There is always a lot of advice about how you never want PCs to actually come into physical conflict with other PCs, how that will ruin your game and you should take any meta-game action necessary to prevent it.

Well, that’s complete and utter crap. Here’s a gaming anecdote about some awesome PC-on-PC violence from an old AD&D 2e Forgotten Realms game I ran.

Bad Neighbors

SPOILER WARNING – this is full of spoilers for the 2e Forgotten Realms adventure “Bad Neighbor Policy” from “Four From Cormyr.”

In general I prefer gritty, low magic campaigns like Greyhawk or even Warhammer Fantasy. But for a change, our group said “Let’s play a high level high magic game!”  This clearly meant the Forgotten Realms, and since I was a crazed D&D DM I had every product put out in the 1e/2e days, so the PCs munchkinned themselves out with high level (10 or 12 or something) powerz and magic items and everything and I prepped a Realms game, which though it went off track, ended up a thing of beauty.

We ran something else forgettable first, but soon began “Bad Neighbor Policy,” in which the PCs are travelling to the Orvaskyte Ruins out in the swamp for one reason or another.  But first, there’s a random interesting location on the way – the “Inn of the Undead,” an inn run by two hot women.  The first, the scenario claims, is “a voluptuous blonde” and the other is a “tall, attractive woman with a luxurious, tousled mane of fiery red hair.”  They are also vampires, as it turns out, and there’s a 12th level necromancer who hangs out with them.

One of the PCs decides, true to form, that he’d “seduce that hot blonde chick who owns the place!”  She says, “Okay…  Come upstairs after closing  and we’ll take a bath together.”  “Well that was easy,” he thinks.  The PC comes upstairs with her, doffs all his armor and weapons and gear and gets in the bath.  Then the other woman, the redhead, comes in too, and the blonde says “I thought I’d ask my sister to join us, if that’s all right.”  The player, nursing a woody by this point no doubt, is all like “Woo, threesome, I win!!!”  They disrobe, get into the bath with him, and and then the fangs come out and ENERGY DRAIN ENERGY DRAIN ENERGY DRAIN ENERGY DRAIN the poor bastard is a vampire himself.  I laughed and laughed and laughed.  It’s scenes like that which make all the BS you have to deal with for being a DM worthwhile.

But it gets better. The necromancer’s there for no stated reason except an “alliance” with the vampires.  So I decide they’re doing some experimentation trying to make the ever-popular vampire that can walk during the day.  There was some spell they published around that time, I think it might have been in the Spell Compendium, where if cast on a vampire, their powers wax and wane over the course of the day but the sun doesn’t kill them.  So the dead PC gets that spell permanenced on them by the necromancer as part of his undead rebirth.  I also decide that the PC has to rest in water not in earth because of the circumstances of his death.  Success, a new weird variety of vampire!

Anyway, the PC wake up as a daywalking water-sleeping vampire and doesn’t let on that anything’s wrong.  “I’m evil now right?  I’m gonna turn them all into vampires!”   The party, upon hearing that he looks “pale and drained” the next morning, just responds “Yeah, I bet.  Let’s get going.”  The PCs travel out through a day or two of swampland to the Orvaskyte Ruins, where they really have a hard time of it what with dragons and cornugons and whatnot.  Half of the PCs are unconscious or otherwise disabled after the final fight – so of course the vampire PC picks that time to strike, paralyzes one PC and drags another off into the swamp for vampirification. The frozen PC gets free and drags the other PCs into the convenient shrine that undead can’t enter in the ruined keep.  (That shrine is actually in the adventure; I didn’t plan any of this.)

So then what unfolds is pure beauty. No hold barred combat between the vampire PCs and the living PCs. For three weeks the players come over and eagerly take seats in separate rooms, and I scuttle back and forth as they try to outsmart and overcome each other.

The living PCs didn’t understand how things were working exactly with the vampires being active in the day - even without their vampire powers, they were still 10+th level Forgotten Realms characters and put down quite a whupping!  The PCs try to hole up in the shrine, but the vampires snipe at them and summon critters to go in and disrupt their sleep, so they’re not getting spells back.  They try to escape through the swamp, but the vampires catch up and attack and they have to retreat back into the shrine.

