#i do find tunnel plugs to be a fun concept

[bitsybunbun]

What are your thoughts on butt plugs and diapers used in conjunction with one another?

I know lots of folks who love this combination and I'm cheering them on! I personally find buttplugs to be uncomfortable and would much prefer a vaginal plug/vibe in my diapers.

[magellanicclouds]

Halo - An Essay: regarding waste management systems and devices for MJOLNIR armoured Spartans It has been a hectic sort of few weeks. Between work and getting sick again (for the fourth time already this year thanks to my crewmates who can't remember it's their duty to stay home when they're ill) I've been on the outs. I haven't had the energy for much, but I'm usually a pretty active person, so this has kind of made me loopy? Which feels like as good a time as any to talk at length about the concept of catheterizing Spartans for waste management in MJOLNIR.

Let me explain.

This Silly Post crossed my dash recently and I fully understand it is meant as lighthearted fun - we have fun here. But it also dragged out some strong thoughts I've had haunting in the back of my mind about this for years because I'm super normal about Halo, and have time on my hands and the right amount of sleep deprivation and medication on board. So I wrote 3500 words about it. And about Karen Traviss, who is pretty knotted up in this conversation, since she's the one who decided to start it back in 2011.

To preface, I'm not an expert, but I have worked in emergency medicine for 25 years, and been a fan of Halo for almost as long. I've had more of a lukewarm relationship with it the last decade or so if I'm being honest, but it will always have a home in my heart; I just think letting it under my skin like that in the first place may have made me feral and prone to biting. Thankfully, I can always happily rotate Fred in my mind until the heat-death of the universe, so that's nice. Anyway, full disclosure: the essay below contains discussion about medical devices, physical trauma, and I am sharing quite a lot of personal negativity about the Kilo-5 trilogy and Karen Traviss. That said, if you'd like to sit in on the length of what I'm about to yell into the sky about all this, you can find it under the cut. I love you.

Welcome to my dissertation.

Section 1 - The Relevant Background:

Equipping Spartans with urinary catheters weeded itself into the Halo universe in the 2011 book Halo: Glasslands, during a conversation between Spartan II Naomi-010 and ODST Mal Geffen. Glasslands was the first in Karen Traviss's Kilo-5 trilogy, and she is both the originator of this, and the only official Halo author or source to have used catheters specifically since. Some context: I don't personally like these books, or their author, or even her reasoning for why she chose to add this. My personal preference doesn't make something 'bad', and I'm not out to hurt any feelings. Kilo-5 isn't a total wash for me, there are some characters and ideas that I'd of otherwise loved to have seen explored through the lens of a different author, but these books felt smothered under Traviss's habit of always injecting her very loud personal voice into the narrative fabric. I think this is something that's fine to do in an original series, but doesn't really belong in an established third party IP. She bangs on about so much of her own narrow worldview and self-assured prejudices across the trilogy that still discussing them today creates division in the fandom, and sadly did a lot of lasting damage to a couple characters. But for the topic here, the dialogue that started all this cath chat came from Naomi-010, having idle conversation with Mal who asks her about bathroom breaks. “I’m catheterized. Another reason why that machine has to be so precisely calibrated. This suit plugs into me in a lot of places.” 'The Machine' she's referring to is a Brokkr assembly, which was introduced to the lore as a large mechanical armature used to get Spartans in and out of MJOLNIR. You can see them in action in cinematics from Halo 4 (+Spartan Ops) and 5.

One single mention, and it was big news. Traviss was naturally interviewed about it because of course she was - people can't help themselves but forget an entire novel and tunnel vision on 'but how pee pee?', and her answer has always irritated me. It's not in what she says, so much as what 'what she says' means in her voice. Traviss didn't answer it directly, but instead talked about how she likes to get into character's heads by addressing the mundane necessity of things that often go overlooked to expand a sense of familiarity with the character and their world. Sounds super reasonable, I know, but don't give her too much credit - that's not a quote. It's just me paraphrasing and honestly I was pretty generous in my wording. Probably because I agree! What bugs me about it, is if you've ever read literally any interview with her, or her personal musings about her writing process, you know there's a bit of an 'honesty' issue there. She's somebody who feels perfectly comfortable ignoring established character voices, traits, or histories to satisfy whatever roles she's reinvented for them, and too many others wind up as mouthpieces. How much are you really challenging yourself in finding characters' voices when most of them are just yours? And the part about familiarity with their world? I giggled a little. She doesn't care about their world, or their aesthetics, or their technology, or their medicine. Because she didn't care about Halo while writing these, and she's not vague about admitting that. It's a matter of pride for her to purposefully refuse to research those things, in the same way she disregarded Star Wars and Gears of War - she doesn't consider the effort to be a valuable part of her process. So instead she'll skim the foundation, gather some recognizable names, pick her targets, and trusts that her personal experiences combined with an outsider perspective will generate better content to seamlessly overwrite what existed. Cool, Karen. Annoying, but why bring all that up? We're here to talk about catheters, right? Well, the fandom for the most part begin and end their assessment of the dialogue at urinary catheters, but the whole quote implies so much more than that - "This suit plugs into me in a lot of places." We're not just dealing with a cath, but apparently with multiple additional external-to-invasive connections. Reader, this dialogue is a plinth to Traviss's bizarre refusal to research not only the franchises she's contracted to write in, but also just into the basic function and hazards of existing concepts that she wants to introduce, and all because she's convinced herself she's done learning about the world. Choosing to ignore the creative freedom of limitless potential in a future of technology that would be basically magic to us today, and instead degrade 529 years of advancement is certainly a take, but it's even more ridiculous to do it with a subject (The Spartan Programme) that is considered to be the peak of advancement in that future's setting. That's clownery, just like her alleged commitment to adjusting her perspective to suit a universe's world.

I want to close out this section with a question: Why is it that writers in the Halo space - both fan and official - cling so tightly to current-day modern concepts as if they'd still be perfectly relevant in 500+ years? Music, for example, apparently suffered a multi-century stagnation in lots of published and fanmade Halo media. Though my partner made a strong counterpoint about this to be fair: we still listen to music composed by Mozart. So there's an argument to be made there. Medicine though. There is way less latitude to embrace the classics there. It's been shown across several games, novels, and films to be sufficiently advanced well beyond anything we're currently capable of or even understand, so why undermine that and choose to drag it centuries backward? For clarity, I am not talking about what might be standard in the public or private sectors, nor the enduring things that'd be used by the public and military alike, like sterile dressings, syringes, supplemental oxygen equipment. Those are the Basics and they will be relevant to us indefinitely. But I'm talking about the UNSC. I'm talking about ONI R&D. I'm talking about Section Three. Retrograding tech and failing to address a necessity that applies to every living person in the Super Soldier Wizardry department makes my mouth flatten into a tight little line.

Section Two - Caths, and why this whole thing got written:

Indwelling urinary catheters, both urethral and suprapubic. There's a laundry list of problems here, but I've distilled it down to the three biggest when suggesting they'd have any safe practical application in Spartans: Care. Activity. Damage. There is unreasonable expectations of care and maintenance for caths with regards to people who can be on operations isolated for months at a time with no support of any kind and are often limited to carrying only what can be kept on their person. The level of extreme physical activity Spartans engage in on any perfectly normal day whether deployed or not is unfit for the stability and safety of a cath. And damage; obvious enough, but with this one I'll be taking a huge emphasis on concussive forces - explosions. Something Spartans are subjected to a lot. I'll be using the height of modern-day catheter quality as a baseline for this, since that's what Traviss felt was sufficient. Regarding Urethral vs Suprapubic, Traviss doesn't specify by name, but Naomi's comment in full reads to me that she's only catheterized temporarily while armoured, hence the assembly needing to be so finely calibrated. Foley caths are temporary urethral caths that would only supplement the urinary process while a person was armoured. Suprapubic caths however are surgically placed devices. They do need routine tube replacement to keep them clean, but unlike the Foley that just serves as an aide measure for an otherwise fully functioning bladder, suprapubic caths are usually placed in people with congenital bladder disfunction, or who've suffered injury or disease that left the bladder in poor health or failure. This type of access will always require a tube in place and this would be the exclusive method of urination - in or out of armour. My Big Three Concerns fit both types similarly, though there is some additional risks associated with urethral caths that I'll cover.

