Wednesday 30 December 2009

Kingdom of Heroes - Review pt 3

The cults in Kingdom of Heroes are written in much the same format as in previous Gloranthan books from Storm Tribe all the way back to Cults of Prax. However, much of the information is fresh, and, of course, the new magic rules put a different slant on things. It is here that the re-focusing on the runes is perhaps at its most obvious; we always knew why Chalana Arroy, for example, had the runes of Life and Harmony, but here its quite specific what that means in concrete terms.

Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe both focussed to a large extent on subcults; the various speciality forms of worship granting unusual magic. In a sense, one could argue that Destor, say, was the default Orlanth cult (at least for warriors), but it didn't truly feel like that - it was more as if one had to pick from a big list of options. Now, I never found that problem, and I quite liked the range of options that were provided, but restoring the subcults to optional niches (as they were back in the old RuneQuest days) is certainly a good deal simpler.

In fact, its not really accurate to say that the subcults of TR and ST have been done away with. A great many of them do survive, albeit somewhat downplayed in importance. Orlanth, for example, has eleven , including Hedkoranth, Destor, Helamakt, and so on. It would be relatively easy to add those that are "missing" (such as Yavor or Vanganth, for example), assuming you have access to the older sources.

There have, on the other hand, been some demotions. The powers of some of the old subcults are relegated to mere feats of the 'default' version of the deity, although, again, its fairly easy to build them back up if one is so inclined. Vinga the warrior-ess and Heler the rain god, both full deities in Storm Tribe, are here demoted to mere subcults of Orlanth. That isn't necessarily so bad, though, since Vinga was always supposed to be able to do anything Orlanth could do, so she might as well be merged in rules terms as well. Heler is perhaps a little more disappointing, but when you have space for only nine cults, its a perfectly reasonable one to leave out. (Incidentally, the others from ST who fail to make the grade are Odayla, who to my mind isn't as interesting as Yinkin, and Eurmal, who isn't very suitable for PCs anyway).

Having said that, cults are fairly central to play in the Dragon Pass setting, and, given the size of the book, I would have liked to have seen more. Expecting minor cults to get the full 5+ pages devoted to each those that made it in might, perhaps be a bit much... but one or two pages each would have sufficed to at least give us the basics. As it is, this is an area where having Storm Tribe available is going to be helpful - at least until a companion volume comes out with the lesser cults properly described.

The one cult in KoH that I felt unhappy with was Humakt, god of death. There seems to have been a general move since RuneQuest days to make the Humakti embody death to such an extent that they cease (at least from my perspective) to be truly interesting or really playable. Storm Tribe, while subscribing to this view, at least seemed to recognise what a big problem it could create in game. The "re-sheathing" ceremony mentioned in that book was a decent stab at keeping Humakti playable, and was, as a result, to my mind one of the most crucial points about the cult in that book.

Sadly, KoH seems to ignore that altogether. Technically, it doesn't contradict it, but that's not much of an excuse, when the reader will be clearly left with the impression that all Humakti - and not just, say, the Devotees - are somehow the "living death". It's a disappointing omission, and, perhaps, quite a surprising one.

While I'm on the subject, the section on Humakti gifts and geases feels weak and woolly by comparison with all previous versions - some more specific examples would have been very helpful here.

Still, other than Humakt, the cults are good. And they're by no means the end of the cool material in the book. There is a lot of good advice on heroquesting, expanding and improving on that in earlier books. Heortling culture is well described, bringing them as a people to life, helped by the high quality illustrations throughout. Dragon Pass itself is described, with the aid of several glossy full colour maps.

These maps in particular, are a part of the reason why I say that the book is worth the price. How often do you see full colour maps in RPG products that aren't produced by giants like Hasbro/WotC? And these are nice looking maps at that, and detailed enough to be really helpful in play. There are even black & white plans of the cities of Sartar, something that has generally been lacking in previous publications. There's also a detailed description of the Colymar tribe, complete with its own colour map.

The book has information about the Lunars, and about the various other cultures that neighbour the Heortling barbarians. Rightly, the focus is on the Heortlings themselves, rather than describing the Lunar Army in detail, or describing the cults of the Grazelanders. But even so, there is enough information here to play them as foes.

All in all, the sheer density of information in the book may seem a little overwhelming to a newcomer, but it rewards the effort with a wonderfully fleshed-out look at a culture different from that in so many other RPGs, and very much retaining the "feel" that Glorantha has had for so long. Yes, I have reservations about the book. It isn't perfect, but then what is? But that doesn't mean that it isn't one of the best Gloranthan products to have come our way in a long time.

