Genghis Con!

Last weekend I went to a gaming convention called "Genghis Con" in Aurora, CO. about 10 miles or so from Denver. Here are a few highlights:

1. The first game I played was called World of Warcraft: The Board Game - it is based on the computer game of the same name. There are two sides: one is the Alliance and one is the Horde. Each side has two to three characters (depending on the number of players) and you go around the board to fight monsters and complete quests. If everyone on the team sticks together they have a better chance of beating the quests, but they have to split the rewards, while if you split up you can complete more quests in a shorter period of time, but at higher risk. Most of the other players had played the game before, but with 2 characters on a side, so they were used to all sticking together (2 is about right for most quests, but 3 is overkill). So they all stuck together and ended up having to split all the quest rewards 3 ways, slowing their advancement. In contrast, I let my two teammates stick together but then went off my own way to pick off the weaker monsters by myself, enabling us to advance faster. We also got somewhat lucky when several good quest cards came up right next to each other on the map, so we didn't have to spend much time then running around the map. In the end the game came down to the final player-versus-player battle, which the Alliance won easily.

2. I participated in a couple play-tests of games in development. One was a collectible card game with mechanics similar to Magic: The Gathering, with the exceptions that (1) you can play any card face down and it gets revealed when it is involved in combat, so there is risk in attacking the opponent, and (2) the cards move around on a grid so you have to maneuver your creatures into position rather than just attacking the opponent. Another game was a similar Magic-like card game where, rather than having a "hand" of cards, you just play the top card of your deck each turn. Of course the thing is there are five ways to play each card - as a creature, an equipment (attaches to creatures and powers them up), a supporter (card that boosts all your other cards or has a special effect once a "war" happens), an order (instantaneous effect and is then discarded), or research (lets you use special powers of your other cards).

3. I learned a couple games that use "Icehouse pieces" - generic pyrmidal pieces that can be used for a variety of different games. One was "Homeworlds", a strategy game where you build up a fleet of spaceships to explore planets and eventually take over the opponent's homeworld. Another, and probably one of the most exciting games I played the whole convention, was "Zendo", a game of inductive logic. In this game "students" make "koans" (arrangements of pieces) and a "Master" tells them which ones have the "Buddha nature", and the goal is for the "students" to guess the secret rule that determine which ones have the Buddha nature. One of the other players was also a computer programmer, and he came up with the rule "the number of small pieces is exactly one greater than the number of medium pieces, and the number of medium pieces is exactly one greater than the number of large pieces" I was able to guess that trule and so it was my turn to be "Master", and I came up with a rule that everyone else thought was the best one of the night, although I don't want to tell you what it is in case I eventually play Zendo with anyone who is reading this.

3. There was an exhibitor's room where I bought some cool things, including a belt puch that I can use to hold spell balls in Amtgard, a football board game, and a couple games made by the same people who were doing the playtests mentioned above. I also took some funny pictures which I will show you in the next post.

4. The last game I played at the convention was called "Ascending Empires". This is a strategy game where you have to build and expand a space empire starting from your home planet and moving outward, while colonizing new planets so you can build research facilities on them. Different colored planets give you different kinds of technologies, such as improved defense, better starships, or increased actions. What is unique about this game is that you move your starships by flicking them across the board, so there is manual dexterity involved - you have to get it within an "orbit" of a planet to be able to go onto a planet, if you collide with an enemy ship they are both destroyed, to attack a ship to get points you have to land within a certain range of the enemy ship, etc. I was able to get the "battleship" technology and start wreaking havoc. The other teo players tried to make a plan to defeat me - one of them moved his ship away from the other one's research planet so it wouldn't be "blockaded", then the other one was goign to use it to research the battleship technology to even the odds. Fortunately for me my turn was between theirs, so I was able to bring in the battleship from across the board and blow up the key research facility before he could use it.

5. I also picked up a flyer or a new live action role playing game called "Crusade of Legends" that is in Aurora. I will see if I can try it out sometimes, but unfortunately, getting there isn't cheap. To get to the convention I had to spend $40 on an airport shuttle to the Denver airport, then $60 on a cab ride to the hotel, the cab had a complimentary shuttle back to the airport, then another $40 for the shuttle to go home. I think I have made my decision that I am going to start taking driving lessons soon - there are a lot of places where I would like to go but it is just much harder if I don't have a car.

