The Last 10 Planes, Wealth Inequality

Hi there! Thanks for dropping by, and welcome back if you’re a return customer. Every couple of weeks I sit down and bang out a thousand words or so on things that interest me in the gaming world, politics and current events, and the finer things in life. If you’re enjoying my blog, don’t be afraid to share! I enjoy my little soapbox, and as Oscar Wilde once remarked, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

This week’s topics: The planes still to be done for Axis & Allies Air Force Miniatures, some thoughts about Wealth Inequality in America (the video!), and cherry trees.

Gaming: A post or two back I mentioned that, after the second set of Axis & Allies Air Force Miniatures, I felt that the game needed about ten or so miniatures before it would represent a reasonably complete survey of the warplanes of WW2. Well, in this post, I’m going to take a shot at nailing down ten pieces that would “finish” the game for me. I have no idea if Wizards of the Coast will ever produce a third set for the game, but if they do, these are the new models I’d want to see.

First: I’d like each major power to have its own dedicated dive bomber or ground attack plane. The Germans have their Stuka and the Russians have their Il-2; ideally the US, British, Japanese, and Italians would get attack planes too. That’s a big commitment of my 10 hypothetical models, so let me see what economies I can come up with right up front. I sort of feel that the Typhoon is pretty iconic as a British ground attack plane, and the Italians can fall back on the Ju-87 Stuka since they don’t really have a better choice. For the Japanese and Americans, I’m inclined to look for naval attack aircraft. It might be fun to look at torpedo bombers and invent a new SA for them, although most torpedo bombers could double as level bombers for land attack. However, I think I’d rather go with the Douglas SBD Dauntless and the Aichi D3A “Val.” They’re a little smaller than the torpedo bombers, and probably a little more feasible in production. Plus, you can play out the big carrier battles of 1942 with these planes, and that’s pretty awesome. Two down, eight to go.

Okay, on to Allied fighters. Let’s assume we’ve got four slots left. I’d love to start with a mid- or late-model P-40, say a P-40E, since so many P-40s were produced and Lend-Leased to a variety of different Allied powers… but there are two major US fighters we haven’t seen in any version yet, the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and the Grumman F6F Hellcat. The game simply wouldn’t complete without the Hellcat or the Jug. The P-47 comes in two different-looking versions, the earlier razorback and the later bubble bubble canopy, but for my money, the bubble canopy is the more iconic version. So the Jug comes out in its late-war P-47D configuration.

Two slots left for the British, French, and Russians—not enough, not enough! The Russians absolutely need another plane, and there are three good candidates: LaGG 3, MiG 3, and Yak 3. I really want to give the Russians a MiG because its performance in 1941 is really interesting, but the Yak 3 was the best Russian fighter of the war, so the Yakovlev Yak-3 gets the nod. For my last Allied pick, I’ll reluctantly leave the French as a two-plane power, and go back for the best British plane we haven’t done. This has to be one of later Spitfire models. I could see going with the Seafire (and giving the Brits a naval fighter) or the Spitfire XIV, maybe one of the cut-down models with the clear-around canopy. I’ll give the nod to the Supermarine Spitfire F Mk XIV, since the British might eventually borrow a Martlet or Corsair from the US models for their carrier planes.

Now for the Axis fighters. With regrets, I inform the Regia Aeronautica that they’re done—I need all those slots for Germans and Japanese planes. To start with, the Germans absolutely need a late-model Bf109, possibly a late G or a K. The G-6 is visibly different from the early G models represented in the game already, and has significantly better armament. Since the Germans produced something like 12,000 of them, I’ll go with the Messerschmitt Bf109G-6. For the last German, I think it’s time for the big gun, the game-breaker, the most advanced fighter of the war: the Me 262. Yes, jets are challenging in this game engine, but I think they’re do-able. My basic approach to the 262 would be simple: It always flies at High Speed, and its speed range is say, 5-9. In an AAAFM game it’ll go like hell in straight lines and climb great, but if you play on a big map, it should work okay.

Two slots left! The Japanese have a half-dozen fighters that *could* appear, but first, I think you have to make sure the Japanese Navy is equipped with the fighters that were on its aircraft carriers in the big battles of 1944, and that means the Mitsubishi A6M5 Zero. Unfortunately, that’s just different enough from the A6M2 and A6M3 in preceding sets to require a new sculpt. I hate to give up a slot for the third iteration of a Zero, but the A6M5 was produced in huge numbers, and the Imperial Navy never found another plane to fly off their carriers. Fortunately, the A6M5 is significantly different from the earlier models in performance, so there’s a reason to make that plane. For the last slot, the Japanese have three very good advanced fighters all jostling for space: the George, the Frank, and the Raiden. Since we gave the Navy their last Zero, I think we go with the Army fighter here, and give our last slot to the Nakajima Ki-84 “Frank.” The Japanese built 3500 of these (a lot more than the George or the Jack), and they saw a lot of service in 1944 and 1945.

So, there you go: Ten planes to finish the Axis & Allies Air Force Miniatures game. There are a dozen more I wish I could include—the late-model P-40, a P-36, a MiG-3, a Mosquito, the Gloster Gladiator, and so on—but that’s what happens when you make a list. Have some fun, and see if you can come up with a better list than mine!

 

Politics/Current Events: There’s a short, thought-provoking video making the Internet rounds these days called Wealth Inequality in America. It takes a hard look at just how much wealth is in the hands of the top 1 percent. Here’s a link, if you care to watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTj9AcwkaKM

Now, here’s the thing: There is a crucial piece of the puzzle you aren’t seeing when you watch this video. I don’t argue with the numbers, but it’s not an accurate picture. “So what?” you might ask. “This is terrible! What could possibly dilute the sheer injustice of this situation?”

