Tuesday Morning, 3 a.m.

Okay it's not 3 am, not yet at least, but we've got a big presentation tomorrow, and if history is any guide, that's about how late it's going to be before I get to bed. As usual I'm optimistic that this time it will be different. But it's nearly 1:00 am and there's still much to be done. I'm waiting for one of my partner's to get off the phone so that I can go over the agenda I came up with. It's mostly stuff we've already done and covered, but as usual there's always places where things can be improved.

I think now that I'm up to my eyeballs in things that this is one of the big difficulties with startups, that everything is moving so fast that you're constantly trying to hit a moving target. In fact as I listen to my partner on the phone I can hear him making changes to our strategy even now at literally the 11th hour. Oh well I could be back in a cube, and though occasionally it's difficult to remember why it was so bad, it won't be after tomorrow when the adrenaline of the pitch and the thrill of victory (or less likely the agony of defeat) will create a vividness to life that I wouldn't trade for all the cubes in India.

If you can't tell I'm already pretty tired... Also bonus points if you get the song or artist I alluded to in the title

The OGL vs. the D20 License

I figured I'd answer aozora's question from yesterday's comments. Back when 3E came out the D&D Brand Manager, Ryan Dancey had this great idea that he would make the game open source and get everyone else to write the things that had to low of a profit margin for WotC to bother with. He did it in 2 tiers, there was the Open Game License which was forever and then there was the D20 license which could be revoked at any time, and was more restrictive (you couldn't have character creation rules and had to refer people to the Player's Handbook), but you could use the D20 logo. The OGL was just supposed to provide the underlying framework, and give other game systems something they could use. All of the action was supposed to involve the D20 license because they figured people would need to logo to get anyone to buy their product. In this way they hoped for the best of both worlds, a bunch of supporting material that drove people to buy the core books.

Instead what happened was that so much crap was released under the D20 logo that it actually got the point where it was almost a negative thing to have it on your book. And all of the big players who had made a name for themselves started stuff that was basically compatible with D&D but under the OGL, which allowed them to sell a self contained system which didn't even need any of WotC's books for it to be played. Since the OGL was set up that it can never be revoked people can use the 3.5 (and 3.0) system as the basis for their derivative games forever. And so of course that's what a lot of people were wondering would the OGL create a split in the D&D market where some people continued didn't switch to 4E, but rather continued to write stuff for 3E. And that's basically what happened, though I'm surprised that Paizo was the first person to take the plunge.

One thing that is important to remember is that the OGL allows you to declare certain parts of your work as protected, mostly proper names. As a result many of the iconic D&D monsters (and all of the adventures and settings) are not "out there" for example mind flayers, beholders, githyanki, basically any monster whose existence doesn't pre-date D&D as a myth. For me that's actually a pretty big deal because there's a lot of coolness locked up in that set of monsters. (I want to say that Drow are protected as well, but I wouldn't swear to it.) Anyway that's a quick and fairly rambling explanation, but I hope it answered your question.

I guess when you're 5 McDonald's is the height of fine dining

Headache

I've had the mother of all headaches today. I think I slept wrong, since I could sense it's presence even before I woke up. I get this sort of headache from time to time and I imagine that it's similar to being hung over (it is at least similar to how hang overs are depicted in conventional media). Obviously taking some ibuprofen is a big part of the cure, but what seems even more palliative is to avoid loud noises headphones, and to move very slowly. The fact that this works leads me to believe that some measure of stress is involved, or perhaps it's just that once my upper neck muscles tighten up that there's some kind of positive feedback loop which just makes them more and more clenched, and that only by trying to sort of unclench my whole body do things start to improve.

After four hours of trying to take it easy the headache has mostly receded, though I can tell that it's just lurking at the edge waiting to pounce should I do anything foolish. As usual it's a source of continual frustration that I'm not a robot. Being an automotan that could just be plugged into an AC outlet and didn't require sleep would be super convenient for me right about now. In other news Paizo, one of the largest publishers of D&D adventures announced that they would not be making the move to Fourth edition, but would instead come up with their own rules system that was based on D&D edition 3.5. For those who don't care about D&D (and possibly even those who do should probably just stop reading at this point.

