Hillary Clinton for President

The party nears a Trump rally.

   

I know, I know. I can hear the groans already. "Politics doesn't have any place on this kind of blog." "Stick to writing about RPGs, addict." "I'm never going to read your blog again."

This election cycle has broken all boundaries, snapped all taboos. And what hangs in the balance is important enough that it ought to be talked about everywhere. When so much depends upon the outcome of a small handful of Americans, there is no place in which politics should be off-limits. If I help convince even one person, it was worth it. If I lose your readership because of these comments, I didn't want it in the first place. 

The New York Times recently called Donald Trump the most unqualified person to ever run for the office of president. They were spot on. The man is a living embarrassment to the United States of America, and a nightmare to contemplate as a president of the United States. The idea that the presidency is even within his grasp--that nearly 50% of voters plan to cast their ballot for this immoral, ignorant, unfeeling horror of a candidate fills me with shame and despair for the future of this country.

I don't have to recount all of the things that make him a terrifying candidate with terrifying policy proposals--just read The New York Times or USA Today (which has otherwise never taken sides in a presidential race). Don't trust papers in such liberal cities? Try the Dallas Times Herald, which hasn't endorsed a Democrat in 75 years, or the Arizona Republic, which has never endorsed a Democrat. Or, frankly, read the endorsement of any newspaper, because only six newspapers in the entire country have endorsed Trump, and together they serve a population of about 25,000 people. "Why should I trust what newspapers have to say?" you ask? Because they're run by people who spend every day researching what's actually going on in the world. But my own arguments against Trump don't rely on newspaper endorsements; I'm just pointing you there because they make the arguments better than I could. You could also listen to the opinions of nearly 400 economists, both liberal and conservative, who call him a "dangerous, destructive choice." Are you a pro-business Republican? Listen to the opinions of literally every single CEO of the Fortune 100. I mean, I'd point to endorsements from the Harvey Milk Club, the Humane society, NARAL, the NRDC, and the Sierra Club, too, but if you care about those, you're already voting for Clinton.

Hillary Clinton is far from a perfect candidate (although she is also far from the corrupt, criminal monster that Republicans have made her out to be by simply repeating the same accusations over and over). If you are a Republican, she might enact a few policies that you disagree with. But she won't dissolve NATO, wreck the world economy, cancel the health insurance of 40 million Americans, appoint lunatics to the Supreme Court, reverse progress on minority rights, give a national voice to racists and misogynists, and do god-knows-what with the nuclear football. You can suck up 4 years of a Clinton presidency to avoid the end of American civilization as we know it, can't you?

If you're an American citizen and eligible to vote, I beg of you, go out on Tuesday and vote for Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. Vote for anyone else that you agree with down ballot, but don't turn the presidency over to a callow, egotistical monster. And don't increase the chances that he'll win by voting for a third-party candidate. When we can get true election reform, including ranked-choice balloting, I will welcome the golden age of third parties, but this is not the election to screw around with.

I could end with something dramatic and say that if Trump wins, I will cancel this blog in protest. While this isn't true, I will probably be forced to give up the blog because Trump has already pledged to cancel my health insurance and de-fund the government organizations that hold most of my contracts. I'll have to go get a real job, maybe move, and won't be able to play Fate: Gates of Dawn in the middle of the day. So, if nothing else, vote for Clinton to keep the CRPG reviews coming. [Edit: for anyone who misunderstood this, I didn't mean to suggest that I play games during the time I'm supposed to be working a government job. Rather, the nature of my contracts gives me the flexibility to work when I want to work--nights, weekeneds, whenever--so I can better manage both my work and leisure time. I've always given the government an excellent product for the money that they pay me and have never misrepresented my hours.]

Back to our normal programming tomorrow. I don't intend to make this a debate, so I won't be responding to comments, but I'll leave commenting open because it's only fair. Just as in the regular posts, offensive comments with obscenities or insults get deleted.

******

Three follow-up comments, two short, one long:

1. Where are all you people when I post about RPGs? I don't mind that you commented on this post, but if you chose this post to make your first comment, whether supportive or not, I'm a little disappointed.

2. For everyone saying something like, "I come here to read about RPGs, not politics," please note that I only post about RPGs every 2 or 3 days. You may notice that I posted about an RPG on Wednesday. You'll see another one later today or early tomorrow. The cycle of RPG postings was not interrupted by my support of Hillary Clinton for president. If you like this blog because of my RPG reviews, you have lost nothing. You could have just skipped this entry.

