The making of Kingmaker

This is a fascinating glimpse into the making of one of my favorite games, Avalon Hill’s classic game of the Wars of the Roses, Kingmaker:

KINGMAKER, the board game for adults based on the political and military activity of the English Wars of the Roses, comes on the market in the autumn of 1974. Copies of the game reach the United States by the end of the year, and by the following summer, with the first edition of the rulebook and a bad review in Games & Puzzles behind it, the game s becoming a cult in some circles. Sufficient numbers of the game appear at Origins 1, America’s leading wargame convention, to prompt SPI, America’s leading wargame publishers, to start importing the game in quantity. Now Avalon Hill steps in. British manufacturers Philmar receive a characteristically scruffy letter from Baltimore. But the content is what counts. Avalon Hill like Kingmaker, they want to manufacture it under licence… now read on…

The Avalon Hill Company has a 20-year old reputation in Britain for producing wargames of quality. (Afrika Korps, Battle of the Bulge, Anzio). The enthusiastic offer from the American company to produce Kingmaker was a dream come true – like rolling a double six on the first throw! Not only did their interest assure a far wider audience for the game, but because they were manufacturing from scratch there was an immediate opportunity to put into effect the main rule changes and modifications which had either been suggested or had made themselves apparent in the first year of the game’s existence. Furthermore, these changes could be made with the help of a game design team whose experience and reputation could justifiably be regarded as among the best in the world.

So began four to five months of transatlantic correspondence in which the game was pulled apart and rebuilt – a process which is worth describing in some detail for the light it throws both on Kingmaker, for those who are familiar with the game, and on the ‘playtesting’ side of the game design in general, for those who may be developing their own games.

I had been fortunate in making contact with Don Turnbull at the time he was running the first postal Kingmaker game. It is a measure of Don’s ability and perception that he had started postal Kingmaker, something I had thought impossible, on the basis of the first rulebook. He was the ideal person to work with on the UK end of the game’s redevelopment.

The Avalon Hill developer was to be Mick Uhl, who we supposed would be overseen by veteran AH designer Don Greenwood. In earlier correspondence, and more recent meetings, Don and I discussed those ambiguities which still remained after the reworking of the rulebook. We had also examined every suggestion which had come from other players in the course of the previous 18 months. Most important of these was undoubtedly the rule on Parliament suggested by Charles Vasey, who is now the editor of the successful fanzine Perfidious Albion.

In basic Kingmaker, Parliament is the means by which a player who controls the King consolidates and strengthens his faction. The player summoning Parliament may dispose of titles and offices which have become available through the death of nobles in the preceding rounds, or which were above the permitted holding of living nobles. Since the titles and offices convey extra strength in troops, ships and castles, a Parliament held after a large number of eventful rounds of play could drastically alter the balance of play. A weak king could become strong immediately. Furthermore, since Parliament could only, under normal conditions, be held when there was only one crowned claimant to the throne, they tended to be rare, twice-a-game events.

Vasey wanted to make Parliament a chance for diplomacy and hard bargaining. Each noble was given a number of votes (seats) in both the Lords and the Commons. Then the proposed allocation of each title or office was voted on, first by the Commons and then by the Lords. The bargaining and diplomacy came in because few players were likely to be strong in both Houses. So players with minimal troop strength could hold the balance in Parliament, benefiting as they received a title or office as the price of their support.

Other refinements were added. The award of Bishops can only be voted on in the Lords, the secular Commons doesn’t get a look in. Charles Vasey’s Parliament suggestion highlights an important aspect of game design in general – the work contribution’ of a game’s units – or how much a unit puts into a game. In basic Kingmaker, towns and bishops didn’t seem to “work” very hard. A player might use a town he held as refuge once or twice in a game. It might serve to block road movement. A bishop might never be used as refuge. Vasey’s Parliament maximised the contribution of both towns and bishops by giving them another level to function on. Parliament itself was also “working harder”.

Fascinated by the value of the ‘work test’, I began to apply it to other units and areas in the game.

It also serves to illuminate the process by which Avalon Hill games came to enter their catalog; there wasn’t actually a small office of supergeniuses designing all of these games from scratch, as I had sort of imagined as a boy. Trivia question: what is the direct connection between the book published by the youngest male published author in the world and Kingmaker?

