RT 3: Quest for the Teenage DM

I found out in an email from a friend: Gary Gygax was dead.

Mr. Gygax was the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, the granddaddy of fantasy role-playing games, as well as the owner of a name that still sounds faintly otherworldly, as if it were plucked right out of a fantasy novel. His creation sucked up a good chunk of my early adolescence, now a quarter-century gone. Hearing he'd died, I found myself thinking about D&D again -- and realized Mr. Gygax's game had a lot more influence on my life than I'd thought.

At first that wasn't entirely welcome news.

Associated Press

Gary Gygax

I started playing D&D when I was 12 or 13 -- which was, to put it mildly, not a optimal strategy for popularity in an early-1980s Long Island junior high. (This was the era in which being anywhere near smart was something to apologize for.) At 15 my family moved to Florida, and I went off to a boarding school where I knew not a soul; given the opportunity to start over that most teens can only dream of, I cravenly erased the D&D chapter of my personal history with the thoroughness of an official photographer at the Kremlin. It was college before I realized that plenty of my friends -- a hard-to-pigeonhole group -- had their own semi-obscure D&D histories, and we'd all turned out just fine.

(Geek Admission #1: After this discovery, I returned to college having dug up several pages I'd written in longhand years before -- my adaptation of the Jedi Knights of "Star Wars" to D&D character-class rules. This doubling-down of dorkery was a source of great merriment. It also eventually yielded semi-serious critiques from my friends -- our grasp of D&D mechanics hadn't eroded as much as we'd thought.)

D&D is still going strong, and now and then I'll thumb bemusedly through a rulebook in a bookstore. (Geek Admission #2: On occasion I've even ordered a used tome via Amazon, a stab at nostalgia that invariably proves disappointing. Except for "Return to the Tomb of Horrors," an update of Mr. Gygax's most-infamous adventure. That was pretty neat.)

But even if I had the time or inclination to take up the game again, it's evolved far beyond what I can remember. (Geek Admission #3: A while back I wrote some "Star Wars" stuff for Wizards of the Coast, now D&D's publisher, and had to work up stats using the current game system. It was like trying to get around Italy with a smattering of 20-year-old schoolboy Latin.)

But while I last played D&D nearly 25 years ago, it's had an enormous influence on me -- and my dorky adolescent self would be relieved to find that I don't regret a thing. (Geek Admission #4: OK, I did color the pictures in the Monster Manual, which is about as cringeworthy as it gets. I do regret that.)

Those old Gygax rulebooks now strike me as purple prose, but they were a revelation to a 13-year-old who liked words. My mom regarded my D&D years with grumpy helplessness, but I remember her admitting that OK, Mr. Gygax's vocabulary was impressive. (Geek Admission #5: The word she noted was "diverticulum," from "The Vault of the Drow." Which was dungeon module D3. I can't remember if it's my day to pick the kid up from school, but I remember these things.)

In his marvelous September 2006 take on Gygax and D&D from The Believer, Paul La Farge brings up a fairly amazing bit of D&D lore, the Harlot Encounter table, with its 12 varieties of prostitute from "typical streetwalker" to "wealthy procuress." (Yes, really.) I laughed out loud to see that one again, but I also remembered that Mr. Gygax's linguistic rosters of professions and weapons and jewels and textures and terrains had taught me two very interesting ideas at once: first, that a single thing could be described by many names; and second, that each of those names meant something subtly different.

And it wasn't just vocabulary. You needed a healthy dose of imagination not just to play D&D, but to grasp the basics of how to play. As a 12-year-old, I was thunderstruck with the idea that there wasn't a board -- or pieces, or obvious winners or losers. After a lifetime of slogging through "Life" and "Risk" and "Monopoly," it was exhilarating to learn there was a game in which you could go most anywhere and do most anything, as long as the dungeon master allowed it. (Oh, and the many-sided dice were cool. Except the 10-sided one they introduced later -- pointless, and not a Platonic solid.)

