On August 29, 1997…

Warning: Self-Replicating Device

 It’s often said that the milling machine was the first tool that could be used to make copies of itself. I think that distinction goes to the hammer, but the point is not lost: a device of great complexity that can be used to make and modify itself is approaching a life-like complexity that makes the tool exponentially greater as a phenomenon.

Well, since 2005 or so, the RepRap project has been going on, making a machine that could make itself that makes open-source hardware possible. The creators claim that the device, when fully functional, will cost $400 to build. Or, of course, you could have your friend fab you up a copy. Presumably, it’s your duty to fab one for someone else at that point.

What’s interesting to me about this (and the creators) is that this does for hardware what’s happened with software since its inception: replication means that you can make complex things for cheap. So cheap that they asymptotically approach free. The RepRap can’t make a sandwich, as Jeff pointed out, and that’s actually kind of important: what a lot of the world needs is food, not tools and toys. But when food is to be had, the other things in life — transportation, communication, construction, and of course play — become very important. We’ve satisfied that craving over the last few centuries by buying stuff. Now we may be able to make it. And that may mean the re-emergence of a material folk culture. One not defined by Swooshes and Apples, but by a billion proud signatures and trade marks.

(Thanks to Tomorrow’s Trends for the “Caution: Self-Replicating Devices” sign at the post head.)

I think we should put some mountains here, otherwise, what are the characters going to fall off of?

Promethea

 From Judd, who got it from Warren Ellis, who got it from M John Harrison:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

I don’t think I’d say this quite so strongly — I think worldbuilding is a fun game to engage in and it will be the core of Xenon: (if it turns out to be fun to play), but I really agree with this about theme-addressing fiction. It’s the reason that you build as you go in Shock: starting with only the most basic parts. You make sure the world is the one that says what you want to say because you build it to suit whenever you want to say something.

So it goes.

Kurt.

These words and the ones that followed meant a lot to me. They highlighted the difference between “equal” and “the same” by showing what it meant to conflate them.

Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut, for giving me these words.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

[Edit: It’s a little sad, losing RAW and Kurt Vonnegut in such rapid succession. They helped me form a lot of who I am and make up a good bit of my formative thought in my teenage years.]

Distinction

Audubon finches

Indie Press Revolution, purveyor of fine, independently-published games and books, has a mailing list for said publishers. In it, a particular publisher said,

I know the owner of Dragon’s Lair somewhat, and have shown him [My game] in the past. His comment (which probably applies to many of my IPR brethren), was something like, “The indie format”–by this he meant the physical format of many of our books; [My game] is 9×6, landscape–“doesn’t sit well on the shelves”.

My response was the following:

I encourage everyone to see this for the bullshit it is.

Go to a Barnes and Noble. Look at all the different shapes of books.

Now go to a game store and notice the homogeneity.

What he wants you to do is fit the format so your book literally doesn’t stand out. Your book will be lost. It will be a bunch of work to redesign the book and it will dampen your sales because it will lose its distinctiveness.

This is a general principle of design: if you make something designed simply to be inoffensive, you are designing it simply to not be noticed. If you design distinction, though, things will be different. The game (or whatever it is) will be noticeable. What that store owner is doing is sacrificing the distinctiveness of his individual products in favor of the size of bookshelf he’s purchased.

Now, the be clear, if you made a game that’s eight feet to a side, weighs 150 pounds, and costs 40 cents, you’ll have a hard time getting a retailer to show much interest. It’s not worth it for the shelf space that could be better spent on more normally sized books. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is that the store owner is uncomfortable because things are different than he expected.

Much of the time, when I’m meeting with a design client, I’m listening for some keys phrases they might say. One of them is, “I like it.” This, believe it or not, is a bad sign. It means that a) nothing’s lept out at them (if it had, they would have said, “I like how there’s this little shape here” or something), and b) sometimes a client just doesn’t want to say anything critical and says “I like it” to keep from having to express displeasure, but it sounds like satisfaction.

But sometimes, they say “I don’t like this.” What that usually means is, “I noticed this.” Often, they’ll then say, later, as the meeting goes on and they’ve looked at things more, “This one’s growing on me.” Again, if they actively dislike something, they’ll be able to identify exactly what it is that they don’t like.

Consider that last one. Consider an unusual thing on a bookshelf: something small (Burning Wheel) or something large (Nobilis). I literally bought Nobilis because it stuck out of the shelf and I kept seeing it. I bought Burning Wheel because it was physically small and quietly beautiful, an oasis in a sea of cleavage and comically giant swords. Its smallness and quietness winked alluringly to me from the bookshelf.

