kent_allard_jr

The Mayan epic the Popol Vuh has two fascinating sections in which heroes travel to Xibalba, the land of the dead. (The "X" is pronounced sh.) Xibalba lies underground and will remind any longtime D&D player of a dungeon. In fact it inspired one of my D&D adventures a couple years ago, in which the players had to survive trials in four "houses," just as Hunahpu and Xbalanqu had to in the Popol Vuh.

Now I'm going farther, mapping the whole Hero Twin journey for Minecraft. I'm doing my best to follow the epic, in which the heroes

1. Left their farm
   
2. Went "over the ledge of a steep slope"
   
3. Came to the mouths of Rustling and Gurgling Canyons
   
4. Passed through Scorpion Rapids
   
5. Crossed Blood River
   
6. Crossed Pus River
   
7. Came to the Crossroads between Red Road, White Road, Yellow Road and Black Road
   
8. Greeted the lords of Xibalba, and endured a pair of practical jokes
   
9. Survived the trials in Dark House, Rattling (Cold) House, Bat House, Jaguar House and Razor House
   
10. And finally, defeated the death gods in a ball game.
    

So far I've only finished the Rustling and Gurgling Canyons, as shown by the screencap below.

Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times reports on the fate of Anders Breivik:

If the court finds him insane, Mr. Breivik will be kept under forced psychiatric care “for as long as his illness persists” (possibly the rest of his life). Otherwise, Mr. Breivik’s maximum sentence will be 21 years, although a judge can extend his incarceration after that point if he’s still considered dangerous.

By American standards that’s a shockingly lenient punishment. Comparing one high-profile case with another—if a Florida jury finds George Zimmerman guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, he’ll face a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a minimum penalty of 25 years.

The American system, oriented around punishment (vengeance) and containment (keeping dangerous people off the streets), is arguably more satisfying for a crime like Mr. Breivik’s. But outside of worst-of-the-worst type cases, it’s Norway, with its focus on rehabilitation, that has the more rational and effective prison policy.

Norway locks up only one-tenth as many people as the US. The sentences (as noted) are much lighter, and conditions in prison much cushier, with each cell having a flat-screen TV, an unbarred window and a private bathroom. Nevertheless they have a far lower recidivism rate: Only 20% of their inmates return to jail after 2 years, while 60% of ours do. Their system clearly works better than ours.

In comments you hear a standard response, one that comes up a lot with crime and punishment: You can't compare Norway with the US because Norway is a "homogeneous society." It's never explicit why "homogeneity" leads to low crime rates, and I wonder if its a euphemistic way of saying "they have less crime because they have fewer n*****s." I doubt they're saying America's history of exploitation and racism is responsible, because while that might explain the US approach to crime, it spectacularly fails in justifying it.

I think there is something to the latter, in fact. When you look at homicide rates around the world you find the highest rates are found in Russia, Latin America from Mexico to Brazil, and South Africa. If we put Putin's Russia aside for a moment, we see a history of race-based slavery and segregation is something they all have in common. It's telling that the highest US crime rates are in the South and Southwest, as well, with slavery and Jim Crow in the former and the Mexican underclass in the latter.

In these countries the police are -- or were for far too long -- an occupying, alien army, deployed against an underclass that "only understood force." Arbitrary violence -- and thus imprecise and unjust violence -- was deployed against them, while they were denied any opportunity to improve themselves. In an environment like that the law has no legitimacy; it's something to be avoided, not cooperated with, no better or worse than the gangsters down the street ... and the gangsters know the community and can keep closer tabs on you.

So crime is high, and it stays high long after slavery is abolished, Apartheid ends and the lynch mobs go home. People hate and fear criminals, and there's nothing wrong with that, as long as they don't let hatred and fear overwhelm their better instincts. Unfortunately it's easy to be overwhelmed when criminals don't look or talk like them; it's easy to fall back on old assumptions, that you're dealing with subhumans who "only understand force." Even when it's clear that treating criminals decently, as the Norwegians seem to do, actually makes the streets safer.

Life has been a little busier than usual, so I've had less time for LJ. Here's a summary:

• I'm back to work for the State Senate. It's full time, but only temporary, and instead of a six-person staff it's just me, alone in the office. Nevertheless money is good, and I'm happy to get out of the house.
  