Moreover, as a kid who liked to write, it was heartening to realize my imagination did a better job visualizing a black dragon on a mound of treasure than any card, figurine or picture could. D&D is credited as an influence for not only today's computer role-playing games but also the multitude of shared virtual worlds we now inhabit and the identities we assume in those worlds. I can certainly see that, but for me the lesson was a bit different, and decidedly anti-technological: No computer game's monsters, characters or settings have ever seemed quite as cool as what my fellow players and I would conjure up in our own heads from words, pencil and paper. I live my life surrounded by computers and gadgets and Web sites, and remembering that has been a useful check on putting too much faith in techie things.

Yes, D&D had rules and stats (did it ever!) but they were really only there to help direct the communal storytelling. And I was like every other player or dungeon master I knew -- if a rule hampered what we wanted to do, we changed it or tossed it. That, within limits, was a good thing to learn at 13.

And I had to learn a lot more. As a dungeon master (I preferred that to playing), it was my job to direct the adventure. That demanded the ability to act, improvise, and mediate disputes, as well as the immense work to create a setting that entertained players while having an internal logic that would satisfy them. That was a tall order for someone in his early teens, but I found I loved being forced to think of something in its entirety, and to consider a problem or a goal from every facet. OK, the players are invading a goblin keep. How many guards does it have? How many of them are awake at any one time? What do they eat and drink? Where does that food and water come from? How often? And so on.

Whether it's a project at work or my own life, I still like considering things as systems, and figuring out how to make them work and how to work with them. Whatever skill I have at that began with Mr. Gygax and his game, and I'm grateful. We're all players at life, but we're more likely to succeed if now and then we can think along with the dungeon master.

What influence has D&D had on the technology world? On you personally? Got any heroic/nostalgic/embarrassing tales to offer? Share your thoughts with me and other Online Journal readers, or email me. If you've got something to say via email but don't want your comments considered for publication, please make that clear.

Teacher's Sense Of Humor Comes Through In Multiple-Choice Tests

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UNIONTOWN, PA—Most educators view multiple-choice exams as an opportunity to couch the correct answer amidst three or four other plausible alternatives. Not so for Uniontown High School teacher Tom Campbell. Campbell, 47, who has taught freshman history at the school for the past 11 years, uses the popular test format not only to instruct but also to delight his students with his quirky sense of humor.

"What was the Great Awakening?" a question from one of Campbell's most recent tests reads. "(a) Coffee and a bagel, (b) The name given to FDR's evening radio addresses, (c) 'C'mon, Mom! Let me sleep five more minutes!' or (d) A dramatic religious revival in Anglo-American history."

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Mr. Campbell's students quietly rule out the uproarious option (b): Porky Pig.

"The answer is D," said Campbell, holding back a wry smile. "Giving them the option of 'Coffee and a bagel.' Get it?"

It's hard to imagine, but this life-of-the-classroom didn't always write his exams in such an amusing fashion. Campbell says that it wasn't until 2001—the year he turned 40—that he began to feel stifled by the standard, school-sanctioned exams and decided his tests would go in a more unorthodox direction.

"I'll never forget that first joke answer," Campbell said. "The question was 'Reconstruction can best be described as,' and I decided to make one of the choices—I think it was C—'What will never happen to the school's broken-down auditorium.' All day long I was nervous the kids would think it was inappropriate, but when I heard a few giggles in the back of the classroom, I knew I had a gift for this kind of thing."

With humorous answers such as these, one might naturally assume that Mr. Campbell is also witty in his daily interactions with others, that he is perhaps considered to be a real jokester in his non-test-giving life. But according to his friends, fellow teachers, and members of his weekend choir group, that couldn't be further from the truth.

"Tom's a quiet guy," Uniontown algebra teacher Gale Halfhill says. "He keeps to himself mostly. He sometimes talks to the other teachers in the teacher's lounge, but I don't remember him ever saying anything comedic."

Campbell readily admits that his quiet demeanor and extreme shyness have changed little since he was a child. That timidity, however, is momentarily abandoned when Campbell sits down at night to write his multiple-choice exams—a process Campbell describes as freeing, and the only time in his life he has felt the self-confidence to allow his true personality to shine through.

"You definitely have to take my tests to understand my sense of humor," said Campbell, who, during his time as an educator, figures he has made more than 5,000 jokes, all of which were part of his exams. "About four years ago, I made the mistake of telling one of the other teachers I used 'Billy Crystal' as an answer choice. He didn't quite get it, I think mainly because people just don't realize I can be a pretty wild and crazy guy, so to speak."