I’ve used some deliberate tools like that on some other books I’ve done. The spine of Shock: is like a laser: a thin little bright line between books. The Mountain Witch is thicker and black, but with this little splash of red. Both are shorter than their counterparts, making them shine even when placed spine-out. When facing cover-out, they both use a variety of tools to get and hold the attention of the proper audience. But they’re both unusual sizes, too. That means that they get more space around them.

The homogeneity of the RPG market is precisely to the advantage of the indie marketer. We’re looking to fill a niche they can’t. We’re making things that are inherently for markets that they haven’t tapped because they don’t want them. Where the business model of Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf is to make their products intercompatible within their own products, our model is to show our distinctiveness between products.

Don’t let anyone tell you any different. When you’re told that you’re missing the market because your book isn’t enough like another one, you’re being offered a ticket to a Journey concert when you can instead be on stage at a local club with a sticky floor, coming away with cash in your pocket and the respect of your peers.

Recovering My Pants With Some Dignity

Busted Powerbook

As is traditional in this day and age, I spent a fair chunk of my weekend trying to figure out if I’d lost all of my work from the last eight years. Fortunately, my backups were what they appeared to be and my machine’s running better than it has in months.

That said, I’m not sure I’m not missing email and there are several people in my friends list in IM who have lost their proper names leaving me with “raspeng39457” as my only clue to the identity of said “friend”. So my communications might be hazy at first, particularly if you’re someone who, like my sister, has had no less than four IM names in the past two years.

(That computer in the post head, by the way, is running. A wardrobe was dropped on it. No, it’s not my computer. Mine is much, much better.)

All the Excitement!

Ngheeeeeerrr!

I’ve been playing Formula Dé Mini since last Chanukah and I really like it. I love how the game’s all about modulating risk, and the game is won by hovering on the knife edge between falling behind and blowing up your car.

The full version (Formula Dé Maxi, we’ll call it. Or Formula Dé Biggie.) retains that element, but you have some other interesting choices to make. Most of the time, these choices come down to, “Should I brake going into this corner, costing me a space and brake wear, but saving some tires, or should I blast through to get in the rhythm again?” It’s a fun decision to make. It adds to the tension. Downshifting dramatically also costs you more, the more you over-rev. So you have to consider the effects of speed at a given corner.There are a couple of random events that I’m not that pleased with, however:

  • The “You might have a shitty start or a great start!” roll is still in place. In Super Mario Cart, this is a matter of skill. You learn to synchronize your thumb with the sounds and lights to get a great start. But in FDé, there’s just a 5% chance you’ll stall the car, a 5% chance you’ll take off at a fast clip, and a 90% chance that the dice will work normally. It doesn’t do anything to break up the pack (because the person in pole position is as likely to stall as anyone else), it doesn’t add tension (because there’s nothing you can do to affect the outcome). It’s just sort of an “Oh, great, I get to move 4 on the first turn.” We play without the rule because it doesn’t plug into any other rule; it sits alone, giving a player a random advantage every so often, or screwing someone over.
  • Collisions are less likely in Maxi, occurring on a 1 on the Black Die. That’s a 5% chance. Despite being next to each other for half the race, my brother and I never once actually collided. It makes the roll a little silly. I don’t like mechanics where the outcome of the roll is probably nothing, but maybe something a little bad. It doesn’t seem really worth it. To be fair, we only played 1-lap races, so maybe it happens more in longer races.

There are car design rules that I’m really excited to try out, and they’re pleasantly abstract. I’m a real sucker for that stuff. One of the optional rules is “Suspension”, which has implicitly within it “deforming damage”. That is, when I blow through a corner or knock into somebody and take a point of damage, I leave a piece behind where it happened. Damage from hitting that stuff is taken on Suspension by those behind you. … I wonder if Suspension damage leaves behind bits, too? In any event, that’s damage that leads to damage. If you’re in the lead, it might be worth it to damage your car so the cars behind you wind up taking multiple hits.

All told, I enjoyed the game quite a bit and look forward to exploring its rules further (though I think the rules for weather might have an obvious solution if I’m reading them right). Greenfieldies, I’d love to play this with you guys. It can take up to 10 players, but I think that might make for a very long game.

Checkin’ in at the Gem

Wild Bill Gets It.

I’m watching Deadwood right now. I’ve been watching for almost three hours. I can’t stop. It’s a terrible problem.

Calamity Jane is fantastic. Probably my favorite character. I want to see her let loose sometime soon — she sure fucking needs it. And you know what’s neat? Knowing a certain amount of the history doesn’t decrease my enjoyment; knowing how things (at least certain things) turn out adds tension. Let’s consider that as a model for fiction games, shall we, cocksuckers?