Favorite song ever

I think my favorite song ever is "Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order.

That is all.

Well, that's never all, is it? I'm way too opinionated and long-winded to simply leave it at that. There's always a bunch of songs floating around and on any given day, any of them could claim the title. Strong contenders include "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode, "A Little Respect" by Erasure, "Dreaming" and "If You Leave" by OMD, even New Order's other huge single "Blue Monday", and... oh, I dunno, plenty of others.

But today, my favorite song is "Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order.

Patience (or cheapness!) wins again

Well, as long-time readers (of which I may well be the only one) know, I'm a big fan of Japanese 2-D fighting games. I can't really explain the fascination; I'm not otherwise overly fascinated with Japanese culture and I'm not really a fan of anime either. For some reason, though, I've always been a huge fan of 2-D fighting games, particularly the Street Fighter series, and I've been following them for a long time. I have quite a collection of games, on various systems, including Street Fighter, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter 2, Super Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.

And that's just the Street Fighter series; I won't bore you with my listing of King of Fighers titles, or any of the other series, but trust me when I say that they're nearly as extensive. One problem with this genre in the past has been the fact the games, while somewhat older themselves, tended to be released when home systems were not capable of porting them well, especially for the later titles. This is particularly true for the Neo*Geo or SNK titles, which ported well to their own proprietary home systems, but not to others. However, in recent years, the company's have realized that there's quite a bit of "free" revenue available on the compilation market. Capcom's Capcom Classics Collection and Capcom Classics Collection 2 gave me my first really modern updates of the early Street Fighter titles. SNK has finally done the same for the Playstation 2, and have finally even started the ball rolling on US releases.

So, I don't have a Playstation 2, but they've come down to a relatively cheap price. And, with several of the US releases out now, and the last one that I really, really want scheduled for sometime in 2008, I can actually have almost all of the titles I really want in arcade perfect, or even better than arcade ports on a modern console, for the US market.

The PS2 titles that I'll want to buy when I get the chance, then, include King of Fighters XI, King of Fighters 2000/2001, Fatal Fury Battle Archive, and Fatal Fury Battle Archive 2. Those titles will give me pretty much all of the Fatal Fury titles, many of which I don't have, or only have on inferior outdated systems, and rounds out my King of Fighters selection. King of Fighters XI is almost worth it just on it's own. I'll also need to hurry and pick up the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology from Capcom while I'm at it.

Between that, my Xbox, my Dreamcast and a small handful of pretty good PS1 ports, I'll be set for life on the genre.

Too invested for 4e

I've been thinking a fair amount about the fourth edition of D&D, which is "imminent", or at least announced, no doubt to the very sudden detriment of sales of 3e and 3.5 products.

And although almost everything I hear about it sounds positive to me, at the same time I'm more exasperated rather than interested in the concept. I guess I'm just not ready to switch. I've been wondering why that is, and I guess I'm just too invested in the current edition. I feel like I have too much material still that I haven't used enough, and frankly, there's tons of material that I still want to pick up!

This is kinda new for me; although I've been floating around the RPG hobby for quite some time, I've never really seriously invested in a game before the release of 3e back in 2000. I picked up tons of 3e product. I was exasperated and unhappy with the release of 3.5, but since the compatibility between the two versions was very high (most products can be used as is in either ruleset) and because the core books were mostly online in the form of the SRD, I got over that. More or less.

But now, we've got 4e coming out, and from the looks of it, backwards compatibility isn't going to be all that high. So I'm left in kinda a bizarre situation; I like what I hear, but I still have no interest in adopting it.

Luckily, my main gaming group seems to feel more or less exactly the same, or they're even less interested in 4e than I am for other reasons. So it looks like I won't be stuck either having to upgrade or having to stop gaming with my group.

But still; I'm not ready. Maybe if 3.5 had never happened... but honestly, even then I think I'd be saying more or less the same thing. I haven't played the heck out of 3e or 3.5 yet, and I still feel like it's a really robust system, now with tons of options, and I'm not that thrilled about starting over from scratch with a new system, having PHB races and classes and not much else to go on for quite some time. Screw that. Give me my illumian duskblade or whatever other esoteric new concept that a mature system can produce, not yet another dwarf fighter just with new edition rules.

New campaign setting noodlings

Well, the Freeport Pbp is off and running. Both groups went through an introductory combat to work out some kinks and set the tone. Then they ended up in the same inn, chatting with each other in the common room. A few other things are going on, but all in all, still very much early days. "Team Monkey" has an assignment and the vaguest outlines of a plan, but "Team Gorilla" still doesn't even have a patron or an adventure hook to follow yet.

I had another idea. In fact, I've had it before, but it came back to me and I want to think about it a bit. What if you played D&D---but with no magic? Seriously; instead of magic, you'd have psionics in the same role. Every class that has a spell progression gets the axe. Every race that seems too overtly tied to "classic" fantasy goes. Instead we get: what?

Classes:

Fighter, rogue, barbarian and monk from the PHB. Although I could do without the monk.

Psion, psychic warrior, soulknife and wilder from the XPH.

Lurk, ardent and divine mind from Complete Psionic.

Races:

Keep human from the PHB. Add in elan, maenad, xeph, half-giant, and dromite from the XPH. Synad from Complete Psionic? I dunno. Plenty of racial options, though. I mean, at least a few classic races work. If you're going to have blues, you need goblinoids, and I like goblin and hobgoblin being choices. I'd do away with blues as a separate monster manual entry, and just say that goblins with a psionic class level gradually turn blue.

Hmmm... maybe do something with the gith or duergar, but there's no reason to. I mean, seriously---how many races are there in D&D to choose from now? 50-60, no doubt. I can find more if I need them. The only thing I need to do is work up some fluff about how they all fit together.

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Anyway, that's the core of a new setting. Maybe I'll "Ray Winninger" it up with a few entries to see where it goes.

Of Men

This is a webpage that I wrote in 1998 or so discussing the inquiry into the prehistoric wanderings and origins of Men in Middle-earth. For some reason, I came across this recently, and I thought I'd update it slightly and repost it here.

