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A gaming grumble.
Jun. 16th, 2004 10:16 pmSeveral years ago, I ran a GURPS game set in a fantasy variant of Elizabethan times. The players were all members of Elizabeth I's secret service.
And ever since then, I've just constantly ran across things that make me wish I was still running the game. Because history just has too many cool things in it that would fit. Unfortunately, I just don't have a regular enough schedule to have any sort of regular gaming group.
Like . . . 1532. A Basque shipbuilder tries to get Charles I of the Holy Roman Empire, I think it was, interested in funding his new ship design. Instead of having sails, or oars, it had a big-ass paddlewheel off the back that would be turned by water vapor coming out of big boilers. Okay, historically, it would never have worked -- there are like a couple dozen technological advances you need to get usable steam engines. But, hell. . . in a FANTASY game, I think that the PCs had enough magical, scientific, technological, and blacksmithing skills that they could have made it work.
Or, this month's Scientific American. The Voynich Manuscript. 230 pages of beautifully-illustrated words in an odd handwriting, in no known human language. Modern cryptographers have not been able to decode it. Text analysis shows that it doesn't look, exactly, like a natural human lanaguage -- it's too regular -- but it also doesn't look exactly like random gibberish -- it's not regular ENOUGH. (I know, that sounds backwards.)
This article claims that the manuscript was written by Ned Kelly, Dr. Dee's assistant. The rogue and spy who Dr. Dee barely managed to save from being burned at the stake -- the one who eventually fled to Poland. The author if the SciAm article claims to have found a method, which knows Ned Kelly knew how to use, that would generate the text.
His theory is that it's just plain gibberish, created so that Ned could sell the manuscript for the equivalent of 50 G's, to the Holy Roman Empire.
Damn, but I could use that. I mean, either it's actually got power or it's a total fake. Having it be real is pretty good -- but, according to this guy's theory, the way that it's designed, it LOOKS like it's real, it LOOKS like, if you just put enough effort into decoding it, you could figure it out, but it's actually totally just gibberish.
Which I think is even cooler. What if this thing is a mage-trap? The point of it is that you sell it, for a hell of a lot of money, to someone you want to mess with. They are now out a chunk of money, and they have to use a certain number of their mages and savants in attempting to decode it. And it always LOOKS like you're making progress, or at least eliminating dead ends -- but, in fact, there's nothing there to make progress WITH, so it's really just something to suck mage-hours away from USEFUL work.
That would be so freakin' EVIL. I could never make something like that up. But it appears possible that Ned Kelly did. . . and, if I were still running that game, I could have used it.
And ever since then, I've just constantly ran across things that make me wish I was still running the game. Because history just has too many cool things in it that would fit. Unfortunately, I just don't have a regular enough schedule to have any sort of regular gaming group.
Like . . . 1532. A Basque shipbuilder tries to get Charles I of the Holy Roman Empire, I think it was, interested in funding his new ship design. Instead of having sails, or oars, it had a big-ass paddlewheel off the back that would be turned by water vapor coming out of big boilers. Okay, historically, it would never have worked -- there are like a couple dozen technological advances you need to get usable steam engines. But, hell. . . in a FANTASY game, I think that the PCs had enough magical, scientific, technological, and blacksmithing skills that they could have made it work.
Or, this month's Scientific American. The Voynich Manuscript. 230 pages of beautifully-illustrated words in an odd handwriting, in no known human language. Modern cryptographers have not been able to decode it. Text analysis shows that it doesn't look, exactly, like a natural human lanaguage -- it's too regular -- but it also doesn't look exactly like random gibberish -- it's not regular ENOUGH. (I know, that sounds backwards.)
This article claims that the manuscript was written by Ned Kelly, Dr. Dee's assistant. The rogue and spy who Dr. Dee barely managed to save from being burned at the stake -- the one who eventually fled to Poland. The author if the SciAm article claims to have found a method, which knows Ned Kelly knew how to use, that would generate the text.
His theory is that it's just plain gibberish, created so that Ned could sell the manuscript for the equivalent of 50 G's, to the Holy Roman Empire.
Damn, but I could use that. I mean, either it's actually got power or it's a total fake. Having it be real is pretty good -- but, according to this guy's theory, the way that it's designed, it LOOKS like it's real, it LOOKS like, if you just put enough effort into decoding it, you could figure it out, but it's actually totally just gibberish.
Which I think is even cooler. What if this thing is a mage-trap? The point of it is that you sell it, for a hell of a lot of money, to someone you want to mess with. They are now out a chunk of money, and they have to use a certain number of their mages and savants in attempting to decode it. And it always LOOKS like you're making progress, or at least eliminating dead ends -- but, in fact, there's nothing there to make progress WITH, so it's really just something to suck mage-hours away from USEFUL work.
That would be so freakin' EVIL. I could never make something like that up. But it appears possible that Ned Kelly did. . . and, if I were still running that game, I could have used it.