Orcs

Now—before you put this away, either “hurr hurr”ing like an asshole, or feeling vaguely disturbed, I want to ask you a question. That orc—you know, the orc in that room in the dungeon, you open the door, there’s an orc there. He looks up, a bunch of heavily armed human motherfuckers are charging into the room waving weapons.

What’s he supposed to do? Smile broadly and say “Hey, mi casa es su casa, amigos!”? No, he whimpers with fear, pulls out his pigsticker, and prepares to meet his doom. I wanna know about his childhood. Are you telling me he doesn’t have friends who are going to miss him? That he didn’t have hopes and fears and aspirations of his own? That you aren’t a bunch of fucking degraded monsters for wasting him without a second thought? You’re playing a fucking role, okay, you’re supposed to act like a real character in this world. And yet you saunter around, killing intelligent creatures like they’re just another widget, a bunch of pixels to blow away, a mechanism for obtaining experience points and treasure. That isn’t roleplaying. Not as I understand it.

Here’s what I want to do. I want to go into a Quake® deathmatch. And I want to strip down to a loincloth, sit down on the floor with a begging bowl, and call after the lunatics with the plasma guns as they flee past me, saying, “It is all samsara, it is all illusion, my friend”—for truly it is, pixels on a screen.  ”Reject the fleeting temptations here, what profiteth you another kill? There is another path.” And I want him to turn, think twice—and then I will smile benevolently as he tosses a rocket my way, blows me to my reincarnation as my peaceful self—and he runs on, and kills and kills again, quad damage, armor, another clip, heal and heal and blammo to the floor—until finally he turns, lays down his gun, and sits by me, asking me to teach. And then one by one, the players shall gather by me, sitting, assuming the lotus position, touching the ground in the earth-witness gesture, letting their thoughts still, contemplating that strange Quake sky as it streams overhead, peaceful, in unity, transforming this one, small, cyberrealm of unending war and mayhem into harmony.

Sigh.

Right.

I wanna be a shooter bhoddisatva, baby.

Man, I am so full of shit.

And then there’s this, from Over the Edge (2nd Edition), by Jonathan Tweet with Robin D. Laws; page 167, under Alternative Hypothesis:

…Perhaps exposure to tulpas, especially psychic contact, would give a person a brief glimpse of the universe as it really is: an infinite number of immortal spirits donning temporary identities in various “worlds” as they play out their intricate, never-ending games with no true concern other than shared amusement. What would one do with this knowledge?

I’ve been thinking about these quotes for a long time. It started when I had a conversation with a good friend of mine almost three years ago. We spoke about the near-death experience she had on an operating table, after being hit by a truck.

I wrote this in my journal, in February of 2009, a couple of days after the meeting:

…and [she] told me something that I guess she told me before but I didn’t properly understand. She said that death is like taking the blinders off—that when we’re not here, living our limited and individual lives, we are infinite beings, capable of infinite understanding. Of course, in a universe where everybody knows everything, beings get bored, so they invented this amusement park / school called life, where we can limit ourselves and experience everything like it’s new again.

Which ultimately means that nothing can truly hurt you. Nothing is permanent—not even death. The only heavens or hells we need to worry about in life are those of our own making. There’s no such thing as eternal punishment or damnation and ultimately there is nothing to fear, or hate, either in life or in death.

This is a very comforting thought—a great sense of peace comes with it. Life is what you make it, and there’s no need to worry. Everything will be okay.  That’s not to say that bad things don’t happen to good people, for reasons beyond their control. Of course they do. Tragedy happens. Evil happens too. But when these things occur, we have a choice in how we receive them. With a little perspective, it’s easier to not take them quite so personally, and thus deal with them more effectively.

Then, in the fall of 2010, I saw the first episode (“Is There a Creator?”) of Through The Wormhole, with Morgan Freeman. That’s where I first learned that the Simulation Argument is a somewhat respectable thought experiment in modern philosophy, and not “merely” an ancient philosophical idea (not to mention a seed for interesting fiction, like The Matrix, or Dark City).

