From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 8:28 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Minor sci point In a message dated 00-03-22 18:17:32 EST, you write: << >The history of science as a series of Aphrodites springing complete and vital from singular Zeusly brows. You mean Artemis, as I remember. Aphrodite came out of the sea. >> Aphodite did indeed appear on the half-shell, Artemis was indeed Apollo's sister and it was Athena who sprang from a Zeusly migraine treated by Hephaestus' hammer and chisel. This will teach me to double-check when changing metaphors in midstream, there I was wondering if Zeusly was a word when I should have been changing goddesses with the metaphor. Does anyone have any questions about Ajax, Agamemnon, Arachne, Ariadne, Achilles, Aeschylus, Argus (the giant and the doggie), Argos, Antigone, Anteus, Adonis or any other Greek/Roman As we haven't mentioned yet? Mark McFadden Sing, O muse, of royal lizards and dark clad men, Detectives of earth and microbe, Architects of web and wording Then take a break and join me with your tootsies in the wine-dark sea. Thalassas, thalassas Peace, I'm out. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 9:27 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: All right, who gave out my great-grandfather's number? In a message dated 00-03-22 18:17:32 EST, you write: << Especially when you realize your great-grandfather (whom I respect very much) probably used that book, or one much like it (to his credit, I highly doubt he held any of those beliefs, but then, he would have been the exception). >> I'm really pleased that you respect my great-grandfather very much... but now you know too much. Dexter! Sinister! Sic 'im. Mark McFadden And BTW, he did too hold those beliefs From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of David Farnell [daf@iwa.att.ne.jp] Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 9:35 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: Salutations! Welcome back, William! And get back to work on the Endtimes Site! I've read everything twice, printed out the best bits, and I want more! And congratulations on the marriage and the job. (Tell us, does the Lycos dog really hang around the office, or has he gotten too snooty now that he's famous?) From: William Timmins > It's William TimmIns, by the way. Odd English spelling or something. > And the site has been moved to: http://wtimmins.tripod.com/DG/ "Whut do they call yew up in Bawston, boy?" "They call me _Mr. Timmins!_" ObDG: Newer members, check out the above site. Very kewl. Dave From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jason R. Armstrong [gerwalkveritech@juno.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 10:36 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Trail of the Game Industry Good point, Mr. Crossingham. I wasn't aware of just how small Chaosium is; I've grown up thinking of them as "big" because they've been around since as long as I can remember. Hmmm... and buying "flawed" products, well, I guess you've gotta try it to know, yes? But what if you're sure you only need one tiiiiiiny thing in some package, and you don't want to spend $20 to just have that one thing? Are we shirking responsibility by scanning it off a friend, instead of supporting the scene, as it were? And also, what if a product from an otherwise good line of product is "flawed" to the point that one thinks it SUCKS? Does one buy it anyway, to support the good things in the presumed future? These are real questions, by the way, because I've gotten myself into this argument (with myself, and others) before. By the regrettably simple way I've aired my arguments, one is a big jerk if one doesn't ALWAYS support the underdog financially. And I'm not sure that's what I mean, really. On the other hand, I almost always DO that. But is that loyalty, or just shotgun consumerism with a supposed conscience? Shit, I'm not sure at times. But I completely agree, that I should stop and re-read what I've written an hour earlier, on occasion. Tsk. Still, what I said about trying to give the money one DOES spend, be it frugally or liberally, to the ones you care about, I think that pretty much stands. Though things change...I mean, I was giving WWolf some slack a ways back because there seemed to be _some_ redeeming qualities to their VAMPIRE stuff, despite the apparent downhill slide. But as the 90's progressed, that slide became a freefall plunge. Now I...just...find it really hard to want to give over money for even an anomalously intriguing product from the Pales. I just _can't_, you know? But am I not giving them enough of a chance? I mean, they still could get better, and it's not as if they're so huge, they're entirely out of reach of fan input(are they?)...conundrums, conundrums. Great, now I'm shooting myself all fulla holes. I hate it when I come on all self-assured, because I'm either not thinking straight, or I don't have enough info-then I end up retracting everything later. Sigh. "Every time I open my mouth, I kinda wish I kept it shut... IIII, "Can't Decide" xJAYx ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 2:50 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Re: Games and the Mythos In a message dated 3/22/00 2:09:30 PM Pacific Standard Time, andywrobertson@clara.co.uk writes: << Chess is culturally bounded. But surely gaming is not.<< WARNING! WARNING Andy Wrobertson. Leiber reference approaching... Not directly related but I figure the reference would eventually show up anyhoo. The man Harlan Ellison said the overwhelming majority of pros were unfit to carry the pencilcase - of, wrote a Changewar story that dealt with determining the influence of Spiders or Snakes by the prevalence of certain types of games. Spiders left traces of web type board games such as chess or Go or checkers, while Snakes left traces of "path" games such as cribbage boards or backgammon or any of the snakes'n'ladders or Game of Life (roll the dice, follow the path) type games. Now, to put this is in a Mythos light, what sort of games would the various GOO "sponsor". <> And further, Go is already 2/3 GOO, and who let that 23 in here? I see where you're going here and I like it. Piers Anthony used the cellular automata game Life in a novel as a universal "language". Simple on/off presentation and a set of rules that can be learned and inferred by watching. But Go seems like the next step in a dialogue. My only problem with Go is it's relative obscurity in the West, although Pi and Shibumi have raised some awareness. And if the story doesn't require that the reader/player know precisely what is going on, it's got some of the hands-down coolest terminology around. Which, on cue, I have promptly forgotten. Davide? Andy? << If I had to prove my fitness to survive to a bunch of star-headed Antarctic Old Ones who had the whip hand - or something like that - I'd try to teach them GO. Wouldn't you grant life and respect to a starfish that taught you how to play GO?>> My mother told me I should write a nice note within 2 weeks of being taught Go by a starfish. A phone call at least. Also not a bad way to open a dialogue with a Yithian before they get a handle on the local language. But consider: Variations on "resurrecting" captured pieces. Variations on castling. Sacrificing a piece (to return by trading a pawn that has completed it's journey). A "black" Bishop and a "white" Bishop on each side. Knights that pass "between" defenses. The King stays behind the lines and is defended, the Queen is the active warrior. Imagine a chess set where sometimes the king looks like The King and you can swear you know the Queen's name. or B&W, playing chess with a hooded Stephen Alzis on a seashore. Mark McFadden But: "Go is to Western chess what Western chess is to double entry accounting" Nicholai Hel, Shibumi From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Robert Thomas [ThomasR@Cardiff.ac.uk] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:31 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Cookbook Technology Hello all, Could the following be used to remove protomatter? : http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_686000/686892.stm Rob. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 8:00 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Salutations! >From: "David Farnell" >Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 12:35:13 +0900 > >Welcome back, William! And get back to work on the Endtimes Site! I've read >everything twice, printed out the best bits, and I want more! And >congratulations on the marriage and the job. (Tell us, does the Lycos dog >really hang around the office, or has he gotten too snooty now that he's >famous?) > >From: William Timmins > > It's William TimmIns, by the way. Odd English spelling or something. > > And the site has been moved to: http://wtimmins.tripod.com/DG/ > >"Whut do they call yew up in Bawston, boy?" >"They call me _Mr. Timmins!