Care: Caring for an invasive cath is a not insignificant effort. They're prone to blockage, kinking, and bacterial growth. They're so frequently responsible for UTIs and kidney stones that these complications are just considered the Standard Fair for having a cath. Their need to be frequently replaced because of their penchant for bacterial growth is the kicker here - whole floral colonies sprout up in caths and can eek their way out into the body through compromised tissue and wreck havoc. They have no self-cleaning mechanism, and steadily deteriorate. Changing and replacing an indwelling cath is a procedure that requires additional supplies that'd have to be carried, and needs to be done in a practiced and clean setting; preferably medical. Granted, there are people who manage the removal and insertion of their own caths at home, but they still need to ensure a clean and safe environment while they do this. A Spartan could never be guaranteed that, nor would it even be wise to consider the vulnerability of removing so much armour to handle it. Modern day caths are recommended to be replaced every 30 days or so, with some models able to be in place for a few months at a time, but that's with constant daily care and cleaning; something that'd be unreasonable for a Spartan to maintain while entrenched who knows where for who knows how long, and without access to replacement medical supplies. Those endurance times between replacements are geared for the average public person who leads an average public life and care for their cath as directed and don't get into fist fights with Sangheili. Needless to say, the endurance time for the same device in a Spartan who leads a wildly different lifestyle probably cuts those times down to a third.

Activity: Modern day caths are designed to offer people the most utility and versatility possible. Both models are available for people who are bed-bound or have extremely limited mobility, as well as for those who are mobile, independent, and live out average lives. With regards to the latter, suprapubics are somewhat more common, if for no other reason than to reduce the Foley's higher risks of induction injury, but modern urethral caths also allow for regular movement and activity with a more reduced chance of becoming dislodged or damaged than they would have had a couple decades ago. But when I say regular activity, I mean going on a walk. Shopping for groceries. Doing basic house chores. Even light exercise and sexual activity can be managed with physician advisement and the appropriate precautions taken. Anytime a Spartan was fielded they'd have to be all the more overly-cautious about Movements Outside of Their Control during confrontations, maneuvers, ambush, environmental or vehicular incidents. Even when things go well there'd be too much risk involved. That said, traumatic decatheterizations happen more frequently than anyone would like, and I'm talking about regular old Joe Everybody. I respond to no less than a dozen of these incidents a year. Both types of catheter are held in place by a bulb balloon that's inflated from a port with around 10-30ccs of saline after the tube enters the bladder (30ccs would be more appropriate for better security of the line). Before removing a cath, the saline is removed to deflate the balloon and the tube is guided out - with a Foley cath, that means being guided out of the urethra. When a Foley cath is traumatically removed, the saline filled balloon - which is like five times wider in diameter than the average 6mm urethra - does a pretty devastating amount of damage on it's way out, penis or vagina; though a penile urethra has significantly more length to damage, and the penile meatus very typically is torn. These incidents run high risk of bladder hematoma as well, which requires urgent surgical intervention. The very worst traumatic decatheterizations I've responded to were all penile and had trauma to external tissue. Ever microwaved a hotdog a little too long?

Damage: How often are Spartans subjected to explosive and other concussive forces? Silly question - answer: a lot and often and unavoidable. And we know they still feel the powerful feedback. Despite shields and dampeners and a self-moderating gel layer, strong inertial forces are still felt through the suits. Across multiple novels we're given details about near misses and blasts, accelerated or uncontrolled falls, rattling their teeth, hampering their vision, hearing, or balance; they've been rendered unconscious and suffered internal injuries. The fact that most of these events don't flat out kill them is a credit to their armour and augmentations. For reference - when a person experiences explosive or concussive force from a distance enough to avoid separation of limbs, bisection, etc, the totality of their injuries can't and won't be seen externally. How they present on the outside is just the tippy tip of the iceburg - it's what's happened to them internally that you need to be concerned about. Cracked or fractured bones, torn musculature, arterial shearing, hollow organ rupture, cardiac and brain tissue bleed, to name some common ones, and this kind of trauma extends to all implanted devices as well. For example, rods and nails and other structural aids or replacements are much more resilient than your organic tissues, and can dislodge when tissues tear or rupture, damaging anything in their way like shrapnel. The fragile little balloon of a catheter will shatter when subjected to even relatively minor explosive force, so to even consider for a moment that this would be a viable piece of equipment for people intended to routinely be involved in explosive environments is beyond willful negligence. That there wouldn't be a better solution to the question of waste management - a necessity for literally all human people who make up the entirety of the Spartan branch, with the infinite funding of ONI R&D seems so stupid to me that I… well, that I wrote this. Because, friends - participating in active warfare is not cath-safe. The kinds of physical demands and forces on Spartan bodies are not cath-safe. The risks will never outweigh the benefits to this. Even while sealed in powered armour and a skinsuit tech layer, the very thought of Section Three engineers or Halsey or anyone involved in the development of MJOLNIR dismissing the glaring obvious failure of Spartans having any kind of externalized invasive devices is so unreasonably negligent that it could only be the brainchild of an author who's convinced that these characters are all actually just psuedo-intelligent government boogiemen who aren't as capable as they claim to be. But No. They are that capable, and they are that intelligent and the fact that they have a bottomless budget and deeply flexible ethics is literally what makes them so dangerous.

So if we have to address this, how do we do it? Apparently there was always an official answer for this. Former Franchise Development Director, creator of the Master Chief**, and extremely racist asshole Frank O'Connor weighed in on this in the same interview, where he almost immediate rejected and denied Traviss's catheterization claim and says that 'this sort of stuff' was the kind of thing he and the other creative heads at Bungie/343i talked and planned about all the time. So how does this work then, because we're invested now. According to 'ol Frankie's elegant input: they just pee freely into the suit. That's it. For clarity, he's talking about the skinsuit and not the MJOLNIR interior proper. He goes on to say that connectivity between body and MJOLNIR at all levels is fully noninvasive, but precise, and that it doesn't matter what kind of body output a Spartan introduces into the suit interior, because a hygienic valve system (??) will scrub it continually and collect all matter for recycling and reintroduction via capillary action powered by movement. It's not clear in what layers or intermediaries these mechanisms occupy, he doesn't break it down more than that. But that's the answer, and it did exist back when Traviss was penning Kilo-5.

Is this answer better than haphazardly plugging extension cords from actual organ systems into MJOLNIR interior? Yes. Like, leagues better by comparison, but also I still think it sucks. To me anyway. It's flat out gross as hell, which definitely fits the personal brand of a man who proudly overfed his cat and called himself "Stinkles", but also it just doesn't strike me as the kind of design strategy ONI would pursue for any of their assets. Beside it just being 100% torn from Dune's stillsuits, it's also missing that special brand of proprietary Section Three je ne sais quoi. There's layers upon layers of too-specialized equipment installed into these people for everything else, why skip this? A body function that should have been Point 3 on a 50 point list of 'stuff to manage'. Also though? It's a lot of freedom. This is just another easy opportunity to add yet another layer of dependence. Spartans are expensive equipment. It doesn't do to give them any fewer reasons to think they can ever walk away.

So anyway, I figured I'd take a crack at it. I came up with this while editing the last two paragraphs: [Waste management] - a fully internalized collection and processing device - lets say a cybernetic implantation - that entirely replaces the bladder. It has bio-organic lumens that interconnect it to the GI and Hepatic organs. The implant assists in accelerating the processing of gathering and refining waste materials with the help of nanobots that identify and redirect waste along the lumens of each system, plus they keep the implant clean and free of bad flora. All twice-processed waste gets refined a lot quicker and any water by-product of the process is refined and redistributed back to the organs along the lumens. None of the refined water is removed from the body for drinking, because that's an unnecessary step; it's already inside. (Drinking water would be the responsibility of a suit system more likely - like, sweat leeching in the skinsuit; refine, filtrate, purify, collect into a reservoir, and jettison the excess sodium. ) There is no 'extraction of other viable nutrient' from the remainder, it's been twice identified as waste. It gets catabolized and consumed by the nanobots as a fuel source, and no externalized waste is created at all while the Spartan is geared up. The implant doesn't always run like this - it only engages this way when the Spartan is wearing MJOLNIR, and when they're not, it just works like an out-of-the-box bladder. The intermittence of usage lets the organic organs truck along as usual, preventing risk of atrophy, and the Spartan can just use a bathroom like everyone else. I'm not a bioengineer, but I do like sci fi and I think all that sounds like something that'd be possible in this sandbox. And that's the real fun of it, isn't it? There's no way anyone today can anticipate what sort of gadgetry might be available 500+ years from now, especially in a fictional universe that includes military tech hybridized with reverse engineered alien tech.

