Why Do I Even Have This?

The inevitable has happened: Wizards of the Cost has announced that they’re working on the next edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  And they’re looking to the players for help.  Okay, so there are two ways to look at this, exciting or mortifying.

If you think this is exciting, then I’m with you.  I’m especially interested in the idea of being able to participate, at some point, in global play testing of the new edition of DnD.  Call me a fanboy, but I like 3.0/3.5 and I really like 4e, I’m looking forward to what they do with another edition.  They’re doing this because 4e caught a lot of flak, which I still think is utter bullshit, but I do applaud them for asking for our thoughts before the game drops.

If you’re mortified by this, I have three words for you: get over it.  If you didn’t like 4e, don’t use it, if you didn’t like 3.0, don’t use it.  You don’t have to use any game system you don’t like, or any part of one that you don’t like.  Role-playing games are about doing what you want, so you can feel free to pick and choose, it’s not Magic: the Gathering or sports.  Play around with it.

And I think the first person who attacks WotC for trying to be profitable needs a swift kick in the ass.  The market is weak, the economy is weak, and they are a huge company that needs to make money in order for their hundreds of employees to have jobs.  They do that by making products.  Is this project because R&D wants to fix problems, or because WotC wants a profitable model?  I don’t know, or care.  Three expansions and a core set a year have kept Magic viable and exciting (and if you disagree stop playing with your pre-Mirage cards and try the new sets out), there’s no reason that the same can’t be done with DnD.  Under TSR DnD didn’t exactly evolve much for a long time, it got stale, people lost interest.  That is how consumption works, in a nutshell.  There are larger forces at work than what Nerd A or Nerd B thinks or wants.  And like always, you can just not buy it.

Play in the play test, or play when it comes out, and be sure to tell WotC what you think about it, but until then, until there are concrete rules that you can actually play with, save your energy and go bitch about Twilight or whatever else you’re doing.  Some of us have work to do.

Anybody who reads this probably knows by now that I’m back from Moscow for good.  What you may not know is the full story of that decision.  I’ll give you all the brief version, because I haven’t even sorted it all out myself.

Moscow defeated me, simply put, and my time there made me realize that no matter how interesting I find Soviet history, there’s something missing there.  Whatever that is, it’s the thing required to keep me focused on Soviet history, to keep me motivated enough to get over the significant hurdles to studying that field, namely the language and working in Russia.  The end result of my almost two months in Moscow, besides meeting some very cool new friends and having some fun stories and drinking a lot of beer, is that I don’t have it in me to spend the rest of my life studying Russia and its history.

So I’ve returned to Michigan State in order to refocus and do American history instead, which has its own difficulties and challenges, to be sure, but I feel I’m much better equipped to handle those.  I’m enrolled in classes and planning on having a publishable paper by the end of this semester, with hopes of presenting it at a conference in the fall.  I don’t have major field advisers yet but I’m only just meeting a lot of the American faculty for the first time.

I don’t have a dissertation topic, but I know that I want to look at gender (of course) as well as consumption and pop culture, with a special focus on what I’ve taken to referring to as “nerd culture.”  Many historians study their own national groups, for example, and I’m a nerd, it seems reasonable that I should study my people, and I think there’s a lot of room for an historian’s point of view with that material.

I’m also taking this opportunity to re-embrace that culture, and not feel guilty about it.  I’ve honestly spent a lot of time in the last year or so playing video games and watching Netflix and so forth but not enjoying it, because I always felt guilty about not being productive.  Well no more, obviously I need to, and will be, working hard, I always do, but I’m over this self induced grad school guilt trip bullshit.  If I spend more time playing Skyrim than working once in a while, oh well.

I’m also going to take the opportunity to try and get back into game design, as well as maybe get into podcasting or a webshow, Erik and I have often thrown out ideas for such projects, and I think it’s high time we got around to something.  We’re not getting any younger and frankly it’s never going to get any easier.

And on the subject of game design, Owen Street Press is the name that I’ve been planning on using if I ever start self-publishing, and since I am, in fact, working on a game now, hopefully this space will actually see some use as a vehicle for that.  I’ll still talk about Star Trek though.

theresthemoonmum:

Poor Beaker

(via oovwee)

wilwheaton:

(via reddit)

Liberals Are Cool: NDAA Provisions Being Tweaked To Address Civil Liberties

Finally someone is talking sense about NDAA.  The section below (e, found on page 428, within section 1031, which begins on page 426 of the pdf) specifically counters the entire problem.  The press flipped out about his section allowing for the arrest and detention of any American for any reason, which was never true.  This language assures that that is not true.  Even people who are not citizens, but are arrested in the US, are exempt.  Maybe now people can stop acting like Obama is some horrible traitor to Americans, and start focusing on how to beat the Republicans in less than a year.

liberalsarecool:

President Obama (and a few key members of Congress) did not let us down and I am very happy to say this. I was very concerned with the language written in the NDAA. This is still not on the Senate website. Naturally - things can change, but it does appear as if the message landed over the course…

forlackofabettercomic:

It’s honestly hard to believe that he is a real person sometimes

LITERAL LOL.  People in other parts of the dorm probably heard that through the closed door.

rikkisixx:

i LITERALLY snorted when i saw this.

(via geek-selforum)

I LOLed so fucking hard at this.

velocicrafter:

bitchiinkaoru:

loooooooooooooooooooool

INSIDE THE WALLS, WE ARE SAFE. INSIDE THE WALLS, WE ARE FREE.

(via queerandpresentdanger)