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BOF V: “A Wolf in the Forest”

Character Classes, Fiction, Games!, Internet Culture

(This was my first experiment in creating a communal story, from Jan 5 to Jan 22/2013.)

(It’s interesting to look back on it, thinking “I thought of that?”.)

“You walk up to a wolf in the forest. It sits up on its haunches and looks at you. What do you do?”

I: “Good dog.”
Me: “The wolf looks at you askance, somehow implying with a glance that comparing it to a dog is somewhat similar to comparing a rocking horse to a racing stallion. What do you do?”
S: “Misunderstanding the somehow-implied metaphor, I draw a small saddle from my pack and hold it out to the wolf, awaiting further instruction.”
A: “I take Fat Neil’s cloak and sword and run into the forest.”
JW: “Can I make a diplomacy check?”
Me: “A: You reach the wolf, who now has two other people standing around it. You are carrying a wooden sword and a towel. What do you do?”
JS: “Run to grandma’s house.”
A: “I wrap the towel around myself and commence eating fish.”
Me: “JW: The wolf seems pleased to see you. It points its nose West, deeper into the forest. What do you do?”
Me: S: The wolf motions for you to turn around. What do you do?
Me: JS: You are now wearing a red cap. You approach a small forest cottage. What do you do?
JW: I pack up my equipment, leave a ration of venison on the ground in thanks to the wolf, and walk of to the west cautiously.
S: Saddle still in hand, I turn around, grumbling slightly about how good Alex’s lunch smells.
Me: A: You finish chewing your wooden sword in two. You now have two sticks, suitable for framing a two-dimensional picture, or perhaps propping up a small tent. What do you do?
Me: S: The wolf reaches around, deftly takes the saddle from your hands, and places it on your back. It then ties the buckle. It seems to want to get on. What do you do?
Me: JW: The wolf breaks the venison in two, eats half, and puts the other half in its pouch. It takes a piece of paper from its pouch, limps over to you, and hands it to as you walk away. As you are walking, you see paths off to the right and left. What do you do?
S: I glance around and declare, “Nay,” scuffing the ground with my boot to emphasize my lack of interest in this plan.
Me: S: The wolf limps over and looks at you sideways, in a pleading fashion. You also smell the delicious taste of venison. What do you do?
JW: I stop and look at both sides of the piece of paper.
PSL: I call out the game master for taking taste as subject to the olfactory sense.
Me: JW: One side has what appear to be coffee stains in the shape of a dolphin. The other side has what appears to be a map of the forest, with paths marked in two different colours. From your memory, you discern that you walked along one of the light green paths to reach the wolf. The path to your right leads to what looks like a cloud of warm colours, the path to the left leads to what appears to be jagged steel slashes. There are numerous dark green lines crisscrossing the paths. What do you do?
Me: PSL: Your character walks up to the nearest tree and smells the bark with his tongue. What do you do?
S: I crouch with a sigh and point at the saddle.
JW: I try to remember why I came to this forest in the first place.
Me: S: The wolf climbs on, straps itself in, and somehow conveys that it wants to go East. What do you do?
Me: J: You’re not sure. Sometimes you go into the forest to try to find the fabled contemplation glade, sometimes you go to hunt for food, sometimes to visit your friend the druid, sometimes just to explore. What do you do?
S: Again misunderstanding the wolf’s attempt at communication, I run in a circle and jump over a downed tree, then wait for my venison reward.
Me: S: The wolf softly nips at your left ear while at the same time tapping its left leg on your left side. What do you do?
S: I shriek, complain a little about unjust desserts, and start running in the direction the wolf indicated.
JW: I follow the path to the right, thanking the druid again.
Me: S: You find that as you start to run, your stride begins to lengthen, and your rum starts to feel more like a gallop. You move through the undergrowth, which seems to part for you, and come upon a large tree. The wolf motions for you to stop. What do you do?
Me: JW: You walk through the forest for a while, until you come to a small cottage. There is smoke coming out of the chimney, and delicious smells wafting from the open door. What do you do?
Jamie Wells I try to figure out what it I am smelling.
Me: JW: It smells like delicious baked cookies, along with a hint of mint. You catch a glimpse of red through the window. What do you do?
PSL: I gallop after S, because that seems to be where a narrative is beginning to develop.
JW: With baked cookies with a hint of mint being one of my favorite things, I can’t help but get drawn to the open foor, peak my head in, and say “Hello? May I please have some cookies?” (in whatever the common language happens to be in this forest).
Me: PSL: You crash through the underbrush and end up in a meadow. You see a woman with a wolf on her back looking at a large tree. What do you do?