• I spent last week in federal jury duty on a banking fraud case. I'd never been part of deliberations before, and it was a heady experience, something everyone should be part of at least once. Too bad that in New York you're permanently indentured and I've been told I'll called back every two years, grumble grumble. (Once is fun, a lifetime not so much.)
  
• Kimberly and I will be in the Aegean for our "real" honeymoon in late May. This was a compromise: I wanted the history and Kim wanted a cruise (she loves being pampered and taken care of, something I don't like much at all). We'll see parts of Greece I missed in '09 (Crete in particular), and this time I'll go full Indiana Jones, bring a flashlight, and get to the bottom on the cistern at Mycenae, damn it!
  
• Gaming: After loving Saints Row 2 to death I couldn't resist Saints Row the Third. I enjoyed it a greatly, and LOL'd out loud at the brazen wackiness a few times, but it was a lot easier than its predecessor, and that made it a little less satisfying, as I finished the main storyline in about one-third the time.
  
• I finished Mass Effect in about the same amount of time (15-20 hours), and my reaction was ... meh. Maybe I was spoiled by SR3; after running around naked with a rocket launcher, a standard strait-laced SF RPG failed to excite me. It wasn't bad, and the basic premise was intriguing, but I found the combat and general gameplay a little dull. Maybe it's just me.
  
• After Mass Effect I turned to Spellbound Caves, one of Vechs' "Super Hostile" Minecraft dungeons. I just finished it this morning, and overall I had a blast. If you've downloaded Minecraft but it didn't engage you, I'd recommend trying it again with one of Vechs' maps. Challenging but a lot of fun.
  

The picture, by the way, is by the great Phil Foglio from a old Dragon. I wish I had the Photoshop skills for a more elegant editing job (it might help if I used Photoshop instead of Corel Photo-Paint, too), but I don't.

As I've said before, I think the computer RPG has eclipsed the paper & pencil variety, at least when it comes to the player's experience. (I know this doesn't hold for Narrativist RPGs, but I don't like Narrativist RPGs. They're supposed to be collaborative story generators, but I see them as dull games that create bad stories.) Sadly, this leaves wannabe Game Masters without a creative outlet. Minecraft creative mode can serve as an adequate dungeon maker -- see Vech's Super-Hostile series to see some great examples -- but it isn't a good world-making tool.

Here's an idea for a game that would create a CRPG world as you play. Ideally it would start with a small multi-player group -- three to a dozen, perhaps -- which would expand as the world grows. I imagine it progressing in two or three phases:

Phase One: The War Against Chaos, Darkness or Evil

The players start out in world dominated by sinister monsters: Giants, Titans, Dragons, the forces of the Dark Lord ... Ideally there would be many options, and the player that reserves the server space could choose one. The object of the Phase One would be to defeat the Evil Overlord(s) and rule the world in their stead.

A key part of this phase is that once the Dark Force leaders are defeated, their minions would flee and hide from the big bad PCs. They'd withdraw into caves, dense forests, mountain passes and the margins of the world. They would become important later.

Phase Two: The Golden Age

In Phase Two the PCs are the new gods. (New players can become "young" gods in this Phase, with limited opportunities for monster-fighting.) They can build their Olympus/Asgard/Valinor and, more importantly, can create the first mortals. There can be only a single mortal race, or several, and in the latter case the general rule will be (a) the first races have the best magic and craft skills, but (b) each later race will be more numerous and will push the earlier ones to the world's margins. Once the last mortal race is created you can move to the third Phase.

Phase Three: The Heroic Age

In the final (?) Phase, players can take the roles of mortal heroes. For old players, these could be the children of their god-characters (in which case, they would have to be from the last mortal race, i.e., humans). These heroes would battle the monsters left over from Phase One, and fight for or against the kingdoms established in Phase Two. In this Phase the gods would only be able to intervene in extremely limited ways (and those playing demi-god descendants wouldn't be able to intervene at all). The game would be much like a standard fantasy RPG at this point.

So, what do people think?