_" > >ObDG: Newer members, check out the above site. Very kewl. > I've already added a bunch of material. I've fixed the gear rules so that Keeper's don't suffer SAN loss trying to puzzle them out. Check out any sections with a 2000 timestamp. To do list: Currently working on an image for the Shamblers. A bit different than most other images of them, but oh well. Images, images, images. (Finally have a good enough Mac to work on some of the stuff I wanted to) Describe gangs Describe mages Alzis and the Fate USO and other government agencies (FEMA, WHO, Majestic) Bring project more in line with Countdown Details of the Rebellion and the Secret Senate Update Projects (astral, etc) Space ship design, more info on space operations More info on Shub-niggurath and Dark Young (Venus operations, et al) Old ones, Serpent folk, Yithians, Shan, Lloigor, and other races in the Endtimes. More info on Time travel and other covert technologies One of the last things I want to try is to create a Lifepath system for Call of Cthulhu. Something where you can, with a Keeper-determined level of control, generate the history of a character, with skills and abilities gained as a result. Neat idea, but very time consuming. -Will ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Graeme Price [graemep@immagene.mcg.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 8:11 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Cookbook Technology Rob "reply to" Thomas wrote: >Could the following be used to remove protomatter? : >http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_686000/686892.stm Interesting idea. Basically, the laser scalpel this article describes is a smaller version of a big machine used in research called a flow cytometer (we have 3 of them in the room next door - they're fun). The machine sucks in cells, shoots a laser at them, and, depending on how much they fluoresce, decides whether to return them back to the tissue or not. Two problems with it. First, you will need to stain the cells with a labelled antibody first... which isn't as easy as it sounds because you have to make sure that the antibody you use only binds to the tumour cells, and second it sucks the cells up through an aperture into a flow chamber so that the laser can hit them. Whilst this will work for things like leukaemias (white blood cell cancer), it's going to really mess up solid tissue (brain, liver, kidney etc.). So nice idea, shame about the application. ObDG: Could it be used to deal with protomatter? I'd say no. My take on protomatter is that it is a big lump rather than discrete cells, so it wouldn't fit through the aperture on the laser scalpel. Plus it would start fighting back. A useful analogy would be something along the lines of "imagine dissecting a live octopus with a teaspoon". Later Graeme graemep@immag.mcg.edu From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Crossingham, Adam [Adam.Crossingham@Octavian1009.E-MAIL.COM] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 8:34 AM To: 'dgrpg@delta-green.com' Subject: DG: Lifepath character generation > William Timmins writes: <<< One of the last things I want to try is to create a Lifepath system for Call > of Cthulhu. Something where you can, with a Keeper-determined level of > control, generate the history of a character, with skills and abilities > gained as a result. >>> > You may be interested in scrounging a copy of the CoC 1st edition 1920s Sourcebook, which allowed characters to spend 20% a year (or something like that) on occupation skills, and allowed switching of occupation on a year by year basis. Nothing outrageous or new, but it was obviously dropped in later editions for simplicity. A lifepath system with bonuses or disadvantages for the effects of timeline events on the character would be manageable in this context. HTH -- Adam Crossingham War in English = Wanting more cows in Sanskrit Home e-mail: tigger@the-wolery.demon.co.uk Any opinions expressed in this email are those of the individual From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Crossingham, Adam [Adam.Crossingham@Octavian1009.E-MAIL.COM] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 8:52 AM To: 'dgrpg@delta-green.com' Subject: RE: DG: Trail of the Game Industry > Jason R. Armstrong writes: > <<< But what if you're sure you only need one tiiiiiiny thing in some > package, and you don't want to spend $20 to just have that one thing? >>> > There's always the second-hand or "previously enjoyed" market.... <<< And also, what if a product from an > otherwise good line of product is "flawed" to the point that one thinks > it SUCKS? >>> > Luckily in the gaming world crap mostly sinks, unless of course there so little of it, when it becomes rare and valuable. I'm of the opinion there is a quality about Chaosium that means even flawed products have enough good points to justify purchase. I can't say that about any other company (other than Pagan, and they're even smaller). Other opinions vary of course. <<< Does one buy it anyway, to support the good things in the > presumed future? >>> > Chaosium have a history of pulling really big, good stuff out of the hat every 3-4 years. I regard everything else as fillers in between. Tasty, yes; filling, perhaps. -- Adam Crossingham War in English = Wanting more cows in Sanskrit Home e-mail: tigger@the-wolery.demon.co.uk Any opinions expressed in this email are those of the individual From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Crossingham, Adam [Adam.Crossingham@Octavian1009.E-MAIL.COM] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 9:27 AM To: 'dgrpg@delta-green.com' Subject: DG: On Gates and similar matters Gates are to become a very important of my Cthulhu campaign, but I'm a little puzzled about how to implement as artefacts in the game. >From reviewing the gaming material and mythos literature it seems there are two sorts of gates: 1. the portal or doorway to another place where movement is as easy as walking from one place to another with no perceptible sensation. The portal is two dimensional when viewed. Perhaps the best example of this portal is the 'window' that the sorcerer Eibon used to escape to Saturn from his pursuers. 2. the 'long' gate or wormhole when transport to the destination is perceptible and non-instantaneous. The gate may be 2-d in form or occupy a 3-d space. The traveller or user is conscious of his/her displacement and emergence somewhere else. TV's Stargate might be the most easily accessible example of this form of gate but definitely non-Mythos. My preferred example is 2001's surreal roller coaster ride that Bowman takes. Gates mostly link two geographical locations together(i.e. Innsmouth-Devil's Reef), but occasionally and very rarely gates may cross time (i.e. the Jurassic era-1920s Arkham, or 1920s Egypt-Pharonic Egypt) and/or planes of existence (i.e. to Dreamlands). Gates can also transform the traveller so that they can survive having reached the destination. This implies some sort of destruction/recreation or modification of the traveller. The things I'm pondering: * are there any other forms of gates and gate travel I'm missing or forgotten about? I'd like to exclude magical transportation by spell or god's whim. Yes, I know Create Gate is a spell, I'm talking about using a gate after creation and treating it as an artefact or as high-technology-turned-magic. * I found the concept of 'whitespace' in the excellent Encyclopaedia Cthulhiana, but having never read the stories form where it originates I have no idea how whitespace works or whether it is even a form of gate travel. * ways of describing gate travel both in the short and long forms. Short is easier because it is like stepping from one room to another, but long is hard to conceive of, let alone describe. I'm wondering whether make long gate travel surreal and close to a near-death-experience especially if destruction/recreation of the self is involved. * would long gate travellers be vulnerable to other dimension entities like the Hounds of Tindalos? Anybody on the list got an opinion or comment to share, or a factoid that I missed? -- Adam Crossingham War in English = Wanting more cows in Sanskrit Home e-mail: tigger@the-wolery.demon.co.uk Any opinions expressed in this email are those of the individual From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 9:58 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters The