http://youtu.be/h2N_OMp3T8I
In my career, I've been fortunate to spend a great deal of time involved in system design. Much of that time has been spent implementing or modifying established systems (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons and Fallout's SPECIAL system). Before I was employed in the industry, I spent a lot of time developing my own tabletop systems and modifying the systems of others, so this has always been something I've enjoyed doing.
There are many pitfalls to system design and I believe most designers trip those pitfalls by moving into implementation details too quickly. I believe some keys to success in system design (and for design in general) are to establish clear goals, to frame what those goals will accomplish in terms of player experience, and to continually return to those goals and player experiences to ensure that nothing was lost in the details of implementation.
I believe the most well-executed systems are ones where thoughtful players can accurately discern the designers' goals simply by scrutinizing the systems in action. Though not all players need to be able to do this, the ones who care to do so should be able to. Designers who succeed in creating systems that can be "reverse-engineered" in such a way have captured the soul of elegance in design.
I sometimes look to traditional games for mechanical inspiration. One of the ones I think of most often is chess. Clocking in at over 1,000 years of play around the world, chess has had a lot of iteration time. I'm not an expert on chess strategy and I'm not a particularly good player, but I know chess well enough to take some simple lessons away from it. Two that I often rely on are lessons of obvious value and orthogonally equivalent value. These two lessons can be summarized by examing three chess pieces: the queen, the knight, and the bishop.
When I look at any system, I examine both the system's design as well as the content that uses the system. I believe this is something that system designers should always do. A system is only as good as the content that makes use of it; content that fails to make use of a system (or vice versa) will always create a disappointing experience.
The queen is typically the most powerful piece in chess (though not the most valuable; that role is reserved for the king). The queen's movement capabilities combine the lateral movement of the rook with the diagonal movement of the bishop. Even if you are learning chess for the first time, the fact that the queen combines the movement of two other pieces makes her relative power clear. A rook's ability to perform a castle, the knight's excellence at creating forks, and a the pawn's ability to capture an enemy pawn en passant are all capabilities that take a while for players to appreciate, but not the queen's movement. The queen's value is obvious.
Gameplay consists of players making (more-or-less) informed decisions about what they need to do to overcome an obstacle. It is not enough for the obstacle to be clearly defined and communicated to players. They also need to have a clear understanding of what tools are at their disposal to solve the problem. In chess, the player's primary tools are his or her pieces. Though circumstances determine the value of pieces on any given move, no one needs to advocate the fundamental value of the queen in chess.
As an extreme analogue in video games, it's unlikely that many players need to be told what the value of the HECU RPG is the first time they find one in Half-Life. After being pursued by a relentless Apache helicopter over numerous maps, the player winds up in a cave with the RPG on the ground and the Apache hovering outside. Players typically snatch up the RPG and blast the Apache in moments. Though the HECU is not the "queen" of Half-Life's weapons, it has obvious applicability in the circumstance where it appears.
When designers develop tools, we should strive for clarity of primary purpose in a player's tools. The more obvious we make the value of the tools at a player's disposal, the more quickly the player will spend time fully engaged with the obstacles at hand instead of trying to figure out what they aren't "getting".
Chess has various informal ranking systems for the relative value of pieces. The rankings are not used for scoring, but they are used to give players a rough idea of the strategic (not tactical) value of those pieces. In the most commonly used system, pawns have a value of 1, rooks have a value of 5, and queens have a value of 9. Knights and bishops are both rated at 3. Bishops move diagonally, always staying on their starting color, and knights are the "funny moving" pieces of chess, hopping two squares horizontally or vertically and one square vertically or horizontally, passing over other pieces along the way. Though their tactical applications in any given circumstance are completely dissimilar, the common ranking systems give them equal (or close to equal) strategic value in chess.
Whether chess' numerous contributors intended for them to be equal in value by design or players collectively determined they were equal in value, today's players generally regard them as being so in spite of their radical differences. I.e., players treat them as having orthogonally equivalent value. Knights and bishops are considered equivalent in an orthogonal sense because their mechanics and applications do not overlap but they commonly create the same amount of benefit for players. Though bishops can move infinitely along their color, potentially from corner to corner, they lack the knight's ability to move over pieces.
Dungeons & Dragons commonly presents choices in such a fashion. The most obvious examples are spells, which are grouped by level. In most editions of A/D&D, haste and fireball are 3rd level wizard/magic-user/sorcerer spells. Though the tactical relevance and application of these spells varies wildly, the games' designers established them as being equal.
When we design tools for the player to use -- abilities, gear, options, upgrades -- options with ostensibly orthogonally equivalent value create interesting choices for the player. They also lend themselves to increased clarify of purpose. The more tools overlap in function, the less obvious it is to players why a given tool exists. The less tools overlap in function, the more those tools seem suited to a specific circumstance.
While these are high-level design concepts, creating choices with obvious, easily differentiated values can make the low-level details much easier to execute and build upon. When a player is presented with strategic or tactical choices, he or she is always fundamentally asking the question, "Why do I want to make this choice instead of any of the others?" As designers, we want to communicate the answers to their questions as elegantly as possible. Ideally, the design of the player's tools and the game's content should be self-advocating, allowing players to reverse-engineer our intent and their range of choices without a word of explanation.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Saturday, September 29, 2012
JSawyer.esp - v5.1
A helpful modder going by the handle xporc graciously addressed some issues in my mod that I was having trouble resolving. After some back-and-forth to fix some display issues, JSawyer v5.1 is ready.