The answers, dear reader, are TIME and INDIVIDUAL PERSPECTIVE. While the video presents an excellent snapshot of conditions as they exist this at very moment, or really at any given moment, it doesn’t tell the story of what happens to the typical individual over the course of a lifetime. A great number of people begin their working careers dirt poor; they struggle to get ahead; over time they succeed in paying off houses and accumulating 401k’s or IRAs; and by the time they’re in their 60s and 70s, they’ve accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets. This is income mobility--you might not ever reach the 1 percent, but a LOT of us join the top 20 percent or so by the time we retire.

It’s true that a lot of people don’t progress very far out of the left-hand side of that chart, and could use help. It’s true that we hit bumps along the way and experience setbacks. And it is certainly true that a CEO earning 380 times their average employee’s salary is simply sickening. But hammering folks making, say, $250,000 with punitive income taxes because they’re in the top X percent of wage-earners won’t fix those problems. The CEOs we want to chastise make tens of millions, not a couple hundred k. More importantly, we want to ENCOURAGE income mobility over time for as many people as possible. That’s how people get rich.

The Finer Things: Spring. The cherry trees are beginning to blossom out here in Western Washington, our surest harbinger of the end of winter. As it turns out, cherry trees are all over the place in the Seattle area, seemingly everywhere you look. We have spectacular displays of pink trees coming up in just another couple of weeks, and let me tell you, it’s a show everybody should see.

Civ 5 Faerun, elementalists, Michelle 2016

Thanks for dropping by!

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big Civilization fan. Well, I’ve been dipping my toe into the world of game mods lately, and I found a really fun one: A huge, sprawling Faerûn mod for Civ 5: Gods and Kings. The social policies have been replaced with Schools of Magic, and culture is now “Weave points,” so you advance in areas like Conjuration, Necromancy, or Evocation. There’s a separate Underdark map, and some powers like Menzoberranzan are naturally located there. You can build heroes like rangers, paladins, or specialist wizards. And many of the independent cities like Westgate, Iriaebor, or Luskan are naturally city-states. Oh, and the physical map is a spot-on rendition of most of Faerûn. It’s a ton of fun for a Realms fan. I’ve been playing as King Lhao of Tethyr. First thing I did, I turned on Calimshan and drove them off the planet. That seemed to go well, so I went after Amn next. The Tethyrian Empire now stretches from Baldur’s Gate to the Lake of Steam, and I have to say, I’m wondering if Waterdeep would be better off under my administration.

In the “What have I done for you lately” category, I’d like to announce that Axis & Allies Air Force Miniatures set 2, Bandits High, is now on sale. This is about the last thing I did for Wizards while I was on staff there. I managed to slip a few unexpected planes into the set list like the IAR-80 or the Ki-44 Tojo, and I came up with a fun tactical bombing option that adds a ton of new gameplay and flight construction strategies to the game. I really hope the game gets a third set, though—there are about ten more planes I think just *have* to be done to get to a reasonably complete set of WW2 fighters.

Gaming: I reluctantly stepped down from the DM chair in my Thursday night group after only a couple of months of running the game, simply because my current work schedule and after-hours writing schedule are making it hard to find a couple of hours a week for game prep. On some reflection, the group decided to return to a D&D 4^th Edition game, this time set in Eberron. My character is an elementalist sorcerer—one of the Essentials-style character options introduced in Player’s Option: Heroes of Elemental Chaos. Basically, my fire sorcerer Halamar works a lot like a 3e-era warlock (or a firebender, if you prefer) throwing flame bolt after flame bolt. It’s the slayer-build for a spellcaster.

I became a big fan of the slayer and similar Essentials classes shortly after those books came out. While it’s true that you can’t easily amp up to meet a single intense challenge by, say, using all your daily powers in one encounter, you get pretty reliable damage downrange every round. One of the things I don’t like about the 4e game pre-Essentials is the fact that you have to design your turn each time your turn comes up, building it up out of your available mix of actions. The slayer, the hunter, the elementalist—they minimize the choices you make about the minute details of your action, and encourage you to spend more time concentrating on the “bigger picture” of a battle: Who am I attacking, and who’s attacking me. Building my turn out of actions and powers draws me out of immersion, but the Essentials-type classes mean I spend less time fiddling with the interface and more time enjoying the experience… or so I think, anyway.

Politics/Current Events: I think Michelle Obama is going to be the Democrat nominee for President in 2016. Things like the Ellen show appearance, the Jimmy Fallon appearance, the Academy Awards presentation… it’s starting to look a *lot* like a pre-campaign to me. Now consider the fact that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign organization has continued raising money nonstop even though the man presumably won the last election of his life back in November. (The campaign is now known as “Organizing for Action,” a 501 (c)(4) organization.) Who else are the Democrats going to run? Biden is a joke. John Kerry is apparently making some noise about trying it again. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive nominee, is facing an age question (she’ll be 69 on Election Day in 2016), and Benghazi might resurface as a difficult issue for her. Michelle Obama would slaughter the rest of that field in a Democrat primary.

She is, of course, largely unqualified for the position, having never held elective office. But I think that Barack Obama’s presidency illustrates the fact that America in the 21^st century worships celebrity for its own sake. Her lack of a record would be a tremendous asset; like Obama did in 2008 and 2012, she could campaign on nothing but a slogan, revealing nothing about her intentions for governing. And that might be all she’d need to crush any Republican opponent. Who do the Republicans have that could beat her?

I’m kinda depressed by the prospect, because I am not an Obama fan. I think that the prospect of a 16-year Obama presidency is just awful, although I’m cheered a little by the thought that the Obama kids won’t be 35 by 2024 so we won’t make it 24 or 32 years in a row. Ultimately, I think it depends on what happens over the next 3-1/2 years. If the economy tanks, if the Mideast explodes, it will be tough to dissociate a Michelle Obama candidacy from the current administration’s part in those disasters. But in that case the Obamas might hand their wreckage to a hapless Republican in 2016, then have Michelle step in to save the day in 2020.

