It's official: Monopoly might last forever

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the numbers have been crunched, and a game of Monopoly has a 12% chance of never ending:

Anybody who has ever played Monopoly knows the feeling. The game can be interminable, with no victor ever seeming to emerge.

That's a real mathematical possibility, Cornell University researchers said in a new study. They calculate that there's a 12 percent probability of a simple, two-player game of Monopoly never concluding.

Does this make Monopoly an even more quintessentially American game?

Thanks to Purple Pawn for the tip-off.

SkyMall demographics

Spending a quarter of a day on airplanes this weekend (and another quarter in airports), I had a lot of time to peruse the literature. I did the crossword puzzle twice, and looked through the SkyMall catalogue a bunch.

As far as I can tell, SkyMall thinks its customer has:

• children (or grandchildren)
• an ornamental interest in geography
• strong fear of home burglary
• a small dog
• a cat
• a large dog
  
• a number of minor aches and pains
• annual income over $200,000
• a pool
• hypochondria
• a preoccupation with getting the best or most in anything they acquire
  
• poor judgment in consumer goods

It's like they know me!

Interesting article: How to Set Goals When You Have No Idea What You Want.

This is a larger problem than most productivity gurus seem to understand. In my experience, when I know what I'm after, I don't have a problem taking the steps to get it (implicit in those steps is the grail of "goal setting"). Even if it's a multi-step process, even if it's a years-in-the-making multi-step process, I'm cool.

For instance, one of the current things I'm after is a return to full-time work in games, and ideally I'd like to work as a writer at BioWare in Austin. Pretty specific! I know what I want. Goal setting is, therefore, commensurately simple.

The thing that makes me surf the Web all day is a failure to discern what it is that I'm after. I'd like to write comics, but where am I headed with that? I dunno. I've got some ideas, some places I've cast around into, but no real goal yet. I don't know exactly what I'm after yet.

I'd like to be internet famous, but there's a whole lot of unknowns there, so I spend more time dreaming about that than goal setting.

This article is (necessarily) vague, but it's the kind of place wandery people like me need to start. We don't need a roadmap. We need a destination.

Finding that is something that "8 Tips to Organize Your Workspace!" will not help to discover. If you're lucky, that kind of "productivity" junk is just noise. If you're unlucky, you start organizing your workspace and think you're making progress.

Google Wave hello

I have a reductive approach to complexity. When anything starts to get complex, I try to do without it. This is a principal reason why I would never be a good engineer.

Sometimes I wonder what I miss by eschewing complication. I'm aware of technological generalities, but almost never the specifics. I don't get trendy things until they're not trendy anymore. Sometimes that means I don't get them at all.

It also means I spend a lot of time in the boondocks. I often wonder if I've made a mistake for valuing things the way I do. But man, two roads diverged in the yellow wood, you know what I'm saying?

Enter Google Wave. I think I'm supposed to be excited? I am a little excited. Curious. Interested. But, like when gmail started up, you can only get in with an invitation.

So I applied. This is what I said:

I'm a semi-neo-Luddite, a late adopter, but a curious one.

I want to see how this thing works. I want to see if it's something I'll want to use, or if it will be another distraction, another new system to learn that becomes outmoded in 18 months.

I want to see. Let me see.

So we'll see.

On Twitter a couple days ago, Merlin Mann said:

Guess I'm resistant to any tool that thinks my REAL problem is not having fast enough access to what 1000s of strangers just typed.

That is my flavor of Internet cynicism right there. If someone at Google gives me the nod, I'll report here.

The Rules

For all the time QT has been around, I've operated with a set of rules I've never spelled out here. I've never done it mainly because it's almost a full-on swipe from someone else, who made such great rules, I wanted to follow them too.

His name is Robin Laws, a writer and game designer who seems to have the personal resources to do nearly anything he desires, and has chosen to write for roleplaying games. Fascinating.