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There are many clans, tribes, nations and kindreds of men spoken of in the works of Tolkien. However, a little research into their backgrounds shows that most of them diverged from only a few basic prehistoric groups of people. The movements and relationships of these groups of people, and the divisions into which they subsequently fell, can be reconstructed, for the most part, especially with the material included in the volumes of the History of Middle-Earth (HoME) series, which contains Tolkien's notes, rough drafts, outlines, and many unpublished and expanded essays. Most useful for discussing the origins of the different types of men in Middle-earth is the chapter in The Silmarillion titled "Of Men" and the essay in The Peoples of Middle-Earth titled "Of Dwarves and Men" although other tidbits of history pop up in various other places as well. These also make clear that hobbits are a branch of men, but as they are sufficiently different from other men, I will not discuss their origins here.

During the First Age, the land of Middle-earth was quite a bit different. There were the lands of Eriador and the lands east of the Misty Mountains as far as the map shows in positions much like they were in the Third Age, but to the west of the Blue Mountains (Ered Luin) was a vast land called Beleriand, where most of the action was, so to speak. Here was the realm of the Sindarin Elves with their king Elu Thingol (Elwë Singollo before the Sindarin language diverged) as well as the various kingdoms of the High Elves (Noldor) and the evil realm of Angband, ruled by Morgoth, a master of such evil that even Sauron was merely a servant, albeit his highest and most powerful. East of Beleriand, everything that happened during the first age, and much of what happened during the second age (especially to men) and even much of what happened during the third age (to men) is particularly shady, while the events in Beleriand are well documented.

The literate elves of Beleriand first became aware of men when the Edain crossed the Blue Mountains. They came in three waves; the people later known as Bëorians were first. They were a small group of people, and were of varied physical stock, since they had mixed during their journeys from the east, but they were mostly broad, brown of hair and eyes (although another source claims they had grey eyes), yet fair of skin. There were exceptions, as Beren was of this house, and he was near seven feet tall, had golden hair and fair eyes. This is considered to be the ancestral condition for the Bëorians, but it had been, to a great extent, bred out of them through mixing with other peoples, which also showed in their speech. It's said that they lived on the other side of a great inland sea from the rest of their kin, probably the Sea of Rhûn. More on their kin later. Tolkien also said that the Bëorians (and the other Edainic tribes) were merely the westernmost vanguard of much larger population movements east of the Blue Mountains, and apparently much of northern Eriador was originally settled by people related to the Bëorians.

The second group of people were actually two completely unrelated peoples, and one of the most interesting. These were the Haladin, or people of Haleth as they were later called. Linguistically, culturally and ethnically, they were unrelated to the Bëorians, although they were united against Morgoth. They were also somewhat swarthy, though more slight than the stocky Bëorians, and came over the mountains in small groups. They were interesting in that their women were known to fight alongside the men, much like the Sarmatians of the steppes in Russia. During the first age, and Haladin were driven nearly to extinction as a distinct group of people as they were eventually absorbed into the other Edainic groups, or killed. However, it later became obvious that the relatives of the Haladin that remained in Eriador spread very far and wide in the south, although this disolution disguised the fact that they were related.

In fact, some of the relatives of the Haladin were pretty poorly treated during the Second Age by the Númenoreans themselves, and therefore became their enemies as a result. Among the more easterly relatives of the Haladin include the men of Dunharrow, most of the native population of Enedwaith and Minhiriath (and indeed, most of the "native" population of Gondor as a whole), the Dunlendings and the men of Bree. Possibly other men mentioned in the north were related too (the hillmen of Rhudaur, perhaps or the men of Angmar and the Grey Mountains, who's origin is mysterious.) I don't think that's the best solution for all of them, especially as we move further north, but it's impossible to rule out an originally Edainic relationship for some of these more mysterious peoples of Eriador and even the Wild.

With the Haladin came a strange people called, variously, the Drûgs (in the language of the Haladin, apparently, which they spoke somewhat strangely), the Drúedain (Sindarin for "wild-men") or the Woses (which is an adaption of an Anglo-saxon word, if it had survived into modern english.) These strange people were primitive; they lived without shelter (except for children, women, aged and infirm who lived in lean-tos built under trees, at least during bad weather), were extremely secretive (even their close friends among the Haladin were unwelcome among their shelters), were only four to five feet tall, and were fairly ugly. In some ways they seemed like hobbits (short, ate mushrooms regularly, able to move very quietly, etc) but in many ways, they were the antithesis of the hobbits, as they were very wild, grim and secretive. It has been supposed by the historians of Gondor that they came from the lands south of Mordor in the First Age and were actually the first men to cross the Anduin. There they lived in and around the White Mountains, which is probably where they met proto-Haladin men and some of them went with them all the way to Beleriand, and ultimately to Numenor. This is quite probable as there are very ancient statues of men resembling the Drûgs built there (the Pûkel-men) and a remnant of their kind still lives in the wild woods near the mountains. However, descendants of the ancestors of the Haladin live adjacently (the Dunlendings once lived as far east as the Woses), so it is possible, at least, that they had been with the proto-Haladin before they migrated into Eriador even, although these friendly relationships must have broken down, for it is said that the inhabitants of Minhiriath and the Enedwaith were afraid to go into the regions where the Pûkel-men still lived. All of the Woses left before the Downfall of Westernesse, because of their innate instincts, which led them to believe Numenor's days were numbered. It is supposed that these refugees returned to live among their people on the southern coasts of what was later to become Gondor. The Woses are interesting in that their descriptions and habits fairly closely match that of Neanderthal men, except that Neanderthals are generally assumed to be hirsute, which the Woses were not.

Besides the movements into the White Mountains and the forests just north of their Easternmost extremities, they also lingered in the long cape of Andrast, which was also known as the Drúwaith Iaur, or Druedain Forest.

