iBanjo

Just got home from OSCON the big Open Source computer convention in Portland. This is the only convention I attend regularly, and every year my buddy Fitz and I give talks about the culture and methodology of developing software in a “volunteer driven” environment (to put it kindly.) Our clik-and-clak routine of bickering, questioning each other, and finishing each other’s sentences has become a bit of a famous gimmick at this point, though we certainly never intended that to happen. Still, it’s one the reasons we record a podcast now and then.

Normally we only give one or two talks at the conference. After all, the real reason people go to conferences isn’t to watch presentations, but it’s to hang out in divey bars with other well-known members of your field and blather gossip. (Right?)

This year we got two 45-minute talks accepted, and were also talked into doing a 4-hour “tutorial” session with four other lecturers. Quite a bit of work! However, a couple weeks before the conference we were reminded that we had also agreed to be panelists in a public discussion, and then once we arrived at the convention we got asked to do another talk at an “unconference” for newbies. And then O’Reilly asked us to do a 40-minute video interview about the 2nd edition of our upcoming book.

So in total, that makes six talks in three days. Absurd! I was so busy running around to blab, I only had time to watch two presentations! And I developed a nasty head cold in the middle of it all. After three days of being hopped up on Dayquil and talking till I was hoarse, I told Fitz that next year we were going to do ONE talk. That’s it, no more. Our routine had officially crossed the line from “fun talky guys” into mouth-flapping whores. On our sixth talk, we had the pleasure of announcing to the audience that it would be the last time we even gave our “Poisonous People” talk, ever. If
anyone ever wants to see that talk again, it’s been up on YouTube for more than a year. 🙂

We had a lot of fun outside the conference too. We got to hang out with our buddies Jim Blandy (now a Portland native!) and Karl Fogel quite a bit, as well as Bryan O’Sullivan. I took a three hour self-guided walking tour of Portland with my big SLR camera too. I’m amazed at how beautiful the city is. I’ve never felt so “politically compatible” with a city before… every corner seems to have either a vegetable stand, bike shop, or microbrewery. Free range meat is absolutely everywhere! Upon wondering into the wondrous neighborhood of Ladd’s Addition to attend an ad-hoc bluegrass jam in the park, I discovered my very first Burgerville restaurant. I had never heard of this fast food chain before; it looks like Burger King or In n’ Out Burger, but if you read the signs it’s about as food activist as one can be. Local vegetables (Walla Walla onions), local cheese (Tillamook), non-frozen beef from free-pastured Oregon cow herders. I was in heaven.

Really, truly. I could move to Portland right now. I’ve never said that about another city before. I hope Chicago forgives me.

Photos are forthcoming!

Well friends, it’s time for my uber-geeky D&D post. I figure that if you can bear listening to me blab about version control software, banjos, and canned tuna… you can listen to my review of the new 4th Edition D&D rulebooks that came out this summer.

My affair with D&D has been on-and-off my whole life. I played 1st edition in 2nd and 3rd grade, then lost interest. I somehow missed the entire 2nd edition of the game completely. When the 3rd edition came out in 2000, I had just gotten back into the game by playing in NASCRAG touraments, so it was like learning the game all over. And now, eight years later, it’s time for the owners-du-jour to do another round of tax collection: everyone buy new books, relearn the rules.

As usual, the internet is full of people screaming about how the game has been ruined and destroyed, how Wizards of the Coast is evil and greedy and oppressing the freedom of gamers everywhere, forcing us into a treadmill of upgrades. Just like what happened back in 2000. 🙂 This time around, the biggest screams have been “OMG they dumbed it down into a video game!” There’s a grain of truth to the accusation, but I decided to give the new rules a good sincere try before condemning them. So I invited some friends over. Everyone rolled up a character, and we did a three-hour test game.

The verdict is: I really like 4th Edition. It was super fun. And everyone who played was raving about it as well. We’re talking about continuing the game now. The common quote was how somehow the new rules (with all the “powers”) essentially made 1st-level combat feel like 5th level. No more 1st-level magic users with 3 hit points and 11 AC expending a single magic missile, then hiding in a closet until the next morning. Nope, the 1st level wizard was kicking ass just as much as the paladin, and having a blast!

The new edition seems to be mainly a rewrite of combat rules, and done such that combat is much much much more fun. Not less complex, but way more entertaining. No more endless rounds of “I swing my sword for the 17th time” — it’s all about doing funky ‘powers’ each round, which keeps things interesting. (The comparison to World of Warcraft is justified here!) However, my players weren’t spacing out when it wasn’t their turn — instead, they were on the edge of their seats to see what kind of crazy stunts their allies were going to do. When was the last time you saw that happen?

