Wearable technology, death, and music

[fearmeforiampink]

Voiceless phonecalls - a collar thing that picks up the neural messages from your brain to your throat, allowing you to 'talk' without ever moving your muscles. It works on speech recognition, i.e. "that looks like he's trying to say 'buttsex' so we'll have our speech synthesiser say that", so it's reliant on the software's ability to interpret. At the moment, the software is apparently about as good as speech recognition was a few years ago, i.e. not very. But given time this could be very cool. Another interesting, if slightly creepy, use for it is when you ponder about something and say something to yourself without actually opening your mouth or whatever, it could do a google search on that, giving you the information you were after. Interesting in that it's a somwhat transhumanist situation of instant knowledge the moment you wonder about something, but creepy as there's the question of what level of sub-vocalisation this thing will pick up. Via Warren Ellis

Phone/wristwatch/PDA/min-ilaptop/fashion accessory – again it's something we won't be seeing particularly immediately, but it may not be that far away. Via oakthorne

I so need a pair of these – glasses that you identify your stuff to, then they keep track of it using a digital camera that records as you go about your daily life. if you've shown it a particular book and mislaid the book, it can show you an image of the last time that book was recorded by it. Via freddiefraggles

Multi-touch is getting closer Via Digg.

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So, on this post one of the White Wolf stuff talks about risk, death and consequences in RPGs. About where you stand on the whole "This game is a stage for you to do cool things on and for me to show you evocative set pieces" versus "This game is you versus the ST, with you pitting your wits, tactics and character build against him in an attempt to stay alive"

Obviously few games will occupy the extremes there, but there is the question of where do you sit? Personally I'm a fan of a definite element of risk. Now I'll risk looking egotistical, and quote myself:

I'll agree on constant re-rolls breaking immersion...

I suppose the main thing I don't want is the feeling that there's an invisible safety net there, unless that's explicitly stated. In a superheroes game, it's part of the setting for villians to capture and gloat at unconsious heroes rather than killing them. In most other settings, it isn't.

In a heavily customised Changeling game I was in a little while ago, we had two deaths in one session. One character had wandered off from the rest of the group, got himself captured by some people that realised what he was, and planned to execute him the next day. The 'head' changeling of the city (a david bowie lookalike that held court in the sewers) told the rest of us about it, and sent us off to rescue him. We pondered the idea while leaving the sewers, decided that we didn't really know his character that well, and didn't rate our chances of taking on a full police station of people aware of what changelings were and how to deal with them, so decided to scarper and leave him to die. Now, you can certainly argue that was the GM's fault for making the 'save him' option too unappealing – if we'd had more backup then we might've gone for it.

But it did have the "If you do stupid things, you have to deal with the consequences" aspect to it. Those consequences won't always be death, but sometimes they will be. And I think that's a good thing.

The other death was someone who decided that while everyone else scarpered, he'd indulge in a bit of theft so that he had some supplies for where we'd end up. He tried to rob a house, said house had a big dog. They fought, he rolled badly, the dog killed him. Ironically, he'd argued that we didn't need to rescue the other guy cause 'Anyone who wanders off alone is an idiot who deserves to die. That one was more bad luck and less stupidity, but to me the main thing was "You're going into a situation where you're fighting people. They may die, you may die."

Yes, tabletop RPGing is like a movie in terms of exploring a character and a narative, seeing where they take you, having the epic battles, and so forth. But to me, one of the essential parts of the game is the fact that it can all go wrong. Yes, it's possible that when you're fighting your father and he beats the crap out of you, you'll just lose a hand and have a friend frozen. But it's also possible that if you don't blow up their space station that they destroy your alliance's base, and mop up the rest of you over the next few years.

It's the fact that that is definitely a possibility that makes 'winning' worthwhile, that you have actually triumphed, that you've succeeded in your objectives, married the princess and saved the kingdom, when you could've ended up dead in a ditch. That's what I like.

I suppose it's telling that I rather like the fact that in Exalted "The canonical conclusion to the Age of Sorrows is that the different factions all point fingers and jockey for position until the sky caves in." as the 1st ed. developer described it. It's something that you've got to fight against, something that you've got to beat, something that will happen if you fuck things up badly enough.

Obviously YMMV, people want different things out of their gaming. The above isn't everything I'm after, but it's certainly a strong part of it.

and

Firstly, it's a matter of choices. IIRC, the character [who fought the dog] was low on glamour, and thus had not much capabilities beyond that of an ordinary human, and while he had some combat skill, he wasn't that specialised into it, and a guard dog can be quite nasty if you don't have a gun to shoot it with. So it's a matter of choosing your fights. If your vampire (old or new WoD, doesn't matter), is down to 2 blood and chooses to go hunting for more in a nasty part of town, I won't feel too guilty about having him face a gang member with a knife and a modicum of combat skill. Not vastly more skill than you, but enough skill that there's a risk, because you've been a dumb by coming here when you've not enough blood to buff your strength or heal your wounds if things go bad.

And secondly, to me there should always be some element of risk, up to and including death, especially in combat. Not combats built to kill players, but running combat with the acceptance that anything can happen, and there isn't an implicit "There's no way you'll die here" in any combat.

Even a combat-capable, ex soldier vampire can trip over, jam his weapon (i.e. botch several times) and have the young punk he was about to terminate manage to put four bullets in his brainpan through sheer dumb luck. I'd not pick the botches with an eye to killing the character, but if they botched their firearms roll, and then both an athletics and a dodge roll, and the NPC facing them rolled all successes on both his attack and damage rolls, then I wouldn't go "That didn't happen" on the fact that the bloodsucking squaddie is now about six lethal health levels below incapacitated.

