Weekly Geekly Rundown for May 31, 2024
Weekly Geekly Rundown for May 31, 2024
Guinness is Math, Rogue, Prog Rock, and Jack Flack
Guinness is Statistics
In addition to my day job as a Research Analyst, I work as an Adjunct Professor at the local university. It’s a combination of job and vocation that will continue even after I finish my Ph.D. The academic market requires a certain kind of nomadic ability that I am not currently capable of providing, but I absolutely love teaching Political Science. I’m particularly fond of demonstrating the ways in which it is actually a science. It isn’t always a science, but at its best it is. This demonstration invariably leads to discussions of the mathematics underlying the science and looks of abject fear from my students when they see something like this on the board:
It takes time to get the students over their fear of jumbled characters to get them to understand that what is being expressed in the above mathematics (a simple t-test and calculation of pooled variance for two groups) is actually pretty simple. All these are is a way to compare the mean values between two groups to see if they differ in a statistically significant way. This simple test is foundational to a lot of science. It is used when comparing treatment effects from medications and can be used to see if a particular characteristic is associated with higher rates of voting (for example) or political polarization.
Because showing equations can intimidate the crap out of students, I’m often looking for new ways to present how and why the underlying mathematics we use in Political Science are the same as those used in other sciences, have been used in some interesting cases, and demonstrate how even simple processes can have powerful and life changing effects.
One of my favorite examples of how important mere correlational data, and mere correlations are, is that of John Snow. No, not Jon Snow, he doesn’t know anything, rather John Snow who knew a thing or two about spatial correlations. His use of spatial correlations demonstrated how cholera spread and formed the basis for further research that determined what the actual cause of cholera was.
When people say blithely that “correlation isn’t causation,” they are only being partially accurate. Correlation in and of itself doesn’t show causation, but if you hypothesis a directional relationship between two things and then find that they correlate in the appropriate direction that might indeed be suggestive that there is a causal relationship going on that needs further examination. John Snow’s demonstration that cholera outbreaks correlated with proximity to a particular water pump didn’t prove that cholera was a bacteria that lived in water, but it was consistent with that hypothesis and the correlation provided sufficient evidence for further exploration. There was in fact a “there there.” Correlations get us to look closer at things, but are only valid if grounded in a firm theory. After all there is no reason for the name Violet in the United States to correlate with the use of Fossil Fuel in Equatorial Guinea, yet they are correlated.
In cases of spurious correlation, say the correlation between the consumption of mozzarella cheese and Engineering graduate degrees, there might be a confounding variable that is associated with both. For example, college students might love their pizza. That’s worth testing. Do college students eat a disproportionate amount of pizza? Do engineering graduate students in particular?
The correlation alone cannot tell you, but a t-test could. You could compare pizza eating habits among engineering students versus the general population. Do they eat more? If so an increase in engineering graduate students might correlate with mozzarella consumption for a reason, but correlation alone cannot tell you that. That requires an experiment and t-tests are great for analyzing experimental effects and now I have a cool story to tell my students regarding the origins of t-tests.
You see, a recent Scientific American article discussed how t-tests were invented to ensure that Guinness Stouts were of the highest quality. In case you are thinking that Scientific American is having a little bit of fun, here is statistician E.S. Pearson (of Pearson correlation fame) talking about W.S. Gosset and his use of t-tests.
Gosset became one of the brewers of Messrs Arthur Guinness Son and Co., Ltd., in 1899. The firm had shortly before initiated the policy of appointing to their staff scientists trained either at Oxford or Cambridge, and these young men found before them an almost unexplored field lying open to investigation. A great mass of data was available or could easily be collected which would throw light on the relations, hitherto undetermined or only guessed at in an empirical way, between the quality of the raw materials of beer, such as barley and hops, the conditions of production and the quality of the finished article.
— E.S. Pearson (1939) on W. S. Gosset
If you want a detailed discussion of what t-tests are and how Guinness used them, check out the linked article above. It’s definitely something I’ll be handing my students. If you want to read W.S. Gosset’s original article on what became known as t-tests I’ve included that below as well as a copy of E.S. Pearson’s biography/discussion of W.S. Gosset’s important role as a statistician.