“Women have no idea”

And here I thought we’d be more productive with women in the workforce. Tapping into that vast pool of hitherto untapped talent and all. And yet, Dr. Helen is unimpressed with her sex, nominally at work:

Apparently, rather than focusing on their own jobs, men are supposed to spend their time playing therapist to how women think and feel. And of course the author has no understanding of how hard it is for men to even interact with women at work, given all the rules and regulations. One “tip” in the article tells men not to be afraid of tears:

    When Paul Gotti of Cardinal Health gave performance reviews, he says that, without even realizing it, he was easier on female directors: “I didn’t want them to cry, to feel bad.” He recognizes now that this was no favor. They should have the feedback “so that they can grow too.”

    Ms. Flynn of Flynn Heath Holt says that her firm has found that men aren’t only afraid of tears but of getting in trouble with “the diversity police” for speaking harshly, or of women being “too high maintenance, or [that] she’ll ask a million questions.” As a result, “men are scared to death to give us feedback…. They’ll let women run astray and off course and be fired before they’ll take the chance to give them feedback.”

    Her advice: Be honest. That doesn’t mean you have to be blunt, adds Mr. Schwartz of the Energy Project, which is more than 60% female: “I’ve learned it’s a balance between honesty and empathy. Honesty without empathy is cruelty.”

Women have no idea what men in the workplace are dealing with when they
work with women. And men, despite what the author thinks, are not there
to babysit women by telling them to ask for raises, brushing away tears
and “twisting” women’s arms to ask for her own promotion.

I suggest learning to refer to “equality” and to say “look, you’re a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need any help from a man to do her job” will be vital for many men in the corporate environment. Black knighting and ruthless compliance with all workplace regulations is the optimal way to circumvent the lunacy.

SJWs at Amazon

This is the description of the Amazon editors’ choice for the best book of 2014:

Lydia is dead. From the first sentence of Celeste Ng’s stunning debut, we know that the oldest daughter of the Chinese-American Lee family has died. What follows is a novel that explores alienation, achievement, race, gender, family….

Do you even need to read Everything I Never Told You: A Novel to know how the book is likely to proceed? Notice how the battle we observe in Pink SF/F vs Blue SF/F is playing out in mainstream literature too. This is not merely the best novel of the year, it is supposedly the VERY BEST BOOK of 2014, yet at 4.2, it has a lower average rating than most of my books, let alone John C. Wright’s.

Why? One guess. Style and SJW politics over story, of course. Compare the two most helpful reviews, one complimentary from a guy who got the book free, and one critical from a woman who actually paid money for it. Exhibit A:

How is it possible that this is a first novel? It is so exquisite, so marvelously perfect, so regally quiet and elegant that surely, it must come from the hands of a old soul author. But no. This is Celeste Ng’s first novel, and in it, she has painted such a deeply felt, original story. This book shall remain with me for the rest of my days.

Everything I Never Told You is a story of secrets, of love, of longing, of lies, of race, of identity, and knowledge. The story begins with the death of Lydia, daughter of Marilyn and James, which is told in the first sentence and slowly revealed through the book. Why she did it drives the narrative, and yet, this story is bigger, grander than this central mystery. Marilyn wanted to defy society’s narrow vision of her life and become a doctor, while James is trying to overcome humble beginnings and a society judging him based on his race. Together, they conventions, marry and create a family. Nathan, oldest son on his way to Harvard, Lydia, the middle sister and favorite one, and Hannah, truly growing up invisible. Together, Ng has created a complex, complicated family that rings so true on every page. There isn’t a false note in the story.

Classic. Pretentious language. Overpraise for a debut – you know there is a non-zero chance we’ll never hear about this writer again – defying society, ringing true, overwrought claims about how the book will live on in his heart forever and ever after, and to top it all off, the literary SJWs favorite praise: “There isn’t a false note in the story.”

Translation: this book is utter SJW bullshit and is full of false notes from start to finish, without ceasing. Remember, SJWs always lie.

And now, exhibit B:

Celeste Ng seems like a talented writer. Her style of writing is fluid and lyrical. For that reason, I really wanted to like this book. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t, primarily because nearly all the characters are so overwhelmingly awful.

I know characters don’t need to be good or even likeable to be compelling, but there has to be something to draw you in and make you care about them. That wasn’t the case here for me at all. In fact, the adult protagonists are so awful I almost wanted to stop reading at times. The main couple comprises the most self-absorbed, selfish, emotionally abusive parents I’ve ever encountered. Before the death of beloved Lydia, they turn her into a proxy of themselves and basically ignore their other children. Post-mortem, they become even more entrenched in themselves and their needs and issues and continue their neglect of their children or even take their anger out on them. Toward the end, which hints at happier times for the parents, I didn’t even care anymore. They didn’t deserve anything better.