The third (really the fourth if the Woses are counted, which they often aren't) are the people of Hador. Again, this is a late name applied to the people in honor of one of the chiefs who led the people after they were already in Beleriand. The Hadorians were tall, fair-haired and light-eyed, and very, very numerous compared to the other kindreds of the Edain. They made up the majority of what was later the people of Numenor, and as we learned later, their ancestors, the proto-Hadorians, made up the majority of the peoples east of the Misty Mountains as well, i.e. people of Dale, the Rohirrim, the Beornings, etc. Linguistically and culturally, they were very similar to the Bëorians, and it is obvious that the proto-Bëorians had split from the proto-Hadorians further in the east, and had become slightly different in speech and appearance. This is said to have happened when they were separated by a large inland sea that did not have tides, but which had strong storms. Lacking any other alternative, we can speculate that this is probably the Sea of Rhûn. Both the Hadorians and the Bëorians had come together that far west from some point even further to the East, which therefore would be off the map entirely. Presumably they left behind descendents along the march, as they did in the lands that we do know, so we can again speculate that the men of Dorwinion may be ancient and distant cousins of the earliest proto-Bëorians and proto-Hadorians. Possibly even some of the Easterling people that later plagued Gondor were---ironically---originally akin to the Gondorians themselves many thousands of years earlier.

In Númenor itself, the peoples of Haladin and the Drûgs were completely assimilated linguistically and culturally unless they simply left of died, but the Bëorian and Hadorian stock did remain somewhat seperate during the second age, although the distinctions between them were much blurred. Most of the Kingmen were of the Hadorian stock, and were thus destroyed in the downfall of Numenor. However, some of the more provincial people, including many of the elf-friends and the ancestors of the later kings of Gondor and Arnor, were Bëorian and still spoke a Bëorian dialect, although the Bëorians had largely abandoned their Mannish tongue in favor of Sindarin during the First Age.

Meanwhile, the men who remained in Middle-earth in the part mapped by Tolkien were mostly descendents of the same groups of people, as the Numenoreans themselves discovered when they came back to Middle-earth in the Second Age. The proto-Hadorian people especially spread, and were found east of the Misty Mountains in the lands that later became Gondor, as well as in the North (the Wood-men of Mirkwood, the men of the Anduin vales, the men of Dale, the kingdom of Rhovannion, which later evolved into the Rohirrim) and could be easily recognized because their speech and appearance were still similar to the Númenorean's own. In fact, it was from here that the Edain came in the First Age, leaving behind many of their kinsmen. Also in this area, the proto-Hadorians came across dwarves of Durin's line, and entered into a peacable relationship with them. The Hadorians in particular were considered expert horsemen, and provided useful scouts, hunters and farmers for the dwarves, who in turn, provided them with wrought material and fine smithwork, such as the men were previously ignorant of. At this time, the proto-Hadorin tongue, an early form of Adûnaic, came under the influence of Khuzdul and borrowed some of it's structure and vocabulary, if indeed it hadn't already done so in the East. The early Númenoreans also recognized a kinship with the men of Eriador, but following the devastating wars of the Second Age, Eriador was largely unpopulated, except for a handful of sparse population centers such as Lake Evendim or Bree.

The Numenoreans called these men "Middle Men" just as they called themselves "High Men." It was supposed that because of their shared ancestry that these men were superior to other men of Middle-Earth, who didn't reject Morgoth so early in the east and flee to the west. This assumption seems, at best, totally unfounded. As a matter of fact, many of the men, especially of Eriador, were called "Dark Men" when they, too, were ancestral to some of the Edain, namely the Haladin. The proto-Haladin spread far and wide through southern Eriador, and were the first to found Bree, for instance, and are the ancestors of the Dunlendings as well as the men of Dunharrow and Minhiriath just to the south of Bree, who fought against the Numenoreans because of the treatment they received from the heavy-handed Sea-kings. Because the Haladin spoke a language that was unrelated to the Haldorian's, the Numenoreans failed to recognize the ancient alliance of their peoples. By the third age, their language had retreated steadily until it was only represented by the Dunlendings themselves, and by a few odd names at Bree (including the name of Bree itself.) The movements of these people are fairly involved in Beleriand. As I mentioned, the reckless harvesting of timber in Minhiriath and the Enedwaith did not endear the the Númenoreans to these people, and they turned hostile. Many in fact were seduced by Sauron and fought with him, or worshipped him as a god during the "Black Years" of the Second Age. Others, such as the men of Dunharrow, swore allegiance to Isildur, but later feared Sauron and refused to fght at all. The Dunlendings position in all this is difficult to tell (although Dunlend may have been populated later by refugees from Enedwaith, Minhiriath and other places where these people had lived previously.

Of men other than the Edainic peoples already mentioned, we know little. There are various Easterlings that turn up from time to time (the Easterlings of the first age, the Balchoth, the Wainriders, the Easterlings of the War of the Ring, and the Variags of Khand) but little or nothing is known of their affinities. It is indeed slightly possible that some, or even most of these groups, are descended from the same peoples that spawned the proto-Hadorians, some kind of proto-Edainic groups that split of from the westward movement before they come into history at all, east of Rhûn. Such possibilities have to remain completely speculative, however, as we have no way of knowing one way or another. It is probably more likely that they are completely unrelated to any proto-Edainic group, or perhaps even to each other.

More interesting, perhaps, are the Easterlings of the First Age. They had made their way all the way to Beleriand, crossing, in many cases, north of the Ered Luin, which means they must have crossed through the lands of proto-Bëorian, proto-Hadorian and proto-Haladin peoples, if they didn't originate among them. Tolkien calls them "swarthy men" and says that they descended from the northernmost peoples of Eriador. This gives us a few possibilites.

The first is that the Easterlings of the first age were descended from the proto-Haladin. Swarthy simply means dark, and the Haladin themselves were a fairly dark people. We know that the proto-Haladin spread as far north as Bree, where legend has them as the first men to settle the area. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume that some of them could have gone a little bit further north and west around the Ered Luin and into Eriador to emerge as the Easterlings of the First Age. However, it seems strange to think that they wouldn't have recognized their kin from the similar languages, if nothing else. The same argument goes if the Easterlings are to be identified with the proto-Bëorians that settled Eriador. Not only that, the Easterlings are described as being physically different from the other Edain; more swarthy, perhaps, and stocky as well, which the Haladin were not.