The Finer Things: Crooners. I don’t know how we acquired the taste, but when I sit down for dinner with the wife and our daughters, the IPod shuffle goes to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Nat King Cole, Michael Buble, Etta James, etc., etc. Dinnertime in the Baker household sounds like you’re eating in a classy steakhouse. I never would have been caught dead listening to that sort of stuff when I was a teenager. Life is funny.

Master of Orion, guns, Yes

Hello there! Thanks for stopping by.

I think I should confront reality and accept the fact that this is really a once or twice a month blog, not a weekly blog. In the future, I think I might look at trying to transition to an honest-to-goodness author website, and make my blogging one of the features there. But for the next couple of months I’ve got plenty on my plate, so that’s a “when I get to it” kind of project.

Not much new to announce in the “What have I been up to?” category. I’ve been doing a lot of work on the Emerald Spire super-dungeon for Goblinworks and Paizo, mainly concentrating on getting the framing story for the dungeon put together and writing up the town of Fort Inevitable. I’m still working on comic books, and I still can’t say anything more than that yet. But as soon as I can, I’ll make sure to let you all know!

Gaming: You know, it’s been 10 years, and I’m still sore about Master of Orion 3.

Master of Orion 1 and 2 were great games. The combination of choosing research, designing ships to incorporate new technologies, and controlling those ships in simple tactical battles was just awesome. When Infogrames announced that they’d be publishing a MoO 3, well, I was giddy with excitement. Then Master of Orion 3 came out, and it was terrible.

Perhaps in its own rights MoO3 was a decent game. My problem was that it broke the franchise’s promise. You didn’t get to *drive* your ship designs in combat the way you could in Master of Orion 1 or 2. Instead combat was a much more “realistic” subgame where you now watched tiny dots like radar blips motor around in vast, empty star systems and do things you couldn’t control. Instead of 4-color comic-book ship designs and alien races, we got an impenetrable interface that looked cramped, lifeless, and colorless. Somehow the developers had convinced themselves that Master of Orion was a game about resource management and industrial production, and they built MoO3 as a game for people who didn’t like fun.

I think it all came down to “grognard capture.”

Grognard capture is a game industry idea that goes like this: Your most devoted and involved fans—the grognards—are the ones who communicate with the game designers; they want down-the-rabbithole increases in detail, complexity, and realism or simulation value; the game designers cater to the grognards, and they make a game only the grognards like. (The term grognard, by the way, refers to Napoleon’s Imperial Guard—old soldiers who complained a lot but were his most reliable troops.) Most people played Master of Orion 1 and 2 to build fleets of battleships and blow things up. The best MoO players played a game of industrial management to *produce* enormous, unstoppable fleets, and crushed all opposition beneath a relentless tide of production. Space battles were boring to them, since the battles were foregone conclusions and the battle system was ridiculously simple. Guess who the MoO 3 developers built their game for?

There are plenty of examples of grognard capture around, if you look for them: Star Fleet Battles, the Third Reich-World at War game system, even some elements of Magic: The Gathering (although Magic was smart enough to retarget new player acquisition with Magic 2010 and the subsequent yearly core sets). I would even argue that D&D suffers from grognard capture in places like, say, Forgotten Realms story material or character optimization.  Keeping your grognards a little happy is good business—these guys are the core of your customer base. Letting them drive development is probably not a good idea. Sure, they’ll grumble when you don’t fix things to their specifications. But it’s the nature of the grognard to complain, and soldier on.

Anyway, back to Master of Orion: I’m still holding out hope for a Master of Orion 4 someday that reverts to something closer to the gameplay of MoO 1 and 2. I know there are a zillion MoO clones available, but I just don’t have the patience to master interfaces and rules sets that I used to have.  If you know of one that I should try, well, I’m all ears.

Politics/Current Events: Nothing new this time, but I’ll elaborate a bit more on my Second Amendment views since I don’t think I was clear about that before.

First, I believe that all human beings have a “natural right” of self-defense. You are allowed to protect yourself, your family, and your property from injury or theft. The framers of the Constitution clearly recognized the existence of natural rights; even today, no one would argue that if you are being pummeled to death you must wait for authority to intervene, and aren’t allowed to throw a punch to save your own life. Likewise you can act to stop someone from beating your wife or child or parent to death, or even victims you don’t know.

In our modern world, guns are often necessary to exercise the natural right of self-defense. First, you may be accosted by a bad guy with a gun. But even if you aren’t, bad guys can inflict lethal injury or grave harm to you and yours without guns. Maybe if you’re a 6-foot, 200-pound man you feel you can defend yourself with your bare fists against most assaults. But if you’re a 5-2, 110-pound woman attacked by that 200-pound man, well, your right of self-defense doesn’t mean much without a weapon that doesn’t care about relative physical size and strength. As the saying goes: God created all men, but Colonel Colt made ‘em equal.

That leads me to believe that responsible gun ownership is protected by a right and principle even older and more sacrosanct than the Constitution itself.

Now, as for the Second Amendment: I think the “right to bear arms” means “the right to arm yourself just as the nation-state does.” Back in the 1780s, “arms” generally referred to flintlocks, swords, or cannons. An individual citizen could equip himself with weapons as deadly as those available to the soldiers of the day without much trouble. Today, that same reading implies that everyday citizens should be allowed to own machine guns, tanks, rocket launchers, fighter jets, or Aegis cruisers, if they can afford ‘em. But this is where that troublesome clause in the Second Amendment comes into play: “A well-regulated militia.” We have an armed militia of citizen-soldiers in this country, and they do indeed keep machine guns, tanks, and fighter jets. It’s the National Guard.

In short, I think the Second Amendment is about the right to organize local and state militias and arm them as regular armed forces. But I think the natural right of self-defense is what gives people who aren’t in the National Guard all the right they need to own firearms for personal protection. A government that tried to deprive its people of the means of self-defense would be acting out of all bounds. However, reasonable measures to regulate firearms are okay. I think we would all agree that there should be a minimum age for a concealed-carry permit, for example. Some regulations are clearly warranted—everything else in this debate is about wrangling over details.