Sure, it's not likely. And if it happens frequently then you need to change your system, check your dice, or sprinkle holy water on the player in question. But people die in combat, and not always the ones you expect to. It should certainly be rare, but to me it should certainly be there.

Where do you stand on the whole thing? More realism? More narativium? More soup?

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Pimp some good music at me!

I've got an eMusic account, as I wanted to use their '50 free tracks when you join' thing to get the entire discography of a band I rather like, and I've stuck with them as it's not too expensive, lets me slowly expand my music library (having been feeling I knew it all too well previous to this), and means I'm actually supporting the music of the bands that need it more - the smaller/indie acts.

And tommorrow my downloads for the month are refreshed, giving me 30 songs to download. If there's some artist/song you think I should hear, see if they have it (they've got a lot of indie stuff, but less of the mainstream), and tell me what it is any why I should listen to it. I may or may not get it this month, as I'm currently already tempted by some stuff from VAST and Wet Spots, but if I like it then I'll add it to my list of stuff to get in the coming months.

Comments

[hawklord2112.livejournal.com]

incubus' "a crow left of the murder"
Rush's "Snakes and Arrows"
Hawkwind's "Warrior on the Edge of Time"
Danzig's "Danzig 2: Lucifuge"

[omniscient-fool.livejournal.com]

Re voiceless phonecalls.

V interesting. Do you know how it differentiate between the thoughts you want to say and the thoughts you are thinking of saying but decide not to? If it's voiceless, presumably you won't be sending the same signals as if you were going to voice a sentence. Would you have to learn a new way of 'voicing' at a sub vocal level so the same signal was sent without actual speech occurring?

[dainul.livejournal.com]

Re: RPGs

The troll was actually pretty damned buff, but he went up against 2-3 guard dogs and their owner. It was really weight of numbers that finished me off.

As for combat being dangerous... yes, yes it should be. Last big fight in the groo game, my alpha was two rounds from bleeding to death when I jumped in and healed him. It was bloody tenser, and if something had stopped me/drained my gnosis/whatever, he could well have died.

[mapp.livejournal.com]

RE: RPGs
I mostly agree. There needs to be risk and struggle for the "I win!" part of the game to be meaningful. Not all encounters should be scripted to be a "life or death clash of the titans!". Sometimes players and characters need to blow off steam by slaughtering 1d10 Kobolds in a bloody massacre that witnesses will describe as "a bloody massacre".

The kobolds may injure them, and if they somehow get very lucky and the players get really unlucky, the kobold gang may even take down a player character. And I think that's how it should work; there's always that chance that luck will run out for you. The kobold encounter isn't designed with "mwahahaha, I'm going to kill a character!" in mind, but if it happens, it happens.

RE: Music
If I could sign up to emusic (no, I don't have a credit card, wanna fight about it?), I'd go and download the Alice album by Tom Waits. Tom Waits + Alice In Wonderland = Win.

some music

[ladybirdintheuk.livejournal.com]

Ok, bearing in mind that I've got no idea what kind of music you like (well... a vague idea, but not really. And you probably have anything we both like already from me via my brother! ), you may end up hating me forever for some of these:

I did try and search for Schmoof, but they don't have any. (for the record the tracks I was going to tell you about were Kinky Spaceman (because everyone should have a song called Kinky Spaceman on their computers) or Northern Line. (because it is ace) ). They do however have the Schmoof remix of jobs that require headphones by J+J+J. I would recommend most things by J+J+J, especailly Snowballs at Her Face, and Insomna.

Who else? erm. This webite doesn't have the things I want to recomend to you. I was going to point you n the direction of Ministrys first album if you don't have it already, because it is like minstry, but in the 80s. Which always amuses me hugely.

They have 1 divine comedy album on there, which has a song called go go ninja dinosaur. Which has got to be worth a listen surely?!

I'm not doing very well at this. How about anyhng off Thickskin by Skid Row. Because I'm wearing a t-shirt with that written on. And that's the only thing I can think of that they actually have!

That's it, I can't think of an more!

(edited to untick the "don't auto format" box, so that the paragraphs worked!... it was horrible. Horrible I tell you!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I'm a little harder on the narrative side, but not much. I mostly don't like seeing PCs die stupid deaths because of bad rolls.

If the high fantasy fighter is stupid, and gets surrounded by kobolds and they pull him down through sheer force of numbers because he's alone, sure, kill him and eat him.

If the high fantasy fighter is being totally reasonable and the third kobold from the left, second row, rolls a mad one-in-a-million instant-kill critical hit, that's bad and dumb (and you're probably playing GURPS, which is an entirely different mistake).

Basically, there's a *mechanic* from Spirit Of The Century that I really like - it's an instruction to the GM that no roll is ever required from a PC, unless failure would be interesting. And that's where I tend to fall in the realm of combat deadliness: the combat can only realistically kill a PC if it would be interesting for me and for the players to have that happen.

If it *would* be interesting, people can die, and their living or failing is all about the dice. If it would be boring or stupid, then no, I'll fudge the dice to leave them hurt but alive.

"Interesting" versus "boring and stupid" depends on the game and the setting. Elder vampire gets taken down by mugger? Boring and stupid. Private eye snoops into Cthulhoid cult, gets caught? Interesting. D&D party takes on equal numbers of surprised kobold children? Dying is dumb. Lone mage gets jumped by the contents of the kobold nursery he was about to fireball? Interesting.