"To even consider Billy Crystal as one of the men who rode with Paul Revere is really, really funny," Campbell continued. "See, he wasn't even born until the 20th century, so unless he can time-travel, it's utterly impossible for him to have even met Paul Revere, much less accompanied him on his epic ride."

According to Campbell, "The kids in my class have come to expect not only to learn, but to laugh."

Another test answer that Campbell wrote is equally outrageous: Between what years did the Civil War take place? (a) 1861-1865, (b) 1862-1867, (c) 1863-1868, or (d) Put your pencils down and sing "Happy Birthday" to Jimmy.

"There's nothing wrong with having a little fun sometimes," Campbell said.

But just because his tests usually consist of approximately 45 joke answers, that doesn't mean it takes Campbell less time to write the exams. Quite the contrary. Campbell explains that he can spend anywhere between two to five hours writing, rewriting, and punching-up his tests—taking care to relate every joke answer in some way to the question. It's a sacrifice the seasoned educator says he is willing to make.

"I could easily just relax and give an exam with eight to 10 essay questions," Campbell said. "But I think that would be doing a disservice to my students."

Added Campbell: "Also, with a multiple-choice test I get to make more jokes."

Thus far, it's clear his students appreciate the effort.

Using Smart Search to Find Wild Animals and Other Creatures

Anyone who uses an RSS reader knows that it is a great, time-saving way to keep up with news and weblogs and other Internet sources. One of the things that many users don’t know about RSS readers is that they are excellent tools for researching specific topics. If you are interested in a particular subject, your RSS reader can be put to use ferreting out information from multiple sources.

Blogger B.L. Ochman interviewed Doc Searls, senior editor at Linux Journal, about how internet pioneer Searls keeps up with the enormous amount of information out there. Searls explains that he tracks keywords rather than individual blogs, news sites or feeds, because, as he puts it, “I’m more interested in subjects than sources.”

If you find yourself in the same situation, consider using NewsGator’s Smart Feed functionality to study subjects rather than individual news or weblogs. You can find it by clicking on Add Feeds from the home page and then Smart Feeds. What it allows you to do is choose a keyword or words for which to search.

If you work at a company with a name as unique as “Newsgator,” Smart Search allows you to monitor the web for news stories, bloggers (both those who brag about our products and those who complain about them) and any other place our name shows up on the Internet. If you work for Smith and Company, it won’t help as much.

One of my personal interests is how predators and other wildlife interact with humans. I started by using Smart Feed keywords like “wolves,” “grizzlies” and “coyotes.” This brought back a few stories about the animals, but since it only searches for terms and not context, I got more high-school sports results (“Grizzlies Maul Hapless Ducks, 17-3”) than information I was actually looking for. I kept trying different combinations before finally coming up with one that worked. “Nuisance wildlife” brings me a nice complement of stories about municipalities, states, the federal government and their interactions and decisions regarding predators and critters.

If you haven’t tried Smart Search and you’re studying something, make sure and give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

Headache Music

I ran across an Opinion piece yesterday in the New York Times written by Jeff Tweedy, the leader of the rock band Wilco. I have always given Tweedy the benefit of the doubt, especially about some of the offerings on Wilco’s latest albums, and especially the disc titled A Ghost is Born. A couple of the songs actually would give me a headache while listening.

As Tweedy explains in his piece, that was at least part of the point. Tweedy has suffered from migraine headaches, depression and panic anxiety almost his entire life, and after collapsing and entering a rehabilitation facility that treated his migraines in relation to his other maladies, he says he hasn’t had a migraine in several years. The headaches, depression and anxiety had a serious (and often deleterious) effect on his music, especially during the making of A Ghost is Born. One of the songs that especially got on my nerves was “Less Than You Think,” a long, slow piece that ends with an irritating, almost unlistenable 15-minute instrumental.

"There is a lot of material that mirrored my condition. In particular there’s a piece of music — “Less Than You Think” — that ends with a 12-minute drone that was an attempt to express the slow painful rise and dissipation of migraine in music," Tweedy writes. "I don’t know why anyone would need to have that expressed to them musically. But it was all I had."