The Finer Things: The second album I ever received when I started listening to music as a young teenager was the Yes Album. My uncle Jeff gave it to me because he was a fan and he thought it would be up my alley, and I’ve been a Yes fan for something like thirty years now. When I need to really put my head into a “fantasy world” space, I’m likely to put Close to the Edge or Relayer into my CD player and loop it for hours. In fact, I wrote the Last Mythal in pretty much this exact method. Anyway, Yes is touring this year, and their set list is simple: the Yes Album, Close to the Edge, and Going for the One, each song on each album played in order. I’m trying to talk my wife into going when they play in Seattle, but she isn’t having any of it.

 

Goblinworks, Bandits High!

Welcome back to my blog! I’m game designer and author Rich Baker, and every week or two I post some thoughts on what I’m working on, gaming topics that catch my interest, and current events. So, enjoy!

It’s been a busy few weeks for me, which is why I haven’t been keeping up as well as I would like. I spent the last five weeks or so working on a short contract with Goblinworks to help out with their Kickstarter project for Pathfinder Online. Now that the Kickstarter’s succeeded, the folks at Goblinworks have offered me a position as a writer/developer on Pathfinder Online, and I’ve accepted.

It’s been 13 months since Wizards of the Coast decided they could no longer afford to retain my services, and it’s been an interesting experience. Obviously, I’ve had some periods of great anxiety about what I would do next. I’ve worked furiously hard on a variety of writing projects I never could have done while I was at Wizards, and I’ve learned a lot about being a self-employed freelancer and a business in Washington state. It’s not as scary as I feared it would be when WotC sent me on my way, and I already think I’m going to be better off for it. Anyway, while I feel like I am a lot more self-reliant than I was a year and a month ago, I’m looking forward to being part of a team again, and learning lots of new things!

In the next couple of months, I’ll be doing a lot of work in Kickstarter fulfillment. One of the big projects promised in the Kickstarter is the Emerald Spire super-dungeon, an all-star offering from sixteen of the industry’s most famous names. I’ll be taking point on wrangling the Emerald Spire into shape, coordinating the contributions of the various authors, and of course working on my own contribution to the project. In addition, the Emerald Spire includes a decent amount of source material on Fort Indomitable, one of the major base areas that will be covered in Pathfinder Online. Much like I did for the Thornkeep book, I’ll be helping to build one of the major start areas of the game. After we get the Emerald Spire off to a good start, I’ll be moving into more traditional design work for the MMO. I’m looking forward to playing around with a new tool set!

The folks at Goblinworks know that I’ve got a busy writing career going “after hours,” and they’re fine with my moonlighting. That’s good news, because it means I can pursue creative projects on the side. Right now, I’m working on writing comic book scripts for a new series. (I would say exactly which company and what project, but I don’t think it’s been announced yet.) This is a new medium for me, and I’m learning a lot as I’m translating my story document into scripts and art suggestions. I’m also working with my agent to shop around a new military thriller. With a little luck, I’ll have a big sale to announce sometime soon.

Newly Released: Speaking of my writing…  a number of my Forgotten Realms books have been released as audio books. Here are a couple of links:

http://www.theaudiobookstore.com/authors/richard-baker/

http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Baker/e/B001H9TURW#/ref=la_B001H9TURW_rf_p_n_feature_browse-b_3?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_82%3AB001H9TURW%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A1240885011&bbn=283155&ie=UTF8&qid=1358729095&rnid=618072011

 

If you have a long commute and you’re looking for a way to pass the time, well, maybe this is something you would enjoy! And if you happen to try out of ‘em, let me know what you think of the audio experience. It’s a new format for me, and I’m curious how my work holds up.

Soon to be Released: And, in case you’re curious what’s coming up next in my game design, keep your eyes peeled for Axis & Allies Air Force Miniatures: Bandits High. This is set 2 for the Air Force minis game, and it includes a bunch of new models for aircraft that didn’t appear in set 1. In addition, there are some very creative uses of aircraft that flew in different air forces, so that you’ll see some familiar planes in some very unfamiliar national markings. Did you know that the Romanian air force flew Hurricanes? Or that the Finns flew Brewster Buffaloes? It’s a fascinating bit of history, or so I think. Anyway, AAAFM Set 2 should be released on or around February 19^th, so get your orders in.

I’m hoping that A&A Air Force Minis continue into a set 3 sometime in late 2013 or 2014, but I’m afraid I can’t make any promises about that: Wizards of the Coast parted ways with me just when I was starting work on that project, and I don’t know if they’re still planning on it or not. But I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

 

Politics/Current Events: Just one thought this week… if you think that sensitivity demands that we avoid any insult to or defamation of Islam, why would you go see Book of Mormon and laugh your ass off? If you think Book of Mormon is all in good fun, then you ought to be okay with a musical making fun of Muhammad and the writing of the Koran. If on the other hand you think one religion shouldn’t be mocked, then you ought to be respectful toward all of them. Refusing to tolerate criticism of Islam but laughing at Mormons because you know they won’t kill you for it is simply cowardice.

I’m sure Book of Mormon is a funny show. But it’s a cheap shot, and I’m not going to see it.

 

The Finer Things: Big Bang Theory. There aren’t many sitcoms that can hold my attention for more than an episode or two, but boy, I love this show. Maybe it’s because it hits dead center in nerd culture, and that’s pretty much where I live.

Back to 4e, the wizard, 2nd amendment

Welcome back, and Happy New Year!

Hope your holidays have been enjoyable! We’ve had a very nice Christmas, even if it’s been a bit soggy—one of the hazards of living in the Seattle area, I suppose. On the bright side, the ski slopes have had plenty of snow.

Not much new to report this time around. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be helping the folks at Goblinworks with the Kickstarter for their Pathfinder Online game. Even if you’re not a MMO fan, you ought to check out what they’re giving away in tabletop game materials for participating in the Kickstarter—it’s a fantastic deal even if you never play a minute of the MMO.

