I’ll be hosting a Call of Cthulhu Game at Gen Con Indy this year. Here are some materials you can download for the game:

1) General Information, including characters and setting, that can also be found at the the Gen Con Forums.

2) The invitation to the barbecue.

3) The Lease to the LAC (Read the rules and regulations carefully)

4) A Chicago Tribune Article framed in the foyer of the LAC.

THE APARTMENT

A Call of Cthulhu adventure by Brad Lund aka “Eternus IV”, Deadpan Jester Games

The newly renovated Langer Apartment Complex in Chicago has been the ideal place to rent, despite the warning from the transient with the three-legged dog who lives outside. “You couldn’t pay me enough money to come off my sidewalk to sleep in there,” he said before you went inside to sign the lease. A week later, the landlord has invited you to attend a party with the other new tenants. The sun is shining, the food smells great, life is good….

GAME TIMES: Gen Con Indy 2008

ID: RPG01957
Location: Union Station - Edison North - 5
Time slot: Fri Aug 15 7:00 pm - 11:00 pm
FULL

ID: RPG01956
Location: Hyatt - Network - 4
Time slot: Wed Aug 13 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm
SLOTS LEFT:3

What makes a fantasy role playing game “Dungeons and Dragons” instead of other incantations of its ilk? How many times can you build or improve upon an earlier version of D&D until it resembles a different game? When does the game change from a D&D variation into an entirely new game?

What happens when D&D goes digital (not to be confused with NWN or the MMO D&D online)? Is 4.0 designed to convert those who play World of Warcraft and Diablo into the D&D system as some claim? How do the rules reflect these assumptions and theories?

I share the view of many others who have watched the pen and paper RPG industry wax and wane (mostly waning, but now waxing wildly on the online publishing front): each new edition of the flagship fantasy RPG induces more sales. C’est la vie. It was time to shake the money out of all the nerds’ piggy banks.

What follows is my analysis on how 4.0 is different than 3.5. Whether 4.0 is better than 3.5 is a matter of perspective, just as when we compare variants of certain games. For starters, this is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that we see a fantasy game evolve, or emerge from the early works of Gygax and Arenson.

Covers for AD&D Player’s Handbook and Hackmaster Player’s Handbook

One of my favorite D&D variants is Hackmaster, which was granted a license from Wizards to develop a spoof-variation of AD&D as used and referenced by characters in the Knights of the Dinner Table comic and focused on hack n’ slash power gaming. Most people I’ve talked to who play both AD&D and Hackmaster were quick to agree that there is little difference in the core mechanics between the games, but a vast difference in how the games plays out. Can we go so far as to say that Hackmaster is an AD&D variant? I think we could, even though Hackmaster isn’t run by Wizards. Ultimately, the license holder of the D&D franchise sits a top the mountain of fantasy RPG choices, so an analysis between the sanctioned versions of Wizard products carries more interest than comparisons between gems like Hackmaster and AD&D. Incidentally, there is another version of Hackmaster on the horizon, which will NOT follow the path of 4th edition D&D. I’ll probably delve into the differences of the new Hackmaster release as I am attempting here with Dungeons and Dragons.

Combat Changes Galore in 4.0

In the case of Dungeons & Dragons, the core mechanics of the game have changed over the years, but the differences between 3.5 and 4.0 are of a greater degree than between past versions, and 4.0 presents players with an entirely new mechanism for which to run their games. My goal is to present the changes how I see them - which is a subjective undertaking, because I tend to find the changes that I hoped would occur more readily than the changes that don’t carry a large impact on how I play or run the game.

However, if you are a world-builder who needs an army of bards and monks to flesh out your “Ultimate Weaponless (Lutes are OK) Gnome Deathmatch Challenge” campaign with plenty of unarmed combat and grappling action, you’ll have a lot of adjustment ahead of you if you use the 4.0 rules. (Read: No more bards, no more monks, no more gnomes, no more grappling in 4.0.)

No Gnomes in 4.0, but this dude can enforce the guarantee!

Make no mistake: 4.0 is not 3.5 less the monks, bards and gnomes (except as seen on p.134 of the Monster Manual.) Different races, classes, equipment, spells and items certainly change a game’s flavor, but these are all things that can be removed or inserted into a game system with a creative DM or world-builder.

Combat Rules in 4.0 Redefine D&D More than Changes in Fluff

No Virginia, the biggest changes in 4.0 revolve around the combat rules. Rules Lawyers rejoice: your expertise will be needed for the transition. However, its more analogous to a situation where Congress repealed large portions of the tax code, and you are stuck explaining to your clients that even though they still have to pay taxes, they don’t need to save receipts and fill out as many forms.