I still will probably hit the fast-forward button when “Less Than You Think” comes on the shuffle, but I appreciate what the song is trying to accomplish. And Tweedy’s journal will tell you more about creativity and mental health than anything you will read in music magazines about those subjects this year or any.

Despite dealing with subject matter that is in no way funny, he still manages to show a sense of humor about his situation: "You know, seeing a rock musician vomit on the side of the stage, I’m sure people thought I was completely out of my mind on drugs or strung out," he admits. "It didn’t have any kind of long term impact on how people perceived the band, though. Crazy thing is, in my business, that sort of thing is considered an asset. Sick but true."

Of iPhones, Twitter-Venting and Even More FeedDemon Tricks of the Trade

In its short period in the marketplace, the iPhone has made many changes in the way people use mobile devices. A lot has been written about the touch pad and the integration of iPod, internet and telephone into one device. Not much has been said about how the iPhone changed the way mobile devices interact with wireless carriers. Apple is the first device maker to make a deal with a wireless company that emphasizes the phone over the access. Up until now, wireless companies ruled that space. Read more about this important development and its implications in this excellent Wired magazine article.

We mentioned last week in this space that FeedDemon’s Nick Bradbury has written two versions of “Ten Little Tricks You Might Not Know About FeedDemon. Well, he finished a third installment this morning, posting it in the wee hours. Don’t you ever sleep, Nick? Or perhaps a little too much Guitar Hero?

RSS News Around the Blogosphere

The mission of MightyMerchant.com, it says on its website, is “to provide usiness owners with straightforward, comprehensive and affordable eCommerce services that produce positive financial results.” To that end, the blog, operated by Datahost Inc., uses RSS to get the message out. A recent post explains RSS and how to create and use RSS feeds. It’s a short, excellent look at the basics.

Those of you who use NewsGator Toolbar, be advised that there is an update available now that offers, as developer Nick Harris says, “a slew of bug fixes.” To find out more or download the update, click here.

And our developers for FeedDemon and NetNewsWire have each posted some tips and tricks of the custom feed reader trade. Brent Simmons has a series of posts titled Things You May Not Know About NetnewsWire in four categories: Browser Stuff; Reading Stuff; Subscriptions List Stuff; and Miscellaneous Stuff.

And not to be outdone, Nick Bradbury has just posted 10 Tiny FeedDemon Tips and Viewing Flickr Photos in FeedDemon. Since these are the guys who created and continue to feed and water these applications, you will pick up something new in these posts. I guarantee it.

Celebs Blog; Some Are Even Good

We are a celebrity-obsessed culture. Many musicians, actors, directors, athletes, TV journalists, building owners and trust-funders are all known by their faces, or their first name.

So it is no surprise that some have taken up the weblog, in many cases just to create buzz for themselves or, in others, people who who actually keep an online journal. Our editorial staff came up with a list of celeb-blogs to which you can subscribe. Among the finds:

If you were a fan of Talking Heads, you would be no stranger to David Byrne, the enigmatic leader of that ancient quartet. Byrne writes a journal of his travels and interests, the latest posts being his trip to Aspen for a video tutorial and an account of a side-trip to the Museum of Jurassic Technology (where he finds a room filled with paintings of dogs the Russians sent into space during the early days of earth orbiting.) Entertaining and erudite, Byrne’s blog is as interesting and curious as the man himself.

Successful businessman and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban has a reputation for outspokenness and provocation. His Blog Maverick, certainly doesn't distract from the mystique. The headline on his latest post is “The Internet is Officially Dead & Boring – It’s the Economy Stupid.”

Pete Townshend reveals that what's left of the Who (Townshend and Roger Daltrey) is back in the studio recording a new CD, the band’s first since 2006, on the official Who Blog. Rosie O-Donnell writes what she calls haiku on hers, while Garrison Keillor waxes poetic about subjects hither and non. You can stream his latest album from the weblog of Bob Mould .

You can find these blogs and other celebrity scribbling in the NewsGator taxonomy by clicking Add Feeds, then Find Feeds and the folder “Celebrity Bloggers” in the list. When you see one you like, click subscribe to add it to your reader.

