PARANOIA

Burlington, the UK's underground city

2008-07-25T02:19:00.001-04:00

Via Daily Illuminator, a lengthy (if rather dry) history and tour of a secret underground city, or anyway a secret underground small town, in Corsham, Wiltshire (UK) -- a Cold War emergency refuge for 4,000 government officials. Variously called Hawthorn Central Government War Headquarters, Stockwell, Subterfuge, Turnstile, and more recently Site 3, the complex was first built in the early 1960s and maintained (at a cost that eventually rose to half a million pounds a year) until 2004. "The MOD [Ministry of Defence] is looking for a company to bring new life to the site. English Heritage have also expressed an interest in preserving part of the site for historic interest."

West End Games passes

2008-07-22T18:25:00.001-04:00

For historical reasons I note what may be the final passing of West End Games, which in its first incarnation in the 1980s published the original editions of PARANOIA. That version of West End ceased most operations in the mid-1990s and finally (as part of its parent company, Bucci Retail Group) declared bankruptcy in 1998. Eventually the rights to PARANOIA returned to the game's original designers, Dan Gelber, Greg Costikyan, and Eric Goldberg. They later licensed Mongoose Publishing to produce the current (2004) edition.

After the bankruptcy, West End (minus PARANOIA) changed hands a couple of times. The current owner, Eric J. Gibson, has struggled for some years. After an extended flamewar on the RPG.net forum, Gibson bade farewell to the roleplaying field. On the West End forum, he says he is now taking bids for individual properties. Though I haven't seen a formal list yet, I presume these properties include Torg, the D6 and Masterbook Systems, and the unquestioned prize of West End's current line, Junta. On another RPG.net forum thread, interested fans are discussing the prospects and wisdom of bidding.

Whether or not the West End name will persist remains unclear.

Truman Show Delusion

2008-07-22T02:09:00.002-04:00

Despite its name, the PARANOIA roleplaying game doesn't derive much literal inspiration from the mental illness of paranoid personality disorder. Real-world paranoids are sad, humorless unfortunates, not at all the ideal model for players playing Alpha Complex Troubleshooters. But in the last few years this age-old mental labyrinth has opened what may be an interesting new subdivision.

In 2006, two brother psychiatrists, Joel Gold of New York's Bellevue Hospital and Ian Gold at Montreal's McGill University, proposed a new derangement they called "Truman Show Delusion": "patients who claim they are subjects of their own reality TV shows." Only a couple of years late, Canada's National Post is hot on the story:

While traditionalists insist that this delusion offers nothing new -- it is no different from, say, a deranged man who believes that the CIA has planted a microchip in his tooth -- the Gold brothers argue otherwise.

"It's really a question of the extent of the delusion," said Joel Gold, 39, who has been on staff at New York's Bellevue Hospital Center for eight years. "The delusions we typically treat are narrow: There is Capgras Delusion, where someone will think his family has been replaced by doubles. Or the Fregoli Delusion, where someone believes that one person is persecuting him: a doctor, mailman, butcher. The Truman Show Delusion, though, involves the entire world."

He also says that The Truman Show had an impact on patients that other films did not, no matter how powerful they were. [...T]hree of the five patients he treated at the storied mental health hospital directly likened their plight to The Truman Show, the 1998 film about Truman Burbank, an affable suburbanite who slowly becomes aware that his every movement is broadcast 24/7 to voyeuristic viewers around the world.

The five patients Dr. Gold treated were white men between the ages of 25 and 34, the majority of whom held university degrees. "I realized that I was and am the center, the focus of attention by millions and millions of people," explained one patient, an army veteran who came from an upper-middle-class upbringing. "My family and everyone I knew were and are actors in a script, a charade whose entire purpose is to make me the focus of the world's attention."

But there are those who say this media tie-in psychosis is mere fashion-following:

Austrian Thomas Stompe, a leading psychiatrist with a traditional bent, believes there are seven kinds of delusions, period.