other gate I can recall without looking is the Limbo gate. Creates a portal, in the form of a mathematical/geometric expression. When the expression is analyzed and understood, one can transport into Limbo space, a foggy white realm. In Limbo space, portals back to 'real' space are seen as glyphs glowing underneath the fog. The challenge is to actually recognize which glyph corresponds to which gate, and figure out how to walk from one to the other. No mean task. -Will ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 10:28 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Spandau prison I'm afraid I don't have any links to illustrate this, but documents declassified from the Public Records Office this week apparently show that the British were considering removing Albert Speer and Admiral Doenitz from Spandau prison during the Berlin airlift, because they believed the Russians were going to scoop them themselves. A classified memo from officers in Berlin warned that the Russians could use Speer for his industrial vision, and Doenitz for his brilliance with submarine warfare, and the fact he was the Reich's last official leader. The powers controlling Berlin took turns to guard the prisoners - so access to them for the Russians would have been easy. Or the British for that matter. DG: One of the prisoners at Spandau may well have been an obscure member of the Special K. Both SV-8 and PISCES, or DG, get wind of this and have to hatch a plot to get them out without breeching the international regulations governing the prison. Might make an interesting 40s scenario, or as the background to something else... JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 10:31 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Bizarre suicide News item which caught my conspiratorial eye... A senior British army officer, a Colonel about to be appointed as a brigadier, committed suicide after being accused of molesting a neighbour's child. His inquest heard that he more or less admitted ``disgraceful conduct'' and was expected to go to the police station to surrender voluntarily. Instead, he was found in his house, with his legs and left arm tied to a chair. He had a plastic bag on his head and had apparently strangled himself with a ligature using his free right hand. Is it just me, or is that a freaking bizarre way to go?? While of course the inquest returned a verdict of suicide, you would think that sounded more like murder. Or I would, anyway. Obviously, I'm spending far too much time reading this flipping list... JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Daniel M Harms [dmharms@acsu.buffalo.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 12:02 PM To: 'dgrpg@delta-green.com' Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Crossingham, Adam wrote: > >From reviewing the gaming material and mythos literature it seems there are > two sorts of gates: > 1. the portal or doorway to another place where movement is as easy as > walking from one place to another with no perceptible sensation. The portal > is two dimensional when viewed. Perhaps the best example of this portal is > the 'window' that the sorcerer Eibon used to escape to Saturn from his > pursuers. > 2. the 'long' gate or wormhole when transport to the destination is > perceptible and non-instantaneous. The gate may be 2-d in form or occupy a > 3-d space. The traveller or user is conscious of his/her displacement and > emergence somewhere else. TV's Stargate might be the most easily accessible > example of this form of gate but definitely non-Mythos. My preferred example > is 2001's surreal roller coaster ride that Bowman takes. I think the second type of gate was in fact described in the original gate story, Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch-House". > The things I'm pondering: > * are there any other forms of gates and gate travel I'm missing or > forgotten about? I'd like to exclude magical transportation by spell or > god's whim. Yes, I know Create Gate is a spell, I'm talking about using a > gate after creation and treating it as an artefact or as > high-technology-turned-magic. The only other examples I can think of - the Limbo gates Mr. Timmins brought up, Gate boxes, Create Window spells, the Portal spell from the de'Medici Manoscritto from the old TUOs, the Vortex of Far Journeying from Dreamlands - don't qualify for what you're trying to do. > * I found the concept of 'whitespace' in the excellent Encyclopaedia > Cthulhiana, but having never read the stories form where it originates I > have no idea how whitespace works or whether it is even a form of gate > travel. As Basil Copper postulated it, there's no explicit link between the Great White Space and gate travel.. At some spot in the world, there's a hidden opening to a sacred band of cosmos, which is used by the Great Old Ones and their minions to travel between the worlds. Whether this is the space through which gates or channeled, or something else entirely, is something which is never really explained. > * would long gate travellers be vulnerable to other dimension entities like > the Hounds of Tindalos? Only if you want them to. Yrs., Daniel From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of john ogden [goidel@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 12:57 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Minor sci point It's Athena, not Aphrodite or Artemis, that was said to have sprung from Zeus' brow following a splitting headache. Know your classics! John Ogden >From: Appelion@aol.com >Reply-To: dgrpg@delta-green.com >To: dgrpg@delta-green.com >Subject: Re: DG: Re: Minor sci point >Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 18:14:04 EST > > >In a message dated 3/18/00 4:54:48 PM, LizardRoi@aol.com writes: > > >The history of science as a series of Aphrodites springing > >complete and vital from singular Zeusly brows. > >You mean Artemis, as I remember. Aphrodite came out of the sea. > >ObDGML: you can't really understand HPL unless you really understand the > >20s >Got a very interesting excerpt from a 1881 history text in history today... >"The white races are imbued with the greatest share of intelligence, >courage, >and wisdom..." Especially when you realize your great-grandfather (whom I >respect very much) probably used that book, or one much like it (to his >credit, I highly doubt he held any of those beliefs, but then, he would >have >been the exception). > > Xavier > It's days like this that make it worth all the rest. > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 12:16 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters Greetings. Looks like we are all working on similar things. Adam writes.... >>From reviewing the gaming material and mythos literature it seems there are >two sorts of gates: > >1. the portal or doorway to another place where movement is as easy as >walking from one place to another with no perceptible sensation. These seem to come in two main flavour - one way (like the ones through which the GOO could come back to here and now) and the two-way gates. A portable version of the two-way instantaneous gates is also known. >2. the 'long' gate or wormhole when transport to the destination is >perceptible and non-instantaneous. [again] Another distinction worth remembering is the one between fixed destination gates and open target gates. Open target gates generally come (in game supplements) with a random table for wrong destinations. >Gates mostly link two geographical locations together(i.e. Innsmouth-Devil's >Reef), but occasionally and very rarely gates may cross time (i.e. the >Jurassic era-1920s Arkham, or 1920s Egypt-Pharonic Egypt) and/or planes of >existence (i.e. to Dreamlands). Do not forget, also, the well known 'somewhere in Yorkshire to Stonehenge 2000 years ago' gate. Again, various permutations are possible . same place, another time . same time, another place . another time, another place . same place, same time (also known as the 'You have been duped' gate spell) >Gates can also transform the traveller so that they can survive having >reached the destination. This implies some sort of destruction/recreation or >modification of the traveller. Fritz Leiber again. The Caves of Ningauble in the Newhon stories carry travellers to other times and places and rearrange their brain providing new memories in tune with the destination. They can be considered permanent (?) long gates. Refer to 'Adept's gambit' for further detail and multiple sincronicity, 'Gambit' being a story Leiber wrote and submitted to Lovecraft (that offered suggestions, including the one about 'cutting out the Mythos references'), based on chess metaphores and with a lot of nifty