My favorite part was when the living PCs ventured out during the day and used spells to track down the dead PC the vampires had carted off and stuck under some roots in an icky swamp pond to turn.  One of the vampires is lurking nearby in a tree and summons a bunch of giant crocodiles into the pond.  The PCs come up and one, thinking for some reason that they’re safe during the day, dives right into the muck without a second glance.  All those crocs latched right on and started spinnin’.  “OH JESUS NO!!!” he was screaming as his hit points disappeared.  I had to devise a quick hit location chart to determine what part of him a given croc was attached to.  The rest of the PCs panicked and Lightning Bolted the entire pond killing everything; all the crocs and the PC floated to the top and they pulled him out to see if they were in time to heal him but he was gone below the torso.   Everyone screams.  Retreat to shrine, cast Raise Dead.  The living PCs had one Raise Dead a day which was very helpful.  Sometimes the vampires would catch a living guy and turn them; sometimes the living guys would catch a vampire and Raise Dead them.   They kept this up for hour after hour, session after session.

Finally after a couple sessions of this the remaining living PCs made a successful break for it, but the vampires were faster and got back to that inn first.  One of the PCs, a monk, was suspicious of the inn as “That’s where all the trouble started!” and stayed outside, clinging to the roof to peer into windows.  Another was disgusted by the whole thing and just marched in to get a room.  When he went upstairs and closed the door to his room, the initial vampire PC was standing behind it with bared broadsword.  The monk peeped down just in time to see the inside of the room’s window suddenly become completely coated with blood.  More screams.  In the end, a couple living PCs retreated under cover of magically created fog while the vampires plotted a daywalking vampire apocalypse to take over Sembia.

The campaign ended there (it was supposed to be short anyway), but everyone had a grand time.  People fight hard against DM-run monsters.  But they fight HARD against other PCs.  It was a very meaningful test of abilities for everyone – the DM couldn’t pull a punch if he wanted to, and each opponent wasn’t one of many faceless critters being multitasked by the DM, each one was backed by a clever and bloodthirsty player’s undivided attention.  Each session, I kept asking “Do ya’ll want me to wrap this up?”  But each time, they were excited to get there and continue one of the most exhilarating fights for their lives they had seen in a game.  I was surprised with how long it went, I would have expected one side to get a numerical advantage and then just roll over the other.  But each side could safely retreat and when things started getting bad they fought harder – using one-use magic items, desperate tactics, and more to avoid being wiped out.  I was really proud at some of the stuff “my players” came up with when the chips were down, I saw balls to the wall crazy kickass things happen I hadn’t seen before or since.  It was really a memorable experience for everyone.

Lesson Learned

After that, I would often bring in a “guest star” – some other gamer not in a given campaign – to run a major villain at the climax of an adventure.  “Here, you’re this guy, here’s what you know, you have free rein to defeat them any way you can.”   You could tell by the “Oh, shit” looks on the PCs’ faces that they realized they needed to step their game way up when that happened.  The villains were always extra clever and brutal and self-preserving (and therefore realistic) when they had a dedicated brain behind them.

And sure, the simple “PCs shouldn’t hit each other” advice is all well and good for the 13-year-olds and emotionally maladjusted out there, where people are just acting disruptively or whatnot.  But in a game for grownups, it has its place.

A survey that asked how uniformed NYPD officers treated their undercover brethren made news; this, after an African-American undercover officer had been killed in a friendly-fire incident.

RaceWire.org, ColorLines magazine’s weblog, posted an item about it.  But it omitted a link to the survey.  When I clicked to the New York City news source, NY1, I found that they had omitted it too.

Before I shared this via Facebook, I refused to do so if I could find the survey; after some minutes of semi-zealous research, I found nothing.

This makes me wonder about what standard news audiences should expect or demand.  A sometime mentor, who runs a national radio show, spoke a lesson that stuck in my head: “There is so much bad journalism out there!”

This isn’t a big deal, but…yeah it is.

