Eddy Webb's Blog, page 9

Elementary 214/215: “Dead Clade Walking” and “Corpse de Ballet”

This is unfortunately a short post, and these two episodes are, in a lot of ways, two of the weaker ones of this season. The only canon nod I could find was in “Corpse de Ballet,” where Holmes makes a reference to his monograph on tobacco and the value of identifying it (which Watson actually […]

The Out-Of-Character LARP

(No one in this picture is an asshole. At least, that I know of.) One of the more popular sections of my presentation on LARP playstyles “Your Game Sucks” is my slide on assholes. Some of the reason, I suspect, is because it’s funny to use profanity in a serious presentation. But some of it […]

Elementary 212/213: “The Diabolical Kind” and “All In The Family”

Sorry for the delay on these — things have been crazy in my life, but when I had an unexpected snow day at work, I was able to catch up on my Elementary watching. Sadly, there aren’t many canon references in the past two episodes, but there are a few to point out. Episode 212: The Diabolical […]

What I Learned From Games Over The Holiday

I planned to do work over the holiday. I really did. But given the rollercoaster that the past couple of months have been, I realized that I needed a mental break, so I ended up playing a lot of video games to decompress. I’ll break it down by system. Android Marvel Puzzle Quest: One of a […]

Undead Drinks for the New Year

A while back, I asked folks to come up with their favorite drinks based on Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem. I got a lot of responses. I decided to compile some of my favorites for people to help them with their New Year’s celebrations. End your year on an undead note! (Note: I haven’t tested any of […]

Elementary 210/211: “Tremors” and “Internal Audit”

Two great episodes, but not many canon references this time around. Episode 210: Tremors Not much in this episode — the whole episode revolves around Holmes’ proclivity to take the law into his own hands to fit his personal sense of justice. Sherlock’s speech to Watson about rulebooks is very evocative of comments Holmes has […]

Hearing Amplification (0.3 Essence)

(Yes, the title is a Shadowrun joke.) Two weeks ago I got my hearing aids. And honestly, I love them. I have the ReSound Verso, along with custom ear molds that sit in my inner ear. I also got the ReSound Phone Clip+, which allows me to stream Bluetooth audio from my phone and iPad. They have […]

I’m On Fire (and not in a good way)

The past couple of weeks have been hectic. So far, I’ve:

Moved from corporate apartment to our new house
Unpacked the house
Discovered that our mattress has been ruined, and that the moving company refuses to accept responsibility for the damage
Taken our elderly cat to a new vet to get his medication, because the previous vet refused to do so
Taken our younger pug to the vet because he hurt his paw, only to discover that his paw was okay
Had to help care for our elderly pug after his surgery due to his trachea collapsing. It got so bad that he ended up having a seizure in the middle of the night
Gotten hearing aids fitted and learning to adjust to these new devices
Survived a layoff at my company (and the usual stress that comes with that)
Finally received the keyboard for my laptop, only to discover that it’s missing a key part that we’ve since been unable to locate even after extensive exploration and breaking open two similar computers
Discovered that I’m missing the power cord from said laptop
Watched a lot of money flow out of the household as a result of much of this
Been grouchy at some people online and in person

Not all of it is bad, and most of the problems have solutions or are at least on the road toward getting resolved, but it does mean that I’ve been completely unable to focus on anything but putting out fires and getting things off my desk as quickly as possible. I’m hoping that, with the holiday coming up, I can use some time to catch up on everything and get things back on track.

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Beating People to Death in a White Room: Game Balance

Recently I stumbled into a conversation where my friend and colleague Matthew McFarland was lamenting the point of “white room balance” in RPGs. For those that don’t know, “white room balance” is the idea that if you make two characters in a RPG using similar points or levels or dots or whatever and put them into a blank room, they should beat each other to death on a relatively even basis. His point is that RPGs rarely present situations such as a white room because these are characters, not blocks of numbers, and therefore the whole point of “white room balance” is meaningless.

I would go even further and submit that objective balance in games, particularly in games in which humans are involved, is largely an illusion. It is, however, an important one.

To illustrate, let’s switch to card games for a moment. There is an entrenched idea that the first player in a card game is at such an advantage that it is hard to find a game where that advantage isn’t somehow neutralized. The method of determining the first player is randomized, the status of first player rotates, or the first player plays at some kind of disadvantage (such as drawing one less card to start). I expect some designers are so used to trying to address this point of common concern that they end up giving an advantage to the second and subsequent players, but you don’t often hear about how the second player is always winning. The reason is that going first feels like an advantage, whether it actually is one mathematically. In fact, there are a number of cases where “common sense” seems to fly in the face of actual math and tactics, such as the infamous Monty Hall problem.

So we go back to white room balance. Even if your RPG character is unlikely to be in a situation where she has to kill someone else in a blank room with no other factors, there is a feeling that this is important. If a game doesn’t address this, one of two things needs to fill the void: either the game needs to address this perception of balance in another way (such as pointing out other systems that address this perception in different ways, like Fate Points do in Fate Core), or it needs to address why the perception doesn’t matter (such as intentionally designing a game where the protagonists are destined to lose, as in Call of Cthulhu). The issue isn’t addressing the numbers, but rather addressing how the players feel about the numbers. If they have confidence that the designers have addressed their concerns, then they are more likely to be invested in the perception of balance or fairness.

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1,000 Cigarettes

Fellow Alliterate John Rateliff has been reading Watson is Not an Idiot, and emailed me on one of the essays in the book. Specifically, in the essay on “The Golden Pince-Nez,” i wrote:

At one point Professor Coram mentioned that he goes through a thousand cigarettes every fortnight. My wife used to work as a smoking cessation coach, so I asked her how much smoking that would be from a current perspective. Assuming twenty cigarettes in a modern pack of cigarettes, Coram would have to smoke just over three and a half packs a day, or nearly four cigarettes every waking hour! Granted, it seems that Mr. Smith was a smoker as well (and therefore may have smoked some of Coram’s cigarettes), but that’s still a hell of a lot of smoking.

John wrote me this in response (quoted with his kind permission):

Just wanted to let you know that I can confirm a point you raised in your book on the Holmes canon (which I’m currently reading and enjoying). At one point you talk about whether it’s even possible for a person to smoke 1,000 cigarettes in a fortnight. My own father smoked three and a half packs (Pall Mall) a day, which works out to about 70 cigarettes per day. Multiplied by 14 days, that makes about 980 — close enough. In Holmes’ day, these [would probably] have not been machine produced but made to order at a tobacconist (Holmes doesn’t strike me as the roll-your-own type).

The most extravagant smoking claim I’ve come across is the one that C. S. Lewis smoked 200 cigarettes a day. That’s clearly hyperbole.

In a follow-up email he mentions that cigarettes were also likely to have been shorter in Holmes’ day — the “king sized” cigarette is a modern invention. I thought it was great to have something I proposed in the book borne out with a personal anecdote like this.

Frankly, I love this kind of correspondence. One of the great things I’ve discovered since putting Watson is Not an Idiot out is hearing from people with their own opinions, perspectives, and research. I think it’s amazing that, over a hundred years later, there’s still energy and enthusiasm for discussing some of the finer points of the canon.

So thank you, John, for taking the time to carry on a long-held tradition.

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