I think it's fascinating when writers and artists shake loose and really grab the reins, and I love seeing the fruit of that labour in this particular tumblr community so often. We're not a huge Halo circle, but we're a passionate one, and if this essay leaves you with nothing else, I hope it will at least remind you to Go For It when you're writing your next fic or drawing your next piece, or composing, or sewing, or printing, or anything!

In Conclusion: Rest easy, friends.

Despite Traviss's word and even books that went to print, the official canon is that Spartans are not catheterized. If that's a bummer for anyone, canon can't stop you from writing whatever you want, but I do hope maybe you'll remember my reasoning for why it might not be the best idea? At least not for armoured Spartans. A Spartan, but they're laid up in hospital? Any non-Spartan personnel? Maybe you're writing in the public sector, a colony world or vessel? Sure - I'll bet caths are still plenty widely used. Why not? They're a blissfully simple and useful effective piece of equipment. It's just all about adjusting and adapting for practicality. Medical science, like any technology, adapts and evolves infinitely as we learn and discover new things. Treatments or drug algorithms I'd of used just last year have already undergone changes, and protocols are amended constantly. It's why a person 'practices' medicine; why a scientist is always a student. If questions like this or similar really need answering in your next work, remember: Give yourself the credit you deserve, and embrace the spirit of invention. Let my Cyber Bladder, by Sparklets be the candle in the window for you!

You may all retrieve your keys from the bowl and unsilence your phones. Stay safe and please text me when you get home. Thank you. ' u ' **Addendum: Former Bungie Creative Art Director Marcus Lehto is in fact the person who is most associated with the creation of the Master Chief.**

[burnwater13]

Din Djarin holding Grogu from concept art by Christian Alzmann. From the Mandalorian, Season 1, Episode 1, The Mandalorian. Calendar by DataWorks.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away Grogu and his dad decided to take a father and son vacation. Things were going pretty well and his mom was busy with his little brother and sister. They were just starting their training with the Brethren and that required everyone’s focus and time. Everyone except Grogu and Din Djarin that is. 

“Well, buddy, where do you want to go?”

Grogu laughed and replied, ‘Galaxy, far, far away.’

“I understand. Solus and T’ad are a bit of a handful.”

His dad laughed as they put their gear in the N-1.

“Fun but loud. Need ear plugs.”

“I just adjust my helmet settings. Don’t tell your mom.”

“Mom knows.”

Grogu smiled at his dad as they both hopped into the N-1. His mom was a lot of fun and she always knew what the two of them were up to. He was actually pretty happy about that. 

“That’s why she’s your mom. There’s no tricking her. So where do you want to go? Jakku? Takodana? Naboo?”

“Ilum. Kyber crystals for T’ad and Solus.”

“Okay buddy, let’s go to Ilum.”

They were up and off Tzura a short while after that and nothing unusual seemed to be on the horizon. Grogu was annoyed that the N-1 still didn’t have a civilized privy and his dad complained that ship still smelled like the dung worms Grogu had left in the snack pocket the last time they saw Peli Motto. That was pretty normal.

But as soon as they jumped to hyperspace, Grogu knew something weird had happened. Not just the normal form of hyperspace weird either, a unique, never been seen form of weird. He had seen purrgils. You know, space whales. This wasn’t a space whale thing. Instead of the normal dazzling white light of hyperspace it was like they had entered a pitch black tunnel. But how could you have a tunnel in space?

It didn’t matter, because when they popped out at the other end, there it was… a planetary system neither he or his dad expected to find. 

Grogu asked R5 about it and found that it wasn’t on any of the charts the astro-mech stored. Huh. How did that happen? They’d have to wait to figure that out because first that needed to work out if any of the planets the sensors detected had anything useful on them, like a inhabitants, or a repair shop, or a privy. Those dung worms were definitely out of season. 

“Looks like this system has eight, no nine planets, a couple of them are gas giants, a bunch of moons, and a pretty good asteroid belt. Why don’t you reach out with the Force and see which one we should visit?”

Wow. Din Djarin was taking this pretty well. Grogu supposed that the Mandalorian probably had this sort of thing happen when he was a bounty hunter. There were some people who would go anywhere to get away from a Mandalorian. 

Grogu did as his dad suggested and reached out with the Force and found that one of the planets had a substantial life force signature. 

“That one.” He pointed at the planetary chart the console displayed.

“Okay, let’s see. Lot of water on that planet. What about this other one?”

His dad had pointed to the fourth planet in the system. Uff. 

“Nope. Like Jakku, not as nice. Droids.”

Grogu hoped the explanation helped. The third planet was closer and he really wanted to use a privy. 

“Fine. Fine. Let’s go and see what we find.”

Grogu nodded his head and just waited to see what sort of place his dad would find to land the ship. No doubt someplace cold. The Mandalorian really seemed to like cold places and this planet appeared to have frozen over spots that seemed suspiciously like that ice ball moon they hard landed the old Razor Crest on.

“Buddy, I know you don’t like the cold anymore than I like the water. But we both like sand, so here. I think I’ve found a place where we’ll fit right in. Marina Del Rey. I haven’t been contacted by any planetary authority, so hopefully we won’t have any issues when we land.”

Grogu thought that was strange at the time, but he really only cared about one thing… well two. Where the heck would he find a privy and he was fresh out of snacks. He hoped there was someplace close by where they could get some food. Maybe some frogs? Or even some bone broth. Anything but dung worms. 

To be continued.

[make-it-mavis]

KICKS DOWN UR DOOR HEY I’VE GOT SOME JUICY NEW HEADCANONS THAT IM WAY TOO EXCITED ABOUT

in which i continue, always and forever, to be this image

SO, you know that for every second I’ve loved WiR I’ve been sweating headcanons and always looking for ways to fill in holes where the creators left no worldbuilding. And since time immemorial, I’ve been plagued by one question -- WHAT ABOUT THE CORD THAT LEADS TO THE WALL? How do you get there? What’s it like? Is it dangerous? What role does it play in arcade society? Well, buds, I think that I may have settled on something while contemplating another pressing question:

Where do those extra doors/tunnels in Game Central Station go??? 

You see!! People are going in and out of them so they must go somewhere. This is from the concept art, but they’re still there in the film, too. Maybe there are bathrooms in there, a whole heck of a lot of bathrooms. But what I’d like to think is that one of these paths (maybe that lonely door) leads to the WALL SOCKET. Why would you go there?

TO GO TO THE OTHER GAME STATIONS!! Game Station West, and Game Station East!!

There’s no way Litwak has the entire arcade plugged into the same power bar, with only 12 game cabinets. I’d like to think that there are two others, with their own sets of games and even their own Surge Protectors. It’s just that GCS has the most full ports with active games, while the others might have more empty ports or cords to games with no screens/characters like Whack-a-Mole that are unsafe to enter, if you can at all.

People can travel between the stations through the wiring in the wall, and it works a lot differently from travelling between game/station. There’s a train ride through the power cord up to the plug in the wall, but past that, it gets a bit funky.

In early concepts for GCS, the artists imagined the characters literally walking on electricity between games. 

I’d like to imagine that’s how travel through the wall socket works. I can also see similar imagery to how Ralph and Vanellope enter the Wifi in the 2nd movie. I think that for a moment, your entire electrical being enters the stream. On the outside, you disappear, but you’re actually riding the electrical current at high speeds. It’s not the most comfortable experience and it’s also more risky than train rides, but its the only mode of travel through that space. No one’s meant to live in the wall, so there would be no cozy accommodations. It’s a drag, and most people don’t do it that often.

I think that it would not be open travel access 24/7. I think that maybe three times a night, the Surge Protector would open gates to travel to and from the other stations. Since he wouldn’t be able to follow anyone out, he really has to keep on top of security for anyone leaving or coming in, and he just can’t do that all night while also keeping an eye on the games in GCS. 