Origins 2011: Part 3 - "Learning From the Masters"

Another thing I did at Origins was go to some seminars. I did this because the seminars are one thing you can only really get at gaming conventions, and lots of them are interesting. At Gencon I went to a seminar on balance in games that I really liked, so at Origins I signed up for two seminars that sounded interesting: "Making Magic Real" and "Internal Consistency." When I got to the seminars I found out they were about books and literature rather than games, but they were still interesting. The seminar on "Making Magic Real" was given by fantasy authors R.T. Kaelin and Jean Cade, and they talked about how good stories need to have limitations on the magic. I mentioned that games are good sources of ideas because games are all about setting up limitations - for example, in "Magic: The Gathering" you have to draw a random set of cards at the beginning and can only cast what is in your hand. They said this would be a good idea for a story - a mage who doesn't know what spells he is going to get each day. The seminar on "Internal Consistency" was given by science fiction author Timothy Zahn. He had a list of a series of ten plots from different stories and asked us to describe what was inconsistent about them. For example:

PLOT: A small, ragtag resistance force tries to overthrow a universally hated dictator.

PROBLEM: If the dictator is universally hated, why is the resistance force so small? (Perhaps most people are too afraid to rise up, but in order to project his power the dictator would need a police force and army, and those people at least would have to support him.)

PLOT: The last two humans on Earth seek shelter from the vampires.

PROBLEM: If there are only two more humans on Earth, where are all the vampires getting their blood to feed?

Overall, both seminars were fun to go to. One thing that was funny was during the "Internal Consistency" seminar when Zahn was talking about how writers can make their stories more consistent. One example he gave was the "Jurassic Park" movies and television shows, where the security system that is used to keep the dinosaurs in was very poorly designed - "even zoos have better systems for keeping animals penned in." He suggested that one thing writers can do to make their stories better is to do more research. For example, Zahn suggested, if you were writing a story like that you could "call up your local zoo and ask them to explain how to design an impenetrable system to keep animals in = and how that system could be beaten." Of course everyone in the room laughed, because we all had exactly the same reaction - that the response you would get is similar to what would happen if you wore this "Personal Electronics Vest" when going through airport security.

Origins 2011: Part 2: "Knights in Columbus"

As before, one of the fun things to do at Origins was the LARPs (Live Action Role Playing). The National Security Decision Making Game was running, although I didn't participate in it. Even though I liked it the first time because of the novelty, it seems like in order to get into it you have to be able to manipulate people, and that isn't a skill I am particularly good at. I did three different LARPs: “Nero”, which is a swordfighting game like the ones I've already talked about, “TerrorWerks”, a science-fiction adventure where you shoot enemies with Airsoft weapons (the enemies shoot back with Nerf guns), and “Rising Lash,” a game where you go through the dark, solving puzzles and fighting zombies. Nero was a three-part adventure where you were trying to rescue Lady Serenity, an adventurer who was kidnapped by an evil necromancer. (By the way, how come necromancers are almost always evil? I mean, all they're doing is recycling decomposed organic waste. It's environmentally friendly!) Anyway, in Part 1, we started out by going and fighting some orcs, who had a map saying where Lady Serenity was being held. The next two parts had us journey there, and in the third part we finally reached the evil lair. As you can see from the picture, the door was guarded by a magical Sudoku puzzle. Once we got in, our leader tried to negotiate for the prisoner's release by offering a magical item:

Leader: “I offer this magic ring worth 120 gold pieces for the girl!”
Boss: “There's no way that's worth that much.”
Leader: “Even if I were overstating its value by half, it would still be worth 60 gold pieces.”

I tried to point out the mathematical error but he didn't understand it. Anyway the boss tried to double-cross us but we got rid of the bad guys. Also, I volunteered as an NPC so I could see the adventure from the monster's eyes.

In TerrorWerks, we were soldiers trying to invade a robotics research facility where a bad guy has uploaded a virus to the central computer which reprogrammed the robots to be hostile. Our goal was to fight through the robots and get to the central computer to install the antivirus software. I played the engineer, and my special power was to unlock the doors – I had a kit with wires that I was supposed to connect between certain points on a grid to light up a bulb, and I also had a gun to defend myself. There were also computers that had information on them, such as that the big “super-robot” at the end has a control panel on the back that you could use to turn it off. When we got to the robot, one of the other players disabled it with a grenade while I ran around back to the control panel. The robot turned back on and no matter how many switches I flipped I couldn't turn it back off. When I tried to run back away from it I tripped over one of the poles holding up a wall and dropped my gun, but fortunately my teammates where there to back me up. Eventually we got rid of the evil robots, put the antivirus in, and got out.

