuinely dangerous, and it took a lot of courage to accept that danger. But Milton also argued that books could be criminal and destructive just as people were -- and like human criminals, they should be suppressed once their criminality was proved beyond a reasonable doubt. I think this standard can apply when people use social media to whip up murderous mobs, as has happened in India and Myanmar.) One interesting point Marantz reports: The people he studied don't back Trump so much anymore. They figure he's given them as much as he will. Instead a lot of them back Tulsi Gabbard, as the most radical candidate who isn't Trump. They particularly like her extreme anti-war stance: Perhaps oddly, a lot of the alt-righters Marantz studied came to their positions through extreme pacifism, or at least an anti-war isolationism. It's an interesting talk, and I recommend it. Dean Shomshak

Yeah -- Thanks, Simon, it is indeed frustrating as hell but it is indeed a point to remember. (My late father was an investigative reporter. I know the constraints sometimes became frustrating for him... but when the story did run, he rather enjoyed telling outraged politicians, business owners and assorted criminals to go ahead and sue and see what happens. They rarely did, and the Tacoma News Tribune employed him for a great many years.) Dean Shomshak dean Shomshak

Yeah -- Thanks, Simon, it is indeed frustrating as hell but it is indeed a point to remember. (My late father was an investigative reporter. I know the constraints sometimes became frustrating for him... but when the story did run, he rather enjoyed telling outraged politicians, business owners and assorted criminals to go ahead and sue and see what happens. They rarely did, and the Tacoma News Tribune employed him for a great many years.) Dean Shomshak dean Shomshak