Muppets and no Sausage Rolls - I read Electric Bastionland - DRUNK

Behold, I hath read (much of) Chris McDowalls Electric Bastionland and tweeted about it, often while drinking. Below you will find my often-incisive analysis and commentary while my brain rockets back and forth between alohol and the effects of antidpressants.

(I left the mis-spellings and insanity in. Headings and sub-headings added by me.)

We Begin

Ok I'm gonna drink and read Chri's Electric Bastionland and tweet it now

Jealousy

everyone has better design skills than me

"Other game say Gamesmaster, Referee or MC but this is Bastion and we do things differently" -

differently, even to the last version of this game, in an acceleration of the rule that every rpg deign head must ritually kill gary in their mind by renaming the DM into something new to symbolise their new dawn

A Starting Party

a sandwich is SIX POUNDS - like, actually that is possible, like an M&S sandwich

Huh so there is starting group debt and even a starting Belloq rival figure with more hit PROTECTION (not points) than you - so the game is very absolutely and directly about doing this particular thing right now

and you also have a failed career

and dying adds to the groups debt - so if you die, even doing something heroic and useful to the group and Basionland as a whole, you are still fucking the rest of the group and your own future self

there is something extremely british and of its generation about the quiet background sadism of that concept

so you start with lamps and batteries, climbnig and camping equipment and food and water - presumably because its boring getting those things

one other thing you might add in - and this comes of gaming with the Fallen Demiurge whos name shall not be spoken - is in a city game no one ever has a car to start with - so I would add in, considering the ambient britishness - a bus pass or family ticket

So in other versions of ItO the crapness of your stats got you better stuff, and good stats got you rubbish stuff - a concept I enjoyed - is that still the case here? For it seems not..

Chris Betrays Gaming

multiple attackers are NERFED - no longer do numbers count for all, and one man can indeed hold off an army

what will this mean for adventuring

no doubt much flop sweat was dropped by Chris over this arguably non-diagetic rule!

HAS CHRIS MCDOWALL BETRAYED GAMING?

LIKE WHEN THAT D&D RUYLESET HAD DAMAGE ON A MISS?

THE JURY IS OUT

AND IS ALSO ME

it makes EB an essentially interpersonal adventure-world and sets a hard - or flattened curve limit, on tactical thinking

so - big ass rooftop ambushes etc or hiring a company of dudes - all flattened, both against the players and if they try to use those methods

a sandwich and a drink gets your hp back but riskes a random encounter- curiously specific

You Will Play This Game The Way Chris Says

Also - 1st mention of Greggs

fuck Electric Bastionland is like being kicked out of your parents house in your 20s and trying to survive off your overdraft while sleeping on a friends couch and begging for a job in Greggs

carryig too much shit reduces your hp to zero! Ruthless!

And effective

rules here are bascially chris staring at you thru the page & saying "the game is not _about_ that"

so there is no 'persuasion' rules - just save CHA to avoid a *negative* reaction and to *stop* your peons running off

that still doesn't get people to *do* things for you - that is all down to gameplay

ah so in fact one map cannot hold off an army as they would be a detachment and roll a D12, while he would roll a d4

HOWEVER

one man could popssibly hold off an armies worth of INDIVIDUALS provided they do not fight as a detachment

'vehicles take no damage for running over soft targets like people' - dark, since everything else is an exchange of risk - time for some hit and runs!

A Complex Relationship with Risk

SCARS - what are scars in EB? Are they gud?

They are a reflection of the creators complex relationship with risk and its role in gaming

you get one if you go to EXACTLY 0hp

not a likely event

and if you get one, there can be good and bad effects (though since the standard response is death, any intermission of chance is 'good'so we may account scars as mercy if we wish

scars are a kind of high risk high reward routlette game you get accesss to for being damaged to juuuust the right degree but not dying

they are interesting enough that I wuold have got rid of the 'death at 0 hp rule, and just made the damage suffered a modifier on an extended

Exemple of play has differing corridors having differeing smells and winds - an adaptation to the generational praxis of high resources but limited time - corridors only gain meaning thru context which the modern gamer may not have time to create and so they must breathe and live

example of play - everything broken down into either/or risk decisons - the essential binary of meaning creation

say w your friends, or run away? fight, or flee? risk w reward or safety with life - the essential dilemma of entropy bound forms

hmm, no random roll for targets in multiple pc situations - a ruthless and heavy burden on the DM - orr CONDUCTER

and classic mcdowall fair declaraion of in-world risks, even if that level of perception not necessarily diagetically justified - a very prodestant mind. All the information will be given to you and you will decide, and FACE THE CONSEQUENCES.

