Alorael at Large

Literary critics and scholars will tout the benefits of rereading for deeper appreciation. Average guys just reading for fun will often reread for repeat fun, and get a deeper appreciation along the way. Sure, "no one" is hyperbole; there's no opinion that no one has. But saying books should never be reread is certainly not an obvious claim, and I think it's a distinctly minority opinion. Of course, that's not really the same. I'd complain if a publisher re-released a book, maybe with a little bit of added content, and demanded the same price again. Or wait, no I wouldn't. That happens all the time with intros by critics, annotated versions, or whatever; republication is the norm for successful old literature. I'd question an author typing out the same novel again, word by word, to publish as something new, but I have no issue with authors spending time to adapt their stories to new media. Mostly e-publication, which is apparently a surprisingly large undertaking. That's a much closer analogy to game designers reprogramming a game to work on modern platforms. But even that's not what Jeff's doing. He's recycling stories with new gameplay and graphics (which are themselves recycled for several games). As I said, the same story just doesn't bother a lot of people. New gameplay is just fine with everyone. It seems like a legitimate undertaking to me. —Alorael, who can see preferring new content to remakes. He likes new stories too. But he's perfectly happy with remakes, and he's also pretty happy with Jeff remaining solvent. And he's just not going to tell someone else how to run a business when it's been successful for 20 years and he personally has zero experience to draw upon.

BoA is Blades of Avernum. And there's the older Blades of Exile. Both let you design your own scenarios using the engine of Avernum 3 and Exile 3, respectively. The latter is free and open-source. —Alorael, who rereads books. With a few years in between, sure. But the words are exactly the same! In fact, often the physical object is the same, so even the positions of the words are identical. No one questions the value of rereading books. How strange, then, to take such a dim view of playing a game that is the same in the way that books are the same but different in the ways that games can be different.

Spiderweb has never had a time when it wasn't making new. The only time there were two remakes in a row was Avernum and Avernum 2, and there was a long run of all-new material from Geneforge 3 all the way to Avadon. —Alorael, who suspects the alternating remake and new schedule keeps Jeff's workload manageable and fends off burnout.

I don't think that really gets to the distinction, Edgwyn. At least not how I see it. Tactical RPG is used to describe a kind of CRPG. But loosely; it's very blurry at the border with other RPGs. Lilith's list is interesting, but I think the first two are the real keys, and you need both of them. The clear counterexample is the traditional JRPG, where your party lines up on one side of the screen, the enemy on the other, and there's no positioning at all. You choose which abilities your characters use, and what the targets are, but there is no battlefield to speak of. I'd say Spiderweb games are not tactical RPGs. In part that's because I expect even more emphasis on positioning and range and the like in tactical games, but in part it's because of how you can kill some enemies and run away, or just back away to more favorable battleground. That's tactical decision-making, but that's not how the tactical RPG genre works. Tactical RPGs are significantly about solving battles as problems. (Not puzzles; that's something else.) Which arrangement of my units is most advantageous? How can I take advantage of height, obstacles, and all the rest? What counters the abilities of the enemies I expect to face? And on a turn to turn basis, which of my units should engage which of theirs, how do I keep from getting myself flanked, how can I use my resources most judiciously? If some of that sounds like how people approach Spiderweb fights, especially on Torment, well, I said it gets blurry. Tactics have become a cool thing in gaming and show up all over. —Alorael, who agrees that while no one really talks about tactical RPGs of the pen and paper universe, there is plenty of discussion of whether games have tactical combat. D&D and its lineage show off their wargame roots and often do have careful tactics, down to the map as a grid with attacks and abilities having precise ranges and areas of effect. Other games can have much more abstract combat.