"A number of recent case reports published during the last 20 years described a quick inclusion of new technologies and cultural innovations into schizophrenic delusions, which led many of the authors to the conclusion that the 'Zeitgeist' is creating new delusional contents," warns Dr. Stompe, the lead author of a paper entitled "Old Wine in New Bottles? Stability and Plasticity of the Contents of Schizophrenic Delusions."

Published five years ago in the journal Psychopathology, the abstract concludes that there are only a few eternal themes of "extraordinary anthropological importance": persecution, grandiosity, guilt, religion, hypochondria, jealousy and love.

Those other Zeitgeist developments, presumably the Truman Show Delusion among them, belong in subcategories according to this categorization. [...] "The major topics are always the same."

(Via TechDirt.)

PARANOIA in the real world: One MILLION terrorists

2008-07-15T01:13:00.002-04:00

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the US government's terrorist watch list now has one million names, including members of Congress, war heroes, everyone named "Robert Johnson" and "Gary Smith," and (until last month) Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela. Nearly 250,000 names were added in the last year alone. (More at Daily Kos.)

Remember, citizen: Traitors are everywhere and can be anybody, even -- yes -- Gary Smith!

Lost scenes from Lang's "Metropolis" rediscovered

2008-07-03T14:12:00.001-04:00

In listing the influences on PARANOIA, we sometimes overlook Fritz Lang's landmark 1927 film Metropolis. The full version of Metropolis was believed lost, but now the German magazine De Zeit reports key scenes from Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” have been rediscovered:

Fritz Lang presented the original version of Metropolis in Berlin in January 1927. [...] At the time it was the most expensive German film ever made. It was intended to be a major offensive against Hollywood. However, the film flopped with critics and audiences alike. Representatives of the American firm Paramount considerably shortened and re-edited the film. They oversimplified the plot, even cutting key scenes. The original version could only be seen in Berlin until May 1927 – from then on it was considered to have been lost forever. [...]

Adolfo Z. Wilson, a man from Buenos Aires and head of the Terra film distribution company, arranged for a copy of the long version of “Metropolis” to be sent to Argentina in 1928 to show it in cinemas there. Shortly afterwards a film critic called Manuel Peña Rodríguez came into possession of the reels and added them to his private collection. In the 1960s Peña Rodríguez sold the film reels to Argentina’s National Art Fund – clearly nobody had yet realised the value of the reels. A copy of these reels passed into the collection of the Museo del Cine (Cinema Museum) in Buenos Aires in 1992, the curatorship of which was taken over by Paula Félix-Didier in January this year. Her ex-husband, director of the film department of the Museum of Latin American Art, first entertained the decisive suspicion: He had heard from the manager of a cinema club, who years before had been surprised by how long a screening of this film had taken. Together, Paula Félix-Didier and her ex-husband took a look at the film in her archive – and discovered the missing scenes.

[...T]here are several scenes which are essential in order to understand the film: The role played by the actor Fritz Rasp in the film for instance, can finally be understood. Other scenes, such as for instance the saving of the children from the worker’s underworld, are considerably more dramatic. [...]

The rediscovered material is in need of restoration after 80 years; the pictures are scratched, but clearly recognizable. Martin Koerber, the restorer of the hitherto longest known version of “Metropolis”, who also examined the footage, said to ZEITmagazin: “No matter how bad the condition of the material may be, the original intention of the film, including all of its minor characters and subplots, is now once again tangible for the normal viewer. The rhythm of the film has been restored.”

PARANOIA for newbie Gamemasters

2008-06-30T15:22:00.001-04:00

Hard-working Paranoia-Live.net Citizen No. 5127 has posted "Introduction for newbie GMs," an article compiling the advice of many wise forum residents to Gamemasters running PARANOIA for the first time. Commendation point, 5127!