My other issue with this novel was its treatment of race. I understand that Ng wanted this to be a treatise on racial differences and the impact prejudice can have on people, but the way she chose to do this was not effective. She was both heavy-handed and uninspiring. She made it seem as if every single person this family encountered had never seen a Chinese person and was prejudiced against them. I find this hard to believe even back in the 1970’s.

As I said, lies from start to finish. Not merely lies, but blatant and unconvincing lies. SJWs not only swim in shit, they want you to swim in it too, which is why they incessantly try to convince you that it’s the purest, cleanest water you’ll ever taste.

To conclude my case against buying into the ludicrous propaganda of Amazon’s SJWs, note that two of the other 100 best books of the year are: Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned” by the Dunham Horror and Cosby: His Life and Times by Mark Whitaker, who somehow managed to avoid discovering anything about Mr. Cosby’s reported pasttime of drugging and raping women in the process of writing his biography.

Honor the martyrs

Christianity is being eradicated in the Middle East by the religion of the sword:

Four young Christians were brutally beheaded by ISIS in Iraq for refusing to convert to Islam, according to a British reverend forced to flee the country. Canon Andrew White, known as the Vicar of Baghdad, told the horrifying story how of the youths, all under 15, were murdered for standing up to the jihadists.

The vicar of the city’s St George’s Church, the only Anglican church in the whole of Iraq, has had to leave the country for Israel amid constant threats on his life by Islamic State. In a harrowing interview with the Orthodox Christian Network, he said ISIS had killed ‘huge numbers’ of believers in Jesus.

‘Islamic State turned up and said to the children, “you say the words that you will follow Mohammad”’, he said, his voice cracking with emotion.

‘The children, all under 15, four of them, said “no, we love Yesua; we have always loved Yesua; we have always followed Yesua; Yesua has always been with us”.

‘They [ISIS] said, “Say the words.” They [the children] said, “No, we can’t”.

‘They chopped all their heads off. How do you respond to that? You just cry. They are my children. That is what we have been going through and that is what we are going through.’

Honor the faith of the four young martyrs by reaffirming your own. And note this: “Iraq had 1.5 million Christians before the US-led invasion in 2003, but now all that are left are 250,000 who have been displaced from their homes in the north of the country by the advance of ISIS.”

Eventually, there will be those who can do more than cry. I suspect it will not be more than 20 years before the new Martel appears and the Reconquista 2.0 begins. The Tenth Crusade will be fought in the West, in both Europe and America, and it will last decades.

The Norwegians are already taking action. The Swedes are waking up. The French are actively voting. And the Germans are rising. Slowly but surely, they are waking up. “The latest PEGIDA march on Monday drew up to 10,000 people.”  PEGIDA stands for Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes. Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamicization of the West.

And soon the Saxon will begin to hate. That is when the anti-Western politicians will be removed from power. That is when the Western nations will rise. And that is when Enoch Powell’s long-predicted Rivers of Blood will begin to flow.

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.

One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.

Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles…. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”
That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with
horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven
with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us
here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but
come.

Now it has come. The statesmen of the West have failed. The preventable evils were not prevented. Now they must play out, as history shows that they have always played out.

#GamerGate crushed Gawker

Nero reports on the costs to Gawker of attacking #GamerGate:

The cost to Gawker Media of its ridicule and viciousness toward video gamers was “seven figures” in lost advertising revenue, according to the company’s head of advertising, Andrew Gorenstein. In addition, founder Nick Denton has stepped down as president and editorial director Joel Johnson has been removed from his post and will probably leave the company, reports Capital New York….

And now here is a chance to kick the SJW while he’s down. An Ilk suggests action:
A few of us were inspired by that stupid Change.org petition that got GTA5 banned to try to use the same tactic against Gawker’s biggest revenue sources. I figure it may be especially effective to kick them when they’re already reeling from the previous damage we’ve done, while Hulk Hogan’s suit and their insurance company threaten to bleed them further. The petition is here: Get Google and Amazon to stop advertising on Gawker Media.

We’d
like to spread this around and get the signature count up before
posting it in the usual GamerGate avenues (ie our Twitter accounts,
8chan, KotakuInAction), so that anti-GamerGate won’t know it’s happening,
and won’t realize that it’s coming from us or be able to respond to it until it’s too late for them to do anything about it.