Planescape: Torment is probably the most interesting computer roleplaying game for actually roleplaying a character. Not that it's the most reactive world based on your choices or gives you the most detailed consequences (choices and consequences are CRPG buzzwords), but you get a ton of freedom in who you decide your character is and how you enact it, and it's in a setting where that matters. It's still nothing like tabletop. Torment's also really good at roleplaying and pretty bad at game. It's notorious for poorly designed combat that just isn't much fun. Baldur's Gate is better in that respect. Still, all of those, and plenty of other computer RPGs, are going to be just CRPGs. Using the mechanics of a system designed for tabletop doesn't really do much to encapsulate the feeling of a game run with all the interactivity and openness of a human GM. There's really nothing that works like tabletop that isn't playing with at least one other person. What you could try to do is find an online gaming group. They exist. They tend to be more unstable than in-person groups, a fair number try to get together but never start, and gaming online just isn't ever quite as good as around a table, in my opinion, but it works. And if you're somewhere without other gamers it might be your best point of entry into the hobby. Like, say, the regular AIMhack games that happen here. See if you can get into one when it starts. —Alorael, who is somewhat surprised that there still aren't, as far as he knows, any games designed specifically for online play. It's a solid niche.

This is timely! —Alorael, who actually isn't so sure that article makes the point it's trying to make by the end. Individuals are not data.

I wouldn't say Muslim expansionism was right, but it was really no different from a long, long history of empire-building in Africa, Europe, and Asia. Egypt, Persia, Alexander the Great, Rome and its successor Byzantium, just to name a few. States have risen and seized territory since the earliest records we have of states. Was it different with religion as a motivation? Maybe. It certainly worked to motivate the masses, but I'm not sure how much difference it made to the leaders. The conquest of the New World was different, I think, in that it wasn't local expansion and there was a distinctly different approach to conquered territory and people. The reason it's still complained about is because colonialism was a different model of conquest and left different lasting problems. —Alorael, who would like to know where any communities are allowed to be self-governing with their internal laws superseding those of the country. There are certainly insular communities that enforce their own laws and try to keep official law enforcement out, but that is not encouraged by authorities.

Contrast the Crusades. Compare the conquest of Hispania and the next seven centuries of the Reconquista. It's inarguable that Muslims invaded the Iberian peninsula and conquered Hispania. What is absolutely arguable is whether seven hundred years later the Christian kingdoms could make any real claim to be anything but conquerors themselves when they took back Granada. As for one side starting it, I think that's an accident of chronology. Christianity got there first, and it did so at least in part by sword. Islam came into a world already full of faiths, and it had to make room for itself somehow. Again, I'm dubious. It resonates, to be sure, and it has more resonance with a portion of the population than anything Christianity can muster now; Judaism hasn't had a state to call its own before Israel for a very, very long time. But the Crusades certainly found purchase in Christian imagination. So did the Spanish Reconquista, followed immediately by the conquest of the New World. The Thirty Years War, one of the darkest periods of European history, at least began over intra-Christian conflict and probably provides something of a model for current sectarianism in the Middle East. What's unusual is the violent faith persisting so far into the modern era, but it's easy to attribute that to post-colonialism and grinding poverty rather than any inherent property of the religion itself. —Alorael, who doesn't think any of this would be a concern if so many states holding large Muslim populations weren't such disasters that they effectively cannot act as states and monopolize the use of force. He could see much the same outcome from fundamentalism in the USA if the USA were not a highly successful state with a strong security apparatus and popular support.

Maybe, but strict quarantine of at least three countries with porous borders is impossible, and trying to enforce one would be a human rights catastrophe. A smaller area probably should be quarantined and aid delivered, but this particular epidemic has already gone too far. —Alorael, who just isn't sure that Ebola in the US could reach sufficient epidemic levels to overwhelm all hospitals. It could get bad, sure, but it doesn't require ventilators for everyone. What you really need for most people is just an IV and saline, and both are really, really cheap. A few people might need ventilators or dialysis, but they're the minority. Ebola on the loose in the US

