It is late November. Not the midst of spring, or the onset of autumn. You accursed episodic headaches do not belong in my head. Go away.

I can tell it’s nearly December because things take a turn. I can feel it in the order in which I do things, in my daily routines, and most starkly, in the conversations I have with people. Rambling. Introspective. Resigned. Stubborn. Someone mistook it all for clinical depression, once, but it is more complex than that — this is apparently the time for wild delusions of accomplishment followed by a tailspin and protracted melancholy. A funk, or a bad spell, some would call it. Mine is just seasonal.

It’s a unique feeling, being negatively influenced by one’s own plots, one’s own mannerisms, and for it to all be so predictable, as if it were natural law.

A happy post from me tonight, for sure. There’s much more ground to cover, but I have my limits in public disclosure. This post, in essence, is born of how I have so little to talk about (a condition not foreign to long-time readers, regrettably). Finally moved the pictures from Saturday off the camera — few turned out. Finished Letter to a Christian Nation a while ago, I’ll save that for a more upbeat mood, as it is deserving of it. My half-finished projects continue to pile up and yet I struggle to put effort into any of my schoolwork, which is immense. For the first time, I’ve been wondering if I can conceivably complete everything in time for spring graduation. Worrysome is how this concern probably should have cropped up months ago.

Ugh, diary post.

Tick tock, tick tock, Andy.

My offer still stands, but you only have little more than a month.

Well, as of a couple hours ago, the next generation of game consoles is completely upon us, and I could not be less thrilled.

The Xbox 360, a modest improvement of what is essentially a North America exclusive console (as far as consumption is concerned, anyway), the PlayStation 3, a ridiculously-priced beast from Sony who publicly mused, in essence, “it’ll sell because we know our fan base is mindless", and the Wii, Gamecube hardware coupled with an unproven remote control/gimmick in an uncharacteristic risk for Nintendo.

Joy of joys, I don’t have a console to buy this generation! I think the Schucks are getting a Wii, and my brother has a 360. I don’t know any rich manor lords or embezzeling bankers or steel barons, so I don’t know when I’ll play a PS3.

zeth asked me if I’ll ever “try the Wii". I said no, because I’m not curious enough to ever want to play it solely to try it out, but I probably will play it because one of my friends will likely find the latest and greatest game that it is imperative I play, with haste — there is no time to waste and everything is laid out right in front of us.

That’s the condition in which I’ll play a Wii.

I’m putting together a new emulator box, hush hush. News on that coming later, as the components aren’t here yet.

Finally, I’m in Toria’s Facebook profile image, and she kindly mentioned so on my accursed wall thing. Since I’m too lazy to log in and think of something to say, I will instead note it here. I’m pretty certain that was the day my hair was braided, not that it can really be told from the image.

(Yes, everyone that was not at Gen Con, my hair was braided. It is that long.)

Yay! Got some new books today, to fill up my queue as I work to finish World War Z: Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation. I guess these books are controversial or something. Synopses to come when I actually read them, or at least, later.

In non-news, I almost decided to install Gentoo on the MacBook again, but Mac OS X is just too awesome at the things I really need the MacBook for: wireless discovery and system sleep, as my MacBook serves mainly as my traveling computer. It’s a shame, because it just feels so wrong to have one whole computer without Gentoo on it. And QEMU/Parallels/etc. just ain’t the same…

I played no less than three games of Civilization IV: Warlords this weekend, so I figured I would mention them all since they have proved to be interesting examples of play.

Old World Escalation — myself (Wang Kon), Kad3 (Tokugawa), zeth (Stalin), Zoasam (Frederick), Saladin, Hatshepsut, Ragnar

Played this one on Saturday. All of Saturday. Terribly long game; world wars will do that.

Terra map, with organized Frederick and creative Hatshepsut on Korea’s sides and aggressive Stalin and Ragnar above and below, on such a tight map, things look bleak. Defensive Korea can only go so far. Stalin was culturing up, though, instead of using the aggressive/industrious double whammy, so hurried knights and support leads to the game’s first declaration of war, by Korea.