Rising Lash was a relatively straightforward zombie game. We go through a series of rooms fighting zombies, and if you get hit you fall down. You can be healed by a doctor, but you get infected, reducing your combat capabilities. You can get rid of the infection with an antivirus (the biological kind this time, not the software kind) but there are a limited number of those. At the end of the scenario, if you survived without getting infected (or have an antivirus to heal you) then in the next scenario you level up and get extra powers. The scenario we did this time was pretty easy and pretty much we all got out alive.

By the way, if you are into video games you have probably heard about the so-called “freemium” business model. This is where the main game is free but you can spend real money for benefits in the game, such as in-game items. A lot of free-to-play MMORPGs use this model, and apparently some of the LARPs have caught on to the idea. For instance, in the zombie game if you buy one of their promotional T-shirts and wear it to the game you get extra armor. TerrorWerks also sells promotional “swag” and has a tiered reward system where one piece of swag gives you extra health, two pieces gives you a healing item, and so on.

Also, in keeping with the whole “being a hero and helping people” theme, there was a blood drive going on. There was an announcement on the PA systme that said they wanted as many people to donate as possible because there was a “critically fortunately I wasn't able to because I went to Vietnam last year.

Origins 2011: Part 1 - "A Hero's Journey"

Last week was the Origins gaming convention in Columbus, Ohio. I wrote about it last year on this blog, and I went again this year. The first interesting part of the adventure was getting there. I originally booked a combination flight/hotel deal on Travelocity. The flight was from Champaign, through Chicago, and then to Columbus. However, the day of the flight, I was informed that the flight from Champaign to Chicago had been cancelled, and they automatically rebooked me on a flight the next day. I looked online and found that if I took a Greyhound bus to Chicago, I could still make the flight from Chicago to Columbus, so I called Travelocity and asked them to book me back on the original flight. However they informed me that was impossible because the flight from Chicago to Columbus was also cancelled. I wasn't sure they understood what I wanted, because I looked online (if you put the airline and flight number into Google it will give you the status of the flight) and that flight was showing as on time. However, when I called American Airlines, they told me the same thing. Eventually I decided to just not use the outbound ticket and take a bus from Champaign to Columbus instead, and take the plane back. (I felt really stupid for booking the flight in the first place and not remembering that there was a bus, especially since I took the bus from Champaign to Columbus to get to my brother's graduation.) looked online to see if I could get a refund for the part of the ticket that I didn't use, and I actually found that for some airlines if you don't use the outbound portion of the ticket, they won't honor the return portion. So I had to call American Airlines to change the ticket. I called and was directed from phone number A to phone number B, then to number C, then back to A, then to B again, and finally after about half an hour of waiting they told me that they were able to change the ticket, and I wouldn't get a refund because it was booked through an external source, but it wouldn't cost me anything extra. (It would certainly have been annoying if they charged me extra for not using part of the ticket.) Anyway, it worked out and I ended up in Columbus the night I expected to. Also, it was a good thing I decided to take the bus because as it turned out, the flight the next day that they originally rebooked me on was also cancelled.

So here are a few things I learned. First of all, always check to see if there is a bus or train before booking a flight. Second, I wonder why sites like Travelocity don't also incorporate things like buses and trains into their tool - it seems like it would be useful to have a tool that figures out the best/cheapest way of getting from point A to point B whether that involves a bus, train, plane, or some combination. I guess it just doesn't come up that often. Third, always book directly through the airline if you can because it is easier to change your flight that way if necessary. Fourth, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the Champaign-Urbana airport has an average of 28% of its flights delayed and 6% cancelled, compared with the national average of 20% delayed and 3% cancelled. After I move to Colorado I will usually be using Denver International Airport, which is better at 18% delayed and 1.6% cancelled, which of course makes sense because the people who work at the secret underground base there wouldn't want their evil plans ruined by flight problems. Of course, if there really was an evil conspiracy going on there, information about it wouldn't stay posted on Wikipedia. Or maybe that's just what they want you to think, and it's a clever diversion. (Of course, I don't actually believe that there's a conspiracy or anything, I just thought it was funny.)

But that's just part of the adventure. Next time I will tell you about what happened after I got there!