Here's a high-level overview of what's substantively changed:
* Hardcore (H2O/FOD/SLP) thresholds have been set to 400/550/700/850/1000 as originally intended for the mod. The HUD indicators now match this. However, because all "Hardcore" HUD indicators flip over at the same values, this means we had to change the Radiation thresholds (and Rad Child) to match. This means you can go a little bit longer before suffering ill effects from Radiation, but since the Hardcore acquisition rates are all faster than normal, I think players will still be doing more maintenance overall.
* A bunch of dirty edits I had previously made have been cleaned up.
* Various oversights have been fixed (details in the readme).
N.B.: Some of these fixes may not appear if you replace the mod for a game in progress.
As always, it is available here:
http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip
Thanks to xporc for his help with these problems. I will be using v5.1 as the starting point for a future v6 (if it is needed).
Here's a high-level overview of what's substantively changed:
* Hardcore (H2O/FOD/SLP) thresholds have been set to 400/550/700/850/1000 as originally intended for the mod. The HUD indicators now match this. However, because all "Hardcore" HUD indicators flip over at the same values, this means we had to change the Radiation thresholds (and Rad Child) to match. This means you can go a little bit longer before suffering ill effects from Radiation, but since the Hardcore acquisition rates are all faster than normal, I think players will still be doing more maintenance overall.
* A bunch of dirty edits I had previously made have been cleaned up.
* Various oversights have been fixed (details in the readme).
N.B.: Some of these fixes may not appear if you replace the mod for a game in progress.
As always, it is available here:
http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip
Thanks to xporc for his help with these problems. I will be using v5.1 as the starting point for a future v6 (if it is needed).
JSawyer.esp - v5
An updated version of JSawyer is now uploaded in the usual place:
http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip
I have been unable to load the mod in FNVEdit to adjust the Dehydration/Starvation/Sleep Deprivation values, but here is the small list of changes since last time:
v5 Changes:
===
9.29.2012
* That Gun added to The Professional list
* Wanderer's Leather and Highway Scar Armor placed in Mick and Cliff's stores respectively.
* Ranger Battle Armor renamed to Lucky Battle Armor. Stats adjusted, Reilly's Rangers decals removed. Placed in Cliff's Store.
* Has Backpack flag checked on Power Armors.
* Bent Tin Can = Tin Can! recipe added. It turns Bent Tin Cans into Tin Cans!!!! WOW!!!!
7.21.2012
* All primary quest XP in DLCs reduced by 66%. Edits were made in the quest scripts.
8.8.2012
* Replaced accidental secondary placement of duplicate Mercenary's Grenade Rifle with the Sturdy Caravan Shotgun.
* Fire Axe and Knock Knock added to Never Axed For This challenge weapon list.
http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip
I have been unable to load the mod in FNVEdit to adjust the Dehydration/Starvation/Sleep Deprivation values, but here is the small list of changes since last time:
v5 Changes:
===
9.29.2012
* That Gun added to The Professional list
* Wanderer's Leather and Highway Scar Armor placed in Mick and Cliff's stores respectively.
* Ranger Battle Armor renamed to Lucky Battle Armor. Stats adjusted, Reilly's Rangers decals removed. Placed in Cliff's Store.
* Has Backpack flag checked on Power Armors.
* Bent Tin Can = Tin Can! recipe added. It turns Bent Tin Cans into Tin Cans!!!! WOW!!!!
7.21.2012
* All primary quest XP in DLCs reduced by 66%. Edits were made in the quest scripts.
8.8.2012
* Replaced accidental secondary placement of duplicate Mercenary's Grenade Rifle with the Sturdy Caravan Shotgun.
* Fire Axe and Knock Knock added to Never Axed For This challenge weapon list.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
the black hound - what its deal was
In the course of following our countdown over at Obsidian, a lot of gamers have been discussing past IPs we've worked with. One of the common subjects is The Black Hound, a project some of us at OEI worked on at Black Isle. It's also something I worked on as a NWN2 mod in my spare time. There's a Wikipedia entry for it and a few lore sites kicking around. Some of the info on it is accurate and some isn't, but I think the details are less important than what we were trying to do with it. I can't speak for everyone who was on the project, of course, but TBH was important to me for a lot of reasons.
When I came to Black Isle, the majority of the studio was working on Planescape: Torment. I was the webmaster for that project, but I desperately wanted to work in development as a designer. I had spent a huge amount of personal time in the 90s playing 2nd Edition AD&D in the Forgotten Realms. Working on Icewind Dale was a dream come true. Yeah, the game had a smaller story focus, and yeah, it didn't have companions, and yeah, and was linear and dungeon-focused, but I was making a real AD&D video game in the Forgotten Realms.
Icewind Dale II is the first game I was credited as lead designer on, but I was the lead designer on TBH first. I felt that the Dalelands, bordering on the Moonsea, presented a cool subsection of the Realms and a crossroads of cultures that would be interesting to explore. We could build a personal story, focused on how you fatefully intersected the life of someone hell-bent on doing something crazy. Like many Realms adventures, this wasn't a world-shattering event, but something locally catastrophic, like Moander appearing near a town and devouring a huge swath of the landscape. It's just one of those crazy Realms stories where bands of adventurers and the Cult of the Dragon start throwing fireballs and leveling villages while the townsfolk run for cover.