curious that we can creat nothing complex without embedding our perception of morality into it

ok a new page has happened

ok weapons are basically

- how much damage d6, d8, d10, d12
- is it bulky (can't carry too much
- does it do BLAST (and so harm detachments)

and thats the deal

THA ART

lol Alecs art has started to come in and the text is so Gen-X british and the art so US Zoomer/Millenial that the combo makes a whole new thing

Old ItO was a lot like watching a british sitcom from the 70s, a halrold pinter televised play or an episode of Dr Who -

what will the asethtic of this version be??

'Board' meaning somewhere to sleep - costs £10. More than the d6£ you start with - so you better get working day one

fuck Electric Bastionland is like being kicked out of your parents house in your 20s and trying to survive off your overdraft while sleeping on a friends couch and begging for a job in Greggs

also - why is Greggs not in this Chris? UKFAIL

Hospital and Leasure are free, but slow - spending money only speeds them up

taking an 'improvement course' lets you re-roll a stat, but you have to keep it whatever - an accurate representaion of british education system

'luxuries ' include a medal ceremony for yourself, a sanctioned duel, a legitimate funeral (10k, really you should be leaving at least 1k for your inheritor to clear the expense of your death) and a radio station

ahhh so he has dealt w the transport issue - public transport is available with sliding scales for distance

A NEW THREAD BEGINS!

OK new thread as we are on to 'failed careers'  -- which aaaare about 215 pages of this 333 page book

answering the question of how do you turn a rulselight system into a fucntional money making product in our global times

answer - fill it with art and make char gen also worldbuilding and make there be  a LOT of it

so this is also our map to Electric Bastionland, through the failed careers of its economy and society

which are also options

(look out for a shit neutered version of this in D&D 5E(b) <<<< A PREDICTION

£10,000 is the group debt - so game assumes that by the time you have done enough shit to make that, you will have embedded yourself in the world and caused enough trouble to be essentially self-generating adventure machines

The Mysteries of Publishing Exposed!

Interesting that this is *not quite* black and white

for anyone who doesn't do pblishing - B&W is much cheaper, and so the profit margins are highter

so every creator notices this and thinks "wait, I'll just do B&W art w high quality, charge the same and make a mint"

BUT

then they think - "hey this thing is going well... maybeoooone colour wouldn't hurt.. just one..."

and then you end up w a full colour book

those are the beans which I just spilled

Cultural Background

so from one career we have sci-fi, sci-fantasy, terry gilliam, touch of 40k, edge of dr who

terry prachett - a 'loot office'

o there is some of the old school ItO evening out of capacities thgrough the money and hp system - w lower money & hp granting cooler stuff and higher worse etc

3. Trench Conscript. What was your role?

£2 -Recon. Take paints and a portable canvas.

So for anyone who did NOT grow up wathing british TV in the 80's/90's

So while up to now was lite sci-fi and Blackadder, this Dead-Shoresman is pure Gaiman. Not only are you back from the dead, but no-one believes you.

So there's this invisible backwash of generall 'oddness' (hook in the title) that flows through market towns at night, moterway service stations, the BBC at odd times

and EB is right slam in the centre of that

I Complain about 'Hipsters'

This book will be popular w hipsters and people who care about 'design' because its easy to read, text tlight and has good art

it is worth caring about for other reasons

I am just making it clear that other, more attractive and succesful, but shallower people, will enjoy this for the WRONG REASONS =and they need to be jidged for that

"Threatening Stave - has no fucntion but glows and vibrates in a way that suggests that it could be used for distributing extreme pain"

what can we say about art?

So - first ItO felt VERY british, 19tC industrial in aesthetic

Here the people and style are clearly not that - more idk definitely US, maybe futuristic/current - from a different social milueax

& sadder - more human - but also more beautiful

definitely the people I saw walking around the hipster area of toronto - thin, golde, multi-ethnic, rather than the dense potato people I know from my youth and environment - 1 of which I am

so for me there is a very slight tension between the art & text

but not necessarily for the first reader, for whome the whole will fall a new whole <<< PARTICULARLY BRILLIANT PHRASING HERE PATRICK, THAT'S HOW YOU GET THOSE SILVER ENNIES

I gotta stop because its nearly 10 heere and I drank everything in the room

got up to page 37 though, so you no i did an in-depth reaed

back tomorrow maybe?

