Game in the Brain

[GURPS Mass Combat] Ancient Armies Part 1

2012-01-26T05:29:00.000+08:00

This is a Part 1, I'll follow up later on. I've been sitting on this for about 3 weeks now. I can't find any more time to add a greater level of detail.

TL and army organization. You can give tactics, soldiering (no soldiers till TL1), leadership and strategy a TL. Intelligence Analysis (Military) becomes available in TL2.

How Organizational Technology Levels Works:

Concepts can be gained and lost. Some Eras gain heights that are lost and are relearned.
Higher TL occurs when key/fundamental concepts are mastered, which allow for more sophisticated concepts to be employed.
The primary focus is organizational and conceptual systems. These discount tools.

TL0 - Warrior Bands
War Leader. Organizational limit of 50 combatants, modify coordination teamwork and planning rolls. Every 5 more, -1 penalty to tactics checks. Inversely, less 10 increases the ease of coordinating up to a maximum of +4 or 10 combatants. At TL1 and onward, double the limit to 100 combatants and every 10 more is -1; ever 20 less is +1 to a maximum of +4 or 20 combatants.
GURPS Rules Terms: There are only up to Two "Military" Ranks.

TL1 - The First Armies
Examples:

Army of Sargon the first and his successors (Mesepotamian Civilizatin)
Armies of the Xia and Shang

Generalship: Now War Bands are capable of organizing into a much larger group. There are now formalized ranks of leadership and sub-organization. Army organization reaches Six military ranks. Organizational Limit of around 1000, -1 to coordination, organization and planning for every 100 more for the General; +1 for every 200 less, maximum of +4 or 200 subordinates.

Organization is about ratios of leaders to subordinates and support staff. Take your current officer corps and look at their optimal subordinate ratio, for every 10% more people they have to lead beyond the ideal, they suffer a -1 penalty to their organizational, coordination and teamwork rolls.

Organizational Penalties: When Lacking enough Trained Officers (one can always promote someone to an officer position), Generals have penalties. For every 10% beyond officer capacity
Logistics: Administration Skill for tests of logistics, cannot be higher than Soldier and History (Military) Skill.

TL2 - Drilled and Organized Tactical Units
Examples:

Armies at the Height of the Hitite, Egyptian, and Assyrian Empires
Armies of the Punic War
Armies of the Spring and Autumn period

Organizational Limit of around 3000, -1 to coordination, organization and planning for every 500 more for the General; +1 for every 250 less, maximum of +4 or 2000 subordinates.
Informal Military Education: All Strategy, Tactics and Military Intelligence cannot be higher than Military (History) and Current Affairs (Military) Skill.

Soldiering: Soldiers have fighting styles and perks.
Military Intelligence: Military is an informal skill.

TL3 - Military Operations
This is when there was a greater and formal understanding of military operations. At this level of organization, the matter of logistics is now delegated to a specialist and more efficient methods and discipline are developed for arranging and acquiring supplies.

Examples:

Armies of Alexander
Armies of the Spring and Autumn period
Roman Legions after the Punic War, like the Marian Reforms; until the Imperial Era.
The Crusades.

Organizational Limit of around 5,000, -1 to coordination, organization and planning for every 1,000 more for the General; +1 for every 500 less, maximum of +4 or 3000 subordinates.
Formal Military Education: All Administration (Military), Strategy, Tactics and Military Intelligence cannot be higher than Military (History) and Current Affairs (Military) Skill plus 2.
Soldiering: Soldiering checks allow characters to know how to prepare supplies and their kit for a number of days, how long it takes to travel and dress for the weather, how set up camp, and how to prep basic fortifications.

TL4 - Combined arms and battlefield maneuvers

This is when tactical units were able to maneuver and deviate from their initial plans. Tactical units is now made up of heterogeneous elements: a mix of archers, pikemen, arqubusiers, heavy infantry etc. taking advantage of the best ability when needed. An example are armies skilled enough to clamp down into a defensive posture like tortoise or pike hedge, but open up to make ranged attacks or skirmishers to quickly make forays and return to the safety of the formation.

Examples:

Armies of the Warring States or the 3 Kingdomes Era
Imperial Roman Legions
Early National Armies of the Renaissance

Improved Formal Military Education: All Administration (Military), Strategy, Tactics and Military Intelligence cannot be higher than Military (History) and Current Affairs (Military) Skill plus 4.
Logistics: There is an Administration specialization (military) and Soldier specialization of (logistics).

Armies of Sargon and his Successors TL1
These represents the armies of the Sumerian City States, up to the rise of Hitite and Egyptian empires that eclipsed them. The Xia and Shang Dynasty probably has a similar set up.

Poor Inferior Heavy Chariot

Poor Inferior Bowmen

Good Good Medium Infantry

Poor Inferior Heavy Infantry

Armies at the height of the Egyptian and Hittite Empire TL2.

These are the armies that moved east to conquer the Sumerian City States.
Basic Average Bowmen

Good Good Light Chariots

Fine Good Heavy Chariots

Good Good Medium Infantry

Poor Inferior Heavy Infantry

Assyrian Empire TL2

These are the armies that succeeded after the one of the early Dark Ages (the fall of the Mycenean Greeks, Egyptians and Hittite Empires; Their apparent and near simultaneous collapse).
Basic Inferior Light Artillery

Basic Average Light Cavalry

Basic Average Horse Archers

Basic Average Light Chariots

Basic Average Heavy Chariots

Basic Average Bowmen
Basic Average Heavy Infantry
Basic Average Medium Infantry

Armies of the Zhou Dynasty TL2

Basic Inferior Light Artillery

Basic Average Light Cavalry

Basic Average Horse Archers

Basic Average Light Chariots

Basic Average Heavy Chariots

Basic Average Bowmen

Basic Average Heavy Infantry
Basic Average Medium Infantry

Armies of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States TL3

This is the rise of the Mandarin Bureaucrat because of the innovations brought about by Taoism and Confucianism. This had lead to a greater level of organization and professionalism of the bureaucracy. This also affected army organization, particularly operational organization because of the extensive state administration skills being applied to military operations.

Sun Tzu and his successors gave the era a Technological Leap, they grant the army in their control an the ability to function at TL4 organization, while the rest functioned as TL3. To fully take advantage of TL4 abilities, a kingdom had to have sufficient funds to train their soldiers until they reach elite levels.

Basic Inferior Light Artillery

Basic Average Light Cavalry

Basic Average Horse Archers

Basic Average Bowmen

Basic Average Heavy Infantry
Basic Average Medium Infantry
Uncommon

Basic Average Light Chariots

Basic Average Heavy Chariots

Persian (Archemaenid) Empire Armies TL2

Successors of the Assyrians, the archemaenid empire stretched so far as to eclipse all the previous empires before it. The many cutures it came to rule had their own special military expertise (allied Infantry and cavalry); they reorganized their warrior elite to sustain their heavy cavalry manpower.

Immortals
Good Average Heavy Infantry
Basic Average Bowmen

Allied Cavalry

Poor Good Light Cavalry
Basic Average Light Cavalry

Basic Average Horse Archers

Persian Warrior Elite
Good Average Heavy Cavalry

Allied Infantry
Basic Average Light Infantry
Basic Average Bowmen
Basic Average Medium Infantry

Slingers - Poor Average Bowmen
Indian Elephants
Basic Average Warbeasts
Other Units

Basic Average Light Artillery

Basic Average Light Chariots

Basic Average Heavy Chariots

Greek and Macedonian Armies TL2.

The military assets depends on the region, its tradition, economy and circumstance. Some City States only have very professional warrior elites, others are more mercantile with great economic resources, others have unique conditions favoring marine, terrain, cavalry and recon expertise

Some City States have more numerous but less well equipped and trained Hopelites, like Athens, Corinth and Thebes. Some City States, like the Kingdom of Macedon, have the Pikemen Tradition. Scithian Allies provide the Cavalry. The GM determines the social political and economic organization of the City State, and that determines what kind of units it can provide.

Spartans

Good Good Heavy Infantry

Corinthian, Theban and Athenian

Good Average Heavy Infantry with Marine feature

Macedonian

Basic Average Pikemen

Thracian

Peltas - Basic Average Light infantry

Basic Average Medium infantry

Basic Average Bowmen

Scythian Cavalry

Basic Average Light Cavalry

Basic Average Horsearcher

Cretan

Basic Good Bowmen

Alexander's Army TL3

Alexander makes the organization TL3 for the army under his command. Other greek heroes can be considered as effective.

Average Good Heavy Infantry
Basic Average Light Artillery

Allied Cavalry

Poor Good Light Cavalry

Basic Average Warbeast

Barbarian Allies

Basic Average Horse Archers

Basic Average Heavy Cavalry

Basic Average Bowmen

Basic Inferior Heavy Infantry

Polybian Legion TL3
The Roman Republic and Kingdom creates units based on socio-economic status, with a military tradition. Each City provides Velites, Hastatii, Principes and Triarii. Since there is a military levy, the distribution of wealth determines the availability of certain units.
Velites
Slingers- poor inferior bowmen
Javeliners - poor inferior medium infantry
Hastatii

poor inferior heavy infantry
Principes

basic average heavy infantry
Triarii

Good Good heavy infantry
Equites

Basic Average Light cavalry

For the Next Parts: either more samples of various armies and sample armies. I really have to get GURPS City Stats (add a level of detail like harn manor) at the scale of the region. I already have the spreadsheet, just need to add another column for yearly operational costs (professional level, levy level).

GURPS SKill: Professional Skill

2012-01-25T17:11:00.000+08:00

The Professional Skill. When I was in school I had a very difficult time getting what made up a professional skill, of course now things are way different. I realized a helpful way, for myself, to describe it than the way the did it in Basic Set.

Professional Skill is the mastery of all the metrics and rules of thumb, and processes of a given profession. Metrics are the measurable or observable values that matter in the given profession. Rules of thumb are intuitive and abstract values and what to do or how to react when encountered; they are what to do with a given metric.

An example of rules of thumb are the Ratios. In every profession there are metrics that have to keep with certain ratios that help identify assumptions and how to identify root cause of problems. A very well known example of ratios is the Bakers Dozen, a baker knows he always needs to make a little extra in case of accidents, presentation purposes or sampling.

If the profession is part of a larger organization there comes much larger and greater amounts of ratios to track and understand. In a Low-Tech setting bureaucracies, soldiering, guilds, and organized religion have very complex set of ratios.

Example of Ratios for a soldier:Organizational Ratios, how many soldiers to one lesser leader, how many smaller teams to a leader, how many men to a company, how many companies to higher leader etc. Then there are how many support staff for an leader; how much supplies per soldier or team or section or squad or company or army etc. per day, per campaign season, per year. Then there are the ratios of their opponents and their own organizational ratios.

Guilds, Bureaucracies, and organized Religions have similar ratios to be mastered. Social Elites also have such ratios to master, but you can base them mostly on bureaucratic profession. This is because some social classes serve as the Literate Elites: examples are Senatorial Class, at one point the Equestrians, Various Priestly Caste of various cultures and the Mandarins.

Processes are also a big part of Professional Skill. Processes are the way things are organized and done; processes also affect etiquette and internal status of an organization and profession. These sometimes are so extensive in Bureaucracies and Merchantile Organization, like Guilds or Merchant Princes; that run States or Major Economic Polities that they fall its best captured in Administration Skill. Professional Skills can default more complex feats at -5.

Chain of Command and Escalation. Who you should report too, who is their boss, and who is your boss' boss' boss. This also includes how to address them, show respect, present one's self or present information.

Vetting and Checks and Balances. Processes are also more important in making sure an action is executed well. This is a more elaborate form of Chain of Command and Escallation, with the purpose of getting things done right and maximizing the mental resources of an organization. Of course some organizations are worth crap, and it shows in their Vetting and Checks and Balances.

These are the two primary purposes of Internal Processes in the Professional Skill, anything more technical deals with other skills outside the Professional skill.

[GURPS] Hazards of Lower Status (or being too Cheap)

2012-01-18T22:46:00.001+08:00

In case you've ever wondered if it isworthwhile to save some extra cash and live below a certain status.This is mainly a reminder when players game the systems, which theyshould, to see if there is any consequences to choosing the cheapestoptions in all things (not the most cost effective options).

It begins with where you live.

Status is not just appearance, or anaesthetic. One of the most keenly felt aspects of status is where youlive. In Low-Tech and High-Tech settings this means Sanitation,Protection from Polution, Public Transportation, Crime rate of thearea, access to Heal-care facilities and expertise, and generalaccess to various skilled services and resources.

The worse off you are, the worse lotyou get. This translates to all the hazard poorer people suffer:disease, food poisoning or poor nutrition, ailments due to pollutionsand toxic hazards in their living conditions, and criminal elements:parasites or overlords, are a RISK in a lower status environment.

Being a RISK it has some circumstantial and random factors, moreoften (and like all risks over the long run) a character suffers itsburden. You may be saving some money, being in a cheap and high crimerate neighborhood but your gambling that saving and more, potentially spending more or getting in way over your head.

GMs have the opportunity to screw theplayers through crime, disease saves, being constantly probed for weakness in their security, and being pawned scamy products or resources. Because this is the poorer section of town, shopshave a higher overhead because of security or the criminal overlordtaking a huge cut. The players have some serious risks of spendingmore.

Opportunities, Access and Education.

In the modern or High Tech settings,the first big problem you encounter being poor (and a lower income)is having less diposable income for education, training,certifications and tools. A higher status person in the modern era,has more disposable income or privilages for all these personalenhancement opportunities. If your poor, struggling to meet basicneeds and maintain relationships, then you don't have these things.

Before you meta-game and decide thatthe character will maintain optimal social mobility and invest highlyin education, training and access (in Low-Tech this can beapprenticeships, guilde access, or paying the high price that goes tohaving a much greater amount of knowledge) there are trade-offs andcharacters begin certain economic limits.

A character that came from a certainstatus and background, has opportunities, typical of that status andbackground (a matter of a social dominant strategy). When thatcharacter makes trade-offs to climb higher, he has to take much morerisk and work than almost everyone in their status. The lower thestatus, the more painful and severe the consequences of failure(again reference to the matter above).

Access to Special Resources and Credit withPeers.

The better offone's peers are, the better the resources one has at his/her disposalwhen they tap their social connections. I left off to dealing withthis last because sometimes this is the most ignored because this issometimes the hardest for the GM to enforce. Typically a GM has tohave a “thesis” of how society works in their setting orsubscribes to that of a setting with a developed set of social norms.There is a balancing act the GM has to perform accommodating a variedgroup of characters, and when players all choose to ignore thisaspect of society.

Ideally, ifplayers and the game chooses to ignore this element of the setting,it is ignored at the consequences of the opportunities lost. Certainstatus has access to various resources: the healthcare, experts, thebest toys, and people who will do absurd things for them. All toooften, everything is on the menu of the players when it comes togear, magical and non-magical expertise, and man-power. I can't blamethe GM, to make special lists of what to allow and what is availabletakes time and careful consideration of resources. Its not like thereis a table that will help Gms quickly narrow these down (this wouldmake a great spreadsheet btw; organized by degree of technologicalsophistication to determine what kind of community might have thisand something to randomize whats available).

Financial Independence

Greater Financial Independence happened when people didn't need the special advantages of having a family provide their basic needs. instead certain levels of urbanization and financial comfort the market can meet these needs, instead.

Housing
Food Preparations and Optimization
Social Security in the form of Children or Dependents
Management of extra-man power in the form of Children or Dependents

TL:DR

Consider the conditions that making poor suck
Characters has no cash to pay for training
Some resources supposed to be monopolized by the elite, shouldn't be accessible to low-status characters.

GURPS Mass Combat Spreadsheet V0.5

2012-01-14T18:19:00.003+08:00

Ok, I just tried making a GURPS mass combat spreadsheet. Currently it can only add up all the costs, factoring up the equipment quality, troop quality, and up to 4 features. This is only up to TL5.

Here are things I see lacking:

I have not made it look pretty (formatting it with special borders, backgrounds, colored font to make it more user friendly).
I have not made it overly user-friendly (which means having comments describe everything, or a workflow)
I have not made it able to calculate individual TS for each class in a given list. I don't know how I'm going to make a smart list for that yet.
I don't know a way to export all the information in some Stat Block for compact, easy saving, and easy printing.

Total Amount of Time I spent doing this and fixing the bugs is about 4-5 hours in between a lot of waiting and idle time. If I were to look at the work left to be done, given what I feel lacking, maybe 16 more hours would fix it. This includes learning to make it export to stat blocks, if it were to me (assuming I can find the method and learn it in about 6-10 hours).

email me if you want me to share it with you, because of the legal limitations of publishing it.

Virtual Gaming Personal Assistant Update part 4

2012-01-13T12:45:00.000+08:00

Here is an update,

I've found some sample VPA online, www.odesk.com allows you to find a contractor that fits your needs. VPAs I've found are at about ~$6/hour USD.
If a company were to hire and run a VPA campaign it would cost around ~$8/hour USD but you will have an administration that will maintain a high level of quality, a pool of VPAs that specialize in clerical work, tele-verification for all tasks, Finance and Accounting, Web API support and IT support. (VPA's are even more effective if a Web API like a CRM, Enterprise Wiki, ERP, Personal Finance, an Organization or Writing Tool etc...)
I've found Neil Gaiman's PA's Blog. I've also found a high level executive assistant who I can approach with profiling questions regarding Service Level standards.
I've also a friend who came back here from Canada who is a script writer and director who needs a VPA to help him more productive.
I've been sick and finding time to do some of the tasks I want a VPGA to do for me, and I've been doing much fasters than my projected SLA. I think its application mastery and screensize as a factor, I should Identify all the high productivity skills for use of office applications (I am a LibreOffice user).
the VPGA doesnt have to just allow the GM to help do his/her gaming work, but also help in their own day-job. That also frees time to allow GMs to spend more time doing their gaming work.

I think I have to get the other following things:

A profile of the kind of people who would want to do the work from home of a VPA.
From profiling EAs, PAs, and Potential Employeers what would be the Service Level Quality and Tasks they expect them to do,
And A detailed and dynamic weekly workflow template to be modified based on the client's profiling.

As a Linux and Open Source Guy, it would suck having to buy all these MS stuff for clients in the business plan I'm making. Not only its add to the Capital Investment which would go into the Amortizing Costs of the VPA, but the value chain you'd have to buy is over-inflated IMO (coming from a 3rd World cost perspective). I'd want the VPA to use all Open Source and GPL tools.

I guess another service could to be provided is the Remote Transitional IT Support for someone or an organization moving from Windows to a Preferred Linux Distro (I haven't gotten around to try Mint).

For my personal needs I and income, I'm ok with $2-3/USD work at home VPA. Since I'm the one making all the workflows and processes in the first place, its an externality advantage of my profession. (economic terms are really useful in gaming, particularly munchkin-ing) and its Philippines to Philippines.

Incentive for MURDER, XP

2012-01-10T16:43:00.000+08:00

I can understand how, back in the day, they didn't have a way to accumulate XP except with "killing" and things. Surprisingly the most intuitive ad-hoc action of the GM, the ad-hoc XP reward at the end of the adventure, is more on the money than Killing for XP.

I guess If I were to go back in time and teach myself some things I learned as I grew up, it would be that there is a way to measure work and not feel insecure about it. I can understand the taboo in measuring work and productivity, people can get really sensitive about their work ethic being under a microscope. I'm still not one to judge... until all the facts are in I guess.

So what is the XP value of a given adventure? The solution can be as simple as a number of questions,

"what has the character experience for the first time" and
"how much time has the character invested in X kind of experience?".

This becomes a Role-playing and Character reflection paper, which is not a bad exercise but leaves out the shy and awkward gamers. One doesnt have to go so far as the reflection paper, they can just look at the character journal or the player journal (if the player i juggling more than one character).

Answer those questions and you have your basis for xp, unfortunately that is not enough. Now you need benchmarks:

How much XP is enough to improve one's wholistic view of their characer: what is enough for levels?
How much XP is enough to improve one's abilities?

Now this is a fun mathematical challenge for non-mathematicians, like myself. These questions all depend on game system, system assumption, style of play circumstance. All of which will take volumes to cover but the short of it is that: declare your assumptions and run with what feels best.

If you heard that it takes 2 years to make a professional roman soldier, and you find out what a soldier does in those two years, then you can use that as a bench mark for a fighter. Of course you have to set some assumptions like, what Level or Skillset a "professional" soldier has as to varying degrees of experience (from green to veteran).

If you are in a field of research, in a technical profession, work in a bureaucracy then you can use your company's HR or professional practice data to plot the advancement.

The bottom line is that you just get the data of how much work it takes to advance in skill and experience (which is survival skill in today's world) and apply to your game. I think self education and one's own skill and understanding how to keep up with the job market and the changing needs of the world will find developing a metric to measure character XP and advancement to be easy and fun (not to mention an exercise of understanding and the ability to compare and contrast with peers).

I guess if my son is finally old enough to play I don't want him playing a system designed to incentive's murder and killing. I just now realize that I've basically ruined every dungeon delving game with pacifistic game style (which is why I prefer sandbox settings/organic games), I guess you really can't please everyone.

[Traveller, Sci-Fi] Starmap of what is actually known

2012-01-09T20:35:00.001+08:00

I just found:

REALISTIC ASTROGRAPHY (version 2.0) for Traveller and other scifi RPGs

Lifted from the Site.

SECTION 0: INTRODUCTION
The aim of this project is to map the stars around Sol in a manner that preserves their direction and distance relative to eachother as much as possible. The existing canonical GDW maps of the Sol subsector and its environs are extremely distorted compared to reality - direction is not preserved, and distances from any given star become increasingly distorted beyond J2 range. The inaccuracies of the GDW map are largely due to stellar positions being distorted by "flattening" of a 3D space into a single 2D map, inaccurate stellar location data to start with. and possibly some other unknown factors - it also obviously omits any low mass stars discovered in astrometric searches between 1977 and 2003. Either way, the positions of the stars on the GDW Sol subsector map bears little resemblance to the real spatial distribution of stars around Sol.
In Section 3 I present a series of stacked 2D maps of a 3D volume around Sol using the latest available astrometric data of the stars in the vicinity of Sol. This avoids any "flattening" issues since each layer will preserve the vertical position of the maps, and the data will be much more accurate since it is based on HIPPARCOS and other catalogues. The resulting maps are very different to those presented in Traveller canon - thus they are entirely non-canonical - but are much more physically accurate. As a result, you will not find any attempt to link any star positions on the canonical GDW map with this realistic map.
This dataset is aimed at anyone interested in astronomy or who is interested in adding nearby stars to their own RPG or sci-fi/Traveller universes - the raw data in particular is easily adaptable to any sci-fi setting or RPG. Every effort has been made to make the maps as simple to interpret as possible, though jump routes have not been calculated.

found this through Winchell Chung G+ page,

personal note: I've been hoping to use a realistic star map for my B3M sandbox. I think it will help if I can use Blender to map this, (I wish I could use Sketchup but I cant get it to run in my Ubuntu 10.04).

WORK = XP + $ + Non-Monetary Gains part 1

2012-01-04T14:52:00.001+08:00

Economics is a wonderful tool, micro-economics is a subtool perfect for this particular problem: Player/Character Compensation/Rewards/Awards.

Caveat. Everything is setting specific, like in other economies the Value of something depends on the economy, the "beholder", the players and the GM. The system I'm explaining is merely a tool for identifying assumptions and "default" way of approaching them. Its not the best way, its just a way where I've been able to identify a bunch of other variables and considerations in my end.

Offering Price vs Actual Cost.

What do you do if the Offering Price is does not fit your actual cost? Patrons, Villains, Bosses, Victims all offer the adventurers something in return for a 'venture. A whole epic stems from an acceptance or turning it down. If Bilbo didn't agree to Gandalf, or Frodo with fellowship, or some hero turned down a deed where would we be? But adventurers, are not all necessarily "heroes".

To see what Costs can mean lets turn up the degrees: What if:

if you take the job you have no margin of net profit,
worse you are at a loss (of either social or material capital),
worse you are bankrupt of any reserves of resources,
worse you are bankrupt in BOTH material and social capital?

To make the decision of what will be a loss or a gain, we look to setting/playing style conventions. Sample "real-world" metrics will provided in this series. Of course these metrics, may not apply to many other settings but its identified something to be measured for future consideration.

From experience, is this a worthwhile pursuit?

More importantly: From experience, did the GM screw you?

When GMs don't count the cost and we end up bankrupt or worse I've given the advice: "deal with it!". While I agree whole heartedly with such advice most of the time, I'd like to look at if there was a choice to begin with, and if we go through the game transcript and look at the flow of choices and decision, and I find that it was something inevitable and this inevitability has a pattern, maybe its time to learn from past mistakes and make considerations.

Observation. This is a completely RATIONAL approach to a situation. This rarely happens, stupid decisions are made everyday and even by the smartest and competent of people. For me, this is an opportunity to do a little bit of FANTASY: The chance to be able to really weigh the costs before getting into something I don't want to do.