Worldwide Adventure Writing Month 2008

2008-06-26T18:19:00.003-04:00

How soon 12 monthcycles flash by! Already it is almost Year of The Computer 214 Month 7, or (in Old Reckoning parlance) Worldwide Adventure Writing Month. Once again Jeff Rients is encouraging all roleplayers to test their creativity by writing an adventure of any length for their favorite RPG. Obviously all citizens of loyal heart who are within range of an Internal Security camera will volunteer to write for PARANOIA. But in fact, as Rients observes in "What System Should I Pick?" any game is permissible. The assignment begins next week, so start planning!

Underground Moscow

2008-06-19T02:36:00.003-04:00

Comrades! Many many many times ve have been linkink to photos of abandoned Soviet tunnels. Never never never can ve be gettink tired of photos of tunnels. Now, vith compellink title "The Underground Moscow," how could ve possibly not be linkink to English Russia blog's amazink photos of genuine Soviet-era KGB dungeons, flooded conduits, and alvays more tunnels, ever more mysterious nightmare tunnels? Go, and see Internal Security and Technical Serwices tunnels made wisible!

Help us playtest Android!

2008-06-15T13:37:00.001-04:00

On the Paranoia-Live.net forums, Eric Zawadzki of the Traitor Recycling Studio (he wrote, among other PARANOIA pieces, "Mockumentary" in Service, Service!) calls for blindtesters for the Studio's latest RPG project, working title Android:

After about 2 1/2 years of development and local playtesting, the Traitor Recycling Studio (the same folks who've written tons of supplements for PARANOIA) have finally reached the point at which we need blindtesting for the current version of Android. Blindtesting means we need people who aren't on the Traitor Recycling Studio's design team for the project to playtest the rules and tell us what works and what could be better. This is our first non-PARANOIA project, and we're really excited about it, but we need your help!

In this game, players take the roles of androids and the humans who control them. As an android, the player possesses enormous physical and mental prowess, but it is an object with no control over its own destiny. As a controller, the player wields absolute power over another player’s android, but he is also responsible for even its smallest failures. The two depend on and are defined by one another. Both obey the ones they serve in hopes of realizing the dreams that are dearest to them. At its heart, Android is about innocence, freedom, power, and human desire.

If you are interested in participating, please take a look at the playtester resource page. Whether you decide to run the game for a few sessions or a few months, we need all the feedback we can get.

Paraguay's INFRARED Market

2008-06-10T15:15:00.003-04:00

Sacha Feinman's feature article in the latest GOOD Magazine, "Blacker-than-black market," presents the most perfect imaginable description of an INFRARED Market in Alpha Complex, with the minor qualification that the market in question is, in fact, in Paraguay:

The downtown market is dense and compact, a maze of concrete spanning a five-block-by-five-block square. Despite its size, the market is extraordinary for its diversity. There’s the upscale Monalisa shopping mall, where the nouveau riche stock up on authentic Montblanc pens and Bulgari jewelry, alongside sidewalk kiosks offering pirated copies of Die Hard 4.0 in bulk and where San Francisco 49ers fans can buy shoddily sewn “Startar” jackets. Thanks to the fact that Paraguay has lower import tariffs than either of its neighbors, Ciudad del Este essentially functions as a massive outdoor duty-free shop—a destination for anyone looking for a bargain.

At the markets, business is international. Everything comes from somewhere else, stopping in Ciudad del Este for a brief respite on card tables and in malls before being packed into the luggage of tourists and smugglers who flock here by the hundreds daily, stocking up on My Little Pony dolls, PlayStations, bootleg DVDs, brass knuckles, and, of course, machine guns. This can make it a dangerous place. Even the city’s police admit that Ciudad del Este has become a haven for criminals.