If you’re not familiar, the Simulation Argument goes something like this: if it’s physically possible to make a near-perfect virtual reality, then chances are (given the age and size of the universe) that some technologically advanced alien culture has already done it. And if that’s the case, then they’re probably running multiple simulations—a multitude, even—including what might be called “ancestor simulations,” to study biological and social evolution, among other things. And if there is a multitude of simulations of the universe running, each of them filled with self-aware virtual beings; then statistically speaking, you and I and everybody we know are probably simulated people living in an artificial reality.

Now, it’s not like these ideas are revolutionary. Pretty much everybody at some point in their lives has heard or thought of the possibility that reality as we know it is an illusion of some kind, or that there might be some greater reality encompassing this one. It’s an ancient idea for a reason. But it really got me thinking.

The simulation argument suggests we may be living in a simulation. And given the state of present-day video games, it’s certainly easy enough to imagine a post-human society with super-advanced video games populated both by living players and simulated intelligences. It’s funny, really, because a lot of people of the transhumanist / singulatarian persuasion wouldn’t bat an eye at such a possibility; and yet will quickly balk at religious notions of a life beyond the one we commonly experience—whether those ideas are coming from a traditional or more New Agey source.

Maybe the Simulation Argument, and religious metaphysics, are just different ways of expressing the same idea—that ultimately, we’re really far more than we believe we are. Maybe in actuality, we’re all part of some vast collective intelligence—whether that’s an omniscient post-singularity hive-mind, or God itself—and maybe the difference doesn’t matter. And maybe, we just individuate ourselves from that totality of being to take on temporary, limited forms in simulated worlds, playing out parts for the education and amusement of ourselves and others.

Jordan Peterson also talks about this in his talk on Virtue as a Necessity. He begins by noting (at 3:47) that Life is Suffering. Life is Suffering because throughout our lives, our goals are thwarted by the arbitrary limitations placed upon us by nature and time. These are limitations like whether or not we’re smart, or good looking, or pre-disposed to certain diseases, and like the fact that one day we’ll die. All of these things are (Transhumanist optimism notwithstanding) beyond our control, and so they limit us. He says (around 6:20) that they are:

“…conditions of existence. Human being is predicated on a kind of fundamental limitation, in that we are what we are, and we’re not other things. And so that means, inevitably, that the awareness of human being comes along with suffering. Life poses the question: How to conduct yourself in the face of suffering. Not only yours, but everyone else’s. And it’s an inescapable question, except that maybe you’re fortunate, and you’ll have periods of time where something absolutely horrible isn’t happening to you…

…And to know this frees you from the false illusion that life can be conducted without suffering. Suffering is an integral part of being. Now, why is that? Well, who knows? It’s a metaphysical question. But I have some ideas about that that have helped me, and they’re things that I’ve read.

I read, for example, an old Jewish commentary about the reason for creation. It’s like a Zen Koan this idea. You take a being with the classical attributes of God: omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; a totality. And the question is, what does a being with those attributes lack? And the answer is “limitation.” And then you think, well, what’s so important about limitation? Well, if you can be anything, or do anything, at any time whatsoever; there’s no being, because everything is one thing. There’s no differentiation between things. So something that’s absolute and total has no being—it has to be parcelled out into limited being.

And you know this because you all play games. You play video games, you play games with other people. You may play games you don’t even know you’re playing. And when you play those games you put limits on yourself. You play by a set of rules. And the reason you do that is when you limit yourself—arbitrarily, in some ways—whole new worlds of possibility emerge. And so there’s a powerful metaphysical idea that being is not possible without limitation…”

Maybe we’re all role-players, at heart.

Peterson concludes this part of his talk by noting: “So you say, what’s the price you pay for being? The price you pay for being is limitation. And the price you pay for limitation is suffering. So the price you pay for being is suffering.”

Why do we let ourselves suffer if we’re just playing an elaborate game?  Why would any all-knowing entity voluntarily experience pain and loss and uncertainty?  Maybe just so that we take the simulation seriously.

Maybe we’re all role-players, suffering for our art. Maybe we’re just playing characters driven by our passions—suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to educate ourselves, or the universe itself, in all the wonders of a life well worn. Just so we can feel, and be moved.

