![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
DAMN. The Children of Earth is just, well, DAMN. This makes me love Torchwood. I liked it before, but this is amazing and excellent and thought provoking. This reminds me of old school thinking focused Science Fiction you don’t see much of anymore, like the original The Day the Earth Stood Still, or the original The Thing, or the Quartermass films. In fact, this reminds me A LOT of the Quartermass films, in a brilliant, edgy and thought provoking way.
This is a deeply political scifi miniseries that really challanges the watchers and makes you actually confront what they’re talking about. Amazing.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Okay, so you guys know how I feel about the future of books, and that they need to transcend being words and paper and become objects of affection themselves (which they are, in a sense), right? Well I heard about Chin Music press on the grape vine and I see that they do exactly this- they set out to create books as works of art. And they succeeded, amiably. Not just in content (amazing) or style (wowzers) but also in price.
Oh: A Myster of Mono No Aware is a perfect book about a Japanese descendent going back to Japan (to try, like Camus’ the Stranger, to discover his emotions). The art, the paper quality, this is a book that will last forever. And the price is only 22$. I’m not kidding. That’s less than most hard covers, definately far cheaper than most “special editions” that are of the same quality.
Grab this book. Espicially if you’re a fan of Camus or Douglas Coupland (the writing and subject matters reminds me of both), or a fan of Japan and Tokyo, or if you love books as objects.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
WTF?
I mean, what’s next? Spamming Amazon with fake reviews? Come on, come on. I’d expect these sort of shannigans from a self published writer, or someone who has fallen prey to a vanity press. But, ugh. This is so unprofessional. You are not a special little snow flake. Welcome to the real world.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
If you are bored by Role Playing games and are just here to hear about my writing, move along and read another post. You won’t be entertained.
Game theory has been on my mind off and on for awhile now. It’s been awhile since I’ve thought about such things- I haven’t programmed a video game RPG in about 5 years. Yet, the ideas I learned and all the cool algorythms had stayed with me (and I’ve used them in short stories and novellas for various things…including the way the ships AI thinks in Open Your Eyes and the way the ship’s cleaning bots process data and fix things that are broken). Now that I’m trying my hand at game design systems for table top RPG’s, I’m starting to pool some of my knowledge from programming.
For example, I plied some object oriented programming techniques to Magpie. Which is why it’s super simple in Magpie to create your own classes, to modify the current classes, etc. I really liked this idea, and while some people where confused (base class and sub classes mostly) a lot of people really enjoyed the power and simplicity that the system offered.
I’ve been catching up on some odd 5 years of games that have been released, and I noticed a trend. A trend towards using Fuzzy Logic to bind narrative concepts to game rules, making them more player friendly and more imiginative. What is Fuzzy Logic, you may ask?
Well, it’s simple. Let’s take a regular run of the mill RPG. You have stats with numbers assigned to them, giving them a weighted value of sorts. Strength of 18, Agility of 10, etc, etc etc. These numbers give us a vague idea on how a character is at one thing or another.
This is pretty much Fuzzy Logic on it’s own. Fuzzy Logic is a varying degree of something, rather than a binary you have it/you don’e have it. It provides for a more natural feel to a game and makes sense with a table top RPG. Now, this is only using a very primitive aspect of Fuzzy Logic, since it’s only using a number and applying those numbers to a game.
Take, for example, a person with a strength of 16. He’s strong. How strong is he? Well, he is stronger than someone with a strength of 12. This is very much in tune with Fuzzy Logic. And in more modern games (anything published with the D20 system) you combine another aspect of Fuzzy Logic: assigning truth values to fuzzy sets. This is usually done with the bonuses. Usually -1 for anything under 9, 10-12 no bonus, 12+ bonus of +1. This applies the concepts of weak (the negative bonus), average (no bonus) and excellent (positive bonus).
