kengr

Digging thru old emails and found this link:
http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/68515543753/novelist-error-messages

This little exchange popped into my head yesterday. Not sure if I'll ever use it, so I'm throwing it out here in case anyone else wants to use it.

Guy (shocked) to T-girl: "You've got a dick!"
T-girl: "And you *are* a dick. We've all got our problems."

I was thinking of some of the problems involved with increasing the tech level of a planet that was pre-industrial. And one of the things you need are nitrates.

You need them for gunpowder (and later explosives). You need the to make various acids (theey act as a catlyst in creating sulfuric acid, and an ingredient in nitric acid).

And I caught myself thinking "if the planet will support human life, you'll have nitrates coming out of your asss..."

And then it hit me that that statement was *literally* true...

Oy.

I just finished reading a short story set in someone's fantasy world.

Roughly medieval level, with multiple intelligent species and some magic (all I recall from this one was some healing potions).

So, some farmers are losing stock to some sort of big cats. Probably a group of them.

Some folks from the village who have relevant experience get together to go after them.

They search and finally find a dead cow (which seems to have been dragged there in some sort of cart). And they follow the tracks of the cats to a lair.

At the lair they encounter 13 of the big cats (types not specified, just "giant cats") and an extra large variety of orc (who is over by the cart which has a dead horse in the traces.

After a battle, our heroes manage to kill all the baddies with only minor damage to themselves.

They then go back to their "base camp" where the smith they'd dragged along repairs the minor damage to their weapons and gear (a nice touch, folks forget about that so often) and they use the potions to deal with wounds and bruises.

Here's where economics come into it. They left *all* the bodies out there.

Uh-uh. No way that'd happen. First of all, they'd attract a lot of scavengers, which is *not* something you want to encourage around farms and places with herds of animals.

Second, those hides are worth serious money. Even with the slashes, etc, large furs are useful. And sometimes decorative. So skinning the big cats is a no briner, even if they went back to base and came out later with a cart and some helpers.

Even the (probably badly damaged) hides on the dead cow and worse are likely good for *some* leather.

The meat of the cow and horse are likely unfit for human consumption. And the meat from carnivores isn't that great.

But at least *some* of it is almost certainly useful to feed to dogs and even pigs (remember, pigs are omnivores and will quite happily eat meat)

Heck some of the claws & teeth from the big cats may be valuable as decorations. Or for magical uses.

This is something that both writers and game masters need to keep in mind. A lot of stuff has value that modern day folks don't think of. Well, modern day *city* folks anyway.

I've got an idea for a meta-fiction set in T-America.

I don't think I'm up to writing the actual booklets for the badges, but a history and overview sounds about right.

Not sure what the *actual* names would be, but I expect that many would refer to them as "Girl 101" and "Boy 101".

Girl 101 started out as a couple of seperate ideas. First, a lot of T-girls needed/wanted to pick up "normal" girl mannerisms, behaviors and experiences.

Second, some dedicated tomboys realized as they got older that some of the girly stuff they'd rejected might come in handy on occasion.

The folks puttering around with both ideas eventually got connected and realized that it'd make sense to combine them into a single badge.

The Boy 101 badge probably had a somewhat different history, or it may have gotten sparked by the Girl 101 project.

Both badges have had complaints that they reinforce gender stereotypes. The usual answers are that some people want to follow the stereotypes and that isn't wrong, or that knowing the stereotype and *consciously* learning about it makes you better able to pick and chose which bits you want and which bits to reject.

Some folks have deliberately exaggerated various behaviors. Sometime to make a point, sometimes as parody. But for most, it's a matter of knowing what the expected behaviors *are* lets you chose whether or not to follow expectations or deliberately (as opposed to accidentally) break them.

Some aspects of Girl 101 have been likened to old-style finishing schools. Deportment, grace, etiquette, fashion, etc.

Some aspects of Boy 101 have been likened to boot camp, though that's a much bigger stretch.

But both deal with "proper" behavior *and* improper/informal behavior. After all, the goal is to be able to "fit in" (if they choose to) in all sorts of activities.

It was discovered early on that having the Scouts interact with younger children of their chosen gender was a useful tool. The younger kids tend to be more accepting and while they'd point out differences from the "expected" behavior, they weren't malicious about it.

It also gave experience with games and other activities the the Scouts had missed out on when they were growing up.

(I'm gonna stop here for now and await comments)

I'm reading a short story titled "Prep School", only when I glanced up at the open tabs after checking something else I misread it as "Perp School". Now *there'd* be an unusual story.

Which reminds me of an idea that came out of an IM conversation a few years back. I forget what exactly sparked the train of thought, but it may have been a combo of talking about alternate realities that had more reasonable attitudes about sex and other things, and some item about sex ed classes.

Anyway, what came out of it was the idea of a world where "sex worker" was not only legal, but there was a Voc Tech track for it in school. Sort of like shop and Home Ec.