I know -- you harbor lingering doubts that an incredibly illegal Alpha Complex black market, secured from Internal Security only by diligent secret society action and hefty bribes, would actually sell My Little Pony dolls. To see what the IR Markets do sell --

weapons like Psionic Detonators, Nuclear Slugthrower Rounds, Toilet Firebombs, and (brrr!) the Chainsaw Gun;

blackmail material to use on high-clearance citizens (what could go wrong?);

illicit services like Mutant Power Training, NuIdentity, the online game AlphaRage, Alibis-R-Us, and Treason Scene Cleanup;

medications such as ClotAlot, Meme Paste, and the first drug for bots, FORTRANce;

and miscellaneous oddities like CyberNeck, the Speak-with-Head Perfused Brain Reactivator and 'Squishy' the Faciomimetic Bio-blob

-- please consult the 96-page equipment book STUFF 2: The Gray Subnets. Everything knowable about the Alpha Complex black market is in there, along with over 100 all-new thingies to dazzle the criminal-minded Troubleshooter. And what other kind is there?

Published last fall, STUFF 2 is one of the best books we turned out at the Traitor Recycling Studio, and I'm dismayed it has received little attention to date. In the near future I'll do what I can to rectify the situation.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Erick Wujcik (1951-2008)

2008-06-08T22:08:00.000-04:00

Though he fought nobly and held on much longer than his doctors expected, Erick Wujcik died Saturday evening, June 7, 2008, of pancreatic cancer. His longtime close friend, Palladium's Kevin Siembieda, reports Wujcik's passing. Before his death, Erick received many fond tributes on ErickWujcik.com and on forums throughout the industry.

Erick was loved by roleplayers worldwide as the designer of Amber Diceless Roleplaying and author of many Palladium RPGs and supplements, including Ninjas and Superspies and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. PARANOIA fans also know Erick as the author of Clones in Space (reprinted in Flashbacks 2) and the "Drugs" and "Psychological Tests" sections of Acute PARANOIA (reprinted in the current Mongoose rulebook).

Erick helped me with advice and information several times over the years, and I unreservedly confirm the universal consensus regarding his endless generosity, keen and enthusiastic intelligence, and copious talent. His death is a sad, sad loss for gaming and the many who loved him.

Architecture of Authority

2008-05-23T20:44:00.000-04:00

Via Boing Boing, here's photographer Richard Ross's exhibition of Architecture of Authority (Aperture Press, 2007). John R. MacArthur's accompanying essay discusses these "unsettling and thought-provoking pictures of architectural spaces that exert power over the individuals within them":

From a Montessori preschool to churches, mosques and diverse civic spaces including a Swedish courtroom, the Iraqi National Assembly hall and the United Nations, the images in Architecture of Authority build to ever harsher manifestations of power: an interrogation room at Guantanamo, segregation cells at Abu Ghraib, and finally, a capital punishment death chamber.

Next time you need to describe an Alpha Complex briefing room or Happy View Therapeutic Realignment Center, check it out.

Japanese highways = Alpha Complex

2008-05-22T01:46:00.000-04:00

All transbot passengers, autocar drivers, and other future victims should check out Ken Ohyama's breathtaking photos of Japanese highway interchanges. They remind me of Joe Nishizawa's photos of underground Tokyo that I linked in "Alpha Complex made real" (April 16, 2008).

I'm not sure where you'd fit these overpasses and cloverleafs in an underground city -- but Alpha Complex, like any state of mind, can be a big place.

Running PARANOIA for the first time: How-to

2008-05-20T19:22:00.004-04:00

Another fine resource on the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net: Citizen No. 5127 has collected many helpful links from the P-L.net forums about gamemastering PARANOIA for the first time. These posts are publicly available (RED Clearance):

New at GMing...any tips?

Advice needed

New to PARANOIA

I want to GM, but I need some info

Curious about GMing a game

First-time PARANOIA GM

GMing PARANOIA for the first time!

5127 also lists four posts in the Gamemaster-only forum. To see these, register at P-L.net (it's free), then ask for admission to these forums by sending a private message (PM) to -- uhh -- I'm looking around, hold on -- well, you know, some likely-looking administrator or moderator -- their numbers have been dwindling lately -- or, here's an idea, post a polite whine on a RED-Clearance forum asking to sit at the big GM-only dining table.