Seattle, Wash. — March 3, 2008 — NewsGator Technologies, Inc. today announced growing adoption of NewsGator Social Sites, featuring CME Federal Credit Union’s (CME) implementation of a corporate-wide portal that leverages a combined Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and NewsGator Social Sites solution. Social Sites has helped CME enhance customer service and improve employee productivity by enabling collaboration and making relevant business information more accessible and discoverable.

Serving nearly 26,000 members and managing assets of more than $158 million, CME is a thriving credit union focused on customer service. Using Social Sites, CME is saving time by surfacing timely, relevant content to employees both within and outside of the portal and by facilitating collaboration between people, departments, and project groups. CME’s employees are also able to enhance customer service by tracking member concerns through a Social Sites tag cloud, which provides customer-service staff and management personnel with a real-time view of member feedback and enables the CME team to immediately involve the right internal resources to more quickly resolve member concerns.

“NewsGator’s technology has helped us deliver on our mission of making life great for our members, and that means a never-ending commitment to enhancing customer service,” said Joe Toth, AVP of information technology with CME Federal Credit Union. “By keeping everyone in our company informed of member concerns and collaborating more easily on business issues, we are better able to help our members succeed.”

CME used SharePoint Server 2007 to create a robust corporate intranet portal that provides all employees with collaboration tools such as wikis and blogs, a document management system, automated workflows, and centralized access to internal business application data. With this wealth of dynamic information, CME needed an effective way for employees to find information and to be notified when content was added or updated, and the Social Sites solution, with seamless SharePoint Server 2007 integration, enabled easy discovery of content and people within the portal. After implementing NewsGator’s Social Sites, employees can now quickly browse through the latest content headlines, view the most relevant/popular portal content and easily learn about authors’ expertise. Social Sites also offers sophisticated RSS feed subscriptions and management features that bring relevant, external news and information into the portal and allow CME employees to receive portal update notifications and important business application data on their mobile devices, desktops and e-mail clients.

“The combined Social Sites and SharePoint Server 2007 solution will enable significant productivity improvements, saving employees an average of 30 minutes per day,” stated Toth. “Social Sites will make it easier for our employees to access and discover critical business information without having to conduct tedious searches.”

“CME’s use of Social Sites is a model Enterprise 2.0 deployment. With Social Sites, CME is getting the most out of its SharePoint Server 2007 investment by enhancing collaboration – giving everyone in the organization the access to information they need to do their jobs faster, better and more efficiently,” said Dave Keller, Enterprise General Manager with NewsGator. “By working closely with Microsoft, NewsGator has enhanced the social computing experience for SharePoint Server 2007 users, ensuring that they become more informed and more productive.”

NewsGator Social Sites enhances social computing capabilities for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.  NewsGator Social Sites drives SharePoint adoption, improves productivity, and expands employee knowledge.  Social Sites installs seamlessly into the SharePoint architecture to provide enhanced Enterprise 2.0 collaboration capabilities to SharePoint users.  Social Sites keeps SharePoint content fresh and relevant, enhances SharePoint usability, makes it easy to discover content and experts, and brings users back to SharePoint through precision notifications.  Social Sites features include advanced tagging; tag clouds; RSS feeds, subscriptions and management; notifications; read states; and colleague tracking capabilities. For more information, please visit: http://www.newsgator.com/Business/SocialSites/Default.aspx

About NewsGator Technologies, Inc.

Political blogs are definitely long tail, survey says

A new survey shows that few Americans really care what bloggers have to say about politics, despite the plethora of opinionated blogs out there this campaign year.

Of 2,300 adults who filled out an online poll in January, 56 percent said they never read blogs on politics and 22 percent said they read them regularly, meaning several times a month or more, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive and reported on by Reuters.

Older people are more likely to read the political blogs, with 26 percent of those aged 63 or older reading them and less than 20 percent for people younger than 44.

We wondered what the percentage of readers was for blogs in general. ComScore looked at its online traffic stats and found that 40 percent of all U.S. Internet users visited a blog at least once during February. That represented 74 million unique users.

It would be difficult to converge the two data sets since the methodologies and sample sizes are so different, and ComScore does not break out the numbers based on blog type.