Me: JW: Peering around the doorjamb, you see an older woman taking a baking pan out of the oven, and a younger woman wearing a red cap sitting at the table chopping mint. The older woman says “Of course!” The younger woman in the red cap says: “Would you like some fresh mint sprinkled on top? It’ll probably be the last for a while, so make sure you savour it!” What do you do?
PSL: I instagram.
Me: PSL: You focus your will, and a small weight appears out of thin air into your hand. What do you do?
S: I pull over, feeling strangely exposed, as if a bit of my soul has been stolen. I peer up at the tree, then back at the wolf.
PSL: I toss the weight at the thick of the tree overhead (or rather the next one over, I’m not *that* hopeless) and wait expectantly.
Me: S: Up the tree, you see a small human dwelling, wedged between the branches. The wolf motions to you and then up the tree with its snout. What do you do?
JS: Part of my brain questions the sanity of taking food from a stranger, however it is overridden by the “COOKIES!!!” portion of by brain. I gobble up three of them (with mint sprinkled on them).
Me: PSL: The weight transforms into a small rabbit and a watch in the air. They gently graze the next tree over and fall lightly to the ground. What do you do?
PSL: I tie the chain on the pocket watch to the rabbit and hold the watch as the leash handle. Then I enter the forest.
Me: JW: This is the MOST DELICIOUS MINT that you have ever tasted. The younger woman in the red says “I know, I’m never able to savour them, either.” “It’s too bad that with the forest going dark, we can’t get any more of that mint.” “Say, you wouldn’t be willing to do something for us, would you?” What do you do?
Me: PSL: You walk into the forest, with the rabbit happily hopping behind you. You feel a faint ticking in your hand each time the rabbit hops. You come to a clearing. There is a circle of mushrooms in the center, and numerous holes in the ground around the perimeter. What do you do?
PSL: I hurriedly pack my belongings and wonder why my office atop Robarts Library closes at five when Christmas seems weeks ago. Then I shrug and eat the first mushroom.
JW: I say “How may I help you?”.
Me: PSL: You successfully escape Robarts Library just before it wakes from its slumber. Huge stony concrete wings unfurl from behind, and two red circles of light appear near the top of the central tower. They seem to be intensifying. The mushroom tastes odd, as if it had been sprinkled with something. You feel the ground getting closer. You have a great desire to eat another one of the mushrooms. What do you do?
Me: JW: The older woman intones: “In the days before humans came to these woods, there was a great darkness that covered the land. It was fought off only through the great valour and sacrifice of a group of noble animals. A wolf, a bear, a rabbit, and a hawk. Their story fills many volumes, and we do not have time for it now. It has been said that the darkness can not encroach as long as they stand vigilant, but they are injured and scattered. We have not heard from any save the wolf in weeks. If you can clear a small path to the mint, and retrieve some, along with the fireweed that grows there, we can perform a divination to figure out the next task.” What do you do?
PSL: I eat another mushroom.
KMV: Suggest it might look good as a grandmother.
CH: Thinks you all have made too many assumptions. *YOU* are obviously a bitch, and a HOT one at that. You and the wolf make passionate love under the full moon, howling in paroxysmal, delight, tearing into one another as clumps of fur lay strewn across the freshly fallen snow. . . [excerpt from Fifty shades of the Grey Wolf]
RG: I cast Animal friendship or Charm animal depending on the edition we playing.
MC: don’t walk up to a wolf in the forest unless you are a wolf. If you are a wolf then smell the wolf’s butt.
CE: I’d say: WHASSSAAAAAAA…
Me: PSL: You see the ground come up at you *really* quickly. You feel the rabbit pulling you away from the mushroom ring towards one of the holes around the clearing. What do you do?
Me: KMV: You see the wolf make the ASL for ‘red’, somehow. It points with its snout down one of the forest paths. What do you do?
Me: CH: You wake up from a very strange dream and find yourself on a strangely computer science-based Jeopardy show. You hear the words: “50 shaders of grey for 100, Alex.” What do you do?
JW: I say “Just show me where to go, and I shall complete this task”.
Me: RG: You cast ‘charm animal’ on the wolf. The wolf seems to shimmer as if something passed through it. Its tongue lolls out as if it is sharing a joke with you. What do you do?
Me: MC: The wolf speaks to you in Wolf: “Praytell, would you join me in a quest to push back the darkness? We must first find my companions, to assist us in the many tasks ahead.” What do you do?
Me: CE: The wolf looks at you as if it was sitting at home, drinking an import. What do you do?
Me: JW: The woman asks you to open your map, and points out one of the dark green lines which ends in a circle of green wavy lines with flames in the center. “You must follow this path to the mint grove. We do not know how far the darkness has spread. You must focus sunlight to clear a path. Take these two sugar crystals. They should focus the light enough to clear a path.” What do you do?