Maybe Shakespeare was right: The Play’s The Thing.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

—As You Like It, by William Shakespeare; Act 2, scene 7, 139–143

And finally, I feel the light at the end of the tunnel. I’d set myself a deadline of July 15 to be finished the core mechanics. Well, I missed the deadline, but the last few weeks have been incredibly fruitful. I’ve got a semi-solid core mechanic, a combat and social conflict system that I’m confident about, and lots of great ideas about character advancement, metagame currency, player motivation, and encouraging role-playing. I feel like all I really have to do now is write it all down in a coherent form, and play the shit out of the thing. Previous playtests have taught me much, but soon it’ll be time to really let the thing run, and only make the most unavoidable changes.

Bottom line, I’m going to finish this fucker. If I suddenly get a brilliant new idea, it’ll have to wait for the next game. Somewhere I have a podcast of a GenCon game design panel featuring Jared Sorensen, Luke Crane, and John Wick, where one of them said the most important thing I think I’ve ever learned about making games: “Better is the enemy of Done.“ Finish the game you’re working on. Make the next game better. Otherwise you’ll drown in the feature creep. A great deal of life outside the game is also the enemy of done, but that part I can’t do anything about—at the very least, I don’t have to compound the problem by, well, compounding the game.

So, now that I’ve declared my oath of completion before the Gods, can I tell you a little bit about the game itself?

My last game design post was almost a year ago, although I’ve been too busy with other things for most of the last eight or ten months to really get much work going on my games. What work I have been doing has been focused on my semi-universal system (the one referred to in previous blog posts with the boring codename Martian Cycles. Because it’s setting non-specific, I’ve started calling the system Metapunk: Poly, or MPP, for short. As you can guess from the name, it uses polyhedrals for primary resolution (where most of my designs use D6′s or playing cards).

There are still a couple of options on the table for how this works, but the one that seems to fit the best uses a pair of dice, the exact combination of which is determined by a “ladder” of ranks which defines character abilities. At ability rank 6 you roll 2D6, at rank 7 you roll D8+D6, rank 8 is 2D8, and so on. Your roll is compared to a competing roll (using a difficulty rating along the same scale), and whoever is showing the highest die result wins (the dice are not summed). Obviously it’s a bit more complex than this, but that’s the basic idea.

Your abilities are defined in 3 ways: a set of skills or possibly careers, “boons” which modify those skills in positive ways (including skill specializations called “knacks,” as well as more specific tricks and techniques), and a small set of “attributes” that define your general aptitude for certain types of tasks. The chief duty of the attributes will be determining initiative in different situations, but they may also control perception rolls in different arenas, starting ranks for skills governed by each attribute, and perhaps basic resistance ratings to certain types of attacks / stress (although these might be handled by an even smaller set of secondary attributes).

Characters will also have a series of karmas—backgrounds, relationships, and character quirks / flaws which are the main source of experience in the game. This way, they act as motivating factors–always driving both story and character development.

Combat is intended to be fast, furious, and flamboyant, with an emphasis on description but still following a more or less traditional RPG pattern. I want combat to be fully integrated with social conflict, so that rather than forcing scenes to be either combative or non-combative/social, you can play out a fight interspersed with conversation and manipulation. I’d like to be able to play out the final scene on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi, where Luke, Vader, and the Emperor are all engaged in emotionally charged (and often manipulative) conversation between saber swings.* It’s dramatic and immersive in a way that you just don’t seem to get in D&D or Rifts or other more traditional combat oriented games; at least, not when I’ve ever played them.

Social conflict itself is intended to be dynamic—with mechanics that guide role-playing without getting in the way. As social encounters develop, tension builds until characters either defuse it, or reach a breaking point. Past the breaking point they can’t control what they’re feeling—they’ll be under the influence of a particular emotion and will have to see it through somehow. Clever players may be able to redirect their reactions, but the key here is that some sort of reaction will occur—driving the story forward.