I don't know how that would apply to other people, but I'd like to a choice unfortunately real-life doesn't, and I'm stuck doing what I don't want and sometimes it doesn't pay enough. The great thing about an RPG in a sandbox/organic setting is that I can say "HELL NO!" and not kill the game. This for me is real freedom and my personal fantasy and escape. The ability to shut down stupidity before it happens.

In the another scenario: if I failed to count the cost yet I agreed and truly had the freedom to agree then, I feel better about the decision and the failure. It would be easy to identify where I went wrong and what values I had a misconception.

To be continued....

Risk and Net profit
Identified metrics in a Low-Tech Adventure
Best Practices, learning from Past Adventures
... Lather, rinse, repeat... with some Umph!

Organic Game, Thoughts about Gaming Styles

2012-01-03T14:47:00.000+08:00

What I call organic games are those where there is no script, but everyone has their own motivations and goals, and all are working toward their own ends. The purpose behind Organic Games is that there is no railroading, characters need an in-game motivation for their character (not a meta-game like xp, cp, levels etc...), and to simulate the Chaos of a world that is indifferent to the characters. Its organic in the sense that it has a life of its own, and I merely facilitate.

This game takes a lot of prep. I need to create an organic set up, that means fleshing out to some detail the motivations of a ton of PCs and having them put into motion. Of course I don't have to make them special or weird, already a lot of the real world motivations (love, family, security, status quo, frustration, etc.) are handy and create a whole lot of character and drama already. (I guess it comes in handy when players contribute to the NPC pool; they help generate a ton of other motivations that criss-cross the paths of their current characters and objectives)

A special trait of the organic game is that: "The world does not revolve around you", in fact it doesn't revolve around anyone. It can appear that it does character to character and from time to time, but it doesn't. This is one of those lessons growing up that has a valuable underlying insight: you cannot stay idle, and you cannot especially depend on the GM or any metaphysical force to help you.

It flows towards the rationale why characters are not safe. That they can die if the player is not carefull and all the risk must be fully appreciated. Characters having no safety net makes actions follow consequences.

Another interesting trait of such a game is that: there is no justice and there is no "deserving". Things happen and characters must deal with it. Bad things happen to Good Characters, and Good things happen to Bad Character. The GM is not granting any favors to anyone, sh!t just happen to happen in that way. The GM doesn't take special pains to make the world "just right". He/she shows the Game Setting and System as an Imperfect system, and what happens is, some of the time, the system is working the way its supposed to, and more often abuses and unintended consequences.

Anyway, this is a game players are really free to make mistakes. (I have my own rules to compensate, so that the pace of the game doesn't crash for one player or everyone, but I'm not going to pull punches with characters.). After playing so many RPGs for so long, real freedom is so dearly prized for me. Even if it craps out the story, I'm for freedom over a Scripted Story. In fact in such a game players make their best mistakes. When real factors are considered and really f-ed up sh!t happens, that's gold. It gets so real that everyone makes that connections. Its when ideas that normally aren't found together but happen to mesh perfectly in the situation

I'm pro-making mistakes. My favorite thing about RPGs is that I allowed to make mistakes without the severe consequences of the real world. In a Table-Top-RPG I get to do it in a fabulous, catastrophic, tragic, poignant and sometimes gonzo way.

I'll leave it up to the publicist (The creative writer who is in charge of weaving the game transcript; a transcript made by the VPGA) into some story. There was no "invisible hand" of the GM guiding events, things happen the way they did. Some of the plans survived, some plans didn't. Things turned into what they are, despite everyone's intentions. These things can be good, bad, somewhere in-between or something of an enigma.

Personal Gaming Assistant Part 3: Planting the seeds

2011-12-29T01:00:00.001+08:00

So I've planted the seeds for the PGA. I've asked some friends to keep an eye out for anyone who would be interested in the paid work. Only time will tell how things pan out, but I don't have to be idle. I will be giving instructions after all, so I might as well detail my plans, instructions and expectations so that I can quickly pounce on a lead.

Setting some realistic Expectations.

Its going to be like any process of hiring, I'm going to go through a lot before I get what need. I'm probably going to lower some expectations because its never going to be a perfect, I'm comparing everything to an idea and ideas appear perfect until tested. I guess I'll have to consider some key-performance-indicators: competency, communication skills, time-management, priority-management, and these all maybe collected as some kind of professionalism score.

Other than key performance indicators, a way to measure and interview potential candidates after the project. A series of questions to find out more about behind the scenes. Also improve my scanning skills by having some of my own interview questions and ways to spot some red-flags. I guess this is not so bad, its like some of the stuff I made for sales.

Transcription

The kind of work that would be most common would be transcription. This is one of those tasks that are under appreciated (until you put a price to it). The transcription the GM does to prepare for the game, can be a lists of equipment, rules, character generation options, inventory people, items, and locations in the setting or locale. Sometimes this list needs to be further detailed based on the peculiarities of the setting. What pet-peeve that comes to mind is when players start poking around where they shouldn't and use rules or equipment that GM's finite attention and free-time could not have prepared for.

When all the material is transcribed into spreadsheet this makes my job as a GM easier. It becomes easier to find, group, array and sometimes automate some game processes. In GURPS, it helps give the players and the GM inventory of all the options they have agreed on for the game.

Another transcription task that is very laborious is taking the minutes of a meeting... in another case, asking for an 8-hour game transcribed and transferred to the campaign journal. But this is better saved for later.

What are the Games I have in mind?
There are a lot of games I want to run. Not only do I want to run the games I'm writing about now, but try recapturing some settings I enjoyed that could use an "update".

If I were to make a list in no order.

Traveller Game inspired by Firefly
Traveller Game inspired by Honorverse Naval Campaign
Harn Inspired Banestorm, A domination campaign starting from young and ambitious characters who get caught up in a war. (A game that uses GURPS Mass Combat).
The First Crusade with an Alternate Cast
The Reconquest of Rome, Byzantium 6th Century with an Alternate Cast
Byzantium in the 3rd Millenium. A campaign that is about the "A Day in the life of Knights in the Service of their House".
Survival Scenarios, near-ordinary characters randomly generated in extraordinary events (Kidnapping, Assassination, Serial killer, Chaos, etc.)
19th Century Philippines Alternate History and a separate game that is a Historical Immersion
The Warring States
(As a player) The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (hopefully I can find a free audiobook about it or buy one)
Ancient Era 1300BCE, Before the First Dark Age. Before the fall of Empires of Egypt, Myceneans, and Hittites. (with a Conan Theme; inspired by The Teaching Company's Ancient Empires before Alexander and Origin of Civilizations)
The Axial Age 700BCE
Forgotten Realms with very little magic (Game of Throne-ish).
Lodoss War using GURPS Dungeon Fantasy
Convert an OSRIC Mega Dungeon into a B3M stronghold, than run that as a game.

How can one prevent players being too character Invested?

2011-12-29T00:58:00.002+08:00

Too Invested?
Being too invested means getting into a rutt when a character dies.
Why can't players have the same investment in their characters as the GM? I've taken this point of view, it has come to the point that I want the character randomly generated within a reasonable range for adventuring or storytelling purposes.

What works for me? Why is it ok for me if my characters die?
I am as attached to a character the way a GM should be: enough that he/she is competent and well thought out given the time constraints, but not so invested that I am not able to recoup and adapt if she/he dies. I find it well suited in games like those my GM would run, or I would also run.

As a GM I like to role-play a lot of characters, I get to play around with personalities and how they interact. I try not to role-play half-assed either, I would have role-playing notes for each character, even minor characters if time permits. That's why I'd rather have a personality generator, using key words to generate motives, aspirations, history, background, quirks etc... of a character.

I noticed the amount of time I spend on characters affects my degree of attachment. I guess that's why I have begun to like randomly generated characters, and the retro-appeal doesn't hurt. Less effort is less personal investment. The 90% of the time I should be investing would be making sense of the character and fitting him/her in the narrative of events.

Looking a my metrics of Character Investment.
If I have to make a cast of 30, 10% of which critical, 30% recurring and integral in the story, and the rest colorful dressing (reusable personalities), ideally I can spend as little time as possible with the 60% and enough time detailing the 40%. If I can make up the 60% in a few seconds, and weave their story in about 5-6mins each that would add up to ~99mins on dressing characters, 2x as much for integral characters (99mins) and about 30mins per critical character... that would be about 5-6 hours of story.

If I were to write these all down I would have written as much as 3-4 pages or 2,000 words. Although realistically I might take up some time to think about these characters. Hopefully not so much that it eats up so much time in my week or month. But usually compelling stories do, so hopefully i just draw from a bunch of stories drawn up from years ago.

Applying this to Players.
What if Players had to make a cast? What if the player had to contribute about 10-20 or so characters to the GM, and the GM, in certain points of time, will ask the Player to use one or a few of these characters?

If the player was distracted or divided enough to spread his/her attention in multiple characters, would this stop him/her from fixating over one. Maybe the GM can have a session where or pre-game exchange (play by post/email) where the player has to role-play a different character or set of them. Since there is an element of the unknown, maybe the player would set his expectations differently.

If there was fixation, I guess the GM would notice it when going through the characters and hold this character back for the players on good, until the GM feels that it was ok.

Reversing things and thinking if it were applied to me, as a GM I guess I would have no problem. As for career players, what comes to mind is a friend of mine who would "exploit" the multiple character option our GM offered to reduce the effect of character death on the pace and fun of the players. I know he would be disappointed, especially if I denied him the more powerful character and employed it for my own purposes...
...maybe the option to employ certain characters for the GM's purposes would reduce fixation even further?

Knowing what to do in the Future: something to try out.
I guess having this written all down, in the future, I should have the players share the load of NPCs generation. Not only it would drastically cut down the amount of time I need to sufficiently detail the game's cast, but also create a reserve of characters in lethal games.

Players who don't make characters.
Have another player make his characters. I sometimes make characters for my players, which I optimizes expectations but is a bad habit. If I have a random character generator, I'll have the player use that instead in the future.

Found another GURPS blog, GURPS Greyhawk.

2011-12-29T00:52:00.002+08:00

I found this through Google Alerts set for GURPS.
The blog is The Ongoing Campaign by faoladh
Its GURPS Greyhawk, and that is AWESOME!

side notes relevant to Personal Gaming Assitant

2011-12-27T13:30:00.000+08:00

Gothridge Manors's Article is one article I find related to my concerns because, if you want to be able to share the cost maybe it would be worth considering selling the cleaned work.

Gothridge Manor: PDF Pricing

he links to ePublishing 101.

a Second thing worth reading is the Free E23 book Running A Game Publishing Company

For Any Game System.

There are so many different compensation systems to consider. Not just for direct pay for PDF, but continued support of an already held market. What if spreadsheets and pdfs that allow GMs easy customization are produced on a schedule and a menu, those that the market decide gets to move on yet not closing off all roads just when some majority decides a particular direction.

Before getting more elaborate, if there are other GMs who want the same as I and want to share in the costs and benefits I'm game. If it drives the price to <$1 for 5,000 worth of words each I'm very game.

Personal Gaming Assistant part 2

2011-12-26T18:56:00.000+08:00

I've heard complaints about the GM carrying 90-99% of the workload. There is some exaggeration there, but the emotional color is worth bearing in mind. Maybe the GM feels like he/she is carrying 90-99% of the load. I don't think its a good idea to have a lop-sided distribution of work or investment in time, in a shared activity. When people can't meet in the middle, there tends to be frustration and resentment. If one would take an economists look at the situation, maybe there is a way to fix things without blaming anyone.

One interesting thing about being able to Pay for the VPGA is being able to make the GM's job more pleasant. Social Norms (Predictably Irrational ch4), the non-monetary contribution the common good of the group, has their place in the Game Table, but so does economic incentives. Note that the monetary contribution to GM assistance does not go directly to the GM, it goes to the entire group.

Where to begin?

I guess such begins with setting expectations. Using metrics, we can potentially forecast workload. Its pretty much how you would measure clerical tasks: Research (Words per Minute) + (Transcription/ writing (WPM) ) x complexity of task (original thinking involved/level of autonomous decision making involved) ). The more steps in the processes the longer the task would take.

Measuring to Project costs?

In the end, it boils down to the GM's experience in preparing such material, he would first make a guess then talk it over with the VPA. What really happens is that we only know the amount of work something is going to take when we've done something very similar or when we are 50% into the task. In this situation constant communication is what allows parties to maintain expectations. Over a course of a relationship, VPA just get more efficient as they get more familiar with the Client's style, needs and expectations.

Its a person to person job after all.

A VPA is a relationship that begins with sensing and measuring, and finally with an assessment of its cost effectiveness. As one can imagine, gets projects a little at a time, these allow both parties to get familiar and understand the circumstance better and more effectively meet expectations. Given how gaming circles go, a recommendation of another GM can go a long way, and a negative assessment of one can be very detrimental. Here is where some Call-center skills can be very much of use.

Nothing Ventured nothing Gained.

Like many VPA's there is a trial period, where there is a shared risk between client and vendor, if one didn't then people would just walk all over each other (thats just basic economics and game theory). This also lowers the risk for both parties and keeps people honest most of the time. There are risks and both if not one party should protect each other from failing too badly. Failure is Ok, I find negative reviews are ok as long as there is an improving trend. When things go south, it should be automatic that the VPA make a root-cause-analysis report in a poorly delivered service and protocols established to prevent this from recurring, even in faultless transactions. It's the professional thing to do.

Low level VPA ($1-1.2 per hour).
This assumes purely skype and emailing. You can use this for evaluation period.

Research 200-250wpm. if thats GURPS book, 12-15 pages an hour.
Transcription and organization 8-10wpm from gaming material
Creative writing 400-500wph (assuming 1/3 of time with research and discussion of instructions. this is over a long period, at least 2 hours)
proofing 100wpm

Mid-Level VPA ($2-3 per hour)

increasing performance by +50-100%. Typically can offer more complex tasks and services.

High Level VPA ($5-6 per hour)

better performance of Mid-level of up to 20-50%, and a much larger range of services offered.

Sample task for Lvl 1 VPGA:
This is a task I would need: List all equipment in GURPS in Campaigns, Characters, High Tech and Ultra Tech in a spreadsheet, convert all cost modifiers to CF format, and have columns for weight, cost, details and description, and pages. This is so that when I build up campaign and setting inventories and requirements I have a handy source to get from. Already this sets the stage for other projects: load-outs, equipment for npcs, unique setting equipment, etc...

Expected hours 16 (2 work days) = $16 (since this is low complexity, mostly cut and paste). This is about triple the cost of a e23 book that presents collated material, but consider those are sold for a couple of thousands.

Step 1: Establish instructions and deliverable, have a short deliverable to see if everyone is on the same page. Break down tasks into segments: GURPS Characters, Campaign, HT and UT. use pages as metrics. At this stage, the convention is constant contact. At this stage, realistically the Lvl1VPGA is juggling multiple GMs or has other part time work, so its not surprising that deliverable are in a day or two.

Step 2: Agree on a compensation. How many deliverables vs pay. Typically, at the low VPA level, its VPA entails the risk first, delivering 20-50% for the same percent in payment.

Step 3: Rate each other. The client gets to publicly rate the transaction. In every transaction there is an evaluation for an ongoing relationship. As the client, how much value this is going to to be worth to him. Did spending $16 worth while for all that labor. The simplest way to look at this is that, instead of doing this particular task what did I do with my time and is worth while? If your players appreciate the work and services, do they appreciate it to share in the cost?

Familiarity Incentive.
Less 10 to 20% in a long ongoing relationship. I spelled out the costs, but what is the point behind long-term client discount: as you get more efficient/it gets easier doing work for the client, it is only worthwhile for both parties to incentive each other for a longer on-going relationship.

Why I need this for myself. I want to game. I happen to be good in my job, but the more time I put into the job the more money and time I get to spend on other things. Of course, some gaming preparations are not very cost effective use of my time. I want to game, but I don't have enough time to prep a game the way I used to before many things (work, family, obligations, exercise etc...) tied up all my other free time.

I happen to like the level of detail I would get into Gaming. I admit I ruined GURPS for my GM when it became a Cost Benefit Analysis and Accounting nightmare, but I find myself a much better person becomes of it and I am able to approach work very effectively with the Gamer Mindset. I'm very sorry for my GM, but I can't be so sorry as to not-want what happened to happen. I'm very gratefull for his GMing, and hope to impart the same experience and love for critical thought and strategic thinking to other players as well, if only there were others who see RPGs as that kind of learning opportunity.

Without those skills, I don't think I would have reached the point where I am now: able to some-what afford to pay someone to help my GM or help me GM. Maybe this year, if I find myself a PGA or VPGA, I can run more games. Maybe run them more efficiently and effectively, and have less of the work and more of the fun of the experience.

Personal Gaming Assistant

2011-12-25T22:29:00.000+08:00

Applying what I learned in the BPO industry, I think I have the materials and processes to create a kind of personal gaming assistant. I have a handy set of performance benchmarks for tasks similar to that of a personal assistant: transcription, research, and writing.

I made a new year promise that I would game more often, and even thought of a value how much I would pay to play for a month. I realized that I am willing to pay ~Php2000 or $45 a month if it could help me create some awesome material (this assumes, mostly work from home and about 96 hours worth of work i a month). At that level of services, and accounting for all the performance aspects of a given task, I could actually delegate it and create a specific task for the person to make. As a part time job, the going rate for such would be at about Php ~6,000.

I crunched the numbers and that should be enough for a very specific set of part time.

Tasks of a PGA (personal gaming assistant)

Create tables, collect stats from the books and put them in a spread sheet. - Over time I will automate a lot of my tasks through a spreadsheet. There are a lot of tasks that are purely transcription in building GM notes and tools.
After breaking down a GM tool into a project benchmarks, have some simpler tasks delegated to the PGA.
Research and organization of data. An example task would be: "group all skills based on Multiple-Intelligence", research economic factors affecting this and that or doctrine for this and that, using the X tables, convert all costs into Cost Factor System, Convert all Harn costs to GURPs using X rule. Etc...
Play-testing house rules.
2nd pair of eyes reading one's work.
Annotation of all my PDFs with the latest errata and FAQ.
Update some of my house rules into the PDFs and Wiki.
Follow up the players during the week for the game, help them with their writing and incorporating their material to the Campaign Journal. Keep the campaign journal.
If the PGA has arts skills - help with maps, cards (for characters, rules, etc), paint my min-art 72mm figs, video-edit the recorded game session. If not, outsource it to a Graphic Artist and be the one to manage that.
Proof my work

An Entrepreneurial Gamer can probably get a job as a full time Virtual PGA. He will do everything remotely. He will divide his time among various GMs. Costs of a home office would entail the following:

Internet can run up to Php3,000 for the internet (PLDT). This is for skyping with the clients, downloading and uploading material, and video streaming if need be.
A PBX using an old CPU and a US Telco (APN, Novanet, Accella; $5 for a US no.) would be the cheapest way to call the clients everyday in their mobile phones. If one is very good in IT, he can Virtualize this PBX or spend 8000 for an old CPU to act as a PBX server, and 3500 for the analog card. This allows clients to call him, and call the clients in their home phones at greater clarity than skype. Also this allows conferencing.

I know a guy who set up an elastix PBX, you can possibly get him to teach you to set one up for Php5,000 (a worthwhile investment in the longrun) for a day. (contact me if you want to know where to get China made analog cards in the metro manila area). Once you know how to set up a PBX that, in itself is a valuable skillset. You can bring down telco-costs of offices.

A good notebook laptop would be best for this, so that taking work away from home some-times is an option to relax. Php30,000 (Laptops in the Philippines is 2.5x the cost of retail in the US because of red-tape). If using open source: LibreOffice, Inkscape, GIMP, etc. etc. this saves about Php20,000 in licensing costs. Canonical and the Paid for Linux programs are relatively cheap, as well. The training for linux desktop support costs about 20,000, or free from a friend. You don't even need desktop support level.
A home office would have airconditioning, that would cost in addition of about Php2200 a month in electricity. (12php per KWh, 800W aircon)
Having two computers running. The PBX running at 24/7 will cost about Php600 in electricity cost, the home PC Php300.
What ever he earns will be less 6% from the banking service fees.
Office Furniture and Air-conditioning Unit Php10,000.

Overhead: Php6,350+variable cost of telco ($0.013 per minute at the most expensive, and $0.009 at the cheapest. depends what you can get).

Capital investment: Php56,000 if starting from scratch - typically one already has many of these except the PBX, that leaves it at about only the PBX and the PBX training at 14,500php. If he adds this to his overhead as a amortization, he'll just be adding Php2,000 of expenses.

In the Philippines, skilled labor at this level is at about Php20-30,000. The VPGA just adds on top of that his expenses of about Php8,350+telco minutes. Php170-230 ($4 to $5.4per hour).

Note: Some of these GM's use this to make their own material to be of a much higher quality to be sold, thus being able to make the investment pay for itself.

About Knights, Byzantium in the 3rd Millennium

2011-12-23T00:58:00.000+08:00

Knights are central in the setting. The Princes and Nobles are too powerful and a bit too intelligent to be made player characters, and are better made as Patron and Adversary NPCs. So many of the adventures center around the Stronghold and its survival in this incredibly harsh and unfair universe.

Which ones are the real Knights?
They are the leading family/household of a given stronghold. A stronghold can have a number of knights, because everyone of that family is expected to serve their overlord in what ever capacity their overlord wishes. The families can be called nobles, but the greatness of the Knightly population, the title of noble is reserved for those with the most prestigious of pedigrees.

Duties of the Knight?
Strongholds are assets that produce either manpower, material resources, and sometimes skilled retainers or technology. They are expected to manage their stongholds well and meet their duties and expectations. Some houses, tend to look closely at the efficiency of the strongholds of their individual knights like the Komenoi, and the Tang.

The most important duty of the Knight is their management of his people and resources for his overlord. This trait can mean a knight getting more resources and favors, and the small bit of meritocracy that allows surviving generations to be granted their own strongholds.

Fostering and Education.
The Scions of Knights, boys and girls, are sent to foster in the stronghold of their overlord where they indoctrinated, socialized, and educated to what would be very high end TL9 concepts and technical abilities. They are only able to return to their home every 2 years, and only for a 2160 earth hours before having to go back to school.
Often, by the time they are 16-18, they are pulled out of school straight into conflict to serve as squires of relatives or anyone the overlord chooses.

Serving in War.
Knights are expected to serve 2 years every 4 years. What happens most often is that, they serve 8-10 years straight and either die in the line of duty or get home too injured and damaged to be useful in the battlefield. Accompanying him are his younger relatives and personal retainers and bondsmen: squires, lieutenants or sergeants-at-arms. The attrition for these knights are the same for their entourage/retinue, mostly the surviving Lieutenants and Squires are promoted in the battlefield to be the leading Knight, only to go home damaged and broken from the experience.

Bondsmen and Retainers
Bondsmen are indentured servants, they have no where to go but to serve the knight or starve and die of exposure, hunger, or ostracism. Bondsmen are highly skilled, when compared to TL8 Real world standards, but have a very lop-sided education. They are completely focused on certain technologies, to the point it is ritualized and they are hidebound. They are also expected to serve as levies, and most of the time have the equivalent content of TL6 basic training and about 130 hours out of the 8640 earth hours of a year opportunity to train.

Retainers are freemen, technically they have more rights by way of mutual convention and goodwill with the Knight household. They are given special favor and opportunities, but more expected of them in return. These retainers are allowed to have their children fostered in Guild for training. The Guilds train them many technical skills, difficult to maintain in majority of strongholds.

Lieutenants and Sergeant-at-Arms.
These are the knights closest servants, they are part of his or her retinue. The lieutenant having the highest rank among the Knight's other sergeant-at-arms. They are all highly skilled: sometimes trained by a planetary Guild-outpost or their overlords stronghold. Knights with bigger retinues tend to have more Lieutenats and sergeant-at-Arms to manage his forces.

Retainers and Squires in War.
Typically, Lieutenants and Squires wear environmental suits with a combat helm and torso armor. They are armed in such a variety of ways, depending on their leadership style.

Knights Hardware
A knight is usually given durable but rustic equipment. In GURPS thats rugged and cheap-heavy (x1.8 the weight, but +0.5CF). The knight is given a TL9 Powered Armor that is rugged and cheap-heavy (but not cheap in setting standards), but rarely do knights use such in their roles as leaders behind the lines. Most often, they wear heavy tactical suits (DR30/15*, 22.5lbs).

Knight Outfit
These come in a range of varieties, it all depends on the leadership style of the knight. A default view is that, a knight is more often in comfortable yet practical suit even within his mobile HQ. (logically, since this is the most comfortable armor to wear in extended periods). In extreme cases of emergency, he/she wears her TL9 rugged and heavy powered armor. Most of the time, they wear garmets made out of TL9 ballistic weave. In readiness, various combinations of environmental suits, tactical suits, ballistic vest armor or torso armor.

Superfine Weapons. Swords, Spears or Glaives (retractable pole) are designed to prevent a knight from being swarmed if at dangerously close ranges. (some swords are modular-able that they can be easily transform to a glaive, if needed). These weapons are very lethal against levies, allowing a knight to cut through more than one at a time.