JW: I take the sugar crystals and take the path the woman indicated on the map down to the mint grove. On the way out, I snag a couple of more cookies and leave 5 silver coins in payment.
PSL I stick my arm up the first hole up to the shoulder.
Me: JW: On your way out, the woman runs after you and hands you back your silver coins. “You’ll want these to help reflect and focus the sunlight!” “Enjoy the cookies! If you need a brief insight later, try eating them!” You wonder why she always speaks with exclamation marks, but you continue on. Going down the path, you reach the point where the path goes from light green to dark green. The Dark green path seems to be a small path through the underbrush. You crawl along the path. After going a short ways into the underbrush, you sense more than see a dark cloud up ahead. What do you do?
Me: PSL: As you reach down to the hole, you realize that the hole has gotten bigger, and is about the same size as you. At approximately the same time, you realize that the rabbit has gotten much larger and is pulling you into the hole. You fall over, and are rolling down the hole after the rabbit. What do you do?
JW: I set up the sugar crystals in a resonating cavity, reflect sunlight into the cavity using a silver coin, and aim the output beam into the cloud (ie. I shoot the beam of light into the darkness).
WYC: You deal them a hand of cards, and play go fish with them.
Me: JW: The sun shines into the cavity, and is somehow focused and *changed*. The beam slashes into the dark cloud, exploding it into shards in a straight line in front of you. You can now see a brightly lit path to a meadow. What do you do?
Me: WYC: The wolf motions you over to a magical pond with fish frolicking inside. There are slots on the side of the lake for cards. Looking at your cards, you see that they now each have a number of fish on them. The wolf asks if you have any kipper. Looking at your cards, you do not. What do you do?
GW: I sit down and look back at it
PSL: I reach out for a protruding root and manage to bring my descent to a halt.
YG: I cast Magic Missile into the darkness.
EG: Smile and say hello.
JW: Into the meadow I go!
LMH: Sounds like time for a makeout session…
PSL:Also, I throw up my mushrooms.
Me: GW: The wolf looks back at you. You see it motion towards the ground. You see something glinting there. What do you do?
Me: PSL: You successfully slow your descent, but the rabbit is too large and pulling you too fast for you to fully stop until you reach the end of the hole. It opens into a large underground room. There are four exits: the way you came in, which looks like a daunting climb, a passageway to the left, which seems to have a flickering light, a passageway straightforward, which the rabbit seems to be pulling you towards, and a passageway to the right, which smells faintly swampy. What do you do?
PSL: Go right.
Me: YG: You make a small temporary hole in the dark cloud, and a few shards break off and fall to the ground. You feel like you might need something larger. There are dark shards on the ground. What do you do?
DL: I call the midwife who tells me to chill out. I look at facebook. I double check the snack bag. I look at facebook again.
GW: I walk over and examine what is glinting on the ground.
Me: EG: The wolf swishes its tail as if to say hello. It points its nose towards a tree. You see something sparkling in a hole in the tree about 10 feet up. What do you do?
Me: JW: You enter the meadow. Bursting out of the brush, you see that the brightly lit path extends into the meadow. You see a large cluster of herbs growing in the center of the clearing. The green cluster seems to be moving. You feel more than see the dark cloud around you starting to fluctuate. What do you do?
Me: LMH: The wolf licks your face repeatedly. It seems to like you. What do you do?
Me: PSL: You throw the extra mushrooms you were carrying up in the air and catch them. Nothing seems to happen. You start down the right passageway. The rabbit seems to be pulling you back the way you came, and eventually pulls away from you and waits at the end of the tunnel, back at the four-way room. The tunnel starts to glow green as you continue. A miasma starts to fill the air. You reach an underground grotto with glowing green moss covering the walls, and a small pond. What do you do?
Me: DL: The Wolf pads over and sits down, trying to distract you to help you relax. It pulls a vole out of your snack bag and chews contentedly in companionable silence. What do you do?
Me: GW: It seems to be a ring. Picking it up, it has a picture of a wolf on it. What do you do?
PSL: Eat moss.
LMH: Begin excreting toxins through my sebaceous glands…
GW: I look the ring over and try it on. Unfortunately it is too big to fit on any of my fingers, so I offer it to the wolf.
EG: I attempt to climb the tree but the first branch is too high for me to reach. After a few painful jumps, I collapse against the tree and fall asleep.
JW: I pick some of the mint, then eat one of the cookies to get some insight on where I might find the fireweed.
BSG: I wander into the mint meadow and am surprised to find someone already there picking mint.