Another possibility is that these Easterlings were descended from some more northern group of men, probably Forodwaith, which were completely unrelated to the Edainic peoples. In fact, a footnote in The War of the Jewels specifically confirms that this is the case for at least some of their tribes. However, The Silmarillion seems to imply that the Easterlings of the First Age were separated by more than simply political allegiance and actually made up more than a single ethnic group. Their lands are marked on the map just north of the Grey Mountains and they became the Lossoth, some of the Easterlings in Beleriand, and probably the men who later emerged as allies and citizens of Angmar in the third age. Possibly even the mysterious Hillmen of Rhudaur and other men of unknown origin in the north come from this same stock. If so, these men must have come east from Hildorien in very ancient times, yet after the coming of the proto-Edainic groups (who were really two unrelated groups, if you remember, the proto-Haladin and the proto-Hadorians) because the proto-Edainic people were said to be the first men to flee the darkness of the east. It seems difficult to imagine these proto-Forodwaith as arriving in their historical seats without having to at least cross through the lands of Edainic peoples since it is said that the Awakening of Men occured in the southeast. More likely they would have been barred from crossing, and so would have had to move west through an even more northerly route, which seems unlikely, though not impossible. From the movements of the Éothéod in Appendix A, it seems that some of these men may have been in the Grey Mountains before the Edainic peoples thought of moving so far north. Therefore we are left with the somewhat unlikely idea that the proto-Lossoth and proto-Angmarians migrated from the east in some remarkable parallel to the Edain, yet much higher north and with no contact at all with the early Edainic groups. Despite it's apparent unlikeliness, it still seems more likely than any alternative.

One possible and interesting, although speculative, solution is that the Forodwaith were a "lost Edainic" tribe of people, unrelated to either the proto-Haladin, or the proto-Haldorians, yet who had rejected Morgoth and travelled west at more or less the same time as the other tribes, if not indeed in front of them. In this scenario, they could be the mysterious blood that was mingled with the proto-Haldorians to emerge later as the proto-Bëorians, with most of the language retained from the latter, but much of the physical appearance dependant on the former. Unfortunately for them as a people, they travelled too far north before crossing Ered Lindon, and came under the influence of Morgoth in his northern seat of power. Indeed, some of these men that later emerged as First Age Easterlings were faithless and betrayed the Eldar and the Edain for the chance to have power over them, given by Morgoth. In fact, it is said that they were already under the thrall of Morgoth before they were ever met by the Edain or Eldar. However, others were faithful, and the Lossoth were not under the shadow when they are mentioned later. However, if they are indeed the same people, the men of Carn Dûm and Angmar were very much under the Shadow, and subject to Sauron and his agent, the Witch-king.

The Easterlings of the Third Age are, as already mentioned, even more problematic, and we have no real clues as to what their ancestry may be. It is certainly possible that many of them are descended from the same stock as early Edainic peoples, who abandoned the westward march before the other groups arrived into the histories at the far eastern edge of what is known of Middle-Earth, but we have no way of knowing. We do know that the Wainriders and the Balchoth were primarily the same groups of people who originated from just beyond the Sea of Rhûn, and in the case of the Balchoth, they had combined with Variags of Khand after first fighting with them, who are another group of people we know nothing about, except that they maintained some type of cohesion to be mentioned by name again in the War of the Ring. Khand, in fact, gives a location, to the southeast of Mordor. However, other than the name, that portion of the map is blank and we know nothing about it. These early Easterlings plagued the Northmen of Rhovannion for many generations, and are probably the same groups of people that made up the Easterlings of the War of the Rings, and they may have been also related to the earliest "wild men out of the East" to invade Gondor, although neither the earliest Easterlings nor the Easterlings of the War of the Ring are described as using wains or chariots. They also plagued Gondor itself, and caused it considerable distress, although the final defeat of these Easterlings was the event in which the remnant of the Northmen came to Gondor's aid, and Gondor ceded Calenardhon to them, thus paving the way for the foundation of Rohan. The last groups of easterlings are described as bearded men wielding axes, and the men of Gondor believed them a "new" type of Easterling. It is unclear which (if any) real world population the Easterlings are supposed to represent. Although Tolkien specifically denied any direct representation, it is also clear that the "Middle Men" of Middle-earth are very similar to the Germanic peoples and since he was trying to create a "mythology for England" it is difficult to see them as not ancestral in some way. The vast hordes of the Easterlings, therefore, probably represent many peoples, as our own hordes of peoples who moved westward from the steppes of Central Asia into Eastern Europe and beyond. To me, the Wainriders always seemed similar to the Scythians, rather than to Turkic peoples. If this correllation is true, and the "Middle Men" are supposed to be westward striking "Indo-Europeans" like the Germanic peoples, then this gives me a very tenuous line of logic to relate these Easterlings to the Edainic peoples themselves, since the Scythians are another branch of the Indo-Europeans.

Some have also looked at the term "Variags of Khand," noted that the word Variag is an alternate form of Varangian, and assumed the Khand is also populated by "Nordic" peoples. Both of these lines of evidence, while intriguing, are two speculative to be advanced very far, however.

The last major group of men that Tolkien mentions are the Southrons, or Haradrim. Little is known of them other than the general location of their country south of Gondor both along the coasts and in the interior, although even there we don't have a name save Near Harad and Far Harad (near south and far south, really.) However, unlike the situation with the third age Easterlings, we do have fairly good descriptions of the men of Harad from Sam's encounter with one in Ithilien. It appears that the Haradrim are very dark, darker at least than any other race of men in middle-earth that we know of (except the men of Far Harad, who are described as being black of skin and looking like half-trolls) and resemble in many ways the Near and Middle Easterners of our world, who's geographic position they occupy in Middle-earth as well. Their language gives us only a single word, mûmak which is not enough to use one way or another to pinpoint possible relations with any Edainic tongue. [Note: The name of Gandalf in the South, Incanus was derived from two Haradrim words, Inka+nush, which meant 'north-spy.' but evidently Tolkien changed his mind, gave the name a Quenya etymology and decided that Gandalf had never gone to the Southrons, concerning himself with the Edain and other peoples who were traditional foes of Sauron.] Even if it did, however, there are at least three avenues through which is could have come as a loan, and there are at least two definate cases of Númenoreans or Gondorians settling and mingling with the Haradrim. The first are the Black Númenoreans, kingmen of the second age who worshipped Sauron and used the old Númenorean harbors as their bases of operations. It is not certain to what extent these Black Númenoreans contributed to the ethnic or linguistic identity of the Haradrim, but we do know that they quickly became as commen men. Also, after the Kin-strife, Castamir and his rebels also moved southwards, founding the Corsairs of Umbar and mingling significantly with the Haradrim. However, it is most likely that the majority of the Haradrim descent comes from completely different groups of men than the Edainic.

