Object off Alaska coast may be WWII sub

Imagine the post-modern dungeon crawl, or probably more properly the modern dungeon crawl. Deep under water is a submarine, lost since the days of WWII. Somewhere within that submarine is a secret, a secret so dark and dangerous that it could not be destroyed but only contained. Now, you've been approached and asked to mount an expedition to recover an object from the newly found submarine.

What do you do?

Object off Alaska coast may be WWII sub

Underwater sonar images of a black shape against a background of grainy monochrome are safely stored on two computer hard drives at Bruce Abele's home in Newton, Mass.

Blurred by odd shadows and striations, the silhouettes are the biggest clues in more than 60 years to the fate of his father's World War II submarine, the USS Grunion, which sank nearly 5,000 miles west of Massachusetts, near the obscure islands at the tip of Alaska's Aleutian chain.

[via Jon Nichols]

Child killer literally a marked man

Probably not dorky but I thought that this might be something that could get some form or another of use out of people. Sometimes the punishment gives a more fitting punishment.

Child killer literally a marked man

Convicted child killer Anthony Stockelman's face and head were unmarked at his trial last year. But now he's turned up at Wabash Correctional Facility with a tattoo on the forehead reading 'Katie's revenge.'

Katie is Katie Collman of Crothersville, the little girl he confessed to raping and killing last year. The Department of Corrections is not saying who applied the tattoo, which is against prison regulations, or why. They say they are still investigating.

Katie's dad, John Neace, has his own theory. Wednesday he said, 'If I had to guess I'd say it's a statement from the inmates.'

Katie's father says he heard about the tattoo from friends and has no idea if Katie's distant cousin, who is also serving time at Wabash, played any role.

Potty Mouths on Star Trek

Probably not work safe but its only a few seconds.

John M. Ford, 1957-2006

I remember John M. Ford from when I was a poster on SJG's Pyramid forum. He had the most hilarious .sigs that I have ever seen, each tailor exactly to the content of the post that he had made. Admitedly I only knew him online as a fellow poster and through his work as a game designer but it is still a loss. Without his sense of humor, the world is a little grimmer today.

John M. Ford, 1957-2006

Mike Ford is gone. The cause of his death is not yet known. Elise Matthesen found his body around two o’clock this morning. She said it looked like it was fast and easy, whatever it was.

He’d been in poor health for decades. This still comes as a terrible shock.

I keep thinking that Mike would know the right thing to say about all this. There’s a hole in the universe.

Just in case you don't know who he was, here is a link to the Wikipedia article about him.

A small circle of friends

Once again, Bill Stoddard brings out the concept of the gaming circle. A great idea, and one of the goals that I had in the back of my mind with the formation of the Cleveland Gamers group. It is still the principal around which I would like to have a larger scale group organized but it just seems less and less possible as time goes along.

I'm not really sure what it is that the concept keeps butting up against, but (for some reason) I can't seem to get it to work. The idea of a large circle of gamers drawing upon each other for games, campaigns, ideas and general support seems to be a natural one but it just doesn't get far up off of the ground.

In the back of my head things like the Geek Social Fallacies pop up, and it makes me wonder exactly how true those fallacies really are. Maintaining any sort of social dynamic among a group of people who probably aren't the most social of individuals is never an easy task. I am not saying that is a problem with the Cleveland Gamers (the people who aren't the most social of creatures that is) but subtle issues of social dynamic do lurk beneath the surface whenever you gather more than three people together into any one location.

A small circle of friends

As a result of online discussions of roleplaying games, I've had it borne in on me that my approach, which I always took to be the obvious and straightforward way of doing things, has a number of peculiarities when compared with how a lot of people game. This is about one of them.

It appears that a fairly common social pattern among gamers is the 'gaming group.' This is a set of people small enough so that they can all play together in a session of an rpg, who meet—most often weekly, but sometimes biweekly, monthly, or irregularly—for the purpose of doing so. The meetings continue indefinitely, either as one long campaign, or through a succession of new campaigns. If a new campaign is started, it's because a member of the group offers to run it and is accepted; and depending on the group culture, either the nature of the new campaign is presented in advance and must receive group approval, or the GM throws the players into it and may face dissatisfaction, resistance, or open sabotage if it's not what the players want—and the player may feel entitled to engage in such sabotage. Players hardly ever face expulsion from the group, even if they do actively sabotage a campaign or make it not fun for other players; keeping the group together is a higher priority. New players can be introduced, but it takes some effort for them to fit in; most player groups don't actively seek new members.

I describe this in such detail precisely because it's not at all the way I do things, and when I first heard about it it struck me as eccentric, if not outright weird.

Over the last three groups that I have put together there have been a total of five people that I had never previously gamed with, or even know previous to our gaming. That is out of seven gamers that have been in those last three groups (one person has been in all three). I think that's a great thing. It brings fresh perspectives to the table and it helps to keep ideas fresh and flowing. You can't really get stale in your ideas and approaches when you're working new people into the dynamic like that.

One thing, having that high number of new players is actually intentional. I run a pretty active recruiting before I start a campaign and I really love to see new faces at the table. It makes things more fun for me because, despite myself, I am a fairly social individual. I do, on some levels, like meeting people and I consider my gaming to be a social activity first and foremost.

The trick seems to be in figuring out how to convince others that this is a viable method. If you know how to do that, please let me know.

There will be more on this topic in the future, I am sure, as it is something that is on my mind a lot.

Batgirl 1st Appearance

Come on, you know you want to look.

Hail Eris!

All Hail Discordia!

Former ‘10th planet’ officially named Eris

A distant, icy rock whose discovery shook up the solar system and led to Pluto's planetary demise has been given a name: Eris.

The christening of Eris, named after the Greek goddess of chaos and strife, was announced by the International Astronomical Union on Wednesday. Weeks earlier, the professional astronomers' group stripped Pluto of its planethood under new controversial guidelines.

Never Forget

We will never forget the day that the moon left its orbit and those astronauts were lost.

Closer To Slash

What happens when you combine Star Trek with Nine Inch Nails' Closer? Click on the video above and find out just how wrong it would be. By the way, this isn't safe for work...just in case I have to explain that to you.

Superman Is A Dick

While trying to find something that would give me an idea what to do with tonight's game session I discovered something else: Superman is a Dick!