Weird Science

As some of you will have noticed, my usual e-mail sig includes the description "Gamer and Skeptic". This blog has been largely about gaming until now, because, let's face it, to the extent hat anyone is interested in what I'm doing, its probably because of my gaming books. (Well, aside from my relatives, presumably...) But, for today, let's talk about the second half of that, and the wonderful world of Doubt!

Of course, what I mean by this isn't the extreme philosophical skepticism of doubting everything. Granted, I can't prove (by the nature of the claim) that I don't live in The Matrix, with everything I'm experiencing being an illusion, but it seems pretty freaking unlikely. Skepticism is really about testing claims to see whether they stand up to scrutiny, and changing ideas as available evidence comes in - which is pretty much the basis of science. Or, at least, it is in an ideal world, because scientists are as fallible as anyone else.

At any rate, I mention this because of the Centre for Inquiry, a skeptical think tank which opened its London branch early last year. I was able to attend the opening event, which was quite interesting, but was followed by what was pretty much silence. Well, they finally got around to organising their first proper post-opening event on Saturday, and I went along. This was an all-day event, with four speakers holding forth on the general topic of "Weird Science", and very enjoyable it was, too.

First we had Richard Wiseman, describing his work in the weirder realms of psychology, performing simple magic tricks to illustrate perceptual illusions and so on. It's pretty much the same talk he always give at these sort of events, and its probably as well that it has been several years since I last saw it (since it has evolved in that time, as he's done more new things), but it is very well presented. And, of course, it included the Colour Changing Card Trick - and, if you haven't seen this, you really should.

Next up, Chris French, talking about his work at the Anomalous Psychology Research Unit. Unfortunately, there were a number of technical hiccups during this presentation, but as always, it was interesting and informative. Who would have thought Haunted Homes would present a mysterious sound as being unexplained (and implying it was made by a ghost) when they knew perfectly well what it actually was? It's almost enough to make you distrust what you see on TV...

After lunch, we had philosopher Stephen Law on the verifiability of Creation Science. I've only seen him once before, but he was an effective speaker on that occasion, too, and certainly somewhat provocative! And, lastly, Ben Goldacre gave a talk called (and I'm paraphrasing from memory) something like "The Lies That the Media Tell About Science and Which are So Fucking Incredibly Wrong that they Just Make Me Want to Slam My Cock in the Door and Revolving Especially Around Instances When They Had an Opportunity to Teach Something About Real Science But Didn't Because They Would Rather Just Tell Lies I Mean Why Would Anyone Want to Do That, Why?". Which was pretty much what it sounds like, and both passionate and entertaining.

After which, we all went down the pub, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Skeptics in the Pub. I attended the very first of these, way back when they were on Fridays, making returning home after 1 am not so unreasonable. I haven't been for a long time, and this was just a pub meeting, rather than including a talk as they usually are (which would have been a bit redundant on this occasion, obviously...) A good evening, giving me the opportunity to talk a bit about evolutionary theory, as well as lots of other things, and to meet (albeit briefly) Rebecca Watson, one of the presenters of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, the only weekly podcast that I never miss.

All of which goes to show that Doubting Stuff can be fun! Especially when there's beer involved.

HarnMaster Barbarians

One of my earlier books (on which I worked with a number of other writers), HarnMaster Barbarians, has recently been released as a PDF on DriveThruRPG. The original was a loose-leaf product, not a bound book, so, with some decent quality paper, the PDF really isn't that different from the original hardcopy - and it's cheaper, too.

I have updated the Writing Credits page of my website with the direct link to the purchase site, and with similar details for any other books I've contributed to that remain available.

The End of Tentacles

I did say that when the official announcement about Tentacles came through, I'd post about that. So here we are.

Tentacles was a great gaming convention held in scenic Schloss Stahleck overlooking the Rhine in Germany. From my perspective, it was particularly significant as a convention specifically dedicated to Glorantha, Call of Cthulhu, and other related games. The location simply can't be beaten, to be able to game in such a beautiful place must have been the highlight of the year for many attendees. But the 2009 gathering will be the last.

