And the rain this morning really tops it off.  I’ve spent the last two days going through all my emails, forum posts, web feeds and blog comments and I’m dozzed out with info overload. It really feels like I haven’t been away now at all, ack!

I didn’t do an inch of coding while on holidays and I’m all the better for it, loads of family time, sunny weather, no stress, no work and I even got to do some writing (for my “secret project” L___ H_____) and drawing (I’ll put up scans later). I’m hoping to keep the momentum up for writing, at least until work has worn me out a bit. I’m afraid this doesn’t mean more blogging but I’ll try and keep regular updates going.

I’ve been struggling with a roleplaying-gaming design issue. It’s probably just my own pet-hate. It’s something I call the “Big Pile of Skills” problem.

When creating a roleplaying character, there is nearly always a section on “Skills”. Most of the time you can choose any Skill you like and invest points into them. Some systems have some concept of grouping Skills like D&D’s Class system and Riddle of Steel’s Skill Packets. But most of the modern day systems I’ve played just let you pick any skills you like.  I’m under the impression that most players considered this a good thing and limiting character choices to a select set of groups is considered Bad^tm.

Let me explain the issue by way of example. I try to create a modern day character based on my own “Skillset” as an embedded programmer. Most generic or non-futuristic systems would have a Skill called “Computers”. By taking this Skill, your character knows stuff about computers. This Skill would allow you to attempt to build any sort of software, use computers at an expert level and in many cases allow you to attempt to hack any security system. Pity my profession isn’t so cool. Certainly “Computers” as a granularity is too vague. But if you break it down, into “Computer Use”, “Hacking”, “Geek Trivial”, “Embedded Programming Techniques”, “Web Programming”, “Blogging”, “Internet Memes”, “Barack Obama”, etc., I’d quickly run out of points and end up with some body who can program really well but can’t actually use a computer, which is nonsense.

For a long while I wondered why it was more fun to design a character’s powers than pick their skills. Picking a character’s skills is prep work for designing their “cool” powers, choosing skills that will support them. Which should be considered wrong. It’s a because it’s a bad “experience” when figuring out the mundane aspects of a character. I guess stuff like powers, magics, gifts, etc. are more exciting but I think they are also more character defining (like super-heroes are often defined by their powers) and they focus nearly exclusively on what they can do and how to use them. I think in part, thats why mortal-characters often appear boring. Not because playing a mortal is any less interesting than playing a super-powered critter, but that a mortal, from the system perspective, is just a bunch of Skills.

For me, Skills should be what you character can do, but most Skill lists read like a CV/resume hit-list. What does “Academics” mean? What the hell can you do with that? Fudge, my favourite hackable RPG system, isn’t so strict on its interpretation of what a Skill is. It has Attributes and it has Skills but only as implementation of Traits and it doesn’t mandate what Skills you have in your Skill List, so I could take “Embedded Computer Programming” with a little “Web Programming” on the side to cover what I can do as a programmer.

The problem really manifests when you’re trying to create a brand new character, not necessarily based on what you know. You end up taking sets of skills to cover what you think your character should be able to do. Leading to the Big-Pile-Of-Skills mess. Most of the time, I think this is acceptable, it’s fine in fantasy-based settings where the characters are, lets face it, a tad unrealistic anyway (come on undetected Vampires in the modern day?). Players will tweak their Skills based on how effective they are in-game, meaning that many of the player-characters start to have a similar feel as they “buy up” the necessary Skills.

Creating normal human characters should be fun but not so unrealistic to break the suspension of disbelief. So I’ve been mulling around some ideas in my head, mostly for Fudge. I don’t want a tight restrictive system like Classes but I still what the freedom of free-for-all Skills. For a start, Skills should only define what makes your character interesting. What can you character do that is unexpected or different from everyone else. What makes them an individual? (If everyone has a big-pile-of-skills, then you’re about as random as everyone else…) In fact, Skills is the wrong word. I think of stuff to put down on my CV when I read Skills, which isn’t what I want to put down on my character sheet, I don’t think.