Why Play a Roguelike When You Can Play Rogue?
I held a number of jobs as an undergraduate, ranging from bank teller to 21/Craps Dealer, but one of my favorite jobs was my work study job in the computing center. While I was there, I got to work with a lot of old guard computer techs who saw the transition from the old mainframe/workstation model to the more modern network systems. It was while working at this job that I was introduced to two of my all-time favorite computer games, both of which use ASCII characters as their graphics.
I remember talking with one of the techs about science fiction, fantasy, and my love of the Dungeons & Dragons game. We chatted for a long time before he said something like, “have you played Rogue on UNIX?” I think I responded with something like, “sure I’ve played Thief but I’m not much of a first person shooter fan” which prompted him to laugh and walk me over to an old, unused, and dusty terminal. He typed in a couple of commands and brought to life a menu that included two games that I have loved ever since. The first is Super Star Trek:
The second is a game that is even nearer and dearer to my heart. It is a game that I have played in many forms and of which I’ve played many adaptations. That game? Rogue. I don’t know what it is about wandering around a Dungeon made of ASCII characters as a little “@”, but that’s my idea of a good time. You can watch some game play of the original Rogue in this video and see how cool it is as a concept.
The game itself has been open source for decades and there is a wonderful GitHub archive of Rogue that includes the ability to play several versions of the original game. I downloaded this particular version last weekend and I’ve been playing it for about an hour every day since. It’s a fantastic game.
If you are wary of downloading the archive, extracting it, and running the game, you can play the Mac version of the game over at Archive.org. They’ve got a good emulator over there and the game is fun, if I think the addition of graphics of any kind undermine the ASCII magic. If you choose to play the ASCII version, my preferred way to play, Rogue’s creators Michael Toy and Kenneth Arnold published a very useful guide for game play and as they always say, “Read the Manual.” Besides, it’s short, super helpful, and you can read it on the way home.
Weekly Film Article Cavalcade
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
Luke has an interesting interview with documentary director Chris Wilcha over at Documentary.org discussing his new film Flipside. The film uses Wilcha’s time working at a record store as a launching point for an examination of creativity and the struggle to complete artistic projects while balancing the need to pay the bills. It’s an interesting sounding film, but I have to say that Luke’s interrogation and point of view provide an interesting counterpoint to my own thoughts on life. Maybe it’s because I grew up poorer than average, but I’ve never bought into the hype of “the worst thing you can do is sell out” mantra. To me, that was always the mantra of the Yuppies, Suburban Pseudopunks, and Urban hipsters. I hated, yes hated, Reality Bites for it’s vapidity and focus on that message. Calling someone a sellout was just a way of enforcing a kind of precious ownership. “You’re not entitled to success, you belong to ME.” That’s an attitude I never understood.
To me, there was no selling out there was just getting by. People who don’t have discussions with their roommate where they consider put their tongue in boiling water for $5, only to demure because you know your roommate doesn’t have $5, don’t worry about whether it’s selling out when they get paid enough to eat anything other than Ramen. When one of your staple meals is “stale tortilla chips soaked in vinegar,” you’d think it was pretty cool to actually get paid to do something you love even if it wasn’t your own personal vision. Worrying about selling out is something that comfort and idle time allow for.
Luke, of course, points this out in his piece when he write, “it’s a portrait of the privileged side of Gen-X in middle age, coming to terms with years of acquiring stuff and a marketplace that no longer supports much idealism, let alone free time to make art.” The Generation X films that spoke to me were Kicking and Screaming and Swingers. The first because the “nostalgic for right now” vibe of the film rings ever true for me. All of my consumptive habits are nostalgic. Some for the past (old D&D stuff) and some for the now (various Pop! vinyls). The second because it represents a kind of life I wish I could have had. Sure Jon Favreau is a struggling artist in the film, but he comes from a much more middle class world. He and Ron Livingstone may play golf with only a couple of clubs, but they still play golf. To me, that was something to aspire towards, even if I personally hate golf as super bourgeoise.
All of this is tangential to Luke’s excellent interview and to what sounds like an interesting film that touches on some of the same conflicts that underpin She’s Having a Baby, which is my favorite John Hughes film because it grapples with this very thing and as much as I envy those who can complain about selling out, it makes for compelling stuff.