I'm excited about 4E although if you've been following my blog you'll realize that the amount of excitement goes up and down. So I maybe prejudiced, nevertheless I think this is a bad idea. Not just for Paizo, for Wizards and D&D as a whole. For Wizards it's bad because it draws attention to how late the GSL is and of course it cuts into their market share in particular the initial adoption. For D&D it confuses the market and makes it harder to get groups of players together and new people into the game. However I think both Wizards and D&D will survive, I'm less sure about Paizo.

Here's the core problem: Basically Paizo is going to start with, at maximum, the fans they already have. And I don't see how they end up with any more than that. I don't see any mechanism, or any sigificant mechanism for them to grow their customer base above what it is today. Then once you start factoring in the people who leave because they're more interested in 4E and then factor in the people who don't like the way the Pathfinder rules develop. Plus the normal attrition just due to time. Before you know it in a few years they're out of customers... In addition by creating a new ruleset they're losing the hard core "3E ain't broke so don't fix it". Why is the Paizo revision going to be more amenable to them than the WotC revision. Paizo claims complete backwards compatibility but they've already made way more changes than 3.5 vs. 3.0 and most people I know feel the need to fiddle with even that small jump.

I like the open beta test, but I think it's also pretty risky. Particularly the way they're doing it in the open. Imagine that they come upon an issue where their base is split about 50/50. Say for example the skill points change (I don't think the split on that issue is 50/50 but it's not a bad example). So you have long inflammatory debates on the Paizo Messageboards, with each side getting increasingly partisan. Well then when Paizo finally takes the side of one faction over the other, how can the faction who lost out not feel some animosity towards Paizo? Particularly if it's not just one issue, but every issue? (i.e. it's their entire philosophy of the game that loses out?)

Anyway I hope I'm wrong. I actually enjoy having a wide variety of systems to choose from. And I like the people at Paizo, and I've really enjoyed their Pathfinder Adventure Paths. And I was really looking to 4E Adventure Paths from them, so much so that I had just renewed my subscription, but now I'm thinking I may go back and cancel it. It's not that they're not supporting 4E it's that I'm not going to get their new system either until August of 2009... So that's over a year of 3.5 stuff, that I'm almost certainly not going to use...

May you live in interesting times

Vomitous Offspring

It's been long enough that I almost thought we'd grown out of this stage, but no, at 3:00 am last night my number one son did something that required us to strip his bed and use copious amounts of Fabreeze. The problem with this thing is that by the time you're done it's actually fairly difficult after being awake for 30 minutes to get back to sleep. And then of course just as you do fall asleep they puke again and you have to get up and clean out the bucket. What's particularly distressing about his timing is that Grandma was going to have a sleep over for all the kids, which would have allowed me to basically work from dawn till significantly past dusk, as it was I spent a good part of the day home with him.

I'm not all that mad, it is nice to have an excuse for a break, but I was also looking forward to a kid-free house tonight... I guess whatever it was it was pretty virulent I guess it knocked out about 30% of his class, which is no mean feat even helped along by the perfect incubator that is elementary. Of course what this probably means is that all the kids are going to come down with it before it's over... Imagine my joy. I just hope that my robust adult immune system which I haven't abused at all recently will keep me from getting it.

Other than that I suffered some fairly severe blows to my confidence. Nothing I can really blog about, but it interesting that when you're a kid you imbue your parents with infinite wisdom, bravery and confidence (or at least I did) and when you discover that it's not infinite (though still far greater than your own) it's a profound learning experience. Of course even at 37 I still have a hard time viewing myself as Adult with a capital "A". I'm kind of just hoping that my children also give me the benefit of the doubt, at least for awhile.

Shaken, but not stirred

A Couple of Interesting Stories

I came across an interesting article in the Economist about getting rid of traction control in Formula 1 racing. (It's interesting to see technology being taken away rather added.) I talked to my brother-in-law who follows F1 racing and apparently the results were not pretty. He said that of the 23 cars that started the race only about 8 finished, and that another 8 or so didn't even make it through the first lap. Now that's pretty funny... I guess all these highly paid drivers were letting the computer do most of the work.