stuff for horror gamers and Cthulhu in particular (gates being just the tip of the iceberg). >The things I'm pondering: > >* are there any other forms of gates and gate travel I'm missing or >forgotten about? I'd like to exclude magical transportation by spell or >god's whim. My take is, there are various ways through which you can manipulate the continuum; some still resemble tecnology, others are advanced enough to look like magic. I generally include a lot of gate technology in Yithian cities - after all, why bother with a corridor if you can just put a gate there instead? >* ways of describing gate travel both in the short and long forms. Short is >easier because it is like stepping from one room to another, but long is >hard to conceive of, let alone describe. I'm wondering whether make long >gate travel surreal and close to a near-death-experience especially if >destruction/recreation of the self is involved. In the weirdly sick (or sickly weird) but fun game known as Whispering Vault, long gates are replaced by 'travelers' - that is, huge critters (think Dune) that just come from nowhere and swallow the characters, bringing them to their selected destination. Inside the 'traveler', characters walk a surreal landscape (keeper's option, but possibly obliquely related with past or future adventures), meet with a surreal but dangerous guardian entity and have to proce themselves to pass through. Once they are about to be delivered to their destination, small insect-like creatures wrap them into silk cocoons and weave the form that the characters will have for the forthcoming session. [NOTE: in Whispering Vault players play the roles of Cthulhu-style investigators that trascended their material being and grew to become GOO-style critters charged with defending reality. To interact with humans they have to assume a temporary humanoid form (usually with some weirdness to it)] Complicated, but a granted show stopper - I still remember the faces of my players when we played our first game! A nice bit I stole from a Japanese anime (the excellent Cowboy Bebop) for gating in CoC is, things going through a gate (expecially a 'long gate') cast a shadow in our own regular spacetime - just that, an evanescent afterimage. This does not help much in describing the gating experience to players, but works great as a shock tool - when the characters will see photographs of themselves, semi-transparent and weirdly fluorescent, on the Psychic Research Society journal or on some disreputable tabloid. >* would long gate travellers be vulnerable to other dimension entities like >the Hounds of Tindalos? Possibly yes. Instantaneous gates seem to carry this hazard - see the Stonehenge gate already mentioned, which came with a random table and a nifty percentage of Hound intervention. >Anybody on the list got an opinion or comment to share, or a factoid that I >missed? The above, off the top of my head. But considering what I've been doing with British stones and lloigor recently, I'll be back. Take care. Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 11:40 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Cookbook Technology Greetings. Graeme defused our enthusiasm about laser scalpels and wrote.... >ObDG: Could it be used to deal with protomatter? I'd say no. Pity. So it's back to liquid nitrogen? As a keeper I always loved that option. Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Graeme Price [graemep@immagene.mcg.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 2:20 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide >Instead, he was found in his house, with his legs and left arm tied to a >chair. He had a plastic bag on his head and had apparently strangled >himself with a ligature using his free right hand. Is it just me, or is >that a freaking bizarre way to go?? While of course the inquest returned a >verdict of suicide, you would think that sounded more like murder. Or I >would, anyway. Obviously, I'm spending far too much time reading this >flipping list... Sounds like the way one Tory politician (whose name escapes me) went in the late 80's/early 90's. Except that case was put down to a cock up (oh yes, the punmeister returns!) during a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation. Besides, I don't think that murder sounds plausible - I mean there are easier ways to fake a suicide. Later Graeme graemep@immag.mcg.edu From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 2:24 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters Good stuff. I'm partial to long gates and tend to organize in that vein. To range outside the strictly Mythos, other forms of "gate" include: My favorite is going walkabout like the royal family of Amber for a change of scenery. I just love the idea of a morphing car, and stopping off at a Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Dino on the way to a different POV. Or Random's glider flight. Ningauble's cave is like a walkabout where you forget the journey and take on a new identity at Customs. King Mob of The Invisibles seems to do something similar, but apparently uses the walkabout process like hyperspace, emerging in his reference reality but at a different time/space coordinate. Heinlein had an intriguing observation about hyperspace travel. Every hyperspace "jump" is potentially "time travel" as well. Every calculation of a destination is implicitly a coordinate in space/time. We're just in the habit of treating a variable as a constant. However, for the classic "step through" doorway gate, I'm partial to the Portable Hole of Felix the Cat and Roger Rabbit, or Wile E. Coyote's ubiquitous black paint. Mark McFadden Breakin' on through to the other side. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Robert Thomas [ThomasR@Cardiff.ac.uk] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 2:27 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide > Sounds like the way one Tory politician (whose name escapes me) went > in the late 80's/early 90's. Except that case was put down to a cock > up (oh yes, the punmeister returns!) during a bout of autoerotic > asphyxiation. Besides, I don't think that murder sounds plausible - I > mean there are easier ways to fake a suicide. that would be Stephen Milligan or Millington, just don't ask about the suspenders, black bin bag or orange. Rob. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 3:01 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: IA, dark prophet! ----- Original Message ----- From: David Farnell > Welcome back, William! And get back to work on the Endtimes Site! I've read > everything twice, printed out the best bits, and I want more! New on the list, new to DG, but let me echo that. The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 3:22 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters > Adam writes.... > >Anybody on the list got an opinion or comment to share, or a factoid that I > >missed? > Only that any form of instantaneous travel is (in real-world Einsteinian physics) exactly the same sort of thing as travel back or forward in time. (If it's outside the "forward light cone" it just depends on the inertial frame you view it from.) So the principles that drive any Gate, whether technological, "magical", or magical, that gives instantaneous travel, could also be used to drive a time gate - it only needs to be "rotated" in space-time. Maybe a really bright scientist could work this out and apply it? (back to my old complaint - we physicists should have a few Mythos points by default, by Cthulhu!) The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Popeyesays@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 3:59 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Cookbook Technology In a message dated 3/23/00 8:11:45 AM Central Standard Time, graemep@immagene.mcg.edu writes: << A useful analogy would be something along the lines of "imagine dissecting a live octopus with a teaspoon". >> a teaspoon might be toohandy a tool - how about a broken popsicle stick? From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 4:02 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: GO and the GOO ----- Original Message ----- From: > WARNING! WARNING Andy Wrobertson. Leiber reference approaching... > > Not directly related but I figure the reference would eventually show up > anyhoo. The man Harlan Ellison said the overwhelming majority of pros were > unfit to carry the pencilcase - of, wrote a Changewar story that dealt with > determining the influence of Spiders or Snakes by the prevalence of certain > types of games. Spiders left traces of web type board games such as chess or > Go or checkers, while Snakes left traces of "path" games