Weird Stuff

Today in the airport I saw a group of people handing out literature for the LaRouche movement. I've heard that the LaRouche movement is a bunch of kooks, but I was interested in learning more. Part of what they said made some sense, like how we should spend less money on the bailouts and more money on technology and infrastructure. But a lot of their literature descended into conspiratorial kookery, such as claiming that JFK was assassinated by "British Empire bank-connected assassins" for wanting to get us out of Vietnam, claims that White House science adviser John Holdren supports forced population control (no, he doesn't). But their literature also taught me something about science that I didn't already know: it talked about using electromagnetic fields to predict earthquakes, and I thought that didn't make any sense but I looked it up and it turns out there is scientific evidence for that.

Another thing sort of related - in the mall today I found a stall selling "negative ion bracelets" for $25. It is an ordinary rubber bracelet that (according to the person selling it) had a small amount of volcanic ash embedded in it to emit "negative ions" that supposedly improve your strength and balance. I asked for a demo and he gave me a "balance test" with and without the bracelet, but the bracelet didn't make much of a difference, which makes sense because there's no scientific evidence that the bracelets do anything. Also, it seems that the people who wrote the brochure about it didn't know much science either, because it said something like "negative ions are natural ... when water mist falls to earth, it loses an electron, which turns it into a negative ion." (Of course, electrons have a negative charge, so if the water "lost" an electron it would gain a positive charge.)

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And also, something that might be interesting on the Internet - the web site I linked to above is part of a network of "Stack Exchange" web sites which allow you to ask questions and get and look up answers on a variety of topics - it started off with computer programming but on expanded into lots of other fields like math and statistics. It works a lot like Wikipedia in that it is entirely community driven where people post answers to and edit each others' questions.

Job Search Conclusion

So my long job search is finally over, and I got a job at Numerica Corporation. I had interviews at a couple interesting places. One was Two Sigma Investments, a financial company based in New York City. I got there a day before the interview, which gave me some time to explore the area. I tried to get a taxi to the Dave & Busters in Times Square, but I tried to get in a taxi and they said they didn't know where it was (even after I showed them the map on my iPhone.) I took a subway there but when I tried to go back, my phone was out of battery power so I couldn't use the GPS to find my way back. I again had no luck finding a cab, so eventually I had to go into a subway station and use the pay phone to call the hotel to get directions back. The next day I had my interview which ended early, so I got to use the extra time to go to a local game store. Then I got to the airport and the flight was delayed. The flight landed back in Chicago about two hours later, and I had assumed I had missed my connection so I used the rebooking phone to call for rebooking, and they said that the only flights they had were for two days from then. I decided instead to just stay in a hotel and take the train home the next morning, but while I was walking back to talk to the airline about reclaiming their backs I saw the departure board which saw the connecting flight was also delayed, so I was able to get on it and get home. Also, one of my professors was on that plane coming back from an NSF panel, and he took me home. Unfortunately I didn't end up getting the job.

Lots of interesting stuff happened on the interview for Numerica. My flight was originally scheduled to leave at 7:00 AM. I overslept and woke up at 6:30, and rushed out the door in the vain hope of getting to the airport in time. I got there at about 7:10 but fortunately the flight was delayed until that afternoon. I got rebooked on a 2:15 PM flight which gave me time to go back home, do some stuff at school that I needed to do, get the charge for my laptop (which I left at home), then go back to the airport. On the flight from Champaign to Chicago a different professor I know was also on this flight. I landed at the Denver airport and took a taxi out to Loveland. The hotel was next to a strip mall so I was able to go out to dinner and also finish up a presentation on my research, which I gave as part of the interview. The interview went vrey well. During lunch, I mentioned that I was interested in board games, and one of the people who worked there was also interested in board games and knew of some board game stores in the area, and offered to take me to them that evening. It was probably the best interview experience I have ever had.

So I decided to accept their offer, and I will be starting work by the end of August. I definitely think that stopping with a Masters degree rather than continuing with a Ph.D. was the right thing to do. I'll be able to continue doing what I love doing, and I'll also be making a lot more money than I am as a graduate student. I am not sure what I will do with all that money, but there are other people in this world who need the money a lot more than I do.