The war starts well, and to add some extra shock and attempt to get the territorial war finished sooner, Korea drags Ragnar into the war. Soon after, Stalin calls on Tokugawa, opposite Egypt to Korea, to aid in counter-assault. Germany, disputing over resource trade, declares war on Stalin. The Korean invasion force has captured two of Russia’s bordering cities but have been stonewalled in Moscow. The war elephants inside do an amazing job holding Moscow, given their weaknesses at defending. In an attempt to stymie Japanese incursions leading to a split in the military, Korea sends the Vikings after Japan. To counter, Japan convinces Egypt to declare war on Wang Kon, and all goes to hell.

At this point Korea has two hostile nations on her border; a seemingly impenetrable Russia and the big player in the game, with a full army, Egypt. Waves of attackers lead to Korea pulling out of Russia and concentrating on defending one city Hatshepsut is intent on taking. Burying the hatchet in a moment of realization of the impending doom of a successful Egypt in the center of the map, peace is declared on all fronts, aside from Egypt vs. Korea and Viking vs. Japan.

Egypt does a good job destroying the Korean countryside, but Korea’s protective nature holds up and not a city is lost. Finally, peace is obtained by capturing one Egyptian city and offering it back for peace; a stern slap to the face of the game’s leading Civ. Meanwhile, Ragnar is unstoppable, and nearly destroys Japan outright before peace can be negotiated through a Korean tech gift to Japan in order to bribe Ragnar. Japan, a shadow of its former glory, makes little impact for the rest of the game.

With the humans reeling from a territorial war gone haywire, a de facto truce is declared, focusing instead on unseating the two major powers: Egypt and Arabia. Korea’s financial nature is fittingly compounding, so the plan becomes to instigate war between the superpowers as Korea grows. Various bribes are given to the AI to keep them busy with artifical skirmishes, and Germany struggles to invade the New World. As part of the de facto truce, military tech goes from Korea to Germany. Russia is nearly eliminated by the warlike Ragnar before peace is declared and Stalin becomes a vassal of Korea.

Finally, with less than 50 turns remaining, the humans are satisfied with a compromise in a time victory by Korea, now that the AI has been out-teched and out-rushed by Wang Kon’s financial powerhouse. Suddenly, true to his nature, Ragnar declares war on Korea, throwing the time victory into question, especially given the AI’s rush to space. However, with a militarized Germany on hand to distract the Vikings for a couple years, Korea is able to buy a military, and with less than 10 turns remaining, the Vikings are eliminated, and Egypt and Arabia powerless to catch up in score in time.

Result: Korean Time Victory. Hardly the victory hoped for when the war to eventually define the game was started.

Lessons:

• A Civ working against its nature is at best questionable and at worst vulnerable. Russia was weakest when neglecting its military but impressive when mobilizing the war machine, and Korea’s offensive battles paled in comparison to the decades-long defense of one city and the following economic flourish.
• War is hell. Especially so when the AI is hard to dissuade once it gets the ball rolling. The escalating war set all the Civs back at least a century.
• Terra is all about position in the early game. Russia and especially Japan struggled to stay relevant due to small territory in the early game; Egypt, Korea, and Arabia were flexible just by sheer volume.

Land Mazes — myself (Hannibal), Kad3 (Stalin), Zoasam (Louis XIV), Saladin, Hatshepsut, Kublai Khan

The Maze map is fun in its own way. Very strange, consisting entirely of three-square-wide stretches of land, in a maze pattern, with water creating the walls. Led to interesting early expansion strategy.

The game starts unbalanced, Carthage and the three AI are situated on one half of the map, while only France and Russia occupy the other half. Carthage, a close neighbor to the aggressive Mongols, uncharacteristically declares an early war and successfully eliminates Kublai Khan, resulting in precious territory with two additional Civs nearby.