PARANOIA articles in Signs & Portents magazine

2008-05-19T15:28:00.001-04:00

On Paranoia-Live.net, loyal citizen CPUreaucrat has compiled a reference list of PARANOIA-related articles in Mongoose Publishing's in-house magazine, Signs & Portents. These articles are various and uneven; that said, the recent entries by Gareth (The Traitor's Manual) Hanrahan are uniformly worthwhile. Gareth is even now finishing up the first new PARANOIA supplement in many months, The Big Book of Bots, to be published later this summer.

eBay auctions nonexistent PARANOIA product

2008-05-18T10:42:00.000-04:00

An inexplicable eBay auction for the never-published and nonexistent PARANOIA mission Spin Control prompted a Mongoose Publishing forum thread detailing the "Spin Control" publishing history. In brief: "Spin Control" has been published in Alpha Complex Nights but, to date, nowhere else. The product in the eBay auction doesn't exist and has never existed. So what does this seller think he has 990 copies of? No idea.

RPG.net Gaming Index reaches 10,000

2008-05-13T20:46:00.004-04:00

On an industry mailing list, RPG.net's Shannon Appelcline wrote, "We hit a great milestone on the RPG.net Gaming Index last week: 10,000 unique books and magazines. When I consider that my old standby reference, Heroic Worlds, had about 3,600 entries, I'm amazed by both how much the industry has grown since then and how much data we've managed to collect in just a couple of years. At this point I'm pretty sure we have 90+% of printed RPGs, though a lesser percentage of magazines and PDFs." Here's the Skotos press release.

PARANOIA has always rated quite well on the RPG.net Index. At this writing, the current Mongoose edition stands at #34 out of 1,083 games in the Core Rules category, tied with the 2004 religious-apocalypse RPG Heaven & Earth (Event Horizons/Guardians of Order/Abstract Nova) and a hundredth-point behind indie masterworks Burning Wheel and Dogs in the Vineyard. PARANOIA is also #61 overall among 10,000 products -- actually 10,027 as I write, which shows how the Index continues to grow.

Thanks to all the registered RPG.net users who have voted for PARANOIA. Though I could exhort newcomers to visit the RPG.net Gaming Index page for PARANOIA and start industriously stuffing the ballot box, in fact the Index guards against such chicanery. Appelcline and RPG.net's Christopher Allen have posted many deep-thinking articles about systems for collective choice on Allen's fascinating but now-dormant blog, Life With Alacrity. These articles discuss specific measures to dilute the impact of "drive-by voting." So if you want to support PARANOIA, just grit your teeth and become an honest, upright member of the RPG.net community. Hey, you could do worse.

The Battlespork

2008-05-04T01:27:00.001-04:00

Gareth Hanrahan's PARANOIA mission "Spin Control," collected in Alpha Complex Nights, begins with a highly important Troubleshooter assignment to maintain and/or destroy spork supplies in an INFRARED cafeteria. The mission naturally progresses from there to -- yes, you're way ahead of me -- to a public-relations campaign for brain-eating zombies. But the idea that pertains here is the spork.

Now, spork fans, witness the revolutionary Battlespork -- spoon, fork, toothbrush, and self-cleaning razor all in one! First proposed in 1992, trapped in bureaucratic limbo to this day, the Battlespork Spork-Toothbrush-Shaver would help defend our overburdened troops from the omnipresent menace of oral bacteria.

(Via the Steve Jackson Games Daily Illuminator.)

