RPG Review Issue 3, IT News, A Nuclear Weapons Free World?

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RPG Review Issue #3 has just been made available. It includes reviews of Mouse Guard and Houses of the Blooded, designer's notes for Fire & Sword, Summerland and Gulliver's Trading Company, an interview with Steve Long, the use of classic AD&D scenarios in a Middle-Earth campaign, a Paranoia scenario and a GURPS Bunnies & Burrows easter special scenario "Return to Druid's Valley" (derived from Different Worlds issue #3), Sexuality in Blue Planet, a rewrite of the core mechanics for Palladium, QAD; a complete roleplaying system, an RPG crossword puzzle and, of course, more friendly advice from Orcus. On a related note (news from allandaros), two classic game designers, Aaron and Allston and Dave Arneson are both seriously ill. Allston is recovering from a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery and Arneson is losing his battle with cancer. Played another session of Dragon Warriors on Friday night, Hacker with ser_pounce and hathalla on Saturday and Gulliver's Trading Company on Sunday.

Already mentioned heavily on el-jay and elsewhere is the Federal government's decision to establish a public-private company to the tune to provide fibre-to-home service. Contrary to the hyperbolic claims, the $43 billion dollar over eight years price tag is fairly modest; indeed it is somewhat less than the personal income tax-cuts announced in the last (2008-2009) budget which occur over five years. On a much more personal scale, I've finally started adding new content on my IT website, after many months of being a content-free zone - installation steps for scientific software, probably of minimal interest to only the few who use these obscure (but important) programs. Going to the Linux Users Victoria meeting tonight; will be interesting to hear arjen_lentz explain why failure is not an emergency.

Two days ago, in Prague, Obama called for the abolition of nuclear weapons: "So today, I state, clearly and with conviction, America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.". I haven't seen a statement this strongly worded since the times of Gorbachev, and hope that something comes out of it. Of course, ending nuclear weapons isn't necessarily a path to peace and security as the President claims. I tend to think that path is a world without standing armies (I must elaborate that letter into a general article).

Comments

[mr-orgue.livejournal.com]

New RPG Review! Yay!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*nods* At the end of each issue I must say I'm quite happy with the content... Also I'm getting all sorts of surprises on who (industry and fans) have heard of it. Word is spreading!

[frou-frou.livejournal.com]

Nice site Lev - does Vicky have a website? You should add the URL to her reference.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's just a basic Drupal install with an old style that I like..

As for Ms. V. yes, she does have a site... But it still needs much more content.

[curufea.livejournal.com]

Sorry, was accidentally logged in as my wife on the previous comment :)

Excellent - I just recently bought Mouse Guard (based on what someone else said about it) it's interesting to read your review.

One of the minor problems I have with the book is repetition. Each section, if it can use the same example or description of rule use as a previous section - it does so. Which annoyed me. Also the duplication of the sample characters.

Also - there are no character sheets included in the rules, but there are a lot of nice downloads on the Burning Wheel website that make up for this. It is probably rare that a roleplayer doesn't have internet access, but still..

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

What you say about MG is true; it is somewhat simplistic and verbose in the writing. The ordering of the chapters is a little odd as well. It struck me very much as a way of getting readers of the comic into the RPG, rather than the other way around. And whilst there might be character sheets on the BW site.. But there isn't on the Mouse Guard RPG site. All pretty odd.

[curufea.livejournal.com]

Posibly because they were BW players first and haven't yet thought to make the site as easily useful for MG.

[forwrathandruin.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you get emails letting you know when it happens, but I felt compelled to respond to your letter regarding standing armies over on Isocracy.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

This is, of course, one of the most critical issues concerning the state and the formation of societies with governments but without states. Give me a night's sleep on it and I'll address the comments you've made. I'll also see if I can work the letter into a proper article worthy of being published on the front page.

[ikilled007.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what I think about nuclear weapons. Since I was a child I've been hearing the argument that nuclear weapons are the only reason there hasn't been a major war in Europe since WWII. Also that major world powers will never go to war -- China, Russia, the US, etc.

And yet we still get major proxy wars like Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan (Russian invasion) and Iraq vs Iran, etc. So I'm not sure how great an argument that one is.

I honestly just don't know. I know what does bother me is the chance of a nuclear accident (mobile launcher or silo detonation, misfires, etc.) and the possibility of a lost weapon, especially as major nuclear powers disintegrate (USSR, for instance).

The genie is out of the bottle, and now what do we do?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A deterrence theory had some mileage, I agree. But it was incredibly risky and assumed (a) rational actors (if Al-Qaeda had nuclear weapons, do you really think the threat of retaliation would worry them?) and (b) rational decision making (consider the poor information that led to the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis).

The inevitably arms race a nuclear deterrence generates also created the military-industrial complex with its influence, if not control, over democratic governments (and the enforcement of "barracks socialism" in the Eastern bloc).

You are right to worry about 'lost' weapons and the like - South Africa doesn't have this problem (or at least they won't contribute to it) anymore because they dismantled the half dozen that they had.

Major stockpiles are still significant; and I guess it will remain a problem whilst some of the arms limitations agreements are (a) vague (SORT) or (b) never implemented (START II).