More Cultural Influences

K I bought more cider and am back to read Chris McDowalls Electric Bastionland again

'Verminator' gets a combination of Cronenberg castoffs

'Lost Expeditioneer' is in debt to the Elephant Reinbursment House, which is a post-singularity sci-fi story right there

Wall-Born more 'infinite city' vibes and more of a China Mieville feel

Cities demorph and arrange themselves neatly for game designers shaping space w random generators and tables - maybe because they are already organised on human-useful lines anyway - as much information as arrangments in space

'shoe throwing' - thats not an object Chris, you have broken your own rules. Inspired by Austin Powers or that guy who shoes George Bush?

All the places Aliens can come from are worse than Bastion. makes sense I guess.

BONE MAGNET! My old nemesis!

The next drink is for Chris for having to come up with 1200 items and elements

"Dog rifle" is one of those fragments which tells a.. _tail_..

Face with tears of joyFace with tears of joyRolling on the floor laughing  im dying inside

'Roadside Picnic' is probably the best tonal match for the technology. Reality-bending, semi-useful, not understood, often one-shot and clearly not meant to be used for the thing it is being used for. Humanity as scavenger.

This definitely feels more like 'Dark Toronto' more than decayed England.

(I have been outside the UK a handful of times in my adult life so my field of reference may be limited)

In the absence of a frontier or a singular unnatural incursion, the adventure takes place 'in between' islands of various elements of order which, if seen from afar, could be mistaken for a whole

See the book 'the insurgent archipelago' which was about no matter how dominant modernity becomes, its very complexity keeps creating new webs and cracks and elisions of chaos betwixt its endlessly moving parts

There is always a little microdrama or a little worldbuilding in the back of Alecs art

main figure, often a crowd, often a single individual that doesn't quite fit, often crossing eyelines, and something in the background, a wreck, a cable car

so depending on what PCs you roll in EB, you could be playing a Neil Gaiman urban fantasy game, a near future China Mieveille sci-fantasy, straight sci-fi or just victorian social drama

Urchin pack - think Arnold was the 1st person to have this idea. I always wanted to use it in a Frostgrave RPG

Classes
Wizard - magic & in charge but can take no action
Merc Company - as in the whole company, can do stuff but no authoity or money
Dog - is a dog, can smell. A good dog.
Barbarian etc - more like standard characters

The advert and the celestial sphere is very "Electric Bastionland", whatever that is

I fully support this movement! #HumanityFirst


If warhammer has taught me anything its that if you really love humanity, you need to kill anything that isn't human

and most of the things that are - because they are getting it wrong

Char Gen is also NPG gen, society gen, plot gen, rival gen and item gen

efficient

'Masked Horrorist' is very Ramsey Campbell, so we can add that to the stew I guess

Chris you give away being able to see in the dark too easily, have I taught you *nothing*?

of course you can basically hack your own 'bastionland' by making maybe 20 character gen packages of a particular tone or diagetic implication

oh gooood people are going to do that - they are going to release _zines_

if you imagine Electric Bastionland as a real place, life there is largely about intuiting the use and meaning of any one of a million potentially powerful but *singular* items, talents or situations, encountered near-randomly in the mosaic of order

The Absence of Moral Chaos - a personal failing in Chris McDowall????

There is no moral chaos is the decision matrix of EB. Risks may be unfair but they are always signalled. It's rare you make a choice without knowing the consequences. My impression is that mad streaks of luck or doom are not an intended part of the game.

Which is a major character difference between Chris and I

It does take some balls to just say "Yes there are Muppets in this"

"They are not aliens or androids. They are Muppets. And they even sometimes act like you are in a Muppets Movie"

But "Monstrosities" are still an element and you can recognise immediately that they are monsters, even if verbal and self aware. This does seem to nudge slightly against the moral axis of much of the rest of the book.

Hmm Chris and his cult of information again.

Information is not the be all and end all Chris! If we never have to gamble with limited, poor or deceptive information then ARE WE NOT MACHINES?

I skipped a lot of the failed careers. May go back to them later

"If you get into the habit of giving the right amount of information to your players, they have more agency in their decisions, and are less likely to be unpleasantly shocked by the consequences of those choices.'

No. Negative affect, boredom, frustration and *some degree* of unknown unfairness are vital and necessary organs of FREEDOM.

