February 15, 2010 – 6:12 pm
I just found this while looking through old illustrations for materials for Human Contact. It’s not related, but I remember being really proud of this drawing. The original’s about 4″ tall.
If I recall, the deal is that these guys are herd animals, but their herds stretch really far apart. They stay in communication with natural radio that run along the top of their bodies inside their carapaces. They’re not naturally highly intelligent, but because of their distributed observational standpoint, have a complex communication system for predicting the weather on the barren, storm-ridden surface of their planet. As herbivores, they spend most of their time snuffling through the soil for little fungus-things, but they occasionally gobble up a little animal that secretes a toxin that has psychoactive effects on the enormous creatures. This pushes their nervous system into full-fledged creative intelligence, which they can only participate in when they’re large enough to not be poisoned by the toxin. Children are therefore little herds, incapable of creative thought. Only adolescence brings creativity.
They have a single eye, but it’s evolved to give them a limited form of depth perception.
They also have started realizing that, if they all point their antennae up, they hear some really weird stuff.
February 14, 2010 – 10:41 pm
In Bruce Sterling’s 1999 book Distraction, interpersonal relationships are largely mediated by “Relationship servers” that keep track of reputations beyond your immediate circle. People will sign up to help someone according to their trustworthiness, and they’re given tongue-in-cheek ranks to indicate how trusted they are. It winds up being a powerful sociopolitical tool in the story, of course.
Facebook — particularly Facebook Login — promises to be that kind thing, with Google Buzz following hot on its heels. But they’ve both made a horrible, critical error: they confused their users with their product. Let’s ignore the fact that, in this age of forward thinking, world-shaking media, they’re treating Google and Facebook like fucking commercial television in that regard. Instead, let’s look at what could be done to make shit work right.
I’m envisioning an Open Source Facebook. You establish yourself as a real person, with relationships, shared activities, a face, a birthday, and so forth. But this is distributed, encrypted, and signed. I’m imagining something along the lines of DNS or BitTorrent. It would necessarily include links to your blog, Twitter, Gravatar, Flobber, and Gropnik accounts (at your request) and allow you rights to edit the accessibility of those items category-by-category and person-by-person.
Doable? Can you design or program such a thing? How do I help?
February 14, 2010 – 2:30 am
February 10, 2010 – 8:47 pm
Many people who read this blog are small publishers like I am. You often find yourselves at conventions needing to take credit cards. I’d like to give you a piece of advice: Don’t Use Merchant’s Warehouse. I got stuck in a contract with them almost two years ago for our booth at Gen Con. They were consistently misleading and charged for every little thing, including doing nothing. Their sales staff is fantastic. Their service staff don’t write back, and they’re careful to send important information at the point in time most convenient to them and least convenient to you.
I got out of my contract because they sent me a notice on December 20-somethingth that they were adding $25 of charges to my useless monthly bill. It’s a clever time to send such a notice. After all, who’s checking all their business mail right before the New Year? There’s family around, you’re probably scrambling with business stuff on the ground. It said that, if I did nothing, I was accepting their new charges. I called them and told them that I wanted out. They emailed me a form that I had to fax (“Email of the 80s!”)back. I filled it out and faxed it back. I just got a final bill with the extra $25 tacked on because I called them in January, rather than in the 45 business minutes at the end of December that they allowed me.
There are new smartphone apps that allow direct access to PayPal like Square’s nifty little gadget. I bet that, by next Gen Con, that shit will be worked out and you won’t have to deal with this kind of shyster like I did.
February 10, 2010 – 10:28 am
Cover of the Shock:Human Contact 2010 Dreamation Preview
I’m excited about running Shock:Human Contact at Dreamation 2010 (The Year We Make Contact) with folks! I’m getting the edition put together right now and I’m really happy with the way it’s shaping up. I’ll have copies of this edition for all players of the game, and depending on the cost of production, might have a few more for sale at the con.
February 5, 2010 – 9:44 pm
I’ve been back down in the basement, working with the Sculpey. It’s more fun than is really reasonable.
I decided to try something with anatomy that could be rationally interrogated this time. So I’m doing a dude. I don’t know what his story is yet. Sooner or later, he’s going to have clothes, jewelry, and that stick will gain some character, but I don’t know what the stuff is yet.
There’s more detail visible over in the little guy’s thread at Concept Art. I’m going to post over there with more detail, just posting highlights on the blog here.
As usual, click these images to see a larger slideshow.
February 5, 2010 – 9:21 pm
A starship of the Academy, crewed by tens of researchers. When it arrives, its crew will spend years studying and learning from the hominins at its destination who have been separated by thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years from the rest of Homininity. While they do that, the engine module will be on a months-long mission to the Oort Cloud of the solar system to refuel reaction mass. Upon launch, 90% of the mass of the ship is the massive sphere of "smart ice" you see here. Thrown down the vectoring needle with fantastic force, it can maintain an acceleration of .1G for months on end, taking as little as 100 days to get to a wormhole from a planet in the Goldilocks Zone of a solar system.
Human Contact is a version of the Shock: system, focused for a far-future, spacefaring setting. Its science is as hard as I can make it while still having fairy dust things like “interstellar travel” work, while at its core, the setting is about culture clash and the moral challenges of being an explorer and being explored.
There’s an interesting tweak to the system that has to do with interpersonal relationships, and I’m curious to see how it works. It’s untested but in theory doesn’t break anything. It should mostly tell you who should be in future episodes of the game, a bit like the Owe List in In a Wicked Age, but it also gives a little oomph to interpersonal challenges that I often find lacking in games of Shock:
I’m running it a couple of times at Dreamation. Sign up if you want to be a researcher on a starship! I promise the locals will be friendly and grateful for the civilization you’ll bring*.
I’ll have a handful of copies of the preview edition of the game and its alternate rules at the con for players at the table. Sign up! Shock: always overbooks (usually by a dozen or so people!), and I won’t be able to run multiple tables at once this year because of this experiment.
*Promises will not be kept.
Because you know who’s going to be playing the locals: You are. And I know how you are.
January 26, 2010 – 1:56 am
One of the four mouths of the Warrior.
The little guy’s complete!
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January 20, 2010 – 9:31 pm
Ashlesan warrior, about to stomp you. Gills are visible between the halves of the shell and the eating orifice is visible under the raised foot.
Painting is nearly done! You can see a spot I missed completely on the right knee, and there are a couple of spots that still need work, but the body’s just about done. Next come the banners, which will brighten the monochrome substantially. More pics under the cut!
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