Variety of Combat Styles
Some knights lead in the front, some fiefs are specialized in light infantry tactics, some are great with specialty weapons, other are superior in their logistics, Intelligence gathering, support vehicles, or in more support roles. Every knight and his battalion is made up differently depending on the strengths from their environment and circumstances. This makes their equipment very different and their doctrines very different. Detailing a doctrine involves looking a the cause and effect of a how these developed for a House, a Fief, then the individual stronghold.

Knight Battalion
Useful Ratios - these are common ratios, but in reality these are adapted to what a situation calls for or to the strengths of the individual knight.

50-80 per Section. lead by a sergeant-at-arms.
200-560 per Company, lead by a squires and/or lieutenants. Each are only able to manage 4-7 sergeant-at-arms effectively at a time. (House Tang, having the organization levels of the highest end).
800-3920 per Battalion, lead by a Knight. The knight is managing up effectively 4-7 squires or lieutenants.
1:4 support personnel to combatant.

Dreadnaughts
These are massive land vehicles, mobile housing for up to 200-300 personnel. This serves as the mobile command center of a knight and his battalion. There are is about 1 to 3 Dreadnaughts per Battalion, depending on the wealth of the stronghold and knight. Some knights would rather spend such resources in Auxiliary Transports, Screening, Recon Vehicles, or special purposes vehicles or equipment.

Visualizing the Stronghold.
Majority (~60%) of has a population of 90,000 to 130,000. A small percent, (~1%) are in the population of 2-4M, and The capital strongholds, have populations of 10-20M. 130,000 to 2M make up ~15%, while ~25% are smaller strongholds.

A stronghold no matter what size is called a stronghold. They are often given the added description of Towns, Cities, and Capitals or Metropolis. It is when they are grouped into a Region do they start being reffered to a Duchy, Barony, County, Province etc... Like in the real world, there is no precise terminology if one is a Duchy, Barony or the like, they are used interchangably... although some take offense of a incorrect referral.

There is about 50m^3 per person. As the stronghold becomes more affluent or poor this gets tighter and nicer. At about $500 per capital income, every 10% above that value there is about an exponential amount more in space per individual. Every 10% less, there is about the same linear percentage less space per individual.

Strongholds of about 1M or greater, have its own internal weather with condensation and some form of condensation. The strongholds of 15M, have a cloudy night sky. It has an appearance of lightly cloudy colored darkness with the buildings hanging from the ceilings appearing like stars at night.

Special Stronghold fortifications.
Deepsea or Under-Ice Strongholds.
Dense Atmosphere Strongholds.
Asteroid Stronghold

Parallels of Scifi Future to the past: The Great Houses

2011-12-22T11:19:00.000+08:00

Its Byzantium in the 3rd Millenium. Looking at the world, I tried best to draw parallels with the 31st Century with that of the 11th.

5 Great Houses
Bloodlines - Princes are the most powerful bloodline Psions. they tend to have mastered the most complex and potent abilities. Inter marriage has allowed all houses the most basic forms of each houses special ability. The most common use of psionics is attribute augmentation.
QDP are initial estimates, i will have to callibrate it once I have time to do the numbers. It just looks incomplete without their context.
Capped Pop

House Baldwin - Baldwin the 1st would have been the synergy that could have revived the Byzantine Empire. The Second Sons of the Franks, earning their reward of Conquest. This is the Western Dream of Empire realized by being able to wrestle House Komenoi from their seat of power, the organizational center of the known worlds.
House Baldwin can maintain the greatest standing fleets and fiefs. Currently the have the greatest wealth to capital ratio, a kind of boom.
Bloodlines. It appears vanilla human ability augmentation (players should not know what house baldwin special abilities, it ruins the setting surprise).

Pop 46B
Wealth (Pop to Income ratio) $1,000 (2011 USD buying power value)
GDP $2Q

House Komenoi - This is if Anna Kommena merged her House to that of Bohemmond of Tarranto, the Normans. The Alexiad, hinted how she was drawn to him. How she called him both barbarian and very attractive and charming. She was the daughter who tried to remove her brother and become her fathers heir and Bohemmond was the Viking Prince who wanted it all and any cost. Combine Byzantine Courtiers with the Vikings, and you would have what should be the deadliest house.
Basically what happened is their analogs is what created house Komenoi.
Bloodlines. Sensor and Inference augmentation are the special abilities of the Komenoi. That is why they have a ton of Assassins and Spies. The privacy invading technology we have now, the acceleratometer that allows a cellphone that can serve as a key logger for devices nearby is the level of information gathering and utilization of Komenoi.
Pop 40B
Wealth (Pop to Income ratio) $900 (2011 USD buying power value)
GDP $1.7Q

House Adir - As the middle-east was the second heirs of Rome, House Adir is as Technologically advanced as Komenoi. They have an expansive territory but their worlds are more hostile than all the other houses, they suffer chronic population decline which have to supplemented by the slave markets. All the houses sell their worse-off to House Adir as slaves. In return they provide sellers tech, radio-actives, and vast amounts of rare materials.
Bloodlines. Radioactives and rare-material manipulation. House Adir bloodline can draw vast amounts of special materials that make them invulnerable to their environment and to many forms of energy attacks. Their special attacks and abilities allow them to manipulate radioactive elements and radiation. They are the only House who can freely walk their Fief worlds without special life-support and protection. Their Princes are the weapon keys of their capital ships.
Pop 24B
Wealth (Pop to Income ratio) $800* (2011 USD buying power value)
*massive use of slaves.

GDP $1.8Q

House Tang - The Tang Dynasty, the largest house relative to manpower, but wealth relative to manpower they are 3rd tied with House Komenoi. Like the Tang of the 11th century, they have the most effective trade network within their territory. House Tang benefits from a lot of internal trade, but still have rather
Bloodlines. Personnal FTL communication, not at the level of instantaneous. Just faster than the fastest modes by about 50%. Add to that, the ability to coordinate and communicate undetectibly over massive numbers and organize all that. They almost act like a Hive mind, but its really superior communication ability. Tang is best in maneuvering and positioning, no other House can match them in this level of expertise. House Guards coordinate with their Lords, like a wushu film, in the degree of perfected communication.
Pop 32B
Wealth (Pop to Income ratio) $900* (2011 USD buying power value)
GDP $1.8Q

House Tek-met - The House with the most number of exoplanets that have living ecologies. All other houses have their strongholds underground and in barren worlds of desert, ice, and toxics. House Tek-met has jungle worlds envied by all the other houses. What stops others from simply charging to get these is their control of their Jump-gates and control of the Biosphere through their blood line abilities.
House Tekmet is the largest food exporter, providing fresh genetic material (over time, radiation leakages destroys the stock material of fiefs, leaving them to depend on algae - the most basic food stuff).
Bloodlines. What makes them different is Biological Weapon Control. These thriving worlds support the largest and most powerful dragons* in the setting. All the other houses are aware of the awesome power of their biological forces, only house Komenoi know about their WMD biological weapons: swarms and pestilence that Tek-met Prince can control.
They can biologically alter their Beasts, allowing them to need minimal tech to survive the worlds of other fiefs.
These allow them to give their knights symbiotic armor.
Pop 28B
Wealth (Pop to Income ratio) $700* (2011 USD buying power value)
GDP $1.6Q

*Dragons
They are biological weapons, but unfortunately, they require a biological pyramid infrastructure to support. They resemble fantasy dragons, but their appearance hides their practical design (a very high surface area to mass ratio). They are genetically engineered for a variety of tasks: Heavy to Light Aerial Support, Tunnelers, and Undersea dreadnaughts, cavalry, armor, reconnaissance and even artillery.
When Tek-met calls their "banners" they call their dragons and all sorts of fantastic beasts.

Magic and Psionics a product of Technology

2011-12-22T01:39:00.001+08:00

In the alternate Fading Suns I've been brewing I was inspired by the TTC lecture about Einstein and the G+ Mad Science Circles I follow. So its no surprise I got to thinking about Nano-Tech, Bio-engineering and Materials that Defy Physics as we know it.

Sufficient Technology is so marvelous as to be considered Magic/Psionics.

In this setting, there was a purpose to making something that appeared like magic as we envision it: To create Technology that is discrete, inherent, and outside the Technology infrastructure pyramid.

The primary role of the technology is survival in the greatest extremes. It allows human to manipulate their bodies to survive the many hostile worlds they cannot otherwise colonize. In the worse case scenario, it allows humans to rebuild when cut off from the rest of humanity and technology. So before the technology could be spread and perfected the fall came.

Now there is Magic and Psionics, but lets look at it technologically:
Before "magery" there was Nano-Tech Cybernetics. This was the highest form of nano-technology, but still conservation of matter had to be followed and this required special materials to maintain. The nanites had to be "cultured" and designed. These were even more discrete compared to micro-machine and micro electronics and circuitry of mature TL10 cybernetics but this needed even a much more sophisticated infrastructure base to maintain the technology.

Lets now move to what is "Magery".
magery evolved from the need of the technology to exist outside the Infrastructure pyramid. It needs to be very permanent or self sustaining, to a level of degree not possible with even with the most advanced materials. The kind of nano-tech materials that composed magery are the kind that the annoying property of defying predictibility. Materials that were still barely graspable by TL11 quantum theory.

This gave the technology a kind of undetectability in all but TL11 tech. This stealth was a side effect of the existence-complexity of the material. This also made the technology unaffected by A TON of factors like sophisticated problems: all sorts of radiations and energies. The sorts of problems all the lower TLs faced and compensated through shielding and heavier builds and parts. So the technology was almost "indestructible" and highly reliable.

Unfortunately this is something passed on and finite (depending on the supply of raw materials). Mages were made, similar to the process of nano-tech cybernetics. It required a very sophisticated industrial base to make mages. The Stellar Church had the best of these, they had the most resources to make mages because as a Church, they had lands in ALL the worlds and fiefs, and their own trade network to pool the ultra rare materials. Of course not at the level of efficiency a real market and economy of a multi-state stellar trade network can create.

Magery was essentially a computer system with modular tools that can be created within the human body. It took advantage of evolutionary wastefullness of the human body: waste heat, chemicals, ions charges etc... powered these tools. A mage had the power to create radio communication tool within the human body, of course this is the most simplest of its incarnations and uses. Mages can easily create EMP effects to protect themselves from technology.

To manipulate these tools, Mages used TL11 mnemonics. Imagine the songs that allowed you to memorize tons of lyrics, or how we sing the alphabet to children so that they can memorize it. Now imagine mnemonics that allowed a human mind to store terrabytes of code in the form of Spells. these spells are not rigid, but can be modified the way a Skald could tell the same story a thousand ways to create a thousand different effects or a Jazz player can play the same song a thousand different ways. Thats what spells are: super mnemonics.

Magery was powerful, but it was not easily transmittable. The scientists of the republic wanted their children to be completely able to fend for themselves and thrive even in the most adverse conditions. Lets say the apocalypse came and the Terraformers all went broke, the Republic Scientists wanted to be sure their children had a fighting chance against that. Even if it would take multiple generations, they would survive even in the scarcest of technology... enter: Psionics and the rational why only the Great Houses have these.

Psion and Scions.
Before the tech was perfected and spread through out humanity, the fall came. The people who had access to it, were the first to climb out of the dark age... but since these were few, human self interest took over and power centralized and coalesced to these few groups: the Great Houses.

Psionics is magery with less programming. It doesn't take enormous amount of resources to create a Psion... BUT psionics is now a weapon: and the Great Houses are in a Psionic Arms race. Ironically, the houses need each other to produce Psions (this is where arranged marriages and blood lines come in). Unfortunately another complexity is that The Great houses are dealing with materials that are highly unpredictable, Quantum elements in the genetics of the Scions/Psions of each great house.

You cannot breed Psions reliably. Strangely even bastards can become very powerful Psions. Forget restoring Humanity to its hayday and bring about peace and equality: its an Arms race and War. (Psionics is TL12).

In the world envisioned by the TL12 humanity, humans can live almost everywhere. They can shapeshift and retain their sentience despite material barriers of gass giants, space clouds/storms, or on the surface of molten or frozen worlds. Through psionics, humanity had the ability to have a part of them indestructible to many of these physical limits found in the galaxy.

Artifacts and Relics.
These serve as Power supply, Augmentations, and added resources for Mages and Psions. Unfortunately, they are rare. Radioactives are not that rare if you look at the Solar System and relative to the amount humans want to consume. Diamonds are not rare if you consider the Galaxy and that Pulsars have a Diamond Planet orbiting it. The rareity of the materials used for Psionics and Magery, is the kind that allows a galaxy of trillions of humans, a few hundred have trace amounts of these.

Psions and Mages cannot draw energy any other way except through Artifacts and Relics. The properties that make magic and psi indestructible and other-world worldly are also the same properties that prevent it from handling common mediums of energy like electricity and radiation directly.

So a Prince and Titled Nobles of a House, will have with them artifacts that allow them to access the powersupply of their suits to create special effects: gravitic, radioactive, and electromagnetic effects.

Cybernetics Vs Psions and Mages.
Cybernetics, even nano-tech level suffer the weaknesses of Tech lower than TL11. As I've mentioned that many kinds of radiation and limitations can disrupt Cybernetics. I'm not saying Cybertech is fragile, its just that there are trade offs to the amount of shielding and protection, Cybernetics and regular hardware can take in.

Its easier to make very powerful Cybernetics, but the trade off is their weaknesses and it is easy to measure technological power. Psionics and mages are wild cards.

Typical uses of Psionics and Magery.
Why use a Fireball when a grenade will do the job cheaper. The one thing Psionics and Magery is used extensively is body manipulation and augmentation. Princes have Powered Armor and Suits, you can only push these materials as far as their human body can go. So what they do is they create augmented skeletal, muscular, neural and cogntive systems.

So Mages and Psions are superhuman in speed and strength. With technology, they are incredibly powerful, indestructible and appearing omniscient. In game terms, they don't suffer much of the cognitive limitations regular people have in the fast pace of combat and emergencies.

A little Excerpt about Knights.
I mentioned that Knights ran Strongholds. These Strongholds had populations of commonly within the range of 90,000 to 130,000. They provided about a battalion (3,000) worth manpower of about 2-4 years of service. Sometimes these were a mixed force. They had ATVs, APCs, and sometimes Ultra-light aircraft etc... Wealthier Strongholds provided Tanks, Artillery, Air Support Craft. Since many of the worlds they warred in were very inhospitable, land dreadnaughts were common mobile HQ for every knight, with their sizes ranging those that can house a few platoon and a few APCs and ATVs, while other can house the whole battalion.

Ideally there should be a Stronghold building spreadsheet. Allows a GM to build "Vaults" (in reference to Fallout) in the manner one can build Manors in Harn Manor.

Through fealty, Knights gain:

Valuable Tech, supplies, trade network among other knights of the same house, alliances and aid.
Fostering (TL9 education)
The power and influence to maintain his absolute control over his Stronghold.

Growing up Gamer has some Odd side effects

2011-12-20T23:50:00.000+08:00

My urge to write about gaming has been building up for a while, Its come to a point that I'm ruining the notebook I have for home projects and tasks and filling it up with GM notes of how I'm going to create incentive for players to with talent* instead of intelligence and how I will play on the risk aversion of players by designing a random character generation system that potentially allow players to get more for their character create incentives for them to play outside their comfort zone**.

It makes me wonder who I am when I find myself writing about these stuff and it happens to be right beside the stuff I do for work. It really is so alien. It doesn't help that I can't remember the last game I was at, except the ones in 2010. (maybe I can find that game if I go through this blog, I would have blogged about it for sure). It also doesnt help that people who can relate are mostly online than people I see and meet at even a monthly capacity (the other people I know who can relate, I haven't seen in more than 7 months)

Looking into the future and understanding this real trait that really just makes me: me. This blog will be going on indefinitely until I change to someone I will not be able to relate to. Its not sentimentality that keeps me being me, It is this me that embraced innovation, change, and seeing the positive spin of life. If I change so much that, that part of me is gone maybe that's a kind of change I should work against. I guess I'm not the only one who believes this about themselves: that the gamer part of us is one of our best parts and we can't afford to lose that.

I have to thank a friend for giving the this thought and triggering this realization.

* All my Cognitive Studies won't let me see intelligence as a single ability. So i plan to impose a Tax and a Cap on IQ. Instead of 20cp, 100cp per point above IQ10 and cap it at 13. Next, I will double the cost of Talents. In the random generation i'll use the massive talent list.

** A random Character generation spreadsheet that allows players to quickly generate a character according to the setting demographics. The emphasis in realistic motivations and limitations: family, friends, social pressures, responsibilities and obligations, loved ones, etc. and try an alternative philosophical view of chance and fairness through such.

Byzantium in the 3rd Millenium

2011-12-19T23:02:00.001+08:00

My brother has been telling me abouthis Fading suns Game, GMed by Spielmiester. So I can't help butfantasize and re-imagine fading suns after all this time. This got me thinking a lot. I began writing about knights and how I would refine the ideas in light of what I have learned.

In summary I began thinking about the role of Knights in this Futuristic Dark Age. I began to write about how a futuristic Dark Age would look like, and how would does economic truths hold in this setting. It got really interesting, especially since a lot of my all my studies were applicable. It was re-imagining the world using a TL8 view of the future and trends, plus the lessons of a TL8 perspective.

One of the things that defined a knight is his/her creation and role. His role to his Stronghold and Household, and his role to his overlord and house. I got carried away defining relationships, the norms, the deviations and the general expectations of much of the setting. I guess its striking a balance of clarity without having to go into such great detail as to narrow the definition is where my errors and self edits got me bogged down.

As I re-imagined the setting, I stumbled on away to make science appear like magic and psionics. I all got inspired by my lessons in cognition and how mnemonics of sufficient complexity and effectivity can turn out like magic, activating deeply embedded and discrete technologically imbued abilities.

I stumbled on an interesting idea: Psions and Scions, as only great houses had access to the most potent of technologically imbued abilities and how marriage alliances served another role of trying to activate powerful dormant abilities. This idea is not new, but what is new is how I defined superhuman abilities as related to their technological equivalents.

What became an recurring economic element is that in the Fall of man, technological and information monopoly concentrated an incredible amount of power to a few individuals. In the Dark Ages, where humanity is at its weakest and most desperate state, suspicion and over-riding self-interest has made a stellar human expanse of much greater scarcity.

There are remnant technologies, types created to exist outside the infrastructure pyramid, in the form of Psionics and Magery, unfortunately humanity fell to the dark ages before this was spread and perfected. Humanity has to rebuild, but having experience greater levels of human tragedy and desperation, and bridge incredible technological gap and physical barriers.

Humanity spread out through the stars, occupying many inhospitable worlds that through a sophisticated trade, specialization, and technological network were made habitable. In the Dark Ages, much of humanity perished, when this infrastructure collapsed. Those that survived now live in underground strongholds, like the self-sustaining fiefs of old.

From the surviving megacorporations came the Great Houses Emerged. From what was the remnants of Stellar Order, a pan stellar organization that allowed the diversity of humanity to come together and have diplomatic and economic ties (like the UN), came the Stellar Church. The few democracies that survived, became the Guilds.

A very long hiatus

2011-12-09T10:55:00.001+08:00

Written Dec 6
My hiatus got much longer, I'm 32 and the family needs me so I had to put aside this for a long while. Don't get me wrong, never does an hour passes that I don't think of how best to do X in an RPG and how to incentivize players to take in more complicated and near realistic challenges.
Funny about being in the BPO industry, it's very much into performance statistics and with the broadening kind of services it gets into it a munchkin is pretty much at home with all these values.
Building my own web server for my own open RPG wiki.
So much of what I'm learning 200+ hours of not for credit courses on economics an history and my work in IT channeled my efforts to make build up my own mediawiki for my own game system.
I tried the free wiki services but it's too slow and chuck full of ads. The ads are a turn off, and I wanted to customize the theme. I also wanted an organized and easy to share approach.
The Wiki had the advantage of already implementing the creative commons I liked: share and share derivatives.
I was just finished reading up on getting a free domain when my last Ubuntu update crashed my GUI.
Right now we, the family, are waiting for someone and stuck for an hour. I had the chance so I'm blogging now.
I hope I can better organize and channel these energies.

In light of the Polls

2011-12-08T09:08:00.001+08:00

Hi all, In light of the Polls my post is going to be about being able to cram as much medieval history in your brain.
I've finished about 80+ hours of not-for-credit history courses thanks to the teaching company. I don't listen to music in my 2 hour commutes in the congested traffic of metro manila but these, I also listen to it when I do about 1 hour of chores. so at about 3 hours a day for about 2-3 years.

Also note that I try to apply what I learned in terms of gaming and framing it in a game. So gaming, the world building type and game prep, are like my practical exercises. Any GM would understand this is like a tip of an ice-burg amount of work.

Ok, one more thing about these lectures, they practice what they preach, they have a Game Theory and Critical thinking lecture and they applied the incentive's techniques to get you to buy. I've been subscribed for about 2-3 years so there always rolls around a massive discounted lecture of up to 70%. I get the pure MP3 download. Thanks to Tablets and Goodreader app its even more portable than ever before. So I get them at about $34 (thats 12 hour or 24 course lectures).

I still can't post much and I'm kinda still on hiatus until we are finish with work. its end of the year, strategic planning and budgeting so hope you understand.

Short Hiatus

2011-10-10T01:03:00.002+08:00

Hope to start posting more relevant material by November. This month of October is a critical period at work and I have to focus. Although, knowing myself, I will still be rambling a bit but because I'm very work/productivity oriented and feed back is that I get more hits with my gaming posts I am moving my work-like discussion to another blog.

Source of Shame. I'm considered ditching my Starship Builder Spreadsheet because its just too big a project and I should target projects that can be finished and "showed-off" in the window of 3-6 hours in a week (not counting planning). I'm not going to junk it entirely, but maybe go back to the drawing board and plan a better way to accomplish it. I'll find time to study Eric Smiths' spaceships generator spreadsheet for tips. (hopefully a useful tool every week, it might not give me hits but some gamer cred).

Target Project. My target 6 hour project is a household generator. I've already made some notes about what tables to use and what assumptions to make. Since I'm working with games and rules of thumb I will clearly state that I will be working with values that are up to 20% of the mark to make calculations easier.

Ex. one pound of uncooked rice is 1615cal, cooked its 590cal. I will round things off to 1/3 then +10% to get cooked rice calories. 450lbs of wheat per acre.

Its going to a bit off and rounded, but its easier to make calculations this way and leave the debate of precise accuracy to the particulars. maybe its a particular breed of rice or a particular region , or a particular method.

The Other Blog: Working the Game at http://workingthegame.blogspot.com/. Other than it is courtesy to give people what they should expect out of a gamer blog, I really want to go full tilt in my a blog where I can track my learning and plot/schedule what should be next in the horizon.

I'm a gamer to the core, and the way its beginning to manifest is in my non-gaming life, at work. I'm just bursting with stats and rules of thumb (and the reasons and details behind such assumptions), the way I would be bursting with GURPS or DnD stats. I feel like I've transformed some of my gamer habits into work-related habits.

Also, I want to be able to find an audience for my this passion. I found RPGamers to find a gaming audience, maybe I can find some fellow altruistic professionals who have that kind of gamer mentality or approach to work.

Currently Listening: Kenneth Harl's The World of Byzantium. This really makes me want to make a city building spreadsheet.

Public Domain and Copyright "Thicket"

2011-09-29T11:23:00.000+08:00

Quick Review, a copyright lasts for the Life of the Creator + 50 years, which was extended by the Sunny bono copyright extension act to 70 years.

So a work made by someone who died 70 years ago, 2011-70 = 1941 has a chance of going to public domain...

Conan is an example of matter where he can be considered public domain but there is long ongoing litigation that he's not because of the writers who made more stories about conan well after Howards death.

The practice is similar to when Xerox patented every little innovation in the Photocopier tech so that no one could ever compete, it was called a patent thicket and was considered an abuse of the patent law.

I'm not sure of the merits of allowing for these Copyright thickets encouraging copyright owners to continue to enjoy the franchise well past the conventional limit.

The Other Side blog: OSRIC Player's Guide - RETRACTION:

'via Blog this'

[Threads of Note] Man Without Disadvantages

2011-09-29T01:42:00.000+08:00

The baseline Character in GURPS opens up a can of worms as it can be interpreted as a psychopath. This moral or psychological discussion is an interesting look at what gamers think makes up being human.

Man Without Disadvantages - Steve Jackson Games Forums:

'via Blog this'

Spoiler: The discussion was open ended (well, it was to me). It happen to get more interesting when we look at dehumanization, but then it seemed to be left hanging.

Future Post. Just got back from a 12 hour shift at work. Clocked 7 hours of economics studies this week, and I'm itching to apply modern methodology of measure on to medieval and ancient civs.

I feel like you can just stat out a kingdoms with the formula for GDP, measure trade deficits or surplus, and tell a story through economic growth.

[Interesting discussion at the forums] GURPSify yourself Thread

2011-09-27T23:09:00.001+08:00

I think any attempt at creating yourself in GURPS winds up becoming a battle between ego and self-loathing that is not pretty to watchOriginally Posted by cosmicfish

GURPSify yourself - Steve Jackson Games Forums:'via Blog this'

Started an RPG shared material folder with Google Docs

2011-09-27T21:21:00.000+08:00

Just started to open up a folder in my Google Docs for sharing. I have to find the time to look for and dump worthwhile docs and material I've made over the years in this folder. Also plan to place nice treasures of game material found around the web, with sources and permissions properly referenced and asked, that way I can keep it someplace easy to access and go through.