The other big change is that using a battlemat and miniatures is sort of a requirement now. In 3rd edition, the board-game aspect was an optional enhancement, one which made combat more visually accessible and strategic. In 4th edition, many powers are described in terms of the grid (“explodes in a radius-3 burst”), so it’s kind of hard to not have one now. Maybe this doesn’t bug me, because I’ve always used a battlemat anyway.

If anything is to be criticized, it’s the writing and artwork in the new rulebooks. The art is cheap and cheesy looking. Imagine the worst fantasy art you can, and then take it down a notch. It’s almost like the cover paintings on bodice-ripping romance novels. And the writing is horrible as well: a much bigger font, with writing style apparently targeting 9 year olds. I think it’s noble that the new owners want to indoctrinate a “new generation” of roleplaying gamers, but in the process the books have turned into what reads like a cartoonish self-mockery of the entire genre. For example, here’s a lovely excerpt from the new Player’s Handbook:

“Imagine a world of bold warriors, mighty wizards, and terrible monsters […] ancient ruins, vast caverns, and great wild wastes where only the bravest heroes dare to tread. Imagine a world of swords and magic, a world of elves and goblins, a world of giants and dragons […]”

Gag me with a spoon.

Ultimately, though, if you’re an experienced D&D player, this corny writing doesn’t matter at all. There’s nothing stopping you from running a dark campaign, creating characters of real depth and motives, and doing serious roleplaying as you’ve always done. The only “new” thing here is excitement of combat; the storytelling and improv acting hasn’t been taken away.

As I was reading the rulebooks, I took notes as I went. You can read my notes here which compare the old and new rules. I hope they’re useful to people thinking of trying out the new edition!

I’m off to OSCON in Portland tomorrow, and Fitz and I are scheduled to give four joint presentations. I’m sure I’ll have blog updates forthcoming!

As many folks know, I’m a huge fan of Interactive Fiction (text adventures). I’ve been working on a z-machine interpreter for Android, as well one that runs in python.

As of today, my iPhone is able to download ‘legitimate’ apps from the AppStore, and there’s still no z-machine interpreter available. For over a year now, there’s been one which requires a jailbroken iPhone out there, but jailbreaking isn’t an option for me (since Google owns my phone.)

My hopes got up when I discovered that the author of Zoom (the best z-machine app for Mac OS X) is actively working on a legitimate iPhone port. However, something he posted really disturbs me:

“A more serious issue is that Apple’s SDK license prohibits downloading code to interpret: this means that it would be impossible to load any games that were not bundled with the interpreter. I think this is probably a fatal problem: it seems doubtful that many IF authors will be willing to pay the $99 required to get their work onto the iPhone – plus it would mean no Zork, ever.”

While it sure is convenient that iPhone users only have one place to check for apps, this really scares me. I’m guessing that the license is intended to prevent people from distributing generic JVM or CLR machines that can download and run any old code, thereby circumventing Apple’s ability to vet applications. But clearly their Safari web browser already downloads and interprets Javascript apps, right? Where does one draw the line? We’re talking about a VM to play text-adventures — would Apple consider the fetching of text-adventures dangerous?

More and more, it’s clear to me that Apple is just as evil as Microsoft, they’re just not as big and powerful (yet)… and they have better taste. Maybe I should give up on issue and just wait for my Android phone at the end of the year. It will be a truly open OS, and I’ll be able to download and run whatever the heck I want.

I’m done with a nice 12-day vacation. I was definitely on the verge of burning out; unproductive at the office and cranky at home all the time. I really needed to step back and forget about computers for a while.

What I did instead:

• Went on a family vacation to Dubuque, Iowa, a mere 3 hour drive from Chicago.
  • Stayed in a hotel-waterpark with wife and 2 year old. Waterpark every day.
  • Horse-carriage rides.
  • Mississippi paddleboat rides.
  • Mississippi Aquarium Museum.
  • Lots of ice cream.
• Finally finished reading Watership Down.
• Started reading The Compassionate Carnivore, which gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that I’m not alone in being a freerange-itarian.
• Read the through the new 4th edition D&D Player’s Handbook. I’m a geek. I like roleplaying games. Sue me.
• Went to the Indiana Dunes — at a friend’s house — for the 4th of July.
• Went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire
• Shot 300 photos. A few of them were pretty good.
• Beta-tested an excellent new text-adventure game written by a friend; it should be available to the public by August 1st.
• Played my banjo at the usual Friday night jam.

Time to go back to Google; I’m continuing to lead a team whose goal is to make Google Code’s Subversion service as fast and scalable as possible.