If Moon Design can keep this up at a regular schedule - and we know there are more books in the pipeline - then its going to be a very good few years for Gloranthan fandom.

Wednesday 23 December 2009

Kingdom of Heroes - Review pt 2

Every time there is a new magic system released for Glorantha, we are always told that "this time it's the way we always wanted it to be", and "this time it really reflects Greg's stories." The magic systems in both HW and HQ1 were promoted with those sorts of phrases, and HQ2 is, of course, no different. I'm past caring whether or not they're true in any meaningful way; I just want to know whether or not the system is any good.

And, on the whole, the system presented in KoH is good.

Of course, there wasn't really much wrong with the theist magic system in HQ1 - although the same couldn't really be said for animism or wizardry. But nonetheless, the writers of KoH have managed to improve on it, and that can only be a good thing.

It's worth pointing out again that KoH is, rightly, a book about the Heortling barbarians of Sartar, dominated as they are by the magic of Air and Earth. So the book has essentially nothing to say about how magic works elsewhere in the world. The primer in the HQ2 core rulebook gave a sufficient outline of that, and it will hopefully be developed more as time goes by. But this is the book for the Heortlings, and its only their magic we see here.

The core of the new Heortling magic system then, is the runes. These are the same old familiar runes of RuneQuest, with Elements, Powers, Forms, and Conditions. We have always been told that the runes were the basis of all magic, but it is only with this new system that that is really shown to be the case. Every character starts off with three runes, one Element, one Power, and one other, which can be anything except another Element or a Power directly opposed to the one you already have. (So, no having both Life and Death, for instance).

Characters with no cult use their runes to augment everyday tasks; they don't create specific "spells". So, if you are strong in, say, the Death rune, you will be able to use it to boost your combat prowess - a sort of Bladesharp, if you will. Here, I would have liked to see more description of what the runes generally let you boost, and a broader discussion of what each of them means. Instead, the descriptions are short, and often of little use, although they do have associated personality traits. Perhaps it was felt that the names were indicative enough, but I feel a broader discussion would have been very helpful.

I'm also not overly enthused by the idea that PCs should be penalised if they fail to act according to the personality traits written for their rune. True, the book suggests that the GM should not use this punitively, but only if it works well with the story. Nonetheless, it feels a little overly prescriptive to me, and I suspect I won't use that part.

Most characters, however, will probably want to initiate to a cult, worshipping a specific god from the Heortling pantheon. To do this, you need at least one rune in common with your god (it's generally specified which one it has to be), and it makes sense to match all of them if you want your character to be magically powerful. A character who belongs to a cult gets to use his rune actively, to cast what would be called "spells" in most other RPG systems. Each god has one "affinity" for each of his one to three runes, which act as keywords allowing the PC to use magic directly related to that aspect of the god. So a Humakti, for instance, can use his Truth rune to cast magic related to honour and oaths.

In HQ1, similar affinities existed, and they were always labelled with an appropriate rune. However, the choice of rune often made little sense - since it had no game mechanical effect, it was merely for decoration anyway. For instance, out of all the many sub-cults of Ernalda in Thunder Rebels, only one had an affinity directly linked to the Earth rune. Similarly, many cults in HQ1 had idiosyncratic runes, creating a plethora of symbols that obscured the underlying simplicity of the system - Under the Red Moon was particularly notable for this.

But, in KoH, the original, simple, list of basic runes takes centre stage. Ernalda has Earth magic, because she is the Earth Mother; Lhankor Mhy, god of knowledge, has Truth magic, and so on. This is both easier to grasp and more atmospheric than the old system, and its a significant step forward.

It does, on the other hand, lead to some problems when the affinities are overly broad. If Orlanth can do anything possible with the Air rune, its difficult to see what the point of any other Air cult might be. As far as I can tell from the rules, a priestess of Ernalda should be just as good at creating earthquakes as a priestess of Maran Gor, the goddess of earthquakes, which sounds a bit odd. Of course, if they were competing against each other, you would give the latter a bonus for the more specific ability, but that seems to be rather side-stepping the issue. Fortunately, the cults provided in the book don't overlap very much, so it's less of a problem than it might appear at first glance.

Another issue in HQ1 was that almost everyone chose to be a devotee, a level of ability that got you more potent magic, but that was supposed to be really rare in the game setting (although, to be honest, this was never very clearly expressed). In KoH, the new "initiates" are essentially the equivalent of the old "devotees" in terms of magical power, removing the temptation to do this.