Some people have suggested that I hate high fantasy or want to subvert high fantasy. Neither of these are really true. I just don't like how most stories handle high fantasy: both too seriously and not seriously enough. Too seriously in the sense that a lot of fantasy conventions are considered so sacred that you can't touch them (or even question them). Not seriously enough in the sense that the scenarios and the characters don't feel like they tackle the obvious questions raised by the settings they're placed in.
As an example, the Red Wizards of Thay (an FR magical organization/magocracy) underwent a transformation between 2nd Ed. and 3E. They became a "kinder, gentler" trading nation forming magical mercantile enclaves in lands that would let them in. The thing is, 2nd Ed./3E Red Wizards probably look pretty weird to Cormyreans and Dalesmen. They shave their heads (including the women), speak a different language, and have a lot of magical tattoos. They're also darker-skinned. After a few centuries of being regarded as pariahs everywhere west of the River Sur, they show up in these places and are doing business -- questionable business -- in broad daylight.
The FR designers did something interesting in shifting their MO between 2nd Ed. and 3E. The not interesting thing to do (IMO) with that shift as a scenario or story designer would be to have a pack of bad guy Thayans in an enclave with the good guy locals saying, "Those darn Thayans are up to something, please help us, heroes." I was intrigued by the idea that a Thayan enclave could contain a "new guard" of diplomatic Red Wizards and an "old guard" of fireball-hurling hardasses who aren't allowed (or are discouraged from going) outside. Some of the new guard genuinely want to mend fences. Others simply want to use it as a way to re-establish safe power centers and observation posts in lands where they previously would have been killed on sight.
The new guard use concealing/lightening makeup, don wigs, and wear "western" clothing to fit in. The old guard chafes at having to conceal their heritage and suffers under the jeers and slurs of locals if they dare to appear in public. The new guard speaks with good and proper "Common" grammar and pronunciation, not stumbling over foreign sounds and linguistic concepts. I thought it would create a more interesting and nuanced relationship between the Thayans, the Dalesman, and those who interacted with them, lending sympathy to the traditionally "villainous" and creating a more agonizing struggle between the sub-factions of the Thayans.
An old evil wizard who strokes his beard and cackles as he unleashes chain lightning on random townsfolk isn't particularly sympathetic. But suppose he were a veteran Red Wizard who watched his fellows succumb over the years in service to the zulkirs and was forced to "step aside" as young diplomats smooth talked their way into trade relationships with their former enemies. He has to endure the insults of locals, hear them mock his clothing, his pronunciation, his skin, his culture. And when he expresses his frustration to his new (younger) "superiors", he's treated like an anachronism, an old artillery cannon left to rust and rot on a forgotten battlefield. That dude may still wind up casting chain lightning on townsfolk, but if we weave a compelling story around him, the player should feel that there's more to him than that.
I've been rambling here a bit but let me get back to the main point: The Black Hound wasn't really *~ sUbVeRsIvE ~* "this ain't your daddy's RPG!" fantasy. It had elven ruins and fire genasi and Ilmaterian paladins and Maztican sorcerers and crypts full of undead -- all the stuff that made the Forgotten Realms the crazy blend of hardass adventurer-heavy, gods-mess-with-things, cults-and-dracoliches-under-this-rock D&D fantasy it always has been. I, and I think we all, just tried to approach the world with open eyes, asking, "Okay, so let's suppose all of this stuff about the Realms is true. What does that really mean for how the people in it live their lives?" It made the world more dark and grim, and sometimes that consideration wound up bucking convention, but we didn't set out to invert fantasy conventions just for the sake of doing it.
I regret that the team wasn't able to complete The Black Hound, and not just because of the time and passion we all invested in it. Some of my best tabletop RPG (and CRPG) memories come out of the Forgotten Realms. Huge, crazy, "how many more Volo's Guides can there be?" Forgotten Realms. I think those scenarios were memorable because the DMs/designers made compelling scenarios and the players gave a damn about each other and what was going on. If you take fantasy for granted, yeah, no one's going to get much out of it. I don't think we took anything for granted. We had an opportunity to make something that celebrated high fantasy without being enslaved by its conventions. In retrospect, there are a bunch of personal design choices I look back on and cringe at, but I don't regret the time I spent on it at all. When you enjoy the process of making something that much, it's hard to consider it time wasted. We had a lot of fun while it lasted.
When I came to Black Isle, the majority of the studio was working on Planescape: Torment. I was the webmaster for that project, but I desperately wanted to work in development as a designer. I had spent a huge amount of personal time in the 90s playing 2nd Edition AD&D in the Forgotten Realms. Working on Icewind Dale was a dream come true. Yeah, the game had a smaller story focus, and yeah, it didn't have companions, and yeah, and was linear and dungeon-focused, but I was making a real AD&D video game in the Forgotten Realms.