Gaming: Well, my experiment in returning to 3e and running a 4e adventure in a 2e setting is wrapped up. There were many things I loved about 3e, but playing that rule set again after years in 4e was more challenging than I thought. It’s a much swingier version of D&D, and encounter building is tougher than I remembered.  For example, the druid in the party blew up two big encounters with a 1^st-level spell (entangle); in 4e, that spell would be (save ends) and maybe a burst 3, as opposed to a burst 10. Anyway, I started working up some house rules and patches to 4e-ify my game a little bit around the edges—say, adding save-each-round versus status effects--and it wound up being a lot more involved than I would have thought.  And my group missed the Character Builder.

Anyway, I’m now thinking about just sticking to 4e. But now I’m thinking about what I might want to houserule in 4e. The two things that bug me the most: Grindy combat, and bland wizards.

By grindy combat, I’m referring to fights where everyone’s used all the encounter and daily powers they care to expend, but the monsters still have more hit points to go through. I’ve seen too many 4e combats stretch out 10 rounds after the fun was finished. A simple patch is to cut monster hit points in half, but that of course just reduces the danger to PCs since monsters drop before they achieve their expected threat against the PCs. If you halve monster hp but double monster damage, you’d get pretty close to balancing it out, but I worry that might actually be too swingy—the effect of a monster getting just a little lucky and rolling a hit three rounds in a row instead of miss-hit-miss or hit-miss-hit would be too severe, especially if it’s a high damage monster like a brute. I’m almost wondering if I could quietly apply something like a +4 attack bonus on my side of the screen to increase damage output without quite so much swinginess.

By bland wizards, I mean wizards that look too much like other classes. This is really an aesthetic issue for me, not a game balance issue: in 4e, wizards just aren’t “different” enough from other characters for my tastes. I feel like 4e wizards would be more true to the D&D idiom if, say, they had maybe 60 percent of the hit points they currently do, but their damage output or offensive power increased in some way. Wizards should be glass cannons, and protecting wizards from enemy attack is a classic D&D tactic that gets short shrift in 4e. IMO, it should be the case that the scariest thing that can happen to you in D&D is to get targeted by an enemy wizard’s highest-level spell… but in 4e, that’s generally not the case.  The striker is way more scary. So what kind of offensive benefit would I give wizards to make them more like glass cannons? Well, I’m not sure yet. I think it could be something like this:

Metamagic: Three times per day, you can use metamagic on a spell you’re casting. Choose one of the following effects: increase a burst or blast by 1; add 10/20/40 damage by tier; change “save ends” to “2 saves end.”

Making it a daily resource is interesting to me, because managing an important daily resource is what wizards have always been about. I want to find a happy medium between the 3e wizard’s ability to absolutely blow up an encounter, and the 4e wizard’s lack of ability to do so (in my experience, the 4e wizard doesn’t kill many foes, although there are certainly obnoxious orb builds that can stun lock foes).

I think I might also houserule a ritual bonus of some sort, like “you have 2/3/4 ritual slots in addition to your utility slots.” Tracking ritual components is no fun, but it’s a shame that rituals just don’t get used in play. I miss the occasional Knock spell.

Politics/Current Events: I’ve been thinking more about the question of gun control and the right to bear arms, and I got to someplace I didn’t expect. Many people don’t realize that the Second Amendment was created specifically to serve as a check on the government’s power. The Founding Fathers were revolutionaries who recognized that a people oppressed by their government had the right to take up arms and free themselves. They wanted to assure the people of the various states that, if the federal government became oppressive, the people would retain the means to protect themselves against tyranny. Of course, in the 18^th century, it was possible for individuals to provide themselves with current, military-grade gear. A farmer’s musket was equal in firepower to a soldier’s musket.

In the 21^st century, it’s no longer possible for individual or small-community effort to field a modern military force. Not many private citizens can afford to own tanks or jet fighters. However, our country does have militia organizations that do exactly that—the National Guard. While it’s true that we don’t really have town or county militias anymore, the Guard of today is what the Founding Fathers were protecting in the 18^th century. So if the National Guard meets the need foreseen by the Framers when they created the Second Amendment, what does that mean for private gun ownership?

I find myself thinking that private gun ownership actually has very little to do with the Second Amendment—and I say this as a gun owner who would absolutely refuse to comply with any kind of confiscation program. Private gun ownership isn’t about the right to bear arms, it’s about the right of self-defense.  The principle of self-defense is enshrined in our legal system in many places; it’s one of those “natural rights” that form the philosophical foundation of our legal and political systems. In a world where you might be attacked with lethal force, you have the right to use lethal force to protect yourself (and your property, to some extent). And that means you can make sure the means of self-defense are close at hand.

So, I think it’s not unreasonable to tighten up gun regulations, but it’s important that people can arm themselves for self-defense if they want to. I don’t think there is a Constitutionally mandated right to own a Hellfire missile or a heavy machine gun—but I think there is a natural right to own a hunting rifle or a pistol, and that right shouldn’t be infringed or limited by government without very good reason.  Let’s just make sure that the regulations we create for gun control are logical and effective, and don’t wind up taking guns away from responsible people while leaving them in the hands of criminals.

The Finer Things: The Twilight Zone. There’s a marathon on the Sci Fi channel today. Man, these shows are great. Best part? My daughter is a real aficionado, too. Nice to know that I’m raising her right.

 

 

More War at Sea, the NRA, Johnson's Popcorn

Greetings!

Thanks for dropping by. It’s been a busy Christmas season for me: I’m working on a short-term contract up in Redmond, which as it turns out is a 55-minute drive from my house in good conditions. The good news is that I’ve worked out a route that keeps me off our jammed freeways and moving for most of the time. It’s a scenic drive: I get a nice look at the Cascades on Route 18, I drive through a pretty valley with striking forested cliffs and picturesque homes along the Issaquah-Hobart Road, and then I drive by multi-million dollar lakefront homes along the East Lake Sammamish Parkway. But it’s two hours in the car each day, no two ways about it.