Trip to Vietnam: Part 2: "Ritual Components"

The first major cultural experience I had in Vietnam was going out with my mom on a mission to perform a traditional Vietnamese prayer ritual to pray for the health of her brother, who is in the hospital with cancer. Religion in Vietnam is an eclectic mix of Buddhism, animism, and lots of ancestor worship, so it is kind of interesting. The theory behind Vietnamese intercessory prayer is that you have to "save a life to get a life", and the way you "save a life" is by purchasing small animals to release into the water at the pagoda (a kind of temple). There is a street in Hanoi that has a market that happens every five days where you can buy animals for this purpose. We went to the market but couldn't find what we were looking for. My mom forgot to bring her Vietnamese phrase book, so in order to communicate with the locals he had to take out a BlackBerry and use a free translation Web site. At first we asked about where to buy "animals to release for good luck," and we were directed to a street that seemed to just have some pet stores, but no market. We also asked where the "five day market" was but they couldn't understand us. Eventually we found our way to a fish store that had someone who spoke English, and they informed us that the "five day market" actually occurred the previous day. So we just bought three fish there for 5,000 Vietnamese dong (about $0.25) each, what a later passerby informed us was a "rip-off", and it should have ben more like 2,000 dong ($0.10). There were also lots of vendors that sell votive offerings to burn, including packages of replica $100 bills. We went to the pagoda, where we pray in front of a large golden Buddha flanked by columns of packaged food items, then go to an area where we burn the money to have it rise up to our ancestors, and then went to release the fish. Since I was under the impression that Buddhism was all about transcending your material needs, I was surprised to see the commercial imagery such as the money and big golden stuff. It's clear the Vietnamese are really into the whole religion thing, as throughout Vietnam there are a whole bunch of vendors selling ritual components, including paper replicas of motorbikes and clothes to burn. According to Vietnamese tradition, burning paper replicas of things is how you send them up to heaven to provide for your ancestors in the afterlife, and Vietnamese believe that your ancestors need the same things in the afterlife that they needed in our life. For example, if your ancestor was a heroin addict, you should burn paper replicas of heroin needles to send them up there. It makes sense, I guess, because if you're already dead anyway, it can't harm you any more to inject some heroin, right?

Trip to Vietnam: Part 1 - "Wondrous Items"

I started my journey to Vietnam by taking a train from Champaign-Urbana to Chicago. I spent the evening in Chicago, and I went to a Dave & Busters and went shopping at a bookstore and a Best Buy. Then I took a cab to the airport and got on a 12 or so hour flight to Narita, Japan, where I would take a connecting flight to Hanoi. On the flight there was a SkyMall catalog, and it was funny to look at all the stuff in it. The primary demographic for this catalog is clearly metrosexual secret agents who have trouble when it comes to science and technology, as is evidenced by the following categories of items, including:

(1) Items that can't possibly work as advertised according to known scientific principles, including an acupuncture device that claims to heal you using the "latest ancient technology" (actual ad phrase), a "Wine Aging Accelerator" that claims to accelerate the aging process of wine by using magnets, and a "Hollywood Cookie Diet" that claims to allow you to lose up to 21 pounds in 13 days by eating nothing but cookies.

(2) Espionage devices, including the Covert Alarm Clock Camera, Covert USB Audio Recorder, Spy Sunglasses, and Cell Phone Spy Recon device. And if you are worried about the enemy purchasing one of these gadgets and using it against you, you can always engage in counter-espionage of your own by using the Mini Handheld Bug Detector.

(3) Multimedia format converters, including the USB Turntable (LP to music file), Cassette To CD Recorder (cassette to CD), Slide And Negative Converter (slides to picture file; I don't know why you wouldn't just use a scanner).

(4) Personal grooming devices, including the 3-In-1 Smart Groomer, HairMax hair laser comb (for only $460, it uses laser technology to help regrow your hair, which is confusing because I thought lasers removed hair), and Home Electrolysis Roller.

Eventually, I got to the Hanoi airport. It was a much smaller airport than either Chicago or Narita. Also because we are in Vietnam all the signs are in Vietnamese and English, and there are some amusing translations. For example, the list of items you're not allowed to bring through security includes spears, scimitars, tridents, and laser guns.