And SINCE the Surge Protectors can’t leave the power bars, the space in the wall is more or less lawless. There must be other ports in the wall that don’t lead to power bars, yes? Maybe a claw machine is plugged directly into the wall. If one made the right detour and twists and turns in the wires, they could visit that socket. The plug/port would still be there, like the ones we see in GCS, but it would not be nice and clean and full of couches. I think that the day it was plugged in, it could have been clean and completely empty+sterile. But those places get fucked up over time because they’re the perfect spot for illicit activity. Which is another reason the Surge Protectors gotta keep a sharp eye on travelers. 

So here’s a fun thing I thought of because there’s massive gaps in my HC timeline for Turbo’s (and Mavis’) life. What if, eventually, with Mavis’ help, Turbo more or less set up camp in one of the wall ports? It’s not comfortable, but it’s safe from the law. He would only live there between his and Mavis’ attempts to infiltrate and settle into other games. Maybe he could find a way to block visitors, like with a wall designating the place a hazard, or something, and Mavis had a password to get in. It’d be a really sad, lonely way of life, effectively imprisonment until a miracle came along, and it would do no good to his already unstable mind. Mavis would keep him company of course, relay news of any opportunities in GCS, bring him stuff to keep busy with and just spend time with him. Especially once Mavis is locked out of her game (working on that plot point), I’d imagine she would spend days at a time with him.

Maybe, eventually, whatever’s plugged into that port is unplugged, and like we see in RBTI, the light from outside actually pours in and he can tell when it’s night or day again. And he spends hours just staring out, thinking of what he wouldn’t give to feel alive and free again, and that list just keeps shrinking. Desperation for a real home and place in life lead to some awful deeds. But in his eyes, the alternative is rotting away forever in a box, and that’s just out of the question. 

ANYWAY. I don’t really have a good way to close this off other than “I’m really excited about this and I’m gonna adopt it into the way I write things from now on.”

YEAH!!

[sepiadice]

NavyDice Campaign (2019/8/30): Poor use of Apples

So I was sitting about, attempting to play more Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Due to a pleasant kismet, it was my first day off of four in a row. I was also awake until Four AM being sick, so it was a mixed sort of day.

Anyways, I suddenly got a text from NavyDice[1] asking if I was up to play Dungeons & Dragons in about ninety minutes, at a location I hadn’t yet visited that was a half to full hour away (depending on traffic).

So obviously I agreed. Because I’m desperate and IndigoDice’s campaign has apparently fallen.[2]

So I got the address, plugged it into the Google Maps app, and went off, listening to a Dungeon World Actual Play podcast episode,[3] brainstorming my character since my original plan to transfer Autumn Quill over had to be abandoned due to everyone else playing a spellcaster.

So time to experiment with other new things. Like using the full strength of the Souvenir Mug Rule!

Anyways, this new campaign features three members of the improv group (Navy[4] GMing, as well as GoldDice[5] and LimeDice[6]) plus a friend of NavyDice who we’ll assign the nickname… Tetrahedron.[8]

In true NavyDice fashion, prepare for time shenanigans!

CAST

Acer ‘Maple’ Palmatum (SepiaDice/Me) Level 5 Elf Fighter. I recalled this image while brainstorming, and decided to just run with it.[9] While making the character, I’d decided she had a military history and a desire to help the helpless. Also likes cute things. We’ll see if any of that pays off. I’d give her a Scottish accent if I could remember to do character voices. As she’s named for a tree, her given name is probably actually ‘Palmatum’.

Garland (LimeDice) A spellcaster of some sort? 

Poppi (GoldDice) Another spellcaster, who used Intelligence and Wisdom as her dump stats so… there’s concerns?

Mumble (Tetrahedron) Bard. Talks very quiet, as is his namesake.

Once characters were complete, we took turns inventing a brief history of the party and why we’re hanging out together.

For the actual campaign, we heard of a job dealing with a band of brigands bothering a town. We travel there and meet with the local marshall, Masem, who is grateful for our help.

The party rents a place at a bed & breakfast and waits to be needed.

So we open on the party doing small things that reveal character. Garland is reading a book. Poppi is mesmerized by a pretty mobile that was hanging about. (I forget what Mumble was doing). Maple is doing push ups.

A knock comes on the door. It’s Masem. The brigands are coming to attack the market space. Maple follows the marshall, the squishier party members follow behind.

In the market, Masem and Maple pose as they wait for the brigands to arrive. Garland and Mumble position themselves for optimal support. Poppi gets distracted by apples, and failing to purchase them since everyone else ran.

Combat ensues. The first wave of six brigands fall to sword and spell, and a second wave (featuring a very definite midboss) arrives, and similarly gets cut down.

As the citizenry start to celebrate, Maple hears a ticking coming from the midboss.

After a short back and forth between me and NavyDice to determine if Maple would know the concept of a bomb, we determine she wouldn’t immediately come to that conclusion. Maple investigates the midboss, and discovers he has a vest under his shirt with many magic scrolls that are starting to autocast. I decide that’s enough information to follow my initial instinct, and Maple shouts for people to run.

Maple attempts to scoop Poppi up, but fails the strength check, kinda ruining the moment but whatever.

Most of the town’s out of the blast range as the scrolls deploy in a massive fireball. Once the smoke clears, Maple removes her excess equipment and gets to work cleaning rubble and moving bodies. The local lord rides a carriage down to thank the heroes (our party) and announce a feast. Maple irritably asks him why his bodyguards aren’t helping with disaster response, and the lord sends the guards to do so.

The rest of the party goes to enjoy the celebratory feast the lord was announcing, but Maple stays until the work is done. I’d decided to play her as a Capital-Aytch Hero, so that’s what I’m sticking to, possibly to my occasional detriment.

Eventual she notices those helping the effort beginning to get awkwardly antsy to attend the feast, but don’t want to leave before one of the people who just saved the market from brigands. So Maple relents and leaves for the party, probably with plenty of soot on her.[10]

Everyone’s gathered at the feast, medals are awarded, toasts are started, all that stuff ceremony that Maple lost a taste for due to her time serving in a military.[11]

Then the church bells ring, and a darkness envelops the town, killing everyone.

Cycle 2

There’s a knocking on the front door.

Ah, so Navy is repeating a campaign he’s told me the story of. I decide not to beat around the bush and just let Maple be immediately be on the ball. Call it battle-won instincts of quickly reading the situation.

Maple answers the door and tries to inform Masem about the groundhog day loop we’ve entered, but the marshall is too concerned by the brigands to listen. Maple instead runs off to the market without listening to the mission text.

This time, she intends to save more people.

This time, she’s not going to waste time with the random mooks.

This time, Maple heads straight to the mid-boss with the bomb vest. If she can stop him before he gets to the marketplace, maybe she can mitigate the damage.

However, running towards the guy triggers some attacks of opportunity[12] from the generic brigands, but Maple ignores them. They don’t matter.

However, when she’s facing Bomb-Vest and the brigands flanking him, their combined attacks do drop her to exactly zero, and Maple falls and I begin making death saves.

Then Poppi decides it’d be hilarious to throw an apple at me. Tetrahedron points out that any damage taken while in this state means autodeath, so GoldDice rolls to hit.

And succeeds. Killing Maple with an apple. My friends, readers!

So I’m out of the cycle, and tune out because I’m an inattentive jerk and wanted to try and find the visual reference for my character.[13]

Eventually, the brigands are felled through a method that nearly kills Mumble, the local lord rides his coach down for easy publicity points as he rewards our party and mourns the fallen, there will be a feast, Maple will be given a hero’s funeral, and other familiar notes.

Some investigation might’ve occurred? I think mostly it was just a tad more somber because Maple died.

Then the church bells ring, and a darkness envelops the town, killing everyone.

Cycle 3

There’s a knocking on the door.

Okay, this time the party’s a little smarter. Mumble uses Leomund’s Tiny Hut to contain the explosion, and only he and Bomb Vest dies.

Okay, successfully saved the innocents. Maple takes the time to fill Masem in, who is skeptical despite magic being real so such temporal shenanigans shouldn’t be out of possibility. But using the evidence of (limited) precognition, Maple gets him to accept that maybe this is a thing that happens.

Masem gets called away to a crime scene, and Maple and Garland invite themselves along. Because information is important, and you don’t know what’s relevant.[14] Poppi goes to church, because… well, out of character, to investigate the church bells. In character, Poppi thinks its the Lord’s Day.

Someone blew a hole in the side of a vault, then a second one to escape. Masem investigates with the help of player characters who do what they want by virtue of being player characters.