These advices are good but they cannot be held to be absolutely true

If I am a contrarian, what of it. I drove to that forest to test my eyes! I was acting legally and ethically!

I have been drinking yes

heuristics of efficiency

It's tomorrow now

Reading this book on vision confirms that evolution is as obsessed as Chris McDowall with cognitive offload, heuristics of efficiency and more minimising time on unnecessary decisions

So the obverse of Chris's risk/reward hypertransparency is the severity of impact once the choice is made

No "minor" fuckups and few "learning" mistakes? Is that how it actually plays over time?

Ah ha! "Like your Tomb of Horrors style deathtrap dungeon might be full of hidden traps that don't announce themselves, but you're breaking that rule as a specific exception for this particular dungeon"

A paradox of performed secrecy in films is that the actor (& film) communicate simultaneously to the audience that they are lying &/or keeping a secret and..

to other characters in that fiction that they are telling the truth.

A dual signal

So in EBlnd can there be *real* geographic secrets? Like a secret door?

*People* can keep secrets, but are not likely to have more than one, if at all

But can there be a secret place which does not communicate it's existence

but which can still be discovered?

The doctrine of information and risk and the iteration of the game world may interact strangely over time to produce unpredictable cognitive lacunae of particular types

Maybe

giant ants and the attention economy

Look giant ants are not uninteresting as a concept - they are basically the Borg - but, ants

The city as starting area seems to be as common a concept to whatever the current gen is as the wilderness was to whatever older gens were

The difference may lie partially in the shift in the attention economy and social groupings from the 70s to now

70s issue I imagine being more like " how do I spend these extra cognitive hours in a world without screens and internet" and "what do I do w my geographically close sustained friend group for 6 hours'

Modern problem being more like "how do I keep their attention for maybe 3 hours max" and "how do I adapt the game to a shifting attendance group and online interaction"

The city can present a flowing matrix of challenge, information and adaptation more easily than the imagined wilderness.  << I SAID ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME THING ABOVE BUT I WAS DRINKING AND FORGOT I SAID IT

Characters/Players can be brought in and out more easily too.

Amusingly, if PCs and NPCs have actual jobs in the imagined world, that explains why they weren't present at the game or scene - they were at work.

In the next edition Failed Careers might be "Unstable Careers" or "Gig Economy Trap Careers"

Future Bastionland would definitely have twitter in it

"9. Dark clothes, lone wolf, won't work with any other hirelings. Thinks they're so cool." - Chris I feel attacked by this remark. Neutral face

Cosmic Angels - are these 40k Primarchs?

So you can have Kermit the Frog and a Primarch in the same world?

Lack of Ghosts

Actually if this was REAL British Paracosm role playing it would have more ghosts in it CHRIS

Fuck you could do a Gerry Anderson "Supermarionation" source book for EB. Hidden humanoid mockeries rocketing forth to save Bastionland in bright primary vehicles

Have fun trying to work out which internet personalities these are based on

A Mass Coffin Auction does sound like fun.

The fact that cremation doesn't seem to exist in this megacity pretty much guarantees a gothic logistical structure of trains and necropoli.

The Bureaucrolabyrinth is good. Advancing d20 rolls remind me of Gardens of Ynn

Alien Kung Fu meta dice games - lol I would probably have based the whole game around these

In case you didn't notice how fucking clever I was being

I will make it explicit for you.

I'll admit I only came up with the idea of mixed rhyming schemes (on top of all ten being almost perfect iabmic pentameter) about half way thorugh. And I only really got into it deeply on the last few. But come on. It deserves more than plus two in total.

Maybe you don't want to reward 'pailing' on line four. But 'pale' 'weal' and 'sail' on one four and five? The interlocking alliterations of 's' and 'w' from two to five? Pulling it all together with the skull/skin metaphor on line five that unifies the 'blazes pale' 'umbral bone' and 'winters smiling face'. Nothing?

Umbral fucking bone people. Umbral bone. You are lucky to be getting this shit for free I tell you.

End-stopped lines on 1-5 and 2-4 with the central end rhyme repeated twice on the bottom line without fucking up the end rhyme with 1? Expressions and weapons? The fucking alliteration all over tyhe first three lines? What do I need to do here? Write you a poem? I FUCKING DID.

Alright I used 'this' twice. But look at the rhyme scheme for fucks sake!

I reveresed the end rhymes on BOTH lines in the thiRd and forth lines and repeated all four in sequence on the last line.