I’ve started playing around some some sort of “solution” for this. Instead of just a Skill list, you take a Profession, Trade or a Role in Society and then some extra Skills you’ve picked up along the way. This is what ever your character does for a living in the setting. It has a rating like Skills and Attributes. At low rates, such as Poor or Mediocre in Fudge, you’re only at a trainee level or simply new to the work. Fair or greater indicate a decent level of competence in the Profession. The trait’s rating does not define the career path. Often careers are made up of several different distinct Professions. For example Student, Programmer, Consultant and Manager should all be considered different Profession traits, not trait rankings. You can easily create a “Loser” this way by purposely ranking their Profession trait low (such as Poor) and make a serious underachiever.

Professions are not a set of Skills related to the specific function of that Profession. Professions often give a character access to a great wealth of abilities and tools. (Professions would also feed in to their lifestyle and resources). A Software Engineer would probably have a decent computer at home bundled with great development software, would be a good problem solver generally and could easily work out how to use most modern day gadgets with easy. A Salesperson would have good interpersonal skills, has a good insight into people’s motivations, can bullshit like no-other, etc. Players should probably write down a few notes about what they think the Profession is (what they think their character can do with it) and the Games Master can clarify it with them. Profession traits should probably be treated as something between Skills and Attributes for XP cost and other resource-allocation costs but be treated like Skills for most everything else.

You should also be able to take Specialities within the Profession. Such Specialities give you a +1 with tasks that use that Speciality but cause a -1 to any other non-speciality task. You can increase the bonus of that Speciality by taking it a second time up to a max of +3 (but the inverse is also true meaning it’ll give you a -3 on any other task). For each level of the Profession above Fair, you have to take a level of Speciality. For example a Surgeon might have the Profession Doctor with a speciality in Plastic Surgery. This would mean they are great at what they do but wouldn’t be as great on a different type of surgery though they know the basics.

Professions would have to be considered narratively when applying them to a task, nearly like Gifts with ratings than Skills. I think a character’s Attributes should also play a part in what they can do with a Profession, however I haven’t come up with a strict/controlled system that would work in Fudge. The best thing to do with be to let the Games Master apply a -3 to +3 modifier based on an applicable Attribute. Professions (and Specialities) can be applied outside of their fields (with negative modifiers) as appropriate. A Cars Salesman should be able to try fast-talking their way out of trouble, for example.

Characters can have several active Professions. They can also have previous Professions but they degrade over time, perhaps losing up to a full level each year. Certain Professions will subsume old Professions (Student gets subsumed by the first Job for example). If a character using an inactive Profession goes up against another character using a active Profession, then the inactive Profession should be at a -1. Players should not be expected to detail all their characters previous Professions, only the ones they deem relevant to describe the character. They can always take one or two Skills extra to represent the left-overs of the previous Professions. I haven’t worked out how you should model moving or changing Professions. A new Professions would require buying each level individually but if the new Profession is similar in field or type of work it should be possible to start at a higher level or even use the same level as the previous Profession. Old inactive Professions might be turned into Skills if the character continues to practice certain aspects.

Professions shouldn’t be just jobs. They can be also Roles in Society, as mentioned initially, ush as House-wife/husband, Homeless, Student, etc. are all completely valid Professions as long as the character does that as their way of life.

Once a player has chosen Professions for the character, they can then chose a few Skills, not too many. These are more like the old Skills, but describe things the character can do that is outside of their active Professions. Perhaps they do sports, play musical instruments, write (books), etc.

Using Professions as traits, you could create a Salesperson who develops psychic powers, a Homeless person that was once a powerful business owner, an office worker who is barely keeping it together, etc. The system describes the character, much like saying a Vampire with that can control others with their mind (Vampire with Dominate).

What does any one think?

… because I’m going on holidays!

Unfortunately I’ve heard that Wordpress 2.6 will be out very soon and I haven’t prepared for it. I’m aware of the changes but I haven’t setup a 2.6 test bed to do the work. So please be careful about upgrading, as soon as I get back it’ll be one of the first things I look at.