We manage to, through the powers of basic deductive reasoning and basicer math, figure out which safety deposit box was emptied despite the bank manager’s attempts to be as unhelpful as possible.

Masem gets called away to officiate an execution. Maple assigns Garland to stay back and keep investigating as she keeps following Masem to learn what his day’s like.

Garland and two to three town guards (played by NavyDice, Tetrahedron, and myself)[15] do some more investigation of the vault, before eventually finding and descending into… either the showers or just inexplicable underground tunnels. The guards banter about why they’re taking orders from this random spellcaster guy, how this is an obvious horror movie set-up, how Garland’s orders to split up flies in the face of local bards tales of Scoobert Doobert and the company of mystery,[16] and other fun. They die there when the cycle ends.

Maple follows Masem away, and learns they are hanging the leader of the brigands they’ve been fighting. Which is fun.[20]

Public death spectacle concluded, Maple and Masem go to attend the lord’s feast. Maple notices Masem getting called away for some new distraction, but she decides not to push her luck in case observing it would affect it, and because she’d inserted herself a lot into Masem’s day as is.

Then the church bells ring, and a darkness envelops the town, killing everyone.

Cycle 4

There’s a knock on the door.

The rest of the party wants to regroup and discuss. Maple wants to save people and immediately rushes off, ignoring pleas that people dying don’t matter.

Instead of helping, Garland and Mumble decide to investigate the bank early, and Poppi hangs out at the church belltower to watch what happens in the market.

I roll percentile to determine Maple’s fate. 08. So, due to negligence by the rest of the party (again), Maple dies. Again. As does Masem. And a bunch of innocent standerbys. And also the lord’s manor via explosion I think? I was still trying to find that piece of art. Which I found used as a gentle nudge to the rest of the table that Maple’s a girl. Cut, but still obviously feminine.

Anyways, no one gets to learn what Maple learned yesterday, because screw them, they left her and everyone else to die, and Maple doesn’t write off anyone if there’s a chance to save them.

And there’s always a chance.[21]

Anyways, Poppi spends the day observing while Garland and Mumble annoy a bank clerk, find the brigands hideout, and Mumble convinces one of them he’s a god.

When Maple dies, I use it as an opportunity to take a break and look through social media. Tempers out of character knowledge and lets me take a break from being Permanently ‘On’ for hours at a time.[24]

Eventually, the church bells ring, and a darkness envelops the town, killing everyone.

So ends the first session.

I’m excited for the rest of the campaign, though I am (progressively) remembering details from the last time NavyDice ran it, so hopefully that doesn’t ruin the fun. Especially since I’m super excited to play Maple, and I don’t want to add her to the list of characters who deserve a second chance.[25]

Until next time, may your dice make things interesting.

-

[1] Who has not formally adopted the ColourDice naming convention, but does have a D&D Instagram? [2] I’ve got plans for that group, however, so stay tuned. [3] Concluded my prejudices against Powered by the Apocalypse is true and I will never willingly touch it. [4] Previously credited as Lyons. [5] Previously credited as Maddie. [6] Previously credited as Jose. He assigned himself the color green, but my brother took that color and I couldn’t convince him to pick something more specific. I rudely haven’t consulted Jose on the reassignment. He can yell at me if he reads this.[7] [7] No one reads these. [8] I’ll figure out a consistent guest player naming convention one of these essays. [9] Next time: glasses. Maybe. [10] There’s an amount of Vimes in this character. Actually, Maple may turn out to just be Sam Vimes. Which I’m okay with, even if I want to play her with an amount of bloodthirsty glee when fighting bad guys… [11] For once, 5e’s dumb background rules actually helped flesh out my character in a satisfying manner. [12] A mechanic I don’t think has ever added fun to D&D. It always feels petty. [13] Which took hours to find! But the references are saved to my phone now. [14] Hint: anything the GM draws attention to is relevant. [15] Always allow players to play NPCs so they can take the mickey out of other players. [16] GM tip! Always let real world media exist in universe. Makes it easier to make references, and justifying it is a lot of fun![17] [17] GM tip! Regardless, someone will always be confused by the concept of sandwiches due to the apocryphal tales of John Montagu, despite insisting sandwiches only existing since the 18th century is ridiculous, and evidence of similar food arrangement has existed long before the famed event.[18] [18] There was a tedious argument with the High School group that I’m apparently still annoyed by. But Good Eats has my back, so I’m confident.[19] [19] While my footnotes are cascading, I’ve been humoring the concept of a ‘Adventurer’s Cookbook’. Which would likely just be a camping cookbook with genre writing as flavor, and the recipes arranged in esculating terms of difficulty. [20] Not actually fun. [21] One of this campaign’s experiments: using the ‘It’s what my character would do’ defense. Because I like to try and justify things.[22] [22] Maybe someday I’ll experiment with justifying Failure to Communicate and Teacher/Pupil relationships.[23] [23] Because, to be clear, I really hate both. [24] GM tip! Let players (and GMs) take breaks. Either by pausing the game, or letting there be lulls where portions of the table can get away from losing focus and think about Other Things. [25] A list that includes Trix and Teddi.

[julianjdavis]

WHAT‘S AN INTROVERT TO DO WITH THE GREAT COMMISSION?

We are what we think about ourselves. And as if being our own worst enemy wasn't enough, we get plenty of help from society to shape our thinking. Pick your poison. There's an article, a podcast, a TED Talk, a book, a conference tailored just your size—affirming and encouraging what you might resonate with the most. There's a plethora of identities to diagnose yourself with. We wear whatever fits best.

No doctors are needed. Introvert is a label we place on ourselves. It's all about how well we know our own self. And as I'm writing this now, I'm realizing how often I'm having to use the word self. The answer to the question of whether you're an introvert or extrovert comes down to how self aware you are. I'm sure those around us could chime in on the topic as well, but we know us better than anyone.

Take me for example. I'm a textbook introvert by nature. I mean, I physically feel my heart trying to leap through my chest at the thought of speaking in front of a room full of people. Even a tiny room. The more courage I muster up to open my mouth, the more intense it gets. Being in a large group setting for an extended amount of time is about as exhausting for me as running a 2K in a sweat suit in the middle of July. I'd much rather stay home and read.

Then there's the chronic brain cramps, like a car engine misfiring, that leave me saying something totally different than my original thought. Seriously. Something happens in between my medulla oblongata and my mouth. When I'm with my wife she can see it happening and just gently grab my arm. That's my cue to find the nearest exit from the tangent I was running off on. Lord knows where it was going.

I had always thought there was just something wrong with me. Until a few years ago when I was rescued by the fresh wave of content that welcomed my social awkwardness with open, loving arms. And of course, a label that gave it value. The whole introvert/extrovert spiel is nothing new. But there just happened to be a surge of articles from some trendy and intellectual sources that caught my eye.

I don't know where things went south for me. I've always enjoyed making people laugh. I'm just naturally not very comfortable with people I don't know well. My mom most definitely has the "life-of-the-party" personality. Everyone who knows her knows that. She's loud and fun. My dad, on the other hand, was one of those rare breeds of people who understood the art of perfecting his craft. This meant tunnel vision. It meant working while everyone else was sleeping. He did always make time for me, though. And for the record, he did have a personality. He also had no problem performing in front of large crowds since he was a professional musician.

Then there's me.

In all my self-analysis I've tried to trace back to the cause. As if I were an alcoholic trying to find the beginning of my downward spiral. I was in the acceptance stage. I guess I'm just weird like that, I said to myself.

Then after reading more about it from a positive standpoint, I was able to switch a few letters around in that word weird. Instead, I realized I was just wired like that. Not everyone is meant to be the life of the party. God made me this way and it is oh so okay.

I clung onto verses like Psalms 139:14 that says "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." I found comfort in the fact that God doesn't make mistakes and that He made us uniquely different. The sovereign Creator made all things yet has no errors or accidents. Including me.

So I set out to be the most confident introvert there ever was. I was newly content in my skin. I was ready to take on the world—quietly and subtly, of course. Then I remembered the story of how God used Moses in spite of his insecurity. He had some sort of issues with his speech and didn't think he was good enough for God to use him. Even after He performed two miracles to remind and reassure him of His power. I just love what God said to him: “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” (Exodus 4:11-12)

That resonates with me on such a deep level. As it does with any one of the seventy-three verses over the course of three chapters in the book of Job when God put him in His place. You can't help but feel the mammoth difference between the Creator and His created being.

