I was introduced to both computers and Dungeons and Dragons around the same time. I did not even see a computer until I got to high school, and soon after I could be found in the computer lab every day after school playing a number of role playing games including Temple of Apshai, Akalabeth, and, Ultima II. I got my own computer not long after and was able to spend way too much time playing those games and others including Ultima III and SunDog. Note that I am only mentioning role-playing games.
I also started playing D&D around this time and it was clear that those games all owed a lot to D&D, in fact the basic mechanics of the games all clearly were derived in some ways from D&D mechanics. The one problem with D&D is that you can only play as often as everyone in the group can play, which was weekly to monthly through the years I played. The advantage of a computer game is that you can fire it up at any time, and play at your convenience. As a result, I began a long search for the holy grail of an immersive game which could be as fun as D&D.
Once in college, I was introduced to Unix and many games including a number of roguelike games like Rogue, Nethack, Omega and a few others I forget. A friend of mine set up AberMUD on a spare machine and I dabbled in that. As GUIs developed I played Crossfire and others of the sort. Years later I tried playing Neverwinter Nights, dabbled in Runescape, Second Life, Vendetta Online, and Neverwinter.
I spent a lot of time on these games in the times I couldn’t play D&D. But thinking back, for all the time I spent on each, I never once thought after a D&D session, “Wow! That was a waste of time”. But most of my time on various video games was usually followed some level of regret, of time wasted. Whenever I play D&D with my friends I have always come away happier than when I started and never a touch of regret. Why is that?
I remember someone jokingly saying that tabletop role playing games were “a bunch of numbers theory disguising itself as a game”. But really this is more true of the computerized versions. The bare mechanics of tabletop roleplaying games were transplanted into the computer, but the actual role playing, the human spirit, the creativity, was left behind. There is no “role playing”, even when there are actual choices to be made, the mechanics are always foremost in any decision. There is a satisfaction to choosing the optimal build, and making all the right choices and getting the higest score. With a computer, the choices are, perforce, limited, such that it is always a railroad. The number of tracks can be greatly increased, but in the end you are on a track, with countless options out of the question.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, which is why this story has sat half-finished for at least 5 years. If my step-son ever locates this story, he will write a lengthy critique explaining how wrong I am, and I am certain he is not alone. So it was comforting to find, at the end of chapter 6 of Joseph Laycock’s fantastic book Dangerous Games a few pages on this very subject, declaring “These are not characters in any narative sense, but collections of attributes and numbers. … in most computerized role-playing games, playing a character does not entail articulating and reflecting on the world, but is really an exercise in arithmetic as the player seeks to advance through a prewritten narrative by manipulating the mathematical representations of fantasy elements provided within the game.”
While I am certain the state of the art has improved greatly over any of the games I have mentioned above. And with recent advances in AI, it is only a matter of time before the game play will become more sandbox than railroad. However, as the years have gone on I have realized the holy grail I was searching for is illusory. What I crave isn’t the bare mechanics of a game, but rather the creativity and camaraderie of a group of friends sitting around the table weaving a story. Or perhaps the holy grail was not illusory, but rather, it was in my hands the whole time.
“The band, Elwood, the band!”
“The band? The band. The band!”
It was the last day of my senior year of high school. Since seniors finished school a week earlier than everyone else, my final project in auto shop had to be evaulated. My partner and I had done a partial rebuild of a Vega engine. Mr. P. came over with his handtruck and other hardware for starting engines. He hooked up the jumper cables and tried to start it. Nothing, it was turning over, but never firing. But he kept trying until, finally, a gout of flame jumped several feet out of the carburetor towards the ceiling. Mr. P. jumped back (as we all did), recomposed himself, realigned his ridiculous comb-over, quietly unhooked the jumper cables, said “you pass” without making eye contact and walked away. I’m sure my partner was able to get the engine going in the next week, since he actually knew what he was doing.
I don’t remember much else about the day, but after the last bell, walked out the front doors right to my father’s pickup, who was waiting for me. Everything had been packed the night before. We immediately started driving south. I wanted to be as far away from there as I could. I wanted a clean break. By the time the graduation ceremony rolled around I was in Los Angeles; the cap and gown in my closet would never be worn, and I would have no further contact with anyone from high school, except…
A few weeks later, I drove to Portland and met up with Lance and Chris to play Dungeons and Dragons. We started playing D&D several years earlier and had played regularily ever since, and with only a short break for my trip and time for Lance to move to Portland, we resumed where right where we left off and kept on for 12 more years. But then big changes in all of our lives brought it to and end and all those distractions caused us all to forget.
I didn’t really think of the importance of those two friends or of Dungeons and Dragons for many years. When you are young you don’t think about such things. But when a chance occurrence 20 years later made me think of Dungeons and Dragons, I tried to get back in contact.
I located Chris in 2019 and when the pandemic started the next year we started playing online, with his sister and kids joining in.
All through this I struggled to find Lance, every phone number I found did not work, the addresses were all out of date. But early this year my searching turned up a new address, so as I had done with every other address I found, I sent a letter. In the midst of a Father’s day get-together my phone rang. Some random 503 number, probably junk. But instead, a vaguely familiar voice asked for me by name. It was Lance! It is hard to express how happy I was.
So these two were the only friends from my childhood who I stayed in contact with, and I credit that to Dungeons and Dragons. At the time, I think we all just thought of it as a game, something to spend our Saturday afternoon doing to avoid homework. But now I see it was the glue that kept us getting together on a regular basis for all those years, and it helped us build a relationship that was deep enough that after a 20 year hiatus, we were able to just pick up where we left off.