On the other half of the map, however, France finds itself with free reign over a large area and utilizes it fully. A culturally-growing France leads Russia into war, but a failed invasion turns itself back on Stalin, and Russia is nearly eliminated before capitulated as a vassal, giving France nearly half the land in the world, and an already-mobilized war machine in addition.

Carthage, close spiritual ally with Egypt, declares territorial war on Saladin, and captures one city before war involving naval transport becomes unmaintainable. The small gains in territory and score are dwarfed by the growing French nation, and soon France declares war on Arabia.

Sweeping through Saladin’s territory, France’s gains only increase, and Hannibal attempts to slow the coming onslaught by settling gaps left in between Arabia’s conquered cities. The little wedges help slightly, but it is apparent by the time France accepts Arabia as a vassal that the game is won. Thousands of points ahead, with a massive military and domination victory on the horizon, the game ends due to players having other appointments, but there is no question who would have soon won.

Result: Success in the race for second. Everything worked out perfectly for France: the map’s pathed nature helped high-culture Civs block out neighbors, France’s vast starting position gave them every opportunity to expand early — and they took it, and the failed invasion by Russia mobilized Louis XIV’s military and made invading Arabia (and presumably, Egypt/Carthage, with time) academic.

Lessons:

• A half-committed war can turn against one easily, making a begrudging neighbor a raging invasion force.
• A fully-committed war can overwhelm any opponent, whether or not either side is aggressive. Wars are won with speed as often as they are with force.
• Surprisingly, navies can make or break a Civ on the Maze map. Despite there being no large body of water, but canals, a strong navy is easy navigation when settling or invading, and an efficient means of exploration across the world, even through non-open borders.

The Off-Axis Terra — myself (Victoria), Shrubey (Napolean), zeth (Alexander), Brennus, Hannibal

Seemingly, a Terra map with a twist, the axis is off, putting the polar regions somewhere other than the extreme north and south of the map. This game is still on-going, so not much can be said, but there are some points to make.

Observations:

• Financial and Imperialistic is a good combination, making the cost of early expansion bearable.
• The AI gets desperate when trapped by an expanding neighbor. This isn’t as apparent as it has been in other games, but I can still sense it slightly as I wall in Hannibal.
• Stonehenge is a powerful, nearly critical tool in early-game aggressive expansion…

…which leads me to talk of theory, in closing. Having been reading books on the game of go in my spare time, I draw an interesting parallel between it and Civilization IV. Go is a game of territory, not capture; a game of cunningly building borders piece by piece, trapping some areas and making sacrifices in position for overall success or inevitable gain. And in many ways, a Civ’s starting expansion is like the ancient game.

I’ve hinted at it a couple times in-game, and definitely abused the tactic often enough. Especially if I have Stonehenge, I play against the neighbor’s borders; instead of growing out from my capital, I brush right up against the existing borders of my opponent (surely not an ally, by this point, for this is almost as aggressive a tactic as war) and let my culture push inwards and expand to the sides, drawing a wide shape around the territory I have claimed. And this is not a complete circle; while placing my points — my go-ishi — much like stones, the opponent may slip by, maybe even into my claimed territory. But they will fall to my oppressive culture pushing in from all sides, with time, unless they can find quickly match my culture with their own.

Some maps make this easier than others. As I mentioned above, the Maze map is made for this tactic. Narrow land paths mean you can easily choke the opponent from a side just by placing a city in the path of their expansion — a defiant rebuke. Turn down open borders and you’ve stopped their expansion entirely in that direction. Maps with large amounts of free terrain, such as the Great Plains map, make this tactic difficult, but possible on the wide scale over time. Shrubey and I effectively cornered two AI into ineptness by strategic placement of cities. The AI could expand, but never too far without risking their city flipping to our side, and they were slowly herded and isolated.

It’s a beautiful thing to see in practice.

Man in lab coat + blender + junk = website! Thanks, Pants.