Here are my rules, based lavishly (though not slavishly) on those of Mr. Laws:

1. I must strive to be interesting. I owe it to you and to me to make something worth reading when I write.
2. I will not write an entire post apologizing for a long absence. If you see a long absence in writing, it is because I have not taken the time to work at being interesting. When I make the time again, I will skip straight to the interesting part.
3. At no point will I tell you what I had for breakfast.
4. I will avoid links and one-liners to the latest Internet point of interest. The dramatic chipmunk was truly hilarious. It was hilarious all those other places you saw it too.
5. My writing will not serve as a bulletin board for petty complaints. I shall seek to avoid detailing:

• Minor illness. Unless it is integral to the more interesting anecdote I am relating.
• Computer problems. This one actually isn't about you. I find this boring.
• Bureaucratic annoyances. Although I have many.
• Anything else that might characterize a tween's cat blog.
  

Sometimes I break my own rules. I recommend not analyzing the rules too deeply. Trust, gentle reader, that I am looking out for you, and that there are guidelines to help the process.

Movies August-September 2009

Five Deadly Venoms
I came to this movie out of duty, because it is a "classic" of Asian cinema in America. But then I liked it. The dubbing was awful, but beyond that, the movie is lean and low. It starts fast, and gets where it's going. The who's who plot is so ambitious, I didn't expect the movie to follow through on it like they could have -- it just would have been wildly confusing. But because of that, the gears of the story were in the open. There's no character development or storytelling filigree to distract from how things go down. A major character dies, and you keep on rolling. Superb.

Knocked Up
I didn't find the main story here terribly enjoyable or believable. The performances that stay with me are Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. Their relationship and interactions and thought processes are fascinating. They're not a great couple.

You know these people? They don't work well together. Their habits and tendencies and preferences fight on a fundamental level -- they drive each other crazy. But they're still hanging in as a couple. They're holding it together through main strength. Fantastic depiction of that dynamic.

Like Pineapple Express, I listened to the commentary track hoping for creative insights, and the string of anecdotes that Apatow and Rogen deliver disappoints a little. But the more I think about it, the more instructive it becomes. It's not class. The learning is between the lines.

30 Rock, season 1, disc 3
Slightly less funny? But only slightly. I feel bad for Liz Lemon that her boyfriend moved away. The commentaries were awful. One person, alone, who basically just watched the episode, laughed sometimes, and complimented every new actor that appeared on screen.

3:10 to Yuma
This was a fine western, and a fine movie. Great characterization. S'funny that the two lead actors in this story set in the American West were British- and New Zealand-born. Also, Ben Foster did a bang-up job as Charlie Prince. I want to see more of him now.

Kung Fu Panda
Sometimes I'm torn, because if I had one really good character, and I made scads of money playing that one good character very well, I would consider it a blessing and a virtue. But When Jack Black does it, it seems boring and lazy.

Miss Potter
Here's what I found most interesting about this movie about Beatrix Potter. There was very little resistance in the main character's arc, and what little came about was mostly solved by other characters. She didn't have an arc, she had a long line, and then a violent bend about 3/4 of the way through the movie. Beatrix Potter in this story was a prettified cipher, and talking to her animated paintings made her appear to the viewer as psychotic rather than charmingly imaginative. Maybe I'm being too harsh? If you're reading these words, I haven't changed my mind yet. The animation was lovely, however. Wish there'd been more of that!

Heroes of the East
Another Shaw Bros. martial arts movie, and another fun kung fu story. More please!

Blogaday 2009 -- Now!

Blogaday has become a yearly phenomenon here at QT. On some level, I'd prefer Blogaday to be perennial rather than annual. But I collapse under pressure.

Instead, I slide challenges to myself casually, leisurely. If I were to direct myself to begin writing on my blog every day, I would fold like an accordion. However, if I conduct a series of increasingly demanding "experiments" on myself, I come closer to achieving whatever goal I'm actually after. My mind balks at conquering the mountain, but clambers happily if it thinks we're just scaling to take in the view. I do not understand it, but it is so.

This is all my roundabout introduction to Blogaday 2009 -- the 60-day trial! In previous years, Blogaday was a November occurrence, my nonfiction response to NaNoWriMo. In just 3 years though, it's become its own animal, a modest self-experiment with discipline, consistency, and composition.

This year I'm experimenting with doubling the length. Please, stop back every day for the next two months. I will strive to be interesting! And hope in your good nature when I am not.

Name your poison

Another quick story from D&D last week
When the first encounter started and everyone rolled initiative, I went around the table asking for characters' names so I could write them next to their initiative results. Since it was the first night, not everyone was totally ready. Jason hadn't named his character yet.