Visit from Grandma and Grandpa

This weekend, my grandparents visited me and I showed them around town. Before they came I knew it would be interesting because they are strong Republicans while I am a Democrat - unfortunately they did not come on March 9 when the university was sponsoring a depate about national health care. But there was still lots of excitement:

Thursday

On Thursday, they arrived about an hour late because their GPS gave them bad directions. Then they took me out to dinner at IHOP, where they showed me lots of interesting things that have happened in the news recently. They accused the Democrats of "trickery" in getting the health care bill passed, because some of the congressmen got special deals for their home districts in exchange for their vote (as if there were any major piece of legislation where that doesn't happen). Then we went to get a shave and haircut. Apparently none of the haircut places in town offer shaves, because it's against local health regulations - clearly another example of how Big Government makes life harder for honest businessmen. However, it was also an example of how "big government" regulations can spur investment in new technology, because they offered to get me a better electric shaver. I informed them that the one I had worked just fine, so we didn't need another one - thus showing that in this case, big government regulations actually saved money. Then they dropped me off at my apartment, and they went to a hotel.

Friday

On Friday, they picked me up at my apartment and drove me to class. I introduced them to the people in the department office, and they both were happy to meet each other. They also wanted to meet my research advisor Jeff Erickson but he was not here today. We left to drive around campus, but unfortunately when we were pulling out of out parking space, another car backed out at the same time and hit the side of our car. Fortunately nobody was hurt although both of the right side doors were damaged, and the car rental company had no spare cars so we had to drive around in the same car for the rest of the weekend. Then we went to the shopping center on North Prospect Avenue to have lunch and get some stuff like new clothes. Finally we went out to dinner. Apparently Grandma and Grandpa had spent the last night watching Fox News and had started channeling Ann Coulter, because they told me what they thought about the latest news on Obama's health care bill:

Me: "What don't you like about the health care bill?"
Them: "For one thing, it reduces payments to doctors. Doctors are like everyone else, they want to make a living. If doctors start making less money, we won't have as competent doctors."
Me: "Other countries with national health care systems pay their doctors less. Do they have less competent doctors?"
Them: "They have worse systems, yes. America's health care system is the best in the world."
Me: "That's not true. According to the World Health Organization's rankings, the U.S. health care system is only ranked 37th."
Them: "The World Health Organization? Isn't that an arm of the U.N.?"
Me: "Yeah, I think it is, why?"
Them: "Don't believe anything the U.N. says. If it were up to me, I'd kick the U.N. out of the United States."
Me: "What don't you like about the U.N.?"
Them: "On every vote on Israel. The Palestinians attack the Israelis, then the UN says it's Israel's fault."

I pointed out a headline in the newspaper that said that the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) had determined that Obama's plan would reduce the deficit, but they said that was "bullshit." Another interesting headline was in local news. The story was the following: UIUC was planning to retire Chief Illiniwek, the former Native American mascot, because it was "offensive to Native Americans." A student group called Students for Chief planned to rent out space in the student union for a dance in support of the Chief, but was at first denied. The student group used a FOIA request to get the e-mails between school administrators concerning this decision, and discovered a concerted plan to keep them out of the hall, such as claiming that the room was booked even through it wasn't. Confronted with this evidence the administration relented and allowed them to have the dance. Then the student group asked the local ACLU chapter for help in suing the school for trying to violate their free speech rights. The ACLU chapter declined to pursue the case, saying that since the dance had ended up happening, there was no violation of free speech. Grandma and Grandpa said that this explanation - that they didn't pursue the case because in the end free speech was not violated - was "a fudge", and the "real reason" was because the ACLU wanted to appear "politically correct" by not supporting something "offensive" to Native Americans.

Saturday

On Saturday they took me first to the D+D Game Day at Armored Gopher Games. They stayed for a few minutes just to see what the game was about, then they went off to do their own thing. They picked me up later in the day, and we went to the mall and got some stuff. Then they took me back to my apartment, so that I could go to the gaming club at school. Unfortunately when I got there I found that it was closed due to spring break. So I spent the rest of the evening at home playing the new video games I got.

Sunday

On Sunday we first went to the bookstore. While we were at the bookstore I ran into one of the people I play D+D with. He thanked me for saving his character's life: in our previous battle, my character had fallen unconscious in the middle of the battle so I spent most of the battle standing up looking at the scene. From the angle I was standing I could clearly see the DM's rolls behind the screen, and could tell that he was fudging die rolls left and right. Although I didn't say anything directly to the DM, I did whisper in the other player's ear what was going on. The DM might have realized I was "on to something" and fudged the rolls less, thus making his character not die. At the end of the battle all but one of us was knocked unconscious, there were only a couple enemies remaining, and as a last ditch attempt to defeat the villain before they escaped, the last remaining character fired a wide area burst across the battlefield, killing the remaining monsters but also me. (Actually I don't really mind that my character died because now I get to play a new character with a different class. The character I have come up with is an artificer - that's the class with the "socialist healing power" I mentioned before.) After we finished up at the bookstore, they droppdd me off at the Armored Gopher's board game night, and went off on their merry way.