such as cribbage > boards or backgammon or any of the snakes'n'ladders or Game of Life (roll the > dice, follow the path) type games. > Now, to put this is in a Mythos light, what sort of games would the various > GOO "sponsor". It all comes back now - and I'm sure those early Changewar stories were HPL influenced. However, I'm not sure that we know enough about games to identify traces left by definite GOO. In fact, despite the title of my post, I doubt there's much validity in linking the GOO (as opposed to the lower ranks of the Mythos) with games. Gaming is a socal thing and the GOO are not social (if any of them ever were they have bootstrapped themselves out of it long since). And I doubt they have "intelligence" in the central, self-defining way we do, though I assume they can unthinkingly build and discard intelligent tools/subsets of themselves at need. However, I suspect the lower ranks of the Mythos, those which are essentially alien intelligent races, (and which share with us the need to form alliances, reproduce, and neigociate) play games. The two-sided Battle is the central human theme, on the board. Yithians may play games with a central theme of chase and dodge - the old Hare and Hounds board game may be a degenerate version (and where did it originate? From some Yith-possessed medaeval monk, unable to construct the machinery to get him back to his own time, madly reprisng the central theme of his being in a solitary cell?). The Antarctic Old Ones seem to have an obsession with geometry, forced by the difficulties of their pentagonal symmetry - I wonder if they play tiling games? But for games as a _vision_, as an analogy of the Mythos, - I can only go back to the Leiber story, which seemed to say everything I'm trying to grasp much better than I can. It is the sort of vision a creature trying to ally with us _against_ the GOO might use as a message, and I wonder what themes such a being might communicate to a GO player. (PS - don't run away with the idea that I'm a GO expert - I've played a few games but can not spare the time to do it seriously lo these 20 years since. And like chess, in the end either you do it seriously or not at all - I hope Davide doesn't get lured away!). http://www.britgo.demon.co.uk/intro/intro1.html for anyone interested in basics. Live group, dead group, the _ko_ rule, seki. The Glove Cleaner PPS - yr right about Leiber, 100 times over. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of box_nine@ix.netcom.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 4:00 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters Davide wrote: My take is, there are various ways through which you can manipulate the continuum; some still resemble tecnology, others are advanced enough to look like magic. I generally include a lot of gate technology in Yithian cities - after all, why bother with a corridor if you can just put a gate there instead? Which could lead to interesting problems when the polyps run amok, if the Yithians are foolish enough to have rooms that can only be entered or exited via gates. Mind, I doubt they would be, but I could see an overconfident race with a tendency to high POW individuals making this mistake. Imagine a worldwide (galaxy-wide, even) 'city' with each room being hundreds if not thousands of miles/light-years apart. Dan Simmons' HYPERION series addressed the problems of a civilization based on distance-shortening technology. Steven From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 4:16 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters Short explanation of space-time and why instantaneous travel is time travel: The flow of events of a given observer is tied to a lightcone. If you plotted space and time on a map, events can be plotted as lines on this map. If time is in seconds and space in lightseconds, lightspeed is a 45 degree angle going in positive time, positive space and positive time, negative space (negative space just meaning 'the opposite direction') Events can look simultaneous OR non simultaneous, depending on reference frame. Draw a map... vertical line, horizontal line, two diagonals left and right. Vertical is time, horizontal is space, diagonals represent light speed. If another observer is going (say) right at 50% speed of light, you can draw another line, between vertical and diagonal right. Now, to that observer, light speed is still diagonal right and left. If you draw a horizontal line across, all events on that line would appear simultaneous to the vertical line (the first observer). However, to the other observer, events further right will appear to occur later than the ones to the left. Proof would require a lot of math and graphs (I suggest Eintein's book on Special Relativity... a lot lighter than it sounds) Essentially, 'simultaneous' is perpendicular to the vector (line of the observer). Bits that are angled ahead of this line will appear later than bits that are angled below. All that being said, reality doesn't care. Observers see events occuring in different order with no problem. However, so long as all events and observers are going at light speed or lower, no propogation of other events and observers, limited to light speed or lower, will appear to go back in time. IF that horizontal line represents ONE event (say, teleporting from the right to the left), it will appear simultaneous to one observer but it wil appear to be going BACK IN TIME to any observer travelling toward the endpoint of the teleport. In other words, 'instantaneous teleportation' is a move forward in time, if the other observer is travelling (very very fast) away from the target location, or move backward in time if the observer travels toward the target location. Very bad (to physics) -Will ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 5:30 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters Cheers. Will writes [highly informative post snipped] >Very bad (to physics) Who cares about physics? As long as it's fine with the Great Old Ones, it's fine with me ;> Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 5:31 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: GO and the GOO Greetings. A new ball is rolling and I like it a lot. >However, I'm not sure that we know enough about games to identify traces >left by definite GOO. In fact, despite the title of my post, I doubt >there's much validity in linking the GOO (as opposed to the lower ranks of >the Mythos) with games. OK, try this one for size. . Chess has a small, crowded board, that gets progressively emptied as the pieces get eliminated. The game dinamic comes from piece movement. . Go has a large, empty board, that gets filled progressively as new pieces are laid and territories are staked out. The game dinamic comes from the laying of more new pieces. First Wild Idea - chess is the Universe(TM) as seen from the static Great Old Ones. Dog eats dogs. Pawns are pawns but can become 'Like the Old Ones' if brought to the edge, and over. Go is the Universe(TM) from the dinamic point of view of independent races, a huge place to be filled and conquered as we multiply. >From the FWI, comes a Second Wild Idea - wanna get a picture of the Universe(TM) from the outside? Imagine that each square in the chessboard is a little Go-ban: white pawn moving one square forward means white conquered the most territory there. We're less than pawns to the GOO.... Third Wild Idea - the chessboard is Carcosa, black and white (good/bad, positive/negative/ compliant/defiant) inhabitants being offed progressively in a blood feud that will leave only one King standing. Food For Thought: Bobby Fisher preferred to play on a gold-yellow/dark green chessboard. Checkmate to the Green? The King in Yellow wins. Suggestive, eh? >Yithians may play games with a central theme of chase and dodge - the old >Hare and Hounds board game may be a degenerate version (and where did it >originate? From some Yith-possessed medaeval monk, unable to construct the >machinery to get him back to his own time, madly reprisng the central theme >of his being in a solitary cell?). I do not know the Hare and Hounds game - unless it has some very different name in Italy. But Yithians look to me like the kind of guys that would really dig roleplaying. And Scrabble. But the chief running game is still backgammon, also known as Royal Table or Tric-trac. The most beautiful woman I ever met (and extremely intelligent) was an absolute killer when it came to backgammon. The thing surfaced one evening, during a field trip (she was a structural geologist). When one of our company asked her why she had not carried a backgammon board (we were spending long rainy nights in a Scottish hotel lounge), she