Let see where this goes.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

We all talk a lot about 'accidental' triggers to nuclear war, but they have nearly happened about three times to my knowledge, and that's just in the US. Once when the US nearly nuked one of their own states in the late 80's, another time when a downed comms line to an airbase led some idiot to think a first strike had occurred in the late 90's, and another garbled story I've half-heard about something to do with an aircraft carrier in the early noughts.

And this barely managed monster has encouraged tinpot nutbars across the world to 'catch up' to the big boys. In fact the deterrent has not so much limited the nuclear powers from fighting each other - there's no real gain there anyway, they're more value as economic partners - but has rather given them free reign to be the bullies in the playground with less influential nations.

This leads to a lot of jingoistic macho bullshit. Hence we hitch our cart to big bullies like the US, hence Kim Jong-Il gets all Clint Eastwood-y and wants to stand up to Japan and the US. Hence Japan - terrified to the shithouse of being nuked again, is prepared to bomb N Korea to the stone age if they even look like they can fire a nuke at Japan.

For me, the deterrent argument has never held water. It foments a different kind of war, it promotes nuclear/military rivalry. In that heated atmosphere everyone's capable of doing something phenomenally stupid.

Obama's statement was positive and hopeful. It would be a lot more progressive if the US immediately started dismantling its stockpile, ceased production of any new weapons and stopped supplying weaponry to its allied nations.

The man who saved the world....

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the closest the superpowers came to nuclear war was when Stanislav Petrov had his finger on the button; and decided it was all a false alarm.

Overall, I think I prefer a military model of 'defensive deterrence'; a regulated militia based on small arms, something incapable of engaging in an offensive war, but incredibly difficult to invade. Whilst I often cite Jefferson in this regard, I'm thinking the origins of the idea come from Machiavelli; both in his advice in The Prince and The Art of War and moreso from his experience as head of the Florentine militia.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

I'm completely skeptical of Obama. We have seen him make a number of grand speeches, claims and calls to act. But we have seen very little by the way of significant changes. He is basically a good propagandist, and considering his policies on prisoner abuse, and the mild, liberal changes he has effected, he will not stand out for his policies.

Wat good is reduced nuclear capacity when we have intensified conflicts in Afghanistan?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Whilst I intuitively agree with the need to be skeptical of all leaders, I think Obama has been largely positive in the changes thus far:

But we have seen very little by the way of significant changes.

Ordering the shutdown of Guantanamo detention centre and the immediate end to the Guantanamo military commission. and requiring the Army Field Manual to be used as interrogations, banning torture, including waterboarding.

Signing in the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Now you are right to be concerned about the planned extra 17,000 US troops in Afghanistan; but that is not a significant as the concurrent planned withdrawal of over 100,000 from Iraq.

Perhaps most significant of course is the $787 billion economic stimulus package; whilst that has some problems of its own (but certainly preferable to the money over fist 'bailout'), the single biggest component - $140 billion earmarked for education - must be seen as a positive.

[madali.livejournal.com]

Obama's speech was a joke. In the same breath he mentioned how he would go ahead with the Poland defense thingie and they are needed as long as threats like Iran exist. Yes, because Iran is a huge threat to...Poland. If the guy can make such excuses for military expansionism based on such flimsy threats, then you think he would in anyway work toward a nuclear free world? The most he would do is dismantle a few older ones just so fans can go squeee!!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

What do you think of his overtures towards Turkey. To be sure there is a US strategic interest in getting them more onside; but people like Juan Cole seem positive.

[madali.livejournal.com]

US has always been friendly with Turkey.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

On a completely different topic, I just downloaded RPG Review for the first time. If you're doing this quarterly, I could probably help you put it into a flashy format if you wish.

Creating page templates, and character/paragraph styles is easy enough, and if you had finished text, I could easily format it for you into a page layout, then shoot you a finished pdf. If you want, send me raw text and separate image files for the one you've done, and I'll do a mock-up for you, to show you the sort of thing you could do.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That would be.... awesome (especially as after the fourth issue it will actually be produced in print). Layout, page templates and such things is not my strong point by any stretch of the imagination.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

Would you do a print AND pdf version after #4? It's easy enough to convert a print quality file to a web quality file, a bit harder the other way around. Your big concern with print would be having image files at good enough quality.

Like I said, if you want to, shoot me an email with your raw text and pics from #3 and I'll put together a mock-up for you of the sort of thing you could do. I'd aim to keep it more or less printer-friendly regardless. You're aiming for a 64 page limit as a standard page count yeah?

Also there's all sorts of useful things you can do in pdf's these days, like live hyperlinks, and jump-to-page contents tables etc.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The idea is four quarterly PDF issues then a print annual.

I'll send you a raw copy of the text and images tonight...

Also there's all sorts of useful things you can do in pdf's these days, like live hyperlinks, and jump-to-page contents tables etc.

Yeah, I actually want to avoid that.. Doesn't translate well when I do the print versions - or if people (shock!) print it out to read on the way to work/gaming whatever.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

No worries. I'll see what I can put together over Easter.

You can make links unobtrusive in a print version, it's just adding functionality to what you've already formatted for the pdf version. I can show you anyway with a finished pdf. See what you think then.