Anyway, this week: What I was thinking for the last set of War at Sea, the NRA, and Johnson’s Popcorn.

Gaming: As promised, this week I’m going to continue with my reflections on things I hoped to do with a final set of War at Sea. Last time I looked at the Axis side, so naturally this time I’ll share some thoughts about the Allied side.

Belleau Wood (reprint): The Independence-class CVLs are represented by only one unit in Set 1, so they’re long overdue for another unit. Belleau Wood had an excellent war record; her planes sank the Japanese carrier Hiyo at the Philippine Sea. Making a point of providing a different SA mix from Princeton was all I really had in mind.

Expert Dauntless (reprint): We took note of the fact that players wanted more of the early-set carrier aircraft just to fill out their fleet builds, so we were working on reprinting the really useful planes. I figured the US could use a dive bomber with a Search bonus for long-range scenarios—LCDR McCluskey certainly deserves an AANM flavor text mention!

USS Marblehead (reprint): We only had one representative of the Omaha class light cruisers. USS Marblehead had the good fortune to be badly damaged in the early part of the Dutch East Indies campaign and sent off for repairs, thus avoiding destruction at Java Sea. I was thinking about maybe giving this unit to the Russians as the Murmansk—the US Navy gave the Russians the cruiser USS Milwaukee in 1944.

New Orleans (reprint): A reprint of USS San Francisco. That was a big class of cruisers, and we only had the one so far.

USS Patterson (reprint): This was basically a reprint of USS Bagley, which hadn’t been reprinted yet. USS Patterson had a very active war career—Pearl Harbor, Savo Island, subhunting, kamikaze defense, everything. I was thinking of taking off the Defective Torpedoes SA that Bagley has, and maybe giving her Close Escort, which the US doesn’t have very much of.

PV-1 Ventura (new sculpt): The US had a number of good patrol planes that we hadn’t gotten to yet. The Ventura could have provided the US with a torpedo- or rocket-capable patrol bomber. Sure, we could have done the B-26 or B-17, but they already had similar units in play. The Ventura would have been more different in the US inventory, and it was pretty important historically.

USS South Dakota (reprint): The Massachusetts has been looking for a reprint since set 2. And South Dakota would have provided us with an excuse to print a major US combatant with a nasty negative SA, just to show all those “RB is a US fanboy” guys that yes, I really would do that.

USS Texas (new sculpt): We were waffling between Texas and New Mexico, and Texas was going to win out because she’s a monument that you can go visit today. She was going to get some shore bombardment specials or shore battery suppression, to commemorate her role in the Battle of Cherbourg.

HMS Implacable (new sculpt): The British have several early- and mid-war carriers to choose from; this would have provided a late-war option, with performance and capacity close to the major American fleet carriers. Her planes attacked Tirpitz in Norway, and she saw action in the British Pacific Fleet.

HMS Lion (new sculpt): The British still had lots of old battleships to do, but we wanted to provide a sexier late-war option if possible. We were really torn between Vanguard, which appeared too late to see any action, and a hypothetical battleship. Since we indulged in fantasy battleships for the US and the Germans, we figured we could give the British one of their speculative ships.

HMS Upholder (new sculpt): This has been on my list for a long time. The U-class submarines were smaller than the T-class boats, which are the only other British submarine we have in print. It would be comparable in basic stats to the Type VII U-boats--the Allies don't have a defense 4 submarine yet. Upholder had an amazing war record, too.

Seafire (new sculpt): This one, too. The Seafires saw a lot of action in the Pacific, specializing in fleet defense against kamikaze attacks. The Sea Hurricane is a second-rate carrier fighter, so the Seafire would give the Brits a good late-war carrier fighter with the Combat Air Patrol special. I’m not sure exactly where it would have measured up vs. the Hellcat, Fw 190, Corsair, or George; I bet there’s a great debate to be had about where exactly it would fall in that mix.

HMS Valiant (reprint): I mentioned this one a little while back. It was close enough to HMS Warspite that we could use it as a reprint. She saw action at the Battle of Cape Matapan, beating the tar out of some Italian heavy cruisers. I was thinking about giving her a Night Fighter special ability—the Brits were probably the second-best night fighters after the Japanese, and the Italians did NOT want to engage the British in night actions. I wanted to sprinkle some more night fighting into the Royal Navy.  

HMS Berwick (reprint): Through Set VI, the Australians had two County-class heavy cruisers, while the British only had one. In fact, the British hadn’t seen a modern heavy cruiser since Set II. The County-class ships had a bunch of different configurations, so it’s tricky to find one that’s a reasonably close match to the existing model. Berwick dueled the Hipper while defending a convoy, and also worked the Murmansk Run, so she might have received a Bad Weather Fighter special ability.

HMS Naiad (reprint): We only had one Dido-class model out there (the Euryalus in Set V), and we felt that the British could use more light cruisers. The Dido sculpt is a decent looking model, and these ships were very active in the war. I also considered HMS Edinburgh as a pick-up in this slot. I would have loved to do more new models of the old cruisers still in service, but as I observed before, the budget just wasn’t going to allow it.

Joffre (new sculpt): If the Germans get the Graf Zeppelin, the French can certainly have the Joffre. It was a much better design than Bearn, if not quite up to the standards of the modern carrier designs in other fleets. With a capacity of 40 aircraft, she would have had a capacity of 2 squadrons.

Late.299 (new sculpt): If the French had continued to develop their carrier aviation, they were considering a new carrier-borne torpedo bomber based on the Late.298 seaplane. While this plane is a bit hypothetical, we thought it was important for each country to eventually receive at least one unit in each unit category. The French could in good conscience embark the D.520 or Wildcat as a fighter and the Vindicator as a dive bomber; the Late.299 would have served as their torpedo bomber option.