Icewind Dale II is the first game I was credited as lead designer on, but I was the lead designer on TBH first. I felt that the Dalelands, bordering on the Moonsea, presented a cool subsection of the Realms and a crossroads of cultures that would be interesting to explore. We could build a personal story, focused on how you fatefully intersected the life of someone hell-bent on doing something crazy. Like many Realms adventures, this wasn't a world-shattering event, but something locally catastrophic, like Moander appearing near a town and devouring a huge swath of the landscape. It's just one of those crazy Realms stories where bands of adventurers and the Cult of the Dragon start throwing fireballs and leveling villages while the townsfolk run for cover.
Some people have suggested that I hate high fantasy or want to subvert high fantasy. Neither of these are really true. I just don't like how most stories handle high fantasy: both too seriously and not seriously enough. Too seriously in the sense that a lot of fantasy conventions are considered so sacred that you can't touch them (or even question them). Not seriously enough in the sense that the scenarios and the characters don't feel like they tackle the obvious questions raised by the settings they're placed in.
As an example, the Red Wizards of Thay (an FR magical organization/magocracy) underwent a transformation between 2nd Ed. and 3E. They became a "kinder, gentler" trading nation forming magical mercantile enclaves in lands that would let them in. The thing is, 2nd Ed./3E Red Wizards probably look pretty weird to Cormyreans and Dalesmen. They shave their heads (including the women), speak a different language, and have a lot of magical tattoos. They're also darker-skinned. After a few centuries of being regarded as pariahs everywhere west of the River Sur, they show up in these places and are doing business -- questionable business -- in broad daylight.
The FR designers did something interesting in shifting their MO between 2nd Ed. and 3E. The not interesting thing to do (IMO) with that shift as a scenario or story designer would be to have a pack of bad guy Thayans in an enclave with the good guy locals saying, "Those darn Thayans are up to something, please help us, heroes." I was intrigued by the idea that a Thayan enclave could contain a "new guard" of diplomatic Red Wizards and an "old guard" of fireball-hurling hardasses who aren't allowed (or are discouraged from going) outside. Some of the new guard genuinely want to mend fences. Others simply want to use it as a way to re-establish safe power centers and observation posts in lands where they previously would have been killed on sight.
The new guard use concealing/lightening makeup, don wigs, and wear "western" clothing to fit in. The old guard chafes at having to conceal their heritage and suffers under the jeers and slurs of locals if they dare to appear in public. The new guard speaks with good and proper "Common" grammar and pronunciation, not stumbling over foreign sounds and linguistic concepts. I thought it would create a more interesting and nuanced relationship between the Thayans, the Dalesman, and those who interacted with them, lending sympathy to the traditionally "villainous" and creating a more agonizing struggle between the sub-factions of the Thayans.
An old evil wizard who strokes his beard and cackles as he unleashes chain lightning on random townsfolk isn't particularly sympathetic. But suppose he were a veteran Red Wizard who watched his fellows succumb over the years in service to the zulkirs and was forced to "step aside" as young diplomats smooth talked their way into trade relationships with their former enemies. He has to endure the insults of locals, hear them mock his clothing, his pronunciation, his skin, his culture. And when he expresses his frustration to his new (younger) "superiors", he's treated like an anachronism, an old artillery cannon left to rust and rot on a forgotten battlefield. That dude may still wind up casting chain lightning on townsfolk, but if we weave a compelling story around him, the player should feel that there's more to him than that.
I've been rambling here a bit but let me get back to the main point: The Black Hound wasn't really *~ sUbVeRsIvE ~* "this ain't your daddy's RPG!" fantasy. It had elven ruins and fire genasi and Ilmaterian paladins and Maztican sorcerers and crypts full of undead -- all the stuff that made the Forgotten Realms the crazy blend of hardass adventurer-heavy, gods-mess-with-things, cults-and-dracoliches-under-this-rock D&D fantasy it always has been. I, and I think we all, just tried to approach the world with open eyes, asking, "Okay, so let's suppose all of this stuff about the Realms is true. What does that really mean for how the people in it live their lives?" It made the world more dark and grim, and sometimes that consideration wound up bucking convention, but we didn't set out to invert fantasy conventions just for the sake of doing it.
I regret that the team wasn't able to complete The Black Hound, and not just because of the time and passion we all invested in it. Some of my best tabletop RPG (and CRPG) memories come out of the Forgotten Realms. Huge, crazy, "how many more Volo's Guides can there be?" Forgotten Realms. I think those scenarios were memorable because the DMs/designers made compelling scenarios and the players gave a damn about each other and what was going on. If you take fantasy for granted, yeah, no one's going to get much out of it. I don't think we took anything for granted. We had an opportunity to make something that celebrated high fantasy without being enslaved by its conventions. In retrospect, there are a bunch of personal design choices I look back on and cringe at, but I don't regret the time I spent on it at all. When you enjoy the process of making something that much, it's hard to consider it time wasted. We had a lot of fun while it lasted.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Firearm Legislation: Why We Have So Much Trouble Talking About It
This past week, there was a terrible massacre at an Aurora, Colorado theatre on the opening night of The Dark Knight Rises. The perpetrator used tear gas and a variety of firearms to inflict numerous casualties before being captured.
As with the Gabby Giffords shooting and many other high-profile acts of extreme firearm violence, there was an immediate call for increased firearm legislation. This is an understandable reaction, but debates on the topic are almost universally unproductive, typically because they aren't actually debates. They are usually online shouting matches and polemics that are designed to draw agreement and ire. I'd like to give my perspective on firearm legislation and why discussions surrounding it often go so poorly.