If you’re reading this post, you’re now seeing incorporeal.org on the new server. It was a bit of a bumpy ride, but everything’s been sorted out and we’re flying high again. I think that the gallery is running a bit faster now, too, which is just awesome.

Speaking of the gallery, and speaking of awesome, here’s what I was playing with today: Beryl.

Enjoy the new server, ladies and gents.

incorporeal.org is changing servers (same provider, just a different box) in order to get access to some updated server software (mainly, PHP 5). The site will be down for a while, likely starting tomorrow morning. I don’t know what time, exactly, or for how long, but it should be 6–24 hours for the changes to trickle through DNS servers.

I decided to move the copy of my old Maniac Mansion Mania site to incorporeal.org and dig up a couple missing pieces from The Wayback Machine while I was at it. Being my first website, worked on in 1998 and 1999, it is a pain to look at now. Quite literally. I was also a weird kid back then.

In any event, until I finish the site index that links to all the various sections of my site, there it is: Maniac Mansion Mania. Now let us never speak of this again.

Mark asked if MapTool could be used with a projector. The short answer is yes; the long answer is yes, with some caveats, so I might as well go over what I see to be the most useful configurations. They are mostly restricted by the number of computers and displays that can be thrown at the problem.

For starters, note that this is a Java app, so this can be run on all the major operating systems. Also, MapTool starts its own server which doesn’t necessarily need to check in to the Internet, so all these connections can be made without leaving the LAN.

Configuration #1: 1 computer, 1 display

This is going to end up being the most basic configuration and the least convenient, however it’s still functional depending on what you want to do. This would be best for just displaying JPEGs or whatever as maps. With just one display, you’ll also be showing the app’s GUI, which you’ll need to use to make most changes. The DM tools (working on maps that aren’t the current map, fog of war to hide things the players haven’t seen yet) will be crippled, since whatever you do is being displayed to the players. But, if you just wanted to project maps onto an existing minis mat, this would work well enough.

Configuration #2: 1 computer, 2 displays

This is where the app starts getting useful. Running two instances of the app (which works, at least in Linux), the first instance runs as the server, which the GM would use on the first display (their main monitor, most likely), while the second instance connects as a lowly player (named something obvious, such as “Projector") and is on the second display, which may be another monitor or a projector.

With two instances running, a lot more functionality opens up. Since the projector is showing a player display, the GM’s display is secret and thus can be used to set up multiple maps, make changes in the fog of war, and so on, and then display the maps or uncover the fog of war at their leisure. The player display can then be “locked” to the GM’s (meaning the player’s map is focused on the same point as the GM’s) and play continues. This would allow, for instance, an entire dungeon level loaded into the app, with the GM uncovering the fog of war as the players progress. The GM could either move tokens through the application, or use minis on a mat.

The one caveat with this is that, being a non-trivial Java app, MapTool seems to suck up a lot of memory, and running two instances of it may not be feasible in all situations. After about 8 hours of gaming on two maps (one a very large open plain with a keep, one a very small section of road), six users, and about 30 counters, the GM app was using around 500 MB of memory. Not lightweight.

Configuration #3: 2 computers, 2 displays

This is kind of the same as above, except it dodges the memory limitations, and it allows for more feedback from the players. Since the GM runs both displays in the second configuration, there isn’t much the players can do — moving the map around to look at something else, moving counters, drawing on the map all have to be done by asking the GM. With a second computer (and appropriate devices), the players could control the machine that is being projected. The player client would still have all the non-GM limitations as above, but the players would have some decision in what they can see and can do with the map.

Configuration #4: >2 computers, >2 displays

The GM has their one computer, one display, just as before, but there are more player clients connected. For example, there could be a projector connected to the GM’s computer showing the main map as in configuration #2, while others with a laptop can connect and make changes from their own machine. For the wired group, everyone could have access to a computer, letting the entire mapping task be done through the app, and (optionally) just using the projector for show, or a larger display than what the players have available.

