Land Tax Issues, Uranium, Gaming, Evil Awards

[tcpip]

Green Left Weekly published my letter on the land tax cuts for the rich. Meanwhile housing affordability hits a new low. Compare land and house prices and housing affordability (links via erudito). An international phenomenon Slums Growing Around The World.

I will be presenting on all these issues on Wednesday June 28th at 6.30pm at the Hume Global Learning Centre, 1093 Pascoe Vale Rd at a forum entitled "Please Explain Mr. Brumby"; please come along.

Martin Ferguson spoke at the Unitarians last Sunday on the global energy debate; possibly presented the best arguments for expansion in uranium exports I have heard - and was steadfast in his opposition to it in Australia. This follows a presentation by Jim Green (who has a rather different opinion) on the same issue.

Ended up continuing to play GURPS Australian Noir, rather than the Retro AD&D game which I set up to balance the numbers. Meanwhile droog64's Arthurian HeroQuest game just gets better and more devious. Next Sunday is my Paranoia/Cyberpunk crossover alongside Middle-Earth Role Playing. Have noticed that Mongoose are getting seriously canned on the various RuneQuest mailing lists. On topic, scored big time at the local opportunity shop last weekend; someone had donated their roleplaying collection. Several Kult supplements, three copies of Empire of the Petal Throne (a roleplaying game designed by a Muslim convert and professor of linguistics), Atlantis, and some D&D supplements.

Two awards of evil this week. One to korgmeister who believes that Australia's indigenous people lost to the British and they should just put up with it, stop whining and appealing to pity. Number two to Japan for leading the charge to declare the IWC moratorium on whaling invalid.

Comments

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Pity? Hmm. I thought it was about appealing to a sense of common decency.

But of course, appealing to common decency would be inexcusably naive and presumably anyone doing that would deserve what they got. (/sarcasm)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, I thought decency and justice would have something to do with it, but there you go. That's just my limp-wristed, pinko, leftie bias. It's really just about pity which, as Nietzsche informs us, is only for the weak. All hail the Great White Superman!

[blot.livejournal.com]

grim.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It's a continuing personality trait.

[blot.livejournal.com]

I was referring to slums and whaling. not the much appreciated tcpip.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The trait comes from the news I keep reading. Sometimes I think I would be happier if I gave it all up and became a goatherd of similar.

I'm sure our rulers would love that!

[greylock.livejournal.com]

One to korgmeister who believes that Australia's indigenous people lost to the British and they should just put up with it

According to PM last night there are those who believe porn is the problem: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1666734.htm

Thought you might be interested.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Of course. The Aboriginal peoples are a different subspecies of human to the rest of us and are more suspect to influence of erototoxins. They are not capable of rational and independent thought etc etc.

With due diligence, our society stumbles to a racist mythology backed by pseudo-science.

[darkstardeity.livejournal.com]

"Now, my critique on this is where is the ability for young Aboriginal men to actually understand what this Australian society is about, when they don't leave their community and this is what they see?"

Actually, this point from the porn article may have some merit. It's drawing a long bow to blame porn as the only or even the major factor, obviously the part about "not leaving their communities and being isolated from mainstream communities" is in fact the larger problem, but it just might be giving men and boys in isolated communities the idea that that sort of behaviour is accepted and condoned in Australia.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

"Now, my critique on this is where is the ability for young Aboriginal men to actually understand what this Australian society is about, when they don't leave their community and this is what they see?"

I find it very improbable that people with television sets and VCRs don't know what is happening outside their community.

[darkstardeity.livejournal.com]

It really depends on what they are watching, and what is available to them in the first place. They are likely getting a very, very limited subset of TV broadcasts (if they get these at all - even the ABC doesn't cover all of Australia) and video selections, not the sort of range and diversity that you and I take for granted. If all they are watching is porn or violent movies ...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

OK, under those circumstances I'd agree. Still, one must acknowledge that's a fairly marginal coverage.

[darkstardeity.livejournal.com]

Well, as I said, it's more of an additional complication to the fact that the communities are isolated - geographically, socially and economically - which is more the root cause of the problem. But if true, this can't be helping matters.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Ooh, EPT! Quite a find. Been interested in taking a good long look at EPT for years.