Flashback: About 10 years ago when we started playing our first 3e campaign in Seattle, we had that same moment. Stan! hadn't named his gnome character, and was futzing around for one at the last minute. Dave, former editor of Dungeon and Dragon magazines, said, "The punishment is that we call you something like Blobbo. If you don't come up with a name soon, that name will stick, and then we'll all call you that for the rest of the campaign."

Realizing this horrible truth, Stan! quickly devised Herumann, who went on to become a beloved curmudgeon and coward, hopelessly attempting to interject common sense into a rotating cast of D&D adventurers for the next several years.

Sadly, Blobbo stuck anyway. The name followed Herumann at a respectful distance for the rest of his career.

Jason's character was briefly named Blobbo last Thursday, because he wanted to take the time to come up with a campaign-appropriate elf name. (+50 experience points!) I didn't even try to make Blobbo stick. The name has enough stickiness all by itself.

Bonus Story: After the Blobbo incident, I moved onto Dave (a different Dave), who hadn't named his character yet either. Fearing the worst, Dave blurted out "Paul Oakenfold!"

Sure, technically, that name is already taken, but if you complain about D&D players stealing names, you have outed yourself as a solid n00b.

D&D: New campaign kickoff

Started my brand new D&D campaign tonight. If you've been following my blog spoor for the last year, you might have noticed I've been screwing around with a wiki for this thing. Now, open for business!

I've spent a hella lot of time laying groundwork and spelling out rules, and it's still not done.

Important Lesson: You're never really done.

But it was surprisingly thorough. I'm methodical as a tornado when I write. I blow through town and look back once I'm done. Sometimes I've hit everything, and other times I've left whole blocks mysteriously untouched. I don't have a system. I just make up stuff until some outside constraint makes me stop.

So going in, I didn't know whether I'd written enough to make tonight work. But then I said, "Well, in the wiki..." about a dozen times in answer to questions. So I think I got all the vital stuff in.

Important Lesson: Don't worry about getting it all right. It's a game you're playing with friends.

Important Lesson: Just because it's in the text doesn't mean anyone else knows it's there.

I made the experience point totals for level gain a little higher, using a conglomeration of different Pathfinder experience gain rates. Then I told them that I'd award extra XP for people who enable group enjoyment by doing out-of-game things to make things more fun. The player who takes notes or handles mapping or draws a group shot or takes pics of minis gets an XP bonus. I hoped to encourage players to be creative and contribute on their own terms instead of doing all the work solo. This idea was poo-pooed, so it might not last.

Instead, I might use a variation on Sean Reynolds's Alternative Level Advancement System. I like Sean's idea, but changing your character every single session is too much paperwork in an already paperwork-heavy game.

Important Lesson: Adults with kids don't necessarily have the giveadamn to write character journals. In the long run, a bennie meant to encourage participation could begin to feel like a penalty on people who don't want to participate.

I thought having the rules online would be a good way to get everything out to the players so I wouldn't have to be the sole source of information. Also I hoped it would require me to lug fewer books to the game.

But the concept is a little ahead of the group's hardware capacity. Nobody brought a laptop or usable wireless device to let them look up stuff. We wound up using books anyway, which don't quite mesh with the fifty-'leben ways I've tweaked the d20/Pathfinder rules sets.

Important Lesson: Oops.

After a lot of shuffling papers and answering questions, characters were done, except for the niggling details that no one ever firms up until the third game anyway. I thought that'd be it. Good work everybody, see you in two weeks.

No! They demanded we play tonight! Begin tonight! Begin fighting! Tonight!

Since one of our regulars was absent, I didn't want to get too deep into the first adventure. So I used the time-tested, beloved pacing device DMs and comic book writers have used for decades. I threw in a combat. It wasn't meaningless, but it was off the cuff.

Important Lesson: Come more prepared than you think you'll need. And come prepared to improvise.

Hair-raising self portrait

As my hair thins, it inexplicably tapers to a fauxhawk.


It also gives me the eyes of a stone cold killer. The moral is you seriously need to watch out for bald dudes. They have been through the woods, and they came out on the other side with an axe and a lot of fucking horizontal trees.