Dispatches from the Eccentric Frontier
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the “Max Kaehn” journal:| ⇐ Previous 20 entries |
20:14 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Post-Information-Age society
( Notes on a galactic post-Information Age society )Current Mood:  creative |
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| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | |
18:50 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Cheap-Ass Megastructures
( I had the idea this morning and wanted to see how the back-of-the-envelope calculations looked )| Current Mood: creative |
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| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | |
18:05 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Initiations
A couple of times now, characters in the high fantasy game have chosen to embrace particular mystical powers during the course of the game. Between the role of theurgist (like the priest and paladin classes in D&D) and the pure-roleplaying of religion in the other professions, I decided to riff on the notion of initiation into old-style mystery religions.
( A couple of initiation rituals )Current Mood:  pleased |
Current Music: The Rachel Maddow Show |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | ||
13:12 ※ Escaped gaming meme: culinary magicks
Today’s Darths and Droids reminded me of a moderately silly magic item I handed out recently: the Piñata Bat. This is a Jō staff with a mischievous enchantment on it: every hit point of damage inflicted on an opponent becomes one piece of candy, and an opponent killed by the staff bursts open, releasing as many pieces of candy as their full hit point total. (It is rather difficult to resurrect someone who was killed by the Piñata Bat.)
This fit into a culinary thread that has been running through the campaign (probably as a side effect of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
obsessivewoman enjoying the Food Network), which has included such things as a magical attack technique that visibly detects the spices that would make a target taste good when cooked (resulting in an intimidation effect as someone sees themselves surrounded by phantasms of herbs and spices and cooking instruments), attack spells that cover opponents in batter and deep-fry them in hot oil, targeted muting of spellcasters by filling their mouths with mochi, Candyland, and the Mithril Chef competition.
There is nothing like handing out an item like the Piñata Bat to get the player characters beating on each other with it to find out what candy they get. (The druid yielded honey-and-herb candies; the monkish martial artist rice candies; the Chaos wielders, the equivalent of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans; the Light-priest (who had to heal everyone up from this!), marshmallows; the (purple) dragon, grape jelly beans.) Sadly, being experienced adventurers, they waited until they were back at their secure base before trying out this nifty new magic item, or it would’ve been the perfect time to have some goons come through the door with swords.
| Current Mood: amused |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | |
12:51 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Cybernetic interfaces
John and I were discussing software failure modes and complexity issues over lunch, and speculation turned to just how tricky cybernetic interfaces would be to implement and debug. I noted how annoying it would be to get brain surgery every time an upgrade came out, and speculated that a good interface would be one that could grow organically (like the Tytan NN-II nerve net in Daniel Keys Moran’s books) to integrate with your brain instead of requiring difficult surgical intervention.
This then hooked up with Ray Kurzweil’s notion of one-neuron-at-a-time uploading: replace one neuron in your brain with an artificial one that is trained to function just like the organic ones and you’re still basically the same person; repeat 100 billion times and you could potentially upload your consciousness to a different substrate altogether. So if you already have an organically growing cybernetic interface, in addition to its interface work, you could also have it deploy new neurons to replace old ones that die off, one at a time. It would take decades to get to the point that you could actually upload, but one could accomplish a lot of living in that amount of time (and it provides a relatively natural decision point for “retiring to cyberspace”).
It then occurred to me that impatient transhumanists might become incredible party animals, indulging in huge amounts of neuron-killing behaviors to hasten the transition to being able to upload themselves. (This would probably increase the error rate, so sane people would follow a more temperate strategy.) So remember, kids, be careful at those parties with the radical extropians!
| Current Mood: creative |
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| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | |
23:10 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Popular magic items
( Items the players have been enjoying lately )| Current Mood: pleased |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | |
14:26 ※ Escaped gaming meme: interstellar chase scenes?
Normally, the escape-to-hyperspace is a point at which a chase scene breaks off in a science fiction game. NASA has found that neutron stars that are in a close binary with a regular sun can slurp down hydrogen and helium and then explode the surface layer like a pipsqueak Type Ia supernova. And they do it at a regular interval. I can just see the light freighter full of player characters, pissed-off capital ship in hot pursuit, taking advantage of their knowledge of the local astrography to drop out of hyperspace and dive toward a neutron star, with the intention of making the capital ship take the brunt of the next upcoming explosion... (Discovered via io9.)| Current Mood: creative |
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| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | |
20:14 ※ Escaped gaming meme: urban droids
( These are the droids that are looking for you )| Current Mood: creative |
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| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎, star wars ⁎ | |
10:19 ※ Escaped gaming meme: The Church of the Eternal Profits
A deranged notion that occurred to me as I was clambering toward consciousness this morning:The Church of the Eternal Profits treats the following theological tenets as revealed truth:
If the church gets any larger than street-corner preaching, they incorporate for tax-exempt status, provide free financial planning services for the poor, and eventually begin creating financial instruments that allow people to profit from virtue.