You can find it in my lower right side after all the unmoving blogs in my blog list (i should get rid of some), after my blog archive, beside the "stuff I made".

The GURPS skill of Leadership, and thoughts about Roleplaying Leadership in Gaming.

2011-09-27T21:16:00.001+08:00

As promised mythoughts on leadership... if you would care to hear them.

LeadershipDefinition (read at your peril).

Disclaimer.Leadership is pretty complicated, and everyone has their own view ofhow it works or what it is. Ok, I can only give mine (Inspiredby Voice of San Diego: New Reporter Guidelines thanks toChemikazi for the source).

Leadership is partof the concept of reciprocity, where one party takens on the greaterburden of responsibility in return is given authority by those whofollow. So a leader has the ability to command as long as those whofollow feel that their own concers and interests are aligned with theleader.

Ideally leaderscut throught situations where the group faces a prisoners andvolunteers dillemma, these are occassions where rational selfinterest can burden a group instead of benefit it. Leaders are neededwhen coordination and discipline are needed to achieve goals thatcannot be otherwise achieved individually.

As to how leadersachieve the goals thrust upon her by her followers depends on hertools and approach. Still there is a skill to being a leader, apartfrom understanding her role and responsibility, there are techniquesthat take practice and situations to she learns to see and react toappropriately.

Lets go tothe Game Use.

Leadership ishandling those who follow you. Leadership does not act like an Auraeffect, its not something that works purely through the “projection”of a stature or a management perception. Its more of a mechanism forthe maintenance of credibility and perservation of loyalty.

As said before,Leadership is not an aura effect. The leaders doesn't just postureand radiate some kind of infectious affliction that causes people toact irrationally contrary to their self interest (for that use someother skill). Because it is a mechanism of maintaining one'scredibility and authority, it can only process a finite amount ofindividuals.

A leader, canmaintain her credibility to a number of individuals equal to herleadership score. Normally, a person without a leadership skill canmaintain IQ-5 or an average person can hold the confidence of 5people at default. Default level of individuals, assume the characterhas not spent any point in the skill, are not chosen by the playerbut are those individuals who would most likely listen to thischaracter. These typically be family and friends, and in oddsituations not family and friends but only one's own professionalcolegues or peers. The GM gets to choose, and sometimes it may not beobvious to the player or the character who'se loyalty they begin thegame with.

When a characterspends cp, then she can command the loyalty (by making herself morecredible) to inviduals she is choosing. This assumes the charactertries to exercise her leadership among these people. With one cp, acharacter gains 4 people more loyal to her (from default of IQ-5 toIQ-1 at 1cp) . Every additional level means the character can work tomaintain one other person.

Leadership is likebuilding a rapport, there is some capital to be spent (time, effort,compassion, empathy, and sometimes material resouces) whencultivating an individual. A character is free to realocate who shecultivates. As a character gets better as a leader, she can cultivatemore people at any one time.

A character withLeadership IQ+2 [8cp] can cultivate 6 people with the same amount oftime an IQ-1 [1] cultivates 4 people.

A character canchoose to stop maintaining the loyaty of an individual. Where thisrelationship goes depends on circumstance. If the character wants tomaintain this, then she will have to allocate some time and resourcesto maintain these.

The time theleader uses to maintain the loyalty of indivuals in game terms doesnot count in the time allocation. Consider the time used by theleader to cultivate her followers a “free” number of hours, thisdoes not affect her task sheet. Of course. Ideally the leader isfrequently exposed to these individuals, at least a few hours in aweek.

Effects ofLoyalty (or relationships).

To keep thingssimple, the GM can keep a loyalty score based on B518 loyalty ofhirelings (which uses the reaction table in B560). Players can givetheir own Loyalty score to the GM as part of roleplaying and to hintat the party dynamics. The GM can impose, the way she imposes aplayer to role-play a situation, that the player role-play theeffects of the other PC's leadership.

Every session theGM can ask the players how events of the session affect their LoyaltyScore sheet (a list of the other players and how they feel aboutthem).

Among Players,Loyalty and Leadership is very interesting thing to role-play andwatch. Its where a lot of drama can be found and a lot of interstingdecisions make for a very engaging story.

Among NPCs,Leadership is a handy tool to survive or to thrive in a situation byallowing the player to have sentient assets help her in overcomingthe challenge. Of course these are not merely material assets to bediscarded, these are sentient assets.

Leaders aren'talways Awesome.

A character can beloyal to a leader out of respect (the most basic requirement). Othercharacters can admire, be enamored, trust, faith in the leader.Leaders aren't always necessarily awesome in the eyes ofthose who follow her commands.

SacrificingCredibility or Political Capital.

Leaders who damagetheir credibility can incur a lasting penalty to their leadershipscore. Credibility is hard to recover, because once trust is brokenit sets a precedent that cannot be easily ignored or overlooked.

Betreyals are verydamaging to the character, despite how skilled she is as a leader.Such an act can make such huge investments of social/politicalcapital worthless in a blink of an eye. The more a leader hasinvested in people, the more he or she stands to gain (or to lose) ifthis betreyal is discovered.

Other ways ofgetting people to do what you want them to do.

BatteredPerson Syndrome is basically commanding through fear. I'mnot sure if I can recommend Intimidation to be used like Leadership,but instead of cultivating respect or credibility it cultivates fear.Although I don't see any problem of using it for such.

Note that now andthen, in order to maintain the effect, let us call the leader as the"Tyrant", has to beat up the person or persons randomly toput them in a perpetual state of confusion and paranoia. Unlikeleadership, there is a long drawn out contest of wills in thissituation.

One cannot be aTyrant and maintain her credibility as a leader without segregatingthe two spheres of people.

Other than fear,Lies and Confusion is a ways of creating and maintaining loyalty.I would imagine Fast Talk would be used forthis tool. Again like Intimdation, the spheres cannot mix (if done socredibility is put to question). Similar to intimidation there is along drawn out contest of wits, instead of wills, in this situation.If we were to follow the study of the book The wisdom ofcrowds for every other additional individual, (since skilljust increases the amount of people to be tricked without increasingthe amount of time to maintain status quo), there is a +1 bonus foreveryone to their IQ roll to see through the deceptions/or thefudginess of the argument.

Some notethe Game Definition and the Real World Definition.

Game definitioncan be twisted and has loop holes to begging to exploited. If takenas dogma, then it can be argued either way because it is after all ansimple and imperfect definition created for the purposes of a pushingher

Google Maps of Ancient Rome

2011-09-26T12:38:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Douglas Cole in the sjforums, where I found it.

I should be able to trace and run the Reconquest of Italy by Belisarius with this map.

OmnesViae: Tabula Peutingeriana - Itinerarium Romanum:

'via Blog this'

GURPS Skills Administration and Leadership

2011-09-26T10:53:00.002+08:00

If you look at the GURPS description of Administration and Leadership, it is the description that barely scratches the surface of the concepts they represent in the real world.

Administration is a summed up as Paper work. Sadly this is very cosmetic understanding of the value of "paper work" or what falls under paper work. I would push the meaning farther, particularly taking stuff that I've learned in management. Between Leadership and Administration, Administration is Organization while Leadership is cohesion.

There is something about these two skill that must be taken of note, they are passive. What I mean passive is that, these skills are automatically in play and always acted upon by the Characters. A character with a high administration is organized, he or she will be easy to understand, will have the documents and data needed when the circumstance requires it, and has very good habits when it comes to keeping things organized in work.

In GURPS, you roll Administration to get the right "paper work" and sort your way out of the "Bureaucracy". Administration is also a social skill, allowing you to deal with bureaucrats. Although there is nothing in these two uses, the logic kinda twists a bit. Why does paper work mastery allow you to be chummy with a bureaucrat? Its really about procedure and using the right channels, if this is really what Administration is about then there is some conflicts, particularly the previous iteration of the skill in 3e, where it was bureaucracy.

In my experience, the skill of using the right channels and forms, and following protocol is found in Profession (specify), NOT in general Administration. These maters are very different per industry, profession, and group and Administration is a general skill that carries over different industries. (Although I would emphasize as a GM that admin has a familiarity penalty equal if you don't have a Professional skills of 12 or higher).

In my opinion as a Passive Skill, Administration measures the workload you can take on. In a 40 hour work week, it is how efficiently you can cram stuff to do for work. The only time its not a passive skill is when it is used as a Monthly professional roll for a Management Character.

A character with high Administration has the habits and professional ability to handle a variety of different topics without being distracted or having to turn his head around too much when the new problem or tasks is so different from the last. Or, the character with a High Administration can identify all the key tasks and allocate enough hours to succeed in them sufficiently.

Basically in a 40 hour (depends in the character's work week, some character can have 50 to 60 hours work week because of their own trade offs.), when you have very differing projects or tasks you can give these a 50% time penalty. In a given week, every different project from the one the character has the greatest familiarity takes on a 50% time penalty. Admin-5 is the number of tasks the character can bring down the penalty to 25%.

Edit: changing the formula so that every point counts, instead of every 2 points. to show an investment of 2 or 4cp equal to 800hours to 1600hours of practice has an impact. Basically Admin is the skill that allows you to discount the time it takes to prepare for a new task, a no. of times a week equal to Admin-5. Time to prepare is at the default 50% the time it takes to perform the action, following the rule of thumb it takes 1/3 of one's time to prepare and plan given the entire budget of an action. With Admin, you discount that by 50%.

So you have 6 key tasks in a week that would normally take up 4 hours. since you have to break your momentum to do a different task, call a new set of people, read a new set of data and research output, deal with a new set of benchmarks etc... every task from the first is going to take 50% more time. without administration or at default, a character with IQ 12, which is Admin-7, can only reduce the time for 2 tasks. So 2 tasks will only take 5 vs 6 hours (10 hours, 30 hours left), then the character will spend 6 hours on the other tasks, which basicaly makes for a total of 7 tasks in the 40 hour week no time to spare. If the character fails in one of the task, this task might eat up more time or has to be done again from scratch.

A character with Admin-12 can have 7 tasks eat up 5 hours instead of 6 hours. Thats 35 hours for 7 tasks, and 5 hours left of free time. If there was a 7 task expectation per week, then the character has 5 hours to spare. Consider it a buffer for failing in some of the week's tasks.

if you want to detail the character's actions and duties, check out the words per minute for writing, reading/researching, and composing of complex subject mater. Meetings and team discussions fit the 4 hour rule because thats the typical mental endurance average for individuals, after that amount of time information input becomes less efficient (admin determines the number of participants in such a discussion equal to Admin-5 that do not suffer any penalty). two-to-one discussions half the amount of time, 2 hours is enough to cover all the topics pertinent in most working conditions.

Admin is the skill set you can use to describe real world management skills. Although in the real world, people that organized are rare, even amongst the high positions. Usually Secretaries or Personal Assistants have Admin at 12 and above. The secretary who basically "manages" your work load to get you to be as efficient as possible is more common than a leader having the skill in high marks. In my experience most of everyone who has enough skill to be organize to get by in their work has only spent 1cp (enough to negate the 4 points penalty of default). The reason why No-one kills/has awesome stats, in Admin is that there are trade-offs and its cheaper to higher a secretary/PA to be the one organizing things. I could be increasing my merchant skill or professional skill (which more directly affects income in some cases).

In TV Donna, Harvey's Secretary in Suits, is one of those characters that have a High Admin. Since the settings is a bit cinematic reality, she is at the 13-14 level. Characters in Burn Notice has high admin, by the amount of paper work and work they fit in the few days of an episode. In the Good Wife, Carey Agos has a very high admin, allowing him to produce the most billable hours for the company. Harvey, of suits, also has a high admin if the 36 cases a day average of his work experience in the DA's office is any indication of high work output. I can't say Mike of Suits has a high admin, his Photographic memory and 100% comprehension speed reading* just makes him a monster in getting work done.

*reason why i find it very cinematic, plus the misunderstanding of how real photographic memory works.

... whoah i rambled on about Admin. I'll try to cover Leadership in another post.

Critiques are for Blog Posts, not for forums

2011-09-26T00:21:00.000+08:00

I realize the best forum for game system critiques are not in the forums. The product is already made and done, there is no going back and most of the time the changes only matter to the individual playing style (regardless of realism or standards of simulations- those things don't count against fun). Blogs are less In-your-face, so its easier to ignore stuff you down want to read in such a medium.

Although Forums should be, theoretically, an open discussion sometimes the nuances of the medium has some drawbacks in creating a more productive/constructive byproduct.

Shiphandling.
Although I have a critique regarding a skill, and thats Ship handling. By the description and from my own studies on management and leadership shiphandling is wierd, its the "magical" ability to keep a ship organize and running. I say magical because it fails to describe itself well or realistically. Anyone who'se lead a team and studied management knows many of the key concepts carries over to other kinds of work, industries and professions.

Most of the key skills of management, which is found in organizing (Administration) and leadership, seasoned with the experience and intuitive grasp of how things work in this industry with Profession: (specify). The profession skill is like Area Knowledge, you know how to navigate the pitfalls and the problems that comes in your profession. If you want to increase your pay, it is a mastery of the "game" or the industry's little quirks, and this is a task for your professional skill.

I realize that it shouldn't be shiphandling that is very high in a captain or an officer, its Profession: Shipman/Mariner/Spacer etc. The More senior someone is, and got a pay increase because of goon performance thats has something to do with his Professional Skill. Heck it makes more sense to junk shiphandling and spend those points in Profession.

Profession as a Social skill. Other than savoir-faire (mariner/spacer/shipman etc.), Profession is the skill one uses to do a Professional Courtesy. As ones intuition regarding their job gets better, they can empathize more with others who are in the same circumstance/job.

My Business Philo.
I do not like Antagonizing anyone at work, even if there is observation that supports my view that someone is not pulling their weight. Once you start conflict, it has a life of its own and eats up a significant part of your time and effort. I'm not advocating being a "pussy" at work but in gamer terms I use: Savoir-Faire Business, Diplomacy, Carousing, when dealing with problems with people.

When I have the time, and busy people don't, I launch my own investigation guided by some tools and people to keep things objective and above board. Although i keep the investigation discrete, I make sure I work within the limits of my authority and take careful note.

What has this got to do with gaming? Well its a personal protocol. once you start a fight, you lose. Its like that Dick rating regarding internet arguments. There is no buts about it, it doesn't even matter if its the other party that started it. As soon as you act on it, you lose, because the medium of discourse has shifted and you are at an arena.

Fighting is exciting, there is that suspense and risk. But in real life, we learn we settle things out of court and in calm and civil discussions where we make the most success. The funny thing about "settling" things and going to personal meetings and hashing things out like this is that this is where the real work and success making comes from. This is where the game really happens.

Basically, when it comes to the challenges of a Free Merchant, just like BPO biz with its high risks and rewards, as well as high paying and potentially nasty customers, it helps to be armed with the knowledge: the fight, the sale, or the ship is not the game. Maneuvering, the way cunning entrepreneur should, is the game and the stuff that would keep one by the seat of their pants.

Self Control in the Real World as opposed to the Game world.
Having personally dealt with criminals (rapists, arsons, swindlers, and white collar criminals) because of the incredibly lucrative opportunity the BPO business creates I have to say that a humanist sense of morals or ethics does not help one to stomach the tactics and modus operandi of such scum.

When you are being played, anyone with a sense of honor or reciprocal courtesy may keep himself under control but will definitely lose 1FP to anxiety (Or I'd like to call a Reserve Point). Heck, stress regarding the circumstance affects us all in the different grades of fear. Some fear being subtle and eat on one's psyche by making them unable to rest well, strain their relationships, or eat up a lot of effort trying to get the disgust and aversion under control. If possible some quirks manifest when these fears arrise, or low point mental disadvantages (procrastination, contrariness, confusion, compulsions, etc. )

Self Control is a funny thing, some parts of us are easy to control when we have a full mental reserve. Some parts of us also work better when given free reign, and thus work better when there is insufficient mental reserve. The way alchohol can help one have fun, bringing down inhibitions can get right down to what cathartic discussion or act is needed by the individual.

Making such Stress or Anxiety known or part of the circumstance enriches the game experience. It allows us to experiment with methods to deal with it, in the safety and positive attitude of the gaming experience. A system of rewarding player contribution, would help make things appear more common place the way it does so in the real world. But what reward can you give a player for being scared?

well, first off acknowledging the risks and the debilitating affects of fear is basic role-playing. The GM's sense of realism doesn't have to be the one to point out, an average person would be tearing their hair out in frustration in this circumstance (or going to their quick fix habit). If the GM were to give a reward, it would be to allow dealing with these matters allow the PC bring up their Will, IQ, Empathy etc. Coping abilities/skills that shouldn't be left to Point rewards to be raised.

Too bad Self-Control is so tricky, game systems really can't deal with it adequately without bogging everything down.

GT:ISW spreadsheet update: formats

2011-09-24T23:00:00.000+08:00

Spreadsheets have a problem with formatting. The way it looks in my LibreOffice set up, may not be how it will look like when someone else checks it out with their MS office excel or Open Office Calc. I'm not aware of the "best practice" in terms of formatting tool-kit for RPGs or interactive "worksheets". Right now, I'm very open to suggestions.

For the sake of practicality and ease of understanding, I'll probably adopt a professional open standard for layout or format to these things when I can find it.

If you know of any please let me know.

Other than the format, the spreadsheet is getting there. I'm at Step 5: Drives, the first part: Maneuver Drives. Originally there is a lot of guesswork and there are no guidelines. Before playing around with different configurations ate up a lot of time. I had to go through all the existing ship designs in the book (which had some internal consistency problems) and make up my mind how many M-Drives without a clue what the final Accel is going to be (and it needs to greater than 1G after being fully loaded).

To make things easier, like what I did in the very start of the worksheet, I gave benchmarks and it was based on something substantial. So I gave a theoretical final mass based on how most ship masses turned out depending on their type: civilian, armed civilian, heavily armed civilian, light Warship, heavy warship, and capital ship. Again, there are very sparse trends which gives very little to go on, and the warships build favor "beam vs beam" instead of missile combat.

This should make the decision pretty straight forward, about the time to scan the options and reflect on the concept behind the decision.

Oh yeah, I gave armor some benchmarks also. I looked at all the ships and their armor. I also made some tables regarding average damage per weapon (and as there is more dice, the mode gets closer to the median) so I used these values against expectations of how the ship should fare given their roles. This also should speed up the decision making process.

I remember the original 3e visual basic(?) Gurps Traveller starship creation made had no benchmarks, nor notes what should be there and how much of it. So ships I made varied widely and failed to consider alot of practicalities. the "doctrine" the way things are done should always be accessible, IMO, even the best of us forget. If the Doctrine Changes, add those notes as well and to why.

I mean I see why the habit is a big deal at work, but being a bit more obsessive compulsive in GMing, it should be a natural thing to do when improving a process.

I guess I failed to Toot my own horn, when I was fixing the spreadsheet. one of the obsessions that derail me is improving on stuff constantly. The benchmarks and notes is important in making any decision.

Burying the Hatchet with Missiles.
I can't seem to let go of this damn bone of the missiles. I'm swinging pro and con like a pendulum. I really want to fix the damn missile system cause its been bugging me so badly.

My preliminary notes are overwhelming. I'm just correcting the internal inconsistencies with regards to missiles:
1st - There really should be a Mil-grade and Civ-grade set of missiles.
2nd - Detail the difference in performance of TL8 to TL11 missiles
3rd - Allow for sub-series within a TL to have improvements. Even if these bonuses are just 5% to 10% improvement or worth +1 in some dice roll, if not the attack roll. As long it does not violate the consistency of TL leaps of improvement.
4th - Detail the dedicated computer systems and the powerful las-comm system that guide each missile through the edges of sensor range (14 hexes and beyond). This is important when determining what has changed since the TL improved.
5th - Special Warheads: Sensor or EW Drones, Jammers, EMP, or EW-Penetrator and how they affect the game rules.
6th - how ISW Vilani missile Doctrine works and why it is very formidable. The Vilani Missile Doctrine was very good, it was just so good there was no point to improving things. How Terran doctrine shook things up for a while and why, and how missiles came back to fashion at TL11* (this part is for me).
7th - Automated systems and Naval Combat. this has to be addressed IMO.

Gaming, A Constructive Hobby

2011-09-23T00:33:00.000+08:00

Work has stopped me from doing my usual projects, and I miss doing them. Although I can play Urban Terror or lose my self in a computer game, I would rather be world building or GM tool building.

Last year, I could lose 6-10 hours a week playing either Civ 5, or dividing those hours to multiple days of the week playing CounterStrike. Now, that I learned to spreadsheets (because of work) and I can make better GM tools, I happen to be too busy to make something more worthwhile.

Productivity is a nagging compulsion, that is more about who I think I am than the economic reasons behind them. I feel guilty wasting my time with an action with nothing to show for, or something that doesn't built into something greater.

Gaming, to me is the root of a lot of my key Life skills. Particularly problem solving and research skills. Not to mention being a GM makes me a bit more particular than the people around me about layout, presentation and details. So most of the things I do related to gaming, is the whetstone by which I hone valuable work skills.

But, there is a difference between work and gaming. I would rather be making more stuff for gaming than work, if I had a little time to spare. If I wanted to do work, in such little free time there would be something seriously wrong with me. (assuming that I had all my other responsibilities and obligations in check, and I am able to balance all the other parts of my life).

Although I do notice that my game writing gets pretty too work-TMI sometimes. I guess you can chalk it up to Escalation. My game obsession has to, somewhat, escalate as my work complexity escalates as well. Challenges has to get harder, as ones appreciation gets broader or more nuanced. I guess its part of getting older, in a way I want to take the game with me up to those complicated reaches life and work gets to.

Cant wait for the next time I have enough free time to finish my damn personal gaming projects. When work accomplishment is to hard to come by (with all the frustrating real world problems), Gaming gives that sense of accomplishment.

GURPS: Teaching-12

2011-09-18T11:37:00.000+08:00

You have 2 professionals who are both highly skilled. They can command a wage of Php100,000 a month. Both are very hard working, and will pull off 40 hours plus 15 additional hours worth of his own time for projects for the company.

Now take one of these 2 professionals, and say that he has the ability to train and teach others his attitude and his skill set. What is his worth?

In the real world, a skilled professional asset that can efficiently self-replicate is worth more than just his or her core competence skill.

in gaming, like in GURPS, a skill-12 in teaching for a Ship Board Traveller Naval or Merchant officer has no impact. Nor is an amicable or easy to work with attitude. Especially an infectious and positive attitude that naturally raises morale and approaches challenges optimistically.

Dillema of the Skilled Professional. Any professional that meets your skill criteria for your opening perfectly will cost 50-200% more than a professional you cultivated within your own ranks. You can ignore this in a medieval game, but I don't think you can ignore this is a modern or sci-fi game with modern-like standards of employment and competence.

the Open Source Attitude. Professionals that have a shared sense of community, those who also are ready to share their skills grant their group the ability to quickly meet the manpower and skill set requirements despite the many challenging tasks they have to juggle.

Its an environment that seeks to be near homogeneity in capability, allowing people to constantly improve (if there is any opportunity to self improve). Interestingly, in a well managed group, they are very open to both skilled and unskilled new members.

Those who can contribute new and different skill sets are worth while for the diversity and versatility they inject, while the unskilled new recruits bolster their number giving upward mobility as the group seeks to organize and fully utilize and create redundancies for their responsibilities.

For a game. the new skill maintenance rules will be coming up in one of the new gurps products. Although, if you are aware of the shifting and training in your own work experience, then making up your own rules and skill maintenance spreadsheet should be no problem, not to mention you are basing it from your own observation and best practice of an empirical method (if your company is into that sort of thing).

Such skill maintenance is an accounting of all the hours and tasks in a day in the life of the character. The skill to do this is valuable at work, because technically it is the understanding of how to create a job loading accounting sheet.

These meticulous accounting of character's time and efforts is one of those key underlying details that have strategic importance to the game. It is where you are at what point of time. given the rules of concentrated action, you can only spread yourself so thinly and Murphy gets to pick and choose the worse time to show up.

Fire Fighting vs Planned Action. Now these Ideals don't measure up to the urgency of a situation that is called Fire Fighting. Some GM may think causing the PCs to Fire fighting is part of the fun. This advice is not for the GMs that never let the PCs to work through situations with deliberation and planning. On the otherhand, and the other extreme Players or GMs that don't have Murphy play an active role in their game stretches the believably and diminishes the level of challenge in the game.

My Boss asks me to be professional, always confronting and verifying a situation that would disrupt a working relationship. I realize that from that advice springs a wealth of Role-playing opportunities. The drama and interesting aspect of internal conflict between characters is the little stuff that can make the gaming experience more engaging.

Growth, economies of action, and variable of so many situations can be an interesting seed for kick-ass adventure.

My Excuses. Why my ISW spreadsheet is delayed

2011-09-12T18:00:00.001+08:00

My Excuses. Why my ISW spreadsheet is delayed
I feel guilty of not finishing my ISW spreadsheet around this week. I do have a lot of real wold escuses why, but the few hours of free time I had was lost doing the missile volume and stat calculations you see posts back.