On the review side of things, Luke gives an extremely positive review to Robot Dreams. In particular, Luke was impressed with the way in which it grappled with adult friendship and the kind of love that comes with that. As I’ve experienced on a number of occasions, a deep friendship is a very powerful kind of love. It’s also a kind of love that is underappreciated in our post-sexual revolution world. In some ways we seem unprepared for it anymore and our ability to describe relationships suffers for it. Just as I’ve loved, and continue to love, every woman I’ve dated. I have deep love for my best friends and weep for the distance that time and obligation put between me and those friends.
Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat
Courtney Howard reviews What You Wish For this week over at Variety. The film has a wonderful noir setup that Courtney describes compellingly in her review. It’s an initial overview that makes me want to see the film, a desire that is cut short when she reveals that the film steps away from noir tropes to provide a more pat ending. To be fair, a lot of classic noir films step away from the abyss prior to the film’s ending, but the most powerful leave everyone (including the audience) changed by the experience. There is no returning home in a good noir story. I’m fine with happy endings, or “my life was fine before” tales, as their own genre, but when it comes to horror and noir I want more of a transformation of the protagonists.
Mendelson’s Melodic Meanderings
discusses changes in the movie marketplace and the failure of the most recent Mad Max film to find purchase with modern audiences. It leaves me wondering if there is a bit of IP fatigue that is expanding throughout the industry. I know that I am getting tired enough of remakes and expanded universes that I’m on the lookout for something fresh. And when someone, I mean me, who defends the Dark Universe as a good idea is thinking this, it might be suggestive.
Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse
There was a lot of great stuff going on in the Substacksphere and Bloggerverse this week. More than I can share in good faith, so some of the older stuff will trickle in in future entries.
First and foremost is
’s post discussing why his YouTube channel was taken down. Stan is one of my absolute favorite illustrators, and his Substack is still a great read, but for the time being his interviews will be down. This is particularly irksome to me because he had a big one with a major TSR figure last week that I won’t be able to watch yet. is once again reading my mind over at his newsletter. This week he covers the old D&D Magic Viewer modules. They were a really cool gimmick that was responding to the Fighting Fantasy gamebook and Tunnels & Trolls solo craze at the time, but with a different technology that would allow them to be both solo or group adventures. The “magic viewer” is something that I miss and I was just checking out my copy of Midnight on Dagger Alley. has been writing up a storm on his homebrew D&D system and I’ll be devoting a little time to it later. I’m a fan of fan hacks and of fantasy heartbreakers in general, so this is right up my alley.’s latest post over at discusses games that influence his game design philosophy. It reminds me that I’ve got to do a series on “Great Books for GMs” some day. There are so many books that influenced how I run role playing game sessions and I think they should be shared. has released his second Dungeon Synth album, which I’ll be checking out this weekend. is one of my favorite Book Editors, and authors, in the fantasy genre and he demonstrates that his insights go beyond literature and into game design as well. His latest post over at is well worth your time.
Last, but certainly not least, is
’s post over at covering narrative and literature in progressive rock. He talks about the frequent use of fantasy in the music genre and his most recent post influenced this week’s musical recommendations, all of which are inspired by the writings of Michael Moorcock in one way or another.
Classic Role Playing Game Recommendation
For as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of Super Hero role playing games. My entry into this particular gaming milieu was Hero Games' excellentChampions 2nd editionrole playing game. I happened upon a copy and was amazed that game designers had even attempted to capture super heroes using game mechanics. At the time, I was only familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, Star Frontiers, Tunnels & Trolls, and Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. I had played all three of those games and their mechanical foundations did not prepare me for what Champions offered.
Unlike the other games with which I was familiar, Champions did not have randomly created characters and instead allowed players to build whatever they could imagine. The only limit to the character you could design was the number of points available at creation (100 points with 150 more possible if you took Disadvantages). Other than that, it was all good. During my initial Champions experience, I didn't have anyone to play the game with and spent all of my time making characters and doing some solo battles. My character builds were heavily influenced by the sample characters in the rule book and thus were typically of 200 total character points (100 and 100 from Disadvantages). This included my personal write ups for the X-Men. I was content with my view of the game, but this view was to be shattered in short order.
