Not that there's anything wrong with discussing the disposition of your pets, mind. My cat Sarah is currently standing on the stove, eating some of her food, which she took carefully out of her bowl, moved to the stove, set down on the stove and started eating. This can't possibly end well, and I'm relatively certain she's insane. But I digress.

Anyway, "Channel Markers" was well received, and even today I hear from folks who say they liked it or got some value out of it. That's very cool. And they often cite the points they felt were most valuable to them -- points about etiquette, or not arguing on other peoples' fora, or being prepared for no one to comment.

There's one point, however, that almost never gets mentioned when people contact me, and that's sad because I think it's one of the most important ones. I reprint it here for purposes of convenience, bit by bit.

And while we're at it, we're going to talk about Boing Boing.

Don't try to rewrite history. Look, we make mistakes. We all do. Sometimes we post an essay and we get stuff wrong in it. Sometimes that stuff makes the whole essay wrong. Sometimes, we put up an essay innocently and it turns into a firestorm of controversy we never meant. Sometimes, we find ourselves in a crucible on all sides.

The temptation is to go back. Revise. Reword what we said. Take the essay down entirely.

It is never a good idea. Ever.

Boing Boing is one of the largest of blogs on the Internet. It is startlingly good at what it does -- which is point out things that they find "wonderful" (or as often terrible). Some very bright people write about some very cool things, from copyright and intellectual property issues to comic books to sex. It has iconoclasts like Cory Doctorow and Xeni Jardin. One of the best editors in Science Fiction (and best bloggers out there in her own right), Teresa Nielsen Hayden, is their moderator. The likelihood that you're reading this pissant thing and don't know about Boing Boing is trivial.

Well, Boing Boing wrote a few posts about a specific subject. What the subject is doesn't really matter to my post, so let's call it Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner. Which is not what it was about, but that's sitting on the sink next to the stove where the cat has moved some of her food so she can eat it, so it'll do for these purposes. These posts on Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner were done over time, and reflected interesting or controversial things that Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner were involved with, and Boing Boing wanted to write about it at the time.

Well. Over time, the good people at Boing Boing started to see Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner differently. They didn't like it as much, and they felt that some of its media tie-ins and statements made in its name weren't things they wanted a tangential connection to. They were afraid, among other things, that their posts about Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner in the past would be seen as tacit endorsement of Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner now, and that was something they didn't want to happen.

So, about a year ago, they quietly decided to "unpublish" their Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner related posts.

In other words, they took them down.

For better or for worse, we live in an ephemeral medium. It's dirt simple to pull down posts, delete comments, go through and re-edit after the fact. One of the truisms of creative writing is "writing is rewriting," and it's so simple to go ahead and edit edit edit.

The problem is, people have responded to what you wrote. If you go and change what they responded to, they're going to remember that fact. Even if you have the best of intentions, any editing or rewriting you do is going to come across as self-serving -- an unwillingness to admit to your mistakes. An attempt to make the record show you made no mistakes, so your critics must be wrong.

Have you ever seen the glee someone takes in posting a Google Cache copy of an original post you've since changed? It's particularly savage glee. And boom -- you have no credibility left. At all. In anything. Congratulations. You have just been demoted to punkass bitch.

Let's make one thing clear right now. Boing Boing did not commit censorship. Not in any way, shape or form. And those folks who claim they did are wrong, and look a little stupid. If the government (federal, state, county, local, shire or other) didn't force Boing Boing to delete all references to Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner, it's not censorship. Those posts were made by Boing Boing writers and published on Boing Boing servers using Boing Boing content management systems that distributed them via Boing Boing HTML, RSS and ATOM feeds. Boing Boing owns the hardware and the software that's on their machines. Boing Boing has the right to publish or not publish anything they darn well feel like on their servers. They released their content long ago, using a Creative Commons license (link is to Boing Boing's CC license and should not be construed as the CC license Websnark itself releases its content under -- my own CC license information can be found on the main page in the sidebar) so they can't stop others from republishing it on their own blogs so long as the license terms are followed, but that license doesn't force Boing Boing to leave that content where it can be seen. They have the right to take down any essay they like. Period.

Everyone got that?

Good. Let's move on.

The problem is not that Boing Boing did something wrong. It's not that Boing Boing has tacitly or explicitly rebuked Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner. It's not that Boing Boing has done anything actionable.

The problem is one of credibility.

Credibility is coin of the realm in blog terms. There is nothing more important to a blog. Blogs can have or lose popularity and they'll weather it, whether 30 people read it or 3 million people read it. But that blog is only as good as people think it is, and when you take down posts -- regardless of the reasons why -- you end up losing credibility when you get caught at it.