Mike Shea wrote a touching article entitled Playing D&D Can Save Your Life which all of us middle aged men should read. And then pick up the phone and call that old friend you lost touch with. Get together regularly, and maybe an ongoing game would be just the thing to ensure you keep it up. It may save your life.
[Disclaimer and credit: I do not remember where I first heard about the brush turkey, but I suspect it was Douglas Adams during a book signing for his book Last Chance to See. The details of the brush turkey are exaggerated and maybe even wrong, but this is to serve a narrative purpose, so any zoologists can sit down, this parable isn’t for you.]
The brushturkey is very prone to boredom. Every time she lays an egg, she thinks to herself, “sitting on these eggs for several weeks is going to be really boring. There has to be a better way. I have an idea! I will build a compost pile on top of the eggs, and that will keep the eggs warm and I can go have fun.” She gets up and runs all over the place gathering organic matter and piles it up on top of the clutch of eggs. She has to gather quite a bit in order to get the temperature high enough to incubate the eggs. But finally she finished! Now she can relax!
After a while she thinks: “I better double check the temperature.” She sticks her head into the pile. “That feels too cool, let me gather more material”. She runs around gathering more material to add to the pile.
A few hours later she checks again. “Oh, no! It’s too hot, I’ll have to take some of the material off”. More running around.
She repeats this, constantly running around adding and removing material from the pile to keep the temperature just right. Day in and day out for several weeks.
Those with ears, let them hear!
As a programmer the urge to automate tasks is constant. However, there are many times when the effort of automating the task may be far greater than just doing the task manually. Let’s say you have a task which takes you 15 minutes, but with some automation you could reduce that to 5. So you spend a day writing a program to do the automation. But you only do that task twice a month. It will take years to break even.
You would have been better off sitting on that egg!
I had a whole bunch of error message screenshots saved and as I was looking through, I realized two things: first, even though there are only 2 dozen of them I don’t know if I have the energy to compose witty comments about each without becoming entirely demoralized. Secondly, I began to notice some themes. Therefore, I am going to take all the error messages I have and roughly categorize them. Since there is often overlap I am going to present it as a table, a sort of bingo card, indicating the categorization.
The first category I call “Sorry, not sorry”: inauthentic apologies for things that the author of the error message is likely responsible for in the first place.
The next category I call “Funny, not funny”: instead of giving inauthentic apologies for our screw up, we will try to distract from it with a “cute” saying (“aw, snap”) or a frowny face icon. I am not laughing, just stop.
The next category is what I call “helpfully not helpful”: the error message gives some excess, though unhelpful, detail with the error message. You still don’t know what went wrong but you spent twice as long reading the verbiage. Also useless suggestions like “try again later” or “retry” fall into this bucket.
The category “dunno” covers most of these errors: I don’t know what happened (even though I am coding an exception block), so I will just feign ignorance. It’s best when these are in passive voice, and extra credit for using the word “something” in the error.
The next category, which rarely comes up, is when there are clues as to what went wrong. I myself have (unintentionally) written errors like this with code like this:
warn "Error: unable to open file $file\n";
Of course, if $file is blank you get:
Error: unable to open file
Someone with some coding experience may pick up that a filename belonged there. Putting quotes around the file would have at least given a hint that I got an empty filename (and failed to sanitize my inputs). Note: I never said I was blameless in this error message hall of shame.
Here we go:
| error | notsorry | notfunny | nothelp | dunno | clues |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
x | x | x | x | |
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x | x | |||
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x | x | |||
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x | x | |||
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x | x | |||
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x | ||||
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x | x | |||
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x | x | x | ||
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x | x | |||
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x | ||||
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x | x | |||
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x | ||||
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x | x | |||
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x | x | |||
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x | x | |||
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x | x | |||
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x | x | |||
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x | x | |||
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x | x | x | x | |
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x | x | |||
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x | ||||
|
x |
How many of those have you seen? Perhaps I should have a giveaway for the first person to have personally seen every single one. I don’t know what sort of prize it would be. Maybe we could sit down and share some whiskey… I feel like I need it after looking at all those.
Some of my early career was spent working on Sun workstations and servers. Way back then they had the slogan “The Network is the Computer”. Clearly, that slogan is the old wine in the new bottle labeled “Cloud”, but that’s another story. As I sit looking at an hourglass or a spinning “progress” icon, I realize that the original slogan was incomplete, the full version is:
“The Network is the Computer… and that’s why it sucks so bad.”
Though, to be fair, the network is not the problem, as such. The problem is the way it is used. Specifically, the apparent pervasive assumption amongst programmers that all network operations have zero latency, infinite bandwidth, and are 100% reliable.
Over the last several years I have noticed a common topic which comes up whenever I talk with my father. He always mentions about how there was another shooting, and how bad the crime is in the city. After he repeated this enough I began to wonder what was going on. Whenever I visit, everything seems as good or better than it ever was (though the homeless problem is worse than ever). I did a bit of digging and found that the crime rates have been declining for years as they have most everywhere in the country.
So what is going on here? Here is my theory: TV news. He has been watching more TV news in recent years and the steady drumbeat of stories about crime and tragedy gives the impression of a unfolding disaster. I have heard it said that the plural of anecdote is not data, but the plural of scary anecdote is fear.