I grew up in Wisconsin, a state with a large population of hunters. Though my father hunted when he was young, he did not hunt at all as an adult. I had a BB gun and a pellet gun, but never had a non-air-powered firearm. My mother hated guns and still hates guns of all kinds. A few years ago, I started taking handgun safety classes and eventually purchased a Colt M1991, an updated version of the .45 ACP sidearm used by American armed forces from WWI to Vietnam and beyond. I also purchased some lever-action rifles, some military surplus WWII-era battle rifles, and a pump-action shotgun. I went to local indoor and outdoor ranges by myself and with friends who were also interested in firearms. I talked with range masters, gun store employees, and fellow shooters at the range on subjects ranging from practical to political.
My interests were mostly academic. For better or worse, many video games feature firearms, and I don't like being ignorant about the things I work on. Don't get me wrong: I also enjoy shooting and maintaining firearms, but that enjoyment followed the academic interest. As with many of my hobbies, my interest peaked, tapered, and has fallen off. I'm about to sell most of my firearms, mostly because I don't have any practical use for them and I just don't get out to the range that often. I'm glad I learned what I have, but it's just not a big part of my life. One of the most important things I've learned is what it's like to be a gun owner in America. I believe it's helped me understand these debates much better than I previously had.
In my (admittedly short) time as a gun owner, I've heard a lot of complaints from other gun owners about why they hate gun legislation. Some of it is rabid hostility, but it's foolish to dismiss all of it as such. I've also had a lot of criticism come my way for owning firearms and for going to ranges. From these two general perspectives, I have developed some theories about why gun control debates get very unproductive very quickly.
Many of the people who are most vocal about firearm legislation are the people who understand firearms the least. A subset of these people are even proud of the fact that they don't know anything about firearms. I believe this attitude is extraordinarily foolish. Ignorance leads to bad legislation, regardless of the subject. Most firearm legislation is bad because the public's understanding of the realities of firearms in America is bad. When I say the legislation is bad, I don't mean that it's bad because it tramples rights or isn't constitutional, but because it doesn't even accomplish the things its advocates want it to accomplish.
The 1975 Firearm Controls Regulation Act (a.k.a. the D.C. handgun ban) accomplished virtually nothing because the legislation ignored the practical realities of how firearms are trafficked across state lines and how available they are across the country, legally or illegally. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) was similarly ineffective because "assault weapons" as defined by the AWB are used in a fraction of firearm-related crimes.
Many of the people who are most vocal about firearm legislation are transparently disingenuous about their end goals. If your end goal is to reduce firearm-related crime, present your ideas and desires sincerely with that in mind. If your end goal is for all firearms to be banned and all extant civilian-owned firearms to be reclaimed and destroyed by the government, be sincere about that as well. There are many, many cases where people advocate legislation disingenuously. They suggest a modest restriction under the pretense of reform, but their actual desire is to make the United States a nation without civilian firearm ownership.
If you wonder why some firearm owners react to talk of incremental gun control as though their houses are going to be raided and they are going to be arrested for owning a bolt-action varmint rifle, it's because they don't believe in the sincerity of people advocating incremental legislation (and they are often right not to).
The NRA is awful. I know some firearm owners and NRA members are going to read this blog and be upset by that, but I find it hard to defend the NRA. It's an organization that frequently rabble-rouses and presents an eternal us-vs-them conflict to firearm owners. Many of their positions are extreme and unsupported. The NRA, along with many firearm manufacturers and gun store owners, "predicted" a huge storm of firearm legislation after Obama was elected.
Before his inauguration, there was an astounding market run on items that they "predicted" would be legislated or banned: >10 round magazines, certain types of ammunition, and anything previously covered by the AWB (that they said would be renewed despite virtually no signs the administration had any interest in doing so). AR-15 receivers were among the most insanely market-inflated, but many types of ammunition were also hoarded in large quantities. Gun store clerks were even re-selling ammunition "under the table" with dramatically increased prices.
The saddest thing is that gun owners across the country bought into it. All of it. For the past year, the NRA has been building up for the 2012 election, promising that Obama is going to go into firearm legislation overdrive if he is re-elected. Again, to date, there's no solid evidence this is going to happen, but the NRA is terribly good at spreading panic.
The media is just as ignorant as the public. It's also sensationalist. So despite the fact that the AR-15, one of the weapons used in the Aurora killings, fires a 5.56x45mm round realistically described as "mid-powered" (its parent round, .223 Remington, was developed for hunting "varmints" -- rabbits, coyotes, squirrels, etc.), many papers and blogs describe it as "high-powered" or "fearsome".
Writers will also draw similarities between situations that aren't really relevant, but promote radical panic. The Aurora shooter used a Glock. Jared Loughner, the man who shot Gabrielle Giffords, also used a Glock. These facts shouldn't be that surprising considering that the majority of police departments across the country use Glocks and it's one of the most popular brands of semi-automatic civilian handgun around.
Some people may say that these points of contention don't matter. When it comes to legislation, those points are very important, and popular opinion often drives legislation. When gun owners scoff at advocates of fingerprinting when people buy "handgun ammo" or restricting the sale of "assault weapons", it's because those quoted terms are vague or nonsense. Unfortunately, many members of the public become concerned about these specific ideas because they're the things that reporters in the media promote, regardless of relevance.