When a significant portion of your blog is devoted to questions of intellectual property, actual censorship on the web, ways to circumvent filters or other blocks on the material and in general being a passionate warrior in the fight for online rights and free access to information, the loss of credibility you suffer for deleting posts (especially without warning) is significant, because you can be seen as blocking access to information -- of trying to change history and the record. It doesn't matter if that's not what you meant. It doesn't matter if (as Nielson Hayden indicated in her post on this fracas) the information is buried somewhere in the Internet Wayback Machine on archive.org. You now come across as one of the people blocking the free flow of information.

In other words, you come across as a hypocrite.

And that's not ever a good thing.

And then, there's the deleted post. Or comment. Or whatever. You know the one. You made a mistake. You took a ton of heat for it. A controversy has brewed. It's not what you meant, at all. So you pull the post down. Maybe you post an apology as well, but you get the mistake out of the record.

Well. The people who hated your post don't forget it because you deleted it. They remember it. Only now, they remember their version of it. And their version of it is vastly worse than what you actually wrote. And they're more than happy to tell the world about this horrible version of what you wrote, and here you are completely unable to refute them, because you took down the evidence. Even if you put it back up, it's trivial for your critics to say "hey, they rewrote that while it was down!" You have absolutely no way to win if you do this. And all too often, you seem like a coward when you do it.

It's not right. It's not fair. But that's how it is.

There is a deeper level issue, of course. The ephemeral nature of the internet is liberating and free and wonderful in so many, many ways. However, that freedom comes with a price. The record can be changed, now. The dialogue can be edited by any participant, on the fly. It's easy to change the record.

And that is a very, very bad thing for scholarship.

I believe in the scholastic method. I believe in the dialogue. I believe that when we put our opinions and our theses and, yes, our mistakes out for the world to see, those words matter. I believe that even if I wish I could unsay something, I have said it, and people have heard it. People have read it. It has mattered to them. And people will remember it.

And I feel I have a moral responsibility to leave that record intact, because even if my opinions change -- even if I'm wrong in the first place -- the record forms part of the foundation for the discussion, and when you knock pieces out of the record, you weaken the foundation. You make it harder to do legitimate research. You obfuscate and confuse things.

And I believe, firmly, that I don't have the right to do that.

When people hit the web and research Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner, the things Boing Boing have said about Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner are going to be relevant to that discussion. And, what is more, people are going to remember that Boing Boing wrote about Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner. When they're reminded of citrusy ginger cleanser in other contexts, they're going to remember they saw something about it on Boing Boing, and they're going to go back to Boing Boing to see what they had to say about it. And they're going to do a search, and when they can't find Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner they're going to be confused. They're sure it was on Boing Boing. Where else could it have been? What else were they reading? They're going to hit search engines and try to find that tidbit.

They're not going to think "I'd better hit the Wayback Machine," because it wouldn't occur to them that Boing Boing would delete stuff. Not Boing Boing. They trust Boing Boing. They're just going to ultimately decide they're wrong, that they didn't see it on Boing Boing. And maybe they never saw it in the first place.

Yeah, when they learn they were right but Boing Boing changed their archive when they weren't looking? They're going to be pissed, because they felt stupid for a while there. Stupid because they were sure they were right but the evidence said they were wrong... and stupid because they trusted Boing Boing.

Like I said. Credibility.

The best thing -- the only thing -- you can do is post a correction. "I said this in my last essay. I was wrong. I didn't mean for it to go where it went. I'm sorry." If you want to absolutely make certain you acknowledge the areas you were wrong, add html strikethroughs to highlight the areas you were mistaken in. If you need to add a correction to the essay itself, put it at the bottom next to a clearly marked edit marker.

There's nothing wrong with Boing Boing's opinions changing. Hey, sometimes Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner becomes the devil. The lemony, lemony devil. And it's natural that Boing Boing would want to eschew the devil when discussing floor cleansers. The problem for Boing Boing comes when they change the record without acknowledgement. There are ways they could have made their changes without damaging their credibility. Changing the posts on Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner to a boilerplate post saying "this was a post on the subject of Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner. Our opinions on this cleaning product have changed over time, and we are no longer comfortable having this post on our site. If you want to see it, check the Wayback Machine." In a better world, they'd link to the Wayback Machine article in question.

In the best of worlds, they'd just append their changed opinion to the bottom of the original post, mind. But hey -- my idealism isn't everyone's idealism, and this post isn't about taking Boing Boing to task. It's about avoiding the nastiness. And there's a lot of blogs out there right now that are going nuclear over this, and a lot of folks on Boing Boing itself are. There are accusations (I don't know the truth of them, I admit freely) that comments about the Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner issue are being deleted off Boing Boing. There's anger and resentment.