It's not impossible to raise the claim that they might have a strong element of proto-Haladinish blood in them too, since it seems that proto-Haladinish people were settled along the coast just to the north of present day Harad (the Men of Dunharrow, for instance.) The proto-Haladin were also dark, though not as dark as Haradrim seem to be, so even if this highly speculative scenario were true, there would almost certainly have to have been another group of men that contributed to the Haradrim's blood.

Faramir states at one point that all the speeches of men are ultimately descended from elves, and while it is certain that borrowings from various Avarin and Eldarin languages have heavily influenced Mannish tongues, it is not certain that Faramir is right in this regard. The most accomplished Noldorin linguist, Pengolodh (who's name is simply Sindarin for 'speaking Noldo') said once that Adûnaic seems to resemble in many ways the ancient Valarin language as well. Despite the policies of the Valar after the coming of the children of Ilúvatar, it is obvious that they loved the second children as much as the first. While the elves invented their own languages, it is possible that some, at least, of the men, were taught language directly from Ulmo or some other Vala who had enough interest to check on Middle-Earth still, rather than first learning language from the elves. It is also said that the language of the Edain (that is, Adûnaic) resembled Dwarvish in many sounds and forms, and that it had several loan words from that language as well. Since Aulë the Valar created the Dwarvish tongue for them, it is certainly likely that it would have resembled the Valarin language as well, providing yet another avenue for this Valarin influence. Most likely, in my opinion from the various readings in HoME, is that both of these conditions are probably true, and the languages of men are influenced by the Elves, the Dwarves and the Valar, as well as the inventiveness of men themselves.

E6 Freeport News #1

Well, the campaign has been kicked off. One group, doing the "Murders in Scurvytown" adventure are currently finding that their ship is stuck on a reef and they're under attack by orc pirates.

So no Scurvytown yet, but we'll get there soon.

The other group, the "Blasphemy in Bloodsalt" started their game on the pier as fresh-faced arrivals in town, and were almost immediately accosted by a gang looking to shake them down. So yeah; not much plot yet, but both groups are engaged in combat. I always find that "Roll for initiative" is not a bad way to start any campaign, and if sets up the idea from the get-go that this isn't going to be a plodding, existential exploration of morality and characters, but a wild ride with adventure, horror, death and the threat thereof pretty much constant.

I'll keep you posted as the fight's wind down and the roleplaying begins.

Freeport Shipping News

Huh. That sounds like a good temporary title for my blog.

In any case, I've somehow found myself committed to running a Play-by-post game set in Freeport for 12 players. Yes, twelve. I'm going to have two concurrent storylines and try to wind them together somehow.

Anyway, it sounds really fun and exciting, but also fraught with potential to fall apart if it doesn't work. I'll keep everyone posted here on how it's working out. We're due to have all characters in and ready to go and start on Monday.

Roots

I've been fascinated with the beginnings of the tetrapod invasion of various terrestrial ecosystems, and of course, you can't talk about that without talking about Ichthyeostega, famous throughout most of the 20th century as the "first amphibian", found in Fammenian rocks in eastern Greenland. For fun, here's a picture of "Ole Ichthy."

Ichthyostega isn't actually an amphibian, as it turns out, although he's a "pre-amphibian tetrapod." He was discovered in the 1930s in a famous paleontological expedition.

Some fragmentary Acanthostega material was also found, although it wasn't until the late 1980s that really good material was found on this cousin and contemporary of "Ole Ichthy." There's also some pictures of him attached:

With this new material, though, it doesn't look like "Ole Acanthy" was actually very adept at getting out of the water, and it's not believed that he did. The same is often said about Ichthyostega too. In fact, even slightly younger basal tetrapods (still not amphibians) like Hynerpeton and Tulerpeton seem to be adapted to swimming around in shallow, clogged swampways more than coming up on land. I guess that's to be expected; they've gotta handle that environment first, after all.

A couple of little guys that I wasn't aware of were discovered in the 90s that are actually even older and more primitive basal tetrapods than this crew, though, found in the Upper Frasnian in Scotland. These are Elginerpeton and the closely related Obruchevichthys. I can't find any images of the latter (and he's known from some pretty spotty skeletal remains anyway) but here's Elginerpeton for your perusal.

As you can probably see quite well just from these illustrations, these basal tetrapods are extremely primitive, and only barely removed from the sarcopterigian (lobe-finned) fishes from which they descended.

In fact, here's a sarcopterygian fish very similar to the first tetrapods for you to look at, if you're interested, weird little Tiktaalik, which frankly is as much notable for it's bizarre name as for it's position close to the ancestry of all Tetrapoda. In fact, it's so close, that cladistically, it's in a group falled Tetrapodamorpha, in which Tetrapoda is closely nested.

From these images, hopefully it's obvious how fishlike the first "amphibians"; the basal tetrapods truly are.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is roots. The root of all land vertebrates in the entire world, which showed up in the late Devonian, 380 million years ago for the earliest examples pictured above.

Some stuff...

Changed the title again. Blood on the Asphalt is actually the name of a free online "CD" you can download that takes the melodies of the familiar Street Fighter 2 songs and "remixes" them. Remakes them, honestly. It's a tribute album. Some of them are pretty weird. Many of them are excellent. Anyway, I'm going to temporarily steal their name because it's cool. http://sf2.ocremix.org/

Other than that, I've been keeping on keeping on. Not much to report. For fun, I've been creating a spreadsheet of all the earth's ages, their names, subdivisions, date that it started (in millions of years ago) and ended, total length, and a few comments. Unlike most such lists, mine doesn't start at the top and go backwards, which I've never found intuitive; it starts at the beginning and goes forward. Imagine that. That's the main reason I did it; to have it all in one place in an intuitive format, but it's also fun to see the time frames. One interesting side effect of looking at all this has been surprising to me.