After a while, the Rules Lawyer’s mantra will be: “They used to have Blee-Blah-Blah in 3.5 but now in 4.0 they just do Blah.”

I have prepared three articles which explore the differences of combat in more detail:

1) The Combat Round - Feet Were Never Perfectly Flat Anyway: Differences in how the combat round is structured and what you can when it is your turn. Casting a spell is less involved than it was under 3.5. You no longer “throw” to “save” yourself from attacks unless you are experiencing persistent effects.

2) Movement and Modifiers - Who Needs Mini’s When you have W.O.P.R.: Moving around has been streamlined quite a bit and I argue that you need mini’s less than you would under the 3.5 rules, thereby dismissing the conspiracy theories that 4.0 was designed to mandate mini use (and thereby sales.) I’ll also discuss how the backstab works under the new rules.

3) On Death and Dying - The Length of the Tunnel is Dependent on your Circulatory System, but C still equals 3 x 10⁸ m/s: Here we will discuss how the death system, and recovery wherefrom, has been changed.

By first addressing the playing field and rules of combat, we’ll have a context in which to explore the balance and utility of the new classes, races, powers, skills and feats.

When I’m finished, I think I can show that 4th Edition is still “D&D” as many envision it to be. In fact, I think 4.0 is more streamlined and newbie friendly than 3.5, with a nice foundation to provide a viable framework for numerous play styles. The beauty of it is: if you hate 4.0, you can still play 3.5 or its earlier versions, and if you still use this character sheet, you are certainly on the fringe, my friend.

Review my articles on the subject and tell me what you think. I know there are many of you who think that 4th Edition is a completely different animal than its predecessors and unworthy of being related to D&D.

NEXT: The Combat Round - Feet Were Never Perfectly Flat Anyway

Dragonborn Clerics are More Entertaining Than Bowling Alleys

Dungeons & Dragons was born in 1974. I was born in 1973 under a roof where my oldest brother played the game since its inception. It therefore is not a complete mystery to me, that even in my thirties; I still follow and play the game. Public perception be damned: I’ll always play D&D under the right circumstances. Some people like to bowl (Lord knows I spent enough time at a bowling alley with a dad as a pro), or get stupid drunk (no comment), or sit in front of computer chatting and organizing their facebook - I’ll take a 2nd level Dragonborn Cleric with +5 STR over all of that, thank you very much.

Dragonborn race in 4th Edition D&D

A bowling alley

It makes complete sense that a storyteller would be drawn to Dungeons and Dragons, which has a built in toolbox for building new worlds and entire campaigns using a modest rule set. I spent a majority of my playing days running the game as a Dungeon Master. The draw for me was in creating the characters that the other players would encounter, formulating the adventure plot, and providing plenty of conflict in the form of puzzles and combat. What better for a writer to see and feel their story come alive and adapt as the players make choices along the way. Sometimes the process of running a game is just like writing a story: you start with an interesting character and a conflict and watch how it unfolds as you go. Running a game takes preparation, imagination, perseverance, and most importantly, the ability to adapt.

Guilty: I Bought 4th Edition D&D

I’ve had the unique experience in running or playing with every version of D&D since its release. So when Wizards of the Coast announced their 4th Edition release of Dungeons & Dragons, the decision was not as to if I would buy the books and try it out, but when.

I purchased all three books: the Players Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide and the Monster Manual. Combining all three, any group can play the game without purchasing any additional material. Reading all three of the books gives you the fullest understanding of the game mechanics and how to pull it all together to build and run a game of D&D as intended by the 4th edition team.

Wizards of the Coast, recognizing the aging demographic of its core customers, the resounding success of World of Warcraft, and the potential to redesign the game to appeal to a younger market (which to date has been all but impossible,) came to the crossroads; and would leave it as Stevie Ray Vaughn, or one more soul of millions deceived by the red man in horns.

But before I can gloss 4th edition the new SRV of RPGs, I ‘d like to share my opinion on how others have ushered in the new rules.

The Church of Gygax and the Reformation of 2008

In a world turned geek in a broad sense, there is still the enclave known as the roleplayers that remain outside the wall (littered by millions of empty cans of Mountain Dew, of course) that separates nerds from geeks. The more hardcore roleplayers are forever barred from the somewhat socially accepted realm of geekiness, as the part-time roleplayers who “just play every once in a while” can manage to avoid public persecution by limiting their playtime according to community standards (once a week in most suburbs; once a lifetime in the Bible Belt states, Utah, or rural areas; Wisconsin and most of California exempt.)

