A little political history

If you feel like a little political history, here's an interesting account of the candidacy of Evan Bayh for governor of Indiana, and his eligibility for the office. The case essentially boiled down to the state Constitution's five year residency rule, and the undecided legal question of whether residency required physical presence or whether a domicile standard was appropriate.

My retrospective

Just because I can, I'll share my opinions on the editions of D&D. I started with the red box, bought the AD&D rule books, and basically used the AD&D rules. I wasn't actively playing in high school, so didn't get into 2nd edition until college. From there, I got involved in organized play, which used whatever the current rules set was, and so played 3rd and 4th from the beginning.

My favorite edition? 3e/3.5e. (There were only minimal changes to the fundamental game rules with 3.5e, so I'll call them the same.) The biggest change in this edition was a moderate focus on tactical combat. Just making using a square grid and miniatures changed the game a lot. Before, you'd tell the DM "I'll advance on the orc and swing my sword." Now, you'd actually see the orcs, and their placement would matter. You'd have a clear idea if you might get surrounded. You could move for tactical advantage, with flanking and setting yourself up for opportunity attacks. And it was relevant for all those spellcasters with their area effect spells. Better place that fireball carefully!

Still, there were issues with these tactical rules, issues that were left unclear by the rules as written. For example, how does flanking change with reach attacks and large creatures? How about cover? A few examples, published on their web site, would have helped immensely. Another example is exactly how to translate a shape (like a 20 foot radius circle) to a grid of 5 by 5 squares, which wasn't addressed until 3.5e. (Hopefully, the design of 5th edition will make sure the rules are clear. Wizards of the Coast also designs Magic: the Gathering, where they use very specific wordings, publish comprehensive rules with exactly one right answer, and issue FAQs with each new set release, including detailing confusing interactions. There's no reason this can't be done with D&D.)

Other things I liked:

• Spells were familiar to players of past editions, but standardized in rules, using a limited number of ranges, areas, and durations. 1st edition was more random, whatever Gygax or one of his friends thought fit.
• A reasonable system of skills was introduced to the game. Proficiencies in 2nd edition were just painful to anyone with basic math skills, with a check being based entirely off one's stat.
• Attributes actually had meaning. In 2nd edition, a Wisdom of 8 was for almost all purposes identical to a 14. 3e's +1 per 2 points allowed an attribute point buy system that went beyond 18/18/18/8/8/8.
• Three saving throws: Fortitude, Reflex, Will. Easy to understand. Easy for a DM to create a new effect and decide which category of saves to use.
• Magic items made more sense, were more flexible, and could be crafted using standard rules.
• Clerics channeling healing allowed a cleric to prepare a variety of useful spells, while still being able to heal when needed.
  

Things I didn't like about 3.5e:

• There were some obvious abuses in designing monsters, including advancing them and adding templates. There were abusive spells, like Blasphemy. There were challenge ratings that often didn't make sense. (A CR 12 monster with the spellcasting of a 18th level sorcerer. An 18th level sorcerer is a CR 18 foe. And adding a level of warrior didn't affect the CR at all.) These problems, and using terrain and hindering effects, allowed one to be a "killer" DM with relative ease. Not a big issue for a home game, but a big problem for organized play, where modules should be run as written.
• The importance of saving throws, and how bonuses were earned, encouraged combining multiple classes. There was little reason to stay a sorcerer, and every reason to add prestige classes.
• The inevitable power creep. (4e would address this problem by constantly refining abusive powers, which resulted in rulebooks that couldn't be used as written.)
• Low level problems for spellcasters. Zero level spells helped, but you'd still see wizards reduced to using a crossbow instead of spells. Something like at-will zero level power spells would be nice. Fighters didn't have this problem, because swinging a sword was always available. Similarly, sometimes it was right for a spellcaster to do nothing, conserving resources. That isn't particularly fun.
  

In contrast, 4th edition had very few positives:

• A standard set of actions: move, minor, standard. Also one immediate action. (3.5e was leaning in this direction in its later days.)
• No more "save or die". Effects like petrification that previously could remove you from combat entirely... didn't, in 4e.
  
• It finally cured the fighter linear-wizard quadratic power issue, where the power of spellcasters simply grew much faster with levels. But for many, the cure was worse than the disease. "Too balanced" is a criticism of 4e.
• By focusing the rules almost entirely on combat, we lost the feel of a role-playing game. Fun magic items and noncombat spells played a role in 2e and 3e, helping overcome obstacles that weren't combat. No more in 4e: everything was forced towards die rolls.

So, my ideal 5th edition would most resemble 3rd edition, including iconic races and classes from multiple editions, a variety of spells including those for noncombat use, and better powers for low level spellcasters and high level fighters.

A new edition!