Imagine a TV station which, every night, on the news aired a story about someone who was struck by lightning. Someone killed! Next night, a person injured and in the hospital near death! Next night, a person who was struck years ago and still suffers. Next night, a person killed when a struck tree exploded. Next night, a person whose dog was struck in the dog park. And so on. Each one accompanied with grisly photographs and footage. After enough of this many people would be scared to ever go outside. And that advertisement for a portable Faraday Cage starts to look like a good idea.
But, as we all know, this fear is utterly irrational and not backed up by the data: only 270 people are struck by lightning in the US each year, and only 27 of them die. Furthermore, that death rate has been on the decline since records have been kept (1940).
But TV news lives for the lurid anecdote, the horrifying footage, the eyewitness stories, etc. That keeps the ratings up. And creates a lot of fear of the wrong things. Even when they give numbers it is one or two numbers which is not very useful. For example, if I told you that the stock market fell 350 points, you might think you need to panic, but then if I tell you that the current number is 27,691, then you would know that is a tiny percentage, and likely a normal fluctuation. But if I give you a chart showing the stock market numbers over the last year or two you could actually make an informed decision based on long-term trends. But that won’t keep their ratings up.
This sort of thing is also what gets people elected, the current incarnation of the Republican party has taken this to the most cynical extreme as stated by Newt Gingrich when he was challenged with actual data:
“The average American, I will bet you this morning, does not think that crime is down, does not think that we are safer. People feel more threatened. As a political candidate, I’ll go with what people feel.”
In other words, screw facts, data, logic, and rational discourse, if I can whip up enough fear I can get myself elected. The dreams of the founding fathers trampled in the name of winning.
So, several months ago I wrote up my experiences with TSR in the early days of the internet. A few days ago, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Plot Points, interviewing Shannon Appelcline, and was surprised to hear someone else involved in those long ago events.
While I had some bits of history he did not (e.g. the email TSR sent to me and related names and dates) I realize I left out some details. Also, in my searching, I found another account of these events, and a detailed web site and I found Rob Repp, himself.
One difference between our cases is that his site was devoted entirely to non D&D games. Which means he could laugh off the threatening letters. My site, on the other hand, covered many systems and there was a lot of D&D content, mainly because that was what I played. When I saw something on USENET of interest, I would archive it on the FTP site. As such, the D&D parts of my site were probably the only materials which I personally read. None of it was directly copied from any TSR materials. None of it, in my opinion, violated any copyrights.
But what was on there? Those files are likely long gone. I think I have a DAT tape containing those files, but finding someone with such a tape drive is unlikely, and I doubt the tape would be readable after all these years. The things I do remember where things like new magic items and spells, alternate critical hits tables, alternate rules, new character sheets, new classes, etc. A big section of the site was campaign write ups, basically transcripts of sessions. Now that I think about it, the modern day equivalent would be all the live-play podcasts which are quite common nowadays (my current favorite is The Titans of All’Terra) But at that time, my favorite was Navero which, coincidentally, I finally found on rpg.net, which is the site Shannon runs.
For reasons I explained in my last post on this subject, I had entirely checked out of the discussions following the lobotomizing of my FTP site. I was angry and demoralized that something I had worked for years on could be destroyed so easily, so I walked away. That was probably also contributed to my giving up role-playing games entirely a few years later.
But after hearing the podcast with Shannon, my curiosity compelled me to go look at the messages on rec.games.frp.dnd, see what I had missed, and piece together a larger timeline. What follows is quite lengthy and probably of little interest to most people, but it interested me, so here it is.
Please be advised that every element of our gaming system must be licensed
before you can incorporate it into a piece of software. This includes game
tables, item descriptions, and any copyrighted monster/character names. Feel
free to contact me by email regarding licensing. Most of the authors that have
written AD&D(R) software in the past neglected this step, and we're most
interested in preventing that from happening in the future.
Thanks!
Rob Repp
Manager, Digital Projects Group
TSR, Inc.
AOL: TSR Inc
InterNet: tsrinc@aol.com
InterNet: mobius@mercury.mcs.com
CompuServe: 76217,761
GEnie: TSR.Online
In article <2uljn4$6ho@thepoint.com> John Scott, j...@thepoint.com
writes:
>Anyone know of an ftp site that has a monstrous compendium availible for
>download? Thanks in advance. (Please email to j...@thepoint.com).
I'd be interested in knowing about this one myself. :)
Rob Repp | InterNet: tsrinc@aol.com
Manager, Digital Projects Group | InterNet: mobius@mercury.mcs.com
TSR, Inc. | CompuServe: 76217,761
__________________________________ | GEnie: TSR.Online AOL: TSR Inc
All opinions are my own, not TSR's | 414-248-3625 Fax 414-248-0389
It is available at ftp/mpgn.com, version II should be out soon.
We ARE aware of the fact that people want to be able to share their
creative efforts with others, and we're trying to find a way to manage
licenses to allow this without giving it all away.. In the meantime,
any software, netbook, etc. which uses TSR copyrighted names,
material, etc. is unlawful.
Let me include a copy of a policy letter we just drafted recently. Here goes:
As we have begun to explore the online community in depth, we've found many
avid gamers and fans. We're interested in providing you with the best in
gaming products that meet our own standards of quality, as well as suiting
your needs and interests. We know that many gamers develop campaigns and
other materials entirely for their own use. We think this is great!
However, when gamers begin sharing their creations with the public, whether
for profit or not, they are infringing our rights. If we don't make an
earnest attempt to prevent this infringement of our trademarks and
copyrights, our ownership of these extremely valuable assets may be
jeopardized.