One would imagine that years of systemic persecution would inspire the roleplayers to unite as one, and storm the walls into conformity with a resounding critical hit (by rolling a natural 20 on a d20.) In a world where playing World of Warcraft is acceptable by ‘geek’ standards, you would think that the nerds would embrace the latest edition of D&D in unison, or attempt to provide the geeks a glimpse over the wall into the world of nerd, in an attempt to build a bridge, nay, bring down the wall that divides those who indulge in fantasy gaming of alternate forms.

What interests me is what you hear on the nerd side of the wall: the endless debates between those who champion one version of D&D above all. There are many who embrace all forms of D&D, unafraid of their affinity for any game with the D&D label. On the other extreme are those who are convinced there is a ‘true’ form of D&D, whereby all imitations should be banished forever. If I were an alien anthropologist dropping in most of the D&D discussion boards, I would go away thinking that Gary Gygax was a religious figure and that D&D was a church with several factions and denominations in constant struggle over sacred doctrine.

Hell, if I were a geek, or better yet a normal citizen who is easily placated by network television, sports and Disney films, I’d keep my kids as far from those message boards as possible, surmising that the roots of a vicious cult were being sowed in our midst, and use D&D message boards as another example of how the internet should be regulated. The geeks are not exempt from similar behavior when comparing video games, especially Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games like World of Warcraft, Everquest or my favorite, Dark Age of Camelot.

Hung Jury: I Hereby Spencer Tracy My Bookshelf of D&D Hardbacks

How can the marketing executives at Wizards make sense of it all? Was the release of 4th edition a success or a failure? Are the younger folks trying it out? Were the new rule changes enough to keep the core players happy while providing a promise of new blood?

From where I’m sitting, the 4th edition books are the first volley of many, or at least they better be. It appears they are placing most of their hopes in the online service to enhance the tabletop version of D&D by providing a graphical interface for players, and using the internet to bring players from afar to a place where they manage to find time to play games: in front of their computer screens.

Therefore, I think the success of 4th edition can only be assessed once the online features are up and running. In the meantime, the nerds can bicker all they want.

Like most Dungeon Masters, I’ll adapt. Whenever I think of debates in religion, I think of Spencer Tracy at the end of Inherit the Wind, a movie account of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial (one of the first of many debates about teaching evolution or fundamentalism in public schools.) At the end of the movie, Spencer Tracy picks up the Holy Bible and Darwin’s Origin of the Species and stacks one upon the other before walking out of the courtroom, both tucked under his arm.

If I could mange it physically, I would do the same thing with each and every version of D&D that I own, but instead I’ll just throw my arm over the bookshelf and pretend I’m dramatically walking out of a courtroom.

Hang in there wormhole, and if I were a theoretical string (and the last time I checked, I am not), I’d be vibrating in my Calabi-Yau manifold, too.

Wormholes are simply one of the greatest tools in a science fiction author’s toolbox to transport their characters between distant stars, across the street in a blink of an eye, or in some cases, between two points in time. Gone are the worries about long extended cyrosleeps and relativity for our wormhole travelers. But do wormholes have a realistic shot of existing in light of a recent simulations in cosmology?

No, thanks to Jan Amborn, Jerzy Jurkiewicz and Renate Loll, who recently resurrected the viability of wormholes using euclidean quantum gracity in their article in the July 2008 issue of Scientific American.

Renate Loll, Quantum Physicist and Cosmologist

Basic Wormhole Theory

The Lorentzian Wormhole

1. Take a piece of paper and write A on one end of the paper and B on the other, representing two places in the universe separated by thousands of light years.

2. Now slowly fold B towards A until you get a floppy u-shape.

3. Imagine a tube between A and B. Now imagine being able to travel in this tube from A to B or vice versa. The closer you smoosh A and B together, the shorter your tube, and shorter your travel time. The path along the tube is your wormhole, and your fastest route to lead your exploration team into the habitable worlds of the Tau Ceti star system and still have enough time to come back next week to watch the Big Game.

The Schwarzschild Wormhole

Same as the Lorentizan except you use two separate pieces of paper, which represent different universes.