Another interesting story I stumbled upon comes from NPR. Apparently there was this piece of choral music so beautiful that the Pope decreed that it could only be played for him during the Easter celebration in the Sistine Chapel upon pain of excommunication. Well this went on for about a hundred years until the 14 year old Mozart was invited to hear the piece. Later that night he transcribed the whole thing from memory. He then took the transcription (hidden in his hat) to a second performance, discovered he had made a couple of errors. He corrected them and that's how the secret got out.

Don't mess with Mozart

Dungeons and Dragons 4E

It's been awhile since I talked about the upcoming new edition of Dungeons and Dragons. When I first heard about it I was pretty excited. I always like to see what different RPG systems do and how they do it and on top of that because I didn't know anything about 4E my imagination was free to craft something of nearly infinite coolness. Since then as I've learned more about it my excitement has ebbed and flowed. I just got done listening to the latest D&D podcast so my excitement is relatively high. Which reminds me, in addition to wanting webcomic recommendations (See yesterday's blog) I'm also somewhat interested in podcast recommendations. Obviously time is a big factor there so it has to be pretty good, or very short, but I notice that I've been running out of podcasts by the end of the week (all of my current podcasts are weekly) before the shows refresh. A really good music podcast has a better chance of making the cut (since I can listen to it without giving it my full attention) than a spoken word podcast.

Anyway where was I? Oh yeah my variable excitement for the new version of D&D. Some of the things that have gotten me excited include: the art in the preview books; the canonization of roles; at-will, per-encounter and daily powers for all classes; the new D&D minis game. Some of the things which have cooled my ardor include: no sorcerers in the first PHB; dragonborn and tieflings; the pit fiend stats; diagonal movement only costing 1. As I indicated on the balance I'm still excited, but we'll have to see what happens once I have the actual books in my hand (regardless of what happens between now and then I'm definitely going to buy the three core books.) They are coming out with the introductory in May, so perhaps I'll run the family campaign through it and see what they think. Whether they want to restart at level one using 4E, try to convert over their current characters or whether they just want to stick with 3.5.

Anyway that's it for today, as I mentioned I still need webcomic recommendations (or actual comics that appear in the newspaper since those inevitably end up on the web as well).

Sharpen the saw

Comics

So I need your help. Previously I have been exceptionally parsimonious about which web comics I will check on a daily basis. Right now it's limited to Penny-Arcade, Order of the Stick and XKCD. But I realized the other day that one of the things that really helps out my ubiquitous stress and anxiety is a good laugh, and that furthermore reading the average web comic installment is an investment of only maybe 30 seconds. With that much benefit for that little cost how can I afford to not read all the webcomics on the whole internet!? Okay, that maybe taking a good thing too far, but I am asking, no actually begging you to point me to any web comics that you particularly enjoy, or even just occasionally enjoy. I am probably going to put some kind of limit on how many I actually follow, so rather than just arbitrarily adding popular ones I've heard about (dilbert, pvp, userfriendly, etc.) I'm looking for personal recommendations.

If we didn't laugh at other people what would we laugh at?

Special Celebrations

Somewhere on the massive "Someday/Maybe" list in my mind is an ill defined item which reads something like "Have more spontaneous and/or quirky celebrations". Here are a couple of examples of what I mean: When Gygax died last week I really wanted to drop everything call up my old gaming buddies and run an old school AD&D game, perhaps run them through "The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl" (the subject of a joke on NPR this last Saturday). While I was on my mission and the summer solstice rolled around we tore down some branches to create kind of an indoor forest, made friets and escargot and stayed up all night telling ghost stories. Another friend of mine doesn't celebrate any holiday except Groundhog's Day (that doesn't really fit the "more" part of the item, but it certainly fits the "quirky" part).

The reason this occurred to me know is that one of my long time readers (aozora) runs a internet turn-based war game every year around the ides of March, which he invited me to participate in. Obviously time is a huge impediment to doing this sort of thing more often, but I also think that most of the time we have our head down just trying to avoid tripping on the rocks in the path immediately ahead of us. As a result we rarely have time to look up and see the scenery around us, or heaven forbid leave the path and explore things off of the path. Okay maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but I think you get my point.

*smack* Doh! I just tripped over a rock.