A gamer in this situation has a few options. He can strip every TSR
trademark and all copyright from his creations before putting them in public
(i.e. "genericize" the adventure). Or he can share his creations with the
public in a way that is licensed and approved by TSR. This is the more
desirable solution, as it protects our rights, and still leaves room for
gamers to share their creative expressions.
Sometime very soon, we're going to create a place where gamers can legally
upload and share their creations, including modules, stories and software. At
that time, I'd be happy to work with you to give your product a base to work
from. We are definitely interested in fostering goodwill among customers,
and we'd like to see our upcoming effort as a pilot project. Eventually, we
want gamers to be able to turn to TSR in cyberspace as easily as they do in a
hobby store.
> Again, this is all missing the point. TSR can't sue me if I publish a
> 'generic' adventure with the monster 'goblin' in it. But if I list that
> goblin as having AC 7, 1-4 hp, THAC0 20, Intelligence Low, etc, then I'm
> using TSR's copyrighted monster. If I needed the Monstrous Manual or
> other TSR product to get the information for 'goblins', then I've
> probably violated copyright. Note, I am NOT saying TSR can copyright
> terms like Armor Class, Intelligence, etc. But, if I get the information
> for goblins from a TSR product, and republish it in another form, I've
> created a derivative work, and am thus liable.
This interpreatation is correct. I checked with legal, and you've got it.
Due to the large volume of mail we're receiving, we're not replying to most
of it personally. Copyright comments and legal questions will be archived for
later examination. Policy statements will be posted to rec.games.frp.dnd.
Customer service and gaming questions will be routed internally and answered
as quickly as possible.
For those of you who aren't entirely certain I exist, I'll be on a panel
discussion regarding online services at GEN CON. David Goss, Bruce Nesmith
and I will discuss proposed projects, future plans, and take questions
from the audience. See you there! :)
For the curious:
Yes, I did PlaneScape's border art. I do exist, and I am your internet
contact. Snail mail can be directed to:
TSR, Inc.
POB 756
201 Sheridan Springs Rd.
Lake Geneva, WI 53147
ATTN: Rob Repp, Digital Projects
I did, in a fit of pique at being repeatedly misquoted, deny someone's
recent request to quote me wholesale. Please feel free to paraphrase the
gist of that response. Actual verbose policy statements and clarifications
will be forthcoming, complete with a request to repost them where-ever you
like.
Any opinions on the border art?
Maybe I'm just ignoring you... :)
Nope, I'm pretty sure that's not it. I must be busy, or maybe I just have
nothing to contribute. Hmmmm, maybe I was in an accident. Nope. Ummm...
"When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed."
David Byrne
Official releases forthcoming. Meanwhile, I'm quietly watching the
commentary go by. That's all, nothing too sinister. Generally, when
addressing a crowd, you should say only what needs saying, lest you draw
fire. In fact, this comment is probably a mistake, but I couldn't resist.
Have a nice day!
REGARDING TRADEMARKED AND COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL USED ON-LINE:
TSR is now an active member of the on-line gaming community. Since
Day-One, TSR products and artwork have been developed by creative people
employed or hired by TSR. This has resulted in the creation of an
extensive line of products, identities, names, rules, game mechanics,
logos, and standards of quality, to name a few. The gaming products,
novels, and publications are designed to encourage resourcefulness and
creativity in play. All of these created properties are owned by TSR
through national trademarks and copyrights which protect their publication
electronically or published on paper. When they are published by anyone
other than TSR, Inc. or their licensees, this publication becomes an
infringement to TSR trademarks and copyrights.
However, the gamers, designers, writers, artists, and editors who work for
TSR, do not wish to inhibit role playing game play.
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTINUED PLAY:
WHEN USING TSR PROPERTIES:
You can create material using the AD&D game mechanics, etc. and place that
material on MPGNet, a licensee of TSR, or place it on AOL on TSR's new
Bulletin Board. You can download anything -- graphics, games, etc.
appearing on TSR AOL for your personal use. Currently, any other
distribution to the general public in paper form or on the net of
AD&D adventures, other TSR materials and game mechanics, or copyrighted
materials is considered unauthorized. However, you CAN freely distribute
or publish "generic" novels, stories, game mechanics, etc. Read on.
HOW TO CREATE GENERIC MATERIAL SOME TIPS:
Don't specifically use AD&D statistics. Be creative. If you want a PC to
encounter a stupid but strong NPC, let the GM determine the NPC's actual
stats for the game system used by that GM. If the party encounters a
hydra, let the GM look up the stats for the hydra in the game system he is
using.
Don't set the adventures in a TSR world. Create your own or use one from
history or legend. For example, you could set your adventure in Atlantis,
but not in the FORGOTTEN REALMS Adventure World.
Don't use monsters, spells, etc. that were created by TSR. Create and name
your own. Draw on history, legend or reality even spell their actual
names backward for uniqueness.
Or, if a monster or spell is used in several different game systems, this
is a good indication that it is not owned by TSR. For example, Drow were
created by TSR, but a hydra is a known legendary monster and is public
domain.
You really can get going creatively when you invent your own, unique, game
mechanics . . . worlds, monsters, etc. And you are free to publish
anywhere when you specifically do not rely on AD&D game mechanics or other
material from TSR.
With our new on-line forum on AOL, we'd like to hear from you about games,
graphics, audio, and other material you'd like to download for your own
gaming. Please let us know. We plan to be electronically publishing a lot
of great things in the future for your gaming use.