Gnathite for fucks sake. Do you have any idea what it took to dig up Gnathite?

Its the part of a jaw or mouthpart that manipluates or chews.

He's finally stopped talking about women at least

Pluvial – city of the Prince of Carcasses

The life of a skeletonised beggar in Pluvial is not so bad. The arthritis from the semi-constant rain is gone so you can stand straight up at least. You get (have) to dress up for the balls as well. You still have to bend, caper and dance madly as the prince goes by. He likes to scream in rage-black madness at the sight. It’s easier, at least, than simply being old.

Skeletons and flensed bodies animated by poetic backwash do most of the menial work and Tomb conversion. They don’t really get tired. The free labour has destroyed what’s left of the economy, which runs mainly on prostitution and words.

Ancient men must bend at 90 degrees and crackle around in single file tapped out in held canes cut only from lumps of the darkest wood. No pine. No beech.

The blind are commanded to gawp and loll madly in the streets, regardless of how they feel about the matter, though some have taken to exchanging braille pocketbooks which they read secretly by fingertips whilst moaning at the tapping of dancing skeletons they cannot see.

Young children are allowed out if they look suitably thin, ghastly and/or starving-gamine. Average, plump children, the middle aged, the robustly proportioned and those with good skin and bright eyes, tend to get their jobs done in the morning and mid-afternoon when the Prince of Carcasses sleeps. Or on Tuesdays which he has banned as ‘gauche’ and now ignores as a matter of form. (Or simply expands Monday and Wednesday by 12 hours each to meet in the middle.)

Women by decree must be beautiful or old. Old women must be pitied and wept over wherever they go. Grey locks and ragged hems caressed as periapt’s of Age and Loss. But not actually helped in any physical way, for instance, picked up off the ground, or given somewhere to live.

Social events are sometimes licenced if sufficiently symbolic of decay. For this reason, aging prostitutes in flaking greasepaint are in much demand, bussed in en-masse in broken coaches drawn by pale and plaguy mares. They un-liven retirement parties and camouflage happy weddings with broken decorations and pre-weathered paint that cracks on application to the wall. Burghers hold covert barbecues on tomb-top roofs when the sun peeps out from round a cloud.

The sewer system is excellent. Or at least capacious. Labyrinthine. Cathedral-Naved, baroque, knotted like lost string and several times deeper that the city is tall. Presumably the stuff is going somewhere. Though drainage does descend below the water table and keep going, which seems strange. In a way, it’s lucky it rains so much. The constantly running water means that despite much encouragement, tuberculosis has yet to take hold. White foundation, diet books and re-useable blood clots can be bought at local shops.

Men have been hired to paint the sky the colour of bruises and rot, to no effect. Enquiries of their progress have not yet been made.

Crime has been encouraged in song and handy ratways built across the tomb-top roofs in hopes that assaulters, housebreakers and masked bandits will transit silently in the night. Lack of anything to actually steal has limited opportunities for crime but numerous anonymous try-hards still make the nightly effort, climbing around, passing each other on the midnight eaves, sometimes mugging each other in a sad, ritual way.

Once, someone broke into the Princes garret (he lives alone in a broken-down tenement made especially for him.) The Prince found evidence of the crime and the resulting breakdown kept him out of everyone’s hair for two weeks. Regrettably it also resulted in several poems. The experiment has not been repeated.

Or Another Of Your Own Creation

The expected market for Vincent Baker's 'The Seclusium of Orphone' is (Choose 2 or 3)

1. People in the OSR who like posh books and can choke down dodgy design choices.
2. Those on old White Wolf forums who know who Jack Vance is.
3. People who don't roll their eyes at the use of the phrase 'Stormy Eyes'.
4. People with LOTS of free time before games.
5. People who really enjoy drawing their own detailed maps for a product they just bought.
6. That guy who thinks Baker is part of a conspiracy to destroy gaming by perving it up.
7. People who would quite like access to alleged above conspiracy
8. People who own d7's.
9. Those people who used to be the forge but I think they're storygames now?
10. A strange new circle of people who may slowly crystallise around the book over time, it being neither one thing nor another, it may generate it's own subgenre. Vornheim might so this might.
11.  Basically nice people who want a go at being 'dark' and 'edgy' in controlled circumstances.
12. Maybe literary people? the tables being fucked makes it look less like a game, so people too up themselves to read Vornheim might potentially read this and think they've discovered and whole new thing and get all up on the lit blogs with it. Could there be an article in Forbes? Gasp.

