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Tycho

A Reasoned Assessment

Between the time this comic was written and now, the natural motion of the Internet has shifted the story somewhat - let me catch you up to speed.  Everything more or less started with a discussion on the Star Wars: The Old Republic boards about their profanity filter, which included words like “gay” and “lesbian” along with garden variety naughties like “fjorded” or “hamhocking.”  No doubt the spirit of this act was was to keep such language from being used as a cudgel.

As I suggest in the podcast, irrespective of any particular detail, telling people what they can’t say sur le web just isn’t something that works.  To compound it, the censorship was automated, without regard to the context.  The perverse undulations of arbitrary power just don’t sit right with digital entities, especially in a place ostensibly designed to facilitate communion.  Plus, these boards are full of Jedi, a group with some experience overthrowing tyrants.

After the conversation had gone on for a few pages, a mod entered the fray and did something truly remarkable.  He closed the thread, which isn’t the remarkable part.  Here’s what he said:

As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars.

I’m sure that what he meant to say (again, from the podcast) was that he didn’t feel the Star Wars: TOR boards were the venue for a discussion of this sort.  What he did in actual fact was to do something truly dangerous: he entered into a discussion of canon on a Star Wars board.

Intimations of romance between Juhani and a female Darth Revan were apparently a “scripting bug,” the sort of bug we might call a “feature.”  Our friend Karen Traviss offered up a fairly robust retort to the notion of a sanitized galaxy in the form of Goran Beviin, if you want to approach the conflict as a war of trivia.  Let’s not.  This is only the most recent conflict in a series - as Joystiq rightly notes, this is something that has happened before.  Policies crafted ostensibly as a bulwark against discrimination had, as their real-world outcome, the effect of deepening that margin.

The mod has since apologized, as none of this was even remotely his intention, but there are unforeseen consequences every time you restrict communication.

(CW)TB out.  

one less is nine

Gabe

D&D questions

 

A few of my players have been twittering during our weekly D&D games. I’ve been getting lots of mail and questions via twitter about our game and so I figured I’d answer them all at once right here.


What miniatures do you use?


We actually use a minis from a couple different sources. For my part as the DM I use the official D&D minis. These tend to vary in quality but for monsters they get the job done. My players on the other hand wanted their figs to be a little cooler and so they use minis from Reaper. These are really cool metal figs that you can paint yourself. 



Where do you get the power cards?


If you ask my group they will probably tell you that these power cards are what made the transition from playing CCG’s to D&D easy. If you use the official character creator it will automatically generate these cards for you. The best part about them is that they take into account all your items and abilities and then just tell you exactly what you need to roll. Normally a power might tell you to to roll 2 weapon damage and add your strength modifier. Then you need to scan your equipment and add any other relevant bonuses. The power card automatically does all that and will just say roll 2 d6 +8. When you have tons of powers and all kinds of gear that effects them, I’m sure you can see how much easier these cards make things. 

Anyone can go and use the character creator but it’s only free up to level 3. After that you’ll need to be a D&D insider subscriber in order to continue to use the builder to level up your character. Obviously that’s not something everyone wants to do, but my players have found it incredibly useful.


What program do you use to make the maps or where do you get them?


The maps I use come from a couple different places. I’ve been able to find some really nice maps for the pre-published adventure I ran on the Cartographers guild. This is essentially just a big forum for people you love to make maps. I’ve also created a basic grid template in photoshop that I can use to draw out my own maps real quick. 



Where do you get the status effect markers?


This is the question I get more than any other. All the awesome status stickers you see in these photos came from Kiko. Having a graphic designer in the party is pretty awesome. He made marks and status effect stickers for all the players and I honestly don’t know how we ever got by with out them. People want them so bad that we’re actually working right now on a way to make these available online. 

-Gabe out