3. Let me clarify a bit more on what I meant by, "If I lose your readership because of these comments, I didn't want it in the first place."

In some ways, it's nice that we live in a world in which not everyone has the same values. It would be boring otherwise. Our combinations of values make us unique. But then again, you want a certain limit on the deviations of those values. I'm happy to be your friend if you tip 15% or tip 25%, but not if you leave Jack Chick tracts in place of a tip.

If we all had the same values, political debates would come down purely to facts, and they would be boring. They'd go:

Debater 1: We need to stop taxing Americans and spending their hard-earned money on foreign aid. The foreign aid budget makes up 25% of government spending!

Debater 2: No, the foreign aid budget makes up 1% of government spending.

Debater 1: Oh, I see. I misread the chart. That's not so bad, then. Never mind.

But it doesn't work that way. Instead, Debater 1 simply does not agree with the value that the United States ought to give any of its money, raised primarily from income taxes on its citizens, to other countries, no matter what percentage it makes up. Debater 2 thinks that there is strategic value in foreign aid that pays off in an improved world economy and global security. They might still fight over the "facts," but only as weapons to promote their specific values.

We often argue over facts because we don't want to admit our values. Right now, there's a debate going on about how much election fraud there is. The general consensus among people who know seems to be that there's hardly any, and all these laws meant to deter it are a waste of money and a clear attempt to disenfranchise voters. But here's the underlying value that we don't often say: I would oppose voter ID laws even if voter fraud was quite common because I think the greater evil is in disenfranchising voters. The death penalty is another one. It doesn't deter crime and costs more than keeping someone in prison for life. But what if it did deter crime and cost less? I'd still oppose it. My value is the harm of executing a single innocent person outweighs any possible cost savings or deterrent effect.

People on the right do it, too. We have arguments about how many people are killed with guns versus how many are saved with "defensive gun use." But admit it: even if the number people killed were far, far, higher than the number saved, you still wouldn't support gun control because your value is to preserve gun ownership rights. That's fine. I might not agree with the value, but I at least respect its existence. We should be more open when it comes to admitting our values. It saves time. No point arguing the facts if the facts don't matter anyway.

The problem with values, though, is that they're deep-rooted, hard to change, and often very personal. And every so often, when the divide in values is strong enough, you have to take a stand. This is how wars happen. The American Civil War came down basically to values. It ended up wiping an entire value from American society. I've heard presidential candidates say some pretty odious things, but I've never heard one advocate a return to a slave system. What if one did? What if an entire pro-slavery movement sprung up? Right or left, north or south, you'd be willing to stand up and fight against that, wouldn't you? I mean, physically take up arms. What if a group of people in the mid-west believed it was okay to stone a woman to death for adultery? You'd join a march out there and put yourself  between the stone-throwers and her body, wouldn't you? Maybe throw a few stones back at them? I'd happily join you.

Fortunately, most values divides aren't so great that we'd be willing to resort to physical violence (although that itself is a value, and some people are willing to engage in it more readily than others). Instead, we have a host of lesser "solutions" on a fairly long scale. If you think that creationism ought to be taught in schools, I'm not willing to go to war over that, but I won't be marrying you, either. If you believe in de-funding Planned Parenthood, you'll probably be invited to the larger post-Thanksgiving party that my wife and I throw on the following Saturday rather than the more intimate "real" Thanksgiving. If you rail against gay marriage, I won't show up at your house with a baseball bat, but I will unfriend you on Facebook.

If you tend to vote Republican, you're already on the other side of a lot of my values, probably. It's tough to say, because there are a lot of political issues and it's a fairly arbitrary combination of them that coalesce in to the Democratic and Republican platforms. But generally speaking, I don't respect someone's decision to side with a party that seems eager to suppress minority rights, promote religion in schools and government, deny climate change, and slash social programs, not even if you agree with their energy policy. Still, I will and do work with Republicans. I won't get up and leave the table if I find out my dinner companion is a Republican. I'd give one a ride if his car was broken down on the highway.