Finishing Games

I just read an interesting article on Gamasutra, about why we're not finishing as many games as we used to. Initially I thought that it was talking about developers not finishing as many games, but the article was actually about players not finishing as many games. The author speculated on a variety of reasons for why this might be, some of the big ones were time, attention or game difficulty. For me time is obviously the 800 lb gorilla, I don't even have time to start games let alone spend the 60 hours required to finish them. But that wasn't always the case, and as I look back to a day when I did have the time to finish a full video game I still, very often, didn't. So once the gorilla is removed why didn't I finish more games?

Well when I look back at the types of games I really enjoyed they fall into basically four categories: 4X, RPG, RTS and MMORPG. And of those four categories I basically have problems finishing all of them. I think I've probably done the best with the 4X category, probably because those games are the shortest of all. But even so, as I think back there were probably more games quit (and immediately restarted, that will be important later) then there were that I finished. RPGs are (with the exception of the MMORPGs) the most time consuming of the four categories, but also probably my favorite. I enjoy them so much that you would expect me to finish every one I start, but instead there are many I never make it to the end of, though I can't think of any that I didn't restart several times.

Moving on to RTS's. I can only think of one game I've ever finished in this category (Warcraft II for the curious.) Now of course I'm only talking about the single player campaigns, I've also played multiplayer though generally my fast-twitch reflexes aren't up to the task of being competitive. As far as the single player campaign goes, at some point the repetitiveness of the core gameplay overcomes my desire to see how the story turns out and I stop playing. Turning to MMORPGs, well for one thing you can't really win a MMORPG, but I haven't even hit the level cap on any MMORPG (my record on WoW is 41 I believe). Of course that isn't really a bad thing.

So what is the common thread? I think it's perfectionism. Basically I want my gameplay experience to be optimal. If it's a 4x game I want to research techs in exactly the right order. If it's an RPG then I want exactly the right party that takes maximum advantage of the items in the game. If it's an RTS I don't want a single building to be in any spot other than the one that's the perfect distance from my gold mine. And finally if it's an MMORPG I will (and have) re-rolled upon discovering that the undead mage avatar looks cooler than the troll mage avatar.

Now as you might imagine this problem doesn't just afflict me when I play video games, it also affects other parts of my life, and I have made great strides in learning to accept outcomes that are less then perfect (for example it took more years of college than I car to admit before I could get any grade other than an A or an F). And although this has helped out a little bit in terms of video game play, it hasn't helped as much as you might think. Given the near omnipotent role you have as a game player (particularly when you factor in mods, cheats and character editors) there's the tantalizing illusion that maybe the perfect play experience is possible. It's not, but there is still some really amazing play experiences available and one of these days when I have the time again, I'm going to find myself one...

Could life be the perfect play experience?

A Quickie

As usual it's near the end of the day, and I still need to blog. I decided that with how much I'd worked last week, and Daylight Saving Time etc. etc. that I needed a little extra sleep this morning. I ended up getting just that a tiny bit more sleep which was mostly punctuated by dreams of me trying, and failing to get out of bed, in several cases, dreaming that I had blankets over my mouth so that I couldn't breathe. Still I thought that it was enough that I should be feeling pretty good. Unfortunately that's not the case. I'm about to pass out and smack my head on my keyboard...

In any case we had a big deadline which was mostly out of my hands (i.e. my part was already all done and other people were in crunch mode) which went pretty well. We also have a big deadline/presentation first thing Wednesday morning. Having the deadline today did greatly ease the pressure for Wednesday so that's good. In any case kicks to the head continue, I've just learned to mostly ignore them.

If you want a picture of the future...

Politics

I read something last week (and now I can't seem to find it, may have to check my browser history at work) that was a hypothetical argument between Obama and Clinton over who deserved the nomination. It made some very interesting points. Of course at this point neither of them can win without the super delegates. I find it endlessly amusing that after numerous attacks against Republicans for disenfranchising women, minorities and voters in Florida, that the democratic race is going to be decided by a group largely composed of white men and without any delegates from Florida (at least currently that's the case.) But I digress, the point is since the super delegates are going to be deciding this thing what sort of arguments is each side going to make to sway these super delegates...