Trip to Chicago

Since there are no classes this week since it is Thanksgiving, I decided to go up to Chicago to see some sights there.

I got to the Illinois bus terminal on Monday morning and bought a ticket for the 11:00 Greyhound bus up to Chicago. Unfortunately there wasn't enough space on the bus for all of us so they had to bump me to the 12:00 bus. I knew planes could be overbooked but I had never heard of a bus being overbooked. Anyway on the way up there the bus broke down. Fortunately there was another Greyhound bus there to rescue us. By the time I had gotten up there and checked into the hotel it was already 4:00, and most of the attractions were closed. Instead I took the subway over to downtown here I could have dinner at the ESPN Zone and explore the rest of downtown where there's lots of shopping. I got a new winter coat (my old one was really worn out) and got a cool looking miniature RC helicopter from Brookstone. Also in Chicago there was a whole store that sold nothing but Legos. Here is a picture of the display outside:



All those things are made out of Legos. On Tuesday I went to the Museum of Science and Industry. There were some cool things there - in one of the activities we got the chance to use a "Human Patient Simulator" medical training dummy of the same kind as those actually used in medical schools. The way it worked was they showed us how to check for different vital signs (pulse, heart rate, breathing etc.) and then we were assigned to go up there, check the vital signs, and diagnoes the patient by matching the results to the results on a diagnosis chart we were given. Also while I was there I ran into Courtney Fontaine, one of the people that I took the comedy class from back at ComedySportz in DC. She now works at the science museum, and is also in another comedy group (not ComedySportz, although there is a ComedySportz in Chicago). She was having a performance that night and I went to see it. There were several comedy groups performing that night, and there were lots of funny parts. Courtney's group got the suggestion "gift-wrapping", and I thought it would be a boring suggestion but they went off on lots of funny tangents with it. The last group I gave the suggestion "Dungeons and Dragons" to, and I was actually quite impressed with their knowledge of D+D themes - they incorporated lots of classic D+D elements including traps, castles, wizards, and even "elemental powers" into their routine. The climax of the scene was funny - someone was talking about going to the "center" of a castle to find treasure, but someone else misheard it as "senator", and the scene then segued into a senator on a talk show whose shtick was "gratuitous profanity" - but since this is a family friendly blog I won't go into it any further.

Then on Wednesday, I first went to the Travisa office to drop off the materials for my trip to India, then went back to get my stuff from the hotel. There wasn't really enough time to go to another attraction so I just went to the train station (I figured I might have better luck on the train rather than the bus) and got there about an hour and a half before the train was scheduled to leave. It was a good thing I got there early because I got the last available ticket to Urbana-Champaign. The train left on time and only got back to Urbana-Champaign about 20 minutes after the scheduled time.

Dispatches from Vietnam: #3 - Lawsuit Culture (or lack thereof)

I just got back from a two-day cruise in Halong Bay, a bay a few hours outside of Hanoi. Rather than repeat a lot of information, I'll just point you to the post my mom posted on her blog about it that has lots of pictures.

But there was one interesting cultural difference we noticed. Throughout the trip we remarked on how if we were doing this in the United States, we would have to wear life vests everywhere we go, and we would have to sign all sorts of waivers. It really does make you think about how much more "lawsuit happy" our culture is than many others. (Of course, if the alternative is to beat people up, as I mentioned a couple blog posts ago, it may not be so bad in comparison.)

This issue does, however, give me an opportunity to blog about something that I thought would be an interesting topic but didn't really have the occasion for. And that is, just how good is our "lawsuit culture" at deterring harmful behavior? Consider the following real-life scenarios:

1. The Amtgard kingdom of Crystal Groves has liability insurance. It got this insurance because it was required to by the park it plays at. (Many, if not most, event sites will require that people renting them out have liability insurance. Even though Crystal Groves usually plays at a public park, the park still required them to have insurance.