Supporting Donald Trump, on the other hand--that takes how I feel about supporting Republicans and multiplies it by 10. I'm still not so far on the side of the continuum that I'll go to war over Trump's election, but if you support him, you're cut out of my life. No, it's not because I don't "get" him; it's not because I've been brainwashed by the liberal media; it's because he has shown that his values are so different than mine that we can't coexist in the same America. I'm perfectly happy to admit that he's not the worst person in the world. He doesn't believe in killing gay people, for instance, or hanging people for witchcraft, or re-instituting slavery, or (I don't think, despite what some other anti-Trump people might say) seizing the presidency for life, or refusing to allow women to drive. There are some world leaders that do believe these things. They are demonstrably worse than Trump. But Trump may be, in my sense of values, the worst person to ever receive a major party nomination for president. I say "may" because I'm fuzzy on some of the candidates in the late 1800s. He is as un-American to me as I'm sure I am to him. There is a huge values divide between us. He won't even be invited to the post-Thanksgiving party.

Where does that leave us? I spend a lot of time on this blog. I try to keep it informative and entertaining. It occupies more of my life than it probably should, frankly. It's personal to me. And it's free. You don't have to pay for anything. I make you watch like one ad. You don't know who I am, and I don't know who you are, but when you read my blog, I'm extending a kind of friendship. I'm doing you a kind of favor. If we knew each other in another way, I might connect with you on LinkedIn, or lend you $50 if you needed it.

If you honestly support Donald Trump, then your values are so different from mine that I would disconnect from you on LinkedIn, I wouldn't be inclined to lend you $50, and I don't want you to benefit from the effort that I put into this blog. You are hurting America, hurting the world, hurting me, and thus don't deserve to benefit from a free favor that I'm doing you. I'd help you out of a burning car, but I don't want you sharing this personal part of my life, this personal journey with me. Obviously, there is nothing that I can do to keep you away, but if you support Trump, you are not welcome here. You are not welcome to the fruits of my labor. So keep telling me how I've lost you as a reader. It makes me feel that, if only for me, this post really did some good.

An Addictive Personality Manifests in Many Ways

I'm going to go ahead and say I've "won."

Back to my primary addiction.

Written Fantasy and the Malazan Book of the Fallen

I often can't identify which characters from inside a book are on the front cover, but this is clearly Anomander Rake with Dragnipur.

I've said here several times that I don't like Lord of the Rings. Nonetheless, I can appreciate it. To me, Rings is like Wizardry for many modern CRPG gamers: they salute it for its contributions to the oeuvre, but they don't find it particularly enjoyable. In my case, I just think Tolkien was a lousy writer. He created evocative worlds and languages, but he needed someone like Brandon Sanderson to punch up the copy.

In discussions of the "best" or "greatest" fantasy novels of all time, I think we have to exclude writers like Tolkien. He's the source, after all--the ur-writer who established the archetypes, who outlined the tropes. Almost all modern fantasy--novels, games, and films--owe Tolkien some debt. So let's take him off the table. After him, a variety of authors developed the genre, and I think in recent years, we've seen fantasy writing reach a certain peak.

I want to make a case for the Malazan Book of the Fallen series as the greatest fantasy series of all time.

In yesterday's posting, I made a sly allusion to the series, which Kyle Haight noted that he caught. His comment set me thinking about how I don't write much about fantasy series, even though I consume them in the thousands of pages. I don't know if I'm a naturally voracious reader, but my work/travel schedule, which involves at least two flights a week, has left me with a bonanza of time for reading. This has even affected my CRPG playing, a bit: whereas I would often spend evenings in hotel rooms playing games, nowadays I'm equally as likely to take my Kindle down to the hotel bar and cover a hundred or so pages until the sheer number of gimlets renders further reading impossible.

It turns out that such is the best method of reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen. This is not a series that rewards time off. There are too many characters to keep track of, too many plot threads being woven at the same time, that to take a break for a few weeks is to essentially shut the door on the series. This series was meant to be read all at once, without stopping. My Amazon account says that I bought Gardens of the Moon on June 17, and I'm currently on Reaper's Gale (Book 7). (It is my second reading for the first eight books.) I expect to finish Book 10 right about the time I earn Delta Diamond Medallion level status in September. It's going to be a banner month.