The reason why the missiles really bothered me is that Its just really weird that there is just one missile for civilian and military applications. That was driving me bonkers everytime I think of it.

Will I let this go by, only to have to fix my spreadsheet again when someone comes around to fixing it? I know missile doctrine is TL10 in ISW universe, but the Honorverse has that strong impression on me that sees direct energy weapon combat as relic of scifi doctrine past and guided missiles as the present we should adopt.

Even now as I write this I'm getting that powerful urge to spend X more hours fixing the missile system. Uggg! Fark that, I'll make that flawed but automated ISW ship design system because I want to accomplish that then move on to World Building. In World Building I have grand designs and more universal niche to fill. A tool for every medieval GM to detail their World economics and population.

The hope that I can detail Entire Region of about 2,000sqkm in about 6 hours (will try to include a project process recommendation and time and motion study). The ability to generate the entire roster and population of a village, with all its problems, needs, wants and conflicts. With every person detailed and easily found in the document. the tools to quickly details and make real all the persons found in the characters surroundings.

The last part should be my mantra for getting the ISW spreadsheet done. Anyway, will estimate be done by the end of Sept. a lot of Mega Reports due this week and IT processes and policies overhaul, documentation and detailing this week and the next. I should say end of sept is an Ideal.

Sent from my iPad

*************

A more open game system. The problem of automation.

2011-09-12T12:21:00.001+08:00

A more open system.
There are many game systems and toolkits I can automate with just a spreadsheet, of course it doesn't mean I should automate them all. Even if I automate them, there is that problem of copyright. I can't just share it completely, because that would lead to some legal problems and give the copyright owners a hard time.
Reflecting, it's not that hard making toolset based on business tool and skills I learned from work. The BPO industry is one of the metric obsessed industries out there, with a life sucking ability DnD3.x vampires would envy
After I finish with my traveller ship building spreadsheet (which I resolved with: to hell with system flaws get this over with so that you can have a another notch on your belt), I will make a different world building system from gurps and harn with my notes open via google docs. I'll also get a creative commons appendix included in the document. the system will be more based on my economic and managing process notes and learning.
As for character creation, which is another tools set when I go from macro to micro, I plan to use man-hours as a character building block. Although I will have to find ways to scale it in 5s, 10s, 100s, and 1000s. Average human will be the baseline, and I'll cite my sources so people are free to substitute assumptions. I will also use more scientific and thus cannot-be-copyrighted terms. It might describe the character with a lot of mood-kill terms but people can just substitute the terms in their own game.
There is just so much to automate to make gaming life easier but one cannot just go around breaking copyrights. So a creative commons system should be around, one that is empirical that way anyone can use while adding flavor to taste.
Sent from my iPad

Synergy: A world economic relationship generation matrix and a game programer

2011-09-09T19:28:00.001+08:00

My friend is what they call a "hybrid" a network and a programmer. He's self taught in graphics programming and a strong open source advocate. Tools we have in common is a working knowledge of Blender.

Since this is a blog I get to post my daydreams and my hopes, without having to put so many of the realistic and pessimistic qualifiers I'd have to in "the real world". So...

Currently we are doing some work together as our company has finally begun moving towards open source and GPL toolset. Economic considerations is a very good motivator to go Open Source, because most of the market selling Licenses here sell it at outrageous prices and the growing trend of Open Source Self sufficiency is growing.

So we were always in talks together of helping each other making a game. He's got the graphics and game engine working mostly already. The problem is mostly the lack of people as skilled as he is in doing the programming.

Where we make a good synergy is that I'm crazy about world building and an economically interwoven world. The obsession with the economics is with making a world where ever single part generated in not out of a vacuum. There are many interlinking and layered sets of relationships: in the economic, social, and political levels. Thats why I'm trying to figure out how to generate towns with detailed income statements and, if possible: balance sheets, that show economic relationship.

A world where you can't just kill a lot of people, steal a lot of stuff, or move things around without messing up the equilibrium and starting over again.

The cool thing I find about how realistic this system can be is because, in itself there is a story. There is no Deus-Ex-Machina or no GM conspiring to make things work against your or work for you. there is that indifference that makes what the PC's achieve their own and to no one else's credit.

A game where the player gets to choose who he can be but lets the roll of the die place him in a circumstance without conspiracy of a "greater" meta power or being. he/she will have either fortune or misery and can play the game making the best of what they have, with the possibility of exceeding expectations given the station they begin with.

The awesome thing of a World building matrix is that you can keep building a world that makes sense, or be suddenly come to posses a Character randomly with a new set of goals motives and dreams and try to figure out how best to achieve these.

Weird, this sounds like an extreme exercise in empathy... phftt!

Anyway, I'm surprised that there is a usefulness to the economic engine I want to create, that is not only for myself. that someday there may be a game out there which can create detailed worlds with people which feel more real because of how its bound to the different kinds of relationships and that there is a world that interacts with the player, not just physically but socially.

[World Building] Getting ADD with too many options

2011-09-03T21:04:00.003+08:00

So I learned a bunch of new and useful skills when it comes to spreadsheets, now more seems possible and I'm getting more distracted because work is getting harder.

Another Dream World Building Tool.
Ok I got Harn Manor and it is really tempting to make the World Builders Ultimate Spreadsheet. I know how to do it now, in fact I'm tempted to spend 4 hours in the a trance building a program outline. Most of Everything needed to build a Manorial Estate/Fief can be made with Harn Manor. Worse/Best, (worse cause its distracting, but its actually good news that's distracting) it has the necessary foundation to build Cities.

Harn Manor makes villages and their manors. ISW has trade and trade relationship rules that can be scaled and tweeked to fit a TL1 to TL4 Economics. These create Trade flow stats, allows me to convert high Trade nexi into a Town. A very high Trade Nexus into a City or a Capital.

Another Distraction is Google Sketch up and Low Tech Companion.
I had a little project at work where we needed AutoCad count the furniture in a given floor plan for pricing. I helped generate the solution, because of my improving Spreadsheet skills. Basically, there is a plug in for AutoCad that allows for all its assets be listed down. It is a relatively simple script to generate a txt file output, and a script to update that output file (saving over the last one). It is also a simple matter to generate a macro, to import that txt file and another macro to organize the data, then another macro to create costing report based on our price list and all the modifiers. (a product that does this is being sold for $700 each seat)

Then there is the possibility that sketchup can do something similar. Sketchup can probably generate some reports, depending if you name the objects and group it properly. Then it is a simple but laborious matter of allowing the spreadsheet to organize than calculate the results using Low Tech Companion 1 to 3 rules.

Then just use Google Docs to store all these different files and structures to share... Distracting.

Learning More Spreadsheet Functions

2011-09-01T12:21:00.003+08:00

Spreadsheets are a wonderful GM's tool. Its weird that only late in life that I have begun trying to learn all I can about it. I guess its because the technical aspect of the game, the details, are one of the main things that help me in my way of playing stay in character and fully visualize the world/setting.

I finally learned to use Data Validation (Data>Validity, choose Cell Ranges). I also learned how to use the Name box, and understand how it works to simplify writing data ranges.

Data Validations > Cell Ranges, is an easier way to make a cell create a drop down list. You just make a table (like the MANY tables in RPG games), select the table and rename it in Name Box so that you won't be having to type in cells and that it will be static (with the $ signs needed to keep it that way) when you cut and paste.

Thanks to DC and Ken, I learned to use Index and Match functions to create Drop Down lists that can affect the other. Although I had help figuring it all out from The Document Foundation users mail archive regulars Adreas and Tom*

The difference between using data validation and Forms>List box is that Forms can be made to activate macros. I learned to make some basic macros through recording my actions and steps. I would rather learn to script, but I don't have any time for that given the state of business and my obligations and responsibilities.

Collaborative GM tools
With Zoho, Google Docs, Live Documents and many other free collaborative document tools, I haven't heard of any GM enclave that shares and collaborates with these tools to make more of them or make them better. If there is a group, I'd be glad to meet and join them.

In a GURPS forum thread about such, replies are about the need for combat tracking and calculations. Which is contrary to my experience, I need the calculators in making preparations and ad-hoc vistas and opponents if the players become too unpredictable.

I hope you can perform data validation in the cloud documentation programs. I have yet to check it out and my internet is quite buggy right now**. With google docs you can keep many versions of the same spreadsheet in a collaborative folder, then copy paste the best in a mutually agreed on generic or allow anyone to cut and paste one, since you can describe the spreadsheet and allow other gms to pick and choose then customize when needed.

Why spreadsheets?
The nice thing of learning more of spreadsheets, It is easily excused for work purposes... which truly it also is. We are making several automated processes through automating the documentation. Our business model is so flexible: a mix of products, services, sales, managing vendors, Biz continuity programs, and so many combinations and iterations it gets dizzying and hell for our Finance department. If there were as a "spreadsheet to rule them all" or some minor spreadsheet forms to help, it would save valuable time, possibly work days in a project. We are a BPO and IT operator, builder, trainer, incubator, leassor, and soon to be network (cisco and juniper) outsourced training and certification for various universities, and Telcom partner its hard to get it all straight.

Already showing one of our departments how to use macro recording did wonders (our cabling, electrical and security systems engineers, they have proactive methods that love organization). Next is if give training for our technical secretaries to use Data validation and Cell Ranges to make our pricing more modular and flexible, allowing us to bringing detailed proposals to the clients door in a days before the competition.

Using forms allow us to make only Parts of a Contract Editable, and speeds up negotiation. even with record changes, sometimes they intentionally cut and paste entire sections of the document and Change Tracking just gets screwed up.

My favorite use is giving some of our more difficult clients, those forced on us, a whole lot of math so they can't be too much of an @$$ at a negotiating table. Ever negotiate with someone who THINKS they know your business and super low-balls and promises BS. The BS this one client was dishing was giving us projects into unstable dictatorships of central africa where UN and International agencies rate as a risk to life of Filipino visitors (a country with no political clout). Hanging central africal like a carrot, dangling that possibility... disgusting lie and a potential for human tragedy.

*hope they eventually move to a forum format, I get 10-40 emails a day from them and Digest won't let me interact very well with the discussions.

**calling the admin of our bldg to get it fixed with our Internet provider later.

Modern Economics appreciation by Gaming.

2011-08-31T10:58:00.001+08:00

In a GURPS discussion about jobs, I just realized some interesting parallels about Modern and Ancient Economics.

One interesting parallel is how Government Hoarding of Gold is similar to the Central Bank raising interest rates. Choking the money supply can increase its buying power to an extent, farmers who have saved up coinage can substitute cash for owed labor.
How it is not the purity of the metal used for coinage but the over supply of the coinage that causes rapid inflation. How an army, like that of Frederic during the Crusades moved through Byzantium carrying so much gold and spending it in these byzantine cities increased the overall supply of gold and thus raising the prices of the goods they sought.
As an example the historic inflation of gold when spain brought it over from the new world. Prices soared yet the gold was pure.
How Kings, princes and lords and their monetary policy work much like a government. With lords passing on the complaints of farmers as inflations makes the cost of living much less tolerable. Where the prince, king or emepror has to make declarations for a certain good like grain (e.g. 1 solidus for 1 modii, 1 penny for 2lbs of bread) just to ease the injustice and abuse.
Also note how slow this processes is compared to modern times, unlike today where there is tracking of inflation and proactive measures in place. By the time corrective action comes by the emperor's decree much human suffering has occurred already. A hardworking freefamer would have become a serf, or his daughters sold off, his sons run-away to the cities. An entire village can be abandon, depending on how merciful or cruel its owners.

One lesson to take to the game table is that, when there is an event, inflation goes up. Depending on the kind of event: Low Yield Harvest, Bumper Crop, War, Famine, etc. In a bumper crop where farmer s and villages benefit from their greater supply of goods vs the actual "monetary cost" going for them. Farmers can accumilate coin in such an event. In war, famine, building projects and low yielding harvest, inflation goes up because goods become scarcer thus their prices goes up.

When the largest and most powerful institution starts a lot of spending bringing about a larger supply of money, this raises the cost of goods but also raises the quality of life in the immediate vicinity. Suddenly there is money to spare. Soldiers paid begin having money to spend. In the heirarchy of needs, other needs start getting attention as well as other vices.

Inflation and Escalation is a standard in a world in flux because some where out there a good or commodity increases/decreases in supply. Going back to "golden age" levels of inflation doesn't happen without preventing necessary change. This change can be technology, climate, the titter of the scales of social justice, and ebb and flow of population.

Economics being taken forgranted.

In a previous discussion with my wife, one interesting thing about economics is how it is taken for-granted because it is so difficult to measure and predict. Even when studies prove that the economists are statistically wrong all the time (from her CFA book), these same critics still rely on the system they say is wrong. I think they have yet to isolate what is "wrong" and their definition of "wrong". Sometimes any actions/policy is good as it keeps us moving forward and not repeating what is bringing more harm.

The discussion was brought about by her CFA lectures that have many critical things to say about economics... but fails to provide any useful suggestions, recommendations or proposals. A rule of thumb with criticism, if the critic cannot imagine a solution or how to come to a solution then it ceases being constructive or a critical thinking exercise¹

That rule of thumb is pretty useful in determining how well-meaning vs conscious or unconcscious malice in a criticism. That fact, that there is no useful forward moving suggestions makes me find such criticism useles. Its like complaining about something no-one else can prevent or stop, where there is no constructive-ness in the action like measring and assessing the situation, it's just a waste of time and not even worth note.

My opinion differs greatly because my historical appreciation is enhanced by gaming. The first example that point out how costs were arbitrary and economics helped fix a lot of things we take forgranted today was in a lecture about Levantine Empires². On how slavery through debt was epidemic, successive civiliazations made many laws to prevent such from happening again and how those laws can be found in Islam. Same such problems happened in other cultures, where the costs of living these individuals thought they could pay was so flawed they ended up in perpetual servitude and slavery³.

Its easy to imagine a world without our conveniences when you role-play these worlds often or play them out in your head as a GM.

1The Art of Critical Decision Making by Micheal Roberto

2Empires before Alexander

3 Some forms of slavery is more sustainable for an individual when they can take advantage of the buffers and defenses of a larger and self sufficient household. Note that in modern concepts of social order, one can achieve the same buffers under a more liberated relationship among equals, in a community. But such social order requires a large amount of wisdom, philosophy, and awareness of individual rights.

ISW missile breakdown and other missiles

2011-08-29T23:23:00.000+08:00

this is my calculations as I broke down the missile stats in ISW. I assumed a certain proportion (as seen in the length vs diameter). I also converted each cylinder, squaring its diameter to get the volume to allow it to fit in a cube compartment.

My assumption is that the 200mm is 2m long (size modifier +0~ish). As the missile got bigger the damage progressed following the diameter (under the same proportions 1:10). So even if the missile got 8x bigger in mass and volume, the warhead which proportionally got bigger only increased in damage by x2.

So here is the stats of the other missiles with these assumptions. Note that from these calculations, there are 176 missiles in 1Dton (500cubic feet or 14.ish m^3) if you see anything wrong please correct me.

Diameter in mm	Length in mm	Size	Area of Circle	Volume of Cylinder in mm^3	Vol. of Cylinder in m^3	Volume Variance	Diameter Variance	Mass (Tons)	No. per Dton	dice	dDmg Average
100mm	1,000 mm	SM-2	7,854mm^2	7,853,981.63	0.01m^3			0.02	1415.84	6	21
200mm	2,000 mm	SM+0	31,416mm^2	62,831,853.07	0.06m^3	8.00	2.00	0.15	176.98	12	42
300mm	3,000 mm	SM+1	70,686mm^2	212,057,504.12	0.21m^3	3.38	1.50	0.51	52.44	18	63
500mm	5,000 mm	SM+2	196,350mm^2	981,747,704.25	0.98m^3	4.63	1.67	2.34	11.33	30	105
700mm	7,000 mm	SM+3	384,845mm^2	2,693,915,700.45	2.69m^3	2.74	1.40	6.43	4.13	42	147
1000mm	10,000 mm	SM+4	785,398mm^2	7,853,981,633.97	7.85m^3	2.92	1.43	18.75	1.42	60	210

Eric's Dominion: GURPSLand

2011-08-29T18:00:00.000+08:00

I wish I saw this before. An awesome web resource for gurps. So much stuff and plus he made the GURPS Spaceships spreadsheet.

Eric's Dominion: GURPSLand:

'via Blog this'

with better understanding comes higher standards...

2011-08-28T00:11:00.003+08:00

I had to redo my ship generation spreadsheet. The back-room calculations and the tables had to be cleaned up a bit. Cleaning up a spreadsheet while formatting the "worksheet" to look more pleasant and understandable eats up a lot of time. Also I've made a system to make all my backroom calculations well documented and annotated, so that I can easily modify it and find my way around if I made some mistakes or need to further modify the system for my house rules.

I'm at step 4 in the ISW ship creation. I will work on 5 to 6 next week. I think it eats up about 4-5 hours a week fixing this.

Renewing my JTAS subscription. So i will be making the spreadsheet follow ISW and JTAS (gurps) canon as well as purchasing some stuff from E23 for collection and support purposes (more than actual use).

That reminds me that I have to renew my JTAS subscription, problem is that our credit card, dedicated and special for online transactions was compromised. There is an internet credit card scam that only kicks in every few months, and charges only a small amounts. Hiding itself conveniently among my PDF purchases. The wife and I had to research through our finances we found out it wasn't anything any of us bought and just typing the company charges up brought up a lot of results warning that it is a credit card scam. So it will be a while before i can input again our credit card online.

Man, making these spreadsheets eat up time. I wonder how many other ISW GM's are out there. I just started using Google Alerts for Traveller and GURPS Stuff.

On a Roll, but Real Life has come up.

2011-08-22T09:45:00.007+08:00

Thanks to Dan, DC, and Ken. I'm on a roll right now, if not for real life obligations and duties. I'm prettying up the Spreadshseet while testing how well it works. To minimize distractions, I plan to allow for only canon Ship design options as per Mgelis articles and the ISW book.

Inclusive in the workshseet are some building notes. I got carried away cleaning up Step 2 and 3, while inadvertently making step 4. Step 1 was supposed to be the Benchmarks and notes on Doctrinal Sizes and the cliff notes on how each has changed per TL.

I promised myself to stick to ISW and Mgelis's articles, then fill out the other nagging details later on. there are a lot of ideas bugging me:

Ultra-Tech and Special Warhead and Missiles. Mgelis has an article on scouts that detail missile drones. Ultra Tech and the JTAS article "Common Fighters of Third Imperium" has stat breakdown of missiles allowing you to use the other warhead type like: Jammers, EMP, swarm etc. I cannot tackle this until I finish the basic ship creation.

In combination with reading Atomic Rockets, to keep me grounded. There are still a lot of things that can be done despite the limitations it imposed. You cannot overcome line of sight, unless you intentionally put something between LoS that can screw with visual and thermal passive sensors.

Also I think the assumptions of Traveller sci-fi Tech vs that of Atomic Rockets de-mystifies should be put on a list.

How many guns can a gunner coordinate? I have to make a rule for this. but plan that fire control is one person, even on a warship. In a warship, despite there is only one Gunner who controls all the weapons he has to coordinate with the EW (electronic warfare) officer. I have to figure out what the Gunner does or what role he plays in a non-combat condition. Also consolidate the differences between UT computers and ISW computers.

Details about Sensor, Com and EW officers. There are multiple roles of officers, so that the GM and players have a better idea of how to allocate officers/specialists is by simply dividing the focus on Combat/Emergency Status and Non-emergency/Non-Combat Status.

I will have to dedicated post on attention/job allocations for bridge crew. There are tasks that require full concentration and attention, and are long ongoing actions in a combat scenario. Then there is the Job-load of an officer in a non-combat scenario.

Detailing this will give some flexibility and guidelines for players and GMs for ad-hoc actions. eventually there is a limit of options, but it will always be an exercise of creativity, preparation, innovation to develop ones own approach/doctrine.

All non-missile weapons fire pinpoints of energy but... The fire pattern in a 30min round of non-missile weapons appear to be cones, with a very narrow oval at its base, with its widest measure equal to the distance the target has traveled. The Ranges are a built in aspect of the fire-control computer where it cannot effectively manage the fire pattern anymore.

All non-missile weapons fire a constant beam or a continuous, very rapid bursts.

Bay weapons and Spinal Weapons and Turrets. Since Bay and Spinal weapons eat up turrets, a Carrier's. Troop Carrier, and Auxiliaries have the most turrets for its size. Strangely it is the fighters carried by Capital Ships, not just carriers, which provide them valuable point defense.

Big Missiles 500mm and Point defense Doctrine. even if missile volume triples when the diameter doubles, the damage just doubles. So even if the damage and energy packed by a warhead is x3, gurps damage is just x2, it follows that rule in GURPS where damage dice progresses slower than the actual energy.

Still, considering missiles and the sizes they can take in these modern times, even with miniaturization compensating to keep sizes much like modern times. Swarming the enemy with enough missiles that their defenses cannot cope in ranges far greater than they can effectively defend against is still an avenue to pursue.

Considering that Honoverse has thoroughly created a doctrine how such engagements work, its easier to figure out the limits of the method. Hi-Accel, and stealthed drones with powerful sensor or fighters can allow warships to launch these missiles of greater endurance and firepower at such great range (light seconds or minutes away in ambushes), which can reach speeds that allow them to overwhelm the defense layers of other ships.

Missile arrays that take up 8 to 10 turrets, sacrifice 16-20 point defense opportunities for the ability to launch 24-36 200mm missiles. Thats is going to be a juggling act. and a decision that will need me to figure out how many 300mm and 500mm missiles I can fit in such arrays.

A small bit of calculation, a light missile array occupies 27-32ksf.

8 Ship Escort for a Squadron. this is the doctrine according to Mgelis. My first concern was how to visualize this, where are the ships positioned? Then I imagined a D8 where each ship in in a center of a Die's facing relative to the ship it is escorting, that escorted ship is in the very center of the D8.

When enemy facing is determined, practical geometric formations are another thing I have to figure out in the future.

Day Dreaming some more work for myself. Fun thing about dreaming is that the possibilities are endless and one can dwell in that reality for that brief instant of its inception.

Not just stopping at the spreadsheet that can generate warships and macro that lets me keep building a detailed stat block of such. The next would be a 3d Template or Blender 3d guidelines to make warships and space ships in general. That means documentation of how to arrange for a 3d ship, internally and externally.

Documentation that is very idiot proof (since I always assume I will forget everything I learned, that I could be that very idiot). That can allow any sci-fi gamer to just grab Blender and install a list of other stuff necessary, then build a traveller warship. Then allow that gamer to render the ship in realistic detail (there are rendering services that get it done very quickly if you can't leave your pc or its slave to render), along with other useful props like planets and space stations.

Note learning curve plus a basic warship design project will take about 40 man hours initially, spread out in a few months. Its like building a model ship, but this is 3d.

This has its uses in a semi-practical pursuit. the ability to quickly generate props for a Game or 3d Animated Sci-fi adventure show (maybe 10minutes long each episode for youtube). Imagining the logistics of how to make such a show, makes me want to start listing and organizing the amount of time each action needed and listing all the skills and personnel needed (something my Multi-Media degree has prepared me for).

Too bad there not much other gamer geeks in the BPO industry :(

Stuck, looking for Spreadsheet functions

2011-08-18T22:11:00.004+08:00

I'm stuck. I've been working on a ship building spreadsheet for ISW traveller. Using it as an exercise to learn spreadsheets.

how to reference several arrays? When choosing a shape, it narrows the streamlining options for the ship. Some structures don't have any streamlining options, like diffused hull ships. Now I want to make a list field in the Form control that changes its refence array as it changes choice of shape.

Vlookup is not working. There is something strange happening in my spreadsheet. Vlookup is not working, I found a long winded work around to the problem above but I can't execute it because all my vlookup functions are not working (error:502). I don't get it, some vlookup formulas are working others are not. I double and tripple checked, rewrote them again and reread everything. No clue why.

Recalculate randbetween function. F9 is supposed to recaclualte certain randbetween but it is not working. Looked around and all the help I found online say F9 to recalculate. Anyway, I'm supposed to make a macro targeting one cell, for recalculation down the line. I need to be able to learn to do this If I plan to make a character generator spreadsheet.

Export or Reference macro or function. After all the stats are generated, I need to be able to express all of the data into a stat block. Ideally all can be exported to a text file to be easily cut and pasted for an article. The function list is not detailed in description, I really need to find the time to go through function per function and look at what they really do in detail.

Currently i have colds and a bit of a fever, but the head ache its giving is not helping and stressing me even more.

Other dream spreadsheet projects:

Harn/GURPS character creation spreadsheet. Using Harn character generator but automatically converting to GURPS equivalent.
System Generator > a more detailed economic system generator
Trade Tables Generator

Reading the Black Company Again. Half way through Shadows Linger.

Open source Ecology: Sustainable Communities

2011-08-15T23:33:00.005+08:00

I invite the Sci-fi geeks who like to imagine how the future might look like check out Open Source Ecology.