My old thesis adviser Andrew Gelman writes about climate trends today. He notes that it's really hard to predict future trends from past values, something you learn in intermediate stat classes (which is as far as I ever got, sadly) and worth reminding ourselves from time to time. Accurate predictions need a strong model, one consistent with the data but derived independently from it.

Do climate scientists have strong models? Well I only know stuff from Traveller and planet-building guidebooks for science-fiction writers, so I'm no kind of expert, but what little I learned suggests that dumping methane and CO₂ into the atmosphere will, all else being equal, make the planet hotter. Are levels of these greenhouse gasses higher than they used to be? From what I've heard, yes.

Naturally, all else is not equal, and there are both negative and positive feedback loops. For example, higher temperatures can lead to more evaporation. That means more water vapor -- which as a greenhouse gas, increases temperature -- but also more cloud cover, which raises the albedo and cools the planet down. These complications, I suspect, add variability to the models and make predictions harder. Climate-change denialists may find that comforting, but not me: I'm not happy that we may end up in an ice age, or we might turn Earth into Venus, but Earth normal is somewhere in the middle so it's all OK. I'd rather take steps to ensure the climate doesn't oscillate out of control.

What's more, the denialists use rhetoric that makes them hard to take seriously. Global warming isn't a "fraud," and anyone who says so is a hack or a nut. Skepticism is called for, particularly with predictions and trends, but that kind of talk has no place.

As the helicopter flies into the sunset: "What do we do now?" "We own this city. We can do whatever we want." Cue the end credits for Saints Row 2!

Yes, I finished the game and had a blast. As I've said, I'm a lousy video game player so my experience may not be typical, but on "casual" I found it challenging without ever being impossible. (I found it harder than Skyrim, but there I stumbled upon an optimal combat strategy so my Skyrim experience may not be typical.) There was a lot to do, from fighting to chases to "ho-ing" to driving around on fire in an asbestos suit, with a wacky humor that made me LOL quite a few times.

If you don't mind playing a violent sociopath -- and I wouldn't hold it against you if you do! -- I would highly recommend Saints Row 2. Only $15 on Steam, and it runs smooth as silk (only crashing once in 60 hours of gameplay, nearly unheard of for PC games on my machine). Check it out, yo!

P.S., The picture on the left is my character with two lieutenants, Pierce and Shaundi. The latter (smoking a doobie, as was typical) voice acted by Eliza Dusku, of all people.

Thanks to all who commented on my last entry. Most skepticism was directed towards the composition of my second chamber, and rightly so. I said it would be "elected from professional associations or something like that," suggesting it would be come kind of syndicalist body and I'd be giving the AMA, American Bar Association and so forth their own Senators. These special interests have too much influence as it is!

I was thinking more in terms of the Supreme Court. I'm filled with ambivalence towards the USSC, which has been a reactionary body for most of its history but which was responsible for Brown v. Board of Education and other great civil rights milestones of the 50s, 60s and 70s. I sympathize with the democratic rhetoric conservatives use in their critique of the judiciary, but know it's just used opportunistically to attack the reforms of the Warren Court. (I wonder what purpose they think the USSC should serve, beyond committing the nation to pointless antiquarianism.) Why give so much power to a group of unelected judges with lifetime tenure?

My conclusion is we need a role for people who are greatly respected for their knowledge and wisdom, who can speak their conscience, and force the political system to acknowledge their arguments, without fear of reprisals.

I'm not convinced their role should be limited to the constitutional interpretation, and at the same time, I don't think their power should be as unfettered as the USSC's. My answer, for an ideal role, was the "technocratic chamber" I proposed for the Rational Republic.

This is a bit of pie-in-the-sky political philosophizing. It's based on a contradiction between two principles.

On the one hand, a good government is one that acts in the best interests of its people, and the only way to ensure this (that we know of) is to hold the government responsible to those people through free, fair and regular elections. On the other, a good government is a well-informed government, one that studies the issues it's involved in.

Traditionally, we've hoped or assumed that representative democracy fulfills both criteria: We elect leaders who then learn all they need to make intelligent decisions, because failing to do so could lead to disasters that they would be held responsible for. Is this, however, a safe assumption? I don't think it is, particularly when dealing with issues of great public interest but limited public knowledge. What's the point of learning about an issue if you're responsible to an uneducated public, that will punish you for taking the correct, well-informed position?

