Finishing up Lost season 4, I can’t help but ponder a D&D campaign based on the premise of the show, mixed with the exploration/colonization rules for Kingmaker.

Will have to ponder that for later.

I just spent the last five hours of my day playtesting the rules for building kingdoms in Pathfinder’s Kingmaker Adventure Path. After 2 years passage of time, my kingdom had three cities, a population approaching 20,000 people, and was fairly stable (and incredibly profitable.) I’m concerned that there’s not a lot of improvements that increase your Stability (your kingdom’s “statistics” are divided into three – Economy, Stability, and Loyalty. Economy determines how many resources you can generate, Stability how well your kingdom holds together, and Loyalty how loyal your people are to you.) And considering that you’re making Stability checks at least once a “turn”, this is something to keep in mind – building too fast might lead to rampant unrest, so while it makes sense to focus on the Economy at first, the middle “level” for your kingdom will be making sure you’ve got Stability as well as Economy. Also – I haven’t had to make a single Loyalty check yet after 25 turns. I wonder what that’s about.

I wonder if Einstein ever felt himself a fraud? Did the big guy – arguably the greatest mind of the 20th century, if not the second millenia – ever look himself in the mirror after a long day of discussing formulas and variables and think to himself: What do I think I’m doing? What gives me the right to presume I’m correct?

Now, I know that I’m not anywhere near the same league as Einstein. But Einstein has always been a personal hero of mine, someone I’ve looked up to, admired, and studied – not just on a scientific and historical basis, but on a personal one as well. I have a book of letters and essays that Einstein wrote, expressing his views on everyday and world affairs, from religion to politics to food.

So I wonder if Einstein ever questioned how intelligent he really was.

The reason I wonder is because I’ve always questioned myself. I’m just a smart ass 26 year old with a brain that’s too quick for his own good and a mouth that’s perfectly willing to lead him into bad scrapes. And then I come home and I’ve got some fresh victory under my belt and I can’t help but sit and wonder… how the hell did I pull that off?

But then I pull off other victories, other small miracles, and on, and on. And I’m approached by other, more experienced attorneys to ask me questions, and they listen and value my advice – my advice, as if I were some wizened sage, instead of just a lucky rookie with less than two years’ experience on the job. And I find myself not batting an eye and answering questions and offering opinions, and I’m just dreading the day when someone will just pull aside the curtain and reveal me for a trickster fraud.

But that day doesn’t come, and I end up here at home wondering how the hell I pulled it off, wondering if I am a fraud, if the game will ever end.

And so I wonder…

(At least, there’s the hope…)

So it’s been… a long while now since I’ve blogged with any amount of regularity – and once a month (if that!) does not qualify as regular.  As a result of this, my creative and literary talents have lapsed, and I’ve felt my writing muscles atrophy.  This is, succinctly put, bad.

As such, I am pledging to make a return to blog – both on this site and on Incorrigible Dicta, which I have truly horribly neglected.  Thus I now shall commence to write every day, at least once per day, and fill you guys in on… I dunno, whatever the hell I feel like writing about I guess.

Anyhow, it’s pure geektalk from here on in, so follow at your own risk. (more…)

I just rewatched last week’s episode of Caprica (”There Is Another Sky”), and I have to say… damn.  The series is becoming something truly magnificent.  It lacks the explosive action of Battlestar, obviously, but it’s got a deeper, far keener understanding of its philosophy and its setting.  (Battlestar, for as great as it was, can’t really be considered to have a proper setting – the confines of Galactica have always been more of a character than a backdrop, and the few snippets of civilization we saw were merely there to remind us of what was lost – and what the remnants of humanity were fighting for.)

Not to be spoilerific, but the episode presented a nice thematic duality, as Virtual Tamara attempts to find her way back home from the virtual world, and Joseph Adama (and to a lesser extent young Bill, or “Willie”, as the series refers to him as an, I believe, effort to distance him from the man-who-will-be-Admiral William Adama) attempts to finally let go of his daughter’s ghost.  The series posits the virtual world, for Tamara at least, as a kind of mythical underworld where things are nasty and grimy and not-quite-right, populated by amoral sadists who kill for money and pleasure.  And Tamara, unknowingly stuck in this underworld, must fight the mythical demons around her, eventually coming to term with the fact that she is stuck, quite literally, in that virtual hell.

And of course, she manages to – in a way – reach  home, just as Joseph and Willie are asking, in their own way, for Tamara to be given passage to the afterlife.

Zoe and ZoeBot had very little in this episode (the focus was primarily on the Adamas, of all stripes), but the scene where Daniel Graystone stands in front of his board of directors and extols the brilliance of the intelligence within ZoeBot was great, as the virtual girl looks up at her father, beaming with pride.  And then, a second later, the look turning to horrified fear as her father orders her to rip her arm off.

Line of the week? “Are you really asking about the practical applications of creating a race to stand beside us?”  (Dr. Graystone, playing god more than a little.)