It follows the premise I first heard about from Warhammer 40k. As humanity spread out into the stars, they used easily self-sustaining tech to quickly bring themselves at TL6-8 level and able to maintain that TL indefinitely because of Idiot proof ways to make the necessary tools and idiot proof way to keep everything running as efficiently as possible.

I personally want to contribute, particularly in the tractor project. Like any GM who had done their agricultural studies from Medieval Historical RPGs, I'm quite aware of the drawbacks and economies of how animal based labor works and how technology (from TL5 industrial age to present modern age TL8) compares and improves on it.

I think the Open source engineers can really make a case when you can make a "business plan" for the tractor. A plan of how the tractor (or microtractor) can quickly make its return-on-investment. Other than accomplishing the task of a Carabao/Waterbuffalo, a tractor can help create roads, remap the village, it can plow: new irrigation, ponds, rain catchers, water reservoirs, canals, create dykes, etc. It can possibly move building materials (to be combined with the brick maker to create many sturdier structures for storage and other uses), or small houses (like the Nipa Huts of farmers).

Each project for the tractor and the open source tech is insight to what goes on in a self sustaining community of the future and the same time exercising a mental puzzle of value generating work for a very basic community like the one these tools are meant for.

A simpler exercise: Interstellar Wars Ship Creation Spreadsheet using Forms Control

2011-08-10T09:45:00.002+08:00

I started making Traveller: Interstellar Wars Ship Creation Spreadsheet. Its doing well so far. The reason I moved to this project instead of the character sheet is because, I don't need to learn (libreOffice database) Base to finish this project.

The ISW Spreadsheet is mostly putting all the tables in One Sheet (tables) and learning how to use some reference functions like Vlookup.

There is a little problem with the Forms Control. When you choose a reference cell, a cell that will be linked to the forms list (a clickable list of options) the exported value has an apostrophe before it. This ruined the vlookup values when there was a comma seperator with some of the values, causing error.

I figured out a way around it is by giving it a formula that allow its to recalculate it self =(datalinked cell)*1. It removed the apostrophe from the result and allowed the vlookup to operate normally.

Currently i'm having second thoughts about using the Hull Precalculated Table and allow the player to determine the exact hull size he/she wants, since I already have the formula for most aspects (surface area and cost).

The spreadsheet follows the ship creation steps. I plan to break from the ISW book in terms of ship type conventions since it is not as consistent with Mgelis's Jtas articles and doctrines. I will borrow some aspects from Honorverse wikia (like allowing for the construction of Q ships).

I am influenced by Lost Fleet in the definition of Auxiliary ships (which is not the same as Honorverse). I want to emphasize the automation that brings down manpower requirement. Basically making automation a late TL10 option, this is standard and an improved feature of TL11, with the option of further enhanced automation features. I don't know how I'm going to implement this yet, but I'm very open to suggestions. These non-cannon options will be given a special place in the table so that people can easily take or leave it.

Another part of the Ship Creation system is the option of Carrier Role. How many small ships it can carry and figuring out all the logistics for that.

One of the last steps in ship creation is the Job Loading or the Manpower needs of the ship. I find this another fun part to look forward to because it is a easier iteration of Time and Motion study. I think I need to finish the basic Canon version before implementing the automation changes.

Progress is Slow, Using LibreOffice Writer to make a Charactersheet

2011-08-05T23:22:00.003+08:00

Progress is slow. Here is a sample sheet which allows me to write characters, player and description. This process is taking a while. Unfortunately, (libreOffice) writer is not the only program I have to learn to use. I have to learn to work with LibreOffice base.

Making a database is also another challenge. I recently figured out how to make list (shift + enter) in writer, but I can't seem to make a list selection for some fields typical of characters like powers level and genre for Base.

There is a huge gap of things to know. Also I realized that google Forms is the EASIEST way to make automated testing, unfortunately one can't just do it all without having to have an internet connection. I though Forms shifted between a spreadsheet and its test paper GUI, I was wrong. When exporting Forms, it becomes a spreadsheet with the answers. I made the wrong assumption it exported everything: the questions and choices.

So when we transcribed our psychological profiling tests at work to google forms, we can't store the test independently. I was completely wrong about how much work it would take to create an automated testing system with just LibreOffice Suite, I thought it would be as easy as Google Forms but not as pretty.

I failed to factor having to learn LibreOffice Basic. There is not much in terms of exercises for LibreOffice basic in the current set of manuals. I still have to find out more about Macros and I haven't successfully executed one except the "hello" exercise.

Now finding time to learn all that between work is going to be another problem.

All hope is not lost, there may be a program out there that can let me make forms easily and allow me to export it to a spreadsheet and vice versa.

Reading. I just finished Lost Fleet Dreadnaught and in the middle of Honorverse Mission of Honor. Now I have the hankering for a Traveller Game, another distraction.

Time and Motion Study. I'm learning to do time and motion study at work. My boss and our new recruitment person is going to help, check, my papers. I wonder if there is a GM out there who has been influenced by the Time and Montion study? A GM who can quickly create man-hour estimates based on complexity, coordination loss, competence, organization, and available manpower for PC actions?

I've mentioned before my sources comes from the BPO industry and practices. Then there are those in military and naval/maritime sources also have such metrics and enough circumstantial details that allows a GM to create a heuristic based on the factors I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I realized there are also such metrics in IT books, like the sources cited by my previous post as well.

If I look at The Combat Leader's Field Guide, there are many heuristics in planning and intelligence analysis found in the book. Particularly when processing data for navigation and forward observation.

Declassified Social Engineering books, also has metrics for conducting very difficult social interactions when it discusses interrogations, interviews, persuasions and negotiations. It shows these metrics in the trials and the amount of time needed for such long actions.

I bought a dummies guide to writing fiction and several writing books I plan to skim for their metrics. I think writing is one of the most useful metrics for mental actions. When i compare the different kinds of writing like: when my wife writes her financial reports, my blogging, the kind I do for my games, the reports at work, it appears to be one of the core skills underlying a multitude of many mental tasks or processes.

I was surprised at how proficient our financial auditor writes his reports and recommendations. It makes me makes me jump to conclusions to how attention to detail and process may have a strong correlation in how organized and clear one writes.

Seeing a Master at work. The way gamers identify various tricks and techniques, I can't help but watch the techniques my boss employs. He is a process expert, a veteran of many mergers, audits, turn-arounds, computerization (which is essentially process overhauls) and difficult negotiations.

In moments, like what I witnessed recently, some clue of what hides behind that vast experience sometimes shows. the clue being that he's done everything and remembers such details so vividly he's got it down to a game. the way he quickly formulates a template and memo, how he actually improvises within a framework shows me the limits of his own abilities, still awes me at how much he's mastered so many templates and processes of not just operations but social approaches.

He has mastered the playbook of how to act and make people feel a certain way. That there really is a playbook, and he's mastered it to a point that he can navigate with his eyes closed. It makes me realize how much time I wasted when I was younger, and I should have been learning such things at the foot at a master instead of wasting time daydreaming.

Well I understand the theory, hopefully my son will benefit from my regrets.

Day dreaming Productivity: a min/maxing habit.

2011-08-02T15:20:00.004+08:00

I'm currently studying on the side, spending about almost two hours (sometimes 4 hours) reading and doodling these kinds of productivity metrics in the hope to find something useful for fun or for making my work easier. I admit it is a almost constructive form of day dreaming.

Words Per Minute

Composing Words per Minute¹ is the key concept and search term, for such a project to begin. Currently it is at 19wpm². My assumption, where this gets pretty much invalidated, is that composition is a mental task comparible to that of thinking creatively and constructively. I will point out now that I've read the google docs link and its very hard to find definitive that this supports my thesis, but I will still follow through with this thought experiment.

Reading Tests

Time should be made to take Reading Test, not necessarily the link I provided but any one that the munchkin can be confident of the results. I've done my own reading test and I've discoved that I read at 120 words per minute at +90% comprehension. I discovered at this speed, I am inclined to use audio books which speak at 150-160 words per minute at 90% comprehension (assuming a particular level of subject complexity, I had to repeat several economic lectures and philosophy of science lectures, for example.)

Composition Tests

If your a regular blogger, then this is a matter of looking at how long it takes for you to write any post and communicate your point effectively. I have a very low composition speed, composition that is readible enough to pass off as an adult work. I can guage myself at 7 words per minute for my last post (Learning LibreOffice Forms) still with glaring mistakes. This makes me assume the 19wpm in composition is based simple ideas and not exaclty work critical expectations (given the drastic difference).

Measures of Time

In marching, every hour is actually made up of 50mins of marching and 10mins of resting, except the first hour of marching in the day, which is 45mins and 15mins resting and fixing equipment³. Another assumptions of how closely physical exertion limits follow mental exertion limits, which is my own observation and I have no reference except bringing in the argument of substance dualism fallacy.

If one follows the assumption of limits of an hour of action, that being 3/4ths is productive while 1/4 is necessary rest, then 1 hour of mental action can be made up of 45mins. This is an arbitrary assignment. I am actually inclined to use 2/3rds vs 1/3, but in my observations when routines have been established the 3/4ths vs 1/4th rule is more of the median between the deviations, also an observation. So if I take 19wpm, assuming an easy task, or 7 wpm, assuming a complex task, and compare it to an hour of work I would have 855wph and 315wph (good for one page).

A Days worth of Productivity.

In a past post, I talked about a days worth of productivity from experience in call center metrics. In a 10-12hour work day (including going home and meals) 6hours, is the most productive and substantial amount of work in a day. I have that an assumption that the other work hours, the remaining 2 hours, are organizational and clerical tasks like answering emails and some basic reporting. An assumption that has to be taken very very lightly.

Taking the amount of time above into consideration, then 5130wpd and 1890 wpd respectively.

Planning and Output

As a fan of Game of Thrones, I used the first novel as a metrics for comparision. ~1,200,000 Words for the first novel, at a median average of ~4000 words per chapter, and a median average ~300 words per page. If I were to plan writing something so big, I would first consider the military rule of thumb 1/3 planning, 2/3 implementation⁴.

If I were to write 1,200,000 words I must consider the amount of ideas such an edited work would produce. Just assuming how much edits reduce final output to depends on one's understanding of writing factors, especially when there is a consideration of complexity and aesthetics, I would think a draft of 2,400,000 words would be necessary (double). This would mean an implementation of 1269.8 days, assuming 261 days (from our HR; Phil workdays a year) a year of productivity that would be around 4.8 years. Using the 1/3 planning heuristic that would be that would total 7 years overall. Its not even going to guaranteed to be good.

Taking the calculations in another direction, looking at what I can produce with the freetime I have. Assuming 4 hours in a week, I can produce roughly 1260 words which might be edited down to 600 words a week.

Reality and the Hobby

Such metrics, as above, my aspirations for writing my own epic is crushed with glaring reality backed up by my own experiences and observations. Then there is the ability to sustain any dream, given how times change and circumstances change a long with it.

In my experience, given work and obligations, I'm better off planning my little projects monthly with as most 10 hours at my disposal. If 3hours are done for planning, and 7 hours execution, I probably have a 2,205 word output.

Maybe next month I should spend my 10 hours doodling a mind map of an Epic Plot for my Fictional Alternate history 19th Century Philippines Setting.

Planning Tools

One program and tool that I have not used to its full potential is Draw or FreeMind. Mindmapping tools were not only awsome in helping me keep track of complex family trees but also in political/economic relationships, and flow of events.

1 Karat, C.M., Halverson, C., Horn, D. and Karat, J. (1999), Patterns of entry and correction in large vocabulary continuous speech recognition systems, CHI 99 Conference Proceedings, 568–575.

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute

3Small Wars Manual United States Marines 1940,

4Combat Leader's Field Guide

Learning LibreOffice Forms

2011-07-27T23:20:00.003+08:00

The Link is to the documentation regarding LibreOffice. Documentation » LibreOffice

GMs and World Builders write a lot, so keeping things organized and making a very efficient system helps save time and focus on the more fun aspects of the hobby.

I've only learned to format recently, around this year, when I learned to use Google Docs. I'm late in this piece of news and productivity, but I wonder if anyone else has delved deeper in it? I've been able to download the notes of other GMs and can see there are some "best practices" worth sharing.

You'd think I'd learn this in college. Especially when there was 3 unit class for APA style journal writing (what it is doing in a Multi Media arts course, I don't know but if you ever see the curriculum of my college you would really be suspect of their motives) but no, I only learned it in gaming because good GMs are should be hella organized.

Customization. Ok, there are a lot of things to talk about for customization. "Alot" involved what I know the software can do plus what I have successfully done. I've just started formally reading the LibreOffice manuals, but I've been tinkering with LibreOffice for a month now. I'd rather show what I've learned and sure about. I can later describe my plans since it is based on what I've read the program can do and have yet to try to achieve it.

Tools > Customization

Headings, gateway to auto updating Table of Contents. I learned the value of headings because I found out that Google Docs automatically formats the table of contents for you. I learned it when I had to write up massive Minutes of the Meetings during works strategic planning sessions. LibreOffice and OpenOffice does the same, but I'm sure of LibreOffice you can click on the table of contents to auto update. Note that there are hot-keys for these and you will have to customize your documentation software and write down the hotkeys and etch.

I followed Google Docs default Heading format. GURPS has a style formating guideline and template, SJGames WYSIWYG. I have yet to learn to fully use templates and how to shift between styling formats. Ideally I should have APA, SJGames, and Wikipedia as the formating styles I have access to when I write.

Collaboration Tools. Google Docs is not the only software that allows you to simultaneously write on the same document. At work we did performance test for Google Docs and various Browsers, obviously the best is Google Chrome (although we happen to have evidence of it now). We found Live Documents in the Google App Store, there are other collaboration writing tools to be found there to.

We were able to test Live Documents vs Google Docs and found live Documents faster and more familiar for people who use MS office BUT less accessible. So most people default to Google Docs. Note that you need around dedicated ~0.1kpb bandwidth or non-dedicated ~1mbp to use collaborative systems. In the office of about a 50 users and dedicated 2mbp (leased line) we can barely use Google Docs.

Record & Show Changes. We play GURPS with a particular style that will explain why we use regular documents instead of character sheets. This simple tool, in LibreOffice Writer it is EDIT > Changes, helps keep track of additions and deletions. Currently i don't know how to make Show Recorded Changes as hot key, although you can just go to Category: Edit > Function: Record a give that a hot-key.

In Google Docs you have a permanent history for the document.

Commenting and Discussion. When making changes or keeping notes about the adventures, commenting allows for clarification that can later be added as a footnote or the appendix and a clear history of what is going on be plain and easily reviewed. This Ctrl+alt+N in LibreOffice.

Hyperlink. In Google docs this is Ctrl+Q, in LibreOffice you will have to go customizations and assign it. In Customization, Category: Tools > Function:Hyperlink.

Footnotes. If your fond of researching and wikipedia, footnotes are your friend. I learned the value when I was writing for a group and I needed to cite my sources (and had to learn the value of sources etc.) Category: Insert > Function: Footnote/Endnote. I used alt+down.

Color Fonts. Coloring text is important when trying to highlight information easily. In Libre Office, you will need to assign it a hot key Category: Format > Function: Fill Font Color (I use Ctrl+G). For coloring background its Category: Format > Function: Fill Color (I use Ctrl+Shift+G)

Indenting. In Google docs, Indenting is also upgrading and downgrading bullet points or numbering. So indenting is very useful and can be made the hotkey for both. In LibreOffice Writer Category: Format > Function: Increase/Decrease Indent (I used alt+left/right)

Learning Plans. I learned the value of hot-keys when I worked in 3d Graphics and when I used to paint. Hot-keys are easy to master with enough time. Time goes by and the learning seems quicker when there are projects that are exciting and fun.

Even tedious processes aren't that scary when you realize that learning to use Macro allows the writer to recorded certain processes and automate it.

A lot of the untapped potential of LibreOffice is in the database program simply known as Base. My simple project right now is creating an equipment list that allows a calculated tally of weights automatically show in another box. Later on that value can be used for encumbrance and determining movement.

LibreOffice GURPS Character Form. This is my learning exercise. I will learn about data management and the capabilities of the tools. An editable characters, maybe built over this one (an old character sheet I made long ago). Anyway this is all usefull at work, since its all very Six Sigma-ish (the language of munchkins).

From GURPS character sheet

Edit:

Here is my saved customization file. In LibreOffice the hotkeys you assign appear in the mouse over name of the function.

I've been looking at the Document foundation where I can share and exchange and track the customization notes, as well as develop a menu of styles and templates (from APA, SJG's WYSIWYG, Wikipedia, etc.) No luck as of yet.

Figuring out Worldbuilder's Spreadsheet.

2011-07-24T14:43:00.001+08:00

Figuring out Worldbuilder's Spreadsheet.

Going about this "World Builder's Spreadsheet" I look to the LibreOffice manuals, particularly writer. I realized a Booklet with an Imbeded and Linked Spreadsheet with Form would be the best medium for this. Writer allows the step by step creation, with forms elements in each step and summarized in the end of the chapter, while Spreadsheet can be linked and displayed in the same PDF booklet.

I wonder if a Macro can be made that allows the byproduct of the operation be exported into a spreadsheet? A sheet having several Households, each sheet being village or community with one sheet summarizing all the data for a Master document to access for larger and larger communities.

I think it works backwards, with the summary sheet generated fist and the Macro generating each sheet (village/community) and all the data of the village.

The first Step would be a Household generator.

This household generator should be useful for generating the peasant (or lower status) background of a character. It should has a list of key word generator to describe personalities, circumstances, and certain social structures.

A challenge is being able to provide a list of social structures and personalities typical of a particular culture. Should it be culture defined or, as in Civilization 5 did, Social Perk based (focusing on the values of a Culture).

Another challenge is because non-monetary costs. In medieval economics there are a lot of things that are not given any monetary costs. A lot of productivity that deserves a large monetary value are: house-wife's labors, a serf's or peasant's labor duties to their lord, duties also owed to religious institutions, as well as neighborly and community contributions that survive to this day.

Resources i can list are: man-hours of labor in primary, secondary and tertiary competences, bushels of seed grains, equipment, beasts of burden and

Expenses i can list: social duties, religious duties, duties to one's lord/master, those from season, those from the current economic circumstance, and typical cost of production/productivity.

Anyway, I need to generate a mind map and several lists before I get into this. Already from the amount of tools and information I may need to detail it is very easy to get lost.

for now I need to further reflect on how I should pull this off.

a 4 hour productivity rule

2011-07-24T00:41:00.003+08:00

I have this 4 hour productivity rule based on hunger cycles. A simple rule of thumb for dieting is that, I ate too much if I'm not hungry in 4 hours, too little (and not strategically enough protein) if I get hungry in less than the that.

I developed the 4 hour increment based on many of the marching and soldiering literature, both in historical and modern.

I apply that 4 hour increment in mental activities. Divide the day into the 4 hour increments, minus the 8 hours of sleep. You have 4 slots of noticeably optimal and decreased mental alertness and energy levels. At the last slot, my self control is noticably weakened. I would say a GURPS -1 to -3 to will rolls depending on how much psychological beating I had that day (which can be something of a morale stat).

Some of the slow risers out there, the optimal productivity hours come 4 hours after the zenith of sleep. Depending at what point one reaches this full mental defrag....

I leave it to people who want to min/max mental performance to read up more on sleep and cognition...

More to the point. What is interesting is that in the BPO industry, there is a rule of thumb that comes from average performance of agents of 6 hours. After 6 hours most agents do not have the mental stamina to close a call. (this is in outbound). Talking with the objective to persuade should be counted as a challenging mental task that requires a lot of concentration.

What is remarkable of this rule is that it follows also some of my observations about the 4 hours slots. if I were to assign these slots 1st to 4th. Then the 2nd slot is the most productive, followed by the slot before it and the slot after it. the 1st or the 3rd slot is not necessarily half as productive as the 2nd, but closer inspection at where these episodes of productivity clusters should be observable in the reports provided by the call manager.

So it is Evidence, but not well documented evidence of the performance curve of mental endurance of the day.

In a game, I would use the 1st to four slots as a way to gauge the morale of the NPCs and ideally the way PCs should view challenges (easy when their full of energy, insurmountable when tired).

Damage from Fatigue. What is interesting at looking at all these performance, also watching and experiencing Burn-outs is the RPG abstraction of Damage vs Fatigue. An interesting differences is that Damage is like Burn-outs, it is much harder to climb out off.

When managing our selves and those of our team, Burn-out is Damage. Burn-out is a line which, once crossed your stuck with much diminished capabilities and have to dedicate resources (time) nursing back to health/mental health.

Its not a penalty that will go away in a nights rest, it is something that will take a few days, weeks, months or a lifetime. Psychological wounds doesn't have to come from drama, it can come from incredibly frustrating work... (my opinion about my work).

Play it like a Game. Given the amount of responsibility and the fire-fighting at work, managing one's self is a game which has a lot at stake. Games teach us to weigh risks, plan and maneuver our assets quickly, Unlike PCs, the mind (or ones' sanity), is an entity that is more challenging to preserve since resources are not so clearly written. All one really has are a ton of personal notes and time to reflect on limitations and mistakes. (a PC without a character sheet)

the World Builders Spreadsheet Dream

2011-07-22T10:24:00.006+08:00

I'm trying to learn as much about LibreOffice spreadsheet as possible. Currently work, Philippine BPO industry, has me dealing with a lot of Key Performance Indicators and trying to make sense of it all or present them in the easiest understood way possible.

As a Gamer, seeing the potential in what I am learning in LibreOffice I see first its uses to my hobby: The World Builders Spreadsheet. A spreadsheet that will allow a World Builder Given certain Parameters to populate a World in a near Realistic/Historical manner.

I also see that the Form Section in LibreOffice Writer can make an awesome character sheet.

Anyway, what this spreadsheet should be capable of doing based on what it can possibly do becomes clearer and clearer. basically given a set of Parameters:

Regional Area,
the Largest and the number of these social units units
Natural resources (with the option to generate it randomly)
Technology Available
Domesticated Animals or Plants Available
Level of Organization
Various templates of religious institution and their method/pattern of spreading
Current Economic Condition
Influence of various States: Warfare, bountiful season, Peace, Famine, etc.
Geometric Relationship

and many more.

The product is detailing the region and its inhabitants down to the smallest social unit: the Household. Each of this household will have a productivity value for future reference and further random detailing. The spreadsheet, through a Macro, will create households, their professions, and their villages and communes based on a lot of economic factors and rules. The Macro would also group these villages based on a randomly determined political/social balance (many semi-equal regions, one more powerful with many lesser that are equally weaker, or decending levels of resources and influences etc.).

It should assign where the Specialist/Professionals based on resources and other factors or allow the World Builder to move these around. These then affect Price Modifiers and availability of Goods as well as offer a sheet for the World Builder to place all products and goods to allow the World Builder to generate regional price lists.

Such a spreadsheet and macro should be able to track these details. It illustrates these all by the story it tells with its Income Statement, which takes a snapshot of the year. Ideally the program can lists certain expenses by the season, so that the World Builder can better tell the story.

Outputs:

Households and their Professions, and where they can be found.
farmsteads, mines, mills, villages, market villages, manors, fiefs, and towns and where they are
Regional Price and Availability List
See where demands and supplies of goods, skills, people, or social needs can be found.

Details and even More Details. It would be nice if that there is already a World Builders Spreadsheet Project, at least as a spreadsheet the barrier of learning is much lower than if it was a software. As an open spreadsheet projects copying variants, data ranges and tables is much easier and anyone can create increasingly detailed and customization outputs.

Anyway just started checking out WorldBuilders and despite how many of the topics there might appear similar, it has made me realized this one I'm talking about has key words like: realistic, historical, human-centric, economics based, simulationsists, etc.

Just Finished A Dance with Dragons

2011-07-19T19:30:00.003+08:00

I got my copy from Random House Audio for $45 for the Audio download (cheapest when I looked around).

If you are avoiding spoilers don't read anything of the Wikipedia article, it has a ton of spoilers even when your not reading the content. I just finally got to read it as i just finished the audiobook today.

Its a great story and its really inspiring to run a game. Especially a game that focuses on the drama and motives instead of the standard rpg motives: xp and gp.

i really want to find time to write my financial statements for squads, companies, bands, farmsteads, villages, and manors plug them into a spreadsheet and figure out a way to generate variants to populate game worlds and the status quo. To forge the one spreadsheet to rule them all.

It also inspires me to write my own epic, with cast of thousands, tell tales of their broken dreams, and their own undoings set in 19th Century farflung Colony.

Reading A Dance with Dragons and thinking of the Game of Thrones

2011-07-17T22:38:00.003+08:00

Now that the world has now learn about the Game of Thrones, I wonder how best to play it as an RPG or as an RPG with some wargaming aspect. GURPS has some answers, but alone it does not suffice. HARN has the verisimilitude that comes closest (and the deepest respect for economics, historical precedent, and realistic limitations) to AGoT.

I tried learning HARN, but I find GURPS more elegant and easily tweaked to how I interpret what I observe or learn. If one can Convert Harn Character Creation into GURPS abilities (so you remove the Point based Creations and go with the Harn method of chance) but have such a setting for AGoT.