Analysis: Archer: The Danger Zone!

Analysis, Games!

So, we played this game last night:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/137336/archer-danger-zone-board-game

The game is a good game for terrible people, although nowhere near as terrible as Cards Against Humanity, but as many of the reviews say, those who don’t know the show ‘Archer’ will likely not enjoy it anywhere near as much.

But this is not a review. This is a design and decision blog post.

During the game, your character chooses to attempt various challenges. To attempt a challenge, you roll 1,2, or 3 dice. You have four skills (Booze, Guns, Sex, and Smarts), one of which you will need to use for each challenge. Each of your skills allows you to roll a number of dice to overcome that type of challenge. The challenges (mostly) come in the four types above, and three difficulty levels.
Level 1 challenges earn you 1 victory point, and require you to roll 6 or higher.
Table:
Level: 1, 1VP, roll 6+
Level: 2, 2VP, roll 8+
Level: 3, 3VP, roll 10+
Level: 4, 4VP, roll 14+

(Level 4 challenges are considered ‘personal’, and you can use any skill to overcome them.)

So, this decision tree seems pretty simple. For a game of sufficient length, you can just play the odds and go by the best expectation value [XV]:

1d6:
Level 1 1/6 (16.7%) [XV 0.167]
Level 2,3,4 Impossible
2d6:
Level 1 26/36 (72.2%) [XV 0.722]
Level 2 15/36 (41.7%) [XV 0.834]
Level 3 6/36 (16.7%) [XV 0.500]
Level 4 Impossible
3d6:
Level 1 206/216 (95.4%) [XV 0.954]
Level 2 181/216 (83.8%) [XV 1.676]
Level 3 135/216 (62.5%) [XV 1.875]
Level 4 35/216 (16.2%) [XV 0.648]

So, with no special abilities/powers, the expectation values (for a game of sufficient length) suggest the following ranking:
3d6 for level 3
3d6 for level 2
3d6 for level 1
2d6 for level 2
2d6 for level 1
3d6 for level 4
2d6 for level 3
1d6 for level 1

Which kind of makes sense, where you have characters playing to their strengths, makes each character different and encourages role-playing. (My character, Krieger, spent almost all his time in his lab, trying to insult any character who got too close.)

All of this becomes more complicated when you factor in a few other game rules.
1) ‘Insults’. Whenever you roll a 5 or 6, you get to draw an ‘Insult’ card which either increases your score or decreases someone else’s score. The increase to your score is in average 1/2 point. The average decrease to others’ score is also about 1/2 point. (As you generally only decrease one other character’s score, this is less useful, unless there’s only one character in front of you, and it’s mean.) We’ll allocate 0.75 expectation value to this, assuming there are two characters in front of you, on average. So, 1d6 would add 0.75*2/6, 2d6 0.75*4/6, and 3d6 would add 0.75*6/6 XV, respectively

This gives you:

1d6:
Level 1 1/6 (16.7%) (+0.25 insults) [XV 0.417]
Level 2,3,4 Impossible
2d6:
Level 1 26/36 (72.2%) (+0.5 insults) [XV 1.222]
Level 2 15/36 (41.7%) (+0.5 insults) [XV 1.334]
Level 3 6/36 (16.7%) (+0.5 insults) [XV 1.000]
Level 4 Impossible
3d6:
Level 1 206/216 (95.4%) (+0.75 insults) [XV 1.704]
Level 2 181/216 (83.8%) (+0.75 insults) [XV 2.426]
Level 3 135/216 (62.5%) (+0.75 insults) [XV 2.625]
Level 4 35/216 (16.2%) (+0.75 insults) [XV 1.398]

This makes the 3d6 skills even stronger, giving the ranking:
3d6 for level 3
3d6 for level 2
3d6 for level 1
3d6 for level 4
2d6 for level 2
2d6 for level 1
2d6 for level 3
1d6 for level 1
(Not sure if you can roll for impossible missions, just enough to deliver insults)

2) The ‘Break Room’ allows you to roll 3d6 for any type of challenge, but if you don’t overcome the challenge, you lose one VP. This changes the decision to the following:

3d6:
Level 1 206/216 (+1 95.4%), (-1 4.6%) [XV 0.906] + 0.75 from insults = 1.656
Level 2 181/216 (+2 83.8%), (-1 16.2%) [XV 1.514] + 0.75 from insults = 2.264
Level 3 135/216 (+3 62.5%), (-1 37.5%) [XV 1.500] + 0.75 from insults = 2.250
Level 4 35/216 (+4 16.2%), (-1 83.8%) [XV -0.190] + 0.75 from insults = 0.56

Giving the ranking:
3d6 for level 2
3d6 for level 3
3d6 for level 1
3d6 for level 4

Making this strategy more risk averse, but probably higher scoring, if you’re getting a lot of challenges which are not suited to your skills, such as if you’re sitting right behind the other character who has the same strong skill as you. (Each character has 1 skill at 3d6, 2 skills at 2d6, one skill at 1d6.)

3) The ‘Applied Research Lab’ allows you to re-roll each of your dice once. This is quite powerful… The question is which dice you re-roll when? This should really be a table (a *large* table):

1d6:
1-5 1/6 chance (16.7%)
If you miss, re-roll on 1,2,3,4 (5 gives you an insult, which is worth more (0.75) than re-rolling (0.42).
[Overall XV 0.167->0.333]
[Including insults: 0.42->0.64]
2d6:
Level 1 challenges (6+)
If you miss, re-roll any dice with 1,2,3
[Overall XV 0.72->0.93]
[Including insults: 1.22->1.55]
Level 2 challenges (8+)
If you miss, re-roll any dice with 1,2,3
[Overall XV 0.83->1.45]
[Including insults: 1.33->2.16]
Level 3 challenges (10+)
If you miss, re-roll any dice with 1,2,3,4 (you can re-roll only 1,2,3 in some cases, but easier to remember to just re-roll 1,2,3,4)
[Overall XV 0.50->1.19]
[Including insults: 1.00->1.97]
(Level 4 challenges are impossible with 2d6)
3d6:
Level 1 challenges (6+)
If you miss, re-roll any dice with 1,2
[Overall XV 0.95->0.998]
[Including insults: 1.70->1.78]
Level 2 challenges (8+)
If you miss, re-roll any dice with 1,2,3
[Overall XV 1.68->1.96]
[Including insults: 2.43->2.82]
Level 3 challenges (10+)
If you miss, re-roll any dice with 1,2,3 (you also choose only to re-roll the 1 if you have 1,3,5 and need 10, interestingly…)
[Overall XV 1.88->2.71]
[Including insults: 2.62->3.67]
Level 4 challenges (14+)
If you miss, re-roll any dice with 1,2,3 (if you get 4,4,4 or 4,4,5, you should re-roll one 4)
[Overall XV 0.65->1.76]
[Including insults: 1.40->2.88]

Conclusions? Left as an exercise for the reader… 🙂 (Best summary in the comments gets a secret prize, which may include glory…)

Mad Max: Furiosa Road

Reviews

Mad Max: Fury Road was a complex movie. Or at least it stirred a lot of complex thoughts in me. I’d heard a lot about how it was ‘really feminist’, and/or ‘much more feminist than the original’. I was curious to see how this panned out, as I’d never seen the original (aside from scattered memories of desert movie scenes when I was very young, and the Thunderdome at Burning Man). This will be a number of scattered thoughts.

