_www.FantasyLibrary.com [Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?] Synthesis & Synchronicity 045

Synthesis & Synchronicity #45

The Relative Challenge : Well, Kiralee and I spent the 25th with my relatives at my parent's house and returned home tired, and relatively unscathed. Our gifts, chosen more to be thoughtful rather than expensive went over well. We were pleased that our combined effort of a gift for Drake, my brother's son, went over really well with both him and his parents (who tend to be a bit picky about things). It was the gift that had taken the most time and effort to find (since it was actually a half dozen gifts that went together) and hopefully will guide him in a gentle manner towards a creative bend that he's been showing lately.

It was a holiday where we spent a lot of time being sympathetic ears, as many of my relatives are VERY stressed out with their lives and in need to vent those frustrations thru discussing them (for hours). And there was some complications at the event by my brother & his new companion arriving late with our nephew, and a problem with the city sewer line that shut down the bathrooms for half the day (thanks to the failure of the City of Waltham to maintain the lines and keep nearby resteraunts from dumping grease and other debris into the lines).

Overall folks managed to not drive each other crazy, not have any shouting matches and nothing major ended up broken or lost. The food was good, and save for the sewer situation things were reasonably friendly and warm. This is a lot better than normal (we skipped attending last year for a variety of reasons).

Who Caught Saddam? This is just hitting some of the net news sources and at least one local non-mainstream newspaper (The Boston Phoenix). It appears that the official "Capture of Saddam" may have not bee the real thing. It appears it is highly possible that someone else had captured Saddam and had been holding him for months, and that there was some fabrication of the news to make our Appointed President look good at just the right time to help him out in some lagging opnion polls.

Who? Well according to a story on KurdishMedia.com that originates from the Scottish newspaper the Sunday Herald, the credit for the capture of Saddam actually goes to Qusrat Rasul Ali aka The Lion of Kurdistan provided information to Jalal Talabani, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council (and leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) which was then delivered to the US troops.

The Israeli site Debka.com studied the data at the scene, the photos etc and concludes he 1) Could not have actually gotten out of his spider hole unassisted and 2) The two unidentified men arrested above ground were likely holding him prisoner.

There's also the tidbit about the dates in the photo. Dates have a specific seasonal growth, harvest and ripening process. Dates appear in one of the photos of the hideout are unripened and yellow - which they shouldn't have been of the photo was recent, but would have been true if the photo was actually taken 3 months prior to the apprehension date. This means either they actually may have captured him 3 months ago, and hid the fact for the 'right photo opportunity" or the photo was taken by non-US captors and sent along as part of the info to prove where he was being held prisoner.

Note that Al-Jazeera TV carried an official denial by Jalal Talabani that his forces had anything to do with the capture of Saddam.... some time evidently BEFORE any of the other news stories involved were pointing to his or Kurdish involvement in the apprehension. Denial before accusation? Methinks someone dost protest too much.

MP3 File Traders : I don't do any internet MP3 trading myself, since I use a rather slow dialup connection for 90% of my net activity and don't appreciate spyware that one risks with such activity. BUT I do have a chunk of sympathy to the battle with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) by those who do and a number of independent artists and studios that have been falsley included in that organizations' attempts to charge outrageous fees for supposed file trading of music (up to $150,000 per song!)

Anyway, there was an interesting new bit today : the RIAA lost a major federal court case and have had ruled against them. In this case ISPs are NOT obligated in any way to reveal users identities to the RIAA. This courtorder threatens all the civil suits still pending and prevents the trade group from continuing it's current high-profile scare tactics. Add in to this the lawsuit AGAINST the RIAA for violating a user agreement with KAZAA and backwards-engineering their software illegally to try to find out the identities of individuals using that system, and this gives us one more backstab into these money grubbing middlemen in the recording industry.

I'm a big believer in Artists rights, and most Artists are ripped off regularly by the record industry big wigs, getting nothing or mere pennies from their creations. They've been ripped off for years, and pretty much have had to live off what they can make touring dates. Creative bookkeeping has ALWAYS been part of the recording industry (and old fashioned "work for hire" contracts were used in that industry until very recently where the artist lost all right to their performance and material).