What KoH calls "devotees" are actually closer to the HQ1/Storm Tribe "disciples" - indeed, they seem to have the same in-world titles. Devotees get specific "feats" which are more focused, and hence more powerful, magic than the broad affinities. In return, they face considerable limitations on their freedom of action, making them less attractive as PCs, unless you really want to play a powerful specialist. Which is, to my mind, as it should be. It is also no longer possible to start play as a devotee; it's a status to be achieved through play, as disciple was in HQ1. A slight niggle is that some of the feat descriptions are a long on flowery text and short on what it is they are actually supposed to do. You're probably meant to work this out in play, but some more guidance would have been nice.

In part 3, I'll take a look at the cults themselves. It's a big book - it needs a long review...

Tuesday 15 December 2009

Kingdom of Heroes - Review pt 1

And so, the wait is over, and Kingdom of Heroes has been released. If you're reading this blog, there's a good chance you already know what that is, but, to summarise, it's the new HeroQuest sourcebook for the Kingdom of Sartar, a magical barbarian land dominated by the powers of Air and Earth. It is set in the world of Glorantha, where everyone can do magic, and there is a distinct bronze age vibe that makes it different from most other fantasy settings on the market.

On the other hand, if, by some chance, you are actually more interested in my occasional musings on secularism and scepticism, then I’ll take the opportunity to promote the recently released Tim Minchin single “White Wine in the Sun”. This is a beautiful Christmas song about the values that are more important to many of us at this time of year than something that may, or may not, have happened in a stable 2,000 years ago. Buy the MP3 online from a legal download site for just 79p, and maybe it’ll get into the Christmas charts. It’d be a nice thought.

Right, back onto gaming. Chances are that the first thing that will strike you about KoH is “blimey, is that the price?” And, yes, by RPing standards, it’s pretty darn expensive - although, if you’re willing to go PDF-only you can get it for much less than many D&D books by buying it online at sites like DriveThru RPG. The obvious question then, is whether the book is worth the price. I’d say that, if you’re already a fan of Glorantha, then yes, it is. (Of course, if your actual question parses as “is it worth my wife making me sleep on the couch for a month because I spent so much on an RP book?”, then you’re on your own).

The reason I say this is partly the sheer size of the book; at a whopping 378 pages, it’s the equivalent of a number of normal RP supplements stuffed into one cover. And, even for the size, there’s a lot of text. The artwork is great (although some of it isn’t new), and there are even full colour maps inside, which you don’t see very often outside of the really big publishers. Certainly, when you compare it with just about anything previously published by Issaries/Moon Design, the physical quality is in an entirely new league.

On the other hand, if you’re not already a fan, I can’t really deny that it has quite a steep entry price. Furthermore, one of the criticisms often levelled at Glorantha is that it’s too complicated, and there’s just too much to know to get into the setting. Dumping a book of this size down in front of someone is unlikely to dissuade them from that opinion! So, I’d have to say that this feels much more like a book for the fans than one for newcomers. The fact that the book has the name "Sartar" in huge letters on the cover, when nobody but a fan will have a clue what that means, supports the idea that this was what the publishers were aiming at; by comparison the more evocative "Kingdom of Heroes" title is in much smaller print.

But, hey, if you are a fan, or better yet, if you are a newcomer and want to try it anyway, then read on…

Perhaps the second question that might strike a potential purchaser is whether we really need this book. If you’re a fan of Glorantha, chances are that you already have the previous Sartar book, Thunder Rebels , not to mention later supplements covering the setting such as Land of Thunder and Storm Tribe. TR was a pretty damn good book, so do we really need a new book on more or less the same subject?

Here, the issue is a little more complex. It’s perfectly possible to run a game set in Sartar with what’s already been published, so “need” is perhaps too strong a word. On the other hand, there is plenty of new material in here, and a number of things that improve on Thunder Rebels. But, then again, there are some other respects in which, in my opinion, Thunder Rebels did a better job than KoH. In fact, for reasons I’ll get into shortly, I’d say that owning Thunder Rebels will make it easier to get more out of this book – they complement each other, rather than the new book replacing the old one.

The first part of the book concerns character generation. Here, the system is essentially the standard one from HeroQuest, although the original religious keyword has now been replaced by a choice of three runic affinities, which are described later on in the book. Aside from this, there is a cultural keyword that applies to all Sartarites, and then a choice of occupational keywords.