What are people bagging Mongoose for specifically?
At least its nice to see Glorantha product flowing again - last year was a very empty one, at least now we have Mongoose and the excellent Moon Design both promising quite a bit of product.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, seeming that the boxed set included multiple copies of the original rules (well, the DW reprint from 1987), I'd be more than happy to swap you a copy for something nice and equally cool ;-)

There has been complaints about elements of the combat system (of course) and especially the legendary abilities section, which is very munchkin in my opinion. But mostly there's been comments about the treatment of Mr. Perrin and the playtest group (cf., a previous lj post of mine where I was almost left off the playtesters list).

The general feeling seems to be that Mongoose is treating RQ as a commercial opportunity rather than a game worthy of revival for its own sake (of course, this shouldn't surprise anyone - Mongoose are a profit-making enterprise),

All this said, I must confess I am really looking forward to the Dragon Pass 2nd Age supplement - Godlearners versus Empire of Wyrm Friend's is truly epic..

Oh, and on-topic Greg Stafford sends his regards. I've been in recent communication with him.

[botrytis.livejournal.com]

Regarding Mongoose ... are you aware of the Joe Michael Straczynski (JMS, creator of Babylon 5 which Mongoose has a game licence for) comments regarding statements that Mongoose made?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I'd heard something about this but I'm utterly unaware of the precise details.. Enlighten me!

[botrytis.livejournal.com]

My source of information on the matter is jmsnews.com - specifically a few posts - http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17550 and http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17546 ...

...those posts are of course from Usenet, so if you have the time, Google Groups should be able to provide you with more details from the discussion.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... It seems that Mr. Sprange may have ruffled people the wrong way in the past.

It will be interesting to see what develops.

Thanks very much for the links.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... we'll have to work out what you might be interested in, then.

I'm not too worried about munchkinness these days. But they certainly did seem to poorly handle the playtest process. Still, proof in the pudding and all that - I haven't seen any of it myself since last year, but at least the current stuff is done by good people. And to be honest I wasn't that thrilled with Perrins magic system suggestions.

The 2nd Age stuff looks good. I'm also looking forward to the 2nd Age deep background stuff Greg and others have done due to be released later this year (despite the ugly confrontation the high priced pre-release con fundraisers have sparked on the HeroQuest list).

Been back and forthing with Greg myself on the HQ list.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The last edition of the rules were less prone to what I considered to be obvious errors. Steve Perrin's magic rules I felt were a first draft execution of a good idea and basically that's what should have been said.

Being as kind as possible the playtest group was treated very poorly. In one period months went past without a single message coming from Mongoose. It really wasn't good.

Send me the link of the HQ list - seeming that I'm actually playing it regularly these days...

[zey.livejournal.com]

There was actually a rather nice article in a local paper I was reading (Perth Voice). Looks like there's a lot of support for the selling of vacant public land with similar restrictions to that NSW country town who sold land cheap a few years back: residential homebuyers only, building start within 12 months, no sale of the land for 5 years. Intent being to fuck off the speculators and investors and try to keep it first home-buyers only. Seems like a nice idea, if it gets through. What they're desperately trying to avoid is the East Perth area especially becoming a "slum lord" zone.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A rather managed method, but of course with break points that will be exploited e.g., building starts after 364 days, is never completed and land is sold after 5 years and 1 day.

[zey.livejournal.com]

Certainly. Devil in the detail and all that. Still, it's a nice idea and could be a goer with some fine tuning.

It'd be rather good if they can use the ATO precedent and make the determination that a housing purchase can be considered an investment property if that is its obvious intent, even if on technical grounds they've followed the strict letter of the law -- sort of the way the ATO handles dodgy tax schemes that take advantage of technical loopholes now.

[taavi.livejournal.com]

I get so jealous reading your roleplaying stories. My chance of doing any RPGing in Laos is about 0.00% unless I got into world of warcrack - and if i did that my partner would probably leave me, and then I'd die of starvation.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, design is a good opportunity when your mind is in a rpg mood; especially given your fondness for historical rpgs.

I started outlines for my Ten Thousand Islands malay archipelago game whilst in Timor. It provided great opportunity to "roleplay" whilst learning more about the people, culture and history of the place I was living in.

Must confess I know sfa about Laotian culture, mythology and history.

[cardinal-sodom.livejournal.com]

You play MERP willingly?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I'm actually running the Cybernoia game.

That said I don't mind MERP and have played it quite a few times in the past. It's a clean and easy system that works well for beginners.

[cardinal-sodom.livejournal.com]

They must have completely rewritten it since the edition I have was published. "Clean" and "easy" are hardly adjectives I would apply to it. "For beginners" is possible if the phrase "because they don't know any better" is added.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The core mechanic is just roll d100, add your bonus, subtract the negatives and look up the result.