(R) and TM designate trademarks owned by TSR, Inc. (c) 1994 TSR, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
] The answer is simple: If you're selling a separate product based on our
] material, or free-distributing something that competes with things we
] license (e.g, software), then we would keep a level of control and ask for
] a piece of the action. On free-distribution GURPS software, we go through
] a quality-control and licensing procedure but no money changes hands.
]
] If you're creating a fanzine, or sharing your own original stories or
] online, then more power to you. We think it's great. We make no attempt
] to license or control fanzine writers, whether their medium is print or
] electrons. The two are indistinguishable these days, really.
]
] If you do create something neat, it would be a courtesy to send our
] webmaster a copy and give YOUR permission for us to archive it on our own
] system for our users to enjoy.
> Does TSR regard it as illegal to play AD&D with a dozen or so people over the
> Net, as opposed to playing it with a dozen or so people in my living room?
We certainly do not. Saving up all the moves, however, and republishing
them as a separate work would probably be an infringement. Playing by any
means is fine.
> Could anyone tell me what the WWW Home page is for TSR?
Not yet, but soon. :)
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 14:43:29 -0400
From: "TSR, Inc." <TSR...@AOL.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list ADND-L <ADN...@UTARLVM1.UTA.EDU>
Subject: Help Wanted
I realize that this is an ad, but I couldn't think of a more likely bunch of
people to be interested in it, so here it is. :)
Rob Repp
Manager, Digital Projects Group
TSR, Inc.
ONLINE COORDINATOR
TSR, Inc., the international leader in fantasy game, book, and magazine
publishing, has an immediate opening for a motivated, organized individual
with excellent communications and technical skills to assist in development
of content for commercial online services and the Internet. Qualified
applicants to be familiar with current online material. Ability to contribute
to development of imaginative new content. Preferred skills include: HTML
and/or RMPlus scripting; Adobe Photoshop; TCP/IP software tools; experience
using WWW, FTP and Usenet; and interactive multimedia development. Online
event planning, forum coordinator experience a plus.
Send resume and salary history to:
TSR, Inc.
201 Sheridan Springs Rd.
Lake Geneva, WI 53147
ATTN: Human Resources
or TSR...@AOL.COM
Actually, I just hired a new online coordinator. I remain the "online
rep." More and more TSR people will be out on the net in the future,
though. We're getting more wired all the time.
Rob Repp
Manager, Digital Projects Group
TSR, Inc.
I'm Sean Reynolds, TSR's new Online Coordinator. Rob Repp has taken a
job with another company, and so he is no longer here at TSR. I'll be
in charge of our online contacts, including the internet, AOL, etc.
I forgot to mention it yesterday, but yesterday was my
first anniversary of working for TSR.
This means that _today_ is the first anniversary of
the day Rob Repp _left_ TSR.
>Tell us, Sean, what have you learned in all that time about being
>an online rep?
Take several slow, deep breaths before saying anything.
After looking at all this, it appears that if I had just blocked off access to the D&D related directories, within a year the whole thing would have blown over, and, two years later TSR would have been taken over by WotC and the landscape changed entirely. Though, on the other hand, FTP sites were on their way out, and, my site would have been rapidly become a historical footnote if I didn’t transition to the web. I may have been considering such a transition around the time of these events, but I honestly don’t remember.
Many years ago, I was talking to my father about money and retirement, and he asked me “when will you be vested?” I looked at him as if he had three heads and said “vested in what?” Then it was his turn to look at me as though I had three heads. When he retired in the late 80’s he had a full pension, and, to this day, has health insurance as part of that pension. He had no idea that these things are almost nonexistent nowadays. We also talked about wages, and I surpassed his highest annual wages when I was in my 30’s; but that’s in raw dollars! Once adjust for inflation, I have never come close to his wages, and I never will unless my boss gives me a 60% raise.
My father had a better life than his parents, and his parents were better off than his grandparents, and so on. But my generation is the first one to go the other direction, and with every passing year it is increasingly clear that the downward slide will likely continue. Understandably, younger generations are upset about this: #okboomer, for example:
Boomers as a class are guilty of; generational terrorism, insolvent social security and medicare nets, lower life expectancies, and psychopathic tribalism. All as result of their self-entitled narcissism as group. Look who they elect to represent them.
It often does feel like earlier generations have “pulled the ladder up behind them”: They have social security, pensions, and medical care, but it does not seem clear that any of that will be there in the coming decades. However, I am not sure this is “generational terrorism”. Here is how I think about it: my generation went looking for the American Dream, and walked in to find her murdered, with the boomers standing next to the corpse. Was it murder? Manslaughter? Was he an unwitting accomplice? Or was it just coincidence? It’s hard to say; it probably depends on which boomer you talk to.
Regardless of blame, it is clear that my parents’ generation had opportunities that I will never have (unions, pensions, cheap housing, plentiful jobs) and there are opportunities which I had that my children will never have (social security?, affordable college, steady jobs). There is plenty here to feel resentment about, but we need to actually understand the problem and develop actual solutions rather than name-calling. I just recently found the book The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown which will, hopefully, provide some answers here.