They’re down. Kick them hard and keep them there.

The results

Apparently everyone expects Jerry Pournelle to produce the best story in the forthcoming RIDING THE RED HORSE. The results of both polls were as follows:

  1. Pournelle 108
  2. Day 45
  3. Torgersen 28
  4. Nelson 17
  5. Raymond 14
  6. Kennedy 4
  7. Nuttall 7
  8. Rzasa 5
  9. Mays 3
  10. Filotto 3
  11. Cheah 1
  12. Carr 1

As much as I hate to disappoint my most hard-core fans, I regret to inform you that neither my story nor the story I contributed in collaboration with Steve is likely to be regarded as the best, or even the second-best story. It’s not that the stories are bad, in fact, they are among the best I have ever written. It’s just that the quality of the stories, even from the lesser-known names and newcomers, is remarkably high.

I changed my mind about doing a poll on the non-fiction, because, with the possible exception of Mr. Lind, it’s too hard to guess what the author could possibly be writing about.

In any event, if you’re a New Release subscriber, you can now decide for yourself.

UVA rape hoax gets even weirder

The hoaxette’s friends have come forward to explain that Rolling Stone did not cover their story accurately:

The college students described as friends of the alleged rape victim Jackie in an explosive Rolling Stone article revealed their identities to ABC News today, and said that some of the magazine’s story is false.

“The text was so divergent from what we said that evening,” said Alex Stock, who said he’s identified as “Andy” in the article.

The magazine article describes a violent, three-hour gang rape that left a University of Virginia student identified as Jackie bruised and bloody when she escaped a house on fraternity row, right near the university president’s office.

When her friends, identified by Rolling Stone as “Randall,” “Andy” and “Cindy,” arrived that night, the article says they urged Jackie to keep quiet to keep their social lives intact.

That is not the scene described by Jackie’s friends to ABC News. They said at the time they believed a “traumatic” sex assault had occurred. But the two males friends said they were told that night — Sept. 28, 2012 — that Jackie was forced to perform oral sex on five men while a sixth stood by.

But their story is just the tip of the iceberg; it’s becoming apparent that they don’t believe her anymore either. Mostly because she appears to have been MAKING UP the very fraternity guy she was pretending to be seeing the night of the “rape”. One of Dalrock’s commenters summarizes the apparent sequence of events:

1) Jackie falls in crush with Randall.
2) Randall LJBFs Jackie
3) Jackie doesn’t understand that “no means no”
4) Jackie invents an imaginary boyfriend “chem guy” , complete with fake photos and phone number
5) Jackie boasts with chem guy in front of Randall to make him jealous. She even gives “chem guy’s phone number” to Randall, Andy and Cindy and, impersonating chem guy, insinuates to Randall that she loves him.
6) Randall remains unimpressed.
7) Jackie goes to date with chem guy.
8) Few hours later Jackie gives Randall a “damsel in distress” call.
9) Randall arrives and she hysterically tells him that chem guy lured her into a gang rape of clinton-levinsky variety.
10) Instead of falling in love with her, Randall calls reinforcements: Andy and Cindy.
11) They try to console her and convince her to go to police, but she refuses.
12) After that night chem guy still sends texts to Randall singing praise to Jackie.
13) Randall still doesn’t want to fall in love with Jackie.
14) Jackie is heartbroken and gets depressed.
15) Jackie finds out campus anti-rape activists and activities. Here she get attention, she didn’t get from Randall.
16) In next two years Jackie gets obsessed with anti-rape activism. Her story of that night gets newer and newer juicy details.
17) Two years later, Rolling Stone femipropagandist Sabrina Rubin Ederly is combing campuses nationwide to find THE perfect person for “campus rape culture awareness poster girl”.

In other words, the Rolling Stone article was based on a gang rape that didn’t happen at a fraternity party that never took place, orchestrated by a college student who doesn’t exist.

Forget rape. This story is grounds for never believing a single word that comes out of a college girl’s mouth.

AC explains why misery loves company

This is an interesting, even ingenious explanation for what strikes so many of us who are sane as inexplicable: why are the rabbits always so hell-bent on attacking those who have nothing to do with them and are not harming them in any way?

As things get worse, the stimulus required to irritate them to action
will grow ever less. Since the rabbit is too cowardly to attack their
enemy themselves, their go-to strategy will be to try and make everyone they see unhappy, and turn any threat they can find in our populace upon the successful.