I’d recently watched the Fallout4 trailer, which had stirred some of the sadness of the post-apocalyptic situation, and I think that carried over into watching this movie. So much of it felt like needless fighting and grandstanding, when they really should have been working together (but I guess that was the point, that when you have a warlord culture, it all becomes about penis size, instead of actually solving problems).

In a literal and figurative sense, it felt somewhat like watching a car wreck. You know that there will be at least some small part of hope at the end, but you know that there will be a lot of death on the way, of people on the side of helping others dying to try to purge some of the madness. (The Postman (the novel) had some of this.)

That being said, the film was quite engaging, and I actually enjoyed it a lot. (It made me think, so it was def. worth it from that perspective. 🙂 )

It even passed the Bechdel test, even with the small amount of talking in the movie. I found the conversation about, and then the passing of the seeds very touching, but then again, I might be a druid. I also liked how the main character was a badass woman who was 10x as badass with her artificial limb.

It’s been said about the movie that it’s really about women finding their own way, and carving out what they actually want in a mad/male dominated world. What would the movie have been like without Max? If Furiosa had solved it on her own, or perhaps with one of her companions finding more of her voice along the way. But then it wouldn’t have been a Mad Max movie, and might have been much more difficult to sell…

Anyways, protagonists. The movie was billed as being about Max, even named after him, but he was really an active character for very few points in the movie. The protagonist was clearly Furiosa, who had a very specific thing she wanted. Oddly, both Furiosa and Max were antiheroes, with her discovering more bravery and him discovering his selflessness by the end of the movie.

Also, his madness was really only an issue at the beginning, but perhaps that’s because he’d gotten back on track.

It says something about Hollywood that they didn’t think that Charlize Theron could carry her own movie (even though she did), and only half/kinda named the movie after her character, and gave her second billing.

Thinking about this some more, there is actually a bunch of hope at the end of the movie, with some (more) sensible people now in charge of the main resources

Other things:
– I liked how even when everything was going sideways, with all the cars mired in well, the mire, the drummers were still going. This shows a dedication to music that is important to a culture. 😀 Also, the fire-shooting guitar rig was totally in canon, as that’s what you’d expect from a showboating warlord not so sure of himself.
– There were a lot of nice tying things together, such as the gift of blood transfusion after being a ‘blood bag’ for the first third of the film
– Speaking of that, I found the first third of the film difficult to watch, with Max being a passive character, then being not sympathetic at all.
– I found it sad how much science had decayed in the film, but perhaps there was a kept caste of scientists to keep the green and windmills going…
– Susana Polo at Polygon said that the avoidance of gore and objectification made for a stronger movie, the former because it allowed for more audience reaction when it dd happen, the latter because it made for a stronger movie, where the female characters could actually be conscious and active actors.

Some inconsistencies:
– How did society decay that fast, so that Max who was a cop before the apocalypse would be 40 or less? There would have been barely enough time to grow a generation up in the new religion that had formed.
– Is there anywhere in the world that you can drive for 160 days and not hit ocean? Even going from Kamchatka to Lisbon is only 9427km, which is a leisurely pace of <60km/day. Those must be some slow motorbikes. (Also, there's no way you could carry enough to sustain you for 160 days on a motorbike.) You could almost walk across Australia in 160 days. At 5 hours/day at 5km/hour, you could do the 4000km in 160 days. Maybe they meant 16 days? - How did no one ever run out of gas in that movie? - If the huddled masses are fighting over that much water, how often must it be released? (Also, what a waste, to throw it down into the dirt, rather than handing it out...Perhaps the warlord had just come into his power?) - How did they do the test for blood type? (Thinking about it, it's a pretty simple coagulation test.) - How would a warlord not leave any defenses? Relying on fear that much?

BOF VI: The Chemist in me:

Science!

UPDATE: to address tormuse’s comments below.

This discussion came out of a comment I made about the usage of ‘cis’ to refer to people whose gender identity is more matching with their gender assigned at birth*.