I'm used to looking at dinosaur ages, and I guess it never occurred to me just how remarkable it is that dinosaurs were on the earth for 160 million years, and that they dominated the fauna for a good 140 or more of those 160 million years. Mammals have been around a good 200 million years and dominated the world for about 65 million---but the terrestrial megafauna dynasties prior to the dinosaurs are surprisingly short. In fact, I never really thought about it, but it was less than 150 million years before the first dinosaur that Ichthyostega and Acanthostega were the first tetrapods to lumber their way out of the water on occasion. At the K-T extinction event, when the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, they had dominated the terrestrial megafauna for more than half of the time that there had even been a terrestrial megafauna to dominate!

Really old grass

This is actually somewhat old news (reported almost two years ago) but since I don't get the opportunity of working as a specialist, I often miss stuff like this.

I was watching the documentary disc 2 section of Walking With Prehistoric Beasts last night, and the scientist they were interviewing made the common claim that even the earlier parts of the Age of Mammals were incorrect to show grass, which didn't arrive on the scene until 30-40 million years ago.

Oddly enough, phytoliths; cells that are specific to grasses, have been found in dinosaur coprolites from about 70 million years ago. This was startling, not only that grass was obviously around that long ago (and part of a titanosaur diet) but that they found five varieties of phytoliths, which is a good marker for types of grass. This indicates that grass had already undergone a fair amount of diversification and speciation; enough so that estimates for the arrival of grass were instantly extended to 100 million years ago or more!

Now truly is a great time to be alive and a fan of dinosaur paleontology. Almost everything we thought we knew about dinosaurs when I was a child has been overturned and we have an entirely different view now of both dinosaurs and their environment both. Not only that, more dinosaurs have been discovered in the last decade than had been discovered in all the time that dinosaurs were known to modern, Western science prior to that. And many of them are truly bizarre. We have the Antarctic fauna, for example. We have the incredible wealth of the Yixian feathered dinosaurs. We've discovered small, feathered and very early tyrannosaurs like Dilong paradoxus, Guanlong wucaii and Eotyrannus lengi. We've discovered the entire radiation of abelisaurs after declaring that Ceratosaurus nasicornis was a late surviving "living fossil" and a dead end. Whoops. We've discovered the amazing diversity and success globally of titanosaurs after saying that the sauropod heydey ended at the end of the Jurassic. Whoops.

Dinosaurs have never been sexier.

E6

Well, I've hit upon another idea for running Dark•Heritage even better. This is the E6 suite of houserules, originally designed for D&D, but applicable I'd think for any d20 game.

Essentially, the idea is that if 95% (or more) of the people in the world only have a level or two of commoner, expert, or some other NPC class, then someone who's about 6th level or so will seem epic. The 6th level fighter can take down a dozen 1st level warriors without going down himself. A 6th level wizard can blast your home into oblivion.

The idea is that since the sweet spot of any d20 game seems to be after you've got a few levels in, but starts to degrade seriously by the time you hit 10th level, this houserule extends the sweet spot indefinately. Essentially no matter how long you play the character, you can still get upgrades without ever moving out of the sweet spot.

Since my prior solution has just been to stop the game and reset with new character by the time you hit 10th level or so, I think this is a wonderful solution. I think I'm going to apply the concept to my d20 Modern and d20 Past ruleset, which means that I'll essentially have to write an all new rules document applying the E6 concept to them.

Oh, well. So much for simplicity.

Flash Gordon

Just a quick heads-up; the campy 1980 or 1981 or so movie Flash Gordon just got a DVD release a few weeks ago. When I went to go add that to our Blockbuster Online queue, I also found that the old Filmation cartoons for Flash Gordon have apparently also been released.

w00t! I mean, they're probably terrible, but I have very fond memories of them nonetheless.

NOT running

At least not yet. We voted to continue our current campaign, which could take up to ten more sessions, although our DM thinks maybe he can pare it down to less.

So we deferred the decision on what we'll do next until we're closer to finishing this one. In any case, I'll still officially throw my hat in the ring when it comes to it.

Dr. Strange

I watched the new Dr. Strange movie from Lionsgate Studios and the same animation team that brought us the two Ultimate Avengers movies and the Iron Man movie.

Not bad. In fact, probably my favorite of the Marvel animated movies to date. Didn't feel particularly comic bookish; more urban fantasy combined with wuxia or something, but that's OK.

I've also picked up Walking With Dinosaurs, Walking With Prehistoric Beasts and Prehistoric America. I've also recently seen When Dinosaurs Roamed America, Before the Dinosaurs and of course Chased By Dinosaurs which I actually bought.

All of them are very interesting, but at the same time, all of them are disappointing. In most cases, it's because either the CGI, the artistry (or lack thereof) of the CGI models. It's extremely disappointing, for example, to see the Allosaurus fragilis in Walking With Dinosaurs because the skull would have to be grossly swollen and deformed and the jaw would have to be dislocated for that to look accurate. On the other hand, When Dinosaurs Roamed America has fabulous looking allosaurs, but the writing and voice-over narration is almost painfully terrible.

On the other hand, we've got movies like Jurassic Park and King Kong which care little for biological accuracy, yet which have absolutely fabulous looking dinosaurs and other "prehistoric"---or better yet, fanciful---creatures. I guess that's the difference between a blockbuster budget and a BBC/PBS special budget. If I were independently wealthy, I'd love to finance and have some oversight over a really good documentary series chronicling the history of life on earth from the Pre-Cambrian all the way to the extinctions that took place a few thousands years ago with the end of the last glacial maximum.

So, if anyone wants to give me money so I can be independently wealthy and accomplish that... ;)

Running again?

Well, there's a possibility that I'll be running a game here in the very near future.

I don't know how good a possibility it is, but I'm going to throw my hat in the ring, anyway.

Given the group, I think I better stick with D&D (although I'd rather not) and since I've somewhat recently acquired The Pirates' Guide to Freeport (which I better hurry and finish, it seems) I'm thinking of pitching the game as Pirates of the Caribbean done in D&D. I mean real D&D, with dwarves, elves, orcs, wizards, etc. But the setting is very definately pirates.

Anyway, I'm excited. I hope it pans out. I miss running.