And, most of all, there's that overriding sense of lost credibility. There are two excellent comments on Making Light (Patrick and Theresa Nielson Hayden's own personal blog) that summarize the consternation people are feeling. The first comment comes from user tim and I quote here:

I don't have a horse in this race (aside from being a visitor of ML, Boing Boing, and Metafilter)but from an outsider's perspective, all I see is that this discussion is getting bogged down in semantics when the following facts appear to be true:

1. Boing Boing has often commented negatively on obfuscation and "spin" against government, and corporations large and small.

2. Boing Boing is not a "personal website," by any definition I can think of, to wit: each of the 4 main editors have their own personal websites which are largely if not totally unencumbered by advertisements, where Boing Boing has a large number, and from a brief perusal, none of their personal websites claim to be copyright "Happy Mutants, LLC" -- which by definition is a corporation.

3. Retroactive deleting of (nearly) all entries and comments which even make reference to [Method® brand Lemon Ginger All-Floor Cleaner], and going on 48 hours without so much as a "our lawyers tell us to shut up" smacks strongly of the very types of evasion and obfuscation that Boing Boing has clearly, and regularly, taken a stand against.

4. This behavior by Happy Mutants, LLC is plainly counter to Boing Boing's long-standing opposition, and people have taken notice of this.

Now, whatever argument you may want to make of it, I think these 4 points of fact are accurate.

Obviously, the substitution of cleanser for the topic was mine, not tim's. The second comment comes from Andrew Wheeler and has some crunchy supporting links:

In the interest of determining what may be considered a fair view of Boing Boing's opinion on similar matters, here's one possible parallel:

Cory Doctorow, at Boing Boing, posts, approvingly but without commenting himself, a message from "JFarber" complaining about The New York Times, a privately owned media company, changing their web archives without notice or explanation.

Boing Boing is a privately owned media company which has just changed its web archives without notice or explanation.

To quote "JFarber" from that post: "Is it common journalistic practice to change old articles like that?"

The way I'd frame this is to say: if Boing Boing wants to operate as a media watchdog, they need to be careful about not doing the same things that they complain about when other media outlets do it. They are a company that puts out a regular media product: yes, it is free (but so is The Village Voice), and yes, it is on the web (but so is Slate). A lot of people, Boing Boing's principals among them, have been arguing for a decade that "blogs" can be just as serious and just as professional as any other media outlet, so hiding under the skirts of "it's just a blog" at this point is, at best, disingenuous.

Credibility. Perceived hypocrisy. And, just maybe, a sense of disappointment. And these weren't very vitriolic comments. You can find some unbelievably nasty ones out there if you go looking.

If it can happen to Boing Boing, it can happen to you. And it's why this particular channel marker is so important to a blogger -- the rocks it warns you off of are jagged indeed, and bigger boats then yours have taken damage from them.

When I wrote "Channel Markers," I finished this point up like this:

We all make mistakes. Sometimes, you have to own your mistakes, in order to keep your credibility.

Two years later, I have nothing I can add to that.

Back from Vegas, feeling somewhat ill -- hardly surprising, after a whirlwind desert week filled with educational conferences, evenings out, occasional liquor, and, y'know, getting married. The wedding was lovely, with evaporative cooling surrounding us with a light mist as we said vows under a rather nice outdoor gazebo. Weds was beautiful. I didn't trip at any point.

It's done.

I'll have more to say on it and many other things later this week, but as I said I'm feeling ill and besides, I want to show off Snarky, the Snarkasaurus, as created in the free demo of the Spore Creature Creator. This is an amazingly cool thing to play with -- I've created something like a dozen creatures so far, and I'm really chomping at the bit to get the full game (or even the full version of the creature creator -- but the game isn't until September and it'll be a few weeks before a ten dollar cool thing is a prudent investment). I think he came out pretty well given the limited tools, and he looks so happy.

Which is how I'm feeling too. Sick? Sure. Still jetlagged? You bet.

But happy.

More later. In the meantime, Eric Burns-White is signing off to lie down and feel a bit ill.

(Yes, Eric Burns-White. I'll explain my choice in detail later, though one friend has mentioned I've managed to up my pretentiousness another eight points, and another friend has said "wow -- your lifelong ambition to be E. B. White has finally seen fruition!" I have literate friends.)

I am in a conference called "top 10 web 2.0 applications."

The presenter is now telling us about a new concept on the web -- something that might really change things.

It's called 'blogging.'

So, you know. You guys might want to watch out for that.

The auctions continue apace -- bid early and often! Before we left, we added a bunch of other things, including Shadowrun, the Book of Vile Darkness (by Monte Cook!), Tom Strong, GURPS Traveller Starports (by John M. Ford!) and d20 Future! And that's not even all.