Tracing the shape of the universe on the quantum level

Quantum physics explores the fundamental laws concerning atomic and subatomic particles. Quantum gravity tries to explain what happens between these small particles, and test those findings in how we see gravity work on large objects like the moon or galaxies. There are a few models used to define quantum gravity, such as string theory or loop quantum gravity. Stephen Hawking, famous for his contributions in quantum cosmology, and a colleague of his, Gary Gibbons, used superposition to explain the shape of spacetime as an average of all of its possible shapes, using what is known as Euclidean Quantum Gravity.

Wormholes didn’t work with previous Euclidean quantum gravity simulators

In a search for how the very small (quantum level) might affect the very large (the universe), EQG simulations treat the universe as a vast empty bag containing millions of tiny four dimensional particles representing spacetime, subject to the laws of quantum mechanics and gravity. The EQG model succeeds if these particles converge into something that resembles the universe.

Previous attempts have failed, producing tiny universes with infinite dimensions or a thin, vast sheet with only two dimensions. These results excluded the viability of wormholes, because if you added the wormhole to the simulator, the universe would never “grow beyond a small but highly interconnected neighborhood.”

EQC + Causality + Cosmological Constant = Dead Wormhole

Loll & Company took EQG and added causality and the cosmological constant into their model and voila: a spacetime that closely resembles our universe (de Sitter geometry, in the absence of matter.) Introducing causality forces space to keep its form as time advances, preventing it from splintering into other universes or creating wormholes.

Strings may be the next thing discounted if you accept the work of Loll & company, who plan to use smaller and smaller scales in their simulations, and guess the results will show that the smaller scale they use, the faster the universe will repeat its structure, like a fractal.

Thankfully for the wormhole, there is life support in the form of different theories, some of which attack the assumptions of causality and the cosmological constant. Furthermore, Loll admits that the ultimate test to their theory will occur when observable consequences can be predicted using her model. However, I haven’t seen another theory using quantum behavior to produce such a stunning resemblance to our universe. The debate on whether string theory can supply a superior result is reserved for the time being, of course.

Writers: back to the drawing board?

For those of us who like to add a little hard science into our science fiction musings (and these days, I think readers expect it), it might be safe to move past wormhole-based models (such as the fascinating proposal by the fictitious Dr. Sirion) and revisit other methods of space travel. One of my favorites was the Alcubierre Drive, elegant, but rife with energy problems. Stargates were fun to think about (using stabilized wormholes) but probably nixed as well. As an offshoot, EQG may end up killing Star Trek’s subspace or hyperspace drive, which theoretically traverses multiple dimensions vaguely justified by string theory.

I also turn your attention to a man I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and passing in the hallways during my own exploration of physics at the University of Wyoming: science fiction author and astrophysics professor Mike Brotherton. Behold his cheat sheet for space travel for those interested in writing Hard Sciifi: cheat sheet.

Then again, why give up something so cool just because some exceedingly brilliant European scientists have put forth some spine-chilling results against the viability of wormholes? Won’t most readers be oblivious to such developments in cosmology and happily indulge in the fiction of wormholes, hyperspace drives and stargates? Of course.

Nevertheless, I am impressed with Renate Loll’s work and have a feeling we have not seen the last of her potentially verifiable work related to cosmology.

Verdict: keep the life support machine plugged in for the wormhole for now. Like with Castro, the public won’t really know when he’s effectively dead. In the meantime, the wormhole’s followers can send fuzzy video footage of him flapping his arms and slowly walking around the room.

Welcome to the Lundiverse: a repository of information that covers science, pseudo-science, gaming and other topics that explore the boundaries of reality, or in some cases, provide a refuge from it. It is my intention to avoid regurgitating information about these topics as already presented, but to explore and start a healthy discourse on alternative ways to approach and question the assumptions behind them. If we are to believe that truth is subjective (a debate of great interest) then it is fair to say that some of the ideas and topics covered here are born from another universe entirely.

What is a universe?

The lexicographers who define ‘universe’ have conveniently created a definition which explains the possibility of Lundiverse.com:

3. In science fiction: a. Another system of time, space, and matter coexisting with or
corresponding to our own. b. A vast and undiscovered star system or galaxy spatially distant from our own.

Unlike Galactus (seen below), I don’t aspire to devour the universe we live in through prose, but rather provide another system of time, space and content coexisting with and corresponding to the bevy of content that came before it.

Is it fair to characterize this website as a separate, or perhaps, parallel universe to the universe of content that came before it? Given my conservative approach to physics, I would concede that such a proposition is still within the realm of “science fiction,” as the definition provided above so decrees. After all, in a cage match between a philosopher and a lexicographer over the definition of something as obvious as the universe, we all know that the forces of the lazy mind eventually side with those that can put down answers in ink, preferably laser, and allow us to move on to American Idol, or the day job without thinking more on the matter.