Note that when I say "uneducated" I mean "about a specific issue." Everyone is poorly informed about some matters, and well informed about others. This is not a question of college degrees or anything like that. It isn't about credentials, but a willingness to learn.

My solution to this problem would be, first of all, to have a limited bicameralism, with one elected (and more powerful) chamber, and another made up of technocrats elected from professional associations or something like that. The latter would be able to veto the decisions of the former, but only with a supermajority vote (say, 3/4th of the technocrat chamber); they would only be able to veto if there was a broad professional consensus. (In practice, these vetoes would have to be made by specialist committees, rather than the chamber as a whole. So there'd be one made up of economists, one of national security specialists, and so on.)

In addition, the second chamber's veto could be overridden by a draft lottery legislature. This would be a group of randomly selected citizens, who would listen to arguments from representatives of both chambers before deciding whether to sustain or override the veto. So in my vision, the constitution would be both more technocratic and more democratic at the same time, with the purpose of creating, and putting more power in the hands of, a well-informed public.

Like many old roleplayers I fell in love with RuneQuest after playing AD&D. The mechanics were elegant and consistent, and its combat system had a verisimilitude that D&D lacked with its clunky abstractions.

One problem with RuneQuest was its basic combat mechanic: In order to damage an opponent, you had to make a successful attack roll and your opponent had to fail a parry roll (or some other defense roll). Rolls were made with percentile dice, and attack and parry skills ranged (more or less) from 5-95, starting at the low range. This meant fights could go on a looooong time. If two folks had skill ratings of 10%, only 9% of their blows would land; and if they had skills of 95% then less than 5% would. Combat was only resolved quickly when skills were in the 50% range. A number of solutions had been suggested over the years, but all of them seemed a bit clunky.

My suggestion is to use other dice, as well as D100s, for skill checks. Use D20s for easy tasks, D40s for somewhat easy, D100 for standard, D200 for hard tasks, and D400 (or higher!) for extremely difficult skill checks. (A D40, in case you wondered, would just be a 4-sided and a 10-sided die rolled simultaneously, and a D200 would be a D20 and a D10.) Criticals and Specials would skill occur if you rolled less than 5% of your skill or 20% of your skill, respectively, so they'd come up more often with easier tasks; while fumbles would occur if you rolled within the die's "threat range" (shown below) and then failed a D100 skill check.

Die Type	Threat Range
D20	20
D40	39-40
D100	96-100
D200	191-200
D400	381-400
D1000	951-1000

In combat, attackers would choose which dice to roll, and defenders would (in most cases) use the same dice for their parry or dodge rolls. So a crude, obvious attack would use a D20 roll, and would likely crit if it made contact, but could easily be swatted away, while a super-duper-ninja-mindfuck attack might require D400, but would be nearly impossible to defend against.

I know the subject matter is a bit obscure, but comments are welcome.

Years ago, Ben "Yatzee" Croshaw posted a glowing review of Saints Row 2:
On Thursday I found it on sale on Steam for $15 and downloaded the game. Friday morning I created an avatar who looked just like my wife Kimberly. Kimberly expressed approval and left for work.

By the time she returned home I broke out of prison, murdered 100 cops, crashed twenty cars and sprayed half the city with raw sewage (don't ask). I'd also settled on an outfit that, to me, was perfect for the game's trashy wackiness, shown on left. Kimberly was horrified.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!?!! That's completely INSANE!!! A pimp hat and FLIP-FLOPS?!?!? At least give her boots with those leggings for God's sake. You turned me into a batty old lady!"

She insisted I abandoned my current mission and go to the nearest clothing shop. I had to lose the hat, cover her ass, and get some decent footwear. I grumbled, at least when I wasn't reduced to helpless laughter, but complied nonetheless. I don't know how long I can keep her sensibly dressed, though. At some point I'll find the costume shop and Kim will get to rob banks dressed as a Playboy bunny or something. How could I resist?

Addendum: Kim read the entry and said she had no objection to dressing her as a Playboy bunny, "as long as everything matches so I don't look insane." Alright then!