The first parts of the book were designed; (Choose 1 or more)

1. For those who like random tables, but not 'too' random.
2. Specifically to irritate a small circle of OSR bloggers.
3. For people who would rather put one egg in a pre-bought mix and call it cooking, instead of buying a pre-made pie or cooking it from scratch.
4. To maximise the pleasure of flipping back and forth in a hardback book. Endlessly.
5. Not to scare hippies.
6. To maximise white space.
7. To show off the cool flower designs on the paper stock.
8. Because if you can't cram pseudo-magical glyph designs into an rpg book any more then we may as well burn down the whole enterprise and go home.
9. Because we paid for a special font for the chapter headings and were damn well using it.
10. Badly.
11. Cryptically.
12. Mysteriously.
13. To annoy people who know the last three options are all true but they can only pick one. (OR ANOTHER OF YOUR OWN CREATION)
14. Because its a book of random tables, so if you just give people the tables and a fully completed Seclusium with a fucking map they can use straight away they will feel robbed somehow?
15. To keep the scum out.
16. To instill wisdom in the reader through suffering, so they have the self knowledge to fully appreciate the good stuff at the back by the time they get there.

 The lists in Seclusium contain; (... and choose 2-4)

1. Useful things
2. Good things artfully seperated to ensure maximum flipping back and forth.
3. Pretentious things
4. Many things neither 'boring and useful' or 'poetic and energetic' but a strange blur between the two.
5. Many cases where it would be better if you just used all of the available choices.
6. Awkward numbering.
7. Reassuring repetitions of the statement that you can choose or create your own thing, presumably because some fucking idiot somewhere wrote a blog or forum post saying 'this product does not explicitly tell me I can think for myself while using it? How them am I to know if I may do so???'
8. A lot of good stuff.
9. Some really interesting rules for magic item creation.
10. A lot of Bakerism's if you are (choose 1 or 2) into/offended by/amused by/vaguely reassured by them
11. Some good monster motivations.

The house rules at the back are; (choose as many as apply)

1. Effectively a whole new game.
2. Better than Dungeon World.
3. Lacking options for clerics.
4. The best use for the soft stats I've seen yet.
5. How I should have been DM'ing already.

Re-Writing the Players Handbook

As my contribution to the pre-emptive fourth-naissance that I sort of invented I am going through the 4^th ed Players Handbook, finding the most boring and tiresome bits and making them better.

The advantage of a ‘clean’ and ‘rational’ system is that you can find everything more easily. This makes scribbling all over it with find-and-replace much easier. If you can find-and-replace an dungeon, why not an entire game?

I will now re-write pages 54 to 55, ‘How to Read a Power’.

Flavour Text

Is to be removed by Patrick when he is done and replaced with something cooler, or incoherent babbling.

Keywords

At-Will replaced with While-Screaming

Encounter replaced with While-Bleeding

Daily replaced with In-A-Fugue-State

Arcane replaced with Soul-Eating

Divine replaced with God-Vomit

Martial replaced with Hate-Based

The Damage Types are generally acceptable except for the following replacements:-

Force replaced with Destructokinetic

Radiant replaced with GayRainbowBurn

Psychic replaced with Cerebroperv

Thunder replaced with Sonic-Trauma

Effect types

Charm replaced with Mind-Control

Conjuration replaced with Thaumogenesis

Illusion replaced with Special Effects

Reliable replaced with Shitboring

Sleep replaced with Rohypnol

Stance replaced with Dance

Zone replaced with Chaotic

Chaotic powers now effect random places and people. Zones are shit and stop people thinking. Stance is rubbish but making people Dance to hit people in a special way is good. Just keep dancing son. Thaumogenesis just sounds better.

Accessories

Implement replaced with KnifeWand

Weapon replaced with Two-Handed-Weapon

My reasoning. Wands are cool, knives are cool. Now clerics have to wave a knife at people. Everyone just became camper and more violent. Anything worth doing with a dagger is worth doing with a sword, anything worth doing with a sword deserves an axe. If an axe, why not a two handed axe? Want to use those Hate-Based powers? Now you have to lug around a sledgehammer or something. This makes things better.