I will be the first to admit that the Malazan series is a difficult series. Sometimes I wonder how I had the patience to get into it. Gardens of the Moon drops you into a complex world with no explanation whatsoever about what's happening, what the history is, what the politics are, who the competing factions are, and so forth (and you frankly don't get a handle on these things until about Book 3). Primed by Tokien (elves vs. orcs), Jordan (Aes Sedai vs. the Dark One), Goodkind (Richard Cypher vs. Darken Rahl, then later vs...I don't know...some kind of emperor...honestly, did anyone read the series that far?) and so on, you immediately start casting about for the "good guys" and the "bad guys" and you find no clear delineation. The titular Malazans don't come off as very "good," although there are some noble characters among them. You figure an ominously-named character called "Shadowthrone" and the god of assassins, "Cotillion," must be (or "must needs be," as Erikson would say) "bad," but within a couple of books, you develop the distinct impression that these two characters might, in fact, be conspiring to save the world from destruction. Or trying to destroy it themselves. There's no way to know.

The books allude to a history that is ancient--ancient cities, enemies, allies, rights, and wrongs. Some of the characters have lived for 300,000+ years, and yet none of them have any idea what the $&#* is going on. It's just like real life, really. You get the impression that Erikson and Esslemont (his co-creator who has written several of his own books in the world) didn't so much create the world as discover it. Both of them are archeologists by trade, and in the novels, you can see an archaeologist's attention to detail in the uncovering of ancient civilizations. Their words are like the brushes that they use to carefully separate bones from dust. But as in archaeology, you can rarely be certain about anything. You get tantalizing hints but have to conjecture the rest. I've read some of these books three times, and I'm still not certain what the relationship is between Dissembelackis, the Hounds of Darkness, the Hounds of Shadow, and the Deragoth. I'm frankly not even sure Erikson does.

On the surface, there's no reason why I shouldn't hate this. Why would anyone want to read 5,000 pages about the Seven Cities subcontinent and still be confused about the different tribes and what happened to the First Empire? And yet it's intoxicating, the idea that no one--not the characters, not even the authors--has all the answers. It frees you to watch the scenery go by in a blur, if you so choose, and focus on the characters. And the characters are what make the series.

Like real people, they can be grand and noble in some circumstances, and murderous and vile in others. You find yourself rooting for a character like Karsa Orlong and his concern for justice, conveniently forgetting that in his first 50 pages he engaged in a series of senseless rapes and massacres. Kalam Mekhar is a popular character despite the fact that he directly contributed to the tragedy in the second book known as the Chain of Dogs. Why do we just forgive him for this? Two of the most amusing figures are, ultimately, an egomaniac and a near-omnipotent god who nonetheless seems to ignore the suffering around him. But how we delight in their banter! Is the Empress a wicked usurper or a besieged ruler doing her best to save the many at the expense of the few? Or something in between? The books give us every possible answer.

George R. R. Martin has been praised for this: characters that seem like antagonists become sympathetic once you get a couple of chapters from their points of view. In The Game of Thrones, Jaime Lannister tries to murder a child who spots him in the midst of a longstanding affair with his married sister, and yet two books later he comes off as a bit of a hero. It's the same here, but tenfold. High King Kallor murders one of the most beloved characters in the series, and a few books later, you're practically crying tears of sympathy for him. I even suspect that the Crippled God--the ostensible antagonist in the entire series--is going to turn out to be a pitiable, decent soul by the end of the last book (please, for K'rul's sake, no spoilers!).

Many of the characters are what Erikson calls "ascendants." Those that have worshipers are gods. There are multiple paths to ascendancy, but none of them in any particularly consistent way (there are no "rules" that hold through the entire series; every one has multiple corollaries and exceptions). You get the feeling that a host of them are ascendants without even realizing it. Their approaches to conflict are so varied and unique that you quiver with anticipation when two of them are about to meet. My "wish list" of such convergences is a mile long, and I suppose it's folly to expect that they'll ever all happen. But please, please, Steve, put Karsa and Kruppe in the same room before the end. (To me, Kruppe is the most memorable character of any book ever written.) You could sustain an entire novel just describing a lunch at which Iskaral Pust, Tehol, Bugg, Kellanved, Tavore, and Corabb were all in attendance.

The morality of the series is also fascinating. Within the first book, you have the annihilation of an entire army only a few chapters from a character worrying about the moral implications of adultery. In Deadhouse Gates, the author graphically describes the rapes and slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians and then somehow brings you to tears over the sacrifice of a horse. But in this, again, the books mirror real life. We grieve deeply the people we know and pause only a moment to consider the deaths of thousands in far-off places. In neither in or out of the books is this hypocrisy; it is enough--it must be enough--to occupy ourselves with those inside our circles of concern and influence.

