The Machine Stops

I had no idea there were so many adaptations of E M Forster's 111-year-old science fiction novella The Machine Stops. These two student film versions, for example (above and below).



Those movies are both quite abbreviated, but at 44 minutes this radio dramatisation does justice to the story:



Or if you want the original Forster prose with no modern trimmings, try the audiobook:



Or you could go full purist (you just know that's my call, right?) and read the thing.

And why now? Because Forster proposes a world of extreme social distancing in which everybody communicates via the Machine (the Internet, basically). He thinks it would become a dystopian nightmare, requiring technological collapse to restore the soul of mankind. The reality is that, like most futures, it may not appeal to us Cro-Magnons but it will be the accepted way of life for those who grow up with it.

Not that we'd ever want to give up all in-person contact, sure, but there are upsides. Our roleplaying games have benefited because we now don’t have to travel across London to get to the game – and that's never a pleasant prospect on a weekday evening. So instead of two and a half hours’ gaming once a fortnight, we can now fit in three or four hours every week. And, pushed online by necessity, I'm hooking up with friends I sometimes don't see for years at a time. Even when the pandemic is really over (spoiler: that's probably not when politicians tell you it is) there are some good habits learned now that will be worth hanging onto.

"Only connect!" as Forster said. If only we could pop back in time and tell him about Skype.

Bats

Dominic Cummings, the Svengali of British government, said on his blog recently that he's looking for "super-talented weirdos":

"We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole, weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as a brand ‘diviner’ who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger or that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB. [...] By definition I don’t really know what I’m looking for but I want people around Number 10 to be on the lookout for such people."

I think I know what he means and blimey, Dom, I can do that. Read a pop science book and draw specious conclusions about entirely unrelated subjects? Child's play. For instance, while pondering the question of exit routes from the coronavirus lockdown, I came up with a humdinger. See what you think...

Obviously a vaccine would be nice. An all-purpose antiviral (such as the Gates Foundation has been funding research into) would be even better, as it would insure against the next (possibly deadlier) virus. But what we really want is a once-and-for-all solution that will stop all viruses dead.

It’s possible to create synthetic nucleotides. Instead of A, C, T, G call them Z, Y, X and W. So far research has concentrated on getting synthetic nucleotides to code for new amino acids so we can build new proteins that don’t normally occur in nature. But how about we instead get them to code for exactly the same amino acids as the existing 64 ACTG-based codons?

Then it becomes possible to rebuild the entire human genome using ZYXW-based codons. There’s a one-to-one correspondence; they build exactly the same amino acids; you still get a human being – but the difference is that the genome of this ZYXW human makes no sense to any existing virus. If a virus enters the cell of a ZYXW human, any instructions it gives the cell to replicate itself will be meaningless. Viruses would literally be speaking an unintelligible language as far as humans are concerned.

You might think we’d have to replicate the whole human microbiome as well as the H.Sap genome, but those gut bacteria (etc) would all function perfectly well in the ZYXW human, because the phenotype is unchanged. It’s only viruses, which work by subverting the cell’s DNA machinery, that would be stymied.

I should get my application off to Whitehall right away, don't you reckon? With a noggin full of notions like this I'd fit right in with Dom's dream team. But enough wild surmise -- tomorrow we're on firm ratiocinative ground with a look at investigative scenarios.

Keep your distance

My gaming group have been looking at ways to play online using options like Skype or Discord. I'm even tempted to do some play-by-mail. Why? Well, if you've been in the Negative Zone for the last few months, this will help explain it.

What do you do about dice-rolling in a virtual setting? Becky Annison had a good thread on Twitter about online gaming and her view on that was: "Trust your players not to cheat on dice rolls - it doesn't matter if you can't see their roll. What on earth are you doing playing with people you don't trust?"

I don't know if it helps anyone - but I role-play a lot and mostly online because I have small kids. I role-playing between 1-3 nights a week and I have done for years. This is what I know works to make an online game smooth and fun (1/8)

— Becky Annison (she/her) (@BeckyAnnison) March 13, 2020

Fair enough, although I'm sorry to say that in the past we had such trouble with one player cheating that I had to institute "the shield of truth", a ghastly blue plastic tray in which all dice had to be rolled. Thankfully that's a thing of the past, but if you're unsure then take a look at Rolz.

Playing online will probably reduce the amount of dice-rolling in your game anyway, which in my book is no bad thing, but if you really want the full rules-heavy dungeon-bash experience there's always Roll20, of which one of our group says:

"Roll20 does seem quite good for creating a virtual space in which we can visualize our characters. It would be enough, I think, for us to hear one another, see the rolls, and pass secret notes to the GM. We could add tactical map battles fairly easily when a particular situation calls for it. Roll20 doesn't have full integration to other systems like GURPS or Dragon Warriors so it would be simplest if we keep the rules in our heads and use the platform mainly as a communication device. We might even use Roll20 for the map and dice, while using Discord for the voice communication. The advice on GURPS forums suggests that most people use Roll20 that way, as a lite service for rolls and maps, keeping the rules, characters, and so forth offline."