A new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, that is. The announcement even got a fluff article in the New York Times.

It may be considered an admission that the fourth edition of the venerable role-playing game was a failure, given it's been around for less than four years, a much shorter lifespan than the eight years of 3e/3.5e and the 11 years of 2e.

The link above is to Ace of Spades, who discusses the announcement. The comment section is active, as might be expected on a subject that attracts this level of passion. There are the normal anti-nerd jokes, people talking about how they've outgrown the game, and people talking about how they still like the game (and which edition they like). Here's one interesting comment, on the Pathfinder game that follows in the style of 3.5e:

As for Pathfinder, it simply is not as backwards compatible as the publishers and fans like to pretend it is, and is quickly accumulating just as much dead weight rules books as 3E/3.5/4E did. Add to that the hard Left worldview of well near the entire management and workforce, and a dominant theme of Torture Porn masquerading as "edgy" and "adult", and you have a product with no real attraction above and beyond sticking with whatever junk WotC is spamming the shelves with.

I can certainly confirm the hard left views of the Paizo publisher on my Facebook feed. And while I haven't played enough of their adventures to see the torture porn, I did see an early example. This same publisher, at the time leading and writing for the new Living Greyhawk campaign, showed off his darker vision by having an early adventure start with a dirty, bruised and naked girl running into the PCs' coach.

The year in weather?

The Guardian published a "year in review" for the environment. It looks like it might be a press release from an environmental group. In any case, it highlights record high and low temperatures, drought, floods, and the like.

Imagine if next year's review included this summary:

The 2012 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most intense in history. A record-tying eight hurricanes reached Category 3 strength, with Hurricane Leslie hitting South Carolina as a Category 4, and three other hurricanes causing massive damage in Texas, Alabama, Florida, and the Yucutan Peninsula.

The report mentions hurricanes, but their damage was nothing like what I wrote. I don't think any hurricanes came ashore above Category 1. Is that notable? Who knows? The review doesn't talk about the way the environment was average or calmer.

What I fear is that this review is discussing weather, not climate, but it's trying to get people worried about climate. Every year, there are droughts and floods. There are record low temperatures and record high temperatures. There are ice storms, blizzards, early snowstorms, and late snowstorms. There's nothing notable about weather events, unless they're tied to climate. If you say they are: was the 2011 hurricane season tied to climate? Was it as tied to climate as the 2005 hurricane season?

The "perils" of high stake testing

A Florida school board member (identity revealed here) took his state's 10th grade standardized tests in math and reading. He reported not knowing how to do any of the math problems, and only got 10 out of 60 questions right after guessing.

Seriously?

This man was an educator for years and has multiple advanced degrees, and he couldn't get a question right on an exam that probably doesn't go past 8th grade algebra? (The WaPo article includes links to similar questions, and I could answer those problems correctly, in my head.)

I would be more than happy to see school board members, teachers, and administrators take these exams, but only if they're compared to volunteers of similar ages from the community. That would help determine if the problem is with the exam, or if it's between the exam and the chair.

Architectural Find!

While digging to put in a new storm pipe, workers at UNC discovered the remains of what might be an old inn or home from centuries past.

After realizing that the historical remnants were not of a well, the group speculated that the site could be a large cellar or possibly an outhouse.

Now that they are further into the project, Davis and the group believe they have come across a backyard cellar they suspect was associated with a detached kitchen from a house that stood in the first half of the 1800s.

“As we get more exposed, we’re able to narrow down the likelihood of what it is,” he said.

“We have more confidence in our current interpretations.”

The first house built on the lot was constructed before 1797, Davis said.

He said the group also found a drain that might be from a hotel that stood after the Civil War before the University bought it and tore it down.

A fitting discovery for the nation's oldest public university!

Devolution

And not the good type, involving wearing flower pots as hats and cracking whips.

Power Line collects a list of incredible failures, neatly summarized with the statement:

If you have ever wondered what would happen in a society consisting entirely of liberals, the Occupier movement is providing the answer: devolution.

Occupy the Administration Building

Students upset with being in debt after receiving a college education, and then not finding a job using their degree, have decided to blame... Wall Street? They're looking in the wrong place. They should be protesting in the administration building of their colleges and universities.

They should protest schools that have raised tuition far faster than inflation, not coincidentally rising to absorb third party funding, mostly government guaranteed loans.

They should protest a system that rewards their biggest name professors (the 1%, so to speak) by having them teach even less.

They should protest an administration that grows and grows, resources that could be put to direct education.

They should protest a lowering of standards for admission. They should recognize the perverse incentives for universities to collect full tuition for a year spent in remedial education.

They should protest a system that fails to focus students on choosing a degree path, realistically discussing the career opportunities for the degree, and getting them out in four years.