Action Types

Standard replaced with Desperate

Move replaced with Frantic

Immediate Interrupt replaced with ‘Actually’

Immediate Reaction replaced with ‘Because’

Minor replaced with Pointless

Free replaced with Useless

No Action replaced with  Irrelevant

Reasons? Interrupts slow down play and annoy. As annoying as the use of the word ‘actually’ in conversation. (Side note, I used to be an ‘actually’ guy. Actually still am. Actually.) Replaced reaction with because to replace an annoying 4^th ed artefact with an annoying storygame artefact. You still got hit but now you know why. If you are arguing with the DM over whether your character is frantic enough, congratulations, they are.

Attack Type and Range

Melee replaced with Breathing-Distance

Ranged … think I’ll keep this one

Close replaced with Too-Close (this effects EVERYONE close to you)

Area replaced with In-Sight (This effects everyone you can see, friend and foe)

Personal replaced with Grope (If you want to hang around doing things to yourself then you have to visibly grope yourself mid-battle.

Prerequisite – Fuck

Requirement – These.

No prerequisites or requirements. For anything.

Target

Anyone so no longer relevant. To be removed.

Attack

These are not that bad. Rolling a number against a number is ok, however the following replacements will be made in the attack column.

Charisma replaced with Dexterity. You cannot use your charisma to attack, grow up.

Wisdom replaced with Dexterity. Fuck you I don’t like it. Somehow INT can stay, that is alright.

Constitution replaced with Strength. Attacking with CON? Bullshit.

There will be no modifiers or additions of any kind. No plusses or minuses. No penalties. No regaining hit points. You are ATTACKING. Getting HP back from an attack is bullshit unless you are a vampire? Are you a vampire? No.

Hit

This is sort-of ok. Having dice is fun. Counting turns is boring. Modifiers are boring unless they add damage.

Every ‘and’ replaced with an ‘or’.

Every modifier or number that is not damage replaced with D6.

Save ends replaced with Forever.

 Ongoing damage goes on until you die and is random. If a hit grants you the ability to compel the target to move … the distance moved will be random and must be accepted.

Whenever you affect a creature with a power, that creature knows exactly what you’ve done to it has no fucking idea what’s going on because a goblins not going to be like ‘oh a divine challenge better change my tactics’. A world where they do is a boring world. To them, you are the monsters, why should they understand you more than you understand them?

Duration and Effects

Powers are either immediate or permanent or possibly both. Its either over in one turn or lasts forever. Nothing in between. No more counting fucking rounds. All area’s are either close, or everything you see, nothing in between.

Miss

A miss is a miss. No more half damage blah blah blah, this line to be deleted.

Secondary Target and Secondary Attack

MUST be made if possible against WHOEVER possible. Enemy to be replaced with Target.

Conjurations

Whatever affects your conjuration affects you as if you were it. All environmental phenomena have the usual effects on your conjuration.

Zones

Fuck zones. See above.

Sustain

All use of Sustain to be replaced with Escape. All powers with escape can only be ended under particular circumstances, a save at minimum.

Join me next episode as I cut-and-paste then find-and-replace some basic powers from the players guide. Lets see what exciting new things turn up!

Students often happen to accept and transmit absurd information

'Al-Mas udi for instance, reports such a story about Alexander.

Sea monsters prevented Alexander from building Alexandria. He took a wooden container in which a glass box was inserted, and dived it to the bottom of the sea. There he drew pictures of the devilish monsters he saw. He then had metal effigies of these animals made and set them up opposite the place where building was going on. When the monsters came out and saw the effigies, they fled. Alexander was thus able to complete the building of Alexadria.

It is a long story made up of nonsensical elements which are absurd for various reasons ...'(Khaldun lists some reasons)'... Furthermore, the jinn are not known to have specific forms and effigies. They are able to take on various forms …. All this throws suspicion upon the story.'

(my italics)

Monsters of Incompetence and Atomic Bread

Mind-Soup

There are three apparently unrelated ideas swirling around my mind.

This post in Monsters and Manuals about the changes in game design shaped by vocal minorities.

This article on the development of ultra-white 'Atomic' bread in the 1950's.

And the book, the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Norman Dixon

I feel a strong relation between the ideas in these sources, yet I am having trouble clearly delineating the nature of the connection to myself. What follows is a kind of internal dialogue to see if I am, in fact, correct. Or if the soup of my mind has failed me again. How can these things be related?

The simplest connection is between Dixon and Manuals.

