damerell

Our problems grow deeper and deeper,
Our lives are held cheaper and cheaper,
The ghastly shortcomings,
Of Johnson and Cummings,
Laid red carpet down for the Reaper.

I know, that's a bad rhyme, but Ozzy Osbourne could get away with it. (Yeah, I'm no Ozzy Osbourne).

Today we have the Book of Vile Darkness, a D&D 3e splatbook about being evil (ostensibly mostly about detailing evil [1] so the players can smite it, but it's not clear that requires - say - price lists for evil spell components...)

Oh, yes, price lists for evil spell components. There's one of those. An example of an evil spell component is the heart of a chromatic dragon of at least 15 Hit Dice (which, to be fair, is not a lot as dragons go, but it is still a bona-fide dragon and not a tiny hatchling...)

One of those will set you back 6 gold pieces. Now, I hear you cry, you have no idea what 6 GP buys. It's not a lot; it would buy you three backpacks, for example, or a 3/5 share in a tent. No wonder evil is so ubiquitous when evil necessities come at such a whopping markdown!

Indeed, the expected treasure from the minimum acceptable 15 HD dragon is 3,400 GP (probably not just as a pile of cash). Who scores that hoard and then goes "Well, we'd better spend 15 minutes carving the heart out and then carry around a big lump of gory flesh, wouldn't want to miss out on that extra 6 gold"? I can only presume we're in MMO-land where when you kill a monster its one harvestable body part magically pops into your inventory to be sold with the rest of your vendor trash later.

(It's not a tiny sliver of dragon heart, either - but it's "dried and hardened into a gemstone-like object", at least, so the evil spellcaster doesn't have to tote around something leaky...)

A lot of the list is like this, too. A vrock feather ("only one usable per fiend", and a vrock is scarier than a 15 HD dragon) - 1 GP. Once you get down to bits of sentient humanoids (ugh), everything comes in at 0.1 GP or less. "Humanoid eye", 0.02 GP. In other words, if you sell one headsworth you can just afford a pint of ale.

[1] Evil mostly appears to be quite kinky with a lot of leather straps, like piercings and tattoos, and get its tits out at a rate which I rather thought D&D had mostly grown out of. But I digress.

Not, alas, ancient (today we have the D&D 3rd Edition _Epic Level Handbook_) or related to encumbrance, but this struck me at the time so here it is.

The Epic Level Handbook is intended to extend 3rd Edition past the normal level cap of 20... well, indefinitely. The first chapter makes it pretty clear that epic [1] characters are not only the bee's knees and the dog's bollocks but, improbably, both at the same time. Names like Baba Yaga and Gandalf fall off the page. "Given time, they rival the powers of the gods", and indeed later on ascension to godhood is mentioned as a possible campaign goal.

There's an actually rather useful chapter about skills which emphasises the way epic characters can be supernaturally competent even without magic - example (high) difficulties are given for tasks like balancing on a cloud, squeezing through a space smaller than your head, or - a personal favourite - forging a document without having seen an example beforehand.

So far, so good. Now we come to a list of epic prestige classes. 3rd ed has prestige classes anyway; not classes you start with, like cleric or monster-whacker, but ones you qualify for by being special, like arcane archer or dwarven defender. The qualification criteria tend to be some mix of skills, alignment, being a dwarf, character factors not measured in game mechanics - but the epic prestige classes, of course, you just aren't allowed them at all unless you are over 20th level and hence as previously mentioned bestride the world like a colossus.

One of the epic prestige classes is the Union Sentinel, "a member of an elite police force that guards the demiplane-city of Union". They "patrol the city streets" and "are regular sights in Union, appearing in small units of two to five."

I don't know about you, but when I worked through the previous chapters, I did not expect one of the things epic-level characters to do to be "beat cop"; even given that the demiplane-city of Union is super-amazing, surely an epic character who wishes to defend justice can do it more effectively than pounding the pavement and, presumably, arguing the toss as to who gets to be the grizzled veteran in the squad today.

There's more of this stuff (in sharp contrast to, say, the divine emissary, who there's one of per god) - a legendary dreadnought might be employed by a prominent ruler or noble, "engaging in staged combats for money" (given that even a 21st-level character is expected to be worth about a million gold pieces, and presumably expects a worthwhile quid pro quo for each fight, what is this - professional wrestling for Croesus' court?)

I daresay Conan the Barbarian sometimes murders people for money, but can you imagine him collecting a wage packet afterwards? Elric of Melnibone clocking in late and being chewed out by his sergeant?

(Union is kind of silly; there's a 15th level fishmonger, raising the question of why he bothers selling fish, even given that he has a super-amazing interdimensional fish portal. I'm not making this up. There's a 10th-level innkeeper, too. The earlier chapters have a bunch of stuff about an epic campaign shouldn't be a regular campaign with bigger numbers which, apparently, the author of this chapter thought was complete rot.)

[1] as a side note, this book uses the word "epic" to mean "anything restricted to characters above level 20" and as a result I have now read the word so often it has lost all meaning.

hairyears having invented the genre of COVID-19 limericks, I submit:

There is a disgusting disease,
Transmitted by coughing, not fleas.
If you see Farage,
Unleash a barrage,
Of sneeze after terrible sneeze.

(The scansion on this one seems to depend on how you pronounce Farage and barrage; you may prefer "If you should see Farage, Then unleash a barrage"."