Then came some serious soul searching to find the place where my gifting and passion intersect as it relates to the kingdom. Music.

Questions arose like how does an introvert pursue music? More specifically, how does one pursue a role like leading worship? Because the men and women who wear those shoes have radiant, magnetic qualities that I don't possess. They're outgoing and witty. Not shy and quiet.

I read the job description and line after line was a case toward my inadequacy. There was no way I could do all of those things. I prayed for God to change me, knowing fully well that He was capable and would if He wanted that for me. I begged Him even. All I have to work with is a surrendered heart, the ability to carry a tune (that's debatable) and a passion for theology. There's plenty left to be desired. So I've accepted the fact that I don't fit the mold of a worship leader—at least by popular standards.

Still, I've wrestled through trying to discern what was actually true about myself and what lies I've been believing. Because there is a lurking enemy who day and night plots ways to steal, kill and destroy. I'm sure I'd be a threat to him if I were invoking the presence of God and inviting others to join me in His glory. What a potential threat that makes me.

But the fact of the matter is that leading worship is not a God-appointed mandate. Whether or not I'm up on a stage, or in the pews, or in my car, or even the shower, I can sing Him praises from my heart. He may not need to use me front and center. I have total peace there.  

But what does a so-called introvert do with the Great Commission? What do I do with the call to share the gospel? How can I radiate the joy of the Lord and love others well? What about community? What about using my gifts to edify the body? These things aren't so optional. In fact, they aren't at all. And I have no peace whatsoever with where I measure with those things.

I just can't wrap my brain around the notion that I could stand before God and it going something like this:

God: What have you done with My words? What have you done for My kingdom? Me: Well, you see… I have this condition. I wanted to do all these grand, amazing things but… but You made me this way. God: That's true. I'll give you a pass. But what about when I wanted you to pray for that man in the parking lot? And why is it that none of your neighbor’s know Me? I placed you right next to them. I also surrounded you with brothers and sisters to help you. Me: I wanted to engage but I just couldn't calm my pounding chest. I was too scared, too shy. And what if they think I'm weird or I mess everything up? God: Well, I know you wanted to and I know you tried. As long as you know Me I guess it's okay. I don't want to inconvenience anyone. Even though My Son went through much worse for you and it's not My will that any should perish.

I'd be willing to bet that you also have a hard time finding that scene to really play out that way. I also want to make sure that anyone reading this who identifies themselves as an introvert feels encouraged and not offended by the end of this post. There are plenty of legitimate factors that make it extremely difficult in a social setting. These challenges are an annoying reality.

But this enemy of ours is also an enemy of God's. He's a liar and the father of lies. He the master of deception. From the beginning he's whispered falsehood that contradicts what God says. He contradicts what He says about us and where our true identity lies.

So the real question is what does God say about us? What does He say about me?

My wife and I got plugged into a church with a missional mindset and a pastor who is leaping head first into the daunting task of breaking away from traditional church as we've known it. I just love him. And discipleship is the collective tone of the body.

On our first Sunday we joined them already in progress as they were going through the gospels. Not long after that, the pastor led our small group by teaching on what he gleaned from his recent trip to Haiti. This was the game changer for me.

Apart from already being confronted with the reality that sharing the gospel is as much about building relationship as it is about sharing faith, and that either of those things involve interacting with other humans, there's a lot more truth to be added. There's more coal to the fire.

The gospel is the lens that all of life passes through. In our small group we addressed the different insecurities and hindrances and doubts and fears that keep us from making disciples. There were so many lies I've allowed myself to believe. Then they were eclipsed by God's truth.

We turned to 2 Corinthians 5:17-21:

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

The words that have taken root in me are new and ambassador. We are in a constant battle of spirit against flesh. Old nature versus new. This is one of those concepts I've heard thousands of times but in this context, understanding that Christ made me new was like a ceasefire amidst this war that’s brewing inside me.  

It's like being knighted. It's like having your name changed from Jacob to Israel or from Saul to Paul. And with this new identity comes a new role. Ambassador. I literally carry God's righteousness! Not mine. I walk and talk bearing the righteousness of God. The act of being made new was Him bringing me to Himself. As His ambassador in His righteousness.  

So what else is true about my identity?

I'm a conqueror.  (Romans 8:37)

I am complete in Christ. (Col. 2:10)

I've been chosen. (Eph. 1:4, 1 Peter 2:9)

I have power. (Isaiah 40:29-31, Romans 8:11, 2 Cor. 12:9, 2 Tim. 1:7)

I have authority. (Luke 10:19)

I am helped. (Isaiah 41:10)

I am loved. (Romans 8:38-39, 1 John 3:1)

I am strengthened. (Phil. 4:13, Eph. 3:16, 6:10, 2 Tim. 1:7)

I am courageous. (Deut. 31:6)

I am bold. (6:19-20)

I am free. (John 8:36)

I am brave. (Joshua 1:9)

I was created for good works. (Eph. 2:10)

And there’s more…

God is actively in the process of finishing the work He started in me (Phil. 1:6).  

He grants me access to everything I need (2 Peter 1:3).  

He can do far more than I could even fathom (Eph. 3:10).  

It is Christ who lives in me and I have His mind (Galatians 2:20, 1 Cor. 2:16).  

God keeps me in perfect peace (Isaiah 26:3).

His truth is where my thoughts should live (Phil. 4:8).

This is who I am. These are the abilities I possess. This is who you are and the abilities you have. When we get out of bed and take on the day ahead, with all it's opportunities and it’s challenges, we should as our true selves. And we can only do that after we've given up our claim to who we are outside of Christ.

When you surrender your entire being to the Lord, He can have His way with you and change you as He wills and for the best possible purposes. There's liberty in surrendering. There's a calming confidence in knowing that He who knows best, is best and wants our best has the control. We don’t need it. And we're better off without it.

It's why Paul knew he could rely on his flesh for absolutely nothing (Philippians 3:3). The God who calls us to “go” doesn't send us out in our own skin wearing all our humanity. We are too bent in ways that disrupt His perfect mission. Each of us have parts of ourselves that we need to bring under His submission. We need every bit of Him and all that He offers us in order to carry out the mission He called us to.

No matter where you lean on the introvert/extrovert scale, Christ levels the playing field. Either way, we need to die to ourselves and our former identity along with it. The former slave becomes free in Him. The former free man becomes a slave in Him (1 Corinthians 7:22-23). Jesus paid for our ability to become new. He purchased our identity with His life. And when I answered His call I took on that identity in Him.

The world promotes self-awareness but God is in the business of humbling and decreasing men so He can be the increase. So we are less aware of ourselves and more aware of Christ in us. He rescues us from our own self. Oswald Chambers explains it this way:

“Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all… If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, “Come to Me…and I will give you rest,” that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness.”

[buildercar]

New Post has been published on http://www.buildercar.com/first-look-bentley-exp12-6e-concept/

First Look: Bentley EXP12 6e Concept

If you think the Bentley EXP12 6e concept roadster, which made a surprise appearance at the 2017 Geneva auto show, looks familiar, you’ve been paying attention to Bentley’s comings and goings. The two-seater with the still-to-be-installed soft-top bears more than a passing resemblance to the EXP10 Speed 6 coupe concept Bentley first introduced at the 2015 Geneva show. But the Speed 6, a British racing green design exercise once tipped to go into low-volume production, has reportedly been put on ice. Not surprisingly then, the follow-up effort codenamed EXP12 (EXP11 is the new GT3 race car) was described as a conversation starter by chief exterior designer John Paul Gregory. Which is another way of saying that positive feedback would further support the case to build something close to it.

The 6e designation indicates the type of propulsion system, with the “e” standing for all-electric. At this point, officials claim that it is early days and powertrain details are sketchy at best. This is not quite true as far as the Geneva show star is concerned. The metallic white open-air proposal is in fact a runner, with a relatively small battery pack stowed away behind the seats and boasting two motors at each end, making it all-wheel drive. The real thing, however, could possibly be based on a Bentley-led, top-secret project known for now as the multi-traction platform (MTP), which is being developed to combine the best of all worlds: all-electric, plug-in hybrid, and combustion engine configurations. To do so, MTP is reportedly being engineered around a center tunnel structure with a transverse rear T-section. In the EV setup, this “skateboard” skeleton is filled entirely with energy cells. Sources say Bentley is interested in utilizing a high-power battery pack and three motors (two of them driving the rear wheels) for its EV application. In plug-in hybrid guise (85kW/243 lb-ft), the batteries are designed to live side by side with the propshaft, while the much smaller e-motor slots in between engine and transmission.