Which lead to "How did you manage to get an F in Intro to Sex??!!"

Whether it's a parent or a fellow student that definitely is going to lead to some *odd* questions and discussions. :-)

And just think of the classes for that track. As well as just what might be *in* those classes. And then there are the electives...

A few (sort of) D&D related things.

Long ago, the Sticks & Stones microgame gave me the idea of "Stone Age" D&D. Neolithic would be interesting, though Paleolithic might be workable.

Obviously the classes would be a bit different. Of the basic four (fighter, cleric, mage, thief) fighters wouldn't change a lot. Mostly a matter of fewer armor and weapon choices.

Clerics would pretty much be limited to some sort of shaman. And their spells would likely be more limited

Mages are a trickier fit, and they'd *definitely have their spells more limited.

Thieves would be *way* different, probably more scouts and hunters to keep the "sneak around" skills.

Monsters would still exist, though a lot of them would be more limited just due to the lower populations.

Dwarves require some thought, but other than tech limits, shouldn't be too much of a problem. Halflings aren't a problem. :-)

For the "evil" races, orcs & goblins aren't a big problem. Kobolds probably aren't either.

Elves of all sorts are a problem. Their long lives might be a problem on several levels, and just how much of advantage they'd have both magically and technologically is gong to greatly affect things.

Another fun thought is if you are running several "independent" campaigns, the results of the stone age campaign might show up in the more "usual" period games as myths and legends. :-)

And now for something completely different.

I'm wondering what sort of "properties" a certain infamous puzzle box would have in D&D. What sort of magic folks think it should detect as, whether it detects of evil, as cursed, etc.

I'm thinking specifically of the "Lament Configuration" box from Hellraiser.

What do you folks think?

While reading yet more of ysabetwordsmith's Polychrome Heroicsstuff I glanced at my default icon and had the thought of what she might be like in T-America.

The antennae suggest insect related abilities. And since I'd just been discussing UV vision, we can throw that in. Likely polarized light detection too. But let's keep the eyes fairly normal looking.

The vision will be from birth. Have the antennae grow in later.

So the first sign that something is different will be when she starts to talk and and argues with her parents about colors. Like talking about the spots one white flowers (some have UV reflective spots on them to attract bees, for example)

I'm assuming some clueful parents, so she'll eventually get some specialized eye exams that'll figure out at least part of it.

One silly thought I had is at a later follow up, they happen to have a couple of *labeled* cards for UV ranges. Say, UVA and UVB. Which with her minimal reading skills she reads as "uv-uh" and "uvb". So she starts using those for color names.

She can probably see several colors in each range, but given the way many cultures with fewer/different color words work (for example, they consider everything from blue to green one color and all the reds, oranges and violets another) she may well lump them all into just the two categories.

Not sure when the antennae will start to grow in, and what they'll be good for. Probably scent and some other things.

Oh yeah, she's gonna go with "Buglet" because that's what her dad called her. "How's my little buglet today?"

Lots of stuff to fill in and thinking to do about stuff like her in kindergarten and the early grades.

Got Yet Another Idea, and I want to check if it's workable.

Basically, want someone or ones to find some rocks in a stream. And get surprising results when they run tests (need reasons for them to run the tests, too).

Crystal quartz, rutile, periclase, sapphire, hematite, and some others (need to look up names for other minerals that will be involved, all metal oxides). All of similar size and "well polished".

The surprising results are that the rocks are pure. That is the quartz is SiO2 with nothing else, rutile is TiO2, sapphire is Al2O3, etc. No contaminants, no inclusions, perfect crystal structures.

If they go for *really* fancy testing, there will be more oddities.

Once they get suspicious I'm assuming the same trick used for finding gold deposits will work. That is, keep sampling as you go upstream and hopefulluy the concentration gets higher as you approach the source. And it you suddenly quit finding it, you start check up tributaries or side canyons, right?

This just came to me the other day. May or may not do anything with it.

The second female President of the US was a bit worried. She'd had a few of these ultra top secret briefings since she'd taken office, but something seemed off about this one. They'd seemed rather nervous when setting it up.

Well, she'd know what it was about soon enough.

"Ms. President, you may have heard rumors about Roswell, area 51, and even the conspiracy theories about 'Majestic'. Today you will be learning the truth behind those those."

"Excuse me, you mean all those alien conspiracy niuts are right?!"

"No, ma'am.. They are actually very wrong. But the truth is a lot stranger than the wild talk. What crashed at Roswell wasn't a flying saucer. Nor was it crewed by aliens."

"Roswell was *real*?"

"Yes, and no. It's rather hard to explain. We still aren't sure what to call the craft, but the consensus is that the crew were what our distant ancestors referred to as the 'Fair Folk'. Keep in mind that they didn't do that because these beings were 'fair' in any sense of the word. Instead they did so to avoid offending them if they happened to be listening. These aren't the elves of modern fantasy. these are the sort of beings that participated in the Wild Hunt."