The problem with COVID-19:
Its symptoms are not always seen.
So don't be a berk,
But stay home from work,
For Death lies in wait for the keen.

The other odd thing about the work canteen is wildly inconsistent portion sizes. Sometimes when I have eaten there it's been a normal sort of amount of food for midday lunch.

Other times... well, ceb and I went there for lunch when it was roast chicken, which turned out to mean "half a bird". Half a bird each, that is, and they didn't exactly stint on the Dauphinoise potatoes, either. Now, I cycle about 11 miles on workdays, so this was very welcome, but unexpected.

Maybe that was just an oddity? Nope; roast chicken again today, half a bird each, and the pork joint yesterday was a fair old chunk of a pig, too.

I wonder if lunch is sometimes hilariously small. I hope not.

As some of you may know, in January I started a job at a bit of the University at Addenbrookes Hospital, which seemed a useful alternative to becoming destitute.

The building has seven floors, so you spend a lot of time in the lift. There's a canteen on the top floor, and every Friday afternoon, the next week's menu appears.

I notice something; every week [1], Thursday says - in red - "It's curry day again!!!". Now, the menu is pretty clipart-tastic, but even so this is starting to strike me as odd. ceb comes over for lunch one day, and we're riding up in the lift; ceb says "coo, they're keen on curry here", or words to that effect. Behind us, the Director - who I recognise but ceb doesn't - says "Oh, curry day's very important, you know."

Later that week, I just miss the lift doors, but overhear two people inside saying in tones of glee "curry day again!". I'm starting to wonder if there's some kind of secret society here.

[1] Almost every week. This week, and you will have to imagine the seven different exciting display fonts, it says "Curry Curry Curry Curry Curry Curry Curry !!"

I have just finished reading a detailed critique of Atlas Shrugged:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/series/atlas-shrugged/

... even the COBRA Commander dialogues at the end, although they drag a bit.

I'd recommend it (the critique, that is, although we are probably all old and wise enough to be able to read the book without being brainslugged) if you like that kind of thing.

What came as news to me was - I knew enough about the book to know that Rand's heroes are loathsome and amoral by conventional standards, but what I didn't appreciate was that _Rand's_ standards are wildly inconsistently applied; we're three chapters in when we're told approvingly "Desperate for funds, with the construction of [the protag's grandfather's] line suspended, he threw down three flights of stairs a distinguished gentleman who offered him a loan from the government."

They steal, they cheat, they bribe, they initiate force with gay abandon, they sometimes give their friends absurdly sweetheart deals, and of course they all end up at the end living in a collective society. Conversely, sometimes the villains' villainy is demonstrated by them squeezing the harshest possible deal out of the heroes... but isn't that what Randoid supermen [1] are supposed to do?

The second surprise was that although the book is taken by its advocates as outlining a realistic philosophy, a sensible way to act in the face of a scenario they believe is already happening, the plot does depend on someone inventing a perpetual motion machine and a cloaking device, and someone else finding a Garden of Eden with everything one might want in it.

The third thing that struck me is this: whenever anyone does anything nice, today's edgelords dismiss it as "virtue signalling", apparently because it is inconcievable to them that anyone might do something nice because they want to do something nice.

However, to Rand altruism is an ever-present danger. She felt about it much as Jack Chick felt about works salvation. The Randoid supermen are distinguished as supermen not least because they can resist the temptation of altruism, a gateway sin toleration of which will inevitably cause society's collapse into a communist dystopia.

[1] all of whom are white except one who's nominally Latino but explicitly described as being pretty darn white, and usually blonde and blue-eyed. As opposed to the villains who are all ugly and I'm pretty sure some of them are described as having especially big noses, by which I'm sure Rand might have meant literally anything.

ceb and I are booking an escape room.

As you scroll down the webpage, you are offered:

THE LAB

THE AVIATOR'S STUDY

THE BANK JOB

PRISON BREAK

CORPORATE TRAINING EXERCISES

I thought we should do the fifth one, myself, where you have an hour to escape before Powerpoint slides turn your brain to jelly.

Warhammer Fantasy Role Play (1986) is a game which is not D&D. It tries not to be D&D, and often succeeds, but it has the assumptions of D&D deeply baked into its worldview.

However, this is not a serious critique [1], it's just an analysis of carrying capacity. In WFRP, your carrying capacity (in arbitary units) is 100 times your Strength. Characters weigh 10 times their Toughness. Hence, since Strength and Toughness are measured on the same scale and more or less come out the same, you can carry ten naked people.

Dwarves' Toughness is on average higher than their Strength, but a dwarf can carry 200 times their Strength, so only about 18 naked dwarves. Or about 24 elves.

Item availability is also odd. We start with a reasonable scheme that describes item rarity and the odds of finding an item of a given rarity in a settlement of a certain size. So far, so good.

Leather boots are Common. The odds of being able to find a pair in Altdorf, the capital of the (thinly disguised Holy Roman) Empire are 4 in 5. But, you say, boots have to fit you? The odds of finding a pint of house wine in Altdorf are also 4 in 5. If you want a bottle of good wine in the single largest city in the game, the odds are only 55%. A dagger? Arrows? Clothes pegs? A saw? Why, they might be clean out of stock - at 80% each, the odds are that they _are_ out of one of those.

[1] although it doesn't have an index, fuck's sake, 1980s RPGs, what's with that?