In February, 2002, the CIA asked an old Africa hand to visit Niger and look into the allegations that Niger sold uranium to Iraq. He reported that the allegations were highly doubtful. In January, 2003, Bush made those allegations as statements of fact.
Said Africa hand, Joseph Wilson, has a nice op-ed in today’s New York Times.
Northern Iraq has been fairly peaceful, despite pre-war worries about Turkey’s reaction to Kurdish freedom. There’s been the occasional skirmish in Turkey and the Kurds clearly still intend to control the northern oil cities, but on the whole matters have gone all right.
Unfortunately, the situation doesn’t seem entirely stable. The US just detained 11 Turkish soldiers, who were reportedly trying to assassinate the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk. It’s a touchy enough situation for Cheney to handle it personally.
Truth is, our alliance with Turkey was important because we needed another ally close to the Middle East. With troops in Iraq, that need diminishes. Armenia and Georgia aren’t really hotbeds of trouble right now.
This is funny. The Texas House is currently in the middle of a special session, trying to get that pesky redistricting done. Unfortunately, the Republicans can’t agree on how they want to draw the new lines. Great stuff. Good times.
WISH 54 is about one of my favorite character generation issues, background hooks.
Do you like to have bits and pieces from your characters’ backgrounds appear in the game? Do you write hooks into your character background for the GM to use in the campaign for your character? Do you like it when the GM gives you a background hook into an adventure or scenario with a previously unknown hook, such as creating an old friend of your character’s who is somehow involved? What are some examples of cases where hooks have worked or not worked for you?
Yes! I love background hooks, I’m big on background hooks, background hooks make me squirm in glee. I don’t write big complex backstory for my characters before starting play, but I do sketch out loose backgrounds, and I invariably put some hooks in. Usually it’s something that would cause the PC problems if it came out.
I also tend to include a couple of strong attitudes. Paul was a devout Catholic, Reese is a bit jingoistic, and Amelia/Andy hates weak women. I’m not sure that’s the sort of hook Ginger had in mind, but I think it provides the same function.
Since I like hooks a lot, I like it when a GM pulls on ‘em. I’m also OK with it not happening. After all, sometimes people go through their lives without their little quirks ever causing serious issues.
Now, an interesting thing about hooks: they’re one of the ways in which you can buy spotlight time during character generation without spending any points or getting high rolls on the attribute dice. Spotlight time is one of the most important currencies in roleplaying. If the GM takes advantage of your hooks, you’re getting spotlight time for free — which touches on Scott’s point about overdoing hooks. Interesting.
Finally, I’m stealing Kynn’s PC requirements for my next game. Cool stuff.
It’s pretty belated, but I didn’t particularly want to just post the Declaration of Independence. Or even the Declaration of Independence with snide comments about the current Administration. Yeah, but it’s too easy, you know?
I came at last to Mencken’s translation, which pleases me no end.
WHEN THINGS get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody.
Yeah.
Justin Achilli has spilled a few beans about his new fantasy setting. Elsewhere, he said simply “Frostholm. First quarter 2005.” In a way I sort of miss hanging out in the kind of crowd that picks up on news like this within seconds and savages it to within an inch of its life, but in a lot of ways I don’t.
Regardless, the setting looks like the kind of thing that I might well like a lot. On the other hand, I’ll continue to bet that the market for grim campaign settings is not all that huge, and Midnight might have locked it up by then. But we’ll see.
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