As I said, the states that grew up in the cradle of Islam, which themselves had Islam as the state religion, were largely aggressively expansionist. This is true. This was the great threat on Christendom's borders for a long time. But jihad/crusade rhetoric aside, most of this was imperialism, plain and simple. States, whether Christian states of Europe or Muslim states of the Levant and Middle East or warring Chinese kingdoms, have been trying to grab each other's land forever. There have been plenty of atrocities to go around. There have been shining examples, too. But none of it, to my mind, paints any side with a particularly harsh brush. Everyone seemed to be progressing out of brutality of the Middle Ages nicely until a series of setbacks and a modern brand of extremist Islam, or rather several sects of it, came to prominence, and that was really in the last century. It's also still not the only brand of Islam, or even the mainstream brand. It's just currently the loudest. —Alorael, who thinks the same could be said about Christianity in the USA, except those extremists are less violent and have less actual power. Or Jews, maybe, if you look at Israel and see the outsized presence of the ultra-Orthodox instead of the largely secular majority. The fringe causes problems, which is why they're who the outsiders see.

If you could make it airborne it'd be terrifying, but enhancing viruses is not easy. And I don't think many terrorists have good virology labs. Now, just grabbing someone with Ebola and leaving him in Times Square, or any busy international airport, or whatever? Maybe. But when you're contagious you're really obviously sick. Everyone would probably steer clear of Patient Zero and health officials would show up really quickly. Most people don't routinely share fluids with strangers! It could work, but it probably wouldn't bring a country to its knees. There might be some panic, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be all that exciting in the end. —Alorael, who also isn't sure Ebola has an ideal disease profile. Sure, killing people is great. But it would be better if even the people who recovered were left with severe lasting harm.

Fighting ISIS in Iraq, yes. It is somewhere between a rebellion and a foreign invader and Iraq has requested help. That's a far cry from the previous ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were about toppling regimes, not supporting them. That's actually a big deal and unusual in foreign interventions. In Syria it's much more complicated. Fighting ISIS isn't about supporting the Syrian government; although we're in an oddly ambivalent place officially, no one likes Assad at all. America supports the rebels, but not the ISIS brand of rebels. Syria's such a mess that it's hard to sort out a best course of action, but I think ISIS's actions in Iraq can be used as justification for fighting them in Syria; if they're not rooted out there, they'll never leave Iraq alone. —Alorael, who thinks Iraq wouldn't be getting nearly as much attention if it were just some non-Western state. The fact that it is a recent product of American intervention means America has pride and reputation on the line in making it succeed, which it showed some tentative signs of doing before it collapsed before ISIS. That's a big unspoken part of why America is embroiling itself in another war there. Not that that's a bad reason, per se, but it's not a high moral calling.

Nor is radical, militant Islam clearly "traditional" in any meaningful sense. Islam certainly has an aggressively expansionist history—but then, so does Christianity. There have been places and periods with harsh policies of aggressive orthodoxy—again, not unlike other religions in other places. And from its beginning, Islam has also been the religion of states that have been pluralistic, and fairly relaxed about orthodoxies. —Alorael, who would consider Al-Andalus to be a very good example of Islamic states ranging from repressively conservative to wildly decadent. And it's worth noting that Al-Andalus itself was periodically threatened more by other Muslim powers than by the Christian Reconquista.

A lot of the fear of airborne Ebola is fueled by the related Reston virus that did become airborne. That virus is in the Ebola genus, but it isn't transmissible to humans. Scary? Sure. Could Ebola become airborne? It could. I am neither a virologist nor an epidemiologist, but I think the risk is low. Pandemic influenza is possible, but again, somewhat less scary now. Antivirals have come a long way since 1918 (as in they now exist). More importantly, supportive care has advanced immensely, notably by routine use of IV access. Swine flu was unusually widespread, but it actually wasn't particularly deadly. It is interesting to note that while the number of patients treated for Ebola in first world, high-tech health care is tiny, no one has (yet) died. Ebola may be somewhat comparable to cholera in the type of mortality: high with poor treatment, but actually fairly low with aggressive supportive care. Ebola seems a little more virulent than that, but it's still not clear that high-level supportive care doesn't drop mortality immensely. It's not so much "white" as "wealthy" that matters here. Vaccines are pharmaceuticals, and they have the unique problem that you're not treating people as they get sick. It may be once, or a few times. Very few diseases get annual vaccination, and flu's the only one that is widely vaccinated against every year. Ebola, unless it somehow does become endemic outside its current range, just actually affects a fairly small number of people in countries that are poor. There isn't a lot of money to be made by developing a vaccine. If the virus goes epidemic in a first-world country then the money's there, but right now it isn't unless organizations step in and essentially offer it as prize money. —Alorael, who will be quick to step in and say that blaming the pharmaceutical industry isn't especially helpful. It's an industry. It chases money because not chasing money is a good way to leave the industry. Funding for orphan drug development and the like is really a public problem.