This strategy is an outgrowth of something innate to the undeveloped amygdalae – a fundamental, penetrating sense of helplessness. If your amygdala is developed, it has been developed through experience. When it encounters adversity, it scans your brain for a solution, finds it stored in memories of prior experiences, and it will then drive behaviors to address your adversity. As a self-sufficient non-rabbit, your amygdala will drive you to fix your own problems.

If, however your amygdala is not acclimated to adversity, then you will not be able to find a solution stored in your amygdala, and you will feel helpless. Once you are helpless, and your amygdala is applying aversive stimulus to drive you to take action, your focus will direct itself to making others solve your problems for you. Then, rather than fixing your problems yourself, you will focus on making everyone else miserable, in the hopes that to alleviate their misery they will solve your problem for you. Suddenly you are laying down in the middle of a freeway, basically telling other people that unless they fight your enemies for you and fix your problems on your behalf, you will stop traffic, and prevent them from getting home.

One can observe signs of this even in their customary language. “This is a problem.” “Don’t you see how that is a problem?” “I find it troublesome.” “That is problematic.” “I have a real problem with that.” What they are really saying is “I have a problem: I am scared and unhappy. I want you to fix it for me.”

But because they are entirely irrational and less than entirely sane by any reasonable measure, the very last thing they are going to do is listen to you or permit you to address their actual problem. Instead, they’re going to try to control you, so that you will obey their inept direction in fixing what they perceive, wrongly, to be the problem. And even if the problem doesn’t get fixed – and it won’t – at least they get the satisfying relief of feeling that they are no longer helpless, because they are ordering you around.

Why the US embraced torture

After reading the various defenses of the CIA’s torture program by various commenters yesterday, I can only conclude that Noah Millman has correctly diagnosed not only why the U.S. government embraced the use of torture, but also its endorsement by many of the very proponents of limited government who should have known better than to do so:

Willingness to torture became, first within elite government and opinion-making circles, then in the culture generally, and finally as a partisan GOP talking point, a litmus test of seriousness with respect to the fight against terrorism. That – proving one’s seriousness in the fight – was its primary purpose from the beginning, in my view. It was only secondarily about extracting intelligence. It certainly wasn’t about instilling fear or extracting false confessions – these would not have served American purposes. It was never about “them” at all. It was about us. It was our psychological security blanket, our best evidence that we were “all-in” in this war, the thing that proved to us that we were fierce enough to win.

I am astonished by the fact that those who are capable of grasping that government control of guns in the name of crime will inevitably be used against the people do not recognize that the government use of torture in the name of fighting terrorism will also be used against the people. And Millman’s observation that support for torture is more a public statement about one’s self-perceived toughness than anything else is particularly astute, and is supported by the language observed to be used by many of those who endorse torture.

At this point, I suspect the average American who does not travel to the Middle East runs a greater lifetime risk of tortured by his fellow Americans, or killed by them in a targeted drone strike, than he is to be killed by a jihadist.

It’s remarkable that anyone is still willing to defend the use of government torture, especially at a time when opposition to government gun control is at a two-decade high, having recovered 7 percentage points from the post-Sandy Hook dip. The libertarian rule is pretty simple. Don’t permit the government anything you don’t permit the citizenry. And don’t permit the government to do anything you don’t want it doing to any of its citizens.

There may be times when torture is deemed absolutely necessary by an individual. And in such cases, if it is so vital, then the torturer should be proud to accept the punishment for his civil disobedience without protest or complaint, and do so with a clear conscience. Many of us would torture a kidnapper who was concealing the location of a kidnapped child who was at risk of starving without a single moment’s hesitation. And I suspect most of us would do so without the slightest concern for whatever the legislated punishment subsequently awaiting us would be.

A question of anticipation

UPDATE: I changed the poll software because the other one was screwing with the blog. You don’t need to vote again since I saved the previous results, which had Jerry Pournelle in the lead with 31 votes, followed by Brad Torgersen with 13.

One of my favorite things about anthologies is seeing how the unknowns fare in comparison with the more established figures. And, of course, it’s always wonderful to discover new writers, new or established, who one hasn’t previously read. Given that many of the contributors to RIDING THE RED HORSE have their own fan bases, I think it will be interesting to see which stories are most anticipated, and which end up being perceived as the stronger ones once the anthology comes out.

In case you’re wondering where familiar names such as William S. Lind and Tom Kratman are, I’ll run another poll tomorrow addressing the non-fiction pieces.