replied with a chilly "No one of you can play me anyway". No wonder I fell for her like a fool. >The Antarctic Old Ones seem to have an obsession with geometry, forced by >the difficulties of their pentagonal symmetry - I wonder if they play tiling >games? Domino? Rubicks Cube? Mah-Jong? >But for games as a _vision_, as an analogy of the Mythos, - I can only go >back to the Leiber story, which seemed to say everything I'm trying to grasp >much better than I can. Fritz used to be like that ;> > It is the sort of vision a creature trying to ally >with us _against_ the GOO might use as a message, and I wonder what themes >such a being might communicate to a GO player. OK, back to a way old topic - the Mi-Go (oho....) miss our intuitive software. Mi-Go can't get to D from A&B without C being spelled out. Now, AFAIK, one of the big problems of building a good, master-level Go computer player is, the machine can't do it as good as a man. No way. Not enough flexibility, no intuition. They should be trying now with neural networks, but they are still in the sticks. No Deep Blue on the Go-ban. They say that playing Go at master level is fighting against your own.... whatever. You need spirit to play it. So... could Go be an attitudinal test for 'those with the spark'? I'm assuming that both Elder Things and Yithians, for instance, have the 'spark'. Ghouls and Deep Ones might have something similar, if twisted. Funguys lack it. Byakhee did probably forsake it whent they bowed down to hastur. Shamblers? Ah! True Confession: I generaly use my lowest-than-dirt knowledge of Go to piss off royally our resident munchkin, that is also (obviously) a National Tournament class chess player. I generally start with the Nicholas Hel quote that Mark offered us a few posts back. Then I go on remarking that chess is a fine game for machines. We humans prefer to play go. >(PS - don't run away with the idea that I'm a GO expert - I've played a few >games but can not spare the time to do it seriously lo these 20 years since. >And like chess, in the end either you do it seriously or not at all - I hope >Davide doesn't get lured away!). I do not think I will. I used to play a lot of chess when I was in high school. It was a fun thing - a bunch of friends showing new tricks to each other. When I hit university I met a few Club-quality players and they disgusted me with their cold-blooded veneration for victory above all else. I decided back then if that's the price to pay - sacrificing fun for victory - I'm not buying. I'm a committed amateur. A final snide remark - wannaget the GOO in gaming? CCGs and miniature games. Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Appelion@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 5:35 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Alternity / Dark Matter / Wizards of the Coast News In a message dated 3/21/00 8:33:05 AM, Mintarr@aol.com writes: >However, perhaps we as a mailing list could issue a group statement >of protest to WotC? Count me in. I like diversity. And every time I go in their Game Center, fifty staff types cluster around me and ask repeatedly if I need any help finding something, until I am forced to lash out with my psychic vibes of surliness. You wouldn't think it'd be that much of a threat to their profits to have my browse for 15 minutes before buying something. Xavier From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Appelion@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 5:38 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bloody Tongue In a message dated 3/21/00 8:41:44 AM, j.turner@irishnews.com writes: >How come >nobody ever gets these nutters before the wheels come off? Until the wheels come of, they can't be arrested, even in Uganda. They haven't done anything or disagreed with anyone important. Xavier From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Stephen Devine [steve@devine09.freeserve.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 5:52 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: DG - Suicide and Gates >Instead, he was found in his house, with his legs and left arm tied to a >chair. He had a plastic bag on his head and had apparently strangled >himself with a ligature using his free right hand. Is it just me, or is >that a freaking bizarre way to go?? While of course the inquest returned a >verdict of suicide, you would think that sounded more like murder. Or I >would, anyway. Obviously, I'm spending far too much time reading this >flipping list... Errr, castigate me at length if I'm wrong, but I always thought that it was impossible to strangle yourself to death 'cos you'd pass out before you died and start breathing again? Besides, if he was an army officer, wouldn't it be far easier for him to just shoot himself with his pistol (far too hard to shoot yourself with an SA80!)? Oh, and re the gate thread, I recently read 'The Search for Schrodinger's Cat' by John Gribbin - an attempt to simplify the whole quantum physics thing which works to a point and then gets way too mind-boggling. One of the chapters mentions an American mathematician Frank Tipler, who calculated that a time-machine is theoretically possible - you would 'only' need to pack as much matter as our sun into a cylinder 100km long with a radius of 10km and rotate it twice every millisecond, 'dragging' the fabric of space-time around it. This does even exist (kind of) in the real world - apparently a pulsar has pretty much the same properties. Not sure how you could fit this useless piece of info in on a DG scenario, though....... Steve From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:02 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters ----- Original Message ----- From: William Timmins > Short explanation of space-time and why instantaneous travel is time travel: > (Just in case it was my " scientist work it out" post that provoked this) What I meant was that a _player_ with a background in Physics should be able to work out _in the game_ that this equivalence is active & apply it. Even if you couldn't rejig the Gate to be a genuine Tardis with your sonic screwdriver, you maybe could load the Gate on a truck and drive it away from its target and step thru it while the truck was moving, and you would arrive at that target slightly earlier in local time. If the gate traversed light years this might add up to hours of target-local time. Could be a crucial advantage, and actually worth doing. I reckon knowing that is worth one point Mythos anyway. (But how does it all fit with the relative motion of the Earth and the target, orbits etc? It doesn't. No wonder Gates are tricky things. I'm not sure I believe in them). The Glove Cleaner ((Or do you drive toward the target? Grrrrrr. 1 am local time here, Spawn noisy and demanding, Time and Space warping.))) From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Appelion@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:25 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Alternity / Dark Matter / Wizards of the Coast News In a message dated 3/22/00 6:14:07 AM, gerwalkveritech@juno.com writes: >Let's face it, their stuff is going to get more and more >juvenile, and we're getting less and less likely to fall for it, the >older we get. [COUGH] I don't think age is the key here, although it may be a factor. >So get your kicks someplace else. Don't give 'em your >money, bad-mouth them to every gamer you know, tell all of your younger >gamer friends the reasons they might want to try other stuff (like Pagan, >who've yet to turn to the Bastard Mammon, and many thanks for that). Oh yeah. Right on. My feelings exactly. Preach on, brother. Xavier From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of James Holloway [j_holloway26@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:33 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: GO and the GOO > >Third Wild Idea - the chessboard is Carcosa, black and white (good/bad, >positive/negative/ compliant/defiant) inhabitants being offed progressively >in a blood feud that will leave only one King standing. >Food For Thought: Bobby Fisher preferred to play on a gold-yellow/dark >green chessboard. Checkmate to the Green? The King in Yellow wins. >Suggestive, eh? > Particularly as there is nothing different about the two sides in a game of chess - a nice moral ambiguity/vacuity... > >Yithians may play games with a central theme of chase and dodge - the old >Hare and Hounds board game may be a degenerate version (and where did it > >originate? From some Yith-possessed medaeval monk, unable to construct >the > >machinery to get him back to his own time, madly reprisng the central >theme > >of his being in a