If you're asking for an explanation you haven't left your sanity yet. —Alorael, who also welcomes you to Spiderweb, games and forums. Both can be lots of fun. He's not saying which one has harder fights.

You've spelled Darth correctly, or at least as it's commonly spelled. You've got Ernie right, too, except it should be א and not ע, apparently. —Alorael, who relies entirely on Wikipedia for this sort of thing. And his go-to, Ernie of Sesame Street fame, isn't actually called Ernie in Hebrew. Fortunately the transliteration is provided as well.

The Runelords has a very interesting magic system, but I found the books completely hobbled by Farland's lackluster characters, slapdash world-building, and increasingly uninspired plot. If only someone could take the concept of endowments and give it as an endowment to a better series! I've picked up Michelle West (Sagara)'s House War books. I still love her world and her writing, but without a dozen different plots and epic events constantly the writing seems a little overwrought for what's mostly just the very beginning of a coming-of-age story. With demons. If this were the first book of hers I'd keep reading but wouldn't be the enthusiast I am. The Sun Sword is still my very favorite large-scale high fantasy saga. —Alorael, who still laments its apparent relative obscurity. Maybe it's the fact that any description makes it sound like a thirty Mary Sue pileup. Children of gods, last survivors of royal families, prophetic urchin waifs, time-traveling seers, flying bard-assassins with anguished pasts, women so beautiful it makes people go stupid, gypsies safeguarding ancient secrets, demons working schemes within schemes within schemes, grumpy old wizards who can level city blocks... Yes, it's better than it sounds. Alternately, it's even better than it sounds!

I'd say something like $30-$50 per month is about standard for US water prices. For me, the question of whether the internet is a "right" is more a question of whether it is a public good that should be provided to everyone. And my answer there is an unequivocal yes. Comparing internet to water is a bit apples to oranges; you absolutely need water to live. You can obviously live without the internet. But compare the internet to education. Do you need education to live? No. Can you in fact live a first-world life with minimal education? Yes. Does it get a lot harder and dramatically increase your risk of grinding poverty? Absolutely. The internet isn't fundamental like public education yet, but it's still important. Just finding and applying for jobs, even with all the qualifications, becomes far more challenging without internet access. Do you need that access at home? No; there are other public resources to provide access, notably libraries. But I think access really is critical, and just like we no longer have water pumps and expect bathing at home rather than have a system of public bathhouses, we're near the tipping point of giving everyone internet access at home so we're not requiring libraries and schools to pick up all the slack and the poor to eat the inconvenience. Or phones; how many forms require a phone number? Yes, you could have messages left at a kind of public phone, but that's not how we operate. Every household, at least, has to have a phone number. Of course, as wireless data becomes ever cheaper and more ubiquitous, we may skip universal home internet in favor of universal smart devices. —Alorael, who will maybe get around to telling the story of his friend who could not get a job interview because he had no smart phone. If your job requires constant availability and interaction your job can provide you with the device and data plan, but what happens when that's something you're just expected to have as a prerequisite? Eventually you can fall off the tech curve and out of the workforce. After all, you don't need to be literate to live either, but good luck on finding income.