To have AGoT done up by Kelestia with such detailed maps of villages which they did for HARN. Such detail will allow for Harn's Manor System (which is basically a method of creating a Manor Income Statement) to be applied in.

And that just reminds about all the Spreadsheet projects and Books I planned to write in my free time... "What free time!?".

Too Damn Busy I'm considering a Career Change. I'm so damn busy at work, if I'm not working I'm being a dad. I've not been out with my team on milsim, not able to maintain my guns, write game material, or achieve any of my hobby goals.

All those "Time in Motion" studies helped me figure out my free time, and I have about 3 hours made up of small 30-45 minutes.

I'm cheap, my hobby is mostly cheap, but I was very productive and could find some time to write. Getting back to reading AGoT got me wishing I could write my own Philippine Historical Epic set in the 19th century when Spanish Elite Sensibilities Ruled this Farflung colony.

Side Note: The Phils was a colony that did not provide any significant strategic advantage but one of the few places a western power can chance to tap the massive and falling Chinese market of about +300M. Every other "benefit" seems like a "sunk cost effect" or "self fulfilling prophecy" or "ownership bias" for having such a colony. It has been very clear in the economic records that the Phils was always a net loss and a prestige colony to be held. Even the US found it a net loss when we moved from steam to diesel. (the only Power that would net the Phils as an asset with a net profit is Imperial Japan, but as a soft target and a future platform for continued imperial expansion)

Because of how tropical civilizations began very late (9C CE) because of the many environmental challenges despite how they can produce an awesome amount of food (rice is x2-3 more productive per acre and can be harvested x2 per year, more frequently even if the river seasonally floods) it is a matter of chance who happens to bother to get these islands (and spain and its overzealous expansionism had the best chances).

An Open Source Linux Friendly FPS review

2011-07-13T18:54:00.002+08:00

I found out about Urban Terror from my brother-in-law. Its Linux and MAC friendly (so I can play this with my wife). I just need to download, open the zip, make a file executable and Viola!

It has an Endurance System, Movement affects accuracy and a whole lot more options that CS. Its great, unfortunately I'm not that 1337 to be able to fix most of the problems it has with my current 11.04 ubuntu set up to really work out all the bugs. Only Con, other than the bugs, is having to learn a new set of hotkeys.

Bugs:

I can only open it once per reboot, after that it errors when I try opening it a second time.
Camera Shake (discounted the possibility in the gaps of the polygons in the game area).
Skipping (i dont know if its cheating as some opponents just "blink" as they run and I can't hit them.

I really wish I can figure out optimizing it on this Lenovo Idea Pad y430.

What I learned: RL Character Creation

2011-06-29T15:26:00.000+08:00

Cheat sheet: what I learned

Character Levels
I've finally have more free time. Its about time to start documenting what I've learned. I have to convince my brother, who is working along side me, to try to participate despite his lack of confidence. I'm also getting some of my trusted friends to participate.

The way my brain is hardwired, the best way to approach this is via an RPG game. I began last night by looking at income brackets. My Rationale behind the income brackets is that we are all a team and we only succeed by moving forward together socio-economically, even if it means splitting up.

If my team mate can make a killing doing something else with his unique set of skills I should help him where I can, and the reciprocity begins there. Everyone is in the Low level temporarily, you help them move up in your org but when you cannot accommodate them, you help them go to somewhere better, in return train their replacement.

Its not a BAD thing to have a good friend in a larger and bigger organization, who can compensate them better than you can in your previous set up.

It begins with characters the career progression, standard builds (to understand why the status quo), and what are the epic characters and how they relate to the basic career progressions and how fate, circumstance and ingenuity changed them to be what they are.

Productivity in Real Life
Payscale has little to do with competence or ability, especially in the lower levels. Ideally Payscale is related to Productivity, someone who is more productive is paid more to keep him/her from going somewhere else (when the person falls far below the market average, EVERYONE can pay better thus no point to staying). In the nitty gritty, HR, productivity experts, and leaders are supposed to measure all forms of output, even those very difficult to quantify like goodwill and unique characteristics. In the end it all boils down to how much money the person brings in and how much that person costs to operate.

Measuring real productivity is a personal matter, but it is a matter better done with close confidants, good leaders, and mentors for greater objectivity and being able to clearly see the goals needed to achieve Level Up. Making remarks about someone's productivity is the same as making remarks about someone's character, it can be rude at the same time partially objective.

Real productivity, as much as a personal matter is better done with friends who can afford to be objective and honest while knowing this bitter pill is what is needed when how one can improve. When discussion of this kind occurs, Ideals arises and all sorts of justifications may fill the air.

Now back to the Gaming, amongst trusted people we can find our Class or Career progression and find out if what we are doing matches our goals. If we want to make millions and set up all sorts of businesses, travel, or broker, we look and analyze the best strategy to achieve this given our backgrounds, abilities and circumstance.

Sadly some Careers do have a pay ceiling, and when people hit this, they move on to Prestige Classes... change career that allows the person to utilize their Background but in much larger projects taking greater risks, handling more critical interactions, and implementing them.

A good background of friends and loved ones, help in the Prestige Class upgrade. there is always that instance in a transition that we cannot see what is over that hill until we get up there. In that temporary blindness people who have your back are the best way to navigate.

Fortunately all these Character Development data and templates is finite and only the subtleties of strategy is what is really infinite. If I can get on paper the Character creation for career in the Philippines maybe my friend can better understand the strategy I'm taking (and get some help in the corrections)

Sent from my iPad

Gaming Craving: GURPS the Mist

2011-06-26T19:01:00.001+08:00

Gaming Craving: GURPS Mist
The Movie the Mist has a great feel and mood desirable for an RPG, especially with that Cthulu-esque suspense. As a Gaming Craving, a great quick way to prep and wolf down this kind of adventure is to gather a themed set of monsters and set it loose on the adventures who are stuck in a supermarket.

The fun part to start with is asking a bunch of other gamer or gms to suggest some monsters, imagining how they work and how they would react if a portal to another world, with softer and easier prey, opens up.

DnD monsters that come to mind are Aberrations. Especially when they appear least like any of the terrestrial creatures found on earth, except for the most disgusting vermin.

Even with old-DnD monsters converted to GURPS, set out against mundane humans with realistic levels of lethality, off set by "fudge" points that allow PCs to survive by creative elements of chance or fate (justified by how character death can derail the fun and slow down the pace of the game, yet the limit of fudge points make death still a possibility).

Even if everyone in the table has watched the movie would not derail any fun to be had or suspense, it might even enhance it. Anyway, the GM is basing the creatures actions based on their abilities and what would consequently occur. It is practically an new and open ending and just arbitrating the monsters closing in (monsters with limitations in their abilities, no improvised abilities "for effect" and function with their basic predatory instincts and intelligence)

My idea is setting the adventure in Baguio, a mountain province where there is a former US military base, beautiful landscaping (thanks to American colonial city planner Burnham, unlike the urban manila is today), and the natural foggy and misty climate.

Players play mundane characters, they each make a character based on an officemate with some extra points, then Pass the character sheet around clockwise/counter-clockwise. So the characters are not themselves but someone else they, ideally, at least respect enough to write up to do justice (or they may have a crush on).

Materials are easily found in Google maps, tourist maps, and old declassified 1940s barracks and military installations.

The nice expectation is to leave it open ended, record the sessions, manage the breaks, and kick back and have some fun. I think researching and finding the material would take me 10 hours.

Character creation should take less an hour per player. The Players also provide roster of archetypes and personality traits from and circles for fodder and tables with names for the GM to roll , a week in advance so that he can have a lot prepared by game day.The can all fill a spreadsheet then the GM cuts and pastes then uses the spreadsheet to generate the values for rolls.

Some considerations: Roll IQ per day, the more sane the character the more difficult to grasp the situation and they cannot act on the impending doom (they must deal with the more immediate needs). So IQ+6 and the GM makes this roll. -1 per day and per instance of life threatening terror, until they fail their IQ and realize the madness of their circumstance.

What monsters would be best for such a GURPS adventure?

Sent from my iPad

Being Hardcore Gamer vs Real Life

2011-06-23T11:35:00.002+08:00

Being Hardcore Gamer in Real Life or is it vs Real Life

Ok my definition of Gamer is very loose, more specifically I associate Gamer with someone willing to pay any game. The guys who take on systems and use or possible abuse it to achieve certain results.

"You can't do that in level 1" is something the GM would say, and something opposed by the player. In what I think of Hard Core Gaming, I think can a gamer take all those things he learned through gaming and push the envelope in what regular people would think unlikely or impossible.

Its that expectation that you can't because of the way the rules are set up, but the possibility that you can because of how things can be made to fall to place.

"You cannot do that because of your limitations: economic status, social status, background, training or education" are very general assumptions. It is in the details where a Munchkin thrives, the little bonuses and multipliers that add on temporarily (because it is a temporary loop hole or you can only excuse your self once). Small Hacks to get one by long enough till resources come in, the cavalry arrives, or possibly Leveling up.*

There is a trade off living the comfy and familiar gamer surrounding to that being in the battle lines: because your mind, as much attention as possible has to be in the game to predict, execute and adapt as quickly as possible one has to surround oneself with the material. The way our RPG books fill a wall in our private space, so does the Game rules of work.

End goal is to level up to a comfy position where you can have enough quality time for the family and personal pursuits, and storing, refining and replicating all the skills learned to one most trusted colleagues. End the sacrifice of having not enough time with the people that matter, with enough skill its easy to adapt to what the world throws at you.

*one of the reasons I'm so pro open source. The barriers guarding this well kept secret is: Time and Attitude. Attributes of only the young and Idealistic.

Gaming Real Life: Tough Negotiations

2011-06-23T11:34:00.003+08:00

Gaming Real Life: Tough Negotiations

Tougher than any Temple of Elemental Evil is the Negotiations or Shakedown of Ruthless or Criminal Business Dealings.

What makes a realistic Negotiation is the stress you get when you are fully aware someone is taking advantage of you and you have to watch and listen to them justify it.

I have a history of panic attacks, even in airsoft I get those shakes. Of course I've done a lot to overcome them (hence playing milsim) but there is that tunnel vision when you have to deal with such stressful people.

There is a Battle raging in negotiations. There are maneuvers and tactics as well as distractions and harrying attacks. If I were to use battles to illustrate negotiations, one vital difference is how subjectivity prevents any real winner... unless you have an audience which becomes the 3rd party to grant some objectivity (or recording the conversation to give you political capital to those who would easily see the unfairness or treachery).

There are economics in negotiations. To keep things civil, at least in the beginning, they hear each other out. There is an allotted time and this can be determined by your status, significance in the interaction and the other factors like audience, subject complexity, and chance.

Using the 5 min attention rule. 1d minutes to bring up your points, the GM makes this a secret roll. Status, Significance and many other points add to a the social attribute roll vs the other groups or persons. A contested roll success one more minute, failure none gained, and critical failure 1 less minute.

In a two way relationship leverage matters more than anything else. Three ways and larger groups perception and procedural justice matters. Of course people can gang up on other people making it an "us vs them" thus making it a two-way instead of a more democratic negotiations.

I would role-play most of this, the dice is for determining the time to deliberate and some of the adjudications. The GM and other players should grade how well the other present the points, with the GM the 3rd party and neutral arbiter, and how some points challenge others.

Ex. Who has a stronger claim of being the "victim", who failed to provide burden of proof, who is being the least transparent, who is making the most barriers to understanding, who is muddying the issues.

Technical considerations, for tracking skill, who best abuses/utilizes fallacies and biases to support their argument can be a side bar. It is used to see who can gain sympathy or political will given their arguments.

Now the time to try to play this... and players who are interested in playing this game. Thats one more big challenge.

sent from my Ipad

Gaming Plans by around August, Hopefully

2011-06-18T16:47:00.000+08:00

This month has my sched full. Since May, when we entered the company and tried to do its turn around we were facing many opponents and challenges. One of the many lessons that is at my current attention is the comprarison of incompetence vs mutiny.

No other time can I say that someone working from the inside against your own group is a much greater barrier than incompetence. Few games ever create such a classic real world problem as the enemy from within.

One particular problem with an internal threat is how easy it is to blow it out of proportion. Paranoia can be difficult to control or keep in check with an enemy from the inside. Especially when you do not have the tools, data, or opportunity to sit down and work out the logical puzzle of "who had the most to gain, the opportunity, or the most compelling motivation". That also there is that Darwin's habit of always putting quite clearly the evidence or facts that can best defeat his own arguments.

The lesson of the enemy within is that in the Real world it is much safer and better to focus on the goal, so that as to move quickly and make it more difficult to be sabotage. Of course you will have to filter information, double check sources, and watch your back. But actively trying to match or beat the Ew/in eats up TOO much resources while tying up your current objective. Like a shark you keep swimming or you might die.

Time is one of the greatest barriers to such a puzzle. Economies of time, regarding eating, sleeping, work-life-balance, catharsis, and overwhelming amount of duties.

Realistically, the GM SHOULD give a laundry list of tasks that is more than x3 to x4 times greater than the PC can handle. (Maybe 50% more than the PCs handle if he manages his time expertly (Discipline and self control-15+).

These tasks have various priorities, from low, moderate, and high. Typically we all do all the High priority stuff, and do the moderate to low half-assed, then some of the low can be resolved with a 3d vs 9 (roll below). Roll every week. On a roll below 9 its stays and can give some minor complications to current situation, when these do solving the situation can also solve the minor problem. On a roll of 6 or less, it escalates to a moderate problem. All problems escalate every week when left untended.

Familial Duties and Relationships in general should impose a -5 worth of "hurried" task modifier for many situations. It basically means the PCs try to achieve the desired results at half amount of time.

Failing to satisfy Family or Relationships degrades the quality of life. If we were to role-play ordinary people then Family, Hobbies, Passions, Loved ones, etc. matter. Diminishing the security or satisfaction regarding these brings down character morale.

No one intentionally destroys their priorities and what they care about the most. Consequences have a domino affect Human Bounded Rationality can barely see in advanced. See Normal Accident Theory, and try applying that to Life.

Low Morale is like being burned out, it takes MUCH more effort to do anything or get anything done. Treat it like fatigue, where it takes twice as much work to do anything. Its visible to anyone who takes the time to notice. Low Morale can be from arguments with the loved ones, some bitter personal disappointment, or a consequence of several small things building up to be something more difficult.

It is a penalty the character is unlikely to notice or objectively feel, but something the Player will note when certain things don't go the character's way.

Gamers with a coping mechanism, seeing the Game or being aware of the game aspect have the disadvantage of being considered delusional. Its not that it doesn't exist, but it is an intuitive sense with very little facts to go on and mostly follows Economic and Behavioral principles which can be considered "soft" empirically speaking.

Anyway, I'm learning a lot. I had an interesting learning about Profit Margins and the pattern they take. How opportunity cost and scale affects them. The easy take home is that 30-35% is the typical margin that makes an action worth while. Less than 15% and your better off using financial instruments where you spend less effort, less risk, and less head ache. At 40% you have luxury or items of convenience. Of course there is a lot of context in this.

Many of the things I learned in the BPO industry (I had a crash course in Labor Laws of 3rd world countries like Phils and India, and Pay scale) apply when you consider that My Traveller Universe. Basically My idea of Angel High Tech investors, kinda of fall under the KPO business model.

For my brother and some Friends, I plan to run this. Around July I will be able to write more because things are getting easier. Hopefully around mid August I can "start marketing" the campaign. In a worse case scenario, I'll have a Pseudo Case study/Adventure module where I can compile all my rules of thumb and list down all the skills I have observed used. Maybe save it for the company archives and database.

Thats another thing in the REAL WORLD. Seeing social and Technical skills employed and measured by Time&Motion studies as well as Six-Sigma methodologies, one begins to notice a lot of odd things.

Like Social Skills are measured and can be seen in the training of Telemarketing agents. Never has there been such a way for a person to learn social skills other than having a slight natural talent or advantage, and using it to get more practice from the rest.

Social Talents like Charisma, Appearance, and Environments where you abundant opportunity to practice with little punishment or threat of loss, while having a sufficient reward were the circumstance that allowed skilled manipulators. The opportunity to practice had many barriers. Now telemarketing, its training and the access to so many opportunities to practice is unprecedented when compared to ages past.

Maybe getting a telemarketing job fresh out of college would be a great way of explaining Fast-Talk, Diplomacy, Savoir-Faire etc. all at 13+

I better stop rambling.

If there were ever a Methodology to Munchkin...

2011-06-14T14:43:00.003+08:00

...I guess Six Sigma would be it.
Science and Gaming = Something Like Six Sigma.

I've begun my self-study, I picked up and spent my bday gift checks on the McGraw-Hill 36-hour course for Six Sigma.

Its a lot of measuring and understanding of statistics. It can appear heavy but after all the hype it is a idiot proof process of min-maxing for regular people, like me. Formulas, Graphs, Notes and the Internet are all there to make understanding all these things easier. Its mastery of those tools: good note taking, framing problems some other way, and being able to use the "expanded memory" of writing thoughts down and drawing relations that makes all this confusing symbols something understandable.

Its not Magic, well it a kind of magic.

Its a 36 hour course... but realistically I bet I will need to spend x3.5 more hours, based on the metrics and rules of thumb on learning I've read. I also have to find ways to apply what I have just learned.

To think this in GURPS 126 hours isn't worth even 1cp, but in reality it can mean a success in a project.

I'm having more time to write... but not as much about games.

Well here I am trying to hit two birds with one stone. I'm trying to write about work and about RPGs, but basically by the way my brain works I'm always in an RPG even though I'm at work.

In its definition of success, its not about awesome leadership, strategies, opportunities or all the sorts of razzle dazzle that become central in a story. It is the subtlety of discipline that makes winners, according to the book I'm reading. The winning qualities are those that get subtle reference and not the Spot light like Heroism, sacrifice and all the key imagery that gets an audience's attention.

Right now I'm trying to figure out what to write about without so much boring topics about min-maxing in business. BPOs and biz opportunities in the Philippines is an expertise I'm surprised to be learning rather quickly.

It makes me aware of how Current Affairs (business) is a skill naturally part of any professional template. Heck, it basically means understanding the current situation, essential in figuring out what to do. The freaking skill means understanding context.

I have a much greater understanding of income generation, particularly how it relates to competence. Particulary, many of the most competent don't just get CASH, they get a ton social norms and unquantifiable advantages. Also the most elite begin with trust and leadership that gives them resources to level up.

Right now we are doing several skill captures designed to replicate into our IT all the necessary and normally protected skills. Protectionism, protected skills, make jobs stagnant little strongholds where ignorance rules. We want to break up all that monopoly and unnecessary overhead.

In breaking monopolies and protectionism we found allies in Open-Source Communities. We want to break away from the increasing overhead costs licensed products and hack ourselves a effective solution. We are migrating away from licenses that take us away from our core business and the politics of the major corporations. We are moving towards contributing freely to the open source community and focusing in our service delivery.

Real World Career Paths.
A useful artifact of DnD is the prestige classes and leveled classes mindset. In a way their is some truism in the concept. My view of professional classes have been greatly broadened beyond my art backgrounds staples, which tends to be more related to manufacturing as there is a "churning" out of art that has some of it recycled heavily. Now I tend to see these as: Finance, Entrepreneurs, Managers and Technicians/Experts.

They differ heavily in their core philosophies and skills. Any of these classes can have strengths in Process, Analytics, Social, and Technical. Consider these 4 a set of skill categories, not absolute and with many skills that fall in between of 2 or 3 of these. They also have circumstantial advantages like: Status, Wealth, Network, and Backgrounds.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of cognitive biases exerts a very strong influence over objectivity as to what advantages or strategies are best.

My Opinion, and feel free to comment or make your own classification, is that Finance are the Magic Users as they make money with "Instruments" and by playing with non-physical forces. Clerics: which are bureaucracy and organization can be found in the management. The Front line: Technicians are the Fighters, like the many kinds and forms of engineers and experts. then there are the Entrepreneurs who exploit any opportunity or look for a situation that can become an opportunity.

Battle Mages are the Finance people who can be in the thick of the fighting. Process expertise is a skill tree of a Cleric, but does a great amount of puissance as it would to a Mage.

Rangers are the entrepreneurial technical experts (rogue and fighter), who take analytics skill tree. They process a lot of information and kind find opportunities, weaknesses and strengths given time and resources.

Fighters have a lot of flavors as there are kinds of engineers and technicians. Although, given this day and age, there appears to be more kinds of technicians than ever.

Marketing are a kind of Rogue. One that use persuasion, manipulation, or simple skullduggery (alluding to the marketing scripts that intentionally deceive).

I got carried away with the work to play comparisons. Oh well, gotta go back to work.

Real life inspiring a game: complete dysfunctional management, fraud, and some criminal activity

2011-06-03T11:52:00.005+08:00

I've been gone a while and got into serious on the job training turning around one of our sub companies. As the COO (child of the owner) I was a newb privy to all that is happening but was under the apprentice ship of two veterans who helped me with my crash course. Coming out of the experience so far, it's not yet over, has so educated me and inspired me.

Like everyone else in the gaming blog circle I see things in gaming terms, mindset, and a bit of munchkinism... Don't forget the appreciation of the drama. We are documenting all the issues and how they were handled and I plan do fully develope it as a case study aka adventure module. All the moves, counter moves, and things happening behind the scenes are coming to light as this mystery gamer (thanks to Lisa j. Steele's books) was able to appreciate the nuances and the wonders of human deviance.

The case study will be there to develop future management talent and possible, in the off chance let my siblings in to appreciate the family business much more. I have to just proclaim that gaming helped me be more engaged and mentally flexible enough to keep and learn quickly how this "game" is played and think out of the box.

The was fraud, drama, a sex offender (and a misappropriated funds used to have a week in olangapo, a sex vacation), tons of conflicts of interest, harassing maneuvers, traps, IT fraud and information gathering, great betrayals, surprising turn arounds, collective efforts, teamwork, playing on each others strengths, and a greater engagement and improving morale.

With a game-int-the-brain gamer with average stats going through the experience. Definitely not an epic level story, but given the challenges it is in a study of how ordinary people can be given a chance to shine and improve themselves beyond expectations and to the surprise of everyone else. No magic, no cinematics, just some empathy, good people, seeing opportunities in adveresity and a shared effort to help each other succeed.

A realistic and attainable level up is something I am guessing everyone really wants, and not just me.

Typing in the iPad, sorry for the errors.

And the Point is...

2011-05-12T10:23:00.000+08:00

Compartamentalize: Work, Personal and Play. Pay for what you need for work computing, and pay for what ever you like for personal and play.

For businesses, they don't have to buy for more than what they need. the chrome notebook keeps things simple and easy. and from the perspective of biz security for the Biz owner the chrome net books is great value for productivity.

One clear point to stress: IT IS ONLY FOR BUINSESS OWNERS. This is for a group of people, not for the individual. You own a business with 10+ employees and need documents, spreadsheets, (even outbound or inbound capability) and all those other work related tools and capital this is for you.

in reference to: Microsoft could lose billions in sales to Google's Chromebook | Companies News - Betanews (view on Google Sidewiki)

Open Source Awesomeness

2011-05-09T19:59:00.001+08:00

Check out Open Source Ecology. We have a manufacturing plant and we are an emerging market that could use all these light industrial equipment.

I'll only be able to act on this next month. Thank Open Source that it has a Cost Breakdown.

in reference to: Main Page - Open Source Ecology (view on Google Sidewiki)

Comparison to Plow Animal

2011-05-09T16:03:00.001+08:00

For Biometric performance of Horses check out the Smalls Arms Manual by the US Marines.

5 hours a day of heavy exertion (200lbs) and about 10% their body weight in fuels. This can only be sustained on a week, then after there is a deterioration performance.

Also work for these animals are seasonal. they cannot be fully utilized for many other projects a village might need.

If these animals are to graze, grazing takes a LOT of time. Grazing is a cheap way to feed this animals, but it requires a lot of space and time.

Plow Horses cannot be used in Wet Irrigation causing them to get sick. that is why despite their advantage in productivity, Water buffalo are preferred.

in reference to: LifeTrac - Open Source Ecology (view on Google Sidewiki)

Early Motte and Bailey 10C

2011-05-05T15:44:00.003+08:00

Early Motte and Bailey 10C

This uses GURPS 4E low tech companions 1 and 2. This is based on the Motte and Baily from Wikipedia.

Motte: 63ft high and 10,000 sqft Packed earthen Mound

$1,500,000 ($1,496,629) / 6,800 tons (6,859 tons)

Perimeter Wall for 40,000sqft is 710ft. (112.8ft radius) $702,300.

$17,800 ($17,791)/ 150tons; DR8. 706’ long (112.4’ radius), 20’ high and 8” thick outer wooden palisade ($1.26/21.36lbs)
$671,000 ($670,752); 1,500 tons (2,959,200lbs); DR72. 685’ long (109.4’ radius), 16’ high and 6’ wide packed earth ($61.2/270lbs) sandwiched between wooden palisades.
$13,500 ($13,426.56); 114tons (227,612.16lbs); DR8. 666ft long (665.6’ long; 106’ radius), 16’ high wooden pallisade 8” thick ($1.26/21.36lbs)

40’ tall stone keep, 20’ lower levels, occupying 3600 sqft

6 stories (4 above ground, 2 below ground inside the motte) $277,000

60’ total wall height, 1’ thick walls, 60’ each wall, 4 walls. (17,288) x Imported Ashlar (200 miles away, or x2.3 cost importation cost modifier; Cheap Quality and Labor -0.4CF; $11.72 to $16.2) = $2,800,000.