Alternate history

Well, I found the list I made of changes. This is still fairly summary form, but it's enough to put together a game, I think. I don't know if I'd still stick with everything here (the moreau's, for instance---do I still care about them?) but otherwise it's still something that intrigues me greatly.

1. Japan was the first WWII nation to develop the atomic bomb. Their plan was to put it on submarines that would run suicide missions into US harbors. However, the first one developed cracked a leak and detonated in Yokohama harbor, where it was berthed, preparing for the first nuclear attack in the history of the war.
   
2. After the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler died in 1943. The new leader of Germany – General Erich von Manstein, a military man and fervent party member, pulled back from the war with Russia and didn’t expend nearly as much resources in the Holocaust as Hitler did in real life. Von Manstein was a shrewd politician with an eye for the long-term survival of the Nazi party, and his decisions, while often criticized by war hawks within Germany, have stood the test of time as decisions that put and kept Germany at the forefront of the world geopolitical map throughout the 20th century.
   
3. Following the pullback from Russia, Germany concentrated on the invasion of Great Britain, but found that their blitzkrieg stalled under much stiffer resistance from the Brits (bolstered by Americans) than they had in France. When the Germans had access to the Bomb, they fired one on a V2 which exploded near London in an effort to move forward their stalled blitzkrieg.
   
4. By this time, the Americans, with the help of defectors from Germany and their own scientists had successfully tested nuclear bombs and had developed a different delivery method: B1 bombers. Dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t have quite the same effect, since Japan had already shown that they had bomb capability, and Germany had also already used them. However, the devastation caused by these bombs was so immensely shocking even to those that developed them, that the state of open war came to a de facto end, and treaties limiting the use of atomic weapons (called the Stockholm Accords, because they were signed in neutral Sweden) were drafted by Germany, the US and Japan.
   
5. Shortly thereafter, the Soviets were able to develop nuclear technology and became the fourth atomic superpower. Because the Soviets had not signed the Stockholm Accords, this precipitated the arms race which was not terribly different from that which actually happened in our world – each of the four superpowers continuously raised the ante on atomic weapons for the sake of deterrence.
   
6. During the late 40s and early 50s, somewhat “hot” action occurred in the Middle East, which became the “Vietnam” styled debacle of Germany, the US and the Soviets as guerrilla warriors kept any superpower from controlling the oil reserves.
7. Finally, Ahmed Al Rahid, an Arab king, was able to unite many of the Arab tribes under his banner. In a political move, both the US and Japan recognized him as the legitimate ruler of the “Arab Empire,” and Germany and Russia pulled back after seeing the favorable trading agreements that they were able to maintain because of this recognition. The Arab Empire has thus maintained the status quo for nearly sixty years due to their economic shrewdness and dominance of the largest oil reserves on the planet.
   
8. With Russian pressure in the west and north and Japanese occupation of much of eastern China, Mao Tse-tung is not able to unite all of China under his banner. In fact, two Chinas eventually form, the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of China in the northeast and Nationalist China. Tibet and possibly even seccesionist Xinjiang remain separate entities unconnected with China in this scenario.
   
9. Some other features of the cold war include prolonged tension between Germany and the West over South Africa, German and Russian conflict over Scandinavia, Japanese and Western conflict in Singapore and many South Pacific islands, and Russian and Japanese conflict over Communist China. Despite several attempts by many, especially the Germans, to weaken their position, the US retains tight control over the politics of Latin America.
   
10. Both the Germans and the Japanese lead the charge on eugenics programs which leads to the development of – among other things – the moreaus.
    
11. Following the incident at Roswell in 1947, the US becomes aware of the gray aliens and that the Germans have been experimenting with extra-terrestrial technology for a few years. Germany is the first to launch satellites in the early 50s, although Japan, Russia and the US all have satellites up before the end of the decade.
    
12. In the early sixties, communist Cuba is overthrown after the assassination of Fidel Castro. Although the CIA is suspected, it is never proven. This prompts a crisis with the Soviet Union that very nearly leads to the launch of atomic strikes.
    
13. In the 1967 the Germans launch the first successful manned flight to the moon. Oddly, though, none of the superpowers make any attempt to do much of anything with the moon, although US astronauts also land there.
    
14. In the very late sixties, the Soviets develop the first psychic agents for the KGB. The Germans also develop occult agents.
    
15. In the early years of the 21st century, intelligence suggests that the state of the world is as follows: the Soviets are stretched financially tighter than they can afford, the Japanese are also stretched too thin over overtly hostile territory in the Philippines, Korea and Manchuria. The US is facing restlessness from much of Latin America and the Germans are facing increasing opposition from non-Nazis. There is also some kind of occult threat – the details of which are not known at the present, which seems to be occupying the Germans and threatening to spill out over the rest of the world.
    
16. A security agency that is jointly chaired and operated by the CIA, the FBI and the NSA is formed in the 70s called the Paranormal Defense Agency (PDA) specifically to deal with occult and psychic threats. The PCs are all members of this agency having come from law enforcement, intelligence or military backgrounds of some sort, although they may have been analysts, programmers, or any number of more mundane “career paths” and still come under the auspices of the PDA.
    

Tannhäuser, yo!

I played the boardgame Tannhäuser at GenCon. While the game itself certainly isn't bad (I had a good time) I honestly think that the real strength of that game is the setting and the artwork.

For the uninitiated, the idea essentially is that it's 1949 in an alternate timestream. The Great War (WWI to us) never ended, but dragged on into a semi-Cold war state. The Alliance (US and Brits, I presume) have reverse-engineered crashed alien technology (from Roswell?) to get cool weapons, while the Kaiser's troops have taken to demonology to get their special weapons. Future expansions look to expand into what the Soviets are doing as well.

Freakin' awesome. However, what it really prompted in me was a desire to utilize the material for an RPG. That brought me around to my old attempt at developing an alternate history; in mine, the aesthetic was similar, but I got there a little bit differently. Hitler died earlier, and the Nazi party was taken over by the Wehrmacht, and actual competent leaders. The Germans got the bomb first. Anyway, I'll spill all the details later, but the short version is that the cold war happened with four superpowers rather than two; the US, the Soviets, the Nazis and the Japanese. I also thought about layering in some Hellboy and X-files type occult/alien secret history, so it really does end up being nearly the same.