Alphaslang article in Signs & Portents

2008-05-01T18:41:00.001-04:00

Signs & Portents issue #56 (.PDF link), the latest issue of the Mongoose Publishing in-house magazine, is available for free download. This issue includes "Keep Your Dictionary Handy," a long, fun article by Zild (of Paranoia-Live.net) about slang terms used in Alpha Complex. Zild compiled the common slang seen in published PARANOIA books (vatslime, goosack), drew more from the active "Alphaslang" topic on the P-L.net forums (bootsmoke -- a dead citizen, plus seven other usages; still dripping -- recently decanted), and added many all his own, including a section of Commie Rhyming Slang, brand names, and a disquietingly long list of euphemisms for dying:

has gone to that big briefing office above the dome.

is shooting trouble with UVs.

donated his body to R&D.

joined the scrubot's list of things to do.

is on tomorrow's menu.

et cetera....

Zild remarks in the Alphaslang topic, "Further contributions are very much welcome, as I already have my eyes set on a sequel!" Commendation point to citizen Zild -- and a treason point for not alphabetizing the list.

Alpha Complex made real

2008-04-16T11:39:00.000-04:00

Alpha Complex comes to life in Japanese photographer Joe Nishizawa's incredible photos of underground Tokyo.

(Via Chris Nakashima-Brown at No Fear of the Future.)

PARANOIA in the real world: Your 23% smile is insufficient, citizen

2008-04-10T17:49:00.002-04:00

Loyal citizen Elle-R-KNO of Paranoia-Live.net forwards this Wired blog report of breakthroughs in Japanese smile-measuring technology:

The breadth of a smile can be measured by new technology from Japanese electronics and health care company Omron Corp. [...]

In a demonstration, a camcorder took videos of journalists covering the announcement. Percentage numbers indicating how much each person was smiling popped up in bold blue letters next to their faces on a monitor, flashing higher or lower as their expressions changed. The numbers ranged as high as 89 percent for a person who was grinning, while a somber face registered 0 percent.

Sony Corp. already has a similar Smile Shutter function for its digital cameras which automatically clicks the shutter when people in the image break into a smile.

But Kawamoto said Omron hopes to used its technology in the medical field, to assess the emotional state of patients, or pack it in mobile phones. Okao Catch can also be useful for people who want to perfect their smiles, or for robot communication to make it easier for machines to decipher human reactions, according to Omron.

Doubtless this tech will soon adorn an airport security line near you....

The real world now 40% paranoid?

2008-04-06T23:20:00.000-04:00

The King's College London Institute of Psychiatry posted a story on April Fool's Day that seems not to be a joke: "Virtual reality tube ride reveals extent of public paranoia."

Researchers stuck 200 test subjects on a four-minute virtual-reality simulation of a subway train ride. "The carriage contained neutral computer people (avatars) that breathed, looked around, and sometimes met the gaze of the participants." And lo and behold, the test subjects were spooked!

The research, led by psychologist Dr Daniel Freeman, and funded by the Wellcome Trust, demonstrates that suspicious or paranoid thoughts are much more common in the general population than was previously thought and that they are almost as common as anxiety and depression. [...]

Dr Freeman and colleagues found that the participants interpreted the same computer characters very differently. The most common reaction was to find the virtual reality characters friendly or neutral, but almost 40% of the participants experienced at least one paranoid thought. The participants were extensively assessed before entering the train ride, and it was found that those who were anxious, worried, focused on the worst-case scenarios and had low self-esteem were the most likely to have paranoid thoughts. [...]

"In the past, only those with a severe mental illness were thought to experience paranoid thoughts, but now we know that this is simply not the case," says Dr Freeman. "About one-third of the general population regularly experience persecutory thoughts. This shouldn’t be surprising. At the heart of all social interactions is a vital judgment whether to trust or mistrust, but it is a judgment that is error-prone. We are more likely to make paranoid errors if we are anxious, ruminate and have had bad experiences from others in the past." [...]

People who feared terrorism on the Underground tended to report more paranoid thoughts in the virtual train, possibly reflecting the after-effects of the London bombings on 7 July 2005. However, the researchers also found that people who regularly used the Underground experienced less paranoid thoughts in the virtual train.