A positive step here was to return to the culture-specific occupational keywords of Thunder Rebels, rather than the generic occupations of HQ1. This makes sense for a book about a specific culture, and removes some of the bland generalisations made necessary in HQ1. It also allows a greater range of occupations than official HQ1 publications had, with, for example, distinctions between common mercenaries and elite weaponthanes.

Regrettably, though, this is one area where KoH falls short of the high standards set by Thunder Rebels.

If you have read my review of HeroQuest 2, you may recall that I praised the preservation of the old method of describing keywords alongside the newer alternatives. Here, HQ2 is allowing flexibility for the needs of the GM and players. Unfortunately, it’s wise advice that KoH chooses to ignore. In this book, there are only “umbrella” keywords, and no indication of how to create the “package” sort. Indeed, there isn’t even any acknowledgement that this might be a problem!

Essentially, all you get in your keyword descriptions is some text, with no clear guidance on what specific abilities they might include. For many people, that might not be an issue, but some might struggle to remember exactly what being, say, a skald, is supposed to imply in terms of abilities. Since many of the abilities that might be included under a keyword aren’t at all obvious (for example, that “entertainer” includes knife-fighting), I myself would certainly want to write down the individual abilities on a character sheet - even if I had to indent them and write ‘+0’ instead of a number.

The writers do their best to get round this limitation in the text descriptions, and largely succeed when it comes to the magic, but they do tend to fall down when it comes to the occupations. Sure, it’s possible to deduce what most of the abilities are going to be from the prose, but a list would have been much simpler to use. Fortunately, anyone who owns Thunder Rebels can use the keywords in there if, like me, they find them more helpful.

Of course, for many people, umbrella keywords will be an improvement over the way they were described in previous books – they might, for example, find it less limiting. But it’s a pity that KoH failed to acknowledge that not everyone might be the same when that variety is specifically catered for in the rulebook itself.

After character generation we come to the clan generation system. A previous version of this was published in Barbarian Adventures way back when, but this one has been retouched since then. For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is a system for generating the history of the particular barbarian clan that your PCs come from. It guides the players through a series of questions about what their ancestors did at a particular time, steadily building up details of their clan as they do so, and providing a quick and entertaining course in the history at the same time.

When I’ve done this before, with people mostly new to Glorantha, it proved popular, and it can be something of a fun game in its own right. The decisions you make all have some sort of effect on the final clan, and the starting resources available to the characters. For example, is the clan warlike, wealthy, open to new ideas, etc.? The system for working this out has been somewhat streamlined since the previous version, although there are still times when the GM will probably want to give the players some idea of what the outcomes of their decisions might be in advance. And this time, there is a nice-looking clan sheet to go with it, which you can fill in when you’ve finished.

In part 2, we'll turn to the magic system, which represents perhaps the biggest change from earlier versions.

Saturday 7 November 2009

Sea Monsters

As I indicated last time, this will be a report of a session I attended about sea monsters. Not the Gloranthan sort, but ones in our world. Since Kingdom of Heroes is due for general release from 28th November, those waiting for a review of that may not have too much longer, and I don't at present have any other meetings of this sort planned before January, so that review should be the next thing up here.

The event, like some of the prior ones I've mentioned, was hosted by CFI London and held at Conway Hall. The first talk was presented by Charles Paxton of St Andrew's University. He defined a "sea monster", not unreasonably, as "an unknown marine animal larger than 2 metres" - that is to say, probably bigger than YOU.

By this definition, it's interesting to note just how many sea monsters have, in fact, been discovered in recent years. Now, granted, some of these are actually instances of animals that were already known, but not identified as being a separate species before. (An example of this kind of thing from dry land would be the recently discovered forest elephant). But some are genuinely new and surprising - the megamouth shark, for instance, was only discovered in 1976, and doesn't really resemble anything known before that time. Just within the last ten years, we've discovered at least two species of beaked whale, a group about which remarkable little is known, along with such things as giant rays. Given all this, it would frankly, be rather surprising if there weren't any new species out there that we haven't yet seen. In fact, it would be downright astonishing.

Most, of course, are going to be cetaceans (whales & dolphins) or cartilaginous fish (sharks & rays). Some will probably be other sorts of fish, seals, or even giant squid. They are not, on the whole, going to be plesiosaurs, but more on that later.

