Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 7, "Banquets and Beatdowns"

This is a very Chrome-centric episode, so of course I like it. He was funny, he was sneaky, he had a juicy role-play opportunity, and he was useful in a fight. (Next session will continue this trend, but with vehicles.)

Because All Ones didn't include the picture of what Chrome wore to the Aslan shindig, here it is in all its glory: 

https://amzn.to/4h2xA3U

As you can see, there's totally room for a stunner pistol down that codpiece!

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 6, "Solomani Salami"

This is my favorite session so far, because this is the one where it feels like everyone's character clicked into place and we all started role-playing as a group rather than a bunch of individuals. Denton is in full Dr Strangelove mode, and his invention of "salami" as an insult to Solomani was inspired. 

Also, Merry Christmas! Chrome has a very special present for all of you in the first 2 minutes of the video. 

 

The intro and outro was done by my friend Jay Peterson,  a professional actor. You can hire him at jaythebarbarian.com. He also has a novel, Renfield Blues: The First Grunt's Grimoire, available for purchase at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format. It's a fun, fast-paced, and intelligent story that's also amazingly well-written.

https://amzn.to/41QSIFy

If you're a fan of urban fantasy like Dresden Files or Monster Hunter International, feel nostalgic for 1990s horror RPGs from White Wolf, or just like stories with competent gun use and/or magic systems more involved than "I cast fireball!", then this is a book you will enjoy reading.  I'm eagerly looking forward to the sequel.

And here's a standalone version of that segment, for you to use if you want to send it to friends and fans of Traveller. 

 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a safe Jump. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 5, "Veterans Without Borders"

 

This session is basically just tying up the first act of the adventure and then beginning the second act. There's no action (wait until next episode for that!) but there's a lot of good character development, including what I think are many fun Chrome-isms. 

 

One of these days, the other players are going to think to ask Chrome why his sense of aesthetics is... whatever it is... but so far it hasn't happened yet. 

Also, here's the stand-alone "KOYNZ" commercial that originally aired at the end of Episode 3. Those of you who are familiar with my work may have noticed the script is from this blog post. 

KOYNNNNNZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 4, "Prometheus"

This week kind of disappeared as interest in Operation Blazing Sword and the Pink Pistols exploded due to the election.

Anyway, episode 4 of our Actual Play series is out. Don't worry if you're behind, because we missed playing last week and will miss this week, so you have time to catch up. 

 

As Chrome's player, I want to make it clear that it was never my intent to blackmail the rest of the party and I hope it wasn't taken as such. Alice said I was basically threatening them with mission failure, and I can honestly say that was never on my mind. Instead, Chrome's feelings were like this:

1. The Leader and the other Warriors of his kroyloss (fraternity) seemed set on killing all the droyne on the planet. As the only droyne in the PC party, Chrome took that personally, and he also thinks that Denton-Warrior-Friend is more than a little deranged when it comes to orbital bombardment. 
2. Within droyne culture, droyne who cannot contribute are encouraged to engage in a painless suicide ritual known as krinaytsyu. A sport that is ignored isn't contributing much. 
   
   
3. Therefore, Chrome's last-ditch action was more along the lines of a samurai performing kanshi to protest the decision of Roberd-Leader-friend the best way he knew how: "Well, if I'm so worthless that you won't listen to me, just leave me there to die with the other droyne you consider worthless."

Dramatic and passive-aggressive? Yes. That's how a lot of things are in caste systems. But I, the player, wouldn't throw the rest of the players under the bus of "Do it my way or fail the mission," and I really hate that it came out that way. I made sure the rest of the players knew that. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 3, "Kilts, Coyns, and Kukri"

 

Chrome now has a kilt! It's a pity that Hero Forge doesn't have the complexity for tartan patterns. But speaking of Droyne with kilts, here's a tartan that they'd love, as they use Base 6 and this pattern is hexagonal. 

https://www.spoonflower.com/en/fabric/10056924-trueblue-hexagon-plaid-by-tallulahdahling

For the bagpipe music played during the battle, I chose "March of Cambreadth" by Alexander Adams. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 2, "Red Tape Rendezvous"

The hijinks continue!

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 1, "Combat Lawyer"

I joined a Traveller RPG group that plays on Mondays. If you're interested in listening, this is our first episode.

I play Chrome the Droyne, a weird little guy who is the ship's pilot.  For reasons which may never be revealed, Chrome likes wearing Hawaiian-print shirts.

A Recommended View from Salem

I have a hard time keeping up with television. Maybe it's an attention deficit problem; maybe it's the fact that most stories I experience are in games, and are more interactive. All I know is that, with a few exceptions, I struggle to keep up with more than one or two television shows,and don't watch very many movies. As a result, most of my "entertainment" comes from adding random interesting videos to my YouTube "Watch Later" list and letting them play on a second monitor while I play a game.

About a week ago, someone at Google with more conservative viewpoints than the average "Googler" (seriously, they actually call themselves that) posted on the company's internal social network a memo that cited scientific sources to explain why Google is struggling with its internal 'diversity', suggestions on how to address it more effectively, and noting that thinking outside of the accepted norm is discouraged and feels like it could possibly lead to being fired... so Google fired him for thinking outside of the accepted norm. The press jumped on this quickly, labeling it an "Anti-PC, Anti-Diversity Screed" and running the author's name through the mud.