All news organizations, including NY1 and RaceWire.org, need to abide by consistent rules.  Either post the PDF, or a link to the survey, or explain why they do not.  If your audience can peruse and scrutinize the survey, they can judge its worth; without it, they have to assume.

Obama plans on directing 30,000 more troops to  the neglected mission in Afghanistan.  Playing right into the hands of the corrupt and immoral Stanley McChrystal, who is most famous for awarding the Silver Star to Pat Tillman knowing that he was killed by “friendly fire.” 

There are many qualities that created the buzz around Barack Obama’s bid for presidency; his charm, wit and dashing good looks.  However, the main reason for many was that he was, at the time, one of the most electable senators who had a respectable anti-war record.  In true Washington fashion, Obama has forgotten what has gotten him to America’s top position.

It was no secret that Obama viewed Afghanistan as the “good war” and he is investing high levels of political capital to build his legacy.  That makes his decision even more disappointing; he is willing to risk the lives of others for political return.

There is an easier way for Obama to build his legacy.  It can be done without sacrificing the lives of innocent civilians, 1,013 civilian deaths the first half of 2009.  It can be done without increasing the nation deficit, considering each troop costs $1.1 million per year.  It can be done by ending the death of American troops, 851 thus far.

What is this magic solution?  End the wars!

I’m a bit behind on this track as I just found it. Nonetheless, it deserves a mention in here as it is indeed an amazing tune. It’s a nu disco number with dreamy vocal that reminds me a lot to Friendly Fire’s Paris which features Au Revoir Simone. It’s been contantly playing on my iTunes’ playlist and I cant get enough of it.

The Golden Filter myspace

The Golden Filter – Solid gold

Media Coverup: Why Illegal Wars Last Forever

Following on from their recent remixes collection, here’s a brand new album from Canadian post-rockers Faunts, who impress from the get-go with their superbly crafted title track, a cocktail of Iron & WIne style harmonised voices, pulsating, primal beat boxes and soaring synth melodies. Sounding like Edmonton’s own answer to The Smiths, the band tackle ‘It Hurts Me All The Time’ with a superb knack for twisting a melody and porting old-fashioned songwriting values over to electronic music. As the album plays out it becomes clear that these guys are up their with fellow Canadians like Stars or Metric in terms of delivering intelligent, well crafted electronic pop music, bringing a real compositional finesse to tracks like ‘Explain’ and a fizzing energy to ‘Lights Are Always On’. Recommended.
-Boomkat

“allt öðruvísi nálgun á þetta ‘danstónlist-indírokk’ paradæmi sem hefur verið í gangi” -ívar pétur (karamba)

FAUNTS – Feel.Love.Thinking.Of.

Ein US Kriegsschiff hat offenbar den polnischen Hafen Gdingen (polnisch Gdynia) beschossen. Laut US Militärangaben aus versehen. Das die US-Army gelegentlich auch schon mal die eigenen Truppen beschießt ist spätestens seit dem Irak Krieg allgemein bekannt. Das nun auch Polen attackiert wird ist allerdings eine neue Qualität. Bestimmt haben sich einige Polen daran erinnert das hier schon einmal geschossen wurde. Und zwar im Jahr 1939 als die Wehrmacht damit begann das deutsche Territorium von der polnischen Fremdherrschaft zu befreien.
Sehen Sie und staunen sie! Die “US-Befreier” in Aktion:

The Phenomenal Handclap Band es un supergrupo, osea, que está integrado por músicos de otras bandas de fama reconocida. En total ocho componentes que provienen de TV on the radio, Sisé ó Calla, nombres representativos de la escena alternativa funk e indie rock neoyorkina.
En junio publicaron su primer album, que es bastaste recomendable, y en el que se incluye “You’ll Disappear” que acaban de sacar en maxi con remezclas de Prins Thomas, Munk, Ilya Santana y Horse Meat Disco.
Este que váis a ver ahora es el video promocional de la canción.

+info: Myspace The Phenomenal Hand Clap Band

HonestReporting Media BackSpin, 15. September 2009

Sollen die palästinensischen Polizisten, die während „Operation gegossenes Blei“ getötet wurden, als Zivilisten oder Kämpfer eingestuft werden? JCPA ging der Sache nach.