I will do my best to check in, preferably drunk, later this week. Right now, I'm sitting at a work related conference, and am therefore sober. It is not an improvement.

Thanks all!

Understand, it's not that I've bought the same book multiple times. Mostly. The original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook I did, of course. I wore two of them out, and later I got a PDF of the thing. And I think I bought a couple of Second Edition over time. But stepping away from that, I've gotten pretty much every new edition that they've thrown in my direction.

Which has sometimes been a joy, mind, but as often -- especially recently -- it's been an obligation. I'll admit it. I never really cottoned to either Third Edition or "3.5." And it's made me wonder sometimes if somewhere along the way I actually grew old.

And that's something of a digression.

Dungeons and Dragons has been a part of my life for essentially all of my life. Some of the things I bought when I first got into the game -- in the seventies, mind, with the Dragon Box Dungeons and Dragons that was simultaneously a precursor to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and Basic Dungeons and Dragons -- were for the original three book set that Gygax and Arneson put out long, long ago. I've read that original set (I own facsimiles of that too) along the way, and locked well away I have myself Gods, Demigods and Heroes -- one of the cool Original D&D supplements, bought back when that kind of thing could be found on hobby store shelves, over by the Judges' Guild supplements, near the Traveller, two shelves down from the Avalon Hill wargames and across the aisle from Boy Scout supplies, model rocketry kits and balsa wood. My earliest dice wore down into marbles. I have dozens of RPGs I've never come close to playing. I own some of the least useful AD&D products ever developed -- I own both the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide and the Wilderness Survival Guide. New books for the ol' D&D -- especially when they were hardcover instead of perfect bound -- were a happy find for literally decades of my life. Softcover could be cool, but a D&D hardcover book was an event.

Third Edition wasn't like that for me.

It had been some years since my last Second Edition campaign had ended as all campaigns do -- by people gradually finding other ways to spend their weekends. Oh, I still had an interest -- but GURPS and Hero and White Wolf products had long since filled the casual "devour the book and distill the concepts into my understanding of the roleplay omniverse" gap that once had puzzled out Nonweapon Proficiences and Weapon speed factors. When I moved out to Seattle, I moved in with a hardcore GURPS fiend. And Seattle in the 90's wasn't exactly a mecca for the old school. The cool kids didn't make graph paper maps and wield +4 halberds. The cool kids made Ventrue and Malkavians and dressed in vintage clothes and tried to score with Goth chicks, and while I liked White Wolf that wasn't really my scene, and over time I fell out of some of the old habits.

And then I came back to this side of the country, and the cool kids stopped being so cool and there was a resurgence of the old school aesthetic and then there was third edition -- one for the new millennium. And like everyone else who once rolled twenty sided dice for twenty six hours in a row, I snapped it up.

And... my brain just didn't glean it. It seemed like a mass of numbers to me. Part of the problem was the graphic design -- some moron at Wizards of the Coast thought it would be a good idea to print black text on brown backgrounds, reducing contrast to the point where reading these things invited headaches. And there were feats and prestige classes and THAC0 was gone only there was something else and....

...well, I got used to it. I had to. By now, I was actually writing stuff, and d20 was the order of the day in a lot of ways. And that was monumental too -- Wizards had opened (most of) their rules up, so anyone could develop for them, and a lot of people did. And I got the hang of d20, and d20 Modern, and d20 Future, and Superlink, and True20, and lots of other variations that sprouted from the giant oak of Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition. When the v3.5 Players Handbook came out, I was a little disgruntled -- hadn't I just bought one of these? -- but I sucked it up and bought the thing. And when I read through the rules -- even the ones that were hard to pick through or that broke my brain -- I could still see the game that had formed part of the foundation of my life, all those years before. I could still figure out exactly how I'd adapt my game world (ah Arthe. How I miss you) for this new setting. And when the good folks hammering out OSRIC and other open source versions of first edition AD&D started doing things, I felt old stirrings in the back of my brain. Sure, I was old now and I couldn't get excited for these things any more and there seemed like way more bookkeeping now and man, really, 3.5 but at the very least, I could be nostalgic.

And like a lot of people, I looked at the prospects of a fourth edition warily at best. The developers proudly talked (in at least one case) of how much they hated the old 1st and 2nd edition rules, and it wasn't until 3rd edition that they really began to like this thing. We heard the rumors -- this was going to be a backport of World of Warcraft. They were going to abandon the foundations that have made the game! Magic users would be remade from scratch! Gnomes were being consigned to the Abyss! All was chaos! All was chaos!

Hell, look at the masthead. I changed it to "Protected Gnomish Habitat since 2008" some months ago, after I heard about the Gnomish exile. That's the kind of thing an old man does, when he finds out what those damn kids were up to.