Hood's breath, am I going on. And I haven't even talked about the races. Let's just say that, again, the books mirror real life. There aren't many "racial traits." I haven't ever finished The Lord of the Rings, but my guess is that you never find a fat elf, a good orc, or a temperate dwarf. It is the tradition of fantasy authors--and not to mention CRPG designers--to assign absolute traits (including alignments) to their races. Not Erikson. Humans, Jaghut, T'lan Imass, Tiste Edur...these ultimately just boil down to convenient ways to describe how someone looks. T'lan Imass are supposed to be singularly driven and clan-oriented, but these are traits more honored in the breach than in the observance. The series delights in introducing stereotypes and turning them on their heads. We have immortal races who exhibit shocking short-sightedness, and mortals who have planned and plotted in such detail that in ten books, we cannot see the full scope of their machinations.

Most important, since we're with this author for more than a million words, is the language. Erikson is, above everything else, a good writer. This is probably why I stuck with Gardens of the Moon long enough to recognize the fundamental greatness of the series. I have read many fantasy authors that I thought were "good" writers--Sanderson, Martin, Hobb, even Jordan despite his frequent repetition of idiotic phrases--but Erikson is the only fantasy writer that I have felt was "great," in a truly Dickensian way. He has that rare art of knowing when to describe fully, and when to describe in sketches. Witness:

The Tarancede tower rose from the south side of Trate's harbour. Hewn from raw basalt it was devoid of elegance or beauty, reaching like a gnarled arm seven stories from an artificial island of jagged rocks. Waves hammered it from all sides, flinging spume into the air. There were no windows, no doors, yet a series of glossy obsidian plates ringed the uppermost level, each one as tall as a man and almost as wide.

--Midnight Tides, Chapter 6

When sober, the sergeant noticed things, in a proper a diligent manner suited to a city guard. And while she was not consistently drunk, cold sobriety was an invitation to hysteria, so Hellian endeavored to proceed steadily on the wobbly rope of not-quite-drunk. Accordingly, she had not known of the odd ship now moored in the Free Docks, that had arrived before sunrise, its pennons indicating that it had come from Malaz Island.

--The Bonehunters, Prologue

This kind of prose comes along and swats braid-tugging, crossing-arms-under-breasts, wheels of time turning with ages coming and passing, leaving memories that become legend completely off the competition board. And yet Malazan has sold maybe 400,000 copies and Wheel of Time us up to something like 47 million. Wheel of Time also has an extensive online wiki, while Malazan, which frankly really needs it, has only a couple of half-assed attempts.

It all comes back to the complexity of the series, which brings me back to my original point about needing to read it all at once. You simply don't pick up the details if you take breaks. Let me cover one example. In Deadhouse Gates (Book 2), some characters accidentally get pulled into a warren (sort-of like an alternate dimension that serves as a source of magic), where they find a ship called the Silanda. It is crewed by a group of headless, ensorcelled Tiste Andii (a dark-skinned race), and the visitors discover that the captain and his officers, a group of grey-skinned Tiste Edur--have been slaughtered. What happened to them? Even as several of the characters take over the vessel and bring it back to the real world, we never find out.

Fast forward to House of Chains (Book 4), where in a prologue set earlier than Book 2, we see the barbarian Karsa Orlong accidentally find himself in the same warren. He comes across the Edur-crewed ship and kills the crew, then just as swiftly departs, leaving it to be discovered by the Malazans in Deadhouse Gates. Aha!, we say. So he's the one who chopped up that ship! But who are the Tiste Edur in the first place? Well, we don't find that out until Midnight Tides (Book 5), but even then, we only discover their backstory. Not until The Bonehunters (Book 6) does it become clear why they were in the warren to begin with, and if you're paying close attention, you have a moment--a real end-of-The Sixth Sense kind of moment--when you realize exactly who the captain was, what he was doing there, and what his fateful chance encounter with Karsa actually meant for another character and, consequently, the overall direction of the series. There's no way you're going to keep all of this straight if you take a nice leisurely break between books.

Have you all really gotten this far? Well, I'm sorry; I have no connection between this entry and CRPGs, except to say that I would love to play a CRPG set in the Malazan world--or even one set in a world of this kind of complexity. Only The Elder Scrolls really comes close. I'm writing this longhand on a plane after my Kindle ran out of juice in the middle of Book 7. More on Times of Lore tomorrow.