I said:

“The chemist in me is glad that this word is being used in this way. :)”

And DM replied, asking about the ‘difference between Cis–trans isomerism and chirality’.

Not knowing if this was a serious question, and not wanting to derail a trans- issue conversation with chemical pedantry, I’m putting my answer in this blog post:

Don’t know if this is a serious question, but I’ll bite. Cis/Trans isomerism (generally) has to do with two Carbons connected by a double bond, with different things at R1/R2/R3/R4.:

R1     R3
  \   /
   C=C
  /   \
R2     R4

R1     R4
  \   /
   C=C
  /   \
R2     R3

These two molecules have the same chemical composition, but because the C=C bond is rigid and does not rotate, they can have different chemical properties.

Chirality is a little bit more difficult to explain using 2-D ASCII Art, but basically:

 R1
   \
r4--C--R3
   /
 R2

(With r4 at the back, behind the C, with R1/R2/R3 sticking out slightly from the page. #limitationsof2d)

Contrast with:

 R1
   \
r4--C--R2
   /
 R3

Which is a non-superimposable mirror image in 3-D. Even if R1/R2/R3 rotate around the r4 axis, they two molecules will never have exactly the same chemical characteristics (cf. Thalidomide)

*I’m sure I’m using some of these words incorrectly or imprecisely. Please comment to correct me!

Poolrad Savegames

Analysis, Character Classes, Games!

This is an .ods of my knowledge of Pool of Radiance Savegames when I started playing this iteration. This knowledge may evolve as I get further into the game and my characters gain more experience:

poolrad_saves_at_game_start

This is the .html for those of you for whom a .ods is…well…odious. 😀

poolrad_saves_at_game_start

Interesting notes:
– There are a bunch of parts of this file I have no idea what they are. Hopefully as I play, differences will show up and be obvious.
– The game designers seem to have included more races and classes than originally thought, though not fully implemented. Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Bard all seem to be present. Half-orc also makes a brief appearance
– Many of the attributes (think saving throws) were implemented up to level 10.
– There seems to be a hard limit of 21 memorized spells
– Casting seems to be based on what the character had memorized. Memorization seems to be based on class levels, not stated classes
– Many other smaller comments are included in the spreadsheet. Take a look!

Also, I just learned the Ctrl-F5 DosBox Auto-screenshot! This is the last piece I needed (aside from a good WordPress photo gallery)!

Let me know what you think.

Poolrad

Character Classes, Games!, Nostalgia

Pool of Radiance. The name conjures up that magical time, when you opened your first ever PC game as a christmas present. That magical time when you were still figuring out how games worked, and min/maxing was not something you did as easily as breathing.

My parents were kind enough to get me Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds as a Christmas present probably in 1990 (when the third game in the series, Secret of the Silver Blades came out), and I immediately set out to play probably for the rest of the holidays. I remember making my first journey with a lead character with the same name as myself. It was incredibly jarring to have the game tell you that you have died when it’s using your name. I quickly restarted with my name reversed. (This has been my online handle ever since.)

My first party was FFFCMT, all human, complete with names out of legend: Arnold, Conan, Merlin, some names not quite so famous: Keef, and some you have probably never heard of: Nayrb, Bogarth. (Zigomar was a late arrival to the party, probably in Curse or Secret.)

We ran through the game, confused by the pyramid, missing all kinds of things, and eventually meeting and conquering the big bad after the big reveal.

I have so many nostalgic memories of this. Figuring out how the Manual of bodily health worked, mostly by accident, maybe thinking that waiting would work if my character was ‘reading’. Then also accidentally discovering that regeneration was possible for my characters, stumbling around Valjevo castle with only that character at close to full health.

Being endlessly confused by the pyramid, possibly until I prevailed on my dad to take me shopping at the computer store where I chanced upon the Clue Book! (I still have it on my shelf, with some of the same notes in it.)

Pool of Radiance was the first game I cracked. (I think I couldn’t find the code wheel, although I still remember the codes for ‘BEWARE’ and ‘TEMPLE’, with the ..- and strange Leo-constellation-like figure.) I did it by the simple expedient of hexediting zeroes over the part directly after where the game asked for the code. I have no idea why this worked.

It was also the first game where I hex-edited characters (I think). This will be important later.