And that... well, that's sort of what it all felt like, to me. Punk kids -- most of whom weren't alive when I was running extensive campaigns -- had taken the reins of Dungeons and Dragons, and clearly didn't care about folks like me. And why should they? Galavanting around the Flanaess is a game for the young, Doctor. Leaving us relics behind was just part of the cost of doing business.

Most galling of all, however, was this sense that this was going to be a new game -- not an update or a new edition, but something entirely new, seeking to tap into those millions of people playing World of Warcraft. They talked about how the new game would follow MMORPG conventions, all the better to make the tabletop experience a seamless transition from their computers. And no one seemed to care about what was being lost, not when there were new markets to tap.

But, I kept mostly quiet about these fears. I wanted to see what would come of Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. Would it be D&D in name only?

And now I've seen it. I have read the books. I know the new edition. I now know who was right -- the fans rabidly anticipating the new books, and the fans dreading and castigating it as a false pretender to the throne.

And interestingly enough... they're both right.

I am reminded, in a way, of White Wolf in 2003 and 2004. Having gotten themselves so choked with continuity cruft that one couldn't throw a stone on a street without hitting three or four supernatural monsters with dark intent and angst-ridden hearts, they decided to take their various Worlds of Darkness and end them once and for all, publishing both sourcebooks for individual storytellers to run Ragnarok and novels detailing the "official" end of the world for each of their game lines. And, once this was done, they released a new World of Darkness, with entirely new rules and a new setting and new basic tenets and emphases. White Wolf hoped their players would come along for the ride, but they had little intention of bringing the characters into this new world.

So it is, in the end, with the new Dungeons and Dragons.

The core of the game is simplicity. The rules are at the least familiar, but character progression is now standardized -- almost cookie cutter. Classes all progress in abilities at exactly the same rate. Level one character from 1 to 20, and you can level any character from 1 to 20. Powers are broken down by the rate you can use them. At Will powers can be used every time it's your character's turn. Encounter powers can be used once an 'encounter.' (Essentially, once in any given battle against a specific set of foes.) Daily powers can be used -- you guessed it -- once per game day, like spells used to be. So, while a fighter's at will powers involve specific maneuvers where they hit people with metal things, a ranger's at will powers involve shooting arrows into their enemies and a wizard's at-will powers involve things like magic missiles. As promised (or warned), the roles of the different classes are far better defined -- and do indeed follow MMORPG standards. Fighters and paladins are defenders, who draw the attention of their foes and have the fortitude to withstand the most deadly of blows. In other words, they're tanks/tankers, and their job is aggro management while other people kill things. Clerics and Warlords are leaders, who "inspire, heal, and aid the other characters in an adventuring group." In other words, they're the buffers. Rangers, Rogues and Warlocks are the strikers. They do the damage to single targets, hitting them with massive blows. (Warlocks at range, Rogues up close, and Rangers one or the other depending on what they specialize in.) By any other name? They're DPS. And Wizards are controllers, locking down enemies and laying down damage over groups instead of individuals -- so, area effect damage plus debuffs plus holds. The press materials promised that all party members would have something to do every time play comes to them, and that much is true -- the balance of at-will, daily and encounter powers inside the above roles means there's always something to do. And it feels like nothing so much as click powers in a tray in an interface.

A lot of the names are the same, but that doesn't mean the characters are. For example, Paladins can be any alignment now, and any race now. In a game where once it was insisted (by Gary Gygax himself) that there was never a reason to champion chaotic evil and so there would never be an official anti-paladin NPC, we now have chaotic evil paladins. Rangers are, as mentioned, strikers. They can lay down immense damage and all their abilities center around that fact. Which is good, because there's no real wilderness powers at all. They don't even need to take wilderness skills if they don't want to. (Amusingly, Belkar from Order of the Stick is now a perfect ranger -- he can be evil, he doesn't really have any of those tracking or wilderness skills, and man can he lay down hit points of damage.) Warlocks and wizards, far from having to manage their daily spells and utilize them when they'd best be appropriate, can fire off eldrich bolts and rays of enfeeblement every time their turn comes around if they want. Heck, it's going to take some folks some time to adjust to the idea that the fighter doesn't do the most damage in melee combat.

And let's not kid ourselves. This is a game of combat -- as much as the original D&D was, if not more so. This is not a game of out-of-combat nuanced roleplay and complicated social mores. This is a game where your character is an optimized killing machine. Yeah, you can take intimidate or bluff if you really want to, but honestly, you have a charisma score, do you really need more than that? Especially when most of the time, your intimidate skill will take a back seat to your Riposte Strike at-will power or a well timed Shadow Wasp Strike. Your characters will feel most at home in a darkened corridor, decimating all around them.