solitary cell?). > >I do not know the Hare and Hounds game - unless it has some very different >name in Italy. I don't know Hare and Hounds - is it the same as Fox and Geese? I can't really see the Yithians viewing the Polyps as geese, somehow... but yeah, it's about the contest between one little, clever guy and a big pack of fools. A really interesting game with a kind of doomed outlook is Hnefatafl. Hnefatafl (which also means "King's Table," interestingly enough...) is a game where one guy has four small forces which collectively outnumber the the other guy's force, which is positioned in the middle of the board. The objective of the game is for the player in the middle to hustle his king off the board, or for the other guy to trap him. Hnefatafl has a lot of interesting symbolic value - it was played during the Dark Ages in Scandinavia, Britain, and probably Ireland and France too. Lots of boards and pieces have been found by archaeologists, but as far as I'm aware, the rules - like the rules to Senet or the Royal Game of Ur - have only been guessed from the board. Which makes me think someone doesn't guess to well, because (oddly) the embattled guy in the middle nearly always wins, unless he's playing like an idiot. So maybe the purpose of hnefatafl isn't to compete at all, but maybe to reenact a particular myth... if it were the other way around, I could see it making a lot more sense. >But Yithians look to me like the kind of guys that would really dig >roleplaying. I really think of RPGs as a KiY kind of thing. I imagine that the KiY game would end with people being unable to return to their out of game identities - the kind of people who really would need a good session of Power Kill. What about cards, dice, and games of chance? I'm guessing that concepts like "random" and "luck" probably have very different meanings to the GOO, and even to the savvier alien races. > > >The Antarctic Old Ones seem to have an obsession with geometry, forced by > >the difficulties of their pentagonal symmetry - I wonder if they play >tiling > >games? > >Domino? >Rubicks Cube? >Mah-Jong? I'm sure this is not an original idea, but I can definitely see some of these races leaving behind "spells" which are essentially the devil's own Rubik's Cube - like the puzzle box from Hellraiser, only the kind of thing that sends math professors mad. Much like in the diary in DG, now that I come to think of it... (blush) >OK, back to a way old topic - the Mi-Go (oho....) miss our intuitive >software. >Mi-Go can't get to D from A&B without C being spelled out. >Now, AFAIK, one of the big problems of building a good, master-level Go >computer player is, the machine can't do it as good as a man. >No way. >Not enough flexibility, no intuition. >They should be trying now with neural networks, but they are still in the >sticks. >No Deep Blue on the Go-ban. >They say that playing Go at master level is fighting against your own.... >whatever. >You need spirit to play it. >So... could Go be an attitudinal test for 'those with the spark'? >I'm assuming that both Elder Things and Yithians, for instance, have the >'spark'. >Ghouls and Deep Ones might have something similar, if twisted. >Funguys lack it. Byakhee did probably forsake it whent they bowed down to >hastur. So, a game could be used as a "test" to distinguish one type of mind from another - maybe minds susceptible to the Vibe from minds which aren't. The Mi-Go resoundingly aren't. Maybe the Brotherhood use a game of that kind to distinguish "Mi-Go" minds from minds open to the Vibe? CCGs are actually a good path for the Vibe to go down... all the kids would kill to get their hands on the Yellow Sign card, but you have to be pretty special to find one - like a Golden Ticket (now that's wrong!) There's something about the Yellow Sign and its mythology that is very much like the way adolescent boys think anyway... or at least the way I thought in those days... Kids gathering in schoolyards during recess: "so, have you found the Yellow Sign?" -- James Holloway "And yet in the end, for all his pains, he only knows how to play a game." - Baldesar Castiglione, "The Book of the Courtier" ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Appelion@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:34 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Re: Games and the Mythos In a message dated 3/22/00 2:09:30 PM, andywrobertson@clara.co.uk writes: >> I'm trying to think of other useful examples, but most just ring changes > >on the "humans as chess pieces" theme. > >Chess is culturally bounded. But surely gaming is not. > >How about games from other cultures? Mancala and Go spring immediatly to mind... Also reflecting the GOO's attitudes, since in chess a piece has at least a little individuality (i.e. it's a rook, or the queen's pawn)... Xavier From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:41 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters In a message dated 00-03-23 19:03:49 EST, you write: << (But how does it all fit with the relative motion of the Earth and the target, orbits etc? It doesn't. No wonder Gates are tricky things. I'm not sure I believe in them). The Glove Cleaner >> This is the probably why I cop out and go for the Amber \ walkabout method. I tend to think that a gate that doesn't have to take relative motion and orbits and such into account would have to be magickal. And a technologically based (as we presently define technology) gate would be fraught with peril in the prototype stages because of these considerations. I remember an old Isaac Asimov mystery that involved these points, in relation to the quest for "antigravity". A scientist achieved "antigravity" with a null field that completely negated any and all effects of gravity/acceleration. When a billiard ball was rolled into the field, it apparently shot off at a healthy percentage of the speed of light. But what actually happened was that it came to a complete and utter stop as *we* shot along at a high "speed". Oh yeah, more instantaneous travel: "jaunting" in The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. Mark McFadden The once and future Lizard King From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of DocHopt@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:41 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Delta X In a message dated 3/17/00 3:15:40 PM Pacific Standard Time, macros@twd.net writes: > ObDG: One adventerous fellow took one of King's books (Mists?) and turned > it into a CoC gaming scenario. Are there any other stories by King that > would work well as inspiration for a DG campaign or one-shot? Way behind in my e-mail, but... King wrote a rather lengthy short story in his collection "Skeleton Crew," entitled 'The Mist'. The standard small-town-in-Maine becomes enveloped in a stange white mist, and all sorts of animals (mainly insects, arachnids, and octupi) apparently get a whole lot larger, trapping a couple dozen ordinary people in a supermarket, where they must fend for their lives. I had never heard of Lovecraft while reading it for the frst time, but on hindsight it has definite HPL elements to it. Other one-shot possibilities: 'I Am the Doorway'. First astronaut to Venus retires, finds small eyes growing in his hands, controlling his movements; some kind of alien intelligence he picked up en route to the other planet. He manges to get control of his limbs enough to douse his arms in gasoline and light up, only to find them reappearing in a small circle on his chest... Eck, typing up the next half dozen synopses is too tiring. Just buy the collection "Night Shirt" and flip to any random page. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Appelion@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:55 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters In a message dated 3/23/00 7:31:36 AM, Adam.Crossingham@Octavian1009.E-MAIL.COM writes: >* would long gate travellers be vulnerable to other dimension entities >like >the Hounds of Tindalos? > Make two kinds: Unsealed (vulnerable), and sealed (perhaps with Pnakotic Pentagrams around each end). Or sic the hound-dogs on 'em if the gate goes through time, but not otherwise. Or keep it open as a potential plot twist, but don't use it yet. Xavier From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Don Juneau [djuneau@io.