The key question is how MTP would fare in the alternative drivetrain competition that co-stars Audi and Porsche as potential partners or opponents. At this point, Porsche’s J1 program (better known as Mission E) is already well underway, while Audi engineers are laying the finishing touches on a C-segment EV to be marketed as e-tron. Trouble is both architectures are in essence nonscalable one-off shots from the hip. True, J1 may soon find second, third, and maybe even fourth homes at Bentley, Lamborghini, and Audi, but what the Volkswagen Group really needs is a pragmatic solution. While Weissach has reportedly edged Ingolstadt as the preferred development lead for a flexible, full-scale EV matrix, parallel activities masterminded in Crewe may still advance the versatile (and more complex) MTP approach, which can kill three birds with one stone.

EXP12 6e could have been a radically non-conformist approach to electromobility a la Nio, Faraday Future, and Techrules. But that wasn’t the case for this project. “The team took a step forward, but it wasn’t a leap,” acknowledges design director Stefan Sielaff. “Visually, the Speed 6e remains faithful to the proven Bentley DNA. We remained true to our roots by making traditional materials more contemporary, consciously avoiding to overload the car with bling. In a world of karaoke-crazy design, there is plenty of room for seamlessness and simplicity. Check out for instance the super-clean cutline management.”

Although the 6e’s footprint is virtually unchanged from the Speed 6, the absence of the coupe roof creates fresh proportions, which are further emphasized by the new rear side panels complete with the must-have haunches, the restyled front bumper incorporating a full-width air intake, the lower roofline (there is no longer an engine to be cleared), and the rear apron without traditional exhaust tailpipes. It’s also capable of inductive charging.

Among the many cross-references to the new Continental GT that is reportedly slated to debut at the 2017 Frankfurt show are its four curved jewel headlamps, the slim oval taillights, the lower and wider mesh grille, the lightweight 21-inch wheels, and the squared-off “horseshoe” trunklid. Not yet ready for production for legal reasons are the camera-operated rear-view mirrors and the backlit full-size No. 6 logo straddled by the Flying B, which is bound to please the diehard Bentley boys. Impressions gathered in the course of the first guided walk around include the massive five-spoke wheels (butch appearance beats aerodynamic efficiency), the beautifully detailed brightwork, deep air extrusion scoops in the hood, and the prominent air breathers in both front wings (more for show than for go). Similar to the very first Corvette, EXP12 also features round cut-outs for the seatbacks on the flush-fitting body-color rear deck. If this were a production vehicle, the cavity between the cabin and the cargo deck would house the batteries.

Inside, this Bentley is an opulent grand tourer trimmed in Olde English white hide, vintage-finish oxblood leather, matching carpets, chrome, and glass. The bucket seats combine tasteful diamond stitching with a generous adjustment range and plenty of lateral support. Brett Boydell, head of interior design, says: “Riding the rising center console that separates driver and passenger is a multifunctional copper-over-silver rotary knob that acts as starter button, gear selector, and drive mode switch. Higher up on the widening divide, you find a combination of easy-to-reach touchpad and curved LED display.”

The EXP12 6e’s conventional analogue speedometer with integrated range meter and a sparkling face made of multifaceted lead crystal is flanked by a rectangular monitor with a wide choice of readouts from phone book over sat nav map to energy flow. Since connectivity is now a big thing even at Bentley, a slim passenger-side black panel can relay all sorts of messages and information, and it also has a mind-reading electronic butler service.

Inspired by the Speed 6, the e-evolution model deserves top marks for its beautifully sculptured lightweight doors lined with wooden panels structured by a pyramid-shaped pattern and small copper dots. Not exactly typical Bentley style is the semi-circular steering-wheel which fuses aircraft and race car elements with the usual modern conveniences. The two copper-tipped boost buttons are a fun novelty item. Press them simultaneously and the propulsion system will release an undisclosed amount of extra torque for an undisclosed number of seconds. “This electric vehicle evokes fresh emotions,” Sielaff claims. “It celebrates contemporary sustainable luxury the Bentley way.”

The Bentley EXP12 6e certainly has what it takes, on paper at least, to become an effortless and cossetting silent grand cruiser. In 2018, we are going to see the Bentayga plug-in hybrid (more plug-ins are in the pipeline), plus at least one fully electric-only powered model sometime after that. All the EXP12 needs to be that EV model is goodwill from Wolfsburg, a platform, and a compelling business case.

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[symbianosgames]

Ion Storm Austin’s Deus Ex was a critical and commercial success when it was released in the summer of 2000, laying the groundwork for an enduring franchise.

More importantly, it inspired a generation of game designers to dig into the nooks, crannies, and conveniently-placed ducts of what we now shorthand as “immersive sims”, those games that ask players to make interesting choices in how they want to confront or slip past obstacles in their path.

Shortly after the game shipped, game director Warren Spector wrote a broad postmortem of the project. Today at GDC, he revisisted the subject after 17 years to shed some fresh insight into how the groundbreaking game came to be.

“People always ask me which of my games are my favorite; don’t ever ask a game designer that,” said Spector. “The closest I ever get to answering is saying that the game I’m most proud of is Deus Ex.”

Spector acknowledges that a lot of what he's talking about is standard practice in the game industry now, but he reminds fellow devs that it absolutely was not common practice 20 years ago when the game was first conceived.

“Conceptually, I thought of Deus Ex as a genre-busting game, which let me say, really enamored us to the marketing folks. They loved that,” said Sepctor. “If you ever want to make a marketing perosn unhappy, mash some genres together.”

The game was envisioned as a mix of first-person shooter, adventure game, and RPG. But Spector traces the history of its development back to playing tabletop games, long before he became a game designer.

"I would not be here, you would not be here, if not for that game of Dungeons and Dragons”

“Let me tell you were it began -- this is going to get a little embarrassing,” said Spector. “It all began with Dungeons and Dragons.”

In 1978, to be precise, when he started playing D&D with a new Dungeon Master.

“I would not be here, you would not be here, if not for that game of Dungeons and Dragons,” said Spector.

The Dungeon Master of that game was “cyberpunk guru” Bruce Sterling, and Spector says the experiene was meaningful not because of the story being told, but because of how it was being told -- by Spector and his friends, under the guidance of Sterling.

“The story belonged to Bruce, but every detail belonged to us,” said Spector. “I was completely hooked; I played in that campaign for ten years.”

So how does that lead to Deus Ex? Spector says it inspired his entire career in game design, a long-running attempt on his part to try and recreate that experience he had playing D&D for the first time in ‘78.

“That’s been my life mission: to recreate that feeling,” he said. “Every game I’ve worked on, every single one, has been trying to engage players in the telling of the story. My only hope is to do it a little better every time.”

So Spector became a game designer, and joined Origin Systems in 1989 to work on games like Ultima Underworld. But at some point he got tired of making those games, and he decided to “Try and swing for the fences.”

“I was sick to death of making games about guys in plate armor swinging swords,” said Spector. He says he wanted to make what he saw as a “real-world role-playing game” in which the player’s choices would say more about the player themselves than their in-game avatar

“I don’t care about your puppet; I care about you,” he said.

He also wanted every player to get to the end of the story; he wanted to tell a story with players the way Sterling told a story with him and his friends back in the ‘70s.

At Origin Systems he pitched a game concept that allowed him to do all this: something called (Trouble)shooter, which was a sort of hard-boiled noir game. Electronic Arts and Origin weren’t interested at all, and Spector shelved the idea. A few years past, he left Origin and joined Looking Glass, where a game called Thief was being developed.

Spector says he had a moment while playing Thief: he hit a part that was too tough to sneak through, and impossible to fight through. So he asked the team to make the player character tougher, so he could fight his way through; but the team balked, saying that wasn’t the point of Thief. The game was about sneaking, after all; it wouldn’t make sense to let players smash through a roadblock.

That, says Spector, was when he got the idea to go back to (Trouble)shooter. So he left Looking Glass shortly before Thief shipped, and wound up nearly signing a contract with Electronic Arts to make a totally different game.

“That’s when John Romero called me and said don’t sign the contract; join me at Ion Storm and make the game of your dreams,” said Spector. “Who can say no to that?”