I definitely support a Canadian style solution - in Canada CD burners (and DVD burners) and the blanks have a small tax on them, which is pooled and then payed out to the performers and publishers. I'm not sure how one gets recognized by this system to get one's share as a performer, but it may for the majority pay much better than the current record industry does.

I Got Some Interesting Feedback On Presenting Setting In A RPG :

From: "Greg Downing"

Facinating read. (sorry this is late, been busy, and wrote this response in parts.)

  I think it's clear that while all of your current players are of a similar cloth, we are not all of a same design.  It does seem that the players are all capable of not allowing personal information to interfere with our playing of a game (my desire to interject bits of pop culture through my character into Greenstone notwithstanding. ;)

As far as what I desire/expect to know...it's not so cut and dried every time.  Overall, the biggest concern is that my knowledge (the player's) adequately mirrors what my character knows.  Sometimes that means I don't know that I know something, but will find this out by making the appopriate skill roll (which means I have to know enough to make the roll. ;)  Sometimes I know something because that information has been provided by the GM as something that is either widely known by people in the setting, or has been previously informed to me that my character knows.  And sometimes, I may have insight into questions I might ask because I have read non-GM provided information about the setting (read as game supplements and/or campaign based novels), but of course, it's up to the GM whether or not my character would know enough to truly ask.

  My desire to know is also sometimes based on my character's desire to know.  Jax, personally, does not know all the intricasies of some of the plots in Ironclaw, especially those involving religion.  Why? it's in his nature.  If it's something vital to planning, he'll make an effort to learn it...but there are just some details that either do not concern him, or he just doesn't feel comfortable with.  Therefore, sometimes in order to adequately mirror that state of unawareness, I don't always pay close attention to public conversations on a subject.  Abigail, on the other hand, is very nosy.  She wants to know everything about everything, and in all matters magical, she wants to know double that!  So her personal actions often mirror her characters desires.

  Cindy and I are also different kinds of players. The rules are very important to her, to be spelled out, to have them gotten correctly.  I can deal with a little more flexibility, or a little looser interpretation of the rules.  It's the game that's ultimately important, not the mechanics.  On the other hand, sometimes I prefer to have rules as opposed to not knowing at all, especially in basic aspects such as spellcasting.  While I never had to deal with it in your Earth Unmasked game, when I ran Cosmic Guardians, spell making was a big sticking point for me, trying to adequately define point costs and limitations with a very hazy outline to work with.  I tend to prefer a more rigid method like D+D or GURPS with my spell casting, or at the very least, a flexible one with specific limitations and rules built in, like Hero.

  So maybe with the rules, information is important.  But I never had a problem with games like Forgotten Realms or World of Darkness.  I've read several books from each, several supplements from each, and was always careful, in any game I ever played, to understand what was included, and what was not.  And really, having campaign worlds such as those above that evolved, had time pass and major historical events included, was a cool thing to me.  It didn't mean so much that there was more to learn, merely that I had to decide what I wanted the starting point to be, and then leave it up to the GM to highlight what was important, and what was not.  If they're a good GM, they'll provide the background, and anything else is just supplemental: interesting, but not necessarily important to the game in play.  And I've had very little reason to be dissapointed with your way of doing things in that regard. I don't need to know everything at start.  I trust that I (and my character) will learn more as play progresses.

  Coming to the game you're working on, it makes sense that different characters, different cultures, will have a different understanding of things, a different belief system.  Its the way the world always is.  And we won't necessarily know other's belief systems, other's legends and historical basises, other's mythologies.  Of course, cleaving to that might be a little more difficult.  Most of the games we've played in have had familiar common knowledge, whether urban fantasy or sword and sorcery.  You may have to outline what we, as a part of our culture, don't know, as well as what we know. :} (after all, I also haven't read thoroughly *all* the books on the list I gave you. )

  Hope that helps.  

-Greg

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