The first floor has a ceiling of 12’. 6 wooden Floors/Ceilings above it the above have 8ft ceiling to floor height. total 40.8ft. 3600sqft x 16” of wood ($4.94/42.72lbs) = $18,000/ 77tons per floor ($17,784/153,782lbs). 6 floors = $107,000/460tons($106,704/922,692lbs)
1 Stone 4” tile floor (4” ashlar $46.88/62lbs) x 3600sqft = $170,000/112tons ($168,768/223,200lbs).

2x 40’ tall 15’x15’ Guard Towers ($14,400 each) = $28,800

Each tower is 40’ high but has 4 corners extending 10’ into the ground x 60’ wall (15’ x 4) x 16” of wood ($4.94/42.72lbs) = $12,000/ 51tons ($11,856/102,528lbs).

4x Support pillars 10’ x 1sqft x 16”of wood ($4.94/42.72lbs) = $200/1800lbs ($197.6/1708.8lbs)
4x 15x15 floors of 8” of wood ($2.47/21.38lbs) = $2,200/10 tons ($2,223/19,224).

Furnishings and Detailing#. $2.5M ($2,505,800). (includes iron gratings, gates, light wooden partitions, heating, sewage, storage, tools for administration and governance, small library, religious materials, etc.)
Total $5M. (for comparison, a Multimillionaire Lord has $8.4M Annual income).
Keep Area: 3600sqft x 7 floors = 25,200sqft keep;
Towers Area: 225sqft x 5 floors x 2 towers = 2,250sqft
Remaining Area (sans keep, towers, walls) 31,231sqft (from 40,000sqft)

Scary

2011-05-02T20:38:00.001+08:00

This information should be given with consent or volunteered.

in reference to: Spokeo People Search | White Pages | Find People (view on Google Sidewiki)

A morality thread in the forums: Killing Orcs

2011-04-27T15:24:00.002+08:00

This kind of topic always generates a lot of debate, since normally people go into it with the baggage of their moral standards, and we all know how different everyones are in close inspection.

Still i like these kinds of threads because it allows people to examine their moral lines. Of course there are a lot of openings to exploit in such arguments and specifics to be defined. It's a very back and forth discussion.

IMO It is something best saved for a forum over moral and philosophical debate. Although this illustrates how RPGs, for me, have been a great gateway into this kind of in depth analysis of my own moral code, those of others, and how perspective can complicate everything.

This is a Google Side wiki post

in reference to: [Fantasy] When not to kill the Orcs - Steve Jackson Games Forums (view on Google Sidewiki)

[Low-Tech write up] Economic Overview of a Kingdom

2011-04-26T14:50:00.006+08:00

This is the economic overview of a Kingdom. A kingdom, has a King who is considered first among his peers, who are other Princes, either by vote, vassalage, or conquest.

There are 17 Principalities. These Principalities are the largest organizational assets a faction can hold. The cost it takes to hold and run such assets test the limits of each faction capability. The most powerful individual, the King, has the revenues and resources of more than one principality.

Typically this is the principality his faction calls home, lesser assets and the seat of power. A principality that constitutes a "seat of power" has symbolic and strategic importance. Typically it has the greatest economic prosperity granting it population and developed resources, as well as the ability to hold other competing principalities in check by being the center of a logistical network ("all roads lead to Rome").

The size of each Principality, powerful enough to influence events and "play the game of thrones" typically falls within a range of 60% different from the largest to the smallest. Many principalities fall somewhere in the middle. The smallest happens to be in the "running" because of some exception to the rule.

How to proceed.

Part 1: Greater Map

The best way to proceed is to take a map, probably using Google Earth. Take a map with sufficiently diverse and large land area. Modify its features to be unrecognizable through stamp tool and healing brush. Apply vectoring tools to sketch and paint features, allowing for greater magnification. Then work with "broad strokes" dividing the area by its geographical and strategic features. Dividing things up to the largest swaths of principalities. Divide this into layers in the vector drawing tools. Overlay with hex grid, with 20-30km wide hex scale.

This would take about 4-6 hours with the right tools.

Part 2: Focus on one portion of the Map.

Proceed next into detailing one particular faction. Using vector drawing program's layering options, hide the layers containing other principalities and proceed to map out the particular principality. Follow water sources, having villages about 4-12 km from each other, depending on the natural barriers. Use "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" to determine a rough number of villages. The naming convention of villages default to Hex code and clock-wise count of the villages. Create a smaller hex layer scaled to 2-5km.

This would take 8-10 hours easy. This is about one week of GM prep, as long as all resources as easily available. Given that it takes multiple sitting, its better to spend the first sitting creating an outline of objectives.

Part 3: Asset Calculations.

Count the number of villages and towns, these are assets. Assign Incomes and Costs to these assets, and consider around 10% of all costs are ultimately tribute that finds its way to the Principality's ruler. Take the largest community, typically a city, and calculate for city income, assets and probably expenses.

Using demographic tools found in "MDME" or other sources, derive the population of various socio-economic classes. This helps determine the number of household man-at-arms, and raw numbers for knights and man at arms; also the professional soldier population; also the available militia/levy from peasant freemen available in the area. With such numbers, one can make a org-structure of the principality. The org-structure, using drawing tools, allows for understanding the force numbers available to the particular principality.

This can take 4-6 hours, if all resources are accessible. Assembling all demographics resources and writing down the objective, and what must be achieved in greatest priority will help keep within time budget.

Part 4: detailing a Smaller region and its Cast.

Having achieved a gross org-structure for the principality, proceed to detail one large manor, the particular branch of an org chart. This manor hold, would ideally be one of a town or an important fief. Using SWOT, describe the situation of the manor, emphasizing the challenges and threats worthwhile for adventuring.

Create a Minor House, develop its family history in relation to the major events of the Principality and potentially the setting. Write ups add up to 500-600 words, for player's consumption. This becomes a launching place for PCs, as they are somehow connected or relevant to this Minor House, and this is where their path to greatness begins.

Writing up the 400-600word story will take 2 hours if one is not attempting to create so many weaving plots. Writing up one relative to the major history events cannot be done. A prerequisite of 2,000 words general setting event overview would eat up as much as 4-6 hours by itself, even with a random name generator (without it takes more time to decide on names without a preferential pattern emerging). Another 600 principality history overview would be an hour to write up. Great reading preparing for such is overview of historical events like: War of the Roses, The Hundred years war, First Crusade, and other overviews of great wars or upheavals.

Total of 16-20 hours. Probably 2 weeks of reading and researching and then writing.

Part 5: Props, details, and preparation.

The GM will need tools to make the preferred conflicts and challenges run smoothly. Take the "Character Generation Tables" from Low Tech world (still under construction) and tailor fit it to the game's setting. Create a fun system to generate NPCs and PCs, and the GM gets to use it by making 10-20 cast, NPCs, members of various backgrounds.

Have several tables of load outs and combat stats available for easy reference. Include the social stats that make social interactions challenging and require a level of cunning from the players.

Have a "script" how things are supposed to proceed based on how the key members of the cast, NPCs, are trying to achieve their own goals. Note the resources they have in case the PCs get in their way or help them achieve it. Highlight all those who can easily benefit from the utility of the PCs.

These all would take one afternoon, 4-6 hours, if all the tools are easily available.

In an hour or two, creating and having a walk-through the Character Creation, Setting Immersion, and Introductory Session plans. Also organizing all the data and storing them properly for future continuance, if proven fruitful.

A total of 52 hours.

If the setting would be fully developed, that would be about 1000 hours. If that could be delegated and be made into a full time job and outsourced, hiring an artist and a writer fulltime. Discounting the management of the writer and artist, $2700 and probably have a turn over of 3 months. This doest count fixed costs of office and utilities.

If I would have a secretary make sure everyone followed the GANT progress chart, I can say it would be finished on time but not at the best costs, probably $3500. To fully utilize the secretary asset, leave him to assemble, organize, and lay out the material. Probably keep a blog and webpage with all the material.

If I did this all with part-time workers, a serious consideration since the people I know who can do this are all working, maybe i can do it at 1/3 the cost but at a production turn over of of 8-10 months.

Objectives.. If I were to try to make this profitable

Making this setting profitable is not the objective. It would be, for me, making a very usable and GURPS 4e very low fantasy (practically realistic) setting with maps detailed enough to use for Mass Combat and play a "Game of Thrones" seizing cities, forging and breaking alliances, and making a lot of enemies.

If I were to make it profitable, I would approach Tale Worlds and venture such a game with their Multi-player Mount and Blade Engine (the game company with a rep for historical very low fantasy game market). Develop a Multi-player game where such options are available. Probably offer a method to outsource and sub-contract the game module development here and create a 100 play-hour game module with a 6-8 week turnover for a number of modules depending on sales. Although they would, of course, rather build on their existing setting. All that money can be attributed as proof of concept.

If making independent Low-Fantasy Game, designed primarily for multi-player (near Table-top-like, near free-form style of play), such a project has a turn around of 2-3 years... definitely out of the question.

Given all the risks of developing a game, what will probably happen if things are ok (3% chance).

Even if it is an Ogre SDK, it will take $90,000 of labor costs and fixed costs of $25,000. Yikes $115k, that doesn't even count marketing. Marketing on history websites, google, Gamer magazines for 6 months before release of $15k and the Datacenter to host these games $25-60k (assuming I can get a Cloud Service to be my datacenter on demand instead of buying a datacenter).

The ROI with $8 play per month plan (free download) and 20,000 players (1/5 of the mount and blade players) will be in 4-6 Months. After those months, maybe profiting 10% of the lowest play per month plan and benefiting from the PEZA tax holiday. All the other expenses in running the datacenter, game services, and "betterment".

Probably ROI in 3 years, have really small margins while investing heavily in betterment in the only year you are profitable. After the betterment, sell the damn thing for its future income x the betterment for about $30M (revenue per month x betterment over 5 years x inflation of 5 years - operation and fixed costs) if anyone is interested.

As a Low-fantasy game with a more conservative graphics, it can compete in emerging markets with expensive online infrastructure costs. Develop more 90s styled-adventure, problem solving modules, along with the combat and mass combat.

My Game Writing blurring with my Work studies

2011-04-22T00:48:00.002+08:00

"The adventure should have the least amount of barriers. The wording and material should be designed with a GM work flow that takes account of the amount of time the GM uses to prepare and the use of his time."

I was writing down objectives to some of the material I was creating for my catharsis. One of the things that struck me is how people find realistic-level games difficult to prepare. So I thought about the objectives that would clear this up, based on my experience running historical RPGs. In my learnings at work, I should gun for the highest bang-for-buck in terms of problem solving catharsis.

Currently at work I'm kinda enjoying the "building a consensus" exercise when troubleshooting. Since we are dealing with many different individuals who have different motives and objectives, the process is simple in theory but time consuming in practice. The time consuming part in practice, is easy to adjudicate in a game. Most of the time what goes wrong are things that are mundane yet are barriers deserving of respect, despite how "everyday" it might appear to those who thirst for magic and wonder.

In fact, as I get older, these everyday challenges hold more and more "magic and wonder" for me. Its part of that humanist spirituality (Professor Robert Solomon: the passions, intelligence of emotions). So I'm more inclined, or Biased, to bringing a new perspective to mundane conflicts and the deeper aspect of it rooted in the myriad of human natures.

Progress in Low-Tech World.

My work in Low-Tech World is focused right now in Load Outs. Going to as far as detailing: Combat Load (Carried and Worn), Marching Load, Squad and Squadron Baggage and Support staff. There are some minor problems in terms of rulings. Eventually some of it lead to finding out the GURPS errata e-group subscription has been down since 2007 and that I'm not the only one feeling that there is no one updating the errata on the PDFs (as the ideal).

I'm near finished in reading Qin: The Warring States. Although, even when done, I'll have to leave it to digest. Meanwhile, I'll be working on classic Load-Out stapples: Imperial Roman Legionaire, Republic Roman Loadouts, Alexander's Army load outs, Feoderati Loadouts etc. Load outs that have some or a hint of what they are comprised off.

Right now "balancing" the loadout weight budget of the Roman Horse Archer found in Procopious History of Wars I: The Persian war is having some problems. Its just too heavy, so I've got to fix it.

Other Historical or Low-Fantasy Gamer Blogs?

Where are they, I'm more interested in reading those kinds, I'm not for the DnD stuff unless there are bits of Historical and Economic elements.

Looking forward to more about China

2011-04-19T15:34:00.003+08:00

The east is the least understood and least played setting in RPGs. So I have a special props for Qin: The Warring States for making a game about the Warring States period. I realized that part of the focus I will do in my Low Tech direction, (there was only one vote to a particular direction and it is towards Low Tech) would be to cultivate more information about Ancient China.

I've gotten back into studying my Putong Hua. My 8 week year old son happens to find it funny when I practice to him. I'm particularly influenced me is the talks by Patricia Kuhl: the linguistics genius of babies. So I'm getting the little guy primed with Putong Hua sounds and speech pattern (all that Anime subtitles growing up helped developed an ear for Japanese and Chinese, particularly Ranma since we had a lot of it in Chinese with english subtitles).

Right now downloading all the free history books and wiki articles on Ancient China. Confucius, being very Secularist Humanist friendly (contrary to how it may be interpreted, it has strong a humanist and nerd philosophy).

I'm looking more for Household Life. That JSTOR subscription is looking more tempting, good thing the last time I had that subscription I downloaded all the material related to ancient history (of all cultures). I still have some JSTOR articles about marriage statistics and culture in ancient china (can't remember what era).

I've checked GURPS china and sadly, I cannot recommend it. China seems like just another setting where you just have to memorize another roster of dieties. My opinion is that, given how Sun Tzu wrote, the affairs of the supernatural were something quietly dismissed by the academic and technical elite.

"Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared.
"Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is FOREKNOWLEDGE.
5. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.
6. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men."
Sun Tzu

I think the approach for a Chinese setting requires an understanding of difference in values. I think a Tour-guide book to China can very well do a better job than a gaming book. Professors Hammond's "From Yaho to Mao: 5000 years of chinese History" is a great place to start also.

Help Me Focus, a Poll.

2011-04-15T17:59:00.004+08:00

Last week I had a bad fever and all I could do was write and read about games. Now that I have a bit more control of my willpower, I realized I started a lot of projects (each one I would love to finish or produce more product) but I can't decide which one should I focus on.

Currently my Game writing projects and their current status:

IMTU Military Doctrine. Where I detail military doctrine of the Imperial Military Branches. Clocked in probably 6 hours this week writing and doing equipment load out calculations. Ended up finding a lot of UTerrata that has not been taken care off. I need to provide my own Magazine weights and stats for the Gause of ETK weaponry, better Scout Robots.
Primary and Secondary Education for gaming. I did a study about secondary education, as an exercise of my understanding of how study and learning works. So I'm getting a handle on it, as well as understanding more about how and where education can fail. So why not make a character generation system that allows the detailed accounting of the subject matters and skills of a character. I realize this is a throw away choice
GURPS Low-Tech World. Inspired by my study about Harnworld, Origins of Civilizations, Ancient Empires before Alexander, all lectures of Kenneth Harl, "From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese History". I've modified my GURPS Knights and Incomes document and converted into a overview (just started outlining the topics I feel i can cover). I got the idea to reorganize it to a more top-down approach and overview of a medieval world. I have been unable to update and maintain my previous and related work: Low Tech Households revenues and expenses. I got carried away

Thanks in advance for those who can contribute the time to help me focus on a more relevant topic.

IMTU Doctrines of the Imperium

2011-04-11T18:13:00.004+08:00

I was doing a detailed review of Gurps Traveller (Ground Forces and Star Mercs) and I was disappointed with the inconsistencies. I was supposed to write a review, but I got busy and filed it as a Draft in my blog. I don't think it would be productive to "rant" when I can do something about it instead.

What I choose to do about it is write about the Military Doctrine of My Traveller Universe instead. I began with a description of the economic state of the Imperium, and I'm slowly working my way towards details and a more unified outline. I realized the Economic overview helps build a more consistent explanation as we move towards details.

I've recently did a pretty in-depth read on US Army and Marine training and proficiencies. The Philippines is pretty much patterned after that, except that its poor and its soldiers are not taken well taken care off. My country's military provides a good example of what balkanized and unstable military services are like in the many poor and struggling worlds of the Imperium.

I will also tackle Naval Doctrine, building on Mark Gelis' article The Imperial Navy in a 4th Edition GURPS Campaign Part I. Basically detail it in the way David Webber did for Honorverse, but given Traveller equipment and ships.

I like doing load-outs so thats one of the things I've begun to do with the details. Currently my internet is buggy and I can't finish my writing.

As for the Doctrine Overview, I'm considering doing Army first.

FAQ: Knight Incomes in GURPS 4e

2011-04-06T16:11:00.002+08:00

I made this little thing to sort out what is a knight income. The basic template is household knight/man-at-arms. Whats funny about this one is that I'm using Suzie Orman's rule of thumb that your household expenses should be 40% of your income (which i roughly translated as 50% cost of living). She says that if your spending beyond this for just household expenses your living beyond your means.

what has changed compared to my other incarnations of such is that I've more sources and my assumptions are more plainly stated. Also there is some symmetry in the numbers.

I will go into Household expenses more in detail in this google doc.

Low Tech Households

2011-04-05T19:24:00.003+08:00

Here is the google docs of the list of Household Revenues and Expenses. I've just listed all the items so far and have yet to define them along with putting where I got all my sources and footnotes.

I decided to do this first before making a spread sheet. This is meant to be generic, as I plan to do several households: Roman Republic, 11C Crusader, Han or Zhou (can't decide yet), and maybe a Spanish Hacienda in the 19C Philippines.

People interested in a shared work, can just ask for an invite. The intent is to be flexible and open, to allow as many interpretations to presented in an orderly fashion.

So much work plus the baby, its fragmenting my writing and concentration.

[GURPS High Tech] Resource: PTR products

2011-04-01T09:44:00.002+08:00

Precision Target Rifles - A gun-manfucaturer that had a revamp. The happen to have my prefered airsoft gun: the G3. Contrary to Gurps HT stats, its $900 not $1,500. What is also interesting is how a old gun gets new life.

Its April 1, so I guess I can't trust any of the news I hear. There is unverifiable news that PTR is building an MP44 for production. This is a big deal for my WW2 re-enactors airsoft friends and I'm quite interested at the collectors market for such a weapon.

Also gaming related, is about the "rights" to produce these anacronistic designs, the ww2 guns. Governments will always have the resources to make their own gun. Although, a Freetrader in traveller, can bring $2-3M worth of equipment (stamping machines, steel casts and molds, machining tools, etc.) and give a small country an arms production facility. In order not to conflict over copyrights, they may use those made by governments that don't exist anymore and were the holders of the weapon design rights.

So imagine going into a port and seeing a bunch of ww2 german weapons. Slightly modified to take advantage of what was available in the locality.

Gritty Finances in Traveller Part 1: Starting Out

2011-03-31T15:23:00.002+08:00

I've resolved to try to create a template of process of character creation for traveller where he uses real world present day financial instruments and tools to purchase his first ship and get his first job, to begin his campaign.

It is a great exercise to practice my accounting and writing about it helps me better remember, see how well I understand the topic, visualize and find deficiencies in my understanding of the concept.

Financing. Financing is the skill of managing cash or cash-like resources, knowledge of financial instruments and tools, where to get financing and how to get and meet requirements, as well as the some methods used to hold, move, protect, and appreciate cash. It can be said that a character with Financing (better with Market Analysis) can invest his/her money in stocks instead of leaving the banks to try to appreciate their cash assets.

Financing in IMTU. In ISW174, there is that unusual financial set up where backers just throw money at the character. It may sound like I'm exaggerating but I'm aware of accounting practices that make even non-munchkins drop their jaws in rules abuse. Share-holders are the first to pay and last to collect. So any creative accountant can just make-up frivolous expenses (like a brand spanking new $150k battle suit as a "necessary" defense measure on a Tramp merchant, a team building exercise in a pleasure dome, a "subcontractor", etc.).

Backers will always have stiff requirements, the most common sense approach is to micro-manage. They will require "touching-base" after a period of time augmented by a fail-safe or some collateral. They will want the returns at their soonest, even if it is in relatively small increments. It can also be having someone of absolute sure loyalty and a shared-stake be on that enterprise (but that is an added expense, unless as an asset to the mission the oversee-er more than takes care of the situation).

The Agent. The micromanager is a BIG role-playing challenge. Some are Assets and others are Burdens, or worse: liabilities to the mission. They are the ACE of the GM's sleeve, and managing them is more of a roleplaying and process-organizational challenge. It is the annoying thorn on the PC's side, or the hidden asset they take for-granted, or worse fight against.

Collateral. Another common method of securing such great investment and risk is by giving a collateral. Collateral is rarely equal or greater than loan for a business, this is because if one has assets equal to that of their New business (the starship), then what is the point on taking a risk on something new. if you have a pretty good business to use as collateral, auditors will be scouring the finances and hedging their bets (asking more in returns) at such a "irrational" financial decision.

So the GM can best assign collateral costs as equal to the cost of chasing after the characters and allowing the backers/financiers to recoup their cost or the possibility to earn better plus lost revenue during the time of the action. Heck thats even a adventure Hook: the players are the collection team and their first mission is bringing back that $170M armed Qian/Akkigish class ship. Its like Bail jumping.

Fate and Finances. The best kind of financial backgrounds are those handed by fate, instead of planned and bought, particularly rolling with the good and the bad. The truth about every individuals Finances is that there is a huge amount of chance, that points should not try to balance. It is these kinds of twists is where creative Acquisitions come from, particularly the trade-offs that blind-side the character.

So if ever, the use of chance through Life-path tables or story telling with dice are always useful in such game beginnings.

Part II. To be continued, still working on the Annual expense sheets for Hero, Beowulf, Marava, Qian, and Akkigish. There are just so many variable expenses and I'm still sorting through the static costs. I'm using as a baseline Uncertain markets that need plans to mature in 2-3 years (8mo-12mo in planning).

[Gurps Traveller] Why Old Relics?

2011-03-30T08:49:00.004+08:00

Learning from our business finances and how the market works, there is still much to be said about the earning potential of a business despite the massive overhead expenses and the chance of hitting the red.

Purchasing depreciated equipment or capital means the Adventurer intends to earn a net profit just before the equipment fails.

Reversely, a company selling depreciated equipment or equipment in their End-of-Life, cannot afford the risk of the equipment failing or needs to keep up with the current pace of technology to stay in the market.

A business, despite being heavily in debt, short of key personnel and competence will always have its major assets (capital, like a ship; and equipment). You cannot use assets to keep the business running, but it is the minimalist requirement to stay in business.

A ship means off-world. it means Inter-stellar Markets or dealing with groups of much larger sizes able to collectively pay your services. It also means going where you want or need to go. There is a difference between products that sell for much, giving bigger margins and the ability to make strategic business decisions like location.

In the real world, I can compare a ship to a Factory or Plant. While having such a large capital advantage, even with the debt, one can still make money. Creditors can give you a hard time, but that won't get them their money back, you can always negotiate in good faith. As for paying labor, which should be one of the first expenses always paid, thats some RPing and playing smart.

Wish I can run Traveller for my younger cousins (father's side relatives are mostly entrepreneurs) give them an entertaining education about business, critical decision making, financing and exercise their accounting skills. Stuff only discussed in school, and only read and written about.

Real life work and Traveller. Filipinos are known for being a popular choice for Overseas Foreign Workers. Many Mariners are Filipinos and in the most troubled regions in the lucrative middle east where skilled labor is imported, Filipinos brave the dangers and the human rights risks of going to such places. Culturally adaptable, coming from a humble station (as being mostly poor) they are open and generally easy to get along with.

Right now, our business is taking us abroad in the places few would do business but people are able and willing, and their elites are willing to pay the cost for such expertise.

Big corporates and higher economically tiered people have higher operating costs. We don't, in fact we are in the low end of our market. We make it up because of Social Norms and Benefit the company provides [1]. After all, Pay =/= Productivity, productivity is a matter of chance, hardwork, and innovation. Its those tiny details that keep costs down, us competitive, and innovative.

I'm just surprised that in some way we are about to take a step towards a direction, I've only dreamed off in Traveller. To go places, only few would, where I and those with me will be able to adapt, thrive and profit.

Interestingly Its not us, who have the best technology, who are going to the Minor or Branch Routes. It is us who are willing to brave it, who understand the risks and challenges and willing to live with the inconvenience. I think its one of the few take-aways from coming from a world with a very wide gap between rich and poor, and living with it everyday. Being somewhat in the middle and able to see and adapt to both social extremes.

[1] The Cost Social Norms (financial security through transparency and willingness to listen and adapt is a social norm; also resource spent developing tools for making the job easier, smoother and emphasis on how the company cares for its employees)