But before I close, let me take a moment for my readers who have read the Malazan series. There is a moment in Book 3 that I find simply haunting, and I want you to recall it to see if you agree. Books 2 and 3 are both set contemporaneously to each other, on separate continents, and both describe armies engaged in essentially hopeless wars. Each makes staggering sacrifices, and in the end, one is victorious (though sort of a Pyrrhic victory) and the other is not.

Book 2 (Deadhouse Gates) is simply brutal. Erikson's writing ensures that we reach the end as exhausted as the characters, and some things happen that are jaw-dropping in their cruelty, both to the characters and to the readers who have followed them this far. We close the book and pick up Book 3 (Memories of Ice). And while some awful things happen in this book, they don't seem as fundamentally unfair as what happened in Book 2. The epilogue even seems reasonably happy. And then we get this. I'm not going to set it up because I don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't read it. You have to remember who these people are, where they are, and how they got there.

"Sure," Spindle snapped, "A story to break our hearts all over again! What's the value in that?"

A rough, broken voice replied, "There is value."

Everyone fell silent, and turned to Duiker.

The Imperial Historian had looked up, was studying them with dark eyes. "Value. Yes. I think, much value. But not yours, soldiers. Not yet. Too soon for you. Too soon."

"Perhaps," Baruk mummured, "Perhaps you are right in that. We ask too much--"

"Of them. Yes." The old man looked down once more at the cloth in his hands.

The silence stretched.

Duiker made no move.

Picker began to turn back to her companions--when the man began speaking. "Very well, permit me, if you will, on this night. To break your hearts once more. This is the story of the Chain of Dogs. Of Coltaine of the Crow Clan, newly come Fist to the 7th Army..."

Those last words have power I've never experienced in another book about fantasy creatures with pointed ears and tusked faces. Tolkien never had this kind of power. Duiker is about to tell them the story of Book 2. And we know what this will do to them. It's truly going to break their hearts--so much that we don't see them again for five books. And at the same time, having read the story of the Chain of Dogs, it breaks ours once more--the last paragraph is both Duiker speaking to the patrons of K'rul's Bar and Erikson speaking to us. This is the greatest fantasy series of all time.

Advertisements on the CRPG Addict. And Pizza.

Readers,

On May 30, 2011, I decided to explore adding advertisements to the CRPG Addict. I had promised my wife--who didn't know about the blog for its first year of existence--that I would at least try to get some revenue out of it, so we could have dinner once a month as some compensation for all of the nights I was blogging instead of sleeping next to her. (Though to be fair, Irene, when you read this: I do lots of other work in the middle of the night, too. I have the e-mails to prove it!)

This being a Google-hosted blog, the ads come from Google AdSense. AdSense had a set of terms and conditions so long that I suspect I may be violating them by even talking about them. (I suspect I may be violating them when I brush my teeth or feed my cat, too.) AdSense, as I understand it, scans the blog for keywords and tries to target ads to the blog's likely audience. A fair number of game and MMORPG ads seem to show up, for instance. In the first 24 hours, there have also been a lot of ads for the Geek2Geek dating site. Can't imagine what on my blog must have triggered those.

It's important to understand that I don't have direct control over what ads appear. It draws them from a pool. I can make some tweaks, but I can't say that I don't want to see any more from a specific company, or that I don't want to see any more with scantily-clad elves. At that same time, my understanding is that Google polices these companies very well, so you should never see overt pornography, ads for anything illegal, or ads that take you to malware sites. If you do experience any of these--or anything else offensive--let me know (best to take a screen shot, too, since the ads change on every reload). One thing I can do is switch to text-only ads, but I actually think they look worse against my site background, so I only want to do that if the images are problematic.

My primary purpose in writing this blog is to write about something I enjoy, so I'll dump the ads if they cause problems or if too many readers complain. The initial reaction to my announcement (see the note below and the comments attached) were mostly supportive, and I've taken the comments received so far as an a-okay. But keep using this posting to comment about your concerns or problems with the ads (I read every comment, no matter how old).

Finally, I appreciate if you turn of Adblock for my site, but of course I understand if you don't. Please click on the ads if you're honestly interested in visiting those advertisers, but please do not think you're doing me any favors by clicking on ads that don't interest you. Google has algorithms that seek out "click fraud," and the amount of money I stand to make from ads is not worth any associated legal issues.

As always, thanks for your readership and support.

Best,

Chet

Note: This posting originally announced my intention to try ads and asked if the readers were okay with that. I know it's not usually kosher to modify a posting so much after people have commented, but I didn't want this topic to take up multiple postings on the blog, and I wanted to have a posting I could link to permanently.