Proposed actions are often radical and irrationally focused instead of progressive and comprehensive. These discussions happen in cycles, usually launched by a national (or international) tragedy. Specific things happen in the tragedy: Glocks are used, large-capacity magazines are used, a certain type of ammunition is used. Instead of looking at national (and international) trends in firearm ownership and crime, people get hung up on the specifics of the tragedy: ban Glocks, ban large-capacity magazines, ban this type of ammunition. For many reasons, it's important to talk about the specifics, but legislating around the specifics usually doesn't solve larger problems. Most of the time, it doesn't solve any problems, and the divide between firearm owners and gun control advocates grows even larger.
Widespread firearm ownership, legal and illegal, is a practical reality in the United States. Gun violence, even adjusted for population, is also a much larger issue here than it is in most ostensibly "peaceful" countries. It is sad that the salient times we have to discuss these problems are often preceded by terrible events like the Aurora shootings. It is even more unfortunate that all sides of the debate spend so much of their energy locked in fruitless arguments instead of approaching the subject with sober, sincere, and considerate minds.
As with the Gabby Giffords shooting and many other high-profile acts of extreme firearm violence, there was an immediate call for increased firearm legislation. This is an understandable reaction, but debates on the topic are almost universally unproductive, typically because they aren't actually debates. They are usually online shouting matches and polemics that are designed to draw agreement and ire. I'd like to give my perspective on firearm legislation and why discussions surrounding it often go so poorly.
I grew up in Wisconsin, a state with a large population of hunters. Though my father hunted when he was young, he did not hunt at all as an adult. I had a BB gun and a pellet gun, but never had a non-air-powered firearm. My mother hated guns and still hates guns of all kinds. A few years ago, I started taking handgun safety classes and eventually purchased a Colt M1991, an updated version of the .45 ACP sidearm used by American armed forces from WWI to Vietnam and beyond. I also purchased some lever-action rifles, some military surplus WWII-era battle rifles, and a pump-action shotgun. I went to local indoor and outdoor ranges by myself and with friends who were also interested in firearms. I talked with range masters, gun store employees, and fellow shooters at the range on subjects ranging from practical to political.
My interests were mostly academic. For better or worse, many video games feature firearms, and I don't like being ignorant about the things I work on. Don't get me wrong: I also enjoy shooting and maintaining firearms, but that enjoyment followed the academic interest. As with many of my hobbies, my interest peaked, tapered, and has fallen off. I'm about to sell most of my firearms, mostly because I don't have any practical use for them and I just don't get out to the range that often. I'm glad I learned what I have, but it's just not a big part of my life. One of the most important things I've learned is what it's like to be a gun owner in America. I believe it's helped me understand these debates much better than I previously had.
In my (admittedly short) time as a gun owner, I've heard a lot of complaints from other gun owners about why they hate gun legislation. Some of it is rabid hostility, but it's foolish to dismiss all of it as such. I've also had a lot of criticism come my way for owning firearms and for going to ranges. From these two general perspectives, I have developed some theories about why gun control debates get very unproductive very quickly.
Many of the people who are most vocal about firearm legislation are the people who understand firearms the least. A subset of these people are even proud of the fact that they don't know anything about firearms. I believe this attitude is extraordinarily foolish. Ignorance leads to bad legislation, regardless of the subject. Most firearm legislation is bad because the public's understanding of the realities of firearms in America is bad. When I say the legislation is bad, I don't mean that it's bad because it tramples rights or isn't constitutional, but because it doesn't even accomplish the things its advocates want it to accomplish.
The 1975 Firearm Controls Regulation Act (a.k.a. the D.C. handgun ban) accomplished virtually nothing because the legislation ignored the practical realities of how firearms are trafficked across state lines and how available they are across the country, legally or illegally. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) was similarly ineffective because "assault weapons" as defined by the AWB are used in a fraction of firearm-related crimes.
Many of the people who are most vocal about firearm legislation are transparently disingenuous about their end goals. If your end goal is to reduce firearm-related crime, present your ideas and desires sincerely with that in mind. If your end goal is for all firearms to be banned and all extant civilian-owned firearms to be reclaimed and destroyed by the government, be sincere about that as well. There are many, many cases where people advocate legislation disingenuously. They suggest a modest restriction under the pretense of reform, but their actual desire is to make the United States a nation without civilian firearm ownership.
If you wonder why some firearm owners react to talk of incremental gun control as though their houses are going to be raided and they are going to be arrested for owning a bolt-action varmint rifle, it's because they don't believe in the sincerity of people advocating incremental legislation (and they are often right not to).
The NRA is awful. I know some firearm owners and NRA members are going to read this blog and be upset by that, but I find it hard to defend the NRA. It's an organization that frequently rabble-rouses and presents an eternal us-vs-them conflict to firearm owners. Many of their positions are extreme and unsupported. The NRA, along with many firearm manufacturers and gun store owners, "predicted" a huge storm of firearm legislation after Obama was elected.