Anyway, I'll try to post the details of that later today, but in the meantime, here's some images cribbed and cropped from the Tannhäuser site so you can see what I'm talking about.

Ask me about 4e!

For many, the big news of GenCon 2007 was the announcement that Wizards of the Coast will be releasing the 4th edition of their flagship RPG Dungeons & Dragons during the summer of 2008. And yet more than a week has gone by, I've made a good half a dozen posts and I really haven't said anything about it other that a reference in passing.

What gives?

Mostly what gives is that I'm not a huge fan of D&D. Way back when I started this blog and I tossed a few placeholder topics up, one of them was D&D editions through the ages and I never did that, so maybe now is the time.

I first played D&D, like many others, in the late '70s, using the old Basic Rules that came in the red box. It actually didn't take for me right away (I do have a memory of an old friend of mine named Clark who was trying to run a game for me, but all I cared about was playing with his massive collection of Kenner Star Wars action figures.) I did kinda catch on and had my eye on the hobby a little bit later; in the early 80s, still with the Red Boxes and eventually also with the AD&D books. I also discovered things like the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and even Rolemaster and MERP, Top Secret, Star Frontiers and a ton of older games, mostly by TSR, during these years. However, I left D&D behind before the 80s were over and before the second edition came out. Primarily this was because D&D did not do what I wanted a roleplaying game to do.

Later on, a friend of mine in college and I used to play some old Top Secret S.I. and MegaTraveller, so I kinda got back in the groove with RPGs. I had always kinda sorta had my eye on them even when I wasn't playing, but for some reason I got big into it in college, when I had no time and no money. I still managed to scrape together a fairly decent collection of Werewolf: The Apocalypse books. At the time, the Storyteller conceit appealed to me; that games were more than just going in dungeons and killing things for XP and GP. Looking back at White Wolf now, it all seems so pretentious, but honestly I was probably a pretty pretentious prick back then as well. Not sure that's changed.

In fact, I became almost an anti-D&D advocate. I was a latte set gamer who couldn't be bothered with such low-brow entertainment. All that changed during the summer of 2000 when I quit school, started working, and discovered that a third edition of D&D was about to come out. It did, I bought it, I liked it. It had enough flexibility that I could conceivably take it away from it's roots and play whatever game I liked with it. Wizards then released a Star Wars and a Wheel of Time game using the same basic mechanics, and they were fairly well done. But wait! I said. After all, Star Wars and Wheel of Time use fairly similar conceits to D&D, so it's no surprise that d20 works well for them too. Then WotC produced d20 Call of Cthulhu. I was sold.

From that moment on, I decided that d20 was mutable and modular enough that I could do anything I wanted with d20, and there was no reason for me to look at other systems anymore. My interest in D&D itself actually waned considerably, as the inmistakable "D&Disms" started to annoy me more than ever, but I still maintained (and maintain today) that d20 itself is a flexible enough mechanic that I prefer it to any other still. It's not perfect, but barring the release of a Holy Grail system, which I can't see happening, it does the job. Not only that, it's got so much source material, especially via the OGL and d20 license, that I feel there are tools out there for anything I could imagine.

The only snag here was the release of 3.5. This fell very flat with me; it changed stuff for the sake of change and to get people to upgrade their books when IMO there was no real need. While it did make some improvements, some things it did were worse, and tons of changes were just different for no net benefit or loss, but suddenly stuff we thought we knew we didn't really anymore. All in all, the update was poorly timed, IMO, it came way too early, it wasn't a good upgrade that made it seem exciting, and it felt like a money-grab opportunity to sell more core books. I was not impressed, I only bought the Monster Manual and simply used SRD print offs for other upgrades, and it's part of the reason I turned away from D&D again.

Of course, that brings us to the 4e announcement. As of right now, I don't know how much 4e will differ from 3e. Hints are that there are some fairly massive changes, and hopefully most of them will ease playability, especially at higher level. Things that were clunky or frustrating from d20 as it currently stands will be replaced by streamlined systems. The "sweet spot" will be extended. So all this means, I don't know if 4e will really be compatible with my current d20 stuff or not. Honestly, I'm not terribly intrigued by D&D itself anymore, so I could take it or leave it, but I'm intrigued by these putative improvements to the system. If I can take some ideas that work really well, reverse engineer them into d20 Modern, and release a "hacked" d20 Modern pdf to my players that gives me the best of both worlds, while still maintaining enough compatibility that I can use all my material that I currently have with a minimum of fuss, than that's great.

If I can't, chances are I'm not going to do much beyond picking up the 4e core rulebooks and occasionally playing a game with my group when they're in a D&D mood. Because otherwise, I'm pretty happy with d20 where it is now. Not D&D d20, but d20 as a complete suite of modules that can be layered to create the effect that I want.

So I haven't really talked much about 4e because I'm not that excited about it. I don't think it's the end of the world, because I'm already not playing D&D anymore anyway, so I don't care if it makes putting together a 3e group hard or not. I don't care if it's a massive improvement, because I'd still prefer to play something other than D&D. I'm hopeful that it's got some nifty ideas I can mine to improve my game, but if not, I'm not really at that big of a loss.

Dark•Heritage tidbit

Part of the reason I created this blog was to talk about my ongoing campaign setting that I'm always tinkering with. One of the things that I always wanted to have in Dark•Heritage was zeppelins. Big ole honking dirigibles crossing the desert. I had initially imagined them sorta like the Hindenburg only perhaps covered in a thick coat of light-weight lacquered scales to provide a sort of armor to the ballon portion. But then I saw this picture.



And honestly; isn't that a much better image right there? I kind of Spruce Goose suspended from a gigantic balloon; that's awesome. So there you have it. And to the artist, Steve Thomas; you da man! I didn't see him myself, but apparently he was at GenCon, and reading a GenCon-goers blog, I was pointed to his website. That kind of pulpish old-fashioned sci-fi travel poster is brilliant. And he's got more. At least four in all in that style.

Flower list

Sweet! I was monkeying around in the code for this blog template and found (among other things) the way to take away those ridiculous flowers that the template used for lists. Now my ordered list looks like an ordered list with numbers and stuff, just like it should.

Next post... actual content. I promise!