What the talk focused on primarily, however, was sightings. What should we make of reports of giant creatures roaming the seas that just don't fit any known species? Some may well be genuine, but many probably aren't. For one thing, even assuming that the reports are genuine (and most probably are, in fairness), if the observer isn't a zoologist, they might not know what they're looking at. Take this, for example, which shows a historical drawing of a sea serpent encounter and a modern photograph of what's very probably the same thing:

You can, perhaps, understand the mistake, but, of course, that photo isn't really a whale being attacked by a pair of sea serpents.

Come to that, the following critter looks pretty much like a sea serpent (it's about 30 feet long), but is perfectly well known to science:


It's called an oarfish, and it's really quite cool.

One might expect - and I certainly did - that most reports of sea monsters would be of the creature being some distance away. For one thing, that would make it harder to identify, if it was, in fact, something well known. Also, since it is very hard to measure distances at sea, one might well think that something is further away - and thus, much larger - than it actually is. But it turns out that's not so. In fact, according to Paxton's analysis of sightings from 1748 onwards, most sea monster sightings are at much closer quarters than one would expect by random chance. That is, if a given creature is real, you would reasonably expect people to have seen at least some of them from a fair distance off, but actually that's not what they report.

There's a number of possible reasons for this. It could be that, having seen the beast, people then often approach it to get a better look, and report that as the distance. It could be that, from a longer distance, people quite reasonably conclude it's probably something familiar they can't recognise that far away, and don't report it. For that matter, exaggerations, intentional or otherwise, are quite likely, especially when one is telling an exciting story.

The afternoon session was presented by Darren Naish, writer of the Tetrapod Zoology blog, of which I was already a fan. He focussed on the Prehistoric Survivor Paradigm; that is, the contention among many (but not all) cryptozoologists that many of the things they're hunting for are survivors of lineages so far known only to exist as fossils. Most obviously, of course, the plesiosaurs. After all, the argument goes, the coelacanth had been thought to go extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs, until it was found alive and well in 1938. So couldn't the same thing have happened to the plesiosaurs?

Well, no, actually it couldn't.

There are quite a few good reasons for this. For a start, the fossil record of the two groups is quite different. Coelacanths were already very much in decline by the time they disappeared from the fossil record with the dinosaurs, whereas plesiosaurs were extremely abundant - anything short of total extinction would surely have left a bunch of more recent species in the fossil record. Secondly, it's a damn sight easier to identify a plesiosaur fossil than a coelacanth one. The bones are much more distinctive in shape, they're unusually solid (making it easier for the creature to dive) so that they should fossilise better, and... well, they are a bit bigger. Harder to miss, you'd think. Coelacanth bones, by contrast, mostly look like those of other fish - at least, aside from the fins - and they're smaller and more fragile. And, on the gripping hand, since 1938, some fossil coelacanths have been discovered from post-dinosaurian deposits, so the gap is a good deal smaller than one might suppose.

Another good reason for thinking this unlikely is that most "plesiosaur" sightings don't look a whole lot like plesiosaurs. They look more like this model (picture from Wikipedia):

Which may be the classic view of what real plesiosaurs looked like, but is, in fact wrong. The most notable point here is the head - notice how it bends forward, like a swan. Real plesiosaurs had relatively stiff necks, so that the head should be tilted upwards if the neck were at this angle. In fact, plesiosaurs might not have been able to lift their necks this much anyway; the long neck was, most likely, for bending downwards to pick shellfish off the bottom. But, even if it could do so, the animal's centre of gravity would have meant that the poor creature would have gone over if it had tried to achieve such a feat.

There was particular discussion of the "merhorses" reported from the northern Pacific. They may, or may not, be an unknown creature, but whatever they are, they're certainly not a plesiosaurs, because the descriptions really don't come close. Some kind of unknown long-necked seal is a better bet, if it's not just misidentification of something otherwise known.

Similar objections apply to other claimed prehistoric survivors, of which the most prominent are perhaps mosasaurs and basilosaurids. Claims that they may have evolved into something quite different since they vanished from the fossil record really don't address the absence of that record, and are a bit like groping for an excuse. Plus, it's fairly unlikely, as is sometimes claimed, that modern plesiosaurs might be furry, or that some modern basilosaurids might look like a cross between a turtle and a centipede (no, really).

The afternoon concluded with a workshop playing with a computer program to estimate the likelihood of something still being around after a gap in the fossil record, and trying to estimate the species diversity of coloured straws in a bucket (courtesy of yours truly, since nobody else volunteered!)