Also in my current work-queue:

• Form Hacker:
  • Form Import/Export and TDOMF Fixes
  • Support for hacking the Error and Validation and Stylesheet
• Excerpt Widget
• Admin Error and Warning messages on some dud Custom Field configurations (such as empty keys or titles, using the same keys across multiple custom fields, etc.)
• Display an Admin warning if Error messages are enabled (with the last release you can enable all PHP errors by a magic combination of options)

BTW If you want to show your appreciation of TDO Mini Forms by just clicking, you can pop over to Wordpress.org and give it a good rating!

… in the usual places.

For TDO Mini Forms, lots of small bug fixes (including one that was preventing some unregistered users from using a form) plus an Auto Respond Email widget and the ability to get moderation emails even if you’ve turned of moderation for a form.

For TDO Tag Fixes, just some bug fixes that have been hanging around for a bit on my private test server. I also plan to do some extra work on this in the next while, specifically around adding a “Tag Surfer” widget. We’ll see how much time I get.

And because I’ve moved to a new host, I can include and my Amazon wishlist for those who’d like to see TDO Mini Forms and TDO Tag Fixes keep on improving….

Okay, so it looks like I made the jump to the new host fairly successfully. Wordpress is up and running and all my data transfered okay. The only hitch, right now, is that the forum is down. I’ll fix that soon.

It’s certainly different being on new host. Like buying a new car without driving it first and finding controls in different places and finding new features and grunting when you can’t find that one or two great features from your previous car. But so far, it looks good.

For the record, I have hosted thedeadone.net on Redbrick since about 2002, I think. Redbrick is a College based club based on computers and networking. I’ve been a “associate” member (which is ex-student/alumni member) for quite a bit. The webspace they offer is great, seeing I was able to run Wordpress (with some hacks), do Wordpress plugin development, use a domain, automatically have shell access and, for a service ran by students, a great up-time (except for the last two months or so but they were the exceptions)… all for a ridiculous low price IMHO. My new host is Digiweb and the reasons for moving are many and do not reflect on the service provided by Redbrick.

Anyway, back to doing real stuff again…

Just a quick heads up. I’m going to be moving host over the next few days and my website will be unavaliable from tomorrow until whenever the nameserver changes propagate across the web. So I’ll be closing down the website tomorrow morning and moving the final snapshot of data across and updating the name servers. This affects the support forums as well.

This does not affect MOC, the Irish Gaming Wiki or my livejournal page.

See you all on the other side!

I love it when I receive books in the mail. I have an Amazon Wish list setup so that people who use TDO Mini Forms can show their appreciation and send me a book. So a book shaped parcel in the post doesn’t surprise me. I fill up with a sense of glee and excitement about what someone send me (the last time it was this excellent Dinosaur popup book). So when I found the parcel in the doorway as I got home, I wasn’t surprised.

It was only later, when I realised it wasn’t from Amazon, I got a bit perplexed. The package was from Leisure Games who sell roleplaying games. I had to take a moment, because I was quite proud of myself that I had not used my credit card in months and had cleared any debt left on it. For a moment I got a little worried, did someone go a little bit further than just my Amazon Wish List? I opened it and it was a copy of Noumenon, a game I was planning to get. A roleplaying game about some really weird, Philip K. Dick kind of stuff. For a brief moment it was quite disconcerting. But once I saw the receipt I realised that it was part of an order I had made last year, and were only now sending me a copy.

Certainly it was a fitting way to start Noumenon. I really like it. A strange game where players play Sarcophagi, humanoid-insects that were once human but no longer remember who they were. They wake up in the Silhouette Rouge, guided by the voice of Logos (the voice of the Universe). The Silhouette Rouge is a house with a fixed number of rooms. Some of the rooms are described by a short story, a little abstract and strange. Some are precise. I found myself swallowing this surreal metaphorical setting with joy. However it’s not a book I’d let my young daughter flick through: insects, blood, monsters and metaphors do not, a batgirl, make.

The system is elegant and, from my reading, appears delightful. I love when games keep in theme and break from the traditional approach. Instead of dice, you use dominoes, which have their own mythos about them. I love how they are used encourages the player group to work together.