Other options worth considering include: Astral Tabletop, Fantasy Grounds, Dungeonfog, and Streamyard. (And for board games try Vassal.) Some of those are full-on VTTs that include maps and dice rolling, others are just for chat. Have a look around to find the best fit for you. After all, you've got plenty of time for research.


But you could be missing a trick if you're simply looking for a way to replicate your usual tabletop experience online. Maybe there are benefits here that are unique to virtual play. For example, our group meets every other Thursday and that means at least half a dozen people travelling across London in order to grab about three and a half hours of gaming. (It'd be longer, but I can't get them to follow the Earl of Sandwich's advice and forgo a cooked meal beforehand.) Because we have such limited time for gaming, we've drifted towards a planned adventure-of-the-week style of play that's really not a patch on proper seat-of-the-pants roleplaying. The improv style of gaming is a luxury it's hard to make time for when everybody has jobs and family. It's a far cry from playing at school or college or in your early 20s, when it's possible to set up side sessions with one or two players on the spur of the moment, and the events in those sessions feed into the main weekly game.

If you're gaming online, though, it's pretty easy to recapture the sandbox, open-world approach. Each player is only a phone call away, and it's no problem finding a half hour for a Skype session involving just one or two players. That opens up a much more freewheeling kind of campaign, where one player might, for example, be sent as ambassador to a foreign court, and he or she plays that out separately, creating world events that will impact on the events of the main weekly game -- if "the main game" even means anything any more.

There is no substitute for hanging out with friends in person, but while the Sword of Damocles hangs over us, let's look for the ways that playing online could provide something different and just as entertaining.

Quick -- before they make it a crime

"At home" used to be what people wrote on a card if they were inviting you round for drinks. Now it means the very opposite of conviviality, and politicians have been using it as a mantra to ward away the plague du jour.

There is no law of reason, though, that demands you stay locked up in your room. SARS-Cov-2 is a droplet-borne infection, like its cousin the common cold, not an airborne pathogen like chickenpox or measles. As long as you stay at a reasonable distance from other people (at least two metres) and wash your hands frequently, the virus has no chance.

So if you're out for a walk or a run or a drive and there's nobody to talk to -- or the only people to talk to are the ones you've been cooped up with for weeks on end already -- here are some podcasts to ensure your imagination can soar even if the authorities think you ought to be under house arrest.

Top of my must-tune-in list is Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice, in which Michael Cule and Roger Bell-West discuss all things game-nerdy. To dip in a toe, try this episode, "Unmutated, More or Less", about Powered by the Apocalypse games.

Talking of things apocalyptic, and with an added pinch of matters macabre & eldritch and a smidgen of the generally unnameable, spin the dial to The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which our genial hosts describe as "a podcast about Call of Cthulhu, horror films, weird fiction, and roleplaying in general." There are over a hundred and fifty episodes just waiting to slither into your ears and decorticate your brain. Here's a good one on "Folk Horror" that I'm sure will give me some ideas for Legend games.

Meanwhile there's wall-to-wall HPL at the H P Lovecraft Historical Society, run by Sean Branney, Andrew Leman, and Kevin Stidham. You can wander their virtual halls in a state of aporetic ecstasy, discovering treasure upon treasure until time has no meaning, but if you're disturbed by the encroaching shadows and the things that scuttle just beyond the range of vision, grab a few of the Voluminous Podcasts in which your hosts read and discuss one of Lovecraft's many, many, many letters. Here's a good one: "A Comedy of Vain Desire", addressed to his lifelong friend Rheinhart Kleiner.

Jeff and Hoi host the Appendix N Book Club to discuss the literary roots of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically the novels that Gary Gygax recommended in the eponymous appendix. I don't play D&D, but I like hanging out with these guys and they always have plenty to say that you'll find inspiring. Frequently I'll start out an episode thinking, okay, I read this book years ago, or I started it and gave up, but I'll hear their thoughts on it anyhow -- and then by the end I'm raring to read it again. You could start anywhere. How about this one on Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows?

If literary is your thing, you'll already know about Ralph Lovegrove's Fictoplasm podcast, in which he takes a novel and talks about both the story itself and the potential for mining roleplaying ideas from it. In this Lyonesse episode, Ralph is joined by me and Tim Harford.

Oh, and mentioning Tim brings me to his Cautionary Tales, which blend storytelling and drama to draw vital lessons from some of the great calamities of history, from shipping disasters to a mix-up at the Academy Awards. Why not start where I did, with the story of the ill-fated R101, in "The Deadly Airship Race"? (And for added insights listen to Slide Rule, Nevil Shute Norway's account of the building and test flights of R101's sister ship.)