Insgesamt 343 palästinensische Sicherheitskräfte wurden während des Gaza-Krieges getötet.

286 palästinensische Sicherheitskräfte kamen ums Leben, die als Mitglieder einer Terrororganisation identifiziert wurden.

27 palästinensische Sicherheitskräfte wurden während des Krieges getötet, als sie sich Kampfeinsätze vorbereiteten.

89 Palästinenser insgesamt wurden am 27. Dezember 2008 getötet, als sie eine Ausbildungseinheit im Polizeihauptquartier von Gaza durchführten.

60 der während des Angriffes getöteten palästinensischen Polizisten waren Hamas-Leute.

Palästinensischen Behauptungen zufolge wurden während des Gaza-Krieges keine eigenen Leute durch „Friendly Fire“ getötet.

Mehr zu den Zahlen bei Elder of Ziyon. Und The New Republic befragt palästinensische und israelische Rechercheure zu den stark divergierenden Zahlen, was die zivilen Verluste betrifft.

A few years ago american pilots opened fire on a group of British soldiers in Afghanastan.  When it was all over a British soldier was dead.  The information in this story came from open source news reports and is only as accurate as the source information.

Is the solution to this another box welded into the cockpit of a pilot who is already in a time compressed situation?

Notice that several things contributed to this incident:

A solution based on human centered design will encompass the full range of systems that failed including training, improved identification systems, support for better situation awareness, team collaboration and communication procedures,  and training to improve readiness to use all of the new tools and procedures.  A human factors solution is far more than a new box welded into the cockpit and a solution that does not incorporate all of these systems will not be a solution at all.

We Were Nearly Wiped Out by ‘Friendly Fire’

Once again, one of our scout birds got shot down and the Blues were called to either rescue or recover the crew.
It was a typical rappel mission as there was no place near the crash site to land our chopper.
I was Blue India (the guy with the radio) so I was one of the first guys to rappel down to the burning Loach (scout bird).
As I recall six of us Blues went down to secure the area and remove the three badly burned bodies from the smoldering Loach.
A Medivac chopper arrived and dropped three body bags down to us. As the body bags were being lifted up to the hovering Medivac bird we began receiving sniper fire.
We always had one if not two Cobra helicopter gunships circling high above us in the event, we needed extra firepower. These Cobras (also called Snakes) were equipped with mini-gun and rockets and were very much feared by the enemy.
Lt. Michael LaChance was our platoon leader. He decided it was time to use one of our Cobras for a gun-run as we had no idea how many unfriendlies we were dealing with. We popped a smoke grenade to mark our position. Smoke is used because we were not visible from the air due to the density of the jungle. Lt. LaChance called in the gun-run, using the smoke as a guide for the pilot.
Suddenly, bamboo was flying everywhere with explosions all around us. I’ll never forget that sound, it sounded like a sewing machine on steroids, and the whole jungle began to rip apart. My first thought was ‘Charlie’ had some big stuff, and he opened up on us. I then looked up and saw our Cobra directly above us pulling out of his gun-run, and realized what happened. The smoke that marked our position had drifted too close to us and the pilot came in right on top of our position with mini-gun and rockets.
Three of our guys were injured by that incident but nothing serious. I lucked out again with only the crap scared out of me. After all, I was a FNG and just twenty years old, half way around the world in a strange land.
The Cobra pilot that made that near disastrous gun-run, was grounded for a short while because of that. In fact, he was beating the bush with us on our next recon mission…

The following is an excerpt from the opening of Chapter 6 — “Tactical Weapons and FAC Tactics” — of my book, Cessna Warbirds:

F-4 Releasing Bombs (US Air Force photo)

Various studies conducted by the US military from World War II to the present indicated that airstrikes are responsible for a relatively small percentage of “friendly fire” accidents (such as short rounds) that resulted in casualties. However, due to the great destructive potential of ordnance delivered by air, such accidents tended to cause more casualties per accident than either field artillery or naval guns. Short rounds and “friendly fire” accidents occurred due to normal ballistic dispersion of unguided weapons, possible aircrew errors in release parameters (especially if enemy ground fire was active), and aircraft or weapons equipment malfunctions.