Before his inauguration, there was an astounding market run on items that they "predicted" would be legislated or banned: >10 round magazines, certain types of ammunition, and anything previously covered by the AWB (that they said would be renewed despite virtually no signs the administration had any interest in doing so). AR-15 receivers were among the most insanely market-inflated, but many types of ammunition were also hoarded in large quantities. Gun store clerks were even re-selling ammunition "under the table" with dramatically increased prices.
The saddest thing is that gun owners across the country bought into it. All of it. For the past year, the NRA has been building up for the 2012 election, promising that Obama is going to go into firearm legislation overdrive if he is re-elected. Again, to date, there's no solid evidence this is going to happen, but the NRA is terribly good at spreading panic.
The media is just as ignorant as the public. It's also sensationalist. So despite the fact that the AR-15, one of the weapons used in the Aurora killings, fires a 5.56x45mm round realistically described as "mid-powered" (its parent round, .223 Remington, was developed for hunting "varmints" -- rabbits, coyotes, squirrels, etc.), many papers and blogs describe it as "high-powered" or "fearsome".
Writers will also draw similarities between situations that aren't really relevant, but promote radical panic. The Aurora shooter used a Glock. Jared Loughner, the man who shot Gabrielle Giffords, also used a Glock. These facts shouldn't be that surprising considering that the majority of police departments across the country use Glocks and it's one of the most popular brands of semi-automatic civilian handgun around.
Some people may say that these points of contention don't matter. When it comes to legislation, those points are very important, and popular opinion often drives legislation. When gun owners scoff at advocates of fingerprinting when people buy "handgun ammo" or restricting the sale of "assault weapons", it's because those quoted terms are vague or nonsense. Unfortunately, many members of the public become concerned about these specific ideas because they're the things that reporters in the media promote, regardless of relevance.
Proposed actions are often radical and irrationally focused instead of progressive and comprehensive. These discussions happen in cycles, usually launched by a national (or international) tragedy. Specific things happen in the tragedy: Glocks are used, large-capacity magazines are used, a certain type of ammunition is used. Instead of looking at national (and international) trends in firearm ownership and crime, people get hung up on the specifics of the tragedy: ban Glocks, ban large-capacity magazines, ban this type of ammunition. For many reasons, it's important to talk about the specifics, but legislating around the specifics usually doesn't solve larger problems. Most of the time, it doesn't solve any problems, and the divide between firearm owners and gun control advocates grows even larger.
Widespread firearm ownership, legal and illegal, is a practical reality in the United States. Gun violence, even adjusted for population, is also a much larger issue here than it is in most ostensibly "peaceful" countries. It is sad that the salient times we have to discuss these problems are often preceded by terrible events like the Aurora shootings. It is even more unfortunate that all sides of the debate spend so much of their energy locked in fruitless arguments instead of approaching the subject with sober, sincere, and considerate minds.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Art and Appreciation
I grew up in a household where one of my parents was self-employed. My mother began a career at a magazine publisher when I was young. Barring a few short stints in the late 70s and 80s when he worked as a full-time employee for various companies, my father has been a freelance sculptor for the entirety of my life. He has sculpted belt buckles, busts, fountains, seals reading books on benches, giant flamingos, torch-bearing Sauks, lamp posts, Erté-inspired art deco female figurines, the Fonz, and myriad corporate doo-dads. He also draws and paints. In our house, there's a painting of me sitting on the steps of our old house in Caledonia, Wisconsin. On another wall, there's a huge painting of some insane abstract whatever he made long ago. And on his computer, he uses his Wacom tablet daily to make some of the most bizarre, Boschian, hellish landscapes I've ever seen.
I never really made a distinction between these things as "art" or "not art". In my mind, I considered all of them to be art. It never crossed my mind that the commercial pieces were less art than the personal pieces, or that the giant abstracts were more art than the portraits of family members and friends. Many people attach personal drive and tenacity to artistic merit. Surrender of drive, surrender of vision, surrender of principle -- that's selling out. I never associated this with my father because, to be frank, in his professional dealings he's often been stubborn, hot-tempered, and implacable. It didn't matter if he was working for a school district, the city of Milwaukee, or a self-made billionaire. If you asked him to make a change that he thought was bad, the response was fast and often not diplomatic.
There is much to be admired in the attitude, if not always the ferocity of the response: the principle, the confidence, the determination. It says, "I am the artist. I am the one who makes the decision." This attitude is not always rewarded, and it is typically not respected by the people who are likely to do the rewarding: the clients. Throughout my life, I've watched my father sculpt many things for many clients. I've seen him frustrated and triumphant as our family went through financial ups and downs. I can't remember a time that I ever went hungry, that I ever felt poor, thanks to my parents, but I could tell that it troubled him. To me, there was no importance on the labels: "art", "fine art", "commercial art". The importance was the struggle. How important is it to satisfy an audience? Does your work need to have an audience? Can you make a bad choice and fix it later? Do you need to communicate something? Do you need to pay the rent? Do you give a shit if this person hates your guts? Does it matter if you lose all future work with this client? Are you willing to live or die on this one point?
After growing up with a sculptor; working with video game artists, writers, and musicians, for over a decade; and living with a traditional painter for almost as long, I developed a maxim for how I would approach creative work: Do anything you want to do in life. Just don't expect anyone to pay you or respect you for it.