A couple of months after I discovered Champions my family moved to a new city, I finally encountered a group of gamers who played the game every weekend. Given that this was the Bay Area, and the game company was a Bay Area company, I soon discovered a rich and vibrant Champions community. I also discovered that how I interpreted character adaptations to the game was very different from others. Some of that difference, I maintain to this day. I personally believe that too many gamers inflate the stats of their favorite characters out of love for the character, rather than an examination of benchmarks and mechanics of the game. But these are things that can only be understood through play, and that was something I had not yet done with Champions. In playing the game, I learned how some combinations worked better than others and I learned that other players were much more likely than I had been to "grab" the "Obvious and Accessible" items some characters used in combat. Not that I designed a lot of those kinds of characters, I didn't, just that I had expected gamers to behave more like the characters in comics than like "tactical gamers" and that the rules treated gamers as tactical gamers while allowing them to behave like characters in comics.
Long story short, I learned that you can only truly judge the quality of a game by playing it. I still love Champions and think it is one of the top 3 or 4 super hero games out there, but my view is now grounded in experience of how the game works and how when some character building norms take over the game can slow down significantly and lose some of its charm.
Eventually, my love of super heroes and super hero games led me to purchaseVillains & Vigilantes, Marvel Super Heroes, and DC Heroes, all of which have there charms. At one point in time, not that long ago by some standards, I could claim to own a copy of every super hero rpg published (at least in one of its editions). With the explosion of pdf based publishing, that is no longer the case and I'm sure I'm missing out on some great games, but I also have a HUGE backlog of games I'd like to play...see how I'm pulling this back to the question of the day?
Among that backlog is Jay Harlove and Aimee Karklyn/(Hartlove)'s early Supergame. It wasn't the first super hero rpg published, that was Superhero 44/Superhero 2044, but it was one of the first and predates Champions. Both the first edition and revised edition came out in 1980. I discovered the game as a "real" thing and not just something mentioned in old gaming magazines, when I moved to Los Angeles after graduating from college in 2000. I was looking for gaming stores and found a long standing game store in Long Beach that had a copy of the 1st edition. Later searches on the internet have shown me that I got a significant bargain on it, as I did with copies of Warlock and a couple of other games originally designed by the Southern California gaming community.
Supergame, like Superhero 2044 which predates it and Champions which comes after it, has a point based character creation system. It also has an interesting skill and combat system that I think has a lot of potential. Some of the stats are odd in how they are presented. For example, if a character has an Agony score (similar to Stun for Champions fans) of 10 or more they suffer no penalties to how they move or act. Given that scores start at 0, and that some sample characters have 0s in other stats implying that a score of 0 is sometimes the "average" score, it seems odd that a person has to spend points just to be a normal person in some areas and not others. Why not just have stats start at "average" and let people buy them down later? Or why not have Agony start at 0 with no penalties and allow negative scores to cause impairment? It's a small complaint, and there are a number of neat features like different defenses against different types of attack (pre-Champions remember). A thorough reading of the rules, both editions, and the supplements has convinced me that I need to play this game to evaluate whether the designed characters are effective at all in a way that would be fun. There are far more characters who have an Agony of 10, or a Physical (like Hit Points but with those with less than 10 being hurt), which means that if they suffer just 1 point of damage they will be impaired.
I think there is a very good game buried in the Supergame rule books, but I think it is a game that needs a lot of play testing and rules tweaks to bring out that game. I applaud Jay an Aimee for their hard work on the game and their ability to get a game like this published in 1980, and this is definitely a game I wish I was playing right now. I have so many questions I'd like answered and I'd love to house rule this game into a more complete system.
I don't know how many copies ofSupergame1st edition exist, but I do know that you can purchase the original and second edition of the game on DriveThruRPG. Precis Intermedia Games reprinted the game last year with a high quality scan (if you want a physical copy you can get it from their site). The pdf includes both the 1st and 2nd edition of the rules. I don't know where Brett got his copy of the 2nd edition for the reprint, but I do know where he got the copy of the 1st edition. It's my personal copy. He treated it kindly as he scanned it for the project. I'm glad he did, because I think that this is a unique gaming item.