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:57 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Jonathan Turner wrote: > Instead, he was found in his house, with his legs and left arm tied to a > chair. He had a plastic bag on his head and had apparently strangled > himself with a ligature using his free right hand. Is it just me, or is > that a freaking bizarre way to go?? While of course the inquest returned a > verdict of suicide, you would think that sounded more like murder. Or I > would, anyway. Obviously, I'm spending far too much time reading this > flipping list... A bit suspicious, but... immobilising what you can, and then adding the dual-asphyxiation of strangulation and the bag would a) be relatively gentle (versus a self-inflicted gunshot or three quarts of Drano) death, and b) possibly seem logical to a bent mind, as "if I can't control myself one way, I will control myself another way". As noted in another reply, self-strangulation by hand will tend to fail at unconciousness, unless, perhaps, your hand(s) cramp down... or you hang a baggie around your face, so that while you drift off, you drift away as well. "Ligature" suggests (to me, anyway), that something else was used besides the bare hand - 3:1 odds it was a belt, which would do the trick as long as there was still pressure. (A military-style dress-web belt, with the sliding buckle, would be even better - it acts as a slipknot.) Hypothesis: legs and one arm can be tied easily, to keep second thoughts/convulsions from interfering. Baggie was placed before the belt (if any), for maximum seal effect. If belt (or whatever) was used, it's likely that it was wrapped and tied in such a way that even without concious effort, pressure would be maintained; quite possibly, this was done in a manner that effectively immobilised the free arm. My own gimmick along these lines, from a story/mission idea I've never quite finished, was a fellow who was suicidally depressed, yet didn't want to knowingly/conciously kill himself. So, he went to the garage, closed the doors, started the car, and relaxed back in the driver's seat... with a cocked revolver held under his chin, trigger pulled and hammer held back by his thumb. Eventually, he nodded off, and *BAM*... somewhat baroque and complicated, I admit, but (in my opinion) it did put the "smart/thinking" together with the "depressed/suicidal" in such a way to perhaps make a nightmare or three. Ah well, I'm a loony. Don From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Appelion@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 7:02 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters In a message dated 3/23/00 7:31:36 AM, Adam.Crossingham@Octavian1009.E-MAIL.COM writes: >1. the portal or doorway to another place where movement is as easy as >walking from one place to another with no perceptible sensation. The portal >is two dimensional when viewed. Perhaps the best example of this portal >is >the 'window' that the sorcerer Eibon used to escape to Saturn from his >pursuers. Simmons' farcasters... With the Lions and Tigers and Black Goats living in the interstices... Xavier From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Appelion@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 7:12 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: DG - Suicide and Gates In a message dated 3/23/00 3:50:44 PM, steve@devine09.freeserve.co.uk writes: >Errr, castigate me at length if I'm wrong, but I always thought that it >was impossible to strangle yourself to death 'cos you'd pass out before >you died and start breathing again? You're right, but if you set it up right, the noose/bag/whatever won't loosen when you relax your hand. So you still die. Xavier From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Don Juneau [djuneau@io.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 7:13 PM To: 'dgrpg@delta-green.com' Subject: Re: DG: Lifepath character generation On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Crossingham, Adam wrote: > > William Timmins writes: > <<< One of the last things I want to try is to create a Lifepath system for > > Call of Cthulhu. Something where you can, with a Keeper-determined level of > > control, generate the history of a character, with skills and abilities > > gained as a result. >>> > > > You may be interested in scrounging a copy of the CoC 1st edition 1920s > Sourcebook, which allowed characters to spend 20% a year (or something like > that) on occupation skills, and allowed switching of occupation on a year by > year basis. Nothing outrageous or new, but it was obviously dropped in later > editions for simplicity. A lifepath system with bonuses or disadvantages for > the effects of timeline events on the character would be manageable in this > context. Hmmm. This sounds like it would be a nifty add-on for Byakhee; it'd almost have to be manually operated, at least in early versions, else you'd get some *very* unique characters randomising. (Orphaned, 20 brothers, 1 sister, all died before the age of three of natural causes... you know the drill) Wonder the Chaosium might be willing to let that out into the Web as "unofficial but usable if your Keeper sez so"? Might have to dig for CyberPunk 2020 PC generators to see if I can kludge them into doing this... Don From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of EdDrWho@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 7:23 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters >Even if you couldn't rejig the Gate to be a genuine >Tardis with your sonic >screwdriver, you maybe could load the Gate on a truck >and drive it away from >its target and step thru it while the truck was >moving, and you would >arrive at that target slightly earlier in local time. Er-HEM. It's a TARDIS, and a gate is much closer to a SIDRAT, the dinky localised version of the classic TT Type 40 Capsule. The newer Type 120's are said to be much better... From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 8:23 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Lifepath character generation > >Hmmm. This sounds like it would be a nifty add-on for Byakhee; it'd almost >have to be manually operated, at least in early versions, else you'd get >some *very* unique characters randomising. (Orphaned, 20 brothers, 1 >sister, all died before the age of three of natural causes... you know >the drill) Wonder the Chaosium might be willing to let that out into the >Web as "unofficial but usable if your Keeper sez so"? > >Might have to dig for CyberPunk 2020 PC generators to see if I can kludge >them into doing this... > >Don I was sort of thinking along Traveller lines, though with hefty modifications. I also considered doing up java(script) pages to help. If designed right, areas with lots of variability (family relations) could be somewhat generalized. Like: Traditional family (2 parents, 1-N children) Extended family (2 parents, uncles/grandparents, 1-N children) Single parent family (1 parent, 1-N children) Creche family (2-3 proctors, 10-50 children) Troubled family Happy family Poor family (etc) Each with various modifications to the flow of the lifepath. So, a character could have: troubled, poor creche family Player desides that the character was in a creche in an underfunded region, run by an unstable and tyrannical director Among other things, I was also considering divorcing hobby and occupational skills from Int and Edu. Preserving the distinctions and proportions, but not linking them overtly. I like the idea of Int reflecting intuition, perception, and inventiveness, with Edu reflecting reason, research, logic, and wealth of knowledge. Personally, I think in the future all Mythos tome research will be based on Edu rolls, rather than Int rolls. Or, perhaps, lowest of both? While a certain degree of intuition and creativity is needed to understand them, I really think a healthy chunk of Edu should be needed to make any heads or tails. Hmm. Given the thin line between Edu and lore skills (archaeology et al), AND the somewhat less impressive effect of lore skills, how do other Keepers handle the Edu stat? Should it merely be relegated the 'how many occupational skills did I start with' number? -Will ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 8:27 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Salutations! Oh, one more thing, regarding the Lycos dog... Lycos was originally a project at Carnegie Mellon University, and the mascot was a big spider (wish I still had an image of it somewhere) Lycos itself comes from 'Lycosidae', or wolf spider. Spider is appropriate, given that Lycos, well, spiders the net. I am guessing that somewhere along the road from project to corporation, a marketing type said 'No, we CANNOT have our public mascot for a friendly, people focused service being a big bug-eyed spider. Wolf spider... maybe a dog? A friendly dog! A retriever of some sort! Ha, I am such a whit' Or something. ObDG: internet Leng spiders in the web? -Will ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com