Note 2: Ignore this paragraph below, and the title. I'm testing out a hypothesis.

Pizza! Boy could I go for a pizza right now! A nice, thick-crust, hand-tossed pizza, maybe with mushrooms and black olives, or maybe ham and pineapple. Yes, sir, I sure am in the market for a good pizza!

The Greatest City in the World

Do you know what it means...

Think about what makes a city a "great city." (Bear with me, the connection to CRPGs comes at the end.) What are the elements you look for? You may come up with a slightly different list than mine, but I'll bet we share some of the same elements:

• A strong music scene
• A good local cuisine
• Nightlife and entertainment
• At least a few great places where you can sit and have a relaxing drink in the evening
• A variety of bars, from quiet adult ones to raucous clubs
• Interesting architecture
• Walkability
• Friendly, interesting people

       
Now, give each city you know a score of 1-10 for each of these items (yes, I'm really into indexes), add 'em up, and what comes out on top?

My theory is that if you don't answer "New Orleans," you either didn't take the exercise seriously or you've never been there.

Maison Bourbon on an average night of the week. This isn't anywhere near the best club in town, and yet it beats just about any club in any other city.

Let's start with the obvious: the best music the world has ever known. This is not a hyperbole. I firmly believe that New Orleans-style jazz beats any musical form ever created anywhere else, and this is coming from a man who cries to Beethoven's string quartets. The great thing about having this belief is that you can stroll down any one of several streets in New Orleans on any night of the week and wander into a club, sit down, and just absorb yourself in it without fanfare. Show me any other city where you have this many choices without having to go through the trouble of reservations and tickets and cover charges and reserved seats. I might pop into Preservation Hall for a set (yeah, all right; they have a cover charge), then wander up to Maison Bourbon for a drink with Jamil Sharif, check my iPhone to see if Banu Gibson is singing anywhere, and jump into a cab across town to spend the rest of the night with Kermit Ruffins--all for less than a single ticket to see much lesser performers in another city.

(As an aside, between "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?," "Basin Street Blues," and "Bourbon Street Parade," New Orleans also has better songs about it than any other city.)

Then, how about the food? If you've never had a muffuletta, I don't even know what to say to you. You've experienced life on a lower level than I have. Get to New Orleans, hie yourself to the Central Grocery, wait in line, and eat one. Then send me a thank-you card. When you get sick of those--and you won't get sick of those--you still have po' boys, all manner of Cajun and Creoloe cuisine, barbecue, and the best French and Italian food found anywhere outside France and Italy. Oh, God, and then there's the breakfasts--which most places happily serve until 4:00 p.m. (Enough with the beignets, though. Seriously: they're fried dough. I can get that at any county fair.)

A muffuletta and a gimlet. Goddamn it, why did I leave?

Nightlife...didn't I already cover that? And if jazz isn't your thing (and, frankly, if it isn't, you just haven't listened to the right jazz), you have any number of other options, from dance clubs to adult entertainment to gambling, all within about a three-block radius. Bars? Everything from class to crass. Architecture? I'd pit the Vieux Carre or the Garden District against the capitals of Europe. Walkability? New Orleans is made for walking.

How about the people? Let's put it this way: to be a true "Parisian," you need to be born in Paris to parents who were born in Paris. To be a true "Bostonian," you have to live for at least 25 years in one of three neighborhoods that you would never live in if you weren't born there. To be a "from New Orleans" involves exactly one step: move to New Orleans. Or just visit for a long time. Some cities say they "value diversity"; New Orleans doesn't even have to think about it.

All of this applies to New Orleans any day of the year. During the Jazz & Heritage Festival...oh, Jesus, don't get me started.

I have been to every major city in America and most of the capitals of Europe, and there is simply none--none--that comes close to New Orleans at the top of my index. Granted, I haven't visited all of them, but what are the odds that Reykjavik or Riga are going to knock it off its pedestal?

Okay, so bringing all of this back to CRPGs...yeah, I was just messing with you there. I just don't have another blog to write this sort of thing on. But if you've been jonesin' for my updates, stay tuned because I've started dithering with Tera and I should have enough gameplay in to resume blogging about CRPGs by Friday or Saturday. Thanks to all of you for your patience during my absence, but I hope you understand--I mean, after all, look where I was:

Disclaimer: none of these people are me. This isn't even my photo.