However, to keep those victorious lexicographers steadily employed, our understanding of the universe changes, ever increasingly, and so must our definitions, as the philosophers who are clever enough to brand themselves as scientists, bravely throw themselves back into the cage to wrestle with such concepts as parallel universes, the modern expansion of Everett’s Many Worlds theory, the rise of M-Theory, the rampant proliferation of string theories and the growing interest in nanoscience, robotics, genetic engineering and cloning.

The philosopher-scientists eventually hit a wall, or run out of grant money, and become, or hang out with the storytellers, who are, by trade, professional, paid liars. The philosopher-storyteller borrows the clever ideas from the philosopher-scientist and uses them as a foundation to explain technology, space travel, cloning, teleportation and aliens, which are then filtered past producers (the philosopher-producers are called aspiring screenwriters) and transformed into popular entertainment such as Star Trek (which at least tries to address relativity) and Star Wars (which ignores relativity completely.) Pseudo-science has and always will be fertile ground for writers and screenwriters in Hollywood to engage our minds and provide refuge against the daily grind and bland realities of our own universe.

Hollywood inspires the dreamers, creating a new crop of philosophers, eager to try something with more flavor than what our lexicographers give us. A war ensues, between those who refuse to ‘indulge’ in challenges to the almighty Lexicon, and those who refuse to conform to the reality they are presented with.

The philosopher-scientists continue to gather data and approach the Lexicon with new findings, but change is slow and the public interest for the minutia behind the emerging technologies wanes. Each generation passes and we cannot get anything fast enough, let alone data to answer the biggest questions. In our haste to find an answer at the touch of a search button, good science is ignored and conjecture, thinly disguised as scholarly and verifiable work, permeates the public domain.

Enter the charlatan pseudo-scientists to give our fast-moving society a quick fix, who are little more than philosopher-storytellers with a science background, who boldly declare (many times basking themselves in the credit that belongs to others): “What we know is this, and what could be is that, but for now, thank you for stopping by and please buy my book or video series.” A compromise is made: those who embrace the Lexicon are relieved that such crazy ideas are safely contained in something with a pseudo prefix that looks like entertainment, and the dreamers can safely discuss, indulge and explore new ideas within the Pseudo - and if caught - can calmy explain, “I don’t actually believe in this stuff but is fun to read about.”

Futurists: a different breed altogether

The winners? The Lexicon, the status quo and those who have much to lose by a large shift in society values or our understanding of reality.

The losers? Everybody else, especially those that didn’t even bother to ask the question:

Is any of this real?

“But don’t ask that of the working family raising six kids on two humble salaries, or those without internet in third world countries,” some will say (and I would disagree, I think everybody is capable of such a question.) Some define reality as their immediate environment, and in many cases, by necessity. Beyond our basic needs, who defines what is necessary? Perhaps the Lexicon has been corrupted by the advertisers, who of course work for the corporations, who make our day jobs possible to spend money on the things we ‘need.’

What is a need?

The marching of the Lexicon arrives, with armies of philosopher-psychologists. Maslow or Microsoft?  Compelling cases can be made for both.

Does the Internet = Self Actualization?

Enter the doctors and the medical community, untainted of course by the pharmaceutical corporations: “you need to eat this type of food and do this type of exercise daily.” All of which is great advice, but we fail because we ‘needed’ to do other things that day. Continues the doctor, “oh I forgot, try this pill, it will motivate you to do so and regulate your hormones,” forgetting to tell you that selling those pills pays for the overhead to fight off the costs created directly or indirectly by the health insurance company - another ‘need’ according to our…..laws? lobbyists? manufacturers? doctors?

No matter who is to blame, there is the Bill, which we all foot, and for most of us, paying that bill becomes our only reality, and the inner philosopher is shoved aside and the Lexicon arrives as the crutch for the daily grind ahead. However, something in your routine eventually forces you to the internet, where you google, chat play games and find other escapes. The responsible users (as defined by the Lexicon and the philosopher-psychologists) only visit to grab some vital info or pay the Bill online. The others are on the internet ‘too much.’

And you, of course, just fell into the Lundiverse! Did you need to? Is it real?

No matter the answer, I hope you agree that we need to ask the question about what is real, and that you find something useful or entertaining in this universe that you can take back to your own.