There are rights and there are rights. Free speech is a right, but I actually don't think it's truly fundamental. You can have a good and just society with limits on it. I'd question very stringent limits, but some rules are okay. The right to live without being arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, or killed is absolutely basic. There's not much leeway there. The right to healthcare is tricky. Everyone should receive some level of care, but it cannot be unlimited because it's the allocation of a limited resource. For the internet, I think it's a fair way down the list of rights. Access to food and water, shelter, and a basic 20th century way of life is probably more important than the 21st century. But only probably; it doesn't actually take much infrastructure to charge cell phones and have wireless data access, and I think the ability to access information and communication really is becoming more and more important. In the first world, though, the internet is rapidly becoming a necessity if it isn't already. Think of how many services and how much information is practically unreachable without internet access. The amount of extra labor required by non-internet users is becoming a prohibitive gap. —Alorael, who also thinks that in the wired, computer-driven world of today it's becoming an unacceptable handicap to raise children without computer and internet fluency. It's becoming very close to illiteracy and innumeracy in how crippling it is in very large sections of the workforce. Even blue collar jobs are seeing tablets show up in the strangest places.

The bad effect is that innocent people die. What is the good effect? Is the threat of execution meaningfully more of a deterrent than life in prison? —Alorael, who will bite. Nalyd, how do you act as though you don't have free will?

All vlishes are delicious. It's just sometimes more metaphorical than literal. —Alorael, who will leave you with the thought that the original force driving the invention and innovation of shaping may not have been military after all.

1. Saying that free will is physically impossible is not some simple statement of fact. It's highly contentious, physically but even more so philosophically. And it seems just as dangerous to build any kind of system assuming the absence of free will as to assume its existence, if not more so. Fortunately, I think actually neither assumption really has any bearing on law or penal codes. 2. In the absence of free will the penal system has the same tasks. Restrain the person incapable of resisting transgression so they cannot transgress again. Punish (publicly) so that other ids with such urges might be suppressed by better-armed egos cognizant of consequences. Rehabilitate so that eventually the transgressor will transgress no more. Free will doesn't enter into it. 3. All of this misses the point. All crimes are urges that apparently weren't resisted. Saying pedophilia is a special category because some people cannot resist says nothing; murderousness is exactly the same. Most people quash antisocial behavior consistently. Some people can't. The presence of the urge is only of limited predictive value. —Alorael, who doesn't think the free will of others is important to the self any more than the possibility of p-zombies has any utility for daily life. Acting as though at least you have free will is critical, though. But trivial, too; you can't, after all, behave as though you don't. That's not a behavior you can undertake.

One of the major roles of the penal system is segregation. We sentence people to deter further crimes, and to punish them, and maybe to try to rehabilitate them, but to many people the most important thing is that while in prison they can't do whatever landed them there. (Execution is an absolutely effective form of permanent segregation, but there aren't a lot of prison breaks and it takes so long to carry out death sentences that if escape were a worry it still wouldn't work.) White collar crime carries less visceral fear and horror. A guy who takes $20 at gunpoint scares us a lot more than someone who tricks shareholders and pockets millions. Thus the sentencing. —Alorael, who doesn't think it's right. White collar crime should have sentencing commensurate with damage. But he also doesn't see the need to put non-violent prisoners in supermax detention. Prison shouldn't be cushy, but it also doesn't benefit from being miserable. And it's more useful to rehabilitate and return prisoners to functional lives than to wreck them and turn them loose.

And yet we have no compunction about sentencing people with antisocial personality disorder (sociopaths/psychopaths) even though they, too, suffer from a mental illness. There is a difference, I agree, especially in that pedophilia is attraction to an unacceptable target of attraction. Resisting urges isn't easy, but failing to do so is a moral failure more than a psychiatric one. Pedophilia is a paraphilia, not an uncontrollable drive. —Alorael, who would argue that all countries only abide by treaties when it's in their best interests. It's just that there can be disagreement about best interests and relative priorities. Whether being caught lying through your teeth has too many long-term consequences to be worthwhile for example.

But war between first-rate powers is something that hasn't happened since WW2. Most first-world powers waging war have more complex goals than victory over an enemy, and it's made things hard. Because we have the weaponry to absolutely crush conventional enemies, sure, but that doesn't work when fighting nonstate actors, or states that we want to keep while changing who's in power and the political system, or any of the other goals that have become very publicly messy since 9/11. —Alorael, who agrees with Nalyd that while the doctrines of war have been more clearly stated and clearly studied in the last century or so, total war is not a new concept. Just go to the fate of Troy.