And honestly? That part right there seems like perfectly good Dungeons and Dragons to me. Yeah, not every DM did the dungeon crawl thing, but the dungeon crawl is the essence of the original game. Purple worms and beholders and kobolds alike existed to be slaughtered for their treasure and their bellies full of sweet experience points.

At the same time, one fear raised up is unquestionably true. This is not an update to Dungeons and Dragons. This is an entirely new game that happens to be called Dungeons and Dragons, and the sooner you get your head wrapped around that idea, the happier you will be. You may have played the same character since 1979, moving from Basic to Advanced D&D, then doing 2nd, 3rd and version 3.5 with him, painstakingly converting him each time. Shake his hand and put him in a drawer and wait for the next time someone wants to play one of those earlier games, because if you try to 'upgrade' him to the new game, you're going to find yourself with an entirely different character with entirely new powers and abilities that don't work the same way, and it can only frustrate you.

And, of course, if you play one of the classes that's absent from this version of the game, you're out of luck. Thieves are now rogues and are way better at killing than thieving (there's nothing that even says you need to take thief skills). Bards? Gone, with no real sense of whether or not they're going to return. There are 'power sources' in this game -- Martial for 'natural' heroes, Divine for Paladins and Clerics, and Arcane for Wizards and Warlocks -- with more coming, but none of them's going to be music. In fact, the ones we know about are psionic, elemental, ki, primal, nature and shadow. There will come a day that monks will be kicking ass again, barbarians and druids will return to the game and do that voodoo they do so well, and we'll even get fire types if we want them.

But... it makes sense, now, that the gnomes are absent from the game right now. In the older game, their best trick was being illusionists... and there is no illusionist, and unless 'shadow' will be an illusionist power source, there's not going to be. Illusions don't really fit the structure of the new game -- they're not used much as it is, and they don't fall into the same role structure as the others.

That's one of the hardest things to work out in this new game with the old name, really. It's not the changes to the rules -- it's the necessity of letting go of the past, as completely as possible, if you're going to embrace this game. Really, the two sides of this little dichotomy are best shown in something Scott Kurtz said over in the blog attached to PVP:

Guess what? Your 3.5 edition stuff did not disintegrate into a pile of black dust today. Get over yourselves. Nobody gives a shit that you committed all the old books to memory and figured out the math of the rules to totally max out your character. Nobody wants you at the table. We only invited you because you got all the books and so many goddamn miniatures.

As happens with Scott Kurtz, I was amazed at how many sides he managed to evoke all at once. On the one side, I completely understood why he said that -- he was taking a lot of crap from people because he was enjoying the game he had been playing, and he wanted to throw some cold reality on them. He's right. There's no reason anyone who wants to play an earlier edition can't go ahead and play an earlier edition. Hell, thanks to the Open Gaming License, development on the old edition proceeds apace in a number of places -- perhaps most successfully at Paizo, where the Pathfinder Role Playing Game is cheerfully revising the 3.5 rules into the next edition of the older game concept. And there's no excuse for trashing someone because he happened to like a game in practice that you despise in theory. None of our opinions are natural laws, after all.

On the other side... honestly, not everyone's ready to be philosophical about this stuff. Telling someone that his ten, or twenty, or thirty year old campaign world can't be effectively upgraded to the new edition of a game he's been playing for most of his post-pubescent life and he should "get over himself" is... well, cold. Callous. And only adds more misery. And misery begets misery.

As for me... I'm on both sides of it. Arthe as it has always been simply doesn't fit this new game. I couldn't revise it into the new rules if I wanted to. My old books haven't disappeared -- I could run an Arthe campaign tomorrow, but I can't do it in Dungeons and Dragons. I can only do it in Pathfinder, or Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (first or second edition). Dungeons and Dragons has left that world behind.

But on the other side... 3rd edition (and 3.5) did nothing for me. They were masses of badly contrasted text that I had to force my brain to follow. The things I really loved (Savage Species is a downright great book, for example) were rare. The game didn't excite me. I was old.

But this new Dungeons and Dragons is cool. I loved reading the books. I wanted to dive in and make characters and generate dungeons and get a group together. I want to play this game.

Reading these rules, I want to dream. I want to imagine. I want to build. And I want to fucking massacre me some kobolds.

Reading these rules, I am young.

And that makes me think that maybe... just maybe... it was D&D that was old. And like the phoenix, it could only rebirth itself in fire.

I don't know, man. All I know is, I can't wait for the next hardcover to get published. These three books just aren't enough.

And then, at the end of the week, there's a wedding. And that's downright awesome.

Needless to say, of course, we need more money than we currently have. And as we have done before and promised to do this time, we're turning to eBay -- land of getting rid of stuff -- to raise said funds while also clearing some room. It's win-win!