Oh, and if you're still trying to puzzle out that first photo: there are two whales in that photo. Two very happy boy whales...

Thursday 29 October 2009

TAM London - pt 3

This will be the final part of this report. However, I am going to a talk about sea monsters next week, so there's very chance I'll waffle on about that before getting round to reporting on the next HeroQuest publication. It also looks highly likely that my predictions that LotW1 won't be out by the end of 2009 will be proven correct! Maybe early 2010?

We'll begin this last stretch with Ben Goldacre, Guardian columnist and author of Bad Science. When it comes to UFOs, or ghosts, or things of that sort, it doesn't, it seems to me, matter a great deal that it isn't true. It's a bit sad that some people spend their time chasing around after things that don't actually exist, but it doesn't, by and large, do a lot of harm. The same cannot be said for quack medical advice. Even if it doesn't do direct harm (which it might or might not, depending on what the advice is) there is always the danger that it might persuade people that it's not really necessary to do something genuinely helpful. A pill that contains nothing but sugar probably won't harm you very much, but if you think that it's working, you might not take the pills that really do work until it's too late.

In short, I believe that quack medicine has very great potential to do harm. Sure, evidence-based medicine can also, at times, do harm, but at least there's a countervailing benefit. And this is why I'm crap at debating this sort of thing - it makes me really angry, and once you get angry, you've lost the argument, no matter how good your case. I work in healthcare; I don't want to see people harmed any more than they have to be, thank you very much, and the excuse that someone is honestly deluded rather than a deliberate fraud isn't always enough.

Goldacre began his talk with a discussion of the anti-vaccination movement, and its portrayal in the press. When he mentioned Andrew Wakefield, the name drew boos from some corners of the audience (although not, I have to say, from me), but Goldacre disagreed, arguing that Wakefield wasn't truly the one to blame. I'm a little less inclined to be generous, but it's a valid point - most of the fuss in the press about the supposed dangers of the MMR vaccine was apparently a few year's later than you might think. Without the press inflating non-stories, the public might well be better informed (or, at least, not so ill-informed).

From there, we moved on to those equations you sometimes see in newspapers where "scientists have discovered the formula" for the perfect body, or the happiest day of the year, or whatever it might be. Well, surprise, surprise, but scientists have, most likely, discovered bugger all. 99% of the time, what's actually happened is that some company or other has decided that a scientific looking equation will help sell their product, and have paid someone a few quid to write something down on the back of a fag packet that "proves" whatever it is they want it to prove. Who'd have thought, eh?

And back to the press over-hyping non-stories. Goldacre discussed the claim that valiant newspaper reporters had discovered deadly MRSA lurking everywhere, including a swab they'd taken from the front door handle of the Department of Health. Quite worrying, especially when you consider that MRSA, while it can get into a number of nasty places, shouldn't be able to grow on doorknobs (too dry, you see). Or, indeed, on most of the other places the "laboratory of a world-renowned MRSA expert" had found them.

Only it turns out that (presumably unbeknownst to the journalists) he wasn't a world-renowned MRSA expert. He was, in fact, some bloke with a microscope in his garden shed and no qualifications in microbiology at all. The papers had, it seems, unwittingly fostered his delusions, and that's rather a tragedy. Blimey, you can't even trust a newspaper these days.

Oh, hang on... I said in the last blog that I'd get down of my high horse for this one, didn't I? Hmm... OK, so how about:

And now we come to what The Londonist described as the high point of the two-day event. I refer, of course, to Tim Minchin.

Last year, round about Christmas time, I attended a sold-out event at the Bloomsbury Theatre entitled "Lessons and Carols for Godless People". It comprised a number of scientists, stand-up comics, and musicians doing short pieces that were very loosely on the subject of either science or Christmas without Christianity. There were a lot of very good acts, some of whom also made brief performances on the Saturday evening after the main TAM event. But one in particular stood out in my memory, even though I'd never heard of him before.

Minchin does stand-up comedy as part of his act, but it's for his songs, accompanied on the grand piano, that he's probably best known. He very much appeals to my sense of humour, with what one can only describe as a mixture of vulgarity and nerdishness. And it probably helps that we seem to agree on a lot of things.

Yet, good as his songs are, he didn't sing one back at that event at the Bloomsbury last year. No, what he did was read a ten minute beat poem. And it blew me away. I'm not normally one for poetry, but... wow. It turns out that I was listening to either the first or second public performance of "Storm", which subsequently, as they say on the interwebz, "went viral" in the pro-science community.