Bezeviers (reprint): The French only had one submarine in the game, Casabianca, and we neglected to give her the ability to engage other submarines. I’d been meaning to fix that for a while, and Bezeviers is the most noteworthy sister ship of the existing French submarine.

Java (new sculpt): This is another one that we’d wanted to get to for several sets now, just so you could get closer to a Battle of the Java Sea scenario. The Dutch cruisers Sumatra and Java were roughly comparable to the Omaha-class cruisers in the US Navy.

ORP Krakowiak (new sculpt): A British Hunt-class destroyer escort manned by the Polish Navy. The Hunt class was one of the largest and most important ship classes not yet represented in the game, so we were anxious to get to them. Krakowiak would have provided many proxies for us. The Hunt-class DE’s were very active in the Channel skirmishing.

K21 (new sculpt): I was waffling between giving the US another submarine class, or giving the Russians a large submarine option. The existing Russian sub, S13, is quite small; K21 was a large seagoing fleet submarine. She attacked Tirpitz during the 1942 convoy battles; the Soviets claimed two hits, the Germans noticed none. But I might have given her a Battleship Hunter SA for trying.

So, there you go—the Allied units I hoped to get to in a Set VII of the game. Sorry we didn’t get there, I think there were some very interesting units in this mix.

Politics/Current Events: The Newtown shooting is too terrible for words; I have actively avoided watching the coverage, because I can’t bear to see it. With good reason, this horrible event is prompting a renewed debate about guns in America, and it’s pretty clear that lawmakers are going to be wrangling over the issue in the next few months, so it’s unfortunately a political issue as well as a terrible tragedy.

I will say this much: The NRA’s “armed guards” proposal doesn’t strike me as ludicrous. Would any law short of universal gun confiscation have stopped the Newtown massacre? Probably not. But a trained person with a gun in the right place might have. Many liberal commentators (and quite a few of my liberal friends) have reacted to this as if it is the most insane idea they’ve ever heard, right up there with “let’s not have schools anymore” or “perhaps we should shoot the students beforehand to deny the killer targets.” I’m not sure that providing schools with armed guards is a *good* idea, but it’s pretty clear to me that people entrusted with protecting other people against threats of horrible violence are usually armed. Maybe an armed guard would have been victim number one, and nothing would have been different—or maybe that attack would have been deterred, or stopped before it ran its terrible course. It seems to me that the idea is worth discussing, in conjunction with measures to control access to firearms, restrict high-capacity magazines, or improve public mental-health services. What’s wrong with an “all of the above” approach?

I have some more to say on the right to bear arms, what it meant historically, and perhaps what it ought to be construed as in the modern world… but I’m already running long on this post, so I’ll save them for now.

The Finer Things: Johnson’s Popcorn caramel corn. This is a staple of the Ocean City boardwalk, and is perhaps the finest caramel-covered popcorn in the world. Each year around Christmastime we usually receive a tin or two as gifts from family back home, and man, is it good. You can actually order the stuff online these days, and you know what? It’s so awesome I’m going to share the link.

http://www.johnsonspopcorn.com/

To me, it tastes like summer. What more can I say?

 

 

 

Finishing War at Sea, the Hot Stove

Welcome back!

My apologies for a bit of a gap between posts; it’s the holiday season, and things are getting busy around the household. Professionally, I’m also up to my eyeballs in exciting new projects. Most of them are still a little too far out for me to get into specifics, but in case you’re wondering what I’ve been up to lately, here are a few things I can hint at:

First, I’ve agreed to pitch in and help out the gang at Paizo/Goblinworks with some design work on The Emerald Spire, a megadungeon that’s planned as a Kickstarter reward for Pathfinder Online. If you’ve been following the Pathfinder Online Kickstarters, you’ve seen something about this book. (And if you think you’d like to stomp around the streets of Thornkeep yourself sometime soon, well, I encourage you to check out http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1675907842/pathfinder-online-a-fantasy-sandbox-mmo?ref=live )

Second, I just finished designing an adventure for an upcoming D&D Encounters Season for Wizards of the Coast. I’m also engaged in revising a 20,000-word “faux history” essay tied to the upcoming Sundering storyline for the Forgotten Realms setting. You should see both of those sometime in 2013.

Third, I’m outlining and writing a comic book series. The series should kick off in 2013. Working on a comic book is a new medium for me, but I’ve always been a very “visual” writer; I look forward to seeing what I can do with a little bit of dialogue and a whole lot of artwork. Not sure how much more I can say about this right at the moment, so I’ll stop there.

Finally, I’m working on a modern-day military thriller. I wrote the first draft over the last six months or so, and now I’m discovering all the ins and outs of breaking into mainstream publishing. I’m pretty excited about this, as you might imagine, and I hope to be able to provide some more information on this front soon.     

Exciting times! We’ll see how it all works out.

Gaming: Back in May, I posted about a few Axis & Allies Naval Miniatures pieces I would have wanted for a Set 7 if it ever came around. Well, it’s been more than a year since Set 6, and I’m pretty sure Wizards has no plans for a Set 7. So, at the risk of rubbing some salt in the wounds of you AANM fans out there, I’m just going to go ahead and tell you about what I was planning before WotC told me to call it a day.

I had figured that Set 7, if we actually did it, was probably going to be the last set, and was going to be pinched for new sculpts. Reprints would have to be selected from the most efficient combination of existing tools (think mold groups) available—for example, if the molds for ship A and ship B were in the same tool, they’d be a better reprint than ship A and ship C or ship B and ship C. Under those constraints, I built a set list that would cover the most important missing pieces that were still absent after the first six sets, and pushed hard to convince the Powers That Be to let us do just one last War at Sea set to wrap things up. Alas, it didn’t pan out.

This week I’ll talk about my last-set notions for the Axis; next time I’ll talk about the Allies.