My eBay page is still here, and there's about 30 items up right now with more being added this afternoon. It's cool stuff! Here's a few highlights:

• We've got lots of GURPS stuff! Everything from heavy hitters like GURPS Psionics, GURPS Time Travel or GURPS Martial Arts to more esoteric things like GURPS Mecha, GURPS Timeline or GURPS Planet Krishna!
• On the Dungeons and Dragons side of things, there's the intensely cool Epic Level Handbook, Savage Species and the Psionics Handbook -- hurrah for brown rulebooks!
• Want to destroy the world? The epic World of Darkness: Time of Judgment shows you ways to do it in Changeling, Demon, Hunter, Mummy and Kindred of the Far East!
• Thanks to Weds and I both owning lots of In Nomine -- you'll recall that's a line I've written for -- we have some beautiful copies of In Nomine books up. If you've ever been interested (or wanted to expand your collection), there's lots here. Try the Game Master's Guide, Angelic Player's Guide, Infernal Player's Guide or Ethereal Player's Guide on for size!
• And, if you're not a roleplaying fan, try a hardback edition of the first Planetary or the first Top 10 volume on for size, with more coming later today! Warren Ellis or Alan Moore -- either way, that's pretty good soup.
• Not so much with Ellis or Moore, but like the art of the comic? Why not try Flight? We have Volume 1 and Volume 2 for you.
• And if nothing appeals that I've mentioned, there's always Kermit the Frog's autobiography. His felty, felty autobiography.

I won't kid you -- this has been a very expensive month for us. Between moving, getting household stuff set up, and preparing for a Wedding (just because we're going the Vegas route doesn't mean there's not, y'know, money that needs spendin') things are a lot tighter than we'd hoped for this stage of things. If folks have an inclination to use the donation button on the sidebar, we'd certainly be appreciative, though I'd admit I feel odd asking for that. Thus, we put stuff up for sale, and continue to do so. So please, bid early, bid often, and tip your waitresses. You know, your waitress doesn't get paid very much -- it's your appreciation that means she eats. Now, please enjoy the dulcet tones of mister Rudy Vallee.

Current Webcomics: Dinosaur Comics, Whispered Apologies

You May Remember Him From Such Webcomics Related Technologies As: Project Wonderful, Oh No Robot, RSSpect, God knows what else....

Enthusiasm: Why Do I Read This Webcomic Again

How Frequently Read: Regularly Checked

Some of these are a little weird to write. For example, this one.

Ryan North is brilliant. He really is. I've read at least one of his theses and it was amazing. He is probably one of the top two best friends Webcomics have ever had -- certainly, he has done as much or more to value add to other peoples' webcomics as anyone I can think of. He's been the major force (though not the solo force, always) behind two innovations that quite honestly make webcomics in general better: Ohnorobot.com, which is an embeddable search engine for webcomics which creators can either use themselves to make dialogue searchable, or something they can let their fanbase take point on in getting dialogue in place; and Project Wonderful, which absolutely takes website advertising and makes it simple for both webmasters and advertisers. You'll notice I use Project Wonderful myself -- it has garnered me significantly more coin than Google ads ever did (by a significant factor), and while my ad rates aren't anywhere near the top tier, Project Wonderful is way better than being slapped in the face by fish. Right up until gasoline prices went pear-shaped, Project Wonderful could generally fund of the full tanks of gas I needed to get to Ottawa to see the woman I'm going to marry in a couple of weeks.

Okay, that's fun to type, even if it has nothing to do with Ryan North.

North's brilliance was further brought forth -- and initially spread among our community -- through the award winning Dinosaur Comics, once called Daily Dinosaur Comics. For those who aren't familiar, Dinosaur Comics has taken a moderately simple and rough looking clip art comic strip featuring a few dinosaurs, one of whom stomps on buildings and people, and made it downright sublime through static art comics. A static art comic, as the name implies, is a comic strip where the art doesn't ever change. It's the same clip art every day, and only the words change. This was done a few times before North -- most (in)famously by director David Lynch in his comic strip The Angriest Dog in the World, which ran in various newspapers from 1983 to 1992. (North tipped his pen to Lynch in a strip that encapsulated the entire run of The Angriest Dog in the World into Dinosaur Comics). And Dinosaur Comics, through its fresh, inventive (and most of all funny) writing burned through our consciousness like a wildfire, devastating the infrastructure and calling out the National Guard. FOR FUN!