But one factor that I think is often overlooked is the pervasive impact of oil prices/availability; I feel that everyone should read The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency for the full story. My parents lived out their adult lives in the boom years of cheap oil, and in those years we restructured our civilization around the automobile as though the oil would always be that cheap. My father could easily drive 25 miles to work because the oil was cheap and the highways were never crowded (coincidentally, he spent his career in the asphalt business, helping to pave all the new roadways). But now we find that we are lucky to find affordable housing within 25 miles of work, and the roads are often choked with traffic. Our children cannot walk anywhere since nobody thought to build sidewalks or have any amenities within walking distance, so, on top of everything else, we end up being a taxi service for our children. We are trapped in a prison of our own making, squeezed between an unsustainable living arrangement and inexorably rising oil prices.
But, all in all, this “ok boomer” is another shot in the ongoing battle going on between Boomers and Millennials (“snowflake” was one of the epithets being hurled the other direction). Meanwhile, my generation sits in the middle, ignored, as usual. For example, Gen X was left out of a list of generations, but someone explained why this was:
Gen X was apparently out of the building during roll call, probably too busy taking care of an elderly parent while sending an Uber to an unemployed millennial child and arguing with a post-millenial about why the WiFi is so slow. #GenX
That hits pretty close, though my millennial child is under-employed and has his own car, but my post-millennial child will complain about the WiFi. But don’t we all?
This post has been sitting half finished for a very long time. I hereby give up and post it as is…
So it was election night 2016, and it was becoming clear what we had done to ourselves. I began thinking about my daughter and what to tell her the next day. This would be her first memory of an election, and instead of being something to, at least somewhat, inspire her confidence about the power of democratic institutions, it would, instead, be a traumatic stain in her memory: someone got elected, under questionable circumstances, who, even an 8 year old could see, was clearly incompetent and indifferent to the democratic institutions of this country and the rule of law.
Then I began to think about my first memories of anything political: I remember sitting with my parents watching the evening news as Nixon announced his resignation, I had no idea what Watergate was all about, but I knew something really bad had happened, a corrupt leader breaking the law to gain a position of power. A traumatic stain on my image of our democratic institutions.
Then, I began to wonder if all of us have some memory like this, so I started asking around. My wife’s first memory was of Reagan getting elected (another dark day). My mother had a clear memory of her entire class going outside to stand around the flagpole as they lowered it to half-mast when FDR died. My father didn’t remember anything about elections or politics, it wasn’t something his immigrant parents ever talked about (though, to be fair, I don’t think they ever talked much about anything). But he says he remembers seeing B-17 bombers going overhead and the fear of what the Japanese might do. My mother-in-law remembered seeing a sign which said “I like Ike” and asking her father “do we like Ike?” and he said “Oh, yes we do!” So at least one of those was not traumatic.
I don’t know what this memory will do in my daughter’s head as she grows up and starts participating in our democracy. I can only hope that it will inspire her to be involved and engaged in making things better rather than descending into resignation, slacktivism and trolling on political forums.
Despite this error, Firefox did, in fact, launch correctly. So both unhelpful and incorrect.
But the sad corpse emoji makes it all better.
I’m glad there could be a reason for this error. But, on the other hand, it may just be random, like the lottery in reverse.
I will do my best to recount my small part amidst the decline of TSR, but many of the original files are gone (or are on media which nobody can read), so the exact dates are a bit fuzzy.
I had been playing AD&D since the early ‘80 while in high school with two friends, but in total isolation. I rarely met anybody else with interest in it and so our games were pretty much limited to published materials and our own attempts to concoct our own. In fact, my first DM experience was with Village of Homlett and then I tried to write the sequel promised at the end of that module. It is probably a good thing that I lost those materials.
Sometime around 1988, I discovered rec.games.frp and related newsgroups on USENET. This changed everything for me, suddenly I was reading details of other people’s games, alternate rules, monsters, maps, stories, etc. This cross-pollination greatly improved my own game and rejuvenated my interest. I started buying material for the new Forgotten Realms setting and started a campaign based on it.
Within a couple of years, my university got connected to the internet, and we set up an ftp server on a Tektronix workstation sitting in the computer science lab (on more than one occasion the FTP site was down because a student bumped the network equipment behind that machine). One of the first things I did was start collecting the useful bits from rec.games.frp and populating my ftp site. On 10-Apr-90 I sent an announcement to rec.games.frp, and even more things started coming in and the site grew by leaps and bounds.
In early 1994 I took a new job. A few months later, an email was forwarded to me by my successor:
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 94 17:28:59 –0400
From: TSRInc@aol.com
To: postmaster@rigel.cs.pdx.edu
Subject: TSR Copyrighted Material
SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR:
Your site was recently included in a list of noted FTP sites for
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS gaming
material. You should be aware that DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and all
related marks and properties are copyrighted by TSR, Inc. of Lake
Geneva, Wisconsin.
You should also be aware that any items created without a specific
license are infringements of TSR copyrights. Such items include (but
are not limited to) any software, net.books, modules, tables, stories,
or rules modifications which contain elements from our copyrighted
properties, including characters, settings, realm names, noted magic
items, spells, elements of the gaming system, such as ARMOR CLASS, HIT
DICE, and so forth. To date, TSR has not licensed any of these net
publications.
On behalf of TSR, Inc. I ask that you examine your public net sites at
this time and remove any material which infringes on TSR copyrights.
Our intention is to find a way to license these and future creative
efforts. In the meantime, remove them from your sites without delay.
Please feel free to contact me with comments or questions. I will
refer any pertinent queries to our legal department as soon as I
receive them.
Rob Repp, Manager, Digital Projects Group, TSR, Inc.