At TAM, he performed a number of his best songs: The Good Book ("I tried to read some other books, but I soon gave up on that / The paragraphs ain't numbered, and they complicate the facts"), the love song If I Didn't Have You (" Your love is one in a million, you couldn't buy it at any price / But of the 9.999 hundred thousand other loves, statistically, some of them would be equally nice"), Confessions, and, of course, Storm. The latter included a clip of an animated version of the poem currently being made, which looks pretty cool.

His final piece was the song White Wine in the Sun. I can't say that this was one that particularly impressed me on the album... but it turns out that hearing it live is a whole different story. It's a serious song (for once), and beautifully emotional.

So, yeah, the Londonist is right: he was the highlight of the event. Which actually makes one glad that they got him on the bill at the last minute when Richard Dawkins had to pull out. But, hopefully, they'll hold TAM London again next year, and maybe we'll get both? Here's hoping...

Sunday 18 October 2009

TAM London - pt 2


Yes, we're back on this again, so those still waiting for HeroQuest news will have to wait just a little longer, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I said last time that there were four sessions in particular of TAM London that I wanted to focus on here. I'll start with Ariane Sherine, who talked about how an off-hand comment spiralled into an intercontinental Atheist Bus Campaign. This is, in many ways, an inspiring story, because it's about giving atheism (or even non-religion in general) a voice that it rarely seems to have. That's partly, no doubt, because, by its very nature, it doesn't have organisations on the scale of organised Churches. And, while British society is a lot less religious than, say, the USA - let alone places like Iran - it does still pervade our society. Not, I think, in an oppressive way, but still in a way that's quite unnecessary. Britain, after all, still has constitutional union of Church and State, and there's really no good reason for that in the modern world that I can see.

A bus campaign, of course, isn't going to convince anyone much. I rather doubt that the much better funded religious campaigns one sees on public transport do much better, either - although those for, say, the Alpha Course presumably have at least some success rate. But conversion isn't really the point. I think it's more about presenting a positive message, and demonstrating that the community is out there, and if you have doubts, you're not alone. The American versions actually seem to be better at the latter, perhaps because that side of things is more important over there.

What's really interesting is the response to this. I'm sure the great majority of Christians either aren't that bothered, or at least support the right of people to disagree with them, but there's clearly a minority whose responses have been decidedly, well... un-Christian. People that, perhaps, feel frightened and threatened by the thought that not everyone agrees with them, and feel a need to lash out in response. There were a number of examples of this in the talk, some of which did verge on the alarming - I may not agree with many parts of the Christian message, but I'm fairly confident it's not supposed to be about bile and hatred!

The very fact that there have been arguments about this, and about the wording that's allowed (hence the "Probably") just goes to show that this has been a worthwhile exercise, and that there is an imbalance here to be addressed. After all, the same restrictions don't seem to apply to the other side...

So that was one uplifting and good-humoured talk that I actually enjoyed more than I expected to. But now I'm going to turn to somebody who has put a lot on the line for the cause of skepticism, and of science in general. I refer, of course, to science writer Simon Singh, who I've mentioned before. The previous times I've seen him give talks, they have been on the subject of the Big Bang, and other directly science-related matters. Naturally, that wasn't the case this time. And that's because of the huge and likely to be long-running libel action that now takes up his time.

I won't go into the details, because it will only be repeating what is available in more detail elsewhere. I will note, however, that there has been a positive development in the last couple of weeks, in that Singh's appeal against the refusal of the right to appeal against the outcome of the pre-trial hearing (don't you just love the law?) has been upheld. Which may yet turn out to make no difference in the long run, but is at least a start.

The specific issue is related to the right to raise scientific questions of public interest, but it seems to me that it's even broader than that. There really is a serious problem with libel law in the UK, and it extends beyond just science reporting. Those in the UK will presumably already be aware of the related issue this week of the Guardian newspaper being prevented from reporting certain proceedings in Parliament, an absolutely astonishing course of events. (This latter incident does not, as I understand it, stem directly from libel law, but the same underlying legal principles seem to be at the source). Britain does not have the same rights to free speech as, for example, the USA, and it may yet be for the European Court of Human Rights to make a ruling on this.

That Singh is continuing to fight this case, despite the risk of financial ruin (he'll be several thousand pounds out of pocket, even if he wins a complete victory) is enormously to his credit. He rightly received two standing ovations, and an award for his contributions to skepticism over the last year. I can't imagine anyone else was even in the frame for that.