It's also worth noting that North didn't just embrace static art comics -- he also raised the bar on them. Lynch did nine years of static art strips, but he didn't dive into multiple characters, continuity, or for the most part even relevance. Most of the off-panel comments were near non-sequitors. Very few if any had anything to do with the dog in question. Folks who've jumped into static art since then have either varied what static panel they use from day to day (more properly making them the broader realm of constrained comics), or don't have multiple characters -- aping Lynch more than North. I know from what I speak -- for a while I did my own static art strip in conscious emulation of North. It was the Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark, and it was about a possessed statue who bitched about Ethan Allen and his wife, made breast jokes about Peggy Shippen, had adroit commentary on the politics of his time and ours, and had a total man-crush on Ice Cube. But as my strip was, by definition, a monologue, I was free to expound however I wished. (And it's worth noting, said strip didn't last nearly as long).

But Ryan North has multiple characters. He has interaction, and a supporting cast, and he has continuity from one strip to the next. North isn't just doing a static art comic strip -- he's doing a static art comic strip, with an expanding (and increasingly off-panel) cast of divinities and disturbing mammals. He has T-Rex, Utahraptor, and all the rest interacting and expounding, trying to mostly match the recurrent art. And he's done vastly better with it than anyone could have expected. It's got a strong readership of devoted fans. It gets referenced. (For a couple of years, David Willis referenced it in the Shortpacked April Fools Day strips, which I can't link to because of catastrophic failures of their electrical infrastructure. Man, they're not having a good weekend.) North's significance and influence is clear and broad.

And, if you look at the last few Daily Dinosaur comics, they continue to be wacky fun. T-Rex continues to be somewhat innocent with the selfishness of innocence. Utahraptor is a good friend though sometimes he has to be the wiser counsel. Dromiceiomius is still... um... occasionally speaking in the third panel. God talks every so often. It's fun!

Fun!

Fun.

Yeah.

Okay, here's the dirty truth. The big problem with static comics? Are they're static. And Ryan North has pushed his comic in incredible directions given that. But... North has written 1,234 (hey! 1-2-3-4!) comics as of this writing. Honestly, they're not blowing my mind any more. They seem... really... the same. Day in, and day out. It's not that there hasn't been evolution -- there has. But there's just so far that North can go in any direction, because tomorrow Utahraptor and Dromiceiomius are still showing up in a few panels and T-Rex is still stomping on that building, and there's no way to focus on another character for a while. It's got to be T-Rex. He's in all the panels!

Look, I like Dinosaur Comics. I really do. Heck, I did a Reader Art strip for it once. North is funny and smart, and may be conquering North America. Heck, he already got it named after him -- like in a merger! But... it's....

I've seen it. Not just the art, but the strip. The patter. The rhythm. All too often the joke.

It's... well, getting kinda dull.

This reminds me a little bit of my comments on Perry Bible Fellowship -- it's much the same reaction, really. It's not that North has lost some of his skills. It's that we've done this often enough that the impact has become dilute.

I have this on "Why Do I Read This Webcomic Again" not because I dislike it, mind. I do like it. It's just... when I ask myself that question, I don't really have an answer. Why do I read Dinosaur Comics? If I end up having to ponder it and not really coming up with an answer, it's pretty much got to go in this category.

At the same time, I don't really plan on stopping reading it, so it might better belong in the Hoi Polloi instead. I dunno.

Right. Let's do the metrics before I become a mass of wish crossed to wash.

Strengths

North is consistent. The writing tends to be solid, the characters are well defined and well distinguished, the updates happen with the regularity one would hope they do, and the layout of the web page is clear.

I mentioned how far North has pushed the boundaries of Static Art. That's not nothing, to use a Sorkinesque construction. He really has done amazing things with the static art form. He tries his best to change up the formula and disrupt our expectations. The fact that he's gone so far with the number of posted strips is a testament to that.

The breadth of topic that the strip addresses and expounds upon are amazing, as are his carefully considered positions.

In other words, North is, in fact, a good writer.

Weaknesses

As said before, we're pushing 1,300 strips and he's running out of wiggle room. All too often, we can often predict where things are going to go. With no real room to move other cast members forward, there's no way to give T-Rex a rest for a while without compromising the basic device being used. I mean, even Hagar the Horrible doesn't have Hagar in every strip doing most of the talking. That's not an enviable position for anyone.

On the Whole

Ryan North is a mad scientist who has mostly used his powers for good. He is clever and wise and very creative, and I like his comic strip very much. But... it may be time to consider something radical... like a new page of clip art -- maybe something that can be alternated or switched between. Otherwise, fatigue is going to slowly weed out readers.

Of course, by then he'll have built a new content distribution system, found a way to project force beams from CRTs, compiled a natural language parser for search engines that doesn't suck and found a way to make hydrogen cell cars affordable. He's like that.

Sorry this took a bit, I got sidetracked with about half a rememberance which then had stuff I need to look out. Also work and eBay auctions, which are going great. More stuff up soon, for people who want to buy! With luck, the next one of these tomorrow... which might be an interesting one to do.