—

So those are the main options as I see them, Pants. Of course, I’ve only done what is effectively the latter, over the Internet, but the others should be just as possible, with varying degrees of utility. If you don’t try them out before then, we’ll have to run through possibilities over Thanksgiving. I don’t have a digital projector, but could probably muster up a spare monitor to bring wherever.

One of the things my IRC gaming group has started using is MapTool, a nice little multi-user network program that lets you import generic image files as maps and counters. Has grids for counter movement, uncoverable fog, and the surfaces can be drawn on. Connected players can move their own counters, so they can have a much stronger feeling of control when playing over the Internet, which really reduces the tactile nature of tabletop roleplaying. Pretty nifty.

We used it in the True20 game yesterday, and it really helped get things visualized. A lot more than generic counters and not-so-good drawing tools in The GIMP, and a lot less work, too. Definitely a keeper, and definitely something to keep in mind if my real-space gaming group ever feels the need to go digital.

Finished converting the IRC gaming group to True20 today (well, yesterday, technically) and ran a game that went a good eight hours. Filled with needlessly excessive and thorough exploration of cliffs near an orc-infested keep the party wanted. Took a while to get going, and combat took some getting used to, but by the end we were moving at a fairly good clip.

Thoughts on the system after one day of actually playing it:

• With the Conviction variant (1 + Cha + 1 per 2 levels past 1st instead of 3 + 1 per 2 levels past 1st), and free access to the Lucky feat, Charisma is a good stat (finally). Maybe even too powerful with Lucky, giving a Cha bonus to both Fatigue (Willpower) checks and Toughness saves to resist damage.
• Combat is more lethal and more unpredictable. One bad Toughness save (instead of using hit points in True20, one makes a save vs. a difficulty; the degree of failure is how much damage is taken) can cause huge problems, dropping an otherwise healthy character to disabled or even dying, and badly in need of healing. Yet on the other hand, for most of the combat (when encounters are balanced), ultimate victory is a process of slowly plugging away at a large enemy, wearing them down, doing little knicks of damage until their Toughness save is so bad they start failing massively and taking real damage.
• The above mostly eliminates the “I have massive armor so I’ll just wade through this torrent of enemies” syndrome. Every little hurt condition affects all later saves.
• Healing is more important; one lethal Toughness save that failed by 5 or more imposes a -2 to just about every check, until the condition is removed. That alone can do a lot of damage to one’s effectiveness, since both traditional combat and most power activation depends on making checks.
• As one could imagine from the above three thoughts, there is a bit more bookkeeping necessary in combat. A necessary evil, I feel, since it allows for more realistic-feeling combat, with tiring combatants.
• Tying power activation (spellcasting, more or less) to fatigue instead of static spells per day lists is brilliant. Important but not terribly consequential powers (like establishing mental contact, or creating little lights) do not immediately fatigue, promoting their use, while a combat caster with a good Will save can unleash many spells while not becoming too tired, which helps thwart spell misers who worry that every spell would be better applied in the future.
• An interesting balance in parry and dodge. High dodge characters are easier to maintain — a high Dex gives bonuses to attack and makes one harder to hit in almost any situation, but high Str, critical for dealing massive damage leads to good parry, which is only relevant in melee combat. The melee combatant has two options for defense, and can generally do more damage than their ranged counterpart, but they put themselves at risk of taking more damage themselves.
• Not sure if Con is any more or less important now; instead of being a major contributor to hit points, it is now a major contributor (one of only a few) to the Toughness save. Maybe alleviated slightly by the fact that Toughness and Fort saves are the only real uses of Con.
• There are some powers with static Difficulty values which kind of seem to scream for a challenge system which increases Difficulty, but I have yet to see one in the rules, although I swore such a thing was there.

That’s it for the True20 thoughts for now, although I’m certain more are coming as I crunch some numbers. I’m looking forward to eventually using this system with the real-space gaming group, if I ever get the time to commit to that. Maybe for Thanksgiving break…