IIRC (If I remember correctly), this insurance costs about $1,600 per year for a kingdom of about 200 people (maybe less, I'm not sure exactly). Additionally, the insurance company offered to extend it to our own barony of Solstice at a cost of $1 per person per year. Assuming that the actuarial value (i.e. the actual expected amount of losses from injuries or lawsuits) is approximately proportional to the number of people, and this offer was not a money-losing proposition for the insurance company, the actuarial value of the original policy is at most about $200 per year. In other words, almost 90% of the cost goes to administrative costs and profit for the insurance company, not actual compensation for risk. (And even the other 10% consists partially of court costs and other expenses not related to actual treatment of potential injuries.) Is this really the most efficient system?

2. The built-in navigation system on the Toyota Prius is designed with a feature that prevents it from being operated when the car is in motion. The purpose of this is to prevent drivers from taking their eyes off the road the use the navigation system. Of course it also means that even if there is a passenger in the car, he can't use the navigation system. (This could even reduce safety in some situations: let's say you're on a highway going 70 mph and you have to pull over, program the navigation system, and merge back into highway traffic.) On 2005 and earlier models, there was a hidden menu that enabled the user to override this lockout. After users discovered this, it was removed from later models. Currently, there are companies that sell devices which can be installed in the Prius that will override the lockout on newer models.

Effectively, Toyota is engaged in an arms race against its own customers in an attempt to reduce the functionality of its product in order to avoid lawsuits. One solution would be if it was possible to sign a legally binding waiver to not sue due to accidents caused by using the navigation systenm, and if you signed that waiver then they would unlock the navigation system for you. But of course if you actually signed a waiver like that, it would probably not be upheld in court. Effectively the consumer's inability to credibly commit to not suing hurts them, because it stops them from using the navigation system (or forces them to buy costly insurance, in the case of the first scenario above).

Dispatches from Vietnam: #2 - Shopping

There are lots of interesting things to buy here in Hanoi, and most of them are really cheap. In downtown Hanoi the streets had all sorts of street vendors on them. One thing you can get for very cheap here is DVDs - I got the first four seasons of The Office for only 100,000 VND (about $6). However when I got home I found out that it was actually the British version, not the American one (which was surprising because the front cover clearly displayed the characters from the American version).

But anyway, I have decided that my main goal for shopping in Vietnam is to get items that look like they belong in Amtgard, so I could use them or sell them at an Amtgard event. (Also it makes it a lot more fun to walk around if I'm actually looking for something.) I got a very cool looking silk robe that looks like it would be perfect for Amtgard for only $18 (this person actually took US dollars). Today, I went to a "craft village," a village full of stores that all sell the same kind of product. The one I went to was a pottery village. There was a whole road full of stores and then when I got to the end, there was an open-air market with even more stuff to buy. At one of the merchants I saw a basket full of small decorated bottles that could easily be magical healing potion bottles. I asked how much they were and the merchant held up two fingers. I at first thought this meant two dollars each but it turned out it meant 2,000 VND (about $0.12) each, so I got a whole bunch of them. I also got a small sculpture that llooked kind of like a castle for 60,000 VND (about $4).

Dispatches from Vietnam: #1 - Traffic

I will be in Vietnam for the next couple weeks visiting my parents, so I'll be blogging about interesting things I see there. One of the first things you notice in Vietnam is that there are few cars; there are mostly motorbikes. But the most amazing thing is that there are very few traffic lights and traffic laws are not well enforced. For example, at most intersections, traffic from two perpendicular directions will travel through the intersection simultaneously, and people will just avoid each other in the middle. Even in intersections which do have traffic lights what often happens is that on the road that has a red light, traffic going from each direction will spill out from their side over the entire road (rather than staying to their side like they do in ths U.S.) creating two opposed "walls" of motorbikes. Then when the light turns green, both sides will go at the same time!

Surprisingly, there are few crashes. Part of this may simply be due to the relatively slow speeds that traffic travels at (rarely more than 30 mph or so, at least on the parts that we've been on so far) but part of this may be due to the method used to punish drivers who are the cause of accidents. Apparently, in any crash, the driver of the larger vehicle is considered to be at fault. And, since Vietnam does not have a well-developed court system like in the U.S., they use the next best alternative: all the bystanders will pull the driver out of his car and beat him up. (Of course, this makes drivers in Vietnam much more careful than drivers in the U.S.)

DISCUSSION QUESTION:

At least in the context of traffic accidents, how does the Vietnamese justice system compare to the American justice system in terms of efficiency, cost, and effectiveness at deterring harmful behavior? Are there lessons that the U.S. could learn from Vietnamese experience in this area?