Music Recommendation
As I mentioned above, all of this week’s musical recommendations have a Michael Moorcock connection and we can blame the Axolotl for that. We’ll start with one of my favorite bands, Genesis. Prior to this week, I had no idea that they’d written a song inspired by Moorcock, but after doing some research I learned that the song “One on the Vine” from Wind and Wuthering was inspired by the novel The Phoenix in Obsidian (known as The Silver Warriors in the US). Wind & Wuthering was one of the last truly prog albums from Genesis and it also marks a shift in the band’s sound.
I don’t think you can do a Michael Moorcock themed music list and exclude Hawkwind. They probably did the most Moorcock inspired, and Moorcock written, music of any band. Besides, they have a certain member who became even more famous as the front man for Motorhead.
Stuart Smith may be best known as the guitarist for Sweet, but he too has written songs inspired by the wanderings of an Albino Emperor.
No list of Moorcock inspired songs would be complete without the inclusion of a Blue Oyster Cult song. In this case, the song was inspired by Prince Corum, a lesser known avatar of the Eternal Champion than Moorcock’s Elric, but my favorite Eternal Champion. As tragic as Elric is, he’s a bit too pretentious for my tastes. Don’t get me wrong, I love Elric but he’s a bit much at times. Corum though has always seemed the more genuinely tragic hero and his stories, I think, inspired the hand and eye of Vecna.
Lastly, I included the song Dyvim Tvar by Battleroar. Why? Not because I knew who Battleroar was. I just found out about them the other day perusing a D.M. Ritzlin list of Moorcock inspired tunes. For those who don’t know Ritzlin is the publisher of the excellent DMR Books. If you are a Sword & Sorcery fan and don’t know about DMR, do yourself a favor and drop by. I chose this song because Dyvim Tvar and Dyvim Slorm, weird as the names may be, were two of my favorite characters in the Elric Saga. For me, they capture the real tragedy of the fall of Melniboné. As evil and decadent as the Empire was, it produced honorable men like the Dyvims.
Classic Film Recommendation
Take a moment to ask your self the following question. What is the best role playing game based/role playing game adjacent movie?
What was your answer? Dungeons & Dragons? Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves? Hawk the Slayer? Krull? (Provide an answer below please.)
For me, the answer to that question is easy. It’s Cloak & Dagger starring Dabney Coleman. As much inspiration as Stranger Things took from Spielberg films like E.T. or John Carpenter films, an often overlooked film in the “Kids on Bikes” genre is Cloak & Dagger and in my opinion it is the best. Not only is it a compelling adaptation of The Man Who Knew Too Much, but it wonderfully integrates role playing games into the narrative.
I’m not just talking about the massive display of D&D products that feature heavily in the background of many scenes, that’s low hanging fruit. I’m talking about the way that the main character uses his experiences playing role playing games to help him survive dangerous situations. The film is filled with commentary. It engages with the trauma of the loss of a parent. Just how long has Davey Osborne’s mom been dead? (Hint: It’s not that long ago.) It also touches upon Davey reconciling the fact that his dad, who is clearly his hero, couldn’t prevent the greatest tragedy he’s ever faced and finding a way to connect with his father again. While it shares more than one narrative element with Disney’s Inside Out, it does so in a way that actually integrates the emotions rather than destroying memory.
On top of all those advantages, it’s also the only film in the entire cinematic oeuvre to have giant twelve-sided dice roll towards a protagonist on screen in what is undeniably the most dramatic presentation of a role playing game die roll in history.
Really fun edition, Christian! t-tests & Guinness, Rogue ASCII game (I've got to play this!), RPG Metal Moorcock Music, and one of my favorite childhood movies - "Cloak & Dagger". R.I.P Dabney Coleman.
Lot's of great stuff in this one, Christian! For a more recent Michael Moorcock inspired song, I highly recommend "Victims of Fate" by Smoulder, with a voice over introduction by Mr. Moorcock himself. It's on their amazing Violent Creed of Vengeance album from last year.