I’ll leave it there—no need to spoil the thing before it’s finished! In any case, you can see that I’m pretty excited. It’s taken a long time, but I’m finally getting to where I want to be with MPP.

I can’t wait to get this thing done.

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*Say what you will about Lucas as a storyteller (and I’ve said plenty myself), scenes like that one in RotJ are what give the series its magic and are an example of what he really got right. Grand emotions in the midst of grand adventures… the characters work out their angst in the middle of a swordfight. That’s what makes it awesome. Sure, a quick and deadly battle with no talking can be cool too, but that’s a lot less Epic.

It started off okay, although there are some great moments in the film where Robert Downy Jr.’s dad is explaining that technology will solve all our problems. I was the lone madman in a theatre full of normal people, so I did my best not to cackle maniacally when he says that. Then, like magic, RDJ builds a particle accelerator (sort of) thingy in his garage, and uses it to pull a completely new and conspicuously unnamed chemical element out of his arse, that, among other things, holds the entire second half of the movie together. It used to be, writers would think up actual words for this stuff. It would add, you know, verisimilitude… or something.

I mean, really, it offends me as a potential writer and all-around geek that there was no name for the inevitable Wikipedia article on this fantastical element. Which is odd, being offended, because I did enjoy the movie. Great special FX, plus, y’know, Scarlett Johansson in a catsuit, kicking ass and not even bothering to take names… and that’s my point: chucking some names in there is just common courtesy. If you make up some sort of bullshit technology that your whole plot-arc is based around, at least spot-weld some techno-babble to it so people can pretend like they know what you’re talking about.

They did it (or rather didn’t do it) in Avatar, too. The eee-vile corporate cliche (don’t get me wrong—actual corporations are cliches too, but I digress) was on Pandora to mine a super-valuable element that, yadda yadda, makes some kind of supertech possible (I dunno, fusion, FTL, anti-grav, gimmick-free cinema, or whatever; doesn’t matter)… and oh yeah, the native Na’vi’s humungoid treehouse sits right on top of the largest deposit of the stuff, making the attempted genocide / big explodey fight scene / special effects extravaganza of the decade at the climax of the movie gratuitously necessary, and the best name Cameron could come up with for this giant steaming pile of McGuffin was: “unobtainium”… cause it’s so, like, hard to _get_… get it? Me am clever, yes?

Okay, anyone out there writing a sci-fi-action screenplay… pencils down, listen up: We all know your amazing and heretofore unknown super-substance is some sort of hand-wavium, but you DON’T ACTUALLY CALL IT “HANDWAVIUM,” or better yet, just hand-wave the problem of a name entirely. Not if you want to avoid insulting your audience.

Damn. There was a time when writers actually gave a shit what things were called. You’d never catch Tolkien phoning it in on the main event. There’s a man who understood the value of naming things. I mean, in the Lord of the Rings, shit had like six names in four different languages. And all those words had their own bloody histories. “Hobbit”… now there’s a word you can hang your plot on. AND HE DID! So what if it took him like 12+ years to write that story? The guy understood craftsmanship! And in his defense, there was that whole apocalyptic war-to-end-all-wars thing happening while he was trying to write it. YOU try pounding out over half a million words of brilliantly poetic, flowing prose, on deadline, while fricken’ Nazis are bombing the shit out of your country!

I tells ya, these folks in Hollywood have it too easy. People will sit through anything nowadays, long as it’s shiny & splodey enough. And dammitall, I ain’t gonna stand fer it no more… Just you wait, I’ma gonna…. jus’ a sec…

HEY YOU KIDS! GET OFF MY GULDERN LAWN, AFORE-AH-HAV-TUH-WHUP-YUZ!!!

Where was I? Anyway… enjoyable flick. Not real deep. But still, ScarJo in tight clothes, so…

I mean, if a movie can’t stimulate my imagination, it better freaking have some hot babe in black latex tearing up a room full of mooks, ya dig?

I’ve added a Stories category, which is where prose fiction, poetry, or other random lexical smatterings will be found.  Of course, this is a shameless challenge to myself, because it means I’ll have to produce some on a regular basis.  We’ll just see how well that works…