This, to me, is the razor. It's the distillation of any creative struggle with the audience: is the critical or financial approval of the audience worth making a creative choice you think is inferior? The audience may change: your co-workers, your boss, your client, your lover, your mother, the critics, the public. You give different audiences different weight, sometimes capriciously, sometimes rationally. Different issues may weigh on you more heavily than others. Sometimes it's easy to let go. Sometimes it hurts like hell. Sometimes you won't budge on principle. Sometimes you won't budge because fuck you, idiot.
We often use art and the authority of the artist (or the author, or the director, etc.) as an abstract shield to justify choices we make contrary to the desires of an audience. We make a choice, an audience complains, and sometimes -- all too often -- we say, "Sorry, but art." This is unproductive deflection. This is an absurd, conversation-ending non-argument. It is presented as a wall that no criticism can breach. How is the critic intended to respond?
Someone doesn't like how you portrayed a character. Someone doesn't like how you ended a story. Someone doesn't like how you framed your shots. "Art" as defense is not a response to criticism, it is a hollow rejection of criticism. It does not encourage dialogue, it does not promote introspection, and it does not (typically) ameliorate the audience's displeasure. At its worst, such a defense encourages non-topical arguments about the nature of art itself. These discussions, in which no parties are ever victorious, quickly spiral so far away from the actual point of criticism that they often never return.
When I see this, I ask myself: is this how authors and audiences should interact? I don't think so. I think both the author and the audience deserve, and can benefit, more from honest appraisals of why we make the choices we makes. Stop talking about "art". Stop talking about "entitlement". How does casting blame elevate and advance conversation about the work? This is about questioning our work, our choices, our relationship (or lack thereof) with the audience.
Ultimately, our works are our answers to those questions. Implicitly, what we give to our audience is indicative of our values. Everything that follows -- the sales, the reviews, the debates, the revisions, the re-releases -- should be viewed as tools for the authors and audience to reinforce or recalibrate those values for future work. Unless an author plans on quitting creative endeavors after the next project he or she completes, this process is something all of us will go through for life.
If you want to end a conversation, to cut off communication, it's easy enough to deflect criticism. Assuming you do make your work for an audience, you probably don't make it for all audiences. Sometimes, the fuck you, idiot instinct is the right one. If you don't want that audience to respect you or pay for your work, cut them loose; they're not worth your time and you're not worth theirs. But most of us can also accept a certain amount of dissatisfaction within our target audience. We make choices, some members of the audience are dissatisfied, but we still suspect they're the right choices. For those people, and for the rest of the audience, we have the ability to engage them, to sincerely explain our values and hear theirs.
All people engaged in a life of creative work have to fight battles against their shifting priorities. We all make trade-offs, one way or another. The more we illuminate the specific twists and turns of our own choices, and the struggles involved in making them, the more everyone can gain from the exchange.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
JSawyer.esp - v4
Yeah, I don't have a good excuse for why it took me this long to update the JSawyer mod. But the battle.net outage gave me a nice chunk of time to fix up a few things. Updating the mod should not conflict with your current save games, but what do I know?
As always, it is located here:
http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip
v4 Changes:
===
5.15.2012
* Added regular Hatchet to I Never Axed For This challenge + perk.
* Fixed critical hit chance on Certified Tech perk.
* Tin Cans and Bent Tin Cans weight from 1.0 to 0.1.
4.22.2012
* Tribal Pack items moved to a *~ Secret Location ~* (see End of Document)
* Caravan Pack items moved to a *~ Secret Location ~*
* Old CS scripts adding items to Chet's invetory have had those lines commented out.
* New (single) message indicates items are placed around the Mojave Wasteland.
* I Never Axed For This challenge and perk added.
4.14.2012
* Classic Pack items moved to a *~ Secret Location ~*
* Mercenary Pack items moved to a *~ Secret Location ~*
2.12.2012
* Level cap properly set to 15, adjusts up to 35 with all DLC. This was stealth fixed for v3 a day after launch, but there you go.
* Auto-Inject Stimpaks and Super Stimpaks set to match Stimpak / Super Stim healing rates.
* Expired Stimpak set to 50 VAL from 75.
* Set the Roughin' It! Bedroll Kit ingestible to 10 lbs. from 15.
As always, it is located here:
http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip
v4 Changes:
===
5.15.2012
* Added regular Hatchet to I Never Axed For This challenge + perk.
* Fixed critical hit chance on Certified Tech perk.
* Tin Cans and Bent Tin Cans weight from 1.0 to 0.1.
4.22.2012
* Tribal Pack items moved to a *~ Secret Location ~* (see End of Document)
* Caravan Pack items moved to a *~ Secret Location ~*
* Old CS scripts adding items to Chet's invetory have had those lines commented out.
* New (single) message indicates items are placed around the Mojave Wasteland.
* I Never Axed For This challenge and perk added.
4.14.2012
* Classic Pack items moved to a *~ Secret Location ~*
* Mercenary Pack items moved to a *~ Secret Location ~*
2.12.2012
* Level cap properly set to 15, adjusts up to 35 with all DLC. This was stealth fixed for v3 a day after launch, but there you go.
* Auto-Inject Stimpaks and Super Stimpaks set to match Stimpak / Super Stim healing rates.
* Expired Stimpak set to 50 VAL from 75.
* Set the Roughin' It! Bedroll Kit ingestible to 10 lbs. from 15.
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