I can understand their reasoning; it has become increasingly difficult in recent years to get sufficient Guests of Honour from America to attend (this was particularly noticeable last year, and reading between the lines, they anticipate similar problems in 2009). Of course, we can all have good fun without the Guests, but it's going to be increasingly difficult to keep the convention at a sufficient stature to fulfil the organiser's legal contract with the owners of the castle. As they've said on the website, they don't want this to turn into a Bachelor Beer and Karaoke Quest, and I can see how that might be the fate if they drag it on too long.

All good things must come to an end, and Tentacles will most certainly be missed by the Gloranthan community (and Cthulhu fans, etc., for that matter) . I only managed to attend twice myself, with the difficulties of getting to Germany, but I do hope to attend their one last hurrah. I wish I had been able to go more often, because the experience is truly wonderful, but such is life.

But Glorantha is bigger than this. We're not a dying community - yet.

(And, yeah, as I predicted, that 'by the end of 2008' schedule for publication of Heroes of Malkion is looking pretty shaky, isn't it?)

Heroes of Malkion Update

The latest update on progress on Heroes of Malkion indicates that artwork is still in progress. Moon Design hopes to have it out by the end of the year, which indicates that it will probably be out before the new edition of HeroQuest. (Nonetheless, it does duplicate a lot of information in the main HQ1 rulebook, in order that it can be used by those who only have access to HQ2).

Personally, I'd take the 'end of the year' estimate with a bucket-load of salt; these things are always statement of hope rather than any definite publication deadline. But... well, hopefully by Tentacles, eh?

In the meantime, here's a wordle from chapter 2 of the book (for the uninitiated, a wordle is an artistic representation of which words appear most frequently in a piece of text):

The Death of Pyramid Magazine

I've been reading Pyramid magazine ever since issue #1, which I believe was about 15 years ago. It's a gaming magazine, published by Steve Jackson Games, and focussing on GURPS, which was the basis for the homebrew system that I played in those days. (The rest of the homebrew system came largely from Pendragon, but the stats were easy to convert, and the ideas fitted what I wanted back then).

Around 10 years ago, it switched from dead-tree format to webzine format and, with a little reluctance, I continued my subscription. I'm glad I did; there has been a lot of good material published in Pyramid over the last decade. I've even contributed three articles to it myself, two on Glorantha, and one on, of all things, astrophysics. Subscription also got me access to playtests of SJ Games products, and, in particular, I helped out with the testing of the Vehicle Design software, and of GURPS Cops. Perhaps best of all, at least in the long term, were the NNTP discussion forums that the magazine ran for subscribers, where I have had all sorts of cool discussions with a wide range of people.

As of today, the Pyramid webzine ceases publication.

Oh, the magazine will continue as a monthly PDF release, with slightly less content for five times the price. But, oddly enough, that's not much of an issue for me. Because, over the last couple of years, since I no longer play GURPS, the NNTP forums were my main reason for paying the annual subscription anyway - everything else was an added bonus. Since those forums are being closed down, I will be cancelling my subscription forthwith, to claim the refund for the rest of the year. It's understandable why they're closing, of course, at least from SJ Games point of view. For myself, I don't really understand why NNTP is no longer popular as a format - it's so much more flexible than the message boards that seem to have replaced it. Sometimes, newer isn't better, and, while message boards are great for some things (hence the MBRPG I help to run), general discussion isn't one of them. A lot of functionality has been lost in the name of progress - but isn't that often the way?

So I'll miss those discussions... but change goes on, and one can't blame a company for closing down something that just isn't profitable for them. A fond farewell to Pyramid, then, and on to something else instead...

(Addendum: If you're wondering why I'm mentioning this, but not the more Glorantha-relevant news from Germany of a similar nature - I'm waiting for the official announcement before commenting on that).

If I were a cat...

One of the players on my MBRPG posted to say that if I were a cat, I would look like this:



(You probably have to know about LOLcats to know what this is actually a picture of... but still, I thought it was rather cool).

Valind's Tale

As promised, the third audio file of my Vadrus stories is now up at my website. It will appear in text form at Mything Links later.