At this point in my life I was not prepared to deal with this: I had just taken a new job, I was a junior engineer frantically trying to learn new software and how to keep builds, and everything else, going. I was also teaching a system administration class at the University, and I was in the process of buying a house and preparing to move. So this was really the last thing I needed on my plate.
I was pretty angry about all of this, as I had nothing on my ftp site which infringed any copyrights. I read most everything that went onto the site, and I never would have permitted anything which outright copied TSR materials. Apparently, someone in TSR leadership must have felt than any fan-generated work represented competition that had to be stamped out. Since it was quite unlikely that any of these fans were capable of challenging TSR in court, it was an easy win for them.
As a result of all that, I don’t think I took any action. But TSR had been mailing other admins all over the University, and they shut down the site in September. They let me go in and pick out the non-D&D material and set up a new site. Over the next few weeks I butchered out 70 megs of stuff and brought the revised site back (here’s a message I posted about this). I sent mail to the TSR representative asking them to review in case I missed anything, but I never heard anything either way.
Since I had a fairly well-known FTP site and a lot of naive youthful enthusiasm, I thought I could have an impact on TSR. So put a README on the site explaining what happened to most of the content and encouraged everyone to boycott TSR. Within a week I had a manifesto posted there, further encouraging people to adopt freely distributed gaming systems to avoid this whole issue. If TSR wasn’t going to be nice to the fan community, we should abandon them. I had been active in the GNU Project for several years and clearly had delusions that I could be the Richard Stallman of FRP games. Hah!
I looked at various game systems and settled on FUDGE. I set to work reformatting the plain text rules into HTML and put that on the ftp site. Then I started putting together a fantasy supplement which was intended for former D&D players like me. That effort never got past an outline and a Texinfo formatted document (with no content). My gaming group started playing using FUDGE, but designing a game system is hard work, and the gaming sessions were not as much fun and both the game sessions and the fantasy FUDGE effort fizzled.
As this was going on, the arguments on rec.games.frp.dnd continued, though I was largely detached from that for the reasons mentioned above. Looking at the archives on Google Groups, it appears that the discussions continued for several years, with many people (including me) using the epithet T$R to represent the company’s apparent greed.
About 30 people pulled together a mailing list about the TSR situation, and some discussion ensued, both about legal options and alternatives like FUDGE. Unfortunately, this also quickly fizzed. The last email was in December of that year. One of the leading people in those discussions wrote an extensive article about this in his “Guildsman” fanzine. You can see this via the Wayback Machine.
So, what happened then? I don’t know, I barely thought about D&D until recently, so I had no idea what happened. Here’s what I have pieced together: It would appear that this legal action was part of TSR’s death spiral (listen to Why Did TSR Fail for details), and the bankrupt company was bought by Wizards of the Coast whose attitude towards the fan community was entirely different. The next edition of D&D was made freely available, which was a total reversal in policies. It seems like there is a lot of fan/3rd party material available, including on Roll20, DM’s Guild, and others.
So, with that, I officially retract my call for boycott, though I suspect only a handful of people remember it, and the only people still following it had, like me, abandoned gaming for other reasons. Since I started this article I bought the D&D Starter Set, so it is now officially official.
Years ago, in an episode of the Permaculture Podcast, the host joked that Computer Science was less science and more superstition and witchcraft. That had a familiar ring to it.
Several years earlier, I had started a new job at a company which was almost entirely Windows based (all my previous jobs had been primarily Unix). One day I was trying to track down a complicated problem. I asked my boss if there were any more diagnostic tools at hand which would help, to which he responded “would the problem go away if the computer is rebooted?” Most likely, but that won’t fix the root prob- “Then reboot the computer, it’s Windows, people are used to that. Don’t waste your time debugging.” I verbally agreed, but in my head I thought “how are things supposed to get better if we do that?”
Fast forward two decades… our lives have become awash in pervasive and increasingly complicated devices. Every day, we encounter strange problems: Spinners which never stop, devices which won’t connect, blank screens, mysterious crashes. Why these happen is a topic for a different day. But how do you troubleshoot it? Google the problem and you’ll find numerous articles which are a variation on this theme:
I may be exagerating a bit… but not much, here’s an example and another. I know I’ve seen others, I’m sure you have too. Feel free to post others in the comments.
But the upshot of this is that nobody knows what is going wrong. All these so-called “troubleshooting” steps are just guesses and workarounds for a wide variety of bugs which are unlikely to ever be fixed. Nobody cares. Just keep rebooting until it works or until there’s an update which breaks other things. The next big version will change everything, anyway, so why bother fixing it? Buy the next latest and greatest gadget, repeat ad nauseum.
Surely you cannot be unsure!
In all my years of programming I’ve never had an operation return an uncertain result. I’ve had my share of unexpected results, but that’s just sloppy programming somewhere along the line. Perhaps it is returning a result of type SchrödingersCat.
On a recent vacation I was driving through Utah and passed through Heber City. I had just started reading “Of Dice and Men” and the next day read the chapter about the Satanic Panic and this excerpt:
In May of 1980, parents in the “solidly Mormon” farming town of Heber City, Utah, convinced their local school board to shut down an after-school D&D club and acused its organizers “of working with the Antichrist and of fomenting Communist subversion.” Local Christian minister Norman Springer told The New York Times that the game was “very definitely” antireligious: These books are filled with things that are not fantasy, but are actual in the real demon world and can be very dangerous for anyone involved in the game because it leaves them so open to Satanic spirits."