Wow, science is really marching on at King's. Comments on the Slashdot topic "VR Study Says 40% of Us Are Paranoid" highlight the junk-science angle, especially this one from LighterShadeOfBlack:

A VR reproduction of the London underground? A place where you're crowded by people, a place which in all honesty does have a reputation for being a haven for pickpockets (whether that's deserved or not, I don't know), and oh yes, one other thing -- the site of the last major (successful) terrorist attack on Britain. [...] Being somewhat cautious in that particular situation is a world away from the headlines implicating that 40% of us are clinically paranoid all the time.

Reasons to be Cheerful

2008-04-02T07:50:00.002-04:00

The new issue 55 of Mongoose Publishing's free online magazine Signs & Portents includes a short, pithy PARANOIA article by Gareth (The Traitor's Manual) Hanrahan. "Reasons to be Cheerful" has nothing to do with the Greg Egan short story of that name. Rather, the article lists an array of secret motives Troubleshooter characters harbor (escape, drugs, gaining mutations, "free thinking"), along with conditions that satisfy those motives. By achieving these hidden goals, players earn Perversity points, which may provide some consolation as your free-thinking character is hauled off for a deep brainscrub.

Gareth is all over this issue. He also contributed a one-page overview and a short scenario for the forthcoming Mongoose edition of Traveller, that languorous and idyllic project that has distracted him from writing the forthcoming PARANOIA bot book. Enough shilly-shallying, Gareth, get to work!

ParanoiaFiles.com

2008-04-01T01:04:00.003-04:00

I hate posting on April Fool's Day, AKA "Internet Jackass Day," because anything I say is automatically discounted. But this happened to be the day loyal citizen Saul Resnikoff at Paranoia-Live.net forwarded to me a kind invitation from one Lisa Axelrod to look at ParanoiaFiles.com.

This site takes "paranoia in the real world" literally -- it's a collection of reports on technology from the viewpoint of, not PARANOIA RPG players, but literal sufferers of paranoid personality disorder. The surprise here is the humorous tone, similar to the "Illuminated Site of the Week" on Steve Jackson Games' Daily Illuminator blog.

Poke around ParanoiaFiles to find plenty of items suitable for R&D field testing, such as dental implants and encoded tire treads.

Asteroid Stackpole

2008-03-27T11:29:00.002-04:00

Asteroid 165612 (2001 FP86) has been named "Stackpole" in honor of novelist and game designer Michael A. Stackpole. Congratulations, Mike!

You may know Mike for his many Star Wars and Battletech tie-in novels, his own DragonCrown War fantasy series and other original books, or his many roleplaying games and supplements for FASA, Mayfair, and Flying Buffalo, among others. But the asteroid christening, according to 165612's co-discoverer Jeff Medkeff, honors Mike for his decades of worthy work in the skeptic community. Mike is Executive Director of the Arizona Skeptics; he has firmly fought the armies of ignorance, especially during the 1980s outbreak of anti-RPG hysteria. He is a calm, constant voice of rationality.

NASA has the orbital details of Asteroid Stackpole. Medkeff covers much of the blogosphere's reaction to the recently announced asteroid names, of which Stackpole is only one. Another asteroid was named for Phil Plait, who runs the excellent Bad Astronomy blog.

I thought Mike Stackpole wasn't the first game designer to get an asteroid -- could have sworn the late Gary Gygax had one already -- but I can't find anything about Gygax in the asteroid belt, nor Dave Arneson, nor any others among the usual suspects. So maybe Mike is once again leading the way for the rest of us.

Am I envious? Duh. But you know, by now I've envied Mike for so many years I'm well into Envy Fatigue. You know -- "Yeah okay, Mike, an asteroid, that's great -- a new species of orchid, you say? That's nice -- what? Your face on the thousand-dollar bill? Your own Constitutional amendment? Yeah, congrats, whatever...."