And so Ion Storm Austin was born, with the game that would become Deus Ex as its debut project. But before work got underway, devs may appreciate Spector's recollection of asking himself a series of questions he calls the 6 + 2 + 1 -- a vetting process he says he applies to all games he works on.

“Why I don’t call them the nine questions, I don’t know,” said Spector. “But if I can’t answer any of these questions I don’t make the game.”

What’s the core idea? Can you describe the core of the game in 2-3 sentences?

Why do this game?

What are the development challenges?

How well-suited to games is the idea?

What’s the player fantasy? (If the fantasy and goals aren’t there, it’s probably a bad idea)

What does the player do? (What are the “verbs” of the game?)

Has anyone done this before?

What’s the one new thing? (“You can always find one thing that hasn’t been done before [in games], even if you’re making a My Little Pony game.”)

Do you have something to say? (“In Deus Ex I wanted to explore all sorts of big issues,” said Spector. “And I wanted players to explore those things in ways that only games could do.”)

All of these questions were answerable for Deus Ex, so in 1997 work on the project got underway at Ion Storm Austin.

“If we were gonna plug into the real cultural zeitgesit, we had to play close attention to things in the real world,” said Spector. Things like mechanically-augmented soldiers, or the rising tide of terrorism.

“You didn’t have to be a genius, even in 1997, to see that the news was increasingly filled with reports of terrorism,” he added.

”And really interesting to us was the rise of nanotechnology; the dangers of that seemed fun to explore. But most importantly, everywhere you looked in 1997, it seemed like there was a conspiracy theory,” said Spector. “The world of Deus Ex was being created all around us; we didn’t have to make anything up. It was great!”

In short, Spector says the game was designed to answer five big questions:

What would happen if you mashed up the adventure game, shooter, and RPG genres?

What would happen if you dropped a secret agent into a world wih no black and white -- just shades of grey?

What if all conspiracy theories were true?

What does it mean to be human in world with augmentation?

How should the world be? Would the world be better off ruled by a secret cabal, a sentient AI that connected all humankind, or plunged into a new dark age?

“The game was going to have no bosses to kill; it was about deciding how the world should be,” said Spector. “You could answer those questions through your play choices.”

To explore these questions in a game, Spector says he established some “commandments” for the team to follow:

Ion Storm Austin Commandments (or, the Deus Ex rules of roleplaying)

Always show the goal. Players should always see what they’re trying to accomplish.

Problems, not puzzles. “It’s an obstacle course, not a jigsaw puzzle.”

No forced failures. “Failure’s not fun.”

It’s “role” not “roll” -- ie.. “It’s about playing a role, not rolling dice,” said Spector. “Why do we still have character classes and skill levels and die rolls?”

If there’s cool stuff happening, players should be doing it. Players do the cool stuff; NPCs watch the players do the cool stuff.

Lay out constant rewards to drive players onward.

As the player gets better, make the game harder.

Think 3D. “I believe 3D maps can’t be laid out on graph paper; if players aren’t looking up and down constantly, you may as well make a 2D game.”

Be connected. Tunnels from A to B aren’t interesting, says Spector; interconnected spaces are.

Every problem should have multiple solutions.

By the time the team moved from the concept phase to pre-production, the Ion Storm Austin team had grown from 6 to about 30 people. It was a “totally dysfunctional team,” according to Spector, and the team had “about sixish months” of pre-production. The design document was cut down to 270 pages (“which nobody read”) and the team entered full production.

“You don’t want to know how many times I was told to just make a shooter, and I said no,” said Spector.

“Then there was the day we hit pre-alpha and realized the game was not fun; that was a good one,” recalled Spector. By this time, September of 1999, Spector says the game had finally come together and the team found out it wasn’t fun.

“Luckily, Eidos saw the potential of the game and gave us more time,” said Spector. “By June of 2000 it was ready to ship. It was the game of my dreams.”

He seems to really mean this, too; Spector says at the start of every project he closes his eyes and envisions what a game will be. By the time Deus Ex had shipped, he looked at it and recalled that “every single detail had changed, but in spirit it was exactly the same. It was kind of amazing; it’s the only time that’s ever happened.”

So what positive lessons were learned from the experience that fellow devs might appreciate? As you might expect, Spector had a list:

Don’t give up

“The lesson here is that if there’s a game you have to make, never give up, because someone’s gonna be stupid enough to give you the money some day.”

Have clear goals

“We wanted players thinking about who they were in the world...we wanted players to think about how they wanted to behave in the world,” said Spector. “We wanted them to feel like they were actually in the world….everything in the game had to be based on something real.”

“If there’s anyone in the audience here who worked on deus ex, I’m sure you hate me,” added Spector.

Don’t skimp on pre-production

“You can always use more, but we did okay,” said Spector.

Keep your game design organic -- be open to change

“Our game systems didn’t work as well in reality as I thought they would on paper,” said Spector.

Always have a playable build

“We always knew where we were, even if that was painful,” said Spector, explaining that the team would build out envisioned missions early, in limited form, to test how they played. These “proto-missions” were small and ugly, but critical to the game’s production because it helped the team see things that didn’t work, early enough to do something meaningful about it.

Also, says Spector, make sure to playtest with real people

“Do not let your publisher know you’re doing this,” said Spector, recounting how Ion Storm Austin would bring folks in to do playtests without telling Eidos. “Listening to their responses, I called that particular milestone the ‘wow these missions suck’ milestone.”

License good tech

“That was something we did right; we licensed Unreal Tournament,” said Spector. “Adding what we needed was much easier than it could have been...3 programmers made Deus Ex. They were very overworked.”

So what went wrong? What should you know to avoid in your own game projects?

The team structure didn’t work

“I had two people qualified to be lead designers so instead of picking one, I gave them both roles as lead designers with design teams,” said Spector. “Don’t do that. I thought I could manage the tension between the teams, and I couldn’t...I had to call one of the design teams 1 and the other one team A, because neither would be team B or 2.”

However, Spector took pains to say one thing he did right was in choosing who to hire. “Those guys do not get enough credit for the creative aspects of the game, the fact that we shipped at all, and managing the team.”

Goals were too big and unrealistic

“Harvey Smith and another designer, Steve Powers, came to me one day and said ‘you cannot make this game. We cannot make this story,'” recalled Spector. “So we cut a bunch, and the game was better for it.”

He recommends you limit yourself in a kind of creative box, and ensure your entire team is operating within it.

More risks should have been frontloaded

Put simply: Spector says devs should prototype more systems earlier so you can iterate and make them better -- or throw out what doesn’t work.

Be careful about licensing tech

“This is something that I said we did right, but it’s also something we did wrong,” said Spector. “Unreal Tournament was not designed to have a deep sim and allow fighting, sneaking and talking...we had to layer all that stuff in on top. It worked, but….we ended up faking a lot of stuff, to be frank.”

He also added that the engine presented the team from being able to create the large, open areas they envisioned, and he feels it significantly impacted the game.

“It was a mistake to try and recreate the real world...in 1997,” said Spector.

Any publicity is not good publicity

“Ion Storm was not a quiet company; I don’t know how many of you remember this,” said Spector, pulling up an image of an ad for Ion Storm Dallas’ Daikatana, also released in 2000. He went on to mention Playboy shoots in the office, articles about pay rates at Ion Storm, and more, noting that “it’s hard for everyone on your team to be productive when everyone’s screaming about your company.”

But when the game finally released in 2000, Spector says the results were gratifying: it sold well, reviewed well, and most importantly (according to him) players got excited about the notion of making meaningful choices in the game.

“Be ready to define success for any game you make; if you can’t define success, you are not ready to make that game,” said Spector. “Conversation was my definition of success.”

He’s talking about the sort of conversations that are now a common goal in game design: the “what did you do? How did you get through this part? What ending did you choose?” conversations between players who are playing through the same game in different ways.

“That was what Deus Ex was all about. It wasn’t about what the development team thought they world should be, but what the player thought the world should be,” said Sterling. “Like Bruce Sterling and every other Dungeon Master, we provided the skeleton of the experience and the players put meat on the bones.”

“Here’s my final thought for all of you: I sincerely hope that everyone of you gets the opportunity o work on the game of your dreams some day,” said Spector. “And I hope every one of you gets to work on something that’s still relevant 17 years after you make it, and has a life beyond you.”