Monsters and Military Incompetence

The main theme of Dixon's book on military incompetence goes roughly like this:-

Warfare is very difficult and produces enormous stress in the people who undertake it. As a consequence, the organisations that are directed to warfare develop rituals, manners and structures that are designed to control, displace, channel, and otherwise deal with stress. Because these organisations develop such qualities they then attract individuals who find themselves in personal need of these qualities in normal life. (Italics mine.)

In Dixon's own words “..those very characteristics which are demanded by war – the ability to tolerate uncertainty, spontaneity of thought and action, having a mind open to the receipt of novel, and perhaps threatening, information – are the antitheses of those possessed by people attracted to the controls, and orderliness of militarism. Here is the germ of a terrible paradox.”

How does this connect to the post in 'Monsters and Manuals'?

The post suggests that changes in game design for Dungeons and Dragons have been driven by a minority of people who base their beliefs about the nature of RPG's on the most negative assumptions possible, and then ask the creators to change the game to eliminate the possible en-action of those dark assumptions.

Another quote, this one is by K.J.W Craik, I took it from Dixon's book. He used it as a heading for a chapter titled – 'Socialization and the Anal Character.'

“... a form of adaptation is thus achieved by narrowing and distorting the environment until one's conduct appears adequate to it, rather than by altering ones conduct and enlarging one's knowledge till one can cope with the real environment.”

So, R.P.G's give us rules to simulate life. They take complex, living situations and break them down to a series of abstract rules that, unlike real life, can be fully and directly comprehended in their totality.

It is possible that because of this R.P.G's attract exactly the kind of people who really need rules for complex living situations. (I can state that this is probably a small, but real, factor in my own attraction to R.P.G's)

It is also possible that the members of the group that are least socially-capable actually produce a greater impact on the engine driving the hobby than the majority of the group. They are 'louder', they are willing to argue for longer, they devote more energy to arguments (especially online). They have poorer social radar which means they will ignore the tacit signals other people use to know when to shut up in a complex situation. They have nowhere else to go, someone whose life is based around D&D will be much, much more directed and focused on changing or influencing the game than someone who has other social options.

If R.P.G's attract this kind of person, and if we also assume that the least socially-capable members of the group also produce the loudest 'signal' in the games audience, then we can see how a game that provides life simulation as a kind of necessity for most of its players in order for them to achieve other aims can be consumed by those for whom those rules are a need in themselves.

I propose that the situation between Military forces and those who are attracted to them is analogous to the connection between R.P.G's and those who are attracted to them. Both will initially attract a wide spectrum of personality types. But ultimately, both can become dominated by those who need the organisation most. These people are not necessarily the ones the organisation most needs.

But how does this connect to Atomic Bread?

Atomic Bread

Aaron Bobrow-Strain is a bread enthusiast. The kind of person who will obsessive search out the methods to create interesting breads from history and then try to recreate them in the kitchen.

In this article he attempts to re-create 50's Wonda-Bread, and while doing so, gives a fascinating analysis of the history of industrial food, our relation with the things we eat and a host of other things. It's an excellent piece and I recommend you take a look if you have the time.

I will briefly summarise the things I understood (or thought I understood) and that seemed to leap forward with a hidden relevance.

During the 1950's, the US government apparently becomes concerned that people are not eating enough bread.

They embark on a massive project to find out why.

They aim to discover what people want from their bread, the results are surprising:- “a clear portrait of America's favourite loaf emerged. It was 42.9 percent fluffier than the existing industry standard and 250 percent sweeter. "

People want really white, really fluffy and really really really sweet, bread. The government tries to give them what they want. They challenge nature itself and produce 'USDA White Pan Loaf No.1'

People hate the bread. They complain about it to a huge degree. They distrust its fakeness, its softness and its whiteness.

They buy it in huge numbers.

They regard it as modern, powerful, they believe in it's artificial enrichments.

There are lots of strange and fucked up elements that go into societies relationship with its bread. But there are two things to remember.

One. It was brought about by large numbers of people trying to do the right thing. The cryptic government bread programs are to strengthen the nation and protect the health of the people. The people want to eat the right thing. The corporations want to make bread faster, better, and sell it large volumes. None of these are essentially evil or immoral.

Two. There is an essential dualness to the peoples relationship to the product. They hate it and they want it. They complain about it and they buy it. They trust it and distrust it.

So how does the bread paradox relate to the Monsters/Incompetence axis?

We can have a human system, generated only by people trying to do the right thing, in which the wrong people are doing the wrong thing, actively disliking it and yet unable to pull away. All driven by human need, and a desire to fulfil it.