It’s not specifically horror, a genre I like but am not enthused by. I can’t picture long-term stories and games based on horror themes. Great for short once-off, creepy stuff. Noumenon has horror, but it’s not specifically about horror except as a mechanism for change. I keep thinking of Don’t Rest Your Head, which is explicitly a horror game but one also set in a mad abstract world. Don’t Rest Your Head drives the players and their characters into madness. Noumenon allows the characters to explore and journey through the horrors like a dream that flows from nightmare to dream to eventual waking. A difference of taste.

My only problem really is I don’t think I could get my group to play it. They’d just look at me, with those, “you’re not serious are you?” faces. But then sometimes they surprise me. And surprises are good, like mysterious books in the post.

Last night, I didn’t sleep well. The recent changeable weather has given me a rather nasty chesty cough. My eyes are sore, I’m tired and flushed the whole time. The kids and my wife are all suffering too and there is nothing besides cough syrups and rest for it (and as parents you’re never really allowed to rest).

I couldn’t get to sleep right. I kept replaying stuff from the day in my head. Nothing critical. But I woke early this morning and I was re-playing code through my head. Running through functions, testing various inputs, visualising outputs. At the same time, interjected with scenes and thoughts about worries. It wasn’t just odd but exhausting, like my head couldn’t handle it. I felt miserable and I couldn’t get out of bed when the alarm clock went. Normally, no matter what my state, I get out of bed on time. I may still be half asleep, but I get out of bed and start into the motions. This time I couldn’t. Pushed the clock away. Let everyone sleep.

What is fascinating though, is that I found a security leak in my code from that weird dream. I tested it this morning, confirmed my suspicions and I patched it in an hour or so.

Feeling better now with the sun beaming brightly. It’s still wind and cold-ish. But the dose of sunlight has really done my head well.

Update #1: It’s not my day. In my rush to get v0.12.1 out, I copied in some broken code to SVN. Nothing critical, just prevents TDOMF from running. v0.12.2 fixes this.

I’ve discovered a security risk in v0.12 of TDO Mini Forms if you use Custom Fields and the “Append to Post” format option. This was introduced during the implementation of the Form Hacker. I’ve already prepared a fix (v0.12.1 v0.12.2) for this and it is now on Wordpress.org (but it may take a few minutes before you can download it).

I strongly advise anyone using v0.12 to upgrade as soon as possible. If you can’t currently upgrade, please consider downgrading to the v0.11.1 or disabling the plugin until you can upgrade to v0.12.1 v0.12.2.

I do not know if anyone has been exploited by this hole, however I would also recommend carefully checking the HTML of submissions done with v0.12 for any PHP tags that might have slipped in the post content or custom fields.

I apologise for this and hope no-one is inconvenienced by it.

My four year old daughter, Alice, is going through a “Batgirl” phase. Normally she’s big into her Dora, Princess and more recently Barbies. But she’s always had a thing about cars and trains (her oldest cousin was also big into them) and also dinosaurs, which is just as cool.

The Bat Girl thing, I think comes from her male peers in her school talking about Superman and Batman and also more than occasionally we’d sit and watch cartoons together, such as Avatar: the Last Airbender (Alice thought she was the female waterbender), Ben 10 (Ben is actually Alice’s cousin) and obviously Batman. There was an evening when we were talking about Batman, Robin and Batgirl and I looked up Batgirl on Wikipedia to find her real name. Now we have a little game she plays sometimes where she says “Hi Commissioner Gordon” and I reply with “Hi Barbara Gordon”. (If you didn’t know, the most common incarnation of Batgirl is as Commissioner Gordon’s daughter). We’ve even had to buy her a graphic novel (of the cartoon of course), and I’ve read from it every night for the last few weeks. I’ve got my hands on season 3 of “The Batman” cartoon that features the arrival of Batgirl. She now knows most of the major Batman super-villains. I’ve even done some images for her, ones that she can colour herself (the colour example is actually mine, not hers…).

The thing is, before I had kids, I never really liked Robin, Batgirl or any of the other “sidekick” characters. They always detracted from, what I thought Batman was all about. It’s perhaps unsurprising now that as an parent, I appreciate the kid friendly nature of sidekicks. Alice sees Batman as a family: Batman as father, Catwoman as mother (?), Robin as brother and Batgirl as sister (herself). (I don’t know where Alfred fits into it!)