Shinano (new sculpt): Of the Japanese carriers we didn’t get to through six sets, Shinano was probably the most interesting. It would have had a low basing capacity (no more than 2 or 3 squadrons) but some sort of plane replenishment special ability, since it was intended to carry a lot of replacement aircraft. Of course, it would also have had a ton of hull points and high armor. That makes for interesting game play—Shinano would have played very differently from any other carrier available.

Kinugasa (reprint):  The Aoba was a nice-looking sculpt. Kinugasa would have been an Aoba with less flag rating, and maybe a shore bombardment or anti-airfield special ability.

Mutsu (reprint): Just about the last operational Japanese battleship left to do. I was thinking of giving her a landing special ability, since she was used to transport troops in China operations before the war. 

P1Y Francis (new sculpt): The P1Y Francis was a Japanese land-based patrol bomber like the Mitsubishi Betty; I figured the Japanese hadn’t seen an uncommon plane in several sets, and they were due for a new land-based patrol bomber.

Expert Val (reprint): Like the B5N2 Kate we did in Set 6, this was essentially a reprint of the Val dive bomber. Players needed more copies of common attack aircraft, so I was trying to get more of ‘em in circulation. I was thinking of giving this Val a search bonus for long-range engagements.

RO-41 (reprint): A reprint of the set 5 RO-51, a decent medium submarine. Less expensive than the big Japanese I-boats.

Takanami (new): This would have been a new sculpt of a Yugumo class destroyer. The Yugumos were very close to the Kageros, but the profiles were off by just enough that we would have needed a new sculpt. Takanami torpedoed a couple of US cruisers at Tassafaronga before sinking under heavy gunfire.

P-class Battlecruiser (new sculpt): The P-class was a German battlecruiser or pocket battleship design that was a lot like an enlarged Deutschland. It was one of the collection of Plan Z designs that never were built, but might have been.  

Peter Strasser (reprint): This was the hypothetical sister ship to the never-completed German Graf Zeppelin. Like the GZ, it would have been a fairly robust 2-cap carrier. Really, the point of this was to give folks more Graf Zeppelins.

Force X Stuka (reprint): The 10^th Fliegerkorps was a Luftwaffe formation that was ordered to Sicily to break the Allied lines of communication through the Med in 1941, and later proved decisive in the German victory in the Dodecanese campaign of 1943. But really this was intended to provide more Stukas—common attack planes were a little constrained in the game. 

Uj202 (reprint): This was an Italian Gabbiano-class corvette that the Germans seized after the Italian surrender and recommissioned as a Kriegsmarine vessel. The Germans operated a number of small Italian escorts and subchasers in the last months of the Mediterranean war. It would be interesting as the cheapest and smallest German ship.

Pola (reprint): The Italians hadn’t gotten a front-line heavy cruiser since Set 4. And, well, we were running out of other options for the Italian rares.

Abruzzi (reprint): This repeats the Set 3 Garibaldi. Far and away the best Italian light cruiser.

Ramb I (new sculpt): The Ramb I was an Italian auxiliary cruiser that was intended for a commerce raiding cruise in the Indian Ocean, but was sunk before it could take any prizes. I wanted to do the piece because it would provide something that could pass as an Italian transport or freighter in scenario play, and have a game function similar to the German commerce raider Atlantis.

Ciclone (reprint): Close enough to the set 3 Pegaso in profile, but with a smidgen more AA.

Vesihiisi (reprint): This was a Finnish submarine that was essentially a look-alike prototype to the Type VII U-boat.  The Versailles treaty banned the Germans from building submarines, so their naval designers stayed in practice by designing subs for other countries. The Vetehinen class boats were submarine minelayers, so she would have had a mine SA, and maybe a sub-killer SA too (Vesihiisi got a Soviet sub).

I sure wish I’d gotten the chance to “finish” the War at Sea game out with just one more set. There were a couple more Axis pieces I wanted to see done—a U-boat tender, some Japanese planes, an Italian tanker or troop transport, a couple of stray Z-plan designs—but we were definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel on the Axis navies. Maybe the Team Poseidon guys at Forumini will be inspired to cook up some stats for my “almost” list.

Politics/Current Events: Eh, nothing this time. I could tell you a heck of a story about local politics and our idiotic mayor… maybe next time.

The Finer Things: Baseball’s Hot Stove season. I’m a baseball junkie, as many of you know. This time of year, I’m checking a dozen different sports news sites ten times a day to see who the Phillies and Mariners are chasing. In the spirit of armchair GMs everywhere, I’ll share a couple of thoughts about the Phillies offseason so far…

1)      Trading for Minnesota’s Ben Revere. I like this move. Ben Revere essentially brings everything to the table that Michael Bourn brings, but he’s only 24 and costs only half a million a year. It’s a clever solution to the Phillies’ centerfield vacancy, and the Phillies fixed it without overpaying. Getting a free agent CF was going to cost 15 million a year or more. The cost wasn’t cheap—Worley is a tough kid as a pitcher, and May has a great upside. But it’s sure looking easier to sign a #4 starter than a good centerfielder in this market, so it’s reasonable.

2)      Trading for Michael Young. Maybe Young is done at 36, but the guy is only one year removed from a .338 season with over 200 hits, and more importantly, the Phils didn't pay much to get him. He’s going to be rough to watch at the hot corner, and he doesn’t bring a lot of patience to a lineup that already doesn’t work enough walks out of opposing pitchers, but there weren’t many third base choices out there. Myself, I would have tried to sign Eric Chavez and set up a 3b platoon, but Chavez went off the board fast. If the Phillies are smart, they’ll put Young in between Utley and Howard in the batting order, and make it a little harder for a lefty specialist to shut down the lineup.

The Phils could still use a corner outfielder power bat, a setup man, and now a #4 pitcher. There are still options for those out there. Myself, I’d like to see Nick Swisher in Philly… but we’ll see. It turns out that GM Ruben Amaro doesn’t call me up to run his moves by me.