Of course Obama's argument is that the super delegates should go to whomever has the most pledged delegates. On the other side Clinton has some interesting arguments of her own. One of the points the article raised, which I wasn't aware of is that while Obama's argument hinges on his delegate numbers as being reflective of the will of the people that most of his pledged delegates have come from caucuses, which if you know anything about caucuses mostly represent the will of a somewhat unusual subset of really dedicated people who are willing to spend long hours in the evening at a caucusing place during the cold winter evening. Also when you look at the big battleground states Clinton has basically won all of those. Now if that's all there was to it then I would still say Obama's pledged delegate point is the winner, but that's not all there is.

Florida and Michigan, as you probably know, moved their primaries forward and as a result were stripped of all their delegates by the DNC. This was a big mistake by the way, they should have done what the republicans did and just stripped half the delegates. (Even with half the delegates Florida and Michigan were hotly contested.) So unless they can do something about the Michigan/Florida problem (why does it always come down to Florida?) Clinton, who won both of those states is going to have a really big argument that without counting those two states that the victory is going to be tainted.

Anyway just a couple of thoughts. It certainly has been the most interesting primary season I can ever remember and it just promises to get more interesting. I'm really hoping this goes all the way to a contested convention...

Bad for the democracy but very interesting

The little things

Some people have to create the perfect environment before they can get any work done. They have to have the perfect workshop, or just the right oak desk, or exactly the right applications installed on their computer. Other people can work however or whenever, give them a folding table two sheets of scrap paper and a 49 cent ball point pen and they'll draft the Declaration of Independence. I, along with I think most other people, are somewhere in between. I think most people at least feel more productive when they're comfortable with their workspace. And obviously not having to waste time looking for the right tool or not having the right tool and making do with something less efficient are clear advantages of having a good working environment, but often it goes beyond that...

For the last month I've had an item on my to do list "Move Desk", and it's something of a testament to my self control that it took me this long to get to it. I mean obviously I can get work done when my desk is not in the optimal place. And actually it wasn't moving my desk, it was moving the wing of the desk. See I have an "L" shaped desk. One arm of the "L" has a keyboard tray and a cradle for the computer, the other arm of the "L" just has a drawer. So obviously most of the surface area of the first arm is taken up by my monitor, and the other arm ends up being my work area where I can spread out documents, make notes etc. Well initially the work area arm was on my left, but the way the desk was set up I was vulnerable to ambush (i.e. my back was to the door.) So I moved my desk so that I was no longer vulnerable to ambush, but as a result I had to switch the work area arm to the right side.

This seems like no big deal, but because the keyboard tray is on the left side of the computer arm, and the cradle is on the right side suddenly from where I sit in front of the keyboard ended up being an additional foot away from the work area arm. So now instead of being able to just glance to my left I had to PHYSICALLY SCOOT MY CHAIR over to the other arm to look at something. The difference may sound trivial, but I can assure you that it's not. In any case today I finally got around to moving the arm back to my left side (while preserving my defensive position) and it's like I've been reborn... Although the act of moving it and crawling around on the floor to bolt it back together and redo the cables gave me a really bad headache... I'm going to say that I'm still a little sick rather than that that small amount of physical effort wiped me out.

I really need to start exercising

Literary Tag

There's this internet meme called tagging whereby someone is asked to do something (answer ten questions about their marriage, or take a quiz to determine what city you are) and then generally as part of the "viral" nature of the exercise they are then asked to select or "tag" five other people or something like that. I generally don't involve myself in these activities, and find most of them kind of big wastes of time, but my sister-in-law (is she still my SIL if she's married to my wife's brother?) posted one that I thought was more interesting than most, and since I can only complain about how busy I am or sick I am so much (and apparently as this same SIL pointed out I had crossed the line of complaining about shoveling my driveway) I thought I'd participate. I'm not "tagging" when I do this, though if you'd like to participate feel free to do so in the comments.

Anyway the idea is:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123
3. Find the first 5 sentences
4. Post the next 3 sentences

Since I've always been something of a rebel I thought I would do it more than once. The nearest book to me right now is "Secrets of Power Negotiating" and the revelent passage is:

Was the note real or was it planted information? Although it was just an unsubstantiated note scrawled on a piece of paper, the salesperson believer it because he had obtained the information surreptitiously. Even if they had planted it, could the salesperson cry foul later?