Well, that seems to be a long enough post; looks like there will have to be a part three. In which I can, hopefully, get down at least little way from my high horse...

Sunday 4 October 2009

The Amaz!ing Meeting

You may know (if only because I've mentioned it before) that my other main interest, besides gaming, is skepticism. If you don't give a monkey's about this, you probably want to ignore the rest of this post, and most likely, the ones that will follow it. You should find it safe to come back once Kingdom of Heroes is released, and I've had time to read and review it.

Still here? If so, you may well have wondered to yourself, what is the big gathering of the skeptical tribe? What, in short, is to skepticism what Continuum or Tentacles are to Glorantha?

Well, OK, you probably haven't actually wondered that. Especially if you're reading this blog for some reason other than being a Glorantha fan. (Hi, Mum). But let's imagine that you did: the answer is The Amaz!ing Meeting, held for the last several years in Las Vegas. Where, let's face it, I'm not very likely to go. But - and this is the important bit - this year, for the first time, there was an additional meeting held outside the USofA. That was TAM London, and I was lucky enough to attend.

I should probably explain why I say I was lucky, and why I haven't mentioned this at all before. That's because the convention was massively over-subscribed. Based on the figures in the US, the organisers figured the tickets would sell out in a few months; they actually sold it out in less than an hour. By the time I logged on to make my purchase - as soon as I got home from work - they were already long gone. So, I figured, I ain't going - and things suck, but there you go sometimes. They made some efforts to get further tickets out, but no luck there, either. Then, last week, they put out a few tickets that had been returned for refunds, and I just happened to be online when they announced it, being able to snag one on the spot!

And now I've just returned. A very, very good weekend, and hats off to the organisers. I most certainly hope there's one again next year, or, heck, even biennial like Continuum (the organisers have promised a bigger venue if it happens again in the UK, which would hopefully help with the ticket problem). The massive interest that this must have had to sell out so quickly is, I think, something of a testament to the growing popularity of skepticism in recent years, and by gosh, it feels good to be part of a tribe that's expanding for once.

Frankly, there was just so much good stuff that I can't really describe it all in detail. I know that Jack of Kent is covering it in his blog (which is probably a thousand times more popular than mine), so maybe there'll be more there, if you're interested. However, there are four presenters at the con who I'd particularly like to talk about, for very different reasons. But that's absolutely not to diminish in any way the contributions of the other six - as I say, the entire weekend was fantastic, and I was really impressed by the quality of the lineup.

Less so by the food on the Saturday night incidentally - memo to organisers: there's nothing wrong with serving sausages, but it's a bugger to eat them without a knife or a table. Just sayin'. (The food for the rest of the weekend was fine, incidentally, as was the quality of the cooking).

Anyway, I do think it behoves me to give at least a run down of the six presentations that I won't be discussing in much detail:

Brian Cox, presenter of various documentaries for the BBC's Horizon strand, started us off with a talk about the importance of the Large Hadron Collider, and of curiosity-driven science in general. This was a lot more fun than it might sound, and I have to say it takes real talent to talk about particle physics for an hour, and make it sound not just exciting, but easily understandable, without really dumbing it down. And the message was clear: curiosity-driven science is, in and of itself, important, and a fitting use of (at least some) public funds.

Jon Ronson followed up with an entertaining talk about his book about CIA psychics, The Men Who Stare At Goats, including clips of the upcoming film based on the book.

James Randi, who surely needs no introduction, and is the figurehead of the JREF - the organisation that runs TAM - gave a video call from America, answering questions, and seeming remarkably chipper, given his recent health problems.

Phil Plait, who actually runs the JREF, gave an fascinating talk about how asteroids could wipe out human civilisation, and other such hilarities, managing to balance the seriousness with a lot of fun. He's a good speaker, if apparently a little puzzled by the British at times (ha! as if we're the strange ones...)

Glen Hill, who I'd not heard of before, gave a talk on the Cottingley Fairies, photographed by his mother. He drew some rather strained parallels with recent conflict in the Middle East, making him perhaps the most clearly anti-religious speaker. Not that that would worry me in the slightest, of course...

George Hrab provided musical entertainment, and came across as a really cool bloke. I'll have to get an album of his music!

Adam Savage is, of course, one of the presenters of Mythbusters, and discussed some of the making of the show, primarily based around trying to see how well someone can swim in a pool full of syrup. Serious science, as I'm sure you'll agree!

So much for the summary... on to more serious discussion. And less serious, too...