If I had the time and energy, it would be fun to put this together as performance art (put together a web site, put some sermons on YouTube, go stand in front of major banking skyscrapers and sermonize publicly), but I’m just turning this notion loose instead. exoterica, please feel free to pass it to anyone you know who would enjoy taking the idea and running with it.
| Current Mood: creative |
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| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | |
22:47 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Stellar immigrants
The Ghosts of Galaxies Past brings up an astronomical feature I was previously unaware of: stellar streams (also called tidal streams), remnants of dwarf galaxies that have been caught in the gravitational pull of the a larger galaxy. These rivers of suns eventually merge with their captor galaxy, but stand out from their neighbors with a slightly different chemical composition; the Arcturus stream and the Virgo Stellar Stream are examples of such galactic immigrants.( Stellar immigrants in a space travel campaign )
| Current Mood: creative |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | |
20:29 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Equilibrium technology levels
weregamer and tara_knight kindly lent us their X-box and KOTOR and its sequel; obsessivewoman and I had fun playing the games, and they doubled as research for Rise of the Jedi. I’ve been musing on the details of 25,000-year-old galactic civilizations and the way that the galaxy can seem so similar in two different eras separated by four millennia. ( Equilibrium technology levels )
| Current Mood: creative |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎, star wars ⁎ | |
19:55 ※ Escaped gaming meme: post-Singularity encounters
In doing the research for Rise of the Jedi, I’ve been contemplating how an interstellar culture can hover around an equilibrium point of technology for 25,000 years. (The Star Wars universe isn’t the only one with long-term stable galactic culture; Asimov’s Foundation books are another galactic empire.) Living as we do in a time of technological acceleration, that kind of stability is a contrast to our daily lives. I have some plans for looking at mechanisms behind equilibrium technology levels, but first I’d like to deal with what Charlie Stross called the “turd that Vernor Vinge crapped into the punchbowl of SF writing, and now nobody wanting to take a drink can ignore it”: the Singularity.( Post-Singularity Encounters )
| Current Mood: creative |
(My 2¢) |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎, star wars ⁎, transhumanism ⁎ | |
14:07 ※ Caves formed by biology, not just geology
In the Frasassi cave system in Italy, scientists have found biofilms full of sulfur-consuming bacteria that eat hydrogen sulfide and excrete sulfuric acid. These can then erode the limestone walls of caves. If you’re the sort of game master who likes to brush up on geology before sending a scenario into a cave system, this could be a useful source of inspiration. (If elves can culture trees into cities, shouldn’t dark elves be able to herd biofilms to sculpt their caves?)Current Mood:  intrigued |
Current Music: Afro Celt Sound System - Seed | |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎, nifty ⁎, science! ⁎ | ||
14:25 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Star Wars— Rise of the Jedi
( A notion for a Star Wars campaign )| Current Location: 37.418000, -122.09565 | Current Mood: creative |
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| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎, star wars ⁎ | ||
21:17 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Fortean Twins
( Not your usual sorts of twins )| Current Mood: creative |
Current Music: Angel Tears - The Dreaming | |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | ||
13:52 ※ Escaped gaming meme: CSI: Lankhmar
( Given how much of CSI is fantasy already... )| Current Mood: creative |
Current Music: Tangerine Dream - Stratosfear | |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | ||
13:15 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Devil's Playground
( Player character types don't do so well in regular government agencies. )| Current Mood: creative |
Current Music: Shpongle - Are You Shpongled? | |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | ||
10:40 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Mystic Mime Garb
( Another roleplaying challenge )| Current Mood: creative |
Current Music: Tangerine Dream - Soundmill Navigator | |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | ||
13:38 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Borg Makeover
( The Borg go to the spin doctor )| Current Mood: creative |
Current Music: Steve Roach - Light Fantastic | |
| Tags: escaped gaming meme ⁎ | ||
18:47 ※ Escaped gaming meme: Nanotech Revolution
( Spoilers for Deus Ex: Invisible War )| Current Mood: creative |
Current Music: Steve Roach - On This Planet | |
| Tags: computer games ⁎, escaped gaming meme ⁎, transhumanism ⁎ | ||
| ⇐ Previous 20 entries |
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