This encapsulates my only regret about the vacation: that I did not get a picture of myself by the town sign holding a D&D book. By the time I read the above passage, I was a hundred miles away and wouldn’t be back there.
For more details of what happened in this city in 1980 see this paper.
I do not recalling hearing about any of these things when I started playing D&D just a few years later with a couple of high school friends. But soon after, I happened upon a copy of Jack Chick’s Dark Dungeons. At first, I found it hilariously wrong on so many fronts. But then I became more alarmed, knowing that my home town had many people who would actually believe this, in fact, almost certainly so, given I found the pamphlet in a local grocery store. And one friend had informed me a year earlier that I would be going to Hell for not believing his brand of Christianity. So a good old-fashioned book burning was not out of the realm of possibility. My D&D hobby was not something I talked about at school because I knew it would be just more fuel for ridicule and bullying. But now I had another reason to keep it to myself; bullying is one thing, but bullying in the name of self-righteous superstition and fear is far more dangerous beast (as some of my ancestors found out).
However, I continued to think about why people had such reactions to D&D. It seemed that there were some pretty profound misunderstandings of the game. For example after one game one of our parents asked who won, underscoring how D&D was different from other games.
I started comparing D&D to other games. First, chess. One one hand you have a game where you play a single individual and you have to face the consequences of your actions in the game. But with chess, the entire goal it to wipe out the enemy, pushing your hapless pawns (peasants) and other servants to their deaths, all to defend the relatively impotent king. That’s real wholesome: everyone and everything must be sacrificed to save some spoiled inbred brat whose only qualification for the job was who their daddy was. What about Monopoly? The entire goal it build up a financial empire, largely via luck of the dice, to dominate and destroy your other opponents. Another wholesome message. Poker? Take everyone else’s money. Actually it is hard to think of a game that does not involve defeating other players. Even when there are teams, they are generally trying to defeat other teams.
I think role playing games (like D&D) are unique in that all players work cooperatively towards a goal (which is usually to defeat evil monsters). Everyone collaborates to tell a shared story with an element of chance thrown in at every opportunity (via the dice). There are no winners, or, perhaps, they are all winners. With that in mind, the “communist subversion” accusation mentioned above makes a bit more sense. I mean, the nerve of people, to suggest working cooperatively! Next thing you know, they will be kind to their neighbors and start loving their enemies, a suggestion which got one man nailed to a tree 2000 years ago.
The common refrain back during the satanic panic was about people committing suicide or murder because of D&D. If a person is driven to such acts because of a game, the problem is mental illness, not the game. If a person is that detached from reality, most anything could set them off (e.g. a Beatles song, The Catcher in the Rye, Jodie Foster, etc.) It is an interesting coincidence that the people who asserted that D&D contains actual occult material and that you could actually summon evil spirits with it, also show an obvious detachment from reality. That isn’t to say that book burning is as bad as murder, but both are acts which can only happen when one has detached themselves from reality and their moral compass.
The accusation of “satanic” is, of course, laughable, but it is clear that such beliefs have not gone away, as I was writing this, a pastor at a Catholic school in Nashville banned Harry Potter books claiming:
“These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text,”
While I do not believe that it is possible to summon evil sprits (since I doubt such things even exist), but it is apparently possible to summon medieval superstitions, even in the 21st century. For more details, read this.
I could go on further, but others have explored this at length, The Plot Points Podcast has several relevant episodes: The Satanic Panic and Demons & Devils & Dungeons & Dragons: A Brief History and the book Dangerous Games seems to be an in-depth treatment of this topic; I plan on reading it. You can listen to an interview with the author.
I recently upgraded my workstation and, once again, had to change music players. Though this is just as well since Banshee’s 20 seconds of unresponsiveness after changing tracks was pretty intolerable. So now I tried Clementine. It seems like a reasonably good player, but on certain tracks I get this:
Presumably the tracks in question were MP3, but knowing the track/file name and the plugin it wanted would be most helpful in locating the exact plugin I need. After installing a whole bunch of packages with different codecs nothing changed.
In my youth I used to think that free software would ultimately be better quality. So much for that.
In 1986 I was handed a newspaper all about legalization of marijuana (it was actually an early version of the book The Emperor Wears No Clothes), and I have been supportive of legalization ever since. I voted for it a couple times, but it didn’t pass until I left the state. In fact every state I have lived in has legalized it… after I left! Perhaps supporters of legalization in Connecticut should start a fund to get me to move elsewhere.
More recently I read the book After Legalization which outlined the different ways legalization could actually happen, using the end of prohibition as a guide for how it could be done and the implications of the various alternatives. If you are at all interested in this issue, you should read it.
However, I would like to submit an alternative plan for your consideration:
Thus, the only way you are going to use marijuana is to grow it yourself. This would suddenly become a nation of gardeners! Numerous people would look at which part of their yards could be used for growing and how to construct beds. Everyone would begin talking about compost methods, mulching materials, gardening tools, and breeding strategies. The next thing you know, they would also begin planting some tomatoes or carrots, since it is easy enough to grow another row of plants. Some people would start cultivating more land and maybe start their own farms, earning a bit of extra money, providing fresh vegetables to their neighbors, and getting out into the outdoors.
I will give Thomas Jefferson the last word (in a letter to George Washington, 14 Aug. 1787):
Agriculture … is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals & happiness.
And in a letter to John Jay, 23 Aug. 1785:
Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the most virtuous, & they are tied to their country & wedded to its liberty & interests by the most lasting bands.