Communications errors sometimes contributed to “friendly fire” accidents.  Examples that have actually occurred include:

• An Army company commander inadvertently transmitted his own unit’s coordinates rather than those of the enemy forces as the target for a blind air strike.
• For a radar controlled air strike, the initial portion of the target coordinates were encoded as “Yankee Foxtrot” but decoded as “Yankee Echo” — resulting in the bombs being dropped exactly 100 kilometers south of the intended target.
• An Army company commander radioed, “Do not bring the napalm closer.” Unfortunately, the first two words of his transmission were blocked by a slow‑keying transmitter. . .and napalm was spread over some of his own troops.

To be effective, a Forward Air Controller (FAC) had to know enough about a wide variety of air‑to‑ground weapons carried by fighter aircraft, artillery used by the Army, and naval guns based on ships to be sure he was directing the use of the best available type for a specific target. The FAC needed to know how the weapons were delivered, what fuzing options were available, what the likely effects would be, and what the minimum safe distance was to protect both himself and friendly ground forces. By ensuring that all fighter aircraft crews had the target in sight early, by properly choosing attack run‑in headings, and by paying close attention to safe separation distances from the friendlies, “friendly fire” accidents could be at least minimized.

Which brings to mind a quote from an anonymous fighter pilot:

“Short rounds cost us double; our own that we lose, and theirs that we don’t get.”

Rosie thought back home

His daddy never knew if he could feed the family

never knew if the owner would let him sharecrop next year

never knew what would happen

if anybody got bad sick

die I reckon

never knew when a gang of white covered men

would string him up

only knew that everything seemed hopeless

but he had to keep workin’

hopin’ something would happen

It ain’t right my son laying down his life

ain’t got no choice

come back dead or a hero maybe or just plain Rosie

His momma just worked and worked

and kept sayin’ things would get better

couldn’t get much worse

black clouds cross her face cloud her smile

be just the same

poll tax, nigger stuff, back of the bus

git out o’ the way white folks say

except maybe when they wants you to die fo’ them

she beamed ‘cause she had to

‘cause Rosie beamed nothin’ but sunshine

Rosie he wanna’ dream about the good things

trouble was he didn’t even know what they was

white army drawl, stripes, big fast talk

look fit fo’ a white sheet

he say put yo’ x on the sheet

fo’ years

seemed like the world

might got a whole bunch bigger mighty fast

gotta’ find out how much bigger it can get

don’t want to think

‘bout his ass shot off

some eneme he don’t even know

not even mad at

maybe some friendly fire

A voice

A growl

An eruption

comin’ down the trench

followed by Sgt Grole

and a kick in the ass

followed by a shrapnel Frisbee

that severed Rosie’s head

Hahaha, holy shit! Does this guy have talent or what? Straight up murders his friend on Russian television.

I guess in a vodka-soaked country, it’s like the Jamie Foxx/T Pain song says . . . blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol.

Friendly Fire (Flash)

“A friendly gardener game that is all about buying weapon upgrades and killing cute animals. Destroy cuddly creatures with 21 different weapons, but make sure your very stylish hat and a nice moustache dont get dirty.”

big props to one helluva generous blogger (not sure if he wants to publically thank him or not – but he knows who he is) for getting me a copy of the wendy & lisa album ‘friendly fire’.

the album, being typical bootleg fodder features not only the unreleased tracks from friendly fire, but a number of other rarities including pieces of their score work from the short-lived tv series ’snoops’ and the movie ’soul food’ as well as a number of demo’s & b-sides.  (love the fan-made c0ver art; not)

this makes me very happy.  very happy indeed.

the completist in me is desperate to find the unreleased album ‘friendly fire’ by wendy & lisa.  if anyone has it and wants to do a swap or can point me to a mp3 site that would be great.  most helpful. (it does live on a torrent site [found here] but i can’t get it work…)