What do these things have in common? Well, I really don't have much to contribute this week. My mind is elsewhere, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by life at the moment. I'll put it simply:

• YouTube is run by Google. 
• My Watch Later list is made up of videos from all over the political spectrum. Far Left, Far Right, In-Between, and completely unaffiliated. 
• Google has recently announced they'll be setting loose an algorithm to police "extremist" content on YouTube which has the aims of moving "controversial" content into a sort of limbo where they won't be recommended, can't be voted or commented on, and will get no exposure. 

I worry that Google has, in pursuit of being "good", has lost sight of it's old motto of "Don't Be Evil." I worry that they might be planning to infringe upon my right to listen, and I say that knowing full well they aren't a government organization. It seems that as soon as people started trying to protect their First Amendment rights, crazy people started trying to get corporations to enforce censorship when they realized government couldn't.

Simply put, I want to make the decision about what thoughts I listen to. I don't want Google deciding for me. If this turns south, for all the good it will do, I'm jumping ship from Android and getting an iThing of some sort.

I'll let someone who is much more experienced in the YouTube world than I am explain it to you better than I could. Yes, this video is roughly 30 minutes long. That's no big thing for me; I regularly listen to lectures and debates that are 2+ hours, but it explains my concerns well. Put aside any nationalistic or idealistic differences you may have with the speaker and listen for me.

 

The Current YouTube Debacle

YouTube is kind of a big thing for me. I'm a cord-cutter, and have been for a long time now: when I got my first solo apartment, I looked into cable prices and realized that a basic package was just far too much more than I was willing to spend for what I'd get and what I'd get out of it. It was at that point that I started looking into alternatives, and began the arduous task of downloading episodes of television shows over a dial-up connection.

To you millenials, this may sound shocking. You think the internet is your ally. I was born in dial-up. I didn't see high-speed, always-on connections until I was a man. (Obligatory Bane reference complete.)

I like YouTube because it provides a platform for a lot of voices, and a way for those voices to monetize their content so that they can continue to provide content as long as people keep patronizing, keep clicking, and keep viewing. It allows me to watch music, entertainment, and news from sources that are not approved by one of the few major satellite or cable content providers. Without it, I'd be stuck with Syfy or CNN, The Home Shopping Network or FOX News. Instead, I can listen to arguments from all sides of an issue, from rational to emotional to paranoid.

Recently, several prominent and many more obscure content creators have been hit with automated notices that their content has been demonetized. In other words, they haven't been silenced; they haven't been removed; they're just not making money anymore when people watch their content. Ostensibly, this is due to YouTube's concern over advertisers, as the pre-scripted message provided to the video producers indicates.

The Rules. So, really, nothing is monetizable anymore. 

The first major case was 10+ year veteran vlogger Philip DeFranco, whose video regarding the woman who claimed she was harassed by a Lyft driver revealed that she was being abusive and harassing because he had a bobble-headed hula doll (the kind they practically issue you when you step off the plane in "the continent of Hawaii", to use her wording) on his dashboard. 

There was a knee-jerk reaction, as his video did include the acronym "SJW" in the title and Google has publicly invited some of the more notorious "anti-harassment" advocates to their headquarters before, but the tide quickly shifted when a producer for The Young Turks (basically the FOX News of the Left and arch-rivals with Alex Jones) tweeted that they were hit by a massive demonetization wave that affected over 500 of their videos. 

That tweet, coincidentally, is now unavailable. I suspect it's because a progressive was referring to it as censorship when there was no government intervention and no one was silenced... just de-funded. Fortunately, the internet never forgets. 

Then came the smaller channels. One lost revenue on a video about depression, another over a video on how to conceal acne. Even videos about suicide prevention by Boogie2988, the Internet's nicest guy, weren't safe.

My theory here, as one of YouTube's support Twitter accounts will not shut up about, is that they're doing it to push YouTube Red. YTR is a subscription-based service that feeds money to participating content creators, based on their view-counts, from the subscription money instead of advertising revenue. By de-monetizing regular YouTube videos, Google hopes to force content creators to switch to using YouTube Red instead. 

Let me give you an idea of the impact this would have on someone who isn't a content creator, but merely a subscriber. I don't have a webcam, and I don't particularly like being on camera, so I watch, listen, and learn. I take in a great number of various voices and viewpoints by listening to scientific lectures, entertainment podcasts, and political rants from all around the spectrum while I play video games. One of my favourite things to do after work is to put my feet up, boot up something like Assassin's Creed or Fallout, and wander around the map picking up collectibles and climbing towers while learning new and different things. So while this doesn't affect me directly, it does upset me that YouTube is doing this because YouTube is probably the Google product that I use the most. 

My fear is that this demonetization push is going to reduce YouTube to cat videos and make-up tutorials, with content creators that want to discuss serious topics fleeing to smaller, less reliable platforms for fear of their livelihoods. After all, if regular YouTube did this to them, who's to say that youTube Red won't do exactly the same later on?

Google:  Please don't do this. If this was a bot, turn it off. If this was a conscious decision, reverse it. You don't realize how important YouTube is to some people's day-to-day lives. It's a more powerful information and entertainment platform than any network or cable television channel, and you're neutering it.