All this is as a long-winded way to say that this is the final playthrough, to finally make right by the Forgotten Realms, to complete the original Gold Box four once and for all with the same characters.

Some rules I set for myself:

Since the point of this runthrough is to make it through all 4 of the original gold box games (Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, and Pools of Darkness), and most importantly the final battle in PoD…

The characters can be edited for attributes and class.

The plan is to have them edited to 25/25/25/25/19*/25. I don’t think all of these work properly (the spell immunities for Int/Wis >19 for sure don’t), but the large amount of fighting in the game is much more bearable this way.

*This is so I can copy Manuals of Bodily Health, and gain regeneration for each of them. My experience is that regeneration, at least in PoolRad is not exactly correctly handled, but science will have to be done.

I’m currently only planning to copy the Manual of Bodily Health, as well as spell scrolls. (The first because regeneration is so much easier (and cooler!) than healing, especially in PoolRad, before FIX, the second is because it makes more game sense to be able to copy scrolls between characters.)

I won’t be using cheats like “give all your gems and jewlery to an NPC, then kill them”, or “restart to get lots of gold” or “restart to make the initial quests easier again”. I’ll also try not to copy the dust of disappearance in Curse. (I discovered the item copy cheat first in Curse by accident when removing and adding characters to my party. I think I had been restarting to get a LS+3, Frostbrand for each of my characters when I discovered it.)

(I also tried ‘long sword + 100’ while doing Death knights of Krynn, just because the half-damage-from-swords skeletal knights were so annoying. A fun reversal of this was ‘The Summoning’, which had weapons break if they did too much damage, so that if you hex edited the damage of one of your weapons, it would just break.)

Other than that, I’m not planning to copy items. I may or may not cheat to bring my items through Limbo. We’ll see how the large bits of Moander are.

One last thing. I always found it constraining that you couldn’t be more classes at once, or that you had to have such low levels. I’ve done some experimentation, and it seems that race and class are saved separately in the savegames for all four games.

(Interestingly, the PoolRad savegame (which I will cover fully next post) has one hex for class, and 4+ others for level in each class. So, you can be a Fighter/Mage/Thief with Cleric levels. I’m not sure exactly which skills are dictated by each of these. Again, science. The other games seem to have these totally independent, probably because it was easier than dictating all of the many options with Ranger being added to the mix.)

Emphasis

Idle Speculation, Puns, Thoughts on Thoughts

So, how do you say the phrase:

“penguin!”

You can’t shout it, because that would be “PENGUIN”. You somehow have to give emphasis without being too loud all the way through.

Kind of like stacatto?

No, that’s more of an emphasized ‘P’enguin.

S says it feels more like the emphasis is on “pENGuin”.

“So, what was the issue?”

Engineering, Software Development, Thoughts on Thoughts

So, we were debugging a common ground issue today at a in the amazing Helios Makerspace in Montreal.

We got as far as we could ourselves (debugging one common ground problem, and tracking the data signal through one board and on to the second), then we got stuck. We tried a bunch of things, but it was only when the came in, and determine it was two problems: A second common ground problem, combined with the first (Arduino) board having too many outputs and so not outputting a high enough voltage.

The really interesting part (aside from learning again how important common grounds are) was watching the engineers in the room (the people who were building things, perhaps or perhaps not engineers) all run over as soon as the problem was solved and someone asked the question “So, what was the issue?”

Anytime someone is agonizing over a problem for hours, there is bound to be some learning for those around…Thinking about this from a min/maxing perspective, someone spends hours solving the problem, then you spend 2mins learning about the solution, and then you add it to your list of things to try/check when debugging, taking maybe 30s to possibly reduce your own debugging time by hours.

Moisture Levels

Analysis, Idle Speculation

Some different moisture levels, ranked in order.

Dry:

Dessicated
Bone Dry
Super Dry
Dry
Wit
Not Dry
Dampish

Slightly Moist:

Damp
Slightly Moist
Firedamp
Moistened

Moist:

Moist
Slightly Wet
Wettish
Humid
Steamy
Slick
Muggy
Glistening
Clammy
Dank
Oozy
Dewy

Wet:

Drizzly
Wet
Drippy

Very Wet:

Dripping
Irriguous

Apres Moi:

Rainy
Sodden
Water-logged
Deluge