I also have the March copy of "Wired" sitting on my desk and being the gigantic magazine that it is, it has over 123 pages, unfortunately page 123 is an ad, so I'll use 122 (from an article called "The Netflix Challenge"):

At the end, SVD often finds relationships between movies that no film critic could ever have thought of but that do help predict future ratings. The danger is that it's all too easy to find apparent patterns in what's really random noise. If you use these mathematical hallucinations to predict ratings, you fail.

Other than magazines and business books, I don't have a lot with me at the office, but I do have "The Dangerous Book for Boys" here, so I'll do that as well:

The second verse is particularly poignant.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted:
They fell with their faces to the foe.

That's from a section on the Battle of the Somme. The poem they reference is called "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon. Here's the full text.

That went unexpectedly melancholy...

Death of Legend

E. Gary Gygax died last night. The web is full of tributes to him (you can find the CNN obituary here) I'm sure there are lots of people (like my brother-in-law up until last GenCon) who have never heard of him. But just about anyone who has ever played a video game has been touched by his influence. If you've ever seen the words "hit points" or leveled up your character in an RPG or a first person shooter. If you've ever played any of the Warcraft games or a wizard who was more a fireballing engine of death than a behind the scenes, unflashy Merlin or Gandalf.

Well looks like in between having to write up an emergency contract and having a bunch of other stuff come up that I'm out of time. Isn't that always the way...

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

BRAT Diet

I'm still feeling pretty crappy. My wife has suggested that I switch over to the BRAT diet to see if that helps out, I just go done eating 3/4 of a loaf of French bread. I don't know if that counts as toast, but I figure it's got to be close enough. On the BRAT Diet page they mention that you should avoid Soft Drinks. I'm sure that's excellent advice, but I also know that, shamefully, I'm addicted to caffeine and that if I don't at least have a coke that I'll get a pretty bad headache. I'm hopeful that the 3/4 loaf of french bread was enough to mostly absorb, and neutralize the evil carbonation.

I was trying to put together a second paragraph, but I really just need to lay down. Perhaps I'll be more loquacious tomorrow.

blah...

Sunday Blog

Many people in my family write letters on Sunday, so it seems like a really good day to sit down and record what happened for the last week, except that I blog every day, so there's really not much left to say by the time Sunday rolls around. Mostly Sunday consists of me gathering my strength so that I can be ready for another week. Of course there's always church, and my weekly Sunday School lesson. In between the Married Student Ward and my current ward I think I've probably been teaching for around 7 years. My wife was just asking if I was tired of that calling. I think not having any calling might be preferable, but I can't think of an actual calling that I would prefer to this one.

As usual I fell asleep during Sacrament Meeting. I can only plead that I've actually been sick the last couple of days which has largely kept me from sleeping well. So in between trying to sleep in this morning, preparing my lesson and sleeping through most of sacrament meeting that's pretty much my Sunday. I'm tying to think of something interesting but I'm drawing a blank. Perhaps next week I'll set aside some of my better stories and save them for Sunday's edition.

No rest for the wicked

Weekly Review

Well it's Saturday afternoon, so of course I'm at the office. I've tried to set aside Saturday as a lower intensity day of sorts. In particular I would like to get my weekly review done every Saturday. For those of you who might not be familiar with wat a weekly review is allow me to explain. David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system has lots of advice on dealing with different things like e-mail, and reminders, etc. But at it's core the system boils down to a few key principles: Collecting all of your "stuff" into a trusted system; Assigning a "Next Action" to all of your tasks/projects; Conduct a "Weekly Review" to keep things on track. I'm not perfect at any of these three principles, but I find that doing a Weekly Review makes up for quite a bit of imperfection in the other areas.

Now that GDC is over and we're better and better prepared for our pitches to VCs. I'm hoping that next week I'll be able to keep some normal hours, work my system and crank through a bunch of tasks. Also I checked the calender and it looks like not much is scheduled for the coming week (unlike this week, when I had something every night, 4-5 hour appointments four out of my six working days and a major deadline on top of GDC hangover).

Tonight the family is going out for my birthday dinner, so that should be a lot of fun, and after that I think I'm just going to hang out with my long-suffering wife and watch some "News Radio". I got seasons 4 and 5 for my birthday, so now I have the complete series.

Infinity is neither here nor there