But until now, what games have ignored is the true power in fuzzy logic for creating a narrative enviroment. Linguistic variables are the keys to making a system using fuzzy logic into a syetm that a narrative representation of the world. So, instead of being -1, 0, +1, we would have the sets of weak, average and strong. This would be your rating- you wouldn’t have a number. Just Weak, Average and Strong.
Now, some games are using stuff like this already. 4th Edition’s Bloodied is an excellent example. When a character reaches 1/2 hitpoints they are bloodied- which is a linguistic variable applied to a fuzzy set. Perfect. Or True 20’s hitpoint system, where instead of a number you have wounded, staggared, exhausted and etc. which takes the concept of bloodied into a completely new direction. Savage Worlds sort of does the same thing (but doesn’t give varying descriptions of wounded…to it’s more binary, you’re either wounded or you’re not…which isn’t very fuzzy).
I think this is the future of Table Top RPG’s. It makes games unique compared to their video game counterparts (which can deal with fuzzy logic, just not as well as humans), and it applies all the things table top games are good at (a narrative simulation based on a gaming concept)*. I’m thinking over an idea for a completely Fuzzy Game (and yes, I know both Fate and FUDGE use Fuzzy Sets…I just don’t like +/- dice, or die pools for that matter) that uses all the benefits of a Fuzzy System (including linguistic variables) to describe every aspect of a character sheet. It would still have numbers on it (since numbers are still key to fuzzy sets, it helps make it more fuzzy…).
I’m thinking a game that uses linguistic variables to a key amount (and makes certain they are memorable and describe things properly) can take gaming to a new level of player comprension.
Just some rambling ideas. If I do this, it would be a system created for creating games of any stripe. I see it combining aspects of Object Oriented programming that made Magpie easy to modify with the structural and narrative complex/simplicity of Fuzzy Logic and Variable Names. I see it as a completely modular system, taking in a lot of what I’ve learned in video game RPG design and applying it to the table top. Creating a unique setting and unique world would be simple, easy and fast to do.
Faster than any other system out there. I’m talking hours of prep time for a complex interesting world. I’m talking quick and easy character creation that gives you the complex unique characters of 3rd Edition/Savage Worlds/etc that players enjoy.
I’m thinking of this for Magpie 2.0. A more powerful toolset for creating worlds. But this is all in the far future. This game system is sketchy in my mind at best.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Go forth and purchase, you little consumer monkeys!
http://www.apexbookcompany.com/products/2
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
I want one. Mostly because I want to be able to load it with a ton of classic books I want to read, but don’t want to spend all the money buying (since I can grab ‘em from Feed Books or the like) or shelving them. Yes, I could get them from the library, but that defeats the purpose of impulse reading. Most of my library is impulse reading based- it’s not that I impulse buy books, but I stock my personal shelves with books I know I’ll read on impulse and need them at arm’s length. If I have to go to a store or a library to feed my impulse, I’ve done something wrong 
Anyway, to me the perfect e-reader would use e-ink, support ePub and PDF (since I have a large e-library of these e-books….are you getting sick of e-everything? So am I, so am I) and be under 300$. To this extent both the Sony PRS 505 and the new and up and coming Cool-ER both fit in nicely. The 505 is a bit spiffier…and a bit nicer.
Ah well, just a bit of rambling. The prices need to drop on these machines still.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
My favorite part:
This sounds like rich fodder for space opera because it’s exactly that. The plot and the characters’ interpersonal relationships are intertwined in a way that keeps the story interesting and fresh. Despite its length, there’s lots to chew on in this meaty novella-sized book.
From:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/05/r
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Check it, check it:
http://www.sensesfive.com/sg6.php
This story is one of my faves, and involved tube punk hippies fighting tie wearing squares in a gonzo retro future setting.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Let’s just say I’m working on it with a group of other great writers. Let’s just say it involves steampunk and new weird. And let’s just it will be pretty, and be something you play. With funny dice. That’s all.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Looks like Apex is rescheduling. Will let you know when that is.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
At 9pm EST
Check out the details [here]
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Date: Monday, May 18th
Time Start: 9:00 p.m. EST
Time End: 10:00 p.m. EST
All you need to do is come to the Apex blog. We’ll host it right here at this page (bookmarking it now might be a good idea) using a nifty chat widget from CoverItLive.com.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Check it out:
http://www.apexbookcompany.com/news/2009/0
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Two words: holy shit. One other word: amazing.
It’s brilliant- an imagining of a future Ambergris, with the regrets of war weighing heavily, and the whole position of grey cap/human switched. To call it a surreal noir would be undermining the amazing level of detail and world building that went into this story, this isn’t the mere meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table, this is the focused, detailed madness of Bosch implanted into a nightmarish version of Blade Runner (or a less kinky Naked Lunch).
In short, I have never read anything like it. It references itself, it references past works of Ambergris, it references all the genre sign posts for so many genres (fantasy, science fiction, surrealism, magical realism, noir) that it transcends and becomes all genre at once. It is the worm oroborus, devouring the tale.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
http://www.apexbookcompany.com/uncategor
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Most of you who ordered Open Your Eyes now have a shiny, pretty copy in your hands. Originally we were going to give away a CD of goodies with Open Your Eyes, but that was eventually nixed in favor of giving away a PDF short story to those who pre-order. We apoligize for any confusion this has caused. There will be no CD after all.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
So, I thought I’d prattle on for a bit here about the technology and ideas I used to create the universe/background for the book Open Your Eyes. Don’t worry about spoilers- I won’t give any of the plot away. I just plan on riffing on my original ideas and give you a feel for what the universe is like and I built things the way I did.
- Naming.
Yes, in the far future world everything has names based on Basque mythology. The ships, the characters, the technology. Is there a reason for this? Yes and no…the main reason is that I wanted to riff an existing mythology and place into space. But the more I wrote, the more things breathed and changed and created a life of their own. The actual skeleton of the original myth is still there…it’s just been warped by it’s journey through space and time.
- Organic Technology.
I wanted the technology in this book to be wholly alien. I wanted it to feel like an artifact discovered on the outer reaches of a galaxy, undiscovered by man. I chose to use an organic technology for most of the things in the universe of the book, and hybrid that with some nanotechnology and some other stuff.
- Immortality?
One of the things I loved about Ian Bank’s Space Operas is the idea of a Soul Catcher. I wanted to use something similiar, but delve a bit more into how they worked and how someone could actually die in the universe. Since people can be stitched back together using sentient nanocreations and have their memories restored (or placed into a different body) with a soul-catcher esque technology, I wanted to draw a line in the sand, saying exactly how far this would extend. I wanted to define death, make it still possible in a world were it shouldn’t be.
- Dolls.
The concept of dolls. The idea that people must be deformed in order to pilot a ship through space (Hello Cordwainer Smith! You too, MJ Harrison!), but I felt that these deformed, transformed characters would still want an avatar that was more palatable to the human eye. The avatar would be their speaker, so to speak, and a mindless doll that is controlled via the ship and the pilot. These dolls would be constructed out of wax, and be more steampunk in fashion rather than organic.
- AI and the Ship’s Heart
Even though the ships are piloted by deformed people, they still need an AI. A human mind can only do so much. In the world of OYE this is known as the Ship’s Heart. The problem with AI is the problem with all matter in our known universe: entropy. Randomness eats away at their carefully coded souls, eventually driving them insane.
So, those are just a few concepts that went into the world of OYE. Anyone out there who’s read the book have any questions about the technology/world/characters of OYE? Feel free to leave them in the comments.
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Check it out!
http://www.storysouth.com/millionwriters/m
Originally published at Worlds of Paul Jessup. Please leave any comments there.
Want to hear the latest buzz on e-ink and e-readers? Check it out.