What's the hard part?

[cardinal-sodom.livejournal.com]

The fact that everything is determined by their bizarre tables rather than a much cleaner success and damage roll system makes it cumbersome and not nearly as playable as better systems. Even d20 is a cleaner, esier system.

It also uses a class/level system (unrelated). This may be easy, but it leaves much to be desired in terms of character development.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh, see I always thought the "bizarre tables" were cleaner than seperate "to hit" and "to damage" rolls. The situation where (in D&D) you hit by six or seven points and then roll a 1 for damage never occurs in MERP. A good hit is a good hit!

As for the class level system, it must be acknowledged this in no way prohibits development in any skill area; it just means (for example) learning magic is harder for a fighter. In D&D it is prohibited.

Levels are just a means of graduated equilibrium. Even level-less systems (like RuneQuest) are graduated by scenario.

All this said, I started playing MERP after playing 1st ed Rolemaster for a few years... So I guess MERP intuitively seemed easy to me!

[cardinal-sodom.livejournal.com]

Point taken on the "good hit/craptacular damage" part, but I still prefer splitting it. It seems more realistic, especially with guns, and even more so with critical hits (real criticals, not the MERP "almost every hit is some form of critical" thing) and fumbles.

A D&D 3E fighter can learn magic very easily -- once he gains a level, he can multiclass into a spellcasting class. I was soured on the class system in general when I first picked up GURPS. I prefer the flexibility.

I also greatly prefer designed characters over randomly-rolled ones. The problem of one character potentially being a superman while his (supposedly) equally-powerful partner is Melvin Ferg (before the toxic waste swim) always annoyed me when I was a D&D player. It also leads some players to fudge their rolls or simply roll up 50 characters before they get a decent stat block.

Being a Rolemaster (not to be confused with the Georgia Pacific "Rollmastr" toilet paper dispenser) player would explain why you can tolerate MERP. I've used it as a punishment for players who annoyed me.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A D&D 3E fighter can learn magic very easily -- once he gains a level, he can multiclass into a spellcasting class.

Very true; D&D 3E was a great improvement in that regard.

I was soured on the class system in general when I first picked up GURPS. I prefer the flexibility.

Again true. Of course, I had experienced classless systems a long time prior to GURPS. RQ really set the path in this regard.

I also greatly prefer designed characters over randomly-rolled ones.

I'm actually pretty neutral about this; random-generation often seems faster for inexperienced players I've noticed. The exception of course is HeroQuest where you can literally make it up as you play.

[cardinal-sodom.livejournal.com]

1st and 2ne edition D&D Fighters could also (if human) dual-class (not to be confused with nonhumans' multi-class option) into a spellcasting class. It was usually more trouble than it was worth, but if enough effort was applied it could result in a very powerful character.

GURPS recently (in the last five years or so) introduced a "template" system that lets beginners (or overworked GMs) take a basic character and modify it for the specific situation. Since templates are more or less compatible (some minor tweaking has to take place if combining templates) a basic character can be assembled in minutes.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yeah, AD&D dual-class options sucked. Really bad.

I've heard about the GURPS template systems and have heard good things about them. A little overdue, imo!

Actually RQ III would have done well if it had a templates book as well. Character generation was great, but damn it took ages!

[cardinal-sodom.livejournal.com]

The template system is very nice. Designing a generic orc fighter consists of combining the "Orc" and "fighter" (depending on just what kind of fighter, you would obviously choose between a half dozen appropriate ones like "Archer" or "Heavy Footman") templates. Clean up overlapping traits, and your character is complete.

I (and I assume most other GMs) have been doing it that way for years, but they finally formalized it in two template books and templates included in most of the newer sourcebooks.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Presumably however the templates are sufficiently minimal to allow the standard starting point cost for race plus profession plus some player choice?

[cardinal-sodom.livejournal.com]

Racial template costs vary widely. Kobolds (not the D&D version, more like borderline retarded humans) and a few other races have a negative cost, and others are over 100 points. The occupational templates from Warriors are mostly 75 points, since they were mostly designed for 100 point campaigns.

Occupational templates usually have an interactive format that allows the player to choose from a list of options (usually # points chosen from a short list) for each category